[Me, Nathan Baxter.]
Kathrine Madigan, businesswoman and full-time evil lieutenant.
Nene Romanova, hacker, genius, police officer, and part-time superhero.
34897-CRS-23, aka Crash. Thirteen year old robot and unwilling cannon
fodder.
Well, I'm going to be perfectly frank. Please feel free to reply to this.
Let me know that you're enjoying it, or heck, even READING it! I honestly
do
appreciate such things.
[Well, would a MST qualify?]
RONIN SUMMER : FLASHBACK
A Sailor Moon / Yoroiden Samurai Troopers cross-over
All: Ooooo....
[Ooooo....]
by Morgan Hudson (dataraven_659@excite.com)
Chapter Five : Check Out A Book
Nene: A BOOK? Like, PAPER?
[There are other kinds?]
Nene: How... Twentieth century.
"Because you mentioned that the biography of King Saigo I lent
you has a scene where his daughter is kidnapped. But I've READ the
Biography of King Saigo the Eighth, and I know that he only had sons."
Sage smiled. "I'm probably the only person in the whole castle who has
read that book enough to pick out whatever details Nezumi has inserted.
And, if we can get our hands on that book, I'll bet it contains
instructions on how to kidnap the Moon Princess!"
Madigan: That was rather... Ill done of them, leaving their plans in such an
exposed place.
Crash: Oh, like Genom bothers with concealment?
Nene: He's right!
"So," the girl said quietly to herself, "the Princess is in
danger? Then it sounds like Sailor Venus needs to get her hands on
that book..."
[Holy Secret Identities, Batmam!]
Nene: Huh?
Madigan: <blinkblink>
"What was that?" Sage asked.
"Nothing!" She replied. "Just... trying to remember if I left
that old thing lying around somewhere else!"
Rowen glanced over at her and smirked. Elves, even half-elves,
were blessed with amazingly acute hearing. So, he thought to himself,
our little bookworm is the one and only Senshi of Venus? How very
interesting...
Crash: The one. The only. SAIIILLAAAAAH _VENUS_!
Nene: Owww... My ears...
**********
Sage looked down at the four cards he still held. "Well," he
said, "According to Ace, I have to find the Five of Swords if I want
them to help me protect the Queen of Stars. We know that the Princess
is the Queen of Stars, and I'm the Knave of Hearts..." He lifted the
card in question, showing everybody the image of himself sketched on
the face of it. "Captain Kento of the Royal Guard is the Knave of
Clubs, and Rowen over there is the Knave of Swords... that means I
still have to find the Knave of Stars and the Wild Card."
Sighing, Rowen sat up on the bed and laid down the card he had
been staring at : his own, to be precise. Acting on impulse, Sage
crouched next to the bed and laid down the other four cards. The Knaves
of Clubs, Swords, and Hearts they put in one row, and the Knave of
Stars and the Jester they set in another row.
"Okay," Rowen said calmly. "All we need to do is figure out
what, or who, these two cards might be. You said that they're Knaves,
right? So what's a Knave?"
The girl leaned over Sage's shoulder, staring down at the
cards. "Well, it's the third highest face card, coming in right before
Queen and King of their suit. Usually, a Knave is associated with a
Knight, and that's what the word used to mean." She reached down and
tapped the Knave of Clubs. "Kento is a Knight, because he's the captain
of the Royal Guard, and he likes to use blunt weapons. So... the Knave
of Clubs."
"True," said Sage, as he pointed at his own card, "but a Knave
is also a thief, like the Knave of Hearts in that nursery rhyme. Ace
said I was the Knave of Hearts because I had the power to toy with
girls' feelings, although I don't know what he meant by that."
"And the Knave of Swords was me," Rowen said, "because I was
stealing swords from Kento's armory and teaching myself swordplay on
the sly."
"So... who are the Knave of Stars and the Jester?"
Sage pursed his lips. "Well... could the Jester be a Court
Jester, maybe?"
"We don't have a Court Jester in the Moon Kingdom right now,"
the girl pointed out, "and we have to assume that whoever they are,
they're nearby. Maybe the trick lies in what a Jester is in a card
game."
"Well... it's nothing." Rowen shrugged. "A Jester is a useless
card, and usually thrown out of the deck. A castaway. It has no value
whatsoever."
"Or, depending how you look at it, every value." Sage countered
as he looked down at the blurry card. "Jesters are Wild Cards, too.
They can have any value they want, depending how the game goes. And
there's usually two in every deck, but we've only got one."
[It's Ace.]
Venus groaned and shook her head. "So, it has no value, and
every value, is vital to the game, but usually thrown away, and is two
things at once? Now I'm getting confused..."
Crash: Bwah?
