Chakra Points [Naruto/Sailormoon]
Table of Contents | Chapter Two
Title: Chapter One
Fandoms: Naruto, Sailormoon
Characters: Hyuuga Neji, Tomoe Hotaru, Meiou Setsuna
Word Count: 2,683
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Neji's arrival in a strange new world is noticed by the Soldier of Death.
Author's Notes: Still thinking of a title. The problem with stories is that I don't think of a title until the story's written. Title chosen! And this is going to be a multi-parter, so... Anyway, this is the scribble with an extension. Enjoy!
Pure instinct, not vision of any sort, caused Hyuuga Neji to snap his legs to his chest so he could use the tree that hadn't been there before as a springboard instead of smashing chest-first into the rough bark. He didn't go far, but he did manage to land on both feet and one hand, the arm made useless from a dislocated shoulder held tight against his side by chakra.
Panting harshly from exertion and still primed for fighting, the Hyuuga took crucial moments to reorient himself. That lightning jutsu's magenta-white light had blinded him a moment before thunder shattered his eardrums before he could even register the sound. Now, everything was serenely quiet.
And horribly wrong.
He wasn't where he had been.
Blood spilled hot and wet into his eye, so he closed it. The ugly, strange, rank stenches of industrialism filled his nose, marring the trees' perfume. The night sky had an odd glow to it, buildings that dwarfed the trees had small lights on and in them. He sensed no one in his immediate vicinity, but there was a bit of a hushed roar in the distance, a concentration of the chakra of many civilians at a distance.
That he could sense that many people, but not the brilliant, searing flame of Naruto's chakra sent chills through him that being in a strange place couldn't.
Ruthless discipline from infancy and absolute faith in Naruto helped keep Neji calm. He would have to worry about Naruto later. Right now, if he didn't attend to himself, he would be of no use to Naruto. And should something happen to Hokage-sama's heir-apparent, extended and elaborate conversations with Morino-san would be Neji's absolute last worry.
First, he searched for any chakra presences in his immediate area. Finding none, he concentrated and activated the Byakugan. The sudden, sharp change in what and how he could see slapped him hard with violent nausea. He ground his teeth and used an effort of will to forcibly keep his sphincter muscles closed and the contents of his stomach, inside his stomach.
He pushed his radial Vision out slowly. Night became as day to his Eyes (even if the fine details were blurry). Trees he expected, though they weren't quite the type he anticipated. Neither was the unnaturally clipped grass, or the flowers that had to have been touched by man. At two hundred meters, he paused when he Saw the stone path cut a swath through the grass. It reminded him of the paths in the Hyuuga compound, where clansmen could walk and not worry about dirtying their robes unnecessarily.
Was he in a (civilian) compound? If so, he should have sensed individual presences before now.
Despite his falling chakra levels, he continued to push his Vision.
His breath hitched when he Found the wide stone path that ran alongside a veritable river of black stone sunbleached into something grayer. It certainly wasn't like the water of the lake he had Seen in the opposite direction, but he had never encountered so much stone when not on a mountain, or in a village located near a quarry.
The lights warned him first, and he barely had the chance to flinch in reflex when the shiny metal wagon -- containing two people; young, laughing, and oddly dressed -- shot through the small portion of the outer edge of his Visual range at a speed he had before only associated with Lee, unweighted. And even then Neji wasn't certain his best friend could keep up.
Blessed Fates' tapestry of life and destiny, where was he!?
~ ~ ~ ~
Tomoe Hotaru, high school student and Outer Senshi, waved goodbye to her study group and broke into a running trot toward the parking lot. She was hardly worried about running into trouble; she simply wanted to get home. Setsuna-mama liked it best when Hotaru didn't linger, and out of respect and love, the fifteen-year-old did her best to obey the request.
The dark purple motorcycle shone almost wetly in the light, and Hotaru didn't bother to suppress the smile. There were some definite advantages to having adoptive parents who were financially well-off. Of course, the motorcycle was intended more for senshi-related business, but when it came to mundane matters, it worked just fine.
That and Hotaru shared Haruka-papa's affinity for speed.
