Millennial Panic Chapter 10

[Shadou]

Wow, has it really been almost two years since I posted my last chapter? Sorry to anyone that was looking forward to this one for so long. I started my new job right around the time the last chapter was posted. I kept meaning to get to this, but there always seemed to be something else that needed to be done in my free time for the first few weeks. Then weeks turned into months. And now months has turned into years. At least I'm off my lazy keister now. And no, this doesn't mean I lost my job. I'm happily still employed.

Part of the problem, though, and mind you I'm not using this as an excuse... this is the chapter where things are starting to come together. Or rather... crash together. Like a really bad train wreck. One that involves several trains. And maybe an airplane.

Anyway, enough woolgathering, and on to the next chapter!

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Nabiki gave a tired yawn as she sat on a bench on a railway station platform. The station wasn't too busy yet, but she knew that was going to change all too soon. For now, she would enjoy the relative calm until her train arrived. She grumbled to herself at the situation. Usually she was asleep at this hour on a Saturday, but there was just something about getting a call from the person she had a crush on that made her more accepting of the idea of waking up before noon... especially since the call came from the hospital.

She checked her watch; it was a little before 11:00. It was still an hour before she would have been woken up by her alarm clock, and she'd been up for about an hour already. “You owe me two hours' sleep, Saotome,” she said to nobody in particular, then yawned again. She didn't know exactly how she was going to collect on that debt, but she was sure she'd be able to figure something out. A brief daydream of herself sleeping with her head on Ranma's lap flashed unbidden through her head, and she felt herself blush.

She shook her head to try and banish that thought, and winced at the pain of the motion dislodging one of her earphones. She grumbled a bit as she placed the earbud back in her ear, wishing for the umpteenth time that she'd bought a regular pair of headphones instead. The portability of the earbuds had seemed like a good idea at the time, but mostly they were just a massive pain in the ear. She sighed as she changed the CD in her walkman before settling herself in again to wait for her train. “Maybe I'll have to get one of those new MP3 players,” she muttered to herself. “Not an iPod, though. They're way too expensive.”

She yawned again and closed her eyes, dozing off to the sound of some music group from the US. She couldn't catch all of the words of the english lyrics, but from what she could understand, the singer had had some kind of heartbreak and wanted something 'that way'. It was probably a good thing she didn't listen to American pop music for the lyrics.

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Much later, Nabiki found herself staring at the wall of the subway tunnel as it raced by, thinking about the call she had received from Ranma not two hours before. She'd already finished drinking the caffeinated soda she'd picked up on her way from the rail line to the subway to wake herself up more, and now since she didn't want to miss the announcement for her stop by listening to music her freshly stimulated mind needed something to focus on.

She wasn't entirely certain if she wanted to feel offended or not at a particular part of the conversation. Before she had even got over her shock at finding out that Ranma was in the hospital, she found out that the only reason he had called her was because he was bored. Or rather, she, as the case seemed to be; the voice on the phone was distinctly his female form. She'd even finished counting the ceiling tiles before calling. Three times. “Ranma, you jerk,” she muttered. “Six hundred twenty-five indeed...” She was certainly going to give Ranma a piece of her mind for that, and make sure that calling her would be much higher on her priority list in the future.

She heard the announcement that the subway car was approaching her station, and stepped up to the doors, ready to leave. She made sure her walkman and CDs were stored safely in her purse, and held on to an overhead bar while she waited for the station.

The subway car slowed and the station came into view. She braced herself for the sight of the crowd she would no doubt be fighting through... and couldn't believe her eyes at what she did see. Hundreds of people... no, hundreds of bodies, she had to correct herself... littering the floor of the subway station. She could see some kind of creature in the station, dozens of them, moving bodies around. More of them seemed to be coming in from the subway entrance, most of them carrying more bodies in from above ground before leaving them behind and returning to the surface. In addition, there was some wierd glowing purple circle on the wall on the far side of the platform, and more of the creatures were coming out of it.

As she took in this horror scene, the subway car she was on came to a stop and the door opened. Hearing the noise, one of the creatures turned to look at the train, and rushed toward it. Then, just as it seemed the creature would be adding her to the surrounding piles of bodies, an alarm sounded and the doors to her car slammed shut in its face, and the car started moving again. The creature chased after it, clawing and scratching at the door until the speed of the subway car made continued pursuit impossible, and the station passed from view.

Nabiki exhaled, finally releasing a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Thank Kami for the quick thinking of the operator. If he hadn't started the subway car going again, what would have just happened to her?