"Hmmm..." Rowen picked up the card and squinted at it. "You
know, this picture may be really blurry right now, but I think I can
make part of it out... I mean, that's the Jester, and he's holding some
kind of masks in his hands... What's that hanging off the left mask?
Some kind of hat?" Holding it closer to his face, Rowen narrowed his
golden eyes even further and suddenly gasped. "I know who it is! I
think I know who he is! You two work on the Knave of Stars, and I'll
go get him!" Leaping off of the bed and tucking the card into the
front of his tunic, he grinned. "Rowen is off to save the day!"
Nene: Heeeeeeerrrreeeeeee I come to save the DAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!
[Groan.]
Madigan: Agreed.
Crash: Huh?
The girl looked up at him and sniffed, wiping at her eyes with
the back of her hand. She was dressed in a red gown, and had a thick
mane of long black hair. Rowen gulped. "Er, I'm sorry," he apologised,
"I didn't know anybody was staying here." Biting his lip, he slung the
bow back over his shoulder and tugged his pigtail of blue hair free
>from the bowstring. "Why are you crying?"
Crash: She's been cooking with onions?
[She stubbed her toe?]
Madigan: She's bankrupt?
Nene: Her kingdom got taken over by the forces of evil because she invited
an ally inside and her brother hates her because of it, and, oh yeah, he's
been taken over by those selfsame evil forces, even though he doesn't
realize it was them?
Others: *stare at Nene*
Nene: Whhhaaaaaaaat?
The girl sat up and looked at him as he fidgeted in the
doorway. "My family was murdered by the Dark Kingdom."
"Oh..." Rowen blinked. "Well, that's okay then. I'm pretty sure
I cried when my family was murdered by the Dark Kingdom. I can't be
sure : I was pretty young." I sound like an idiot, he realised, and
ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, uhm, except my brother, that
is. At least, I THINK he's still alive..."
Madigan: No kidding? I thought you always sounded like an idiot.
"Does your brother hate you?" The girl asked quietly, and Rowen
shrugged.
"Probably." Rowen tossed his pigtail back over his shoulder and
sat next to the girl on the bed. "Bro and I never quite saw eye to eye.
Mainly because he likes to act like he's bigger than me."
Crash: Well, at least I don't have that problem.
Madigan: Roll over.
Crash: *gets out of his chair and does so* This is very humiliating, you
know.
Mars glanced at the strange boy sitting on her bed and
swallowed. "Does your brother want to kill you?"
That gave Rowen pause. "Well, if he did, I wouldn't know. I
haven't seen him since I left Earth nearly five years ago." He sighed,
and tucked his hair behind his ears. Mars stared. "What?" He asked.
[Bum BUM _BUM_!]
She pointed to the long and sharp-tipped lobes. "Your ears,"
she said curiously. "I've never seen anybody with such strange ears."
"Oh, that's because I'm an elf!" Rowen grinned. "You didn't
have elves where you come from? Where ARE you from, anyway?"
"I am the Princess of the planet Mars." Mars said with a sad
look, as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, placing
her head in her hands. "Or at least I was when there still was a Mars
to be Princess of... I'm not sure what I am now. Can I touch them?"
"My ears?" Rowen blinked. "You MUST be from Mars." He looked
off into the corner of the room, not noticing that Mars was already
reaching towards his head. "Everybody knows better than to touch the
ears of an elf!"
Madigan: No, she would have to be from Venus...
[BWAHAHAHAHAA!]
Nene&Crash: Huh?
"Why?" Mars asked, stretching out a finger.
"Well, elven ears are very s-EN-sitive!" With a yelp, Rowen
bounced off of the bed and leapt across the room, nearly slamming into
the far wall before he landed and turned to glare at Mars, who drew
back her hand and bit her lip.
"I'm so sorry!" She said, looking like she was about to cry
again. "Did I hurt you?"
Crash: THIS is Rei Hino's former incarnation?!
[Yes, and we're all very curious as to how you know that.]
"No," Rowen confessed shakily, "I'm not HURT... but you really,
really shouldn't do that anymore." He smiled nervously. "Let's just
say that my mother always told me not to let a strange girl touch my
ears until we were engaged."
"Oh." Her eyes widened, and she suddenly blushed. "OH! I'm so
very sorry! A-are you engaged?"
[*Rowen voice* No, but if YOU'D like to be, I'm sure that something could be
arranged...]
"No, I'm free as a bird in the sky." Rowen smiled again, a
little less nervously this time. "It's, uhm, it's my big brother who
has all the women chasing him. Seems to me that I heard something about
YOU being engaged, though..."
"Yes, to my darling Jadeite." Mars smiled, then looked downcast
yet again. "Who by now is either dead, or working for the enemy, as my
brother accused."
