Where Are We Now? Chapter 3 A Ranma/Sailor Moon fusion By Dr. Suekeiichi Kaiton ---Temple of the Time Gate, early afternoon--- None had entered the chamber save one for 25,000 years, a massive chamber with a circular indentation shimmering in the centre. Pluto was watching the time-gate, the slowly rippling surface scintillating light over the pillars and markings of her bedroom. As she was so engrossed staring at the future, she didn't notice a lithe stranger enter her realm, creeping right behind her. The intruder let his right hand fall to her shoulder. Suddenly her time staff whizzed by his head, clipping a few strands of hair from his bangs. He parried her blow, forcing her back towards her canopied mattress his smile glowing in the all-encompassing darkness. Gritting her teeth from the force of the blow, Pluto slashed across her assailant's chest with the sharp edge of her steel, the metal emitting a horrific sheering sound of nails on a chalkboard. "You've got to do better than that..." His voice flowed from the darkness, both all around her and not around her at all, devoid of emotion or inflection. Almost an ethereal technological sound. [He must be using a scrambler...] She thought as the stranger swung again with his silver sword. She moved her staff horizontal to her body, stabbing out at the illuminated outline of her attacker, the red garnet orb atop it glowing red in close proximity to the time-gate. Then it was stopped... ...By the Cosmic Xenosol. It's bearer smiling sweetly at his childhood friend and lover. She contemplated fainting. "...To defeat the one who taught you how to fight." He lowered the sword, its blade swallowed by the amorphous shadow of its master. He pulled the voice splitter away from his face. "It's been too long Puu-chan." "Is it...you?" Shock was imprinted across her face, then tears came to her eyes as one whom she loved and thought long dead returned looking handsomer than before. "Honto-chan? You're...really you!" She screamed and threw her arms around him, tackling him to the bed, the dark purple sheets sinking further into the mattress. Hands encircled her slim waist, their callused sweaty palms adhering themselves to her tight nightgown. She felt pinpricks of pleasure race up her body from the warmth of his hands, she had been cold for so, so long. She kissed him reverently, sloppily open-mouthed as she arched her back, rubbing various interesting parts of her anatomy against his body. She rolled over, straddling his waist, rubbing her hips along his stomach. Smiling lasciviously, her shadow loomed above him as she tore open his uniform dress shirt and ran her cool hands over his warm, taut, chest. "You may still kiss just as well, but let's see if you can do _other things_ just as well." She trailed a soft hand down the front of his pants, relishing his moans, rediscovering a love from 25,000 years hence. "Puu-chan. Stop." His breathing was ragged. As much as his body wanted too, he didn't have the time to enjoy it now. "My, my, Honto-chan! It seems your reincarnation left you some rather _large_, _extra_ benefits!" He blanched as she twiddled in his pants. He yanked her hands out and held her wrists outstretched. "W-what are you doing? I always thought you liked it when I was aggressive!" She pouted at him, kneeling on the edge of the bed. Her mind a whirling dervish of memories and desires, remembrances of their first time came flooding back at once. His face was somber. "I need to know who and where the outers are." He kissed her ear, his tongue caressing its lobe, gradually moving further down as his hands worked at the juncture of her thighs. "Reincarnated names if possible." He lapped the sweet sweat from her neck, sniffing the perfumed skin. His hands began moving faster, kneading the flesh of her inner thigh, driving her to near climax simply due to the feel of his rough hands on her skin. "Y-you know I can't do that unless a cosmic emergency is declared," although there had not been a cosmic leader since the fall of the Moon Kingdom. If the King and Queen should ever fall then the rite of succession passes to the eldest daughter, then son, etc. If the entire immediate royal family has perished, the mantle of leadership falls to the commander of the royal Trigan guard. The bearer of the Cosmic Xenosol and wearer of the might of Marduk. After so many millennia of solitude and duty, finally the Kami blessed her with true love once again. Not knowing how she had survived with her sanity intact for so many years, the loneliness, stillness, it threatened to drive her mad! Always watching, never participating, waiting for the day her post could be abandoned, her duty forgotten. Now he was here, alive and much _bigger_ than before, willing to indulge her solitary urges. She could wait just a little longer. "As acting leader of this cosmos, I declare this an emergency of the highest level. If it were not so I would never have awoken." She went still. "Y-you mean if the danger had never occurred you would have stayed buried in the subconscious of the mortal?" Her heart sank at the thought that he hadn't returned out of love for her. "No, I would have awoken, but only when he slept. He would have no recollection of my activities, at least not like I am now." He spun her around