Hello Minna-san,
Here is part 5 of "The World Without" by Mike Chenoweth. I enjoyed
doing this part with Mike and JetWolf and I hope you like it too.
If you need the previous parts, please Email me or it is available at
the SM Fanfics Archive (Canadian Site) at
http://log.on.ca/users/helm/anime/index.htm along with any of another
240+ fics.
There is also voting on this page for the SM Fanfics Archive Author of
the Month and Author of the Week. Please all you SM fanfic readers, go
to the above URL and vote.
Please comment if you can. We (Mike especially) loves to hear from you
what you think good or bad.
Ja ne,
"Tuxedo" Will
Venus "love me" chain encircle!
Keeper of the SM Fanfics/Scripts Archives
Disclaimer: Sailor Moon and all characters contained within this
work are the copyright of Naoko Takeuchi, Toei Animation, Kodansya and
probably lots of other big people I'm forgetting. I am using them
without permission, but suing me because of it would be futile as I have
nothing. Feel free to distribute this work around (for no profit, of
course; I'm not making any...), as long the included text is unmodified.
If you publish or repost it somewhere, please let me know.
Comments, criticism, flames, etc. welcomed (and, in fact,
requested) at Ultrace@aol.com.
The World Without
A Sailor Moon fanfic by Mike Chenoweth [Ultrace@aol.com]
Co-Plotted by "Tuxedo Will" Wolfshohl [Wwolfshohl@logicon.com] and
Nikki "Jet Wolf" Purvis [Jetwolf@ix.netcom.com]
Additional editing by Novareinna [Novareinna@aol.com]
Part 5: Minako's Dismay. Beware the Rushing Clock!
February, 1997
There was a long silence in the throne room as Jadeite approached
at the Queen's summons. He did not look pleased.
"What have you to say?" Queen Beryl asked, calmly. "In your last
attempt, not only were you unable to eliminate the Sailor Senshi, but
you expended much energy in the process. My patience begins to grow thin
with these failures."
"They have been inexcusable," Jadeite agreed, holding his anger in
check at the mention of the humans that had caused him so much trouble.
"But soon I will prove to you that the fruition of my plans has been
worth the wait."
"You speak with confidence. How do you intend to redeem yourself?"
"I will gather enough energy to compensate for my earlier mistakes.
The energy of humans is known to increase and decrease with the stress
they experience. Acting with my own power through a youma, I will hurry
them and heighten that stress, raising the energy that we will collect
to a phenomenal level."
"A fine plan..." The Queen narrowed her eyes. "But the same can be
said of your earlier attempts. What of Sailor Venus and Sailor Mercury?"
"I will focus my efforts on the collecting of energy and not on
disposing of them. No doubt they will come and find us, but this time we
will be ready," Jadeite assured her. "My youma and I have a new strategy
devised that will take care of them. Even the Sailor Senshi can pose no
threat when stripped of the ability to attack."
------------------
"You didn't have to walk with me to school, you know," Ami told
Luna. The words were critical, but everything in her tone indicated
gratitude. "You'll have to go back to the apartment alone when we get
there."
"I don't mind," Luna said. "It's nice to have a little time
together without having to worry about the Dark Kingdom or your
homework."
"Well, that's certainly true." Ami thought about it. "I wonder if
Minako-chan and Artemis--"
She was interrupted by the ear-wrenching noise of a car that came
racing down the street, and crashed right into another going in the
opposite direction. Ricocheting from the collision, the first car went
spinning into a third, and both of them ended up parallel to the
direction of the street.
Within seconds, other cars not involved in the accident were forced
to stop. The resulting lines of vehicles had backed up a considerable
distance, but Ami was far more concerned with the people in the
accident. With traffic effectively halted, it was safe for her to run
out into the street and make sure the drivers weren't hurt too badly.
It turned out that she didn't need to. The three drivers and one
passenger emerged from their vehicles before Ami reached any of them.
Their injuries looked to be mostly minor, although one person was
holding her arm and another appeared to have a slight cut on his head.