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“Three hundred twenty-three. Three hundred twenty-four. Three hundred twenty-five...” Ranma counted, aloud. There was once again nothing good on the public channels for her to watch, she'd already gone through the books Ami had picked out for her and finished reading the few that had interested her, and Nabiki had yet to arrive. She really wished that something, anything, would happen to relieve the boredom soon, or she was likely to go crazy!

Just then, her communicator rang. She fumbled with it for a few moments as she rushed to answer it, and held it up to her ear. “Hello? Ranma speaking,” she said.

“Hey, Ranma? It's Nabiki. Is everything alright where you are?” came the voice from the communicator.

How did Nabiki have the number to her communicator? 'Oh, right,' she thought. 'I called her with it, she must have caller ID.' “I'm as bored as ever,” she said aloud. “Are you close?”

The response was garbled as Nabiki's voice cut in and out. “...monsters... subway tunnel... dead bodies piled... ”

Dead bodies? Monsters? “Nabiki, you're cutting out. What about dead bodies and monsters? Are you okay? Nabiki? Hello?” She looked at her communicator, to see the message on the screen that the call had been lost.

Well, she had been wishing that something would happen. How did that saying go again? Be careful what you wish for? She didn't have time for self-recrimination now, though. Nabiki had said something about the subway tunnel. She thumbed the emergency button on the communicator, before grabbing her transformation brooch. “Moon Prism Power, Make Up!” she called out.

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Hitomi had a spring in her step as she approached the room of one of the patients she was assigned to. The girl in the room had had plenty of time to read the first book she had loaned to her, and she had the second tucked under her arm. The girl was no doubt eager to read the next book, and she herself was looking forward to having someone to talk to about Edward and Bella. She knew there was a chance that the girl would join the Jacob ship instead, but that was a risk she had to take in order to find someone new to join her Edward Cullen Fan Club. And really, who wouldn't fall in love with sparkly vampires? They were just so sexy.

She was about to turn the handle to the door when she heard the sound of breaking glass, followed by the sound of metal scraping on metal. She quickly opened the door to see someone with long red hair and wearing a white leotard and blue skirt jump out the window. The patient's bed was empty.

She ran into the room and pressed the emergency button on the bedside call box. An irritated voice came in response. “Ranma, the call box is not a toy. Stop pushing that button so we can focus on the REAL emergencies!”

“This IS a real emergency,” Hitomi said. “One of the sailor senshi just broke in here! The patient has been kidnapped!”

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Minako was laying on her bed, moping. The two moon cats were curled up next to her, one on either side, as if their presence could ease her troubled mind. Minutes passed in companionable silence, before Minako finally spoke. “So, how do I be a normal girl anyway? I mean, back in England I was always busy with Sailor V stuff when I wasn't busy with school, and ever since I moved here and found the others I've always been with them when I wasn't busy. So, what now?”

The two moon cats looked at her, then at each other. Artemis was the first to speak up. “Well, for starters, you could try not talking to cats?”

A low growl escaped from Luna as her hackles rose and she levelled a death glare at Artemis. Before he could even begin to figure out what was wrong, she pounced over Minako at him with a hiss, and he was suddenly trying to escape a hissing, scratching, biting ball of anger. Minako giggled at the spectacle as the two of them tumbled off the bed, and Artemis escaped underneath it. Luna sniffed, and jumped back up into Minako's lap. She looked up into Minako's eyes as she gave her own answer to the question. “There isn't any one definition for normal. Normal for someone like Ami is doing her homework and trying to get into the best university she can to get into a good career. Rei's normal would probably revolve around her shrine maiden duties.”

Minako almost giggled again. Luna sure hadn't wasted any time pumping Artemis for information. “So what about me, then? What's normal for me?”

Luna gave a little kittenish shrug. “What's important to you?”

While Minako was pondering that question, she felt her communicator ringing inside her subspace pocket. She pulled it out, saw the message, and gasped. “It's Flower-chan! There's an emergency! I have to go.”

Minako ran out of her room, called out an excuse for leaving to her mother, and left the house. Luna grumbled where she had been dumped on the floor, but straightened herself out with a few licks to her fur and jumped back on the bed. “You didn't even think twice. For better or worse, Minako, your 'normal' is with the Senshi. I only hope you can help each other carry the weight of the responsibility.”

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Ami startled as she felt an alarm coming from the Mercury Computer. Pulling it out she saw an alert on its screen, with a map showing an area around a subway tunnel covered in dark energy signatures. An icon on the map that looked like a crescent moon had a red exclamation mark flashing over it. Ami groaned. She'd forgotten she'd tied her computer into the communicator network.

