Lawkeeper chapter 5

Jun 23, 2007 22:44


Lawkeeper
Chapter 5

Moon sighed, tugged at the short, dark blue skirt of her scout costume and wondered if her human companions had any concept of their own mortality. She understood the urgency of the situation, she was the one who had emphasised it after all, but surely hijacking a flying saucer required more than seven hours planning. Of course, if anything happened she could get both herself and the reincarnates away safely but something inside of her rebelled against a course of action which would involve little more than the indiscriminate use of her unchained magic. A sense of professional pride insisted that she accomplish this mission with no more than the tools provided. In other words, she didn’t want to cheat.

She sighed again and tried to discipline her mind. It was a pity that there were no soul bonds between any of the scouts so they could combine their powers but they all possessed respectable abilities and Darien was almost a beta level warrior. Between them they had miraculously managed to defeat both Metallia and her pawn, Beryl. Surely they could take on Rubius and the remaining sisters. From what she had been told, Rubius could be no more than a mediocre beta that, although strong, shouldn’t be too difficult an obstacle for Darien. And if all else failed, she still had the two battle spells that, between them, accounted for both subtlety and brute strength.

As soon as memory of the stronger of the two spells surfaced, Moon felt like kicking herself. She still hadn’t made herself a focus to stop the spell from burning her illusion away.

“Sailor Moon?” Mercury’s soft voice interrupted her self-recriminations.

“What’s up Blue?” she asked, still running various options through her mind.

The young-old teen held out a slender object and said softly, “I thought this might be useful to you.” It was a rich red wand about half a metre long, trimmed with gold and which resembled a royal sceptre more than anything else.

Moon grinned in sudden relief. “You must be psychic Mercury,” she exclaimed, “I was just thinking about my need for a focus.”

Her friend smiled shyly. “I knew you didn’t have anything when you first showed up and I wasn’t sure if you’d had time to find something so I whipped that up.”

“It’s great, thank you,” the Lunarian assured her sincerely.

Mercury smiled again and then blinked as if something had just struck her. “Oh and it can be used as a physical weapon as well as a magical one,” she advised, “You lengthen it so that it can be used as a staff.”

The blonde found the hidden switch and twirled the now two metre long staff easily. “Wicked!” she laughed. Moon was touched that the scout had gone to so much trouble; it wasn’t something she had expected from a human of such short acquaintance. It suggested to her that maybe the end of the interdiction wasn’t as far off as she’d feared. “Thank you,” Moon repeated and wished she could properly show her gratitude.

Mercury shrugged it off. “It was no problem,” the brunette protested, “And this way you won’t have to keep borrowing Darien’s cane.” There was a warning light in her blue eyes and Moon decided to put her at ease.

“Don’t worry,” she grinned, “I’m on my best behaviour today. No stirring the Frog-face until this is all over okay?”

“Thank you.”

“Alright, is everyone ready?” Tux’s voice broke up the soft chatter and drew everyone’s attention to him.

The six warriors were gathered in the still deserted park. The morning traffic was only just beginning to pick up and most of the distant shops were still closed. Mercury walked away from Moon and kneeled near a small device she’d arranged when she’d first arrived. She made a few last minute adjustments and then nodded to Tux.

“Everyone knows what to do?” he asked and the scouts nodded in confirmation. “Right, Moon and I first, followed by Venus and Jupiter with Mars and Mercury bringing up the rear. Good luck.”

Moon retracted the staff and moved to stand next to the masked man. Neither of them was exactly pleased with being paired together but the others had long since formed natural partnerships which left them no other choice. The only real objection that Moon could think of was that it might make more sense to set the two most powerful members of the mission to separate tasks but if she had brought that up then she would have to explain exactly why she rated herself as more powerful than the other scouts. So she shut up and accepted the arrangements.

“Remember you two,” Venus warned, “Don’t get sidetracked.”

