An Inevitable Outcome Production
In Association With
Naoko Takeuchi
and
CLAMP
Tomaranai mirai o mezashite
Having the infinite future in mind
Yuzurenai negai o dakishimete
Embracing the dream that I will never surrender
THE INFINITE FUTURE
An Alternate History of
The Together Again Universe
Chapter One
April, 1994
Osaka Naru looked out at the city of Tokyo from the observation deck
of the Tokyo Tower, and smiled. It was really strange that, living so
close to the landmark, she'd never visited it, but life was strange. The
last couple of years had convinced her of *that*.
She was just glad that her love had been able to find time to come
with her. It would have been better if they'd been able to come later
tonight, but her mother probably wouldn't have appreciated it. Besides
... there were disturbing hints in the air that the nights in the heart of
Tokyo weren't going to be *safe*, exactly, for a while to come.
Naru smelled the scent of his cologne before she felt his arms
embracing him from behind, but only smiled. "It almost looks alive,
doesn't it?" she asked suddenly.
"The city?" he asked.
She nodded. "Pulsing, beating ... moving in time to a distinct,
recognizable rhythm." She shook her head, feeling his chin muss her
hair. "I don't see how anyone who looks at something like this can deny
that *things* have their own life. I bet if you could look at the world
from far enough away, but with enough detail, you'd see the whole world as
one ... big ... life."
There was a silence between them. "Mystical this afternoon, aren't
we?" he teased gently.
She turned her head just enough so that she could give him a look.
"How can anyone go through what we go through on a regular basis and *not*
be mystical?"
"There is a certain logic to your position," he agreed soberly.
She sighed bemusedly, then turned around to face him, looking up into
his dark blue eyes. She started to go up on tiptoe.
"People are staring, you know," he said.
"Let 'em stare, they may learn something," Naru replied as she leaned
in to kiss Chiba Mamoru on the lips.
After a certain duration, she settled down again, to look at the
crowd. The vast majority of them were junior high school girls on their
class trip. Naru wasn't sure, but she thought she saw a few staring in
their direction embarrassedly -- or should that be *enviously*.
After only a few seconds of listening to their chatter, she had to
shake her head. "Was I ever that innocent?"
"Yes," Mamoru answered definitely. "I'd like to think you still are."
She snorted. "You're confusing me with a certain dumpling-headed
princess."
He sighed. "I'd thought the two of you were getting along better
these days," he said, and there was more than a note of plaintiveness in
his voice.
She couldn't meet his gaze, quite. "I *try*. I really, really *try*,
but she does so many things that are almost *calculated* to drive me
berserk! It's bad enough that she'd rather go off and play snuggle
bunnies with you know who than try and figure out what to do about
Nemesis. We're running out of time on that front, and --"
He pressed a finger to her lips. "I know that you're going to be able
to handle it."
Naru shook her head. She wasn't nearly as certain. She watched as a
short girl with hair that was only a few shades lighter than her, dressed
in a red school uniform, stormed past with a determined look on her face.
"And if we don't, all these children will ... will ..."
She broke off. Something strange was happening. Something about that
girl --
Mamoru sensed her sudden disquiet. "What's wrong, Naru-chan?"
She ducked around him, trying to see where the girl was headed. She
caught a glimpse of her standing and staring at two other girls -- one
with long blue hair in a uniform of the same shade, and the other with
light brown hair, large glasses, and a green uniform. She started to
focus.
Then there was a sudden explosion of light. She heard a number of
shouts, including one from Mamoru's throat, but ignored them. A single
harsh syllable created a shade before her eyes, shielding them, and giving
her clear vision.
The floor beneath the trio of girls had turned into a liquid, and was
busy swallowing them.
Naru blinked, to make sure that she was seeing properly.
And in that instant, the light faded. A tap of her fingers dispelled
the shade, and she saw clearly that the three girls were only sitting on
the floor. Two of them -- the blue-haired girl and the one with glasses
-- were busy crying their eyes out.
The red-head wasn't crying. Her face looked as though it had no
expression at all -- it was almost numb.
But Naru couldn't miss the look in her eyes. It was a look of anguish
and confusion that was beyond the comprehension of most people,
thankfully.