on his lap to face tearing eyes, his rough, callused hands rubbing her arms with warmth. Lithe silky smooth legs entwined his waist, ankles locking him in her, while thin athletic arms wrapped around his neck. He absently stroked her deep emerald hair. "I would have returned for you." "I do not doubt it. I still cannot give you the names of the outer senshi." "The cosmos is in dire peril!" "From what?" "The Seven Scourges." The air took a colder temperature at the mere mention of the deadly plagues. the Red Death, the Shadow King. the Conquering Worm, the Ghost Reaper, the Eater of Souls, the Death Phantom, and the hideous Necromancer. "They're coming, some have already been chained, others have no corporeal form. That just makes them all the more dangerous. I'll need your power along with Saturn's to defeat them." She sobered, looking with tearing eyes at her lover. Finally the floodgates opened and the tears began to fall. Like the crushing weight of a freight train, the years of death and destruction flooded back to her. The Moon Kingdom's massacre became vividly clear as she cried in his arms, colleagues dying in pools of blood, others blown apart leaving nothing to bury. Seeing the Queen fall from the crystal palace. He had been born Divus Honturi, heir to a dukedom on Pluto and brother to the House of Serenity. His family owned a vast estate on the outskirts of Tartarus with a magnificent view of the river Styx. It being a loosely populated area, he had become friends with the neighboring lord's daughter, Persephone, a relationship that rapidly gained momentum until blossoming into forbidden love. The stars had shone brightly on the night they chose to consummate their love, it was the festival of Thanatos, first colonist of Pluto, and fireworks soon illuminated their activities to their respective families. Years past with little contact between them, both had long since reached the age of consent and were free to wed. They didn't. It was two months after her twentieth birthday that she was named the Senshi of Time, a crushing blow to their already straining relationship. Time was stretching short for the young lovers and tensions ran high. At the end of six months they parted on amicable terms. It was around this time that the Trigan guard contacted him. It was during the years in- between his twentieth and thirtieth that he tempered his powers, achieving an energy reading rivaling that of the Queen! He knew she kept her feelings bottled up, stewed and simmering for thousands of years, now she was letting it all out. He sensed that leaving now might compromise her already tenuous grasp on reality. "Shhhh...it's alright now." He rocked her in his arms, sobs wracking her frame. "I'm here now Puu- chan...you'll be alright." He raised her head with a thumb, his lips instantly locking with hers. Tears fell from her eyes as she closed her lids, rolling down her creamy cheeks as he stroked her silky green hair. "I can't stay forever, but I can stay for today." "T-thank you...Honto-chan." Tears dried and faded, slipping to his shoulder. Hands rough from struggle and the road gently encircled the straps to her gown, letting it fall to the floor in a shimmering waterfall of ebony. Her slim fingers with their delicate nails undid the clasp to his Trigan Guard uniform, letting the jacket fall to her bed. "You do know that the other senshi know about me...the marriage. I'll have to follow them." He unbuttoned his white formal shirt. "I know...but I just want you to myself, just for a little bit." [Where have a heard that before?] He thought of Altaecia, they were alike in so many respects. He kissed her, which led to another and another. He gently took her to bed. ---Five in the evening, Juuban High School Gymnasium--- "So where's this hot instructor?" Usagi bounced around the heavily padded mats, completely oblivious to the incredulous stares from the remaining senshi. "W-what are you looking at me like that for? I was asleep alright?" Rei groaned, a massive vein pulsing under her forehead. "The class is about to begin anyway so you'll meet him then." An unfamiliar voice spoke from her right. "He's sorta handsome if that's your thing, but he's at least three years older than all of us, you guys don't have a chance." Haruka and Michiru sat by the bleachers, garbed in off-white sienna gis. Even if neither of them 'went that way' neither could dispute there were strange vibes from the instructor; vibes that aroused them even as he was a man and gave an overwhelming feeling of femininity to his aura. "I didn't notice you there before, my name's Usagi, this is Rei, Minako, Makoto, and the nerdy one is Ami." "Hey! I'm not nerdy! I prefer to be called intellectually inclined!" Ami sat in the lotus position next to Makoto. A slightly tight gi adorning her frame. "I hope this doesn't tear while we are practicing." "Don't worry about the gi, we probably won't start real katas today and the name's Haruka. This is my friend Michiru." The aqua-haired girl next to her nodded. "Nice to meet you." She noticed Makoto's deliberative position. "What's wrong?" Broken from her daze, Makoto glanced at the group of her friends staring at her. "I'm just worried about whether of not he'll remember me..." Makoto placed a finger to her cheek, her