Of Worlds to Fall
Chapter Eighteen - Insanity
by Apollymi

Main Series: Sailormoon, Dragonball Z, Gundam Wing
Genre: Crossover, Romance, Supernatural
Word Count: 1,327
Disclaimers: I own nothing but the idea. All series and characters are copyright to their individual creators and distributors, of which I am not one. I make no money from this fan-created work.

There were a few seconds of silence then... "This has to be the most insane thing I have ever heard."

She shrugged slightly. "I'm just telling you what we were told."

And she wasn't adding honorifics to either of their names--or even using their names if she could help it--until she got over the internal debate she was having. Her brain kept insisting that, if there was going to be all this attitude, then it would just have to be '-san'. Her heart, or whatever it was that was helping her decide who to trust and who not to, seemed to be dead set on '-kun' though, and that just didn't make any sense. It made even less sense than dreaming of giant mecha and somehow knowing that they were somehow connected to the pair in front of her.

"Do you even know if these things are real? I mean, maybe--"

"I have seen one of the Carrions," she cut in before Duo could continue ranting. "We've heard them several times since we've been here too."

"As for the Reapers," Trunks-kun continued, "we saw four of them when they dropped you to on our doorstep."

"What exactly do they look like?" To her surprise, that came from Heero. It was the first time she had heard him speak since they woke up. Odd: she hadn't been expected his voice to be quite so... She wasn't sure of the word for it, but it was unique.

"They fly, for starters," she explained. "Other than that, they were wearing long black robes with hoods and carrying what looked like scythes. Kind of like those pictures of the Grim Reaper?"

It was a second attempt to explain what it was she thought the Reapers looked like. It turned out that the Grim Reaper wasn't anything Trunks-kun had ever heard of before. Apparently things like that didn't make across the worlds. Baseball was something the two of their worlds shared, but not the image of the Grim Reaper. If she ever got back to her own world, she was going to have to ask Setsuna-san about this; Sailor Pluto was the only person she could think of who might have any kind of idea about stuff like this.

"Damn." Unsurprisingly that came from Duo. Honestly, she was starting to think that he had some sort of swearing quota he was running behind on.

"What?" she asked. If it had been Trunks-kun, she might have been a bit more delicate in her asking, but it was the middle of the night and she was annoyed. Her delicateness was just about worn out at this point.

"They sound like the creatures that attacked us."

Part of her was having a very sarcastic thought, that of course the Reapers were the ones that attacked them; the Reapers were the ones who brought them all here. But there was something else to that sentence, something a whole lot more immediately important. "You remember being attacked?"

"Yeah... You don't?"

She shook her head, glancing over at Trunks-kun, who in turn did the same. "I remember everything up to that point, but what actually happened when the Reapers brought me here? It's still all a blank."

"Same here," Trunks-kun commented. "Everything up to that last minute or so is crystal clear, but the actual attack is gone. I can't remember it, no matter what I try."

It sounded like Trunks-kun had been trying. Somehow that didn't surprise her, even if she hadn't known about it until now. She hadn't completely given up on it herself, but it had been since early yesterday--or rather, the day before yesterday by now--since she had last tried to stir any trace of the memory.

Trunks-kun had said something, though, something that bore some additional investigation. What if the Ginzuishou could do something with this? She might not have had her magic in order to fully use it, but maybe... She was still the daughter of the Queen of the White Moon Kingdom. Maybe she could convince it to do something.

At that, Duo finally stopped pacing back and forth the length of the small room and sat down across from the two of them. Heero, on the other hand, continued to lean against the wall behind Duo.

"The Preventers had been getting reports of strange activity on an abandoned colony. Heero and I went to check it out. When we got there, there were these things... all over the place. They looked like what you described, Usagi: like a whole bunch of damn Grim Reapers."

An inane and possibly sleepy part of her mind archived the fact that there was a legend of a Grim Reaper on Duo and Heero's world. More than that, though, there was something a whole lot more concerning. "Wait, 'a whole bunch'?" she questioned. "We've only seen the four. How many are you talking?"

"Dozens."

"No more than twenty or thirty," Heero put in, correcting Duo.

Okay, so that's probably what it's like to have the breath knocked out of you, she thought in shock. There are so many of them. What could they possibly be doing in this other world?

Fortunately, though, Duo continued as if she hadn't had just made some kind of horribly strangled sound of surprise. "It looked like they were building something, some kind of relay tower. Aside from that, it looked like some of them were strengthening the infrastructure throughout the colony."

"They're leaving this world." She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden sound of Trunks-kun's voice right next to her. "Maybe this world is nearly used up. They need a new world to take this--"

"House of horrors," she provided for lack of a better phrase.

"--this house of horrors to, and I suppose they've selected yours."

"Like hell." Unsurprisingly this came from Duo. Heero remained silent, but his face looked even stonier than before. He definitely agreed with his... partner?... on this. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but what can we do to help?"

She exchanged a glance with Trunks-kun, and both of them shrugged helplessly at one another. Neither of them had yet taken this as far as fighting captors they had only seen for the first time today.

"I'll need to talk to Tenchi-san," Trunks-kun finally said. "See if he knows anything about how to get out of here."

She kind of doubted it, but Tenchi-san had been a pretty good fount of information on things in this weird world so far. Maybe someone had tried it before. Even if they had failed, it could still be a good source of knowledge.

And then a thought occurred to her, probably her most insane one to date. "Do you think the Thunder Emperor could help?"

"Are we crazy enough to try it?" Trunks-kun countered. "Tenchi-san said that he was pretty indiscriminate about who he attacks."

"But he leaves that Sylphiel person alone. It might be worth a shot. And if he's got his powers back like Tenchi-san said..."

"Am I supposed to be following this conversation?" Duo sounded like he was musing aloud, but either way it was somewhat amusing and she cracked a tired smile.

Trunks-kun pushed himself stiffly to his feet and held a hand down to her to pull her up, which she gratefully accepted. "That might be part of the conversation best saved for the morning." It was a fairly pointed comment towards how late it was, but at this late point in the evening, she was more than willing to see those tossed around. She could certainly do what a few more hours sleep. "You're welcome to the bedroom and the room behind it for the rest of the night," Trunks-kun offered. She pointedly did not mention that he was offering up the training room; it didn't need to be mentioned right now. "We'll figure out if other arrangements are needed in the morning."

"Good night," she added.


21 September 2012

I seriously did notmean to let it get so late without me putting up a chapter. Still, here it is: up on Friday as promised!

See you next chapter!
Apollymi

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