It was the look of suddenly lost innocence.
"What happened?" Mamoru asked quickly.
People crowded around the trio before Naru could do anything --
friends, classmates, what have you -- and shuffled them away, separating
them.
"I'm not sure," she replied after a moment. "But I think we need to
set up a meeting with the others, *soon*.
"This may be vital."
* * *
"Could you be a little more specific than just, `something magical
happened?'" Mizuno Ami asked politely.
Naru tried to articulate the sense of what she had experienced for
several seconds, then turned to glare at Hino Rei. "How do *you* explain
this sort of thing to them?"
Rei shrugged, smiling faintly. "I don't even try, usually."
"Great," Naru sneered. "Look, I don't know how to explain what I
*felt* when I saw it. I've told you what I *saw*, now what do we do?"
Ami frowned, considering. "I've been reading a bit about alien
abduction, to try and determine whether or not it might have its origin in
a Nemesis plot. Some of what you describe does echo the accounts of the
abductions."
Naru let out a sigh. "Thank you, Ami. So what should we *do*?"
"We should probably maintain surveillance -- if Nemesis is also
watching them, we'll be able to figure it out fairly quickly," Ami
explained.
"Ummmm ... what kind of surveillance are we talking about, here?"
Tsukino Usagi said, delicately raising a hand.
"We could probably work in shifts -- each of us take a turn watching
... three girls ... hmmm ..." Aino Minako trailed off. "Ami, loan me a
pen and paper? I can start working out a schedule --"
"Uh, you mean, twenty-four hour a *day* surveillance? I mean, when
are we going to find time for that? I mean, we *are* just starting summer
break, but I was kinda looking forward to --"
"We'll *make* time," Naru growled.
Usagi ducked behind Rei, who gave her a mildly irritated glare, before
turning back to look at Naru. "Naru, do we even know who these girls
are? I mean, we can't exactly go hunting after them without knowing who
they are."
"I *thought* of that. Fortunately, all three of them are rather
popular at their respective junior high schools. The blue haired girl is
named Ryuzaki Umi -- she's the captain of her school's fencing club. The
girl with the light brown hair is called Huouji Fuu. The red-head is
called Shidou Hikaru -- something wrong?"
"How did you find this out?" Rei asked, looking puzzled. "Listening
to conversations?"
Naru was silent for a moment, and did not quite meet Rei's eyes.
"After a fashion," she finally muttered.
Rei immediately guessed what Naru meant by that, and groaned. "Naru,
you didn't."
Ami wasn't far behind. "You took it out of their minds, didn't you,"
she said. To her credit, she probably didn't *mean* to sound as accusing
as she did.
"It doesn't work like that," Naru protested, angrily. "They were --"
She broke off, and looked for a moment at each of them, somehow
seeming to grow angrier with each passing second. Finally, she burst.
"Hell with this! Look, I've told you what happened. I've *done* my
part. Now you can just decide what you're going to do, and I'll do what I
*have* to do." She stood, turned, slammed the door to Rei's room open,
and stalked out.
She stood on the porch, staring up at the stars and thinking dark
thoughts, when she heard a soft step behind her. "Kind of hard on them,
weren't you?" she heard Kino Makoto ask.
"They weren't exactly prepared to be *soft* on me, were they?" she
replied, trying to hold on to her anger. It was hard, though, with
Mako-chan. She didn't fully understand why the friendship she'd felt with
Usagi before the awakening had been transferred to the taller senshi --
maybe it was that Mako-chan also knew what it was like to be frightening,
maybe the kindness she'd shown to Umino when he'd finally figured out that
neither she nor Usagi were interested in him -- but Naru was glad to have
at least one friend left.
"You didn't finish your explanation. Maybe if you had, they would've
been sorry for thinking that you --"
"It's like hearing," Naru interrupted. "If someone talks, you can't
help but hear it. But you can choose to listen, to turn *noise* into
*signal* ... that's what telepathy is like. People make all these sounds
-- thoughts -- that a telepath can choose to listen to, and understand."
"That wasn't so hard," Mako-chan noted.
Naru looked away. "I got angry," she muttered.
"Oh really."