She silenced the alarm and sent the computer back to her subspace pocket. It didn't have anything to do with her anymore. She'd left the group, and there wasn't much she'd be able to do to help besides. The other senshi would take care of the threat without her.

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Rei was kneeling before the sacred fire, meditating. Outwardly, her appearance was calm and serene, but inwardly she was a mess.

She hated to admit it, but the other inner senshi were the closest thing to friends she had. For all the arguments they had, for all the times they got into fights with each other, they were the only ones she'd found that she could relate to. Even if the price of having them around was having to deal with the Dark Kingdom attacks, she'd found herself admitting that she wouldn't have it any other way.

Sure, she'd complained that she should be the leader of their Senshi group. When things went wrong, it was easy to say in retrospect that she would have done things differently. But when it was hours later that she thought of things that she would have done differently, could she honestly say she would have done better than Minako always did in the heat of the moment? She didn't have an answer for that, at least not one that she liked. By now, the only reason she kept insisting she should be leader was to motivate Minako.

She didn't want to lose her friends. But she'd done just that, when the stress of their increasingly hopeless war against the dark kingdom finally turned them against each other. Minako and Ami had gotten into another fight. Then Ami and Makoto had left. When Minako had said she would be going home, it was all she could do not to beg her to stay, just a little while longer. Just to reassure herself that they were still friends. Then her own stubborn pride kicked in, and she found herself throwing Minako away.

Now, friendless, her shrine maiden duties seemed like an endless torment, reminding her how alone she felt. She hadn't realized how much she looked forward to her meetings with the other senshi until she could no longer look forward to them. What did she have to look forward to now? She almost considered calling Minako and apologizing, begging her to come visit. But her pride had allied with shame and guilt, and the coalition kept her from making the call she so desperately wanted.

She wanted her friends back. Minako, Makoto, Ami... she wanted the group back together again. Maybe if there was another attack, they'd all cooperate to defeat the dark kingdom, and things could go back to the way they were before? She had a moment of shame for wishing for an attack, and she had to admit to herself that things would never go back to the way they had been. Not with what Ami had said; it was unlikely that she would even show up.

She felt her communicator go off in her subspace pocket, and pulled it out to see an emergency alert on its screen, accompanied by the Moon symbol. Right, Sailor Moon. She'd almost forgotten about the newcomer. If it was a real emergency, Sailor Mars was needed. But maybe, after they'd dealt with the threat, she could be friends with Ranma? The girl seemed nice, and she was the reincarnated Princess after all.

As she left to follow the signal from Moon's communicator, it didn't even occur to her to think that more senshi would be needed to take care of whatever threat the Dark Kingdom had sent this time, or even that the other senshi might not show up. The Princess had called, and she would answer. And maybe she'd make a friend, too.

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Makoto sat back from her desk in her small apartment, and rubbed her eyes. For about the dozenth time today she wondered if she needed glasses, but she pushed the thought aside and focused again on her math homework.

She really didn't understand her current homework, but Ami had made it clear that she wouldn't be doing her any more favors. But then, had Ami really been doing her a favor? She'd gone to Ami for help with her studies, and for a few weeks that had gone well enough. When was it that Ami had stopped helping her with her work and started just doing it for her instead? At this point she felt like she was weeks behind, and her 'tutor' had just left her in the lurch. How long would it take her to catch up now? She'd gone to Ami because she needed help keeping up in class in the first place. Why had it been so easy, when Ami started becoming impatient with the slow rate she learned, for her to just let Ami do it for her?

Her eyes stung with tears as she let the betrayal sink in. Here she'd gone to Ami for help, and now she was worse off than if she hadn't done so in the first place. To add insult to injury, Ami blamed HER for it. All those times Ami had become frustrated and just taken over her homework. Then all the times that she'd shown up at Ami's asking for help, to have Ami just take the papers and send her away. She'd tried to keep up in class, but she'd just fallen further and further behind. It had become so easy to just let things go on as they were... but then Ami had blown up at her in front of the other Senshi because she didn't do her own homework. Well, screw her!

She gave a frustrated sigh. Was there anyone else she knew that could help her? Did she even know anyone else that was smart enough? She needed to re-do a few weeks' worth of math lessons in a weekend, just to catch up to the class. Maybe if she asked Minako, she'd know someone that could help...

Her communicator rang loudly on the desk beside her, startling her. She laughed to herself at the thought that Minako had somehow heard her thoughts and called her, but when she got a look at the message her mirth faded quickly. The screen indicated an emergency, with Moon's symbol.