Hotaru kept her motorcycle to the proper speed limits as she left Myoujou Gakuen High School behind. It was a beautiful, quiet night, and she relished every moment of peace as much as she enjoyed the feeling of the wind where it could creep in under her helmet.
There hadn't been a sign of youma for quite a while; long enough that Michiru-mama felt comfortable getting back to career as a professional violinist with Haruka-papa as her accompanist. That meant at home, there was just Hotaru and Setsuna-mama.
That was fine with Hotaru. They cou--
Death whispered, murmured.
The tires screeched and left skid marks as Hotaru slammed on the breaks. With the ease of practice, she was able to swing the bike around to disrupt the forward momentum so she could stop more quickly. The engine idled quietly. Hotaru narrowed her eyes and flipped up the visor, inhaling deeply. A death-giver. To go by the smell, they had killed recently, and many.
She cut off the engine, stepped off the motorcycle and wheeled it into the nearby brush of Inokashira Park. A simple cloak of darkness masked the vehicle and the helmet now on the seat from human eyes before she took off at a silent sprint. There was a bare flicker of purple light as she transformed.
The Soldier of Silence ran with inhuman speed. Her footfalls would betray no sound unless she willed it. The smell of death mingled with that of drying and dried blood about the moment she sensed a presence. She slowed, frowned. It was stronger than a human's, yet it lacked the feel of a youma. She debated summoning the Glaive, then chose against it for now.
Violet eyes scanned around her. The darkness and shadows did nothing to affect her vision, save washing the color away. The owner of the presence was near, near enough that instinct warned her to call in the Glaive.
The weapon remained hovering in the air when Saturn whipped herself away from it. A pair of thin needles struck the air where her arm had been to bury themselves almost completely into the soft earth, and then suddenly the world exploded in light.
She cried out, blinded and in pain. Three sharp blades punched into her backside; only chance saved her spine from getting hit. She stumbled from the force of the impacts, and got ready to turn when suddenly the blades were yanked out of her body, seemingly of their own accord.
She cried out again, only it was on purpose. The blinding light suddenly extinguished, and she could hear a whisper-whistle in the air. The Glaive appeared between her hands, and she caught the blades on the staff portion. She saw the wires tied to the knives' ring-pommels, and snake-quick she wrapped her hand in the wires and pulled.
A pained grunt heralded a body's departure from a tree. The figure half-fell, half-rolled to come up in a crouch. Saturn had a bare moment to pick out a white mask, an arm held rigid against one side of the body, and a light-colored vest before the figure disappeared back into the foliage.
Something, she deduced, was very wrong. If nothing else, it looked like someone was trying to be a ninja.
It made no sense.
Neither did that niggling sense of familiarity that had no place here.
She shook her head and focused upon more important matters while she felt her wounds knit themselves closed.. Like the fact that those knives had been well-aimed. She might have been (temporarily) paralyzed, and she was certainly bleeding, but none of the wounds would have been lethal as they struck at non-vital areas. He -- she was certain it was a he -- wasn't trying to kill her.
Yet he positively reeked of death. Most beings who stank this foully didn't tend to strike to debilitate when they did choose to strike. And there had been a kind of...professionalism about him, that she wouldn't ordinarily expect.
Not someone playacting, then, but an actual ninja.
Except that profession had been dead for well over a century. If any ninja truly remained, they wouldn't be so casually ninja as this one behaved.
"Ninja-san." She spoke quietly, but her will made the whisper be carried everywhere for about thirty meters. The Glaive vanished from her hand, and she lowered her hand to her side. "If you wish so badly to talk, then let us talk."
No reply came. Saturn waited patiently while silence began to settle around her as softly as gentle snow.
The faint, sweet smell of healing energy took her by surprise. Curious, she oriented on it, but before she could take a step forward the scent abruptly vanished.
Tension pulsed in the air. Moments later, the ninja stepped slowly around the base of a broad tree. She saw now that the mask bore an abstract avian design, one that evoked the feeling of a majestic bird of prey. The vest was a flak vest, scoured with rips that revealed additional armor beneath the surface cloth. His skin also bore marks of similar damage, and there were slashes in his black clothes. Pouches ringed his waist, some flaccid, some still full. The one arm was still held tightly against his side. The other ended with a hand that grasped a katana in a reverse grip.