Moon caught Tux as he glanced at her and read his expression easily. It told her in no uncertain terms that, although he was perfectly confident of his own professionalism, hers was in doubt. She sighed again and restrained a groan of frustration. After this was over she was going to have to find a way to rub his nose in her ‘meatball headedness’.

Mercury tapped a button and an energy field sprang up around the pair of them and the park disappeared. Seconds later the two of them materialised in a long, dismal corridor which extended several hundred metres in either direction. Moon shook her head in admiration, the girl really did know her stuff, and then got down to business. She recalled an image of the corridor plan at the same time as she lightly sifted through the faint energy patterns. Seconds later she had her bearings and looked at Tux.

“This way,” she told him and pointed.

He ignored her for a moment while he confirmed it in his own way and then started off without another word. Moon took a deep breath before she followed. This partnership was not going to work, she could tell that already. Suddenly she stopped rigid and frantically looked around. The local energy fields resonated with the presence of several others yet she and her reluctant partner were alone in the corridor.

“Ummm,” she started reluctantly as she didn’t want to alarm Tuxedo Mask unnecessarily but the vibrations were growing as the enemies’ proximity grew.

“What?” He didn’t even turn to face her and she was slightly comforted to realise that he was uneasy as well.

She put her hand on his shoulder to stop him and drew closer, brushing a faint sense of familiarity aside as she did so. “I know it looks like we’re alone but there’s a lot of something elses in here with us.”

His head turned to her slightly. “I can feel them too.”

“They’re coming closer.”

“How can you tell?” he whispered.

“As a healer I use energy patterns in a person or animal’s body to track illness. There are similar fields all around us and everything in them, especially living beings, affects them. There’s only a small difference between reading a person’s patterns and reading an area’s.” For a moment she wondered how her answer would affect his assessment of her but she shrugged it aside and turned to the problem of their invisible foe.

“Can you fight them using these energy fields?” he asked softly and she could literally see the hairs on the back of his neck rising.

She considered for a moment. “Only if you want to alert everyone to the fact that we’re here. They’re droids, I think, they don’t actually have a field of their own and using the surrounding fields is inexact at best. I’ll probably miss more than I hit.”

“I don’t think we need to be too concerned about secrecy since they’re here,” he reminded her dryly, “But if we hurry, we might still be able to catch Rubius unawares.”

Rubius was their particular target in this endeavour. He undoubtedly knew that they were there now. Even if he hadn’t detected Mercury’s matter transmission, the invisible security droids would have alerted him to the intruders. Still, it would take him a short time to assimilate everything and, if they were lucky, the other teams would engender more confusion that would slow his reactions down further.

“Get ready to run,” she advised her partner, “I gonna try out Mercury’s gift and it’s definitely going to set off a lot of alarms.” Without saying another word she raised the sceptre that the Mercurian senshi had crafted for her and used it to shape a flood of power. White light spilled from the sceptre and even before it had properly faded Tuxedo Mask began to drag her down the hall at a dead run. Klaxons began to go off and she looked over her shoulder to see a dozen small piles of dust materialise out of nowhere. “Well it worked,” she said brightly and started to run on her own initiative.

“Not exactly inconspicuous though Meatball Head,” he retorted breathlessly.

She snorted. “I did warn you and don’t call me Meatball Head!”

“Now, now, don’t be so touchy.”

“Touchy?!” The door at the end of the hallway opened to reveal two strange droids and closed when they’d entered the hallway. “Look who’s talking, a slight mishap on a bridge and you go berserk.”

The droids whirled toward the pair but neither of them paid too much heed, too embroiled in their argument. Their distraction made little difference; both of them assessed their new opponents unconsciously and acted in harmony even as they bickered with each other.

“Why shouldn’t I have gone berserk?” Tux snapped as he ducked a whip-like projection of the first droid and shot three roses into the second without stumbling. “The water smelled like fish and I don’t want to think of what I washed out of my hair that afternoon.”

“Poor baby,” she snickered and sliced off the whip-like projection with a thrown discus of light even as he ducked under it. “You had to go to all that effort of washing your hair again... and you just did it the night before. You’ve got better things to do with your spare time than do it again.” She threw another discus. It missed and flew past the second droid.