What made Ami take notice, however, was that none of them seemed
concerned about their wounds. They were all yelling at each other, and
not about who was at fault for the accident.
"Idiot! I'll never make it to work on time now!" the owner of the
first car shouted.
"You think you're the only one who has to be somewhere?!" came a
response from the woman holding her arm.
In the distance, Ami and Luna could hear rapidly approaching
sirens. Since everyone involved in the accident was alright, they
started heading back to school again, taking only a momentary look back
at the squabbling drivers.
Still puzzled by the way the people involved had acted at the
accident scene, Ami arrived at school to find out that they weren't the
only ones behaving strangely. She approached the door to the school,
grasped the handle, then stopped. "What's that noise...?"
She turned around just in time to be bowled over by two students
hurrying to get into the building. Ami recognized the brown-haired blur,
Naru, and her friend.
"Faster, Usagi!" Naru yelled. "We're going to be late!"
Ami picked herself up off the ground, wondering what they were
talking about. She had left for school with plenty of time to spare, and
stopping to look at the accident couldn't have slowed her down that
much...
A clock on the wall confirmed her suspicions. There was still
almost twenty-five minutes before class started. Ami didn't know Usagi
personally, but she did know of her reputation. Usagi was always late;
for her to arrive so early was beyond strange.
"What do you mean, no class?" a voice from inside one of the nearby
classrooms was demanding. Ami walked closer to it and looked inside.
"I just don't have time for class today, so I'm declaring a study
period," the teacher responded. "Your exams will be postponed until
tomorrow, at least."
"Great," a student muttered. "Now what am I going to do with my
time?"
"We've got to wait more than an hour for next period!" another
wailed.
Ami backed away from the room, confused. "Excuse me,
Takara-sensei..." she started, flagging down another passing member of
the faculty.
"Pardon me, Mizuno-san, but I'm already running very late," he
apologized. "Perhaps another teacher can help you."
Ami watched him continue quickly down the hall. `What's going on
here?' she wondered.
------------------
Renua was a very special youma, and Jadeite knew it. She was
physically weak and not exceptionally intelligent, but her unique
capability to manipulate the energy of time was proving to be quite
handy.
Jadeite teleported next to Renua while she was admiring the results
of her own handiwork, a glowing ball of energy that grew larger and
brighter with each passing moment.
"The energy you've collected is more than even I had anticipated,"
Jadeite told her. "Queen Beryl will be very pleased."
"Thank you, Jadeite-sama," Renua humbly acknowledged.
"When the Sailor Senshi decide to interfere, act as I have
instructed and you will be rid of them with ease." He smiled. "And that
will also very much please Queen Beryl."
Jadeite smiled at the thought of it. Soon he would helping Queen
Beryl to rule this universe. But first, he had to get rid of those
Sailor Senshi.
------------------
Luna looked up from the bed and glanced at the clock as Ami entered
the room. "You're home early, Ami-chan... Is something wrong?"
"I think so," Ami said. "All of my classes except for two were
canceled. The teachers refused to teach them because they claimed to be
too busy."
"That sounds suspicious..." Luna said.
"A lot of students were acting as though they were too busy for the
classes, too. And there's something else... Before I left school, I
overheard a few conversations, and some of the people who were behaving
so strangely also mentioned something about new alarm clocks. To be
honest, most of them were going on about it so quickly I couldn't keep
up with what they were saying."
"Clocks?" Luna confirmed. She mulled it over. "Artemis and I have
been keeping an eye out for new locations the Dark Kingdom might use as
part of their plans. An extravagant clock store just opened up a couple
of days ago in one of the shopping centers..."
"It's definitely worth looking into," Ami said.
"Ami-chan!" Minako said, with relief, when she opened the door to
find Ami standing there. "I thought I was going to die from boredom!"
Ami was momentarily puzzled. "Why? How early were your classes
canceled?"
"About twenty minutes ago," Artemis said, rolling his eyes.