He cocked his head momentarily to the side momentarily. "You see me." He had a baritone voice, only slightly muffled by the mask. His statement contained as much expression as a mountain's face.
"You see me," Saturn returned, her interest piqued. This was the first time she had encountered a human with superior night vision who wasn't being in some way influenced by a youma. "Who are you?"
"Falcon." A beat. "And you?"
Two could play at this. "Seeraa Sataan," she returned. While she could speak the English words better than even Minako, to judge by his accent those sounds would be difficult for him. Therefore she used the katakana pronunciation.
The name clearly meant nothing to him. To everyone else in Japan, sailor plus a planet's name invoked a reaction of some sort, usually one of recognition. His reaction was a complete non-reaction.
Interesting.
The silence stretched on.
"Why are you here, Falcon-san?" Saturn finally asked.
He took his time in responding.
"A better question, perhaps, is where am I."
Saturn frowned, faintly. She still held the wires in one hand while the knives were still wrapped around her Glaive's staff. "You're in Musashino, Tokyo," she answered. She kept her voice neutral so she could better judge his response.
Falcon cocked his head to the side in a quite birdlike manner, and there was another silence before he spoke. "I know not this place."
"I see," she murmured. Moot point asking where he was from. "Perhaps, Falcon-san, you would let me help you? You are in a strange place, for one, and you're injured as well."
"You can self-heal, but does that make you a healer?" he asked.
"No. My ability to properly assess injuries and the ability to heal same makes me a healer."
"Point," he conceded. "Very well, Sailor Saturn." He slid the katana into his scabbard without even moving his head.
His posture shifted from 'on guard' to 'warily cautious'. She attempted to unwind the wires from her staff, but when that looked to take more time than she wanted, she used one of the knives and a bit of force to cut the wires.
She had taken two steps when she felt that familiar something that was Pluto sliding into this time. Falcon didn't notice, which was--
Metal slid sharply against metal, causing Saturn to jerk back reflexively and snap her Glaive in a guard position. She stared at the tableau before her: Pluto's keystaff sliding off of Falcon's katana, her bangs still falling from the momentum of what had to have been an impressive overhead attack; and Falcon between Saturn and Pluto, in a stance where the taller man would have been protecting Saturn had she been in actual danger.
"Puruuto!" she cried out, again with that careful pronunciation, "Wait!"
The ageless senshi turned her riposte into a flourish that slapped the sword away from her throat. Again Saturn blinked her surprise; she hadn't even seen the ninja's counter-attack. Falcon's response was once again nothing. He instead adroitly spun his sword into a forward grip and half-turned his head until Saturn could see just a hint of the mask's dark eyehole. "Sailor Pluto is a friend," she told Falcon. "A fellow soldier of mine."
"Saturn," Pluto said softly, pressing for answers to obvious questions. Her expression was stern, her garnet eyes dangerous, and the Garnet Orb at the end of her keystaff glowed with faint luminescence.
"He calls himself Falcon. I can't say where he's from."
"Where he's from matters less than how he got here in the first place," Pluto just about snarled. "He's from beyond the Fourth Dimension."
Pluto was the Guardian of Time, the Keeper of the Keys, her station at the Gates of Time. Through the Gates were Time and Chaos, where openings in space and time and matter to other realms could be found. That place was called the Fourth Dimension. Trespassers through that place always meant trouble, and Saturn knew that Pluto maintained potent protections. That this ninja had managed to get through them... No wonder Pluto was so angry.
"The what?" he demanded. He had no clue of what she meant, going by his tone.
Saturn thought quickly. "Ninja-san, what do you last recall before you were here?"
"Fighting, and a torrential thunderstorm that rained as much lightning as water. A brilliant bolt that obliterated all sound and vision, then I was here."
That was enough for Pluto to give him a less hostile glower as she studied him intensely. "He still trespassed," she stated. "The law on that is clear."
Death.
"I don't believe he a threat to us," Saturn told her. "Perhaps there is a reason he is here besides one that is harmful to us."
"Such as?"
Saturn smiled slightly. "Such as you're listening to me versus trying to eliminate him," she answered.