Ranma had apparently not received any message that the Senshi group was breaking up. But then, she was in the hospital, so who would have told her? Come to think of it, how was it that the seriously injured girl was apparently blocks away from the hospital? She shook her head, and looked forlornly at her math book. With how much she still needed to catch up, would an hour or few away from it really make a difference? On the other hand... Sailor Moon was the Princess. If she was in danger, her duty was clear. Besides, afterward she'd have the chance to corner Minako and see if she knew any math tutors.

She left her homework sitting on the desk, and ran out of her apartment.

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“Hey Murtaugh, check this out.”

Murtaugh looked over at his partner, who was looking out the window, as usual, at the police station down the street. “What is it now?” he asked.

Riggs waved him over without looking back. “It's the station. Something's happening. Something big.”

Murtaugh moved over to see what was going on, and was greeted by the sight of police officers and squad cars leaving the station. “So? Something's always happening.”

“Something that sends nearly all the district's vehicles going off in one direction?” Riggs asked. “I've never seen the squad car lot so empty, even when there was an attack going on.”

Murtaugh had to admit his partner was right; he could even see officers piling into personal vehicles and heading the same direction as the squad cars. “They must have called in everyone they had. That seems like a disaster response to me,” he noted. “You think we should follow them?”

Riggs shook his head. “Nah. Let's check out the station while they're all away.”

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The scene was one straight out of hell.

Youma after youma was pouring out of the subway exit. Civilians on the leading edge of the youma invasion were running, screaming, from the encroaching youma – there had to be hundreds of them! - and those unfortunate enough to be caught by the youma were being dragged, unconscious, into the subway.

A dozen or two of the stronger of the combat youma surrounded and faced off against one red-haired, sailor-suited fighter, while others avoided that particular fray. Every once in a while the girl would tag one of the youma with one of her magical attacks, but there always seemed to be another combat youma that would divert itself to the fight, keeping the girl busy and preventing her from assisting the civilians.

The police were slowly setting up a perimeter, but their guns and riot shields did little to the youma aside from knock them back and annoy them. It wouldn't be long before the police would be overwhelmed and forced to move back their perimeter. There were already more than a few officers being dragged with the civilians into the subway tunnel.

This is the scene sailor Pluto saw as she materialized on a nearby rooftop. The dark kingdom's strategy here was clear enough to her; keep the senshi occupied while the weaker youma capture civilians. It seemed the Dark Kingdom had finally decided to stop toying with them, and sent an invasion force. Their invasion portal was most likely in that subway.

As she viewed the situation, she decided that there was an opportunity here. She aimed her garnet rod at a concentration of youma that seemed just about ready to overwhelm a police barricade. “Dead Scream,” she whispered, and the entire group of youma exploded into dust as the attack hit.

She sent more attacks into concentrations of youma that seemed to be most threatening to police fortifications, before jumping down from her vantage point and approaching one of the barricades.

The old sergeant in charge of the police forces at the barricade she approached seemed unable to decide if he was happy to see her or not. “You know,” he started conversationally as she came within speaking distance. “On any other day, I'd be trying to arrest you for vigilantism, property damage, and I don't even know how many counts of manslaughter.”

“You have more important things to do than arrest me,” Pluto noted.

“True enough, miss,” the sergeant sighed. “This is war, isn't it?”

Pluto nodded as she turned and fired another Dead Scream downrange into a mass of youma. Rather than stand and be vaporized, however, the youma scattered and the attack only caught a few on the fringes of its area. “We're not your enemy, and never have been. This enemy threatens us all.”

The sergeant frowned as he noted the ineffectiveness of her attack compared to her previous shots. “They're intelligent. They learn.”

Pluto nodded. “Now you begin to understand what we've been trying to hold off for so long. You have some of our stronger members imprisoned. We will need their help to push back this invasion.

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“Headquarters, come in. We have critical intelligence on the enemy attack. Is anyone there? Over.”

Murtaugh looked over at the abandoned radio, and raised an eyebrow at his partner. Riggs just shook his head. “Ignore it,” he said, and the two wandered deeper into the station complex, ignoring the radio's demands for a response. It was eerie, how quiet it was in here. Even in a disaster situation, there should have been someone at the radio, at least, providing coordination to the scattered police forces. As it was, the station seemed to be completely abandoned.

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“So this is your plan?” asked Murtaugh, as he kept lookout from the door of the file archives room while Riggs searched a file cabinet. “Sneak into the Juuban PD and steal their files? I thought you were trying to help the Senshi.”

Riggs looked up at his partner and rolled his eyes before going back to looking through the cabinet. Finding what he was looking for, he pulled a thick folder out of the cabinet and laid it on the table in the center of the room. “I am trying to help the Senshi. This is all part of the plan.”