"Just twenty minutes??" Minako asked, in disbelief. She ran over to
look at a clock on the wall, and threw her hands up in despair when she
discovered the cat was right. "It feels like hours!"
This behavior was now very familiar to Ami. She brought a hand to
her head and closed her eyes with a light sigh. "Did you get any new
clocks recently, Minako-chan?"
"Yes! I bought this wonderful alarm clock yesterday--come on, I'll
show you!" She grabbed Ami's arm and half-dragged her up the stairs to
her room, flinging open the door when they arrived.
Among the menagerie of dolls and stuffed animals, it was hard for
Ami to make out anything different about the room. After a few moments
of searching, however, she noticed the clock on Minako's headboard. It
was small, little larger than a typical alarm clock, yellow and looked
like a canary.
Ami walked over to check it while Minako seemed compelled to fidget
nervously. After a few simple scans with her computer, Ami turned to
Luna and nodded.
"What's going on?" Artemis asked.
"This clock is from the Dark Kingdom," Ami said. "Their latest
attack has something to do with giving these clocks to people and making
them all rush through everything."
"WHAT?" Minako yelled, outraged that she had again been a victim of
the Dark Kingdom's plans.
"Don't you ever keep an eye on her?" Luna asked Artemis.
"She picked it up on the way home from school," Artemis said,
defensively. "When she woke up early this morning, I thought she was
taking a lesson from Ami." He glanced at Minako. "Maybe I should have
known better..."
"This clock is definitely carrying the energy signature of the Dark
Kingdom," Ami said. "It's very faint, unlike the pattern the schanerla
gave off, but there's no mistaking it."
Minako had been clenching her fists in annoyance for the past
twenty-five seconds or so while the others had talked, which, she felt,
was twenty-five seconds longer than she had to spare today. "What are
we doing, wasting time talking, then?" she asked. "Let's go!"
When Sailor Venus, Sailor Mercury, and the two cats arrived at the
store where Minako had bought her clock, they found it securely locked
with a metal garage-style door.
"They don't think that's going to stop us, do they?" Minako asked,
raising her finger to blast through the entrance.
Ami reached out to stop Minako from firing. "Wait. We should see if
there is another way in. We might be able to surprise them that way. If
they locked the door, they must have been expecting us..."
Minako didn't like the thought of doing anything but busting in
through the front door. What she wanted right now was action. But Ami
had a point. "Alright, alright," she said, taking off around the
building, and scanning it top and bottom with her eyes at a speed that
would probably have been impossible were she not under the influence of
the clock. As it happened, there was another entrance after all. On the
opposite side of the building they found the back door.
"Good thinking," Minako told Ami, grasping the knob. It was locked.
"Or maybe not," she added, with a frown. Her small amount of patience
from earlier was gone, and she pointed at the doorknob before Ami could
stop her again. There was surprisingly little noise when her attack blew
the handle off the door, which creaked a little as it opened.
"Come on," Minako said, urging them to enter.
The inside of the building was like a maze. Rooms warped and
twisted as if they weren't at all real. It wasn't long before the four
of them were lost as, Minako, in search of the youma behind this
particular scheme, was running through the rooms at a near breakneck
pace, and Ami, hard-pressed to keep up with her, had completely
forgotten which way they had come from or were going. Artemis and Luna,
surprisingly, hadn't fallen behind, although they too had no idea where
they were.
As Ami fumbled with her computer en route to their eventual
destination, she noticed that it was getting bigger and bigger in her
hands, which seemed to be getting too small for her gloves. In fact, her
entire uniform was quickly becoming too large for her.
"Venus, stop!" she yelled.
Minako turned around impatiently, then saw Ami and recoiled.
"What's wrong with you, Mercury?" she asked. Ami looked to be about
eight years old, and getting younger by the second. Minako looked down
at herself and suddenly realized that Ami wasn't the only one. "What??"
"A youma must be responsible for this," Ami said, frantically
punching the keys of her now cumbersome computer, hoping to find a
solution to what was happening. All around them, she could see varying
waves of energy through her visor, but only the computer could make any
sense of them.
