Keystaffs and Quests.... (part 1)

Days later...

Strange, I could not help but notice a few things about how negatively the other around me view the "original" Sailor Moons/Usagis. I mean at first she was rather the reluctant warrior (and a bit of a cry baby) but she DID . . .

Well, she did step up and fulfilled her duties. Eventually. But that said I guess first impressions just were very strong (and negative) when and what they saw of Moon.

Actually, the youngest versions of Usagi are . . .rather annoying truth be told. Even to me right now, but then again I can understand and sympathize with her plight. She DID rather get chucked into the deep end without warning here. Especially "my" version. My liege . . .er. . .former liege lady.

Gods and Goddesses only know how LESS thrilled now she'll be once she finds out what she and her fellow Senshi shall have to face back home (my old home) when they'll have to face down what Ranma had been fated to take care of instead.

Damnit, why did Flagg and that moron Scott Chen have to go and cause that incident at the Cursed Springs to go so wrong? Before it had been bad enough that Ranma got cursed but nothing crippling. It could and would have been overcome and even cured in time. Later in this lifetime but it would have happened. I saw his future, you know.

At least, that was until basically Ranma's life ended when he got dunked into the Spring of the Drowned Girl. Ranma went down but what came back up . . .was not Ranma. Oh, it was that red headed girl you're probably familiar with in those "manga" and "anime" that chronicals his chaotic life but the mind and soul within wasn't him.

Somehow the drowned girl's spirit got transferred into Ranma's feminized body and Ranma's spirit itself got laywayed to wherever those who get drowned go in that Cursed Spring area.

Even I couldn't figure out where that is exactly. Not even my mother--Queen Serenity-- can figure out where that place is, much less reach it to reclaim Ranma's lost soul.

What Flagg and Scott did with that poor girl after she'd just won free of the pool . . .just does NOT bear repeating here and now.

Poor soul...

....

But then again, maybe wherever Ranma's soul is now, I think he may be better off there than his old homeplane. The . . .martial art style of combat he used just did NOT translate into the new reality his old world now resides in. A human body just cannot take the punishment NOR move in the ways that Anything Goes demands. Ranma's entire LIFE revolved around martial arts and he wouldn't LIKE being reduced so.

Basically, even if I hadn't tried to step in to correct the disturbance the removal of Ranma from the playing field things would have been altered. AND I mean in ways that would have been well and truly beyond the disturbance of the removal of one super powered martial artist would entail. The entire world changed because of the Transition event.

Flaggs’ actions on my world even before I became aware of him guaranteed that.

. . .

Things to go and take care of later, I am sure. Right now I still have to take care of the rather bad mess I made, actually somehow bringing whole worlds into this reality which should NOT have been brought.

Gods and Goddesses only know when and how I actually managed that, what with Walker bloody well snapping on my heels during that madness. However, I DID and now I and my husband will have to deal with the fallout of it all.

Ah, but anyway, what I and those who shall be accompanying me? What is My Vailidation Quest, beyond the Rules and Agents having me to basically clean up the mess I made of things?

Simple enough what I and whoever will be accompanying me will basically have to do: undo the damage I have done. See, because in at least one incarnation I was such a fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” so of COURSE I just HAD to have my VERY own Hellmouth to play with in my personal spare time. If only to zap the badguy vampires and all that.

What an IDIOTIC thing to want...

The Hellmouth is, of course, located in Buffy’s hometown of Sunnyvale, California. It’s a weak point in space/time that can be considered something of a rift to other realities, mostly Hell like in just about any way you’d care to consider. I, even in the throws of madness, did NOT want to visit any of those places nor have those places’ denizen visit Sunnyvale . . .en mass. Where the Hellmouth connects with NOW that it’s here in this reality I can only state is less Hellish, for the most part.

I think, anyway. I cannot recall exact details of what I’ve done and HOW I’d done it. But whatever I’ve done was slipshod at best, maybe. Or maybe it was more to do with the differences in the under working principles of the different realities that are now connected. That is something I didn’t get while speaking with my new . . . .employers, but whatever the case if left unchecked long enough there will be a VERY violent closure of the Hellmouth passageway to those realities. THAT violent event cause a LOT of death and destruction from the explosive power unleashed from the closure.

My task is to cause those passages to close in a non-catastrophic manner, using the Keystaff from my old life. Odd that as Sailor Moon I should have that thing still, but . . .it’s part of how I must finish this Quest so I’ll go with it.

Gods, it seems so wrong in a way to have to carry it with me though: I’m no LONGER the Senshi of Time. No longer a Time Mage but it’s still bonded to me, all the same.

It will still be useful to channel my power through for this Quest and beyond.

Forever and ever. Even as the Senshi of Time I thought that I eventually would be handing it off to the next Sailor Pluto. Giving it to my replacement when I retired sometime in the distant future...

I . . .thought I’d never touch it again after relinquishing it to my Replacement, but here it is again in my hands. It just . . .keeps turning back up, no matter how hard I try to rid myself of it, though. Might as well make good use of it, channeling my Senshi Power through it to close the Hellmouth passages. And then to finally finish off the Sunnyvale Hellmouth, in the end.

THAT is the Validation Quest for me is, and that is what I have been discussing with Fred Takahashi and one Rei Hino (that one Sailor Mars who’d I’d befriended back in the reality I’d been Sailor Venus) over a cup of Green Tea.

“But why does it have to be Champions and not Senshi?” Hino asks me finally, vexed about the whole situation. “Shouldn’t we Senshi be better suited to the task, all considered? And why . . .those three? The ones who’s character was named after . . .me?”

That last part had “weirded” her out a bit, that the NEQ character we’d jested about somehow having been secretly named for her really HAD been named after her.

1. The quirks of multi-versal travel (where one’s life in one reality can be a work of ficiton in another) really has her head spinning I have heard.

Add New Option

Go Back

View Forward Story Tree
View Back Story Tree