Naru sighed. "Yes, I know ... for as long as you've known us both,
I've *been* angry with her, haven't I?"
"Pretty much," Mako-chan agreed.
"It wasn't always that way ... once upon a time." She looked up at
the stars again. "The night that it all changed wasn't that different
from tonight."
* * *
March, 1992
Her mother had been acting so strangely, all day. Pushy and forceful
towards the customers, she had been distant towards Naru -- the exact
opposite of the way she usually was.
And now there were strange noises coming from within the jewelry store
that provided them with their income. Naru crept down the stairs,
frightened but also strangely curious.
She peeked into the show room, and let out a gasp. There were several
customers lying on the floor, their faces seeming to be in great pain.
Tiny crackles of lightning seemed to be flaring from the jewelry they were
wearing. Her mother was standing among them, her back to Naru.
"Mama?" she whispered. "What's going on here?"
Slowly, ever so slowly, the head of the *thing* that looked like her
mother turned completely around on its neck to look at her. Two large red
blobs where her eyes were supposed to be stared at her, and a mouth full
of fangs was set in a rictus-like smile. "I'm not your mother, dear," it
said in a parody of her mother's voice. "I am --"
"Youma," Naru whispered. She did not know where the word had come
from, but it seemed so right.
The youma paused, and stared at her for a long moment. It then let
out something akin to a gasp. "YOU!" it shrieked, and darted towards her
faster than Naru could have believed. Taloned hands swept up and grasped
her throat. She began to struggle helplessly against the iron grip of the
youma.
"It *is* you," the youma hissed as it strangled her. "Lord Jadeite
will reward me greatly for the proof of your death, B--"
"Hold it right there!"
The youma turned to glare at the suddenly opened doorway, and Naru was
also given a glimpse of her apparent rescuer. Standing in the doorway, a
blonde-haired girl, her hair done up in two long pony-tails, and dressed
in a costume that looked like a modified seifuku, was silhouetted by the
moon as she glared at the youma.
Who promptly answered, "Says who?"
The girl opened her mouth to retort ... then couldn't quite seem to
get any words out. "Um ..."
<This is my rescue?> Naru thought, strangely.
There was a faint, furious whispering from around the girl's feet.
She smiled suddenly, and began to speak. "The pretty, sailor-suited
soldier of love and justice! Sailor Moon! And in the name of the moon --
I'll punish you!" She posed.
<*This* is my rescue?>
"Sailor Moon?" the youma hissed. "Never heard of you. And I doubt
that I ever will again!"
The youma threw Naru to the side, slamming her into the wall, and
leaving her to slump to the ground in a great deal of pain, as it dashed
towards the "soldier of love and justice".
Who freaked out.
As she watched the antics of her "savior", one thought kept running
through Naru's mind, far more potently than the pain she was in. <This is
the person who's supposed to save *me*?> she thought with mounting
irritation. <This ... this *dumpling-head*?>
When at last the bodies of the customers rose up as zombies to fight
at the youma's command, Naru was more or less reconciled with the idea of
dying. <After all,> she reasoned morbidly, <if the Christians are right,
I'm going to get into heaven automatically.> She considered that further
for a few seconds. <DAMMIT, I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT BECAUSE I HAVEN'T
DONE SOMETHING I *REALLY* WANT TO DO -->
Suddenly, a bright red rose blossomed in the youma's forehead. The
head then proceeded to explode, and the headless corpse collapsed into
dust.
"At last ... at last I've found you," came a soft, deep masculine
voice from above.
Naru looked up towards the large window in the front of the store,
which had been closed earlier, if she remembered properly. Standing there
was a man with dark hair and eyes, dressed in a strange suit of grey armor
and a cape, with a sheathed sword at his side, gazing down at her with
love.
At her. At Naru.
He hopped down to the floor, and slowly approached her. "It's you.
It *must* be you."
"Ummmm ... excuse me?" interrupted Sailor Moon. She looked around in
mild confusion at the unconscious bodies of the customers, freed by the
youma's destruction from its control. They both ignored her.