Luna and Artemis, suddenly kittens, stared at each other in
amazement. Frustrated, the now five-year old Minako waved a tiny,
indignant fist in the air at the unseen youma. "You can't do this to me!
I'm Sailor Venus!" she cried out in an unusually high-pitched voice.
Ami, despite the fact that she could barely walk in oversized boots
and clothes, grabbed Minako and pulled her off to the side. The cats
followed, and within a few seconds they had all returned to their normal
ages.
"What happened?" Minako asked.
Ami was looking around with her visor. "It looks like this youma
can manipulate time. We were standing in a spot where time rapidly runs
backwards. There are other spots where it quickly moves forward, and in
some places it seems to stand still."
"Can you find a way through?" Minako asked.
"I think so. Hold on," Ami told her. Minako waited--barely--while
Ami managed to pick a safe trail through the zones of energy. The
interference from the mass energy was preventing her from locating the
youma, but she hoped the path would lead them to her. It did.
They entered a large and empty room. Empty, that was, except for
the giant-sized clock, and, in front of it, a female-looking youma whose
face was white with several black stripes, almost reminiscent of a tiger
without fur.
Renua smiled at the sight of the two Sailor Senshi. Had she not
been expecting them, it would have been a disaster, but being prepared,
she smiled, and waited for them to introduce themselves, as Jadeite had
told her they would.
Minako glared at the youma. "Time is a one-way street, and you've
been driving on the wrong side of the road!" Ami, Luna and Artemis all
gave her a look of bewilderment, but she swept on before anyone could
say anything. "I'm the Sailor Warrior of Love and Beauty, Sailor Venus!"
"And I'm the Sailor Warrior of Justice, Sailor Mercury!" Ami added.
"In the name of Venus--"
"--and Mercury--"
"--we'll punish you!"
Renua laughed, which, more than anything else that had happened
that day, annoyed Minako. She ran toward the youma, who was at least
fifty feet away, but before Minako got further than ten feet, her entire
body suddenly felt like lead. Her legs gave out, and she fell to the
floor on her hands and knees.
"Venus!" Mercury said, coming forward to help her.
"Stay back!" Minako yelled, and Ami stopped in confusion. `No
wonder that youma laughed,' Minako thought. `She must have known I would
come after her and right into another one of those time fields Ami was
talking about...' She looked back to Ami. "Use your visor..."
Ami again called up the visor up and could see the rampant energy
waves flowing through the area in which Minako was trapped. She began
working on finding a way through it and to the youma.
"No you don't," Renua said, as though she could read Ami's mind.
With a wave of the youma's arm, a strange bolt of energy hit Ami before
she even saw it coming, and she felt almost totally paralyzed. The
computer slipped from her frozen hand's grasp and clattered to the
floor.
As Renua started to leisurely walk toward Minako's semi-prone
figure, Luna and Artemis were at a loss as to what to do. If they went
after the youma, they would end up like Minako once they got too close.
If they didn't do something, on the other hand, the youma would
certainly kill them all.
Minako, however, wasn't about to let that happen. With Renua only
about twenty feet away, she pushed with every ounce of strength she
could gather, and miraculously, managed to go from being on her hands
and knees to just being on her knees. She started, slowly to get up and
face the youma, every inch taking its toll as if she'd run a mile.
Renua was stunned. It was impossible that anyone could get up after
that much energy had been drained from them. She raised one hand and
increased the power drain to an even higher level, forcing Minako back
down to her knees again. Renua then continued to approach the girl, a
little less leisurely.
"Artemis..." Luna suddenly said, in surprise.
"I saw it!" he responded. When Renua had raised her arm, the clock
behind her had flared with light. Artemis decided that it must have been
where they were holding the energy stolen from humans, and also the
source of the youma's power. "Sailor Venus!" he yelled, making sure to
get her attention, which was focused rather heavily on the youma ten
feet away. "Destroy the clock!"