“I’ll have you know that I do have better things to do-” A rose distracted the droid as the discus boomeranged back and a ball of crimson energy finished the damaged enemy.

She triggered the switch on her sceptre and used its sudden growth to vault over the remaining droid. “Yeah, yeah,” she scoffed, spun low and used her staff to knock the droid off balance. “Things like dusting or, organising your sock drawer. You know, important stuff right?”

He was conspicuously silent as he impaled the falling droid on his cane and supercharged it with energy. It dissolved into ashes and she stood and gaped at him incredulously.

“You’re kidding me,” she sputtered, “That’s really what you do with your spare time?”

He ignored her and blasted the door out his way angrily.

Moon shook her head in pity. “Man, Andy’s right, you really do need a girlfriend.”

“What?!” He jerked to a halt in the doorway and half turned to yell at her when she ran into him and knocked them both through the entrance.

A sudden weight prevented them from regaining their balance and they sprawled out on the floor. It felt as if she had the entire Silver Keep resting on her back and she shuddered to think of how Tux must feel. They must have had at least five of Earth’s gravities pressing down on them but she at least had the advantage of living under Jupiter’s two and a half gravities for the last several years. Painstakingly, she drew herself to her knees and saw Tux doing the same beside her. His expression showed that it was as much from bravado as true strength. His pride would not allow him to be weaker than she.

“Well, well, well,” a malicious voice sneered, “What do we have here?”

She looked up to find a man standing in the centre of the large chamber, next to a single control consul. His wild hair was fairly short and a fiery red, his face pale, his eyes brown and an inverted black crescent stood out on his forehead. She hadn’t seen him before but there was only one person he could be: Rubius. He pressed something on the consul and the force around her
doubled. She gasped but refused to submit and, next to her, Tuxedo Mask did the same. The gravity increased again and neither warrior could prevent themselves from sprawling out on top of each other once more.

She heard footsteps and managed to turn her head enough to see his boots stop less than a metre distance from her. That meant the gravitation field was confined to an area either directly in front of the door or on the perimeter of the room; either way, it meant that she didn’t have that far to go to get out of it. He laughed and she restrained an urge to lash out at him. From her own reaction she suspected that the man in front of her was an entirely different kettle of fish from the sisters and not because of the power he possessed.

“I do believe it is the sleeping beauty from yesterday’s battle-”

A sudden fierce protectiveness welled up within her and Moon realised that Tuxedo Mask unwittingly projected his emotions through the contact of her body on his and she couldn’t move to break the connection.

“And you must be her Prince Charming, eh?” the red head finished and Moon gasped at the almost tangible wave of animosity that ran through her from Tux.

Her mind couldn’t deal with the emotion, it was too fierce and she rolled herself off him in a desperate bid to break the link. Her movement triggered an increase in the intensity and it suddenly felt as if her mind were under attack by waves of pure hatred. She knew she’d shocked Rubius with her ability to move but her mind was too involved with the attempt to create a protective shield from the ferocity that still battered at her psyche. In the distance she felt her brother and her mother reach for her in concern but even they could not break through the waves of rage generated by the human. To do this, he had to be much more than a potential beta level but the pain of the psychic onslaught obscured the ramifications of this.

“DARIEN!” she shrieked, “STOP!”

Her distress got through to him and his anger ebbed in shock but then the gravity doubled again and then again. Through the channel that still existed between them she felt him start to die and her own heart began to labour under the pressure. She knew the link went both ways when his anger began to grow once more in response to her distress. The pressure in her head built up again and the pain in her body dwindled in comparison. She rose to her knees and both pressure and rage increased. She staggered to her feet, the pain just too great and then everything climaxed. She screamed.