Pluto's gaze remained on the ninja while she circled slowly around to close to Saturn. "If you don't mind?" she asked.
"Right." Saturn focused her will, and the quiet sounds of the park vanished. Such was the sound-warping that surrounded she and Pluto.
"Something is wrong," Pluto said as soon as the warping was in place. "I couldn't see what will happen."
"Puu-chan, you know that in regards to your own future, you can see glimpses at best," Saturn chided her gently.
"Yes," Pluto replied somberly. "But I couldn't even see that. It was..." She trailed off, a quiet huff of frustration hissing through her teeth. "...blocked, for lack of a better term. I saw nothing. Just the equivalent to television snow."
"Odd," Saturn commented with a frown. She moved her free hand as if to hold her chin, but stopped when she remembered she still had Falcon's knives. "Very odd. But perhaps we should play it cautious, for now. You saw how fast he moved, and he's obviously willing to talk instead of fight." Something no youma or Enemy ever wanted to do, or not for very long. "At least allow me to heal him. He may be even more willing to speak if he is not in pain." Not that she technically needed Pluto's permission, but asking may help soothe some of the worry.
Pluto was quiet a few moments before she nodded. "All right."
Saturn nodded in reply and dropped the warping. "Your knives, Falcon-san," she said, holding them out to him.
-end chapter one-
Table of Contents | Chapter Two
Title: Chapter One
Fandoms: Naruto, Sailormoon
Characters: Hyuuga Neji, Tomoe Hotaru, Meiou Setsuna
Word Count: 2,683
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Neji's arrival in a strange new world is noticed by the Soldier of Death.
Author's Notes: Still thinking of a title. The problem with stories is that I don't think of a title until the story's written. Title chosen! And this is going to be a multi-parter, so... Anyway, this is the scribble with an extension. Enjoy!
Pure instinct, not vision of any sort, caused Hyuuga Neji to snap his legs to his chest so he could use the tree that hadn't been there before as a springboard instead of smashing chest-first into the rough bark. He didn't go far, but he did manage to land on both feet and one hand, the arm made useless from a dislocated shoulder held tight against his side by chakra.
Panting harshly from exertion and still primed for fighting, the Hyuuga took crucial moments to reorient himself. That lightning jutsu's magenta-white light had blinded him a moment before thunder shattered his eardrums before he could even register the sound. Now, everything was serenely quiet.
And horribly wrong.
He wasn't where he had been.
Blood spilled hot and wet into his eye, so he closed it. The ugly, strange, rank stenches of industrialism filled his nose, marring the trees' perfume. The night sky had an odd glow to it, buildings that dwarfed the trees had small lights on and in them. He sensed no one in his immediate vicinity, but there was a bit of a hushed roar in the distance, a concentration of the chakra of many civilians at a distance.
That he could sense that many people, but not the brilliant, searing flame of Naruto's chakra sent chills through him that being in a strange place couldn't.
Ruthless discipline from infancy and absolute faith in Naruto helped keep Neji calm. He would have to worry about Naruto later. Right now, if he didn't attend to himself, he would be of no use to Naruto. And should something happen to Hokage-sama's heir-apparent, extended and elaborate conversations with Morino-san would be Neji's absolute last worry.
First, he searched for any chakra presences in his immediate area. Finding none, he concentrated and activated the Byakugan. The sudden, sharp change in what and how he could see slapped him hard with violent nausea. He ground his teeth and used an effort of will to forcibly keep his sphincter muscles closed and the contents of his stomach, inside his stomach.
He pushed his radial Vision out slowly. Night became as day to his Eyes (even if the fine details were blurry). Trees he expected, though they weren't quite the type he anticipated. Neither was the unnaturally clipped grass, or the flowers that had to have been touched by man. At two hundred meters, he paused when he Saw the stone path cut a swath through the grass. It reminded him of the paths in the Hyuuga compound, where clansmen could walk and not worry about dirtying their robes unnecessarily.
Was he in a (civilian) compound? If so, he should have sensed individual presences before now.
Despite his falling chakra levels, he continued to push his Vision.