expression downcast. Rei was still deliberating on whether to tell her comrades about Honturi or not. "...sempai..." That slight whisper, coupled with the nostalgic air in her voice aroused more than suspicion in her fellow senshi. "WHAT!?!" The girls exclaimed, shaking Makoto's shoulders as they shouted. "He's your old sempai!?!" "Uh...yes." "HOW!?!" Their inquiries were cut short as the young man in question strode to the centre, bleached white gi hanging open at the chest exposing sleek, tan flesh to the giggling gaggle of girls garbed in gis around him. He bowed to the class staring back at them until they bowed in return. "Let us begin..." ---Okayama, Masaki Shrine--- "Yosho..." Katsuhito Masaki, formerly Yosho of the House of Jurai, lay on the floor of the shrine office. The disembodied voice called out to him from the darkness, phasing into this reality piece by piece, an ancient whisper amid seas of memories and nightmares. Throwing the quilt off, his aged disguise evaporating in the moonlight, he called out to his mysterious visitor. "Who calls me thus!? I don't know you!" Retrieving his wire-rimmed glasses from his side, slipping the cold steel around his ears, he stood young and proud in his Jurian battle gear. "Show yourself or disturb me not." A light sword erupted from his palm. A swirling began in the centre of the room, tatami mats shifting uncomfortably in the increasingly viscous winds, curios blown from his desk, an amorphous black shadow that with each passing moment grew into our world. With no warning a gloved hand vomited forth from the transport portal, taut, tanned skin wrapped in a layer of black fabric. The swirling pinwheel of darkness began to recede into nothingness, leaving more and more of the stranger before the astonished eyes of Nodoka Saotome's father. Finally, as the darkness closed upon itself, the figure was revealed robed in Jurian regiments and tassels, bearded and wrinkled. "It's been far too long Yosho. How has my favorite student been these last few millennia?" A somber baritone echoed in the darkness. "Master Honturi!" Yosho dropped his sword, the blade loosing corporeal form as its power was cut, and his Jurian battle suit disappeared only to be replaced by his priestly robes. Running forward and pulling the older man into a hug, Yosho laughed heartily as his original sword master returned the embrace. "I thought an old coot like you would have died thousands of years ago!" "This old codger has a few more eons left in him! Your mother's been asking for you in the court you know." Tenma Honturi, father of the galaxy- hopping Divus Honturi, set his slippered feet down on the floor, a slight gust of dust marking the air displacement his being caused. "Arranging your marriage is all she's been doing since she last saw you. She even wooed the Queen of Andromeda, widow for three centuries, to be your Queen!" [I knew talking to her was dangerous...] "Why are you here master? Don't you have more pressing concerns?" "Those concerns are what brings me here Yosho. Have you heard from my son lately?" Moonlight shimmered off Katsuhito's glasses. "Honturi-kun? No, not at all." The older man pulled away. "Is he in trouble again?" Tenma withdrew his thumbnail from his teeth, the pasty friction between them setting his mind ablaze. Closing his eyes and steeling his mind, Tenma told Yosho words never to be uttered for fear _THEY_ would appear. "The seven scourges. My son has teamed with the senshi to defeat them, but I fear that will not be enough. I prevail upon you, my most loyal student, to aid him in averting this disaster!" Tenma sank to his knees, starched cloth crinkling in the very motion. He stilled as a hand fell to his shoulder. "Master, do not kneel to me, if you owe me anything I owe it back a thousand-fold. I will do as you ask, my grandson lives in Tokyo now anyway, he will aid your son if need be." The master rose from his knees, aging joints snapping with the motion. "Thanks gentle prince, noble son Yosho, I lost my son once..." Tenma rose to his full height of six feet, robes blowing around him. "...I will not see him fall to the clutches of those foul abominations again!" He bowed once again, giving Yosho a quick wink before taking his leave through the sub-space transporter. "Ask your daughter, Nodoka, about my son. She knows more about him than you'll ever know." With that he was gone once again, leaving Yosho illuminated by the moonlight of the cloudless sky, a pale spotlight on that actor of fate. ---6:30 p.m., Juuban High School Gymnasium--- "I don't understand why we have to wait here, I mean all he's doing it teaching klutzes like Usagi basic katas." Rei and Makoto sat next to Haruka and Michiru on the stands as the beginners followed Ranma's instructions. At the beginning of class he had asked those that had previous martial arts training to step aside and let the beginning class catch up. As such, the senshi were broken into two groups. "Alright now, practice those three until the end of class. If you have any questions I'll be around awhile after class." Ranma strode over to the assembled girls lounging on the bleachers, his step fluid and graceful. Makoto tried hiding behind Rei, enraging the black-haired girl even more as her long chestnut ponytail tickled the