***

Tuxedo Mask, or rather, Darien dragged himself upright. At some point while he’d been unconscious, his disguise had faded and he couldn’t work up the will power to change back. In fact, in the wake of what happened, he no longer gave a damn if someone discovered his real identity. His eyes had a difficult time focusing and so it was several seconds before he saw Bunny’s limp form near the charred stump that was all that remained of the control consul. He lurched over to her and fell to his knees next to her and frantically searched for her pulse. He was more relieved than he cared to admit when he found it but he couldn’t even begin to measure the relief when she began to stir in response to his touch a minute later.

“What happened?” she whispered hoarsely, even before she opened her eyes, and he knew with a mysterious certainty that she didn’t need to look at him to identify him, she would never mistake his touch for another’s.

He tried to gather his scattered thoughts as he helped her to sit up. He found that all he had was a vague recollection of fear and pain and the fear had been for her. “I don’t know,” he answered after a moment, “I don’t really remember... Rubius trapped us and then... I don’t know.”

She blinked repeatedly as if trying to regain some control over scattered senses. “Our transformations-”

“Undone while we were out of it,” he told her and helped her to her feet. Each supporting the other, they’d gone barely a step when they stumbled again. Darien stayed upright by will alone and Bunny did so only because of his aid. He looked down to find what they’d tripped on and discovered the pitiful remains of a corpse.

“Rubius,” she breathed and Darien felt what little remained of her strength drain out of her.

“Steady,” he murmured and shifted her in his arms.

“What happened? What could I possibly have done to him?” Her voice was agonised and he remembered her words of the day before, ‘I cannot hurt when I have the opportunity to heal’.

“Don’t blame yourself,” he told her, “It could have just as easily have been me who did it.” Neither of them really believed that and she shook her head, still shocked. He glared at her fiercely. “Listen to me, you can’t tear yourself apart because of this. Whether it was you or me, he was going to kill us and of the two possible outcomes, I prefer this one.”

She shook herself and laughed harshly. “I don’t even know why I’m so upset. I know he was evil, I could feel it and I know that I wouldn’t have been able to make him good but... Catzi loved him you know. Not like stars and comets kind of love... but... he was her first love...”

He tipped her chin up and made her meet his eyes. A crooked smile lurked on his lips as he said, “Much as it galls me to admit this, Meatball Head, you’re a good person.” She turned in his hold, threw her arms around him and for the next couple of minutes they hugged each other in silence.

“You know we’d really freak the scouts out if they saw us like this,” he murmured softly. She choked on a laugh and as she backed away, he saw the tears on her face.

“Don’t worry,” she told him, “As soon as this is over we’ll be back to normal. We’re only getting along because we promised the scouts.”

He examined the girl before him. Her eyes were still sad but she’d rebounded from the horror better than he’d expected or even hoped. “You’re right. I don’t think I could be continuously polite to a ditz.” Not that he could simply dismiss her so anymore and from her smile, she knew it.

She mock glared at him as she began to walk to the exit on the opposite side of the chamber. “This from someone who organises his sock drawer by colour, weave and date of purchase!”

She couldn’t possibly know that-

“You don’t... you do?!” she turned back and blurted incredulously.

Darien felt his cheeks heat and cursed his slow wits. She began to giggle. A frantic beeping interrupted his growl. They looked at each other blankly for a second and then memory surfaced and Darien felt like kicking himself again. He dug a small device that resembled a pager out of his pocket. The tiny screen on the little gadget came to life at the touch of a button and he found himself looking at Venus’ anxious face. Before either of them could even open their mouths to speak, the screen split in half and the image of Mercury’s face appeared besides Venus’.

“Tux- Darien?!” Venus blurted in shock once his appearance registered.

Darien sighed. “Long story, don’t ask. Everything go off okay? Anyone hurt?”

Mercury nodded. “Everyone’s well-”

“We’ve got Prisma and Avery ready for Moon-” Venus added cheerfully.

Mercury interrupted fearfully, “We have problems and I’ve been trying to contact you for the last half an hour-”

Darien glanced to Bunny for an instant and then back at his communicator. “We had a slight problem. It’s been dealt with. What happened?”