"Do I ... know you?" Naru asked the stranger. There was something so
compellingly familiar about him, but --
He was now close enough to touch. "Do you know me? You taught me to
love this world again. You gave me the strength to do what *was* right,
not what *felt* right. Don't you know me? I'm Endymion. Don't you
remember?"
And she did.
"Ahhhh ... what's going on?" Sailor Moon asked, now *very* confused.
They turned to look at her, and blinked as one. "Serenity?" they
asked in chorus.
"What?" asked a different voice. Naru looked down at the floor, and
saw a small, bewildered looking black cat standing not too far from
Sailor Moon -- or Serenity, as she now knew her to be. The cat seemed
familiar, but she couldn't quite place her name. "What are you talking
about? This is ... she's not Princess Serenity, that's *absurd*."
Endymion frowned at the cat. "Of course she's the Princess, Luna. I
should know, I was engaged to her for years."
That was the start of a very long night of explanations ...
* * *
"You're right, I can't imagine what that's like," Mako-chan agreed.
"To suddenly realize that your best friend in the world was suddenly your
romantic rival --"
Naru turned to stare at her in shock. "She is *not* my romantic --"
she burst before seeing the faint smile on Mako-chan's face. "Arg -- that
is not the point!"
"Isn't it?"
Naru let out a sigh. "I don't *know* ... *he* *chose* *me*. I don't
have any reason to be jealous. But every time I look at her ... and the
worst of it is, this was always part of us. I *always*, even before I
knew, thought of her as being a little spacey, but I figured she was just
doing it to be cute. But --"
"She *does* just do it to be cute," Minako's voice interrupted. She
and Ami headed down the hallway towards Mako-chan and Naru. "You should
know that, Naru. If the war against Jadeite and the others didn't prove
it, and Ail and Ann, and --"
"I know, I know ... I *know* all of this, but I can't seem to realize
it when it's happening. I'd *like* to like her. Mamoru wants us to get
along, and --" She broke off. "Why are the two of you out here?"
Ami blushed vividly, which pretty much told Naru everything. Minako,
showing a great deal of decorum, replied, "Well, Usagi-chan and Rei-chan
wanted to be alone to ... um, read some manga together, and --"
Naru snorted. "I might have known. Any time we try to hold a meeting
it turns into a make-out fest."
"Like you don't know what Mamoru-san had for dinner before each of
your meetings with him?" Mako-chan asked in a teasing tone, causing both
Naru and Ami to flush.
"That's not the *point*," Naru bit out ... then let out a sigh. "Oh
well. I suppose I should be grateful that neither of them is male, or by
now they would certainly have --"
And then she knew.
Naru said a very long, very old curse involving Queen Serenity and
twenty lit candles. Ami didn't flush -- she went white.
"What the hell?" Mako-chan asked.
Naru didn't bother to answer. She turned and headed up the hallway,
her face set. She reached the door to Rei's room, and flung the door open
without bothering to knock.
Rei darted her hands out from under Usagi's blouse as Naru stormed
in. "I've just figured out who that girl is."
"Huh?" Usagi asked, startled and confused.
"The girl. The red head. The one I sensed something strange about
*before* whatever the hell it was happened." She took a deep breath.
"I've seen her aura somewhere before."
"Where?" Rei asked.
"In the Silver Millennium. Days before the fall. She was much younger
then --"
"You mean that she's like us? Reincarnated?" Usagi asked.
Naru shook her head. "No. Her mother ... her mother asked me to send
her baby daughter, body and soul, to the future -- in hopes that she would
be safer there. I never knew exactly when it was that she arrived --"
"Naru-chan ... why are you telling *us* this?" Usagi interrupted.
Naru took a deep breath. "Because the mother was Princess Serenity.
You two are her parents."
TO BE CONTINUED
Author's Notes
If you haven't figured out by now who this Naru was in her past life,
smack yourself. Next time, we'll see her transformation.
Please note. This is an alternate universe. *Anything* can happen.
"Sailor Moon" was created by Naoko Takeuchi and brought to North
America by DiC and Mixx Publications. "Magical Knights Rayearth" was
created by CLAMP and brought to North America by Mixx Publications. This
story, while incorporating elements of motion pictures and magazines held
under copyright by others, is copyright 1998 by Chris Davies.