back of her neck. "Hey Ranma-sensei! Someone wants to talk to you!" Rei yanked hard on Makoto's ponytail, shoving her forward into Ranma's arms. With a yelp of surprise, Mako-chan fell forward into her sempai's arms. "Mako-chan? Is that you?" He chuckled a bit at the universal irony of his situation, here he was doing this as a ruse while the senshi all gathered towards him, somehow it would figure that Makoto Kino would be the Senshi of Jupiter. "It's been a good two years! How have you been?" "I-I've been...g-good. I've b-been practicing the move y-you taught me..." A crimson blush, easily as red as the bow on Sailor Mars' outfit flashed across her face. "Really? I'd love to see it!" Ranma remembered the day he taught her that. She had been twelve and completely enamoured with him to say the least, he had been practicing outside for a change when she'd appeared asking him to train her. Of course he hadn't taught her anything too dangerous, just enough for self-defense, the move had been a basic anything-goes stance coupled with a aerial flip and snap-kick to the opponent's solar plexus. It required intense skill and targeting to hit just the right place. "Y-you do? Really?" Makoto shakily got to her feet, taking a basic Anything-Goes stance as Ranma stood in front of her, an eager practice dummy. Breath came hot from her lungs, cool air rushing in to cool and calm her battered nerves, remembering the basic instructions for the maneuver she breathed out forcefully, and unwritten cue for the match to begin. She hoped to show how she'd improved, hoped to show off for her sempai. He nodded to her, a serious mask hiding his interest at the display, and proceeded to throw a weak punch at her side. The results were instantaneous. Makoto dodged nimbly to his right, grasping his forearm and using it as a springboard to propel her over his height, waiting for him to turn before lashing out with a right-handed chop to his chest, one that was deflected just as it hit his clothing. [Damn he's fast! I've gotta hit him fast!] She lashed out with a flurry of punches aimed to all his vital points, feeling them all impact soft flesh. As her attack ended she felt a growing numbness in her hands, gazing down at them she found the kanji for slow gently pressed into the flesh of her digits. Looking back up in awe at the skill her sempai showed, she was greeted by a Cheshire grin as he waggled a finger at her. "The beginning was good, very good in fact, but your follow up is poor. You must learn to never underestimate your opponent, you thought that because I was so well defended that a fast flurry of hits would immobilize me." He stepped closer to her, the classmates around her dispersing as he dismissed them for the night, feeling the heat of her exertions radiate off her body. "Let me demonstrate why." He raised both hands rather innocently before striking with the Katsu Tenshin Amaguriken at the pressure points lining her arms and neck. As he finished the demonstration Haruka and Michiru thought he'd done nothing, his hands hadn't even moved, then Makoto's arms went limp and her neck locked. "Do you see?" "Hai, sempai, I have much to learn." She couldn't move her torso, everything was numb from her chin to her waist, it was her waist, however, that was really feeling the sensation of his hands touching her. "Could you...um...unlock me now?" She looked a little nervous, knowing Ranma's bizarre idea of what was good for training. "I don't think so, all I did was make your body think it was ten times heavier, if you can move any part of your torso, then I'll unlock you." He stepped away, beginning to assess the skill levels of Haruka and Rei. Makoto sighed heavily then began the endless task of moving a muscle. Michiru still had the feeling that Ranma was hiding something, he just seemed so odd. In a familiar way. Perhaps they knew each other in a past life, she joked. Anyway, those dreams she'd been having were both disturbing and strangely sensual, even if they were with a guy. She sighed, if only men like that existed. ---To be continued--- Well, another chapter, another author's rant. Sorry about this chapter's meandering but I had to set the stage for the meeting between Ranma's mother, Setsuna and Makoto. Don't worry, Haruka and Michiru will soon find the red apple of their eyes at the Juuban High School campus, and Rei will break the news to everybody that Ranma is Honturi! Magnetite and Amethyst grow tighter as Beryl's tenuous grasp of reality begins to degrade, and the Senshi have yet another encounter with the Dark General as he interferes with another youma battle. For those of you wondering where my fanfiction is located then please refer to the following list. Lady Cosmos: http://www.crosswinds.net/~ladycosmos Zaxxon: http://sfcreators.com/Atlantis/FanFic/Other/DrSuekeiichiKaiton/ Hawk: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quasar/6189/ Phu: http://members.nbci.com/phu_lam The Lost One: http://ranmaxovers.tripod.com The Church of Kasumi and Ranma: http://www.angelfire.com/anime2/KasumiandRanma Tannim: http://home.earthlink.net/~tannim Nighthawk: http://www.geocities.com/nighthawk/hosted.htm As always, C&C, flames to: Suekeiichi Kaiton, Holy Scribe and Second Disciple The Church of Kasumi and Ranma Kaiton@banet.net