“There was a massive energy surge a half an hour ago and it’s de-stabilized the dark crystal. I have a patch of a sort on it but to do so I had to shut down a lot of the essential systems, like life support. We cannot even consider trying to use it to generate full power but without a lot more energy, and soon, the entire ship is going to start re-entry.”

Both Darien and Bunny looked to Rubius’ pathetic corpse and then to each other. Whatever they’d done, it was obviously the cause of their current problems.

“We’re not going to be able to keep the ship,” Bunny said, unnecessarily.

Darien nodded. “Venus, you and Jupiter have got to get the sisters out of here first and foremost.”

“The Hall of Mirrors,” Bunny suggested and Darien looked at her in confusion. She moved next to him and peered into the communicator. “Remember that there’s got to be a room where they can both spy on and get to Tokyo? Well, Catzi and Bertie said that near the sisters’ quarters should be a large chamber with about six mirrors arranged in a smallish circle in the centre of the chamber. The mirrors are actually a combination of scrying device and teleporter. If you’re lucky, one should still be active, if there isn’t one you’d better get one of the sisters’ to turn one on for you. They’ll probably do it once they realise that their own lives are at risk as well as ours.”

The blonde scout nodded, signed off and Mercury’s image grew to cover the entire screen. “What are we going to do?” she questioned quickly, “We cannot allow the craft to self destruct. Unlike a meteor it wouldn’t break up upon entry into Earth’s atmosphere and the meteor which killed off the dinosaurs was smaller than this ship.”

“Actually Mercury, self-destruction sounds good,” Darien muttered and his mind raced to consider all of the options.

“But-”

“Surely this thing has to have some kind of automatic self destruction mechanism. If we can activate it, we’d blow the ship into lots of small bits that would burn up in the atmosphere. We’d get a lovely fireworks show but no damage.”

“Um, that might not be possible,” Bunny said hesitantly and pointed at the destroyed consul. “I think the controls you’d need were on that.”

“Damn!” he swore.

She shrugged. “Still, what we want is just a big bang right? Isn’t that what you get when you add matter and antimatter without safeguards?”

Darien looked to Mercury hopefully. “Could you rig the dark crystal to explode and take the entire ship with it?”

Mercury smiled wryly. “It’s almost at that point anyway, the question is how much time I can give us to escape.”

“Let us know as soon as you’ve figured it out,” Darien ordered and then switched the communicator off.

Of all of their goals, they had achieved only the capture of the remaining sisters. Rubius was dead, the dark crystal was about to destroy itself and the ship with it. That meant that they’d accomplished only one of their three objectives “One in three,” he spat and kicked at the destroyed consul. They couldn’t even hope to retrieve any computer files. The mission was a bust.

“One in three,” Bunny repeated and Darien frowned at her. He’d begun to revise his opinion of her and hoped that she wasn’t about to have a relapse of ditziness again. Instead of reverting to her bubble headed manner though, she smiled at him sadly and directed his gaze to Rubius. “We’ve now defeated or captured one third of the enemy forces,” she elaborated, “There are only two more commanders serving this mysterious prince and Prisma can tell us about at least one of them and maybe the prince as well, since she was seeing his brother.”

Darien’s spirits rose. She was right and they still had a little time to try and salvage what they could from the ship itself. “We might have destroyed the bridge,” he told her, “But surely there’re other interesting places we could investigate before we evacuate. There was a library, a communications room and a workroom at the very least on the map Mercury made”

She bit her lip thoughtfully. “Didn’t Bertie say something about a room Rubius used to go into to receive his orders? It’s supposed to be near the bridge right? That means it shouldn’t be too far off. We could make a small detour on our way out... Maybe we could find something in there which would let us eavesdrop on the other commanders?”

How could he ever have thought she was stupid? “Perfect Meatball Head!” She rolled her eyes at the name that was no longer an insult but rather an endearment between the two. He chuckled and quickly ran through his mental map of the place. “This way!” he said, grabbed her hand and pulled her back through the door they’d entered by. They had much to do and little time in which to do it.

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