“Having the whole building abandoned so you could sneak in was part of your plan.” Murtaugh said sarcastically. “You really are crazy.”

“Look, just think about it,” Riggs said as he spread out the contents of the folder on the table. “The Senshi are the only ones that are capable of handling these 'youma' creatures. But rather than supporting them, the population hates them and the authorities want them arrested. Obviously whoever's behind the youma is pulling some strings on the political front.”

“Yeah, obviously. So tell me something I don't know,” Murtaugh replied.

“I'm getting there. So the big bad guys have these powerful monsters that take the combined effort of all of the senshi to kill. The police don't like the senshi, and have orders to arrest them,” Riggs explained as he looked at one piece of paper in particular out of the file. “So then the police receive a tip from... 'a concerned citizen'... regarding the identities of three of the senshi. The police arrest the girls. That brings us to where we are now, with a disaster of a magnitude that requires every hand the police have.”

Murtaugh thought about that for moments before coming to a chilling conclusion. “You think the 'disaster' is another attack, and the senshi can't win without the three that are being held here.”

Riggs shook his head. “Not quite. I think the fight's already over, and the police have been called in because the senshi already lost. The creature has started killing people again, and the entire police force has been brought in to deal with the rampaging monster.”

The silence in the abandoned building was almost deafening as Riggs found whatever he was looking for, folded up a piece of paper, and stuck it in his pocket before walking over to the door where Murtaugh was waiting. “So, here's my plan. Let's go free the senshi.”

“I can't let you do that,” came a voice from the back corner of the room, startling both detectives. A figure that had not been there moments before stepped toward them; a man with long reddish brown hair and wearing what looked like it might have been a military officer's uniform. “You see, getting them captured wasn't entirely easy, and letting them free now would cause quite a bit of trouble for a colleague of mine.”

“I thought you were keeping lookout,” Riggs said to his partner as he stepped into a ready fighting stance.

“I was. He just appeared out of nowhere,” Murtaugh replied, doing the same.

“You two think you can fight me?” the man asked, and chuckled. “I was going to ignore your presence here, but I really can't allow you to interfere in our operations. I'm afraid the two of you are going to have to die.”

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Jadeite frowned as the portal to the Dark Kingdom finally fizzled out and disappeared with a pop, neatly slicing apart a youma that had the misfortune of having been halfway across the threshold when it failed. The first phase of his plan had gone off better than he had even dared hope; the life energy he had gathered when his grenade had gone off had been more than enough to open the portal to the dark kingdom, and the youma that had been waiting on the other side had quickly gone about their work, nearly uninterrupted, and brought in more life energy from outside to further fuel the portal and allow him to bring in more youma. Two of the senshi had shown up so far, but they had been too late to stop him before he had brought most of his forces through the portal.

Now nothing could stop him from exterminating the senshi. The police barricades couldn't hope to keep his youma contained, and the senshi would tire and fall trying to defeat the army of youma he had brought. There was just one problem with his plan.

Where the hell were the rest of the Senshi?

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Please note that the opinions of the characters in the story are their own opinions, and do not reflect that of the author. Also, avoid twilight. I'm more in agreement with Ami, from last chapter. Those books are beyond awful.

[Shadou]

Updated to current version after my beta reader got through with it.

[Dumbledork]

Took me a while to reread the whole thing. I still like it as much as I did then, but you should put up a link to the older chapters at the top of your post for those who are too lazy to go to ff.net.

[Spica75]

I kept meaning to get to this, but there always seemed to be something else that needed to be done in my free time for the first few weeks. Then weeks turned into months. And now months has turned into years.

It´s amazing how quickly that happens.


Anyway, good to see another chapter, will read as soon as i can.

[Shadou]

I do need to get this chapter up on FFN soon. If there's no criticisms in the next couple days, I'm going to have to go ahead and put it up there.

Also, Weebee and I have been working on a collaboration story. It's not a fukufic so doesn't really go here, but we think it's entertaining to write nonetheless, and hope our readers think it's just as fun to read. It's called "The true meaning of pervert" and we've posted the first chapter at FFN. More to come.

[Spica75]

It's not a fukufic so doesn't really go here

I don´t think anyone will reject it from here.





Ok, read through and not finding anything that requires fixing. Looking pretty good.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

I don't really see any problems worth noting... Though that's coming from someone who barely remembers anything about this particular story. ^^;

[ijp92]

Wow. It's really good to see this story again.

[Blackcat101]

IS ALIVEEE!

Thank you for continuing the story.