Crash: Sounds very familiar...
Kento spun the staff, listening to its hum with a well-trained
ear. This, he could sense by the feel, was a good staff. He could take
a man's head off with this staff, or block even the sharpest blade.
It had a good grain, a good weight, and it slipped easily through his
fingers. As usual, when he was surrounded by the droning hum of his
weapon through the air, with the soothing rythmic feel of it slapping
>from palm to palm, he began to think.
Crash: *flips his drink can in the air, then chops it in half with his wrist
blades* Sharpest blade? Really?
That Sage lad, he thought to himself, quite a shame, that. Nice
boy, as far as he could tell, but obviously insane. Shows up yesterday
tagging after Venus like her newest puppy dog, and starts blithering
about cards, and Dark Kingdom plots hidden in books... mad as a hatter.
Of course, it was Kento's experience that all scribes were a trifle
mad : he was certain it must come from being cooped up in those cramped
chambers with all those ink and glue fumes.
[Sort of like hackers, and their computer's magnetic fields.]
Nene: HEY!
Just... like a Jester. Like a card that changes its face and
becomes anything it wants. Kento blinked. He never should have let
that poor, deluded, Sage bend his ear with those tales of Knaves and
Queens and damn fool quests. It was starting to take over his brain!
Chuckling, he shook his shaggy head.
[Ooookaaaayyy.... I was wrong.]
Crash: Like the OverMind System!
Madigan: Hey! Zip it!
"That's just it! He's so smart, he's being stupid. He's
convinced I can't beat him, so he's taking risks he shouldn't be." Sage
grinned. "I mean, if he was playing smart, he would have killed me the
second I overheard Nezumi talking about the book. He wouldn't have
told me what his plan was, or given me so many hints on who I would
need to help me." His brow furrowed, Sage locked his hands together,
staring at the interlaced fingers as if they held the all the secrets
of the universe. "I think Ace is liking this game too much to stop
playing it now... and that means the book is still somewhere in the
castle."
[sooo... Ace is a Xellos clone?]
Madigan: *fingers her hair*
Sage grinned. "Little bit of column A, little bit of column B.
Would you mind explaining to me?"
Crash: Delta Zero Niner!
[Huh?]
Crash: Boomer humor.
"This creep already broke into my room ONCE! What if I'm in
here when he does it again?" On top of which, she added silently, if
the Princess really is in danger, Sailor Venus is hardly going to stand
aside while some scribe takes on the Dark Kingdom to save her! "I'm
staying right by your side, until this gets taken care of."
Madigan: How close by his side, girlie?
"Fine," Sage groaned, and pulled off his robes. Beneath, he
had black trousers and a physique Venus did her best not to stare at.
How did a scribe get a body like THAT? Obviously, those books are
heavier than they looked... "Put this on and pull up the hood. I'll
grab another robe from my room, and if anyone asks, we're just two
scribes looking for an important scroll, okay?"
Nene: *drools at the view*
"Uhm, okay," Venus said with a gulp as she pulled the white
fabric down over her head. Looking down, she tugged on the robe and
frowned as it tangled in the fabric of her gown. With a shrug, she
reached behind her.
"What are you doing?" Sage asked as he desperately took off
his glasses and clamped both hands over his eyes.
"Looking the part." Her bodice untied, the gown fell around her
ankles with a loud thump. She shook the robe slightly, and smoothed it
with her hands. "There we go : a perfect fit!" The fabric was
surprisingly comfortable and soft, and hung down to her calves. Sage
was quite busily polishing the lenses of his glasses and looking
elsewhere.
"Er, can we please go now? And for Serenity's sake, WARN me
before you do that kind of thing again!"
[I would think that he would be enjoying himself.]
Crash: Was that meant as a signal on her part?
"Remember," Sage whispered, "we aren't supposed to be here, and
you ESPECIALLY are not supposed to be here. If Nezumi catches us, he'll
do all KINDS of horrible, horrible things."
Nene: *Venus voice* OOOH! ^_^ With tentacles?
"What will he do?"
"We're not sure," Sage admitted. "Nobody has ever dared to
find out." With a shrug, he gently touched a match to the candle he
held and fitted it into a special holder that he attached to his
ring. "Just keep your head down low, be quiet, and follow me."
[A line right up there with: "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?"]
"I," the creature snarled through a mouth filled with gleaming
tusks, "am the destroyer, the conquerer of worlds!" Its bat-like wings
spread wide as it floated through the hole it had made, liquid flame
spewing from its glowing eyes. "I... AM..."
"Trouble," Venus and Sage chorused in a resigned tone.
Crash: "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
[Very kewl! This series ROCKS.]