Minako forced herself to ignore the youma and look at the clock on
the far wall, noticing for the first time how it was glowing with power.
She ceased trying to get up and put all her effort into raising and
aiming one single finger at the clock.
With horror, Renua realized what was about to happen, and that she
was too far from either the clock or Sailor Venus to prevent it. "No!"
she howled, making a last-second dash for the girl.
"Crescent Beam!" Minako screamed, hoping she would have enough
energy to make the attack count. Her beam streaked past Renua and
impacted directly in the center of the clock's face, smashing it into
dozens of pieces.
In the blink of an eye, it seemed, the clock's effects were gone,
and Minako was returned to normal. She made good use of her regained
energy, jumping and rolling away from Renua's swipe, and ending up next
to Ami, who had also recovered. The two of them looked at the youma
disdainfully for a few seconds.
Renua looked back at the shattered remnants of the clock. Her
situation was not good. She was one of the few youma incapable of
teleporting or otherwise escaping, and even if she could do so, Jadeite
would probably have her destroyed for this failure, just as he had with
Electra.
She let out a heavy sigh, then looked up at the girls. The only
thing she could do was take her chances. She leapt at the girls as
quickly as she could, claws outstretched. "Die!"
Ami and Minako acted as one.
"Shabon Spray!"
"Crescent Beam!"
A warped blast of energy-laced bubbles ripped through Renua long
before she reached Ami or Minako. The youma disintegrating youma fell to
the ground and, to the surprise of Ami, Minako, Luna and Artemis, the
building dematerialized as well, as if it had never been there in the
first place.
Jadeite winced in expectation of his coming chastisement, as he saw
the ball of energy Renua had gathered dissipate. Queen Beryl was not
going to appreciate another failure, and while it was indeed his youma
who had been at fault, the misplacing of blame was not something Queen
Beryl concerned herself with, merely success.
Jadeite himself was tired of being humiliated at the hands of the
Sailor Senshi. It was time he became even more personally involved in
his plans... While he could still make them.
------------------
Ami stepped into the classroom with an almost cautious air. She
knew she hadn't done anything wrong, but it was very unusual to be
summoned by a teacher after school when you weren't even in any of their
classes.
"You wanted to see me, Haruna-sensei?" she asked.
"Yes, Mizuno-san," Miss Haruna said. She indicated a chair near to
her desk for Ami, and the two sat down. "I don't usually ask this sort
of thing of students, especially since I know you must be busy with your
own studies, but I asked you here to see if you would be willing to act
as a tutor to one of my students."
Ami hesitated, and Miss Haruna continued.
"She's always had difficulty getting to class on time, let alone
making good grades, but her performance has only been getting much worse
during the past few weeks. I was hoping that someone who sets such a
good example as yourself might be able to help her. Her name is Tsukino
Usagi."
For a brief moment, Ami couldn't help but smile as she thought of
the girl who had only a few days earlier run around proclaiming herself
to be Sailor Mercu-V, Champion of Love and Justice. It was no surprise
that her academics had suffered recently; being a repeated victim of the
Dark Kingdom could definitely have that effect on someone.
Ami was indeed busy with her studies--more so now than ever before.
But she could always find a few minutes here and there to help someone
else out, she hoped. "I'll be glad to see what I can do, Sensei," she
said.
Miss Haruna smiled. "Thank you, Mizuno-san. If anyone can rub some
good study habits off on her, you can." She looked toward the door with
a frown. "I asked her to come here today as well, but I suppose she must
have forgotten. I'll let her know tomorrow that I've requested for you
to tutor her, so I suppose you can go home now. Thanks again."
Ami nodded, walked up to the door, and started to grab the handle.
She paused. `That noise...'
Before she had a chance to react, the door was flung open, and for
the second time that day, the blond-haired girl bowled Ami over,
knocking her to the floor.
"Sorry I'm so late..." Usagi panted.
On the floor, Ami just winced. Things were back to normal, but for
some people, that wasn't saying much...