Of Worlds to Fall
Chapter Forty-Seven - Desoate
by Apollymi

Main Series: Sailormoon, Dragonball Z, Gundam Wing
Genre: Crossover, Romance, Supernatural
Word Count: 1,038
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.

The world solidified into that first one. She definitely had no been mistaken: the sky was made of metal--and maybe it was weird that that wasn't even the strangest thing about all of this. It was more than just the sky that looked like a machine: she could see a similar material everywhere she looked. It seemed to be beyond all the buildings in every direction.

So this was a... colony, if that was what Duo-kun and Heero-kun had called it? It seemed so... empty, so... desolate. But hadn't Duo-kun said something about it being abandoned? Before the Reapers started making claims on it? Had it been abandoned before or after the Reapers?

This really wasn't the time for observation. A quick glance around seemed to confirm that she had managed to grab everyone to bring them here: friend and foe. And okay, yeah, she definitely could have left the Reapers and Carrions behind, but there had been no good way to do that without leaving part of her army behind. There was no way to do that she was willing to risk doing that. She wasn't willing to leave anyone behind on that forsaken world.

Not that this desolate place was much better, so far as she could tell yet. They would make it work, though, but first impressions and all...

No one else seemed to be distracted in the least from the change in scenery. No, they were all most assuredly distracted by other things. In a word: fighting. From the hodge-podge collection of comments she had gleaned about the Saiyajin from Trunks-kun, it was no surprise that that was what he was currently occupied with. It was also no surprise that Duo-kun was taking one steady shot after another on the approaching Carrions or that Heero-kun was still steadily typing, even though they were at their destination. Maybe there were still more steps involved to make sure they were in this world for good.

And her eyes could barely follow Trunks-kun as he shot all over the sky, trying to stay ahead of the Reapers. That she had expected. What she hadn't expected was that she was having a similarly difficult time trying to keep Ban-san in her line of sight. It was amazing. She felt so much more powerful, but there were so many powerful fighters here with so many different kinds of fighting.

And somehow she had been one of the ones to bring them all together. It was all too amazing to be believed.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Trunks-kun deliver a brutal backhand to one of the Reapers, and it hit the ground hard enough for her to feel it through her bare feet. Duo-kun turned calmly and put a bullet through what would have been its head. It didn't move again. Duo-kun aimed a quick thumbs up at Trunks-kun, who returned it just as quickly before turning to the next Reaper in the sky.

There weren't as many as there had been only a few minutes before. That was probably a good thing. It looked like they had managed to take a few of the creatures.

Too bad the Carrions weren't as willing to go down. She had been watching Ban-san and Duo-kun. It seemed that every time they got one of the things down, presumably dead or at the very least unconscious, it would be right back up again only moments later. They didn't stay down. They didn't stay dead. There were whole litanies of things not right about that.

Still, that was against physical attacks. Their magic users, excepting her and Sylphiel-san, were still tied up against the Reapers. Maybe magic could make the difference against the Carrions?

She raised her staff and set her sight on them in preparation of an attack...

...and that was odd...

She hadn't noticed it until she really focused on them, but the Carrions had the same connections to other worlds that her allies had. It was a lot fainter, probably why she hadn't seen it until now, but the connections were indeed still there.

I never asked what happened to anyone who died of something other than being eaten by the Carrions.

That was a horrifying thought. All those people who had just vanished, all the people who had died in the first assault on the Reapers, anyone who might have just died of old age... Was it possible that that is where the Carrions came from?

Was it possible that the Carrions were people who were brought to that old world, the world they had just left, for their powers... and then kept to be what amounted to a boogie man for the remaining people, maybe even controlled in death by the Reapers?

They were called Carrions, after all. Didn't 'carrion' mean... something to do with dead things? She couldn't remember exactly, but it seemed right.

It seemed beyond comprehension, but maybe it was possible, as terrifying as the thought might have been. Why put anything past the Reapers, after all? She had known before this fight that they were monsters. Maybe they were bigger monsters than she had previously realized.

She chose a Carrion at random, one near the rear of the assault, and used what she could feel of those connections to other worlds and her own magic from the Ginzuishou within her to tug at the creature. The Ginzuishou whispered about its need to fix, to heal, to... resurrect.

She let it.

The globe on top of her staff lit up brilliantly before a soft light escaped from it, rushing rapidly across the distance, shaped like something between a cloud and some of Ginji-chan's lightning, enveloping the Carrion she had selected. She could barely keep up with what the Ginzuishou in her mind said it was doing, but she got something about cutting connections to the Reapers and healing and returning flesh to the age it had been when it arrived on that strange world.

When the light pulled back mere seconds later, a red-haired man with a cross-shaped across one cheek in an old fashioned kimono stood in its place.

Oh God... She had been right. The Carrions used to be people.


06 November 2012

Only three chapters still to go...

And this makes the second story I've slipped Himura Kenshin in with a minor role, the other being Gods and Other Creatures. Whoops. I love Kenshin, I really do, but Usagi doesn't know his name, so it's not mentioned. (Gods and Other Creatures is the only story on FFnet that has more reviews than this one now.)

This also makes the second time I've played with Sailor Cosmos, with the other being The Hope Saga.

See you in the next chapter!
Apollymi

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