His breath hitched when he Found the wide stone path that ran alongside a veritable river of black stone sunbleached into something grayer. It certainly wasn't like the water of the lake he had Seen in the opposite direction, but he had never encountered so much stone when not on a mountain, or in a village located near a quarry.
The lights warned him first, and he barely had the chance to flinch in reflex when the shiny metal wagon -- containing two people; young, laughing, and oddly dressed -- shot through the small portion of the outer edge of his Visual range at a speed he had before only associated with Lee, unweighted. And even then Neji wasn't certain his best friend could keep up.
Blessed Fates' tapestry of life and destiny, where was he!?
~ ~ ~ ~
Tomoe Hotaru, high school student and Outer Senshi, waved goodbye to her study group and broke into a running trot toward the parking lot. She was hardly worried about running into trouble; she simply wanted to get home. Setsuna-mama liked it best when Hotaru didn't linger, and out of respect and love, the fifteen-year-old did her best to obey the request.
The dark purple motorcycle shone almost wetly in the light, and Hotaru didn't bother to suppress the smile. There were some definite advantages to having adoptive parents who were financially well-off. Of course, the motorcycle was intended more for senshi-related business, but when it came to mundane matters, it worked just fine.
That and Hotaru shared Haruka-papa's affinity for speed.
Hotaru kept her motorcycle to the proper speed limits as she left Myoujou Gakuen High School behind. It was a beautiful, quiet night, and she relished every moment of peace as much as she enjoyed the feeling of the wind where it could creep in under her helmet.
There hadn't been a sign of youma for quite a while; long enough that Michiru-mama felt comfortable getting back to career as a professional violinist with Haruka-papa as her accompanist. That meant at home, there was just Hotaru and Setsuna-mama.
That was fine with Hotaru. They cou--
Death whispered, murmured.
The tires screeched and left skid marks as Hotaru slammed on the breaks. With the ease of practice, she was able to swing the bike around to disrupt the forward momentum so she could stop more quickly. The engine idled quietly. Hotaru narrowed her eyes and flipped up the visor, inhaling deeply. A death-giver. To go by the smell, they had killed recently, and many.
She cut off the engine, stepped off the motorcycle and wheeled it into the nearby brush of Inokashira Park. A simple cloak of darkness masked the vehicle and the helmet now on the seat from human eyes before she took off at a silent sprint. There was a bare flicker of purple light as she transformed.
The Soldier of Silence ran with inhuman speed. Her footfalls would betray no sound unless she willed it. The smell of death mingled with that of drying and dried blood about the moment she sensed a presence. She slowed, frowned. It was stronger than a human's, yet it lacked the feel of a youma. She debated summoning the Glaive, then chose against it for now.
Violet eyes scanned around her. The darkness and shadows did nothing to affect her vision, save washing the color away. The owner of the presence was near, near enough that instinct warned her to call in the Glaive.
The weapon remained hovering in the air when Saturn whipped herself away from it. A pair of thin needles struck the air where her arm had been to bury themselves almost completely into the soft earth, and then suddenly the world exploded in light.
She cried out, blinded and in pain. Three sharp blades punched into her backside; only chance saved her spine from getting hit. She stumbled from the force of the impacts, and got ready to turn when suddenly the blades were yanked out of her body, seemingly of their own accord.
She cried out again, only it was on purpose. The blinding light suddenly extinguished, and she could hear a whisper-whistle in the air. The Glaive appeared between her hands, and she caught the blades on the staff portion. She saw the wires tied to the knives' ring-pommels, and snake-quick she wrapped her hand in the wires and pulled.
A pained grunt heralded a body's departure from a tree. The figure half-fell, half-rolled to come up in a crouch. Saturn had a bare moment to pick out a white mask, an arm held rigid against one side of the body, and a light-colored vest before the figure disappeared back into the foliage.
Something, she deduced, was very wrong. If nothing else, it looked like someone was trying to be a ninja.
It made no sense.
Neither did that niggling sense of familiarity that had no place here.
She shook her head and focused upon more important matters while she felt her wounds knit themselves closed.. Like the fact that those knives had been well-aimed. She might have been (temporarily) paralyzed, and she was certainly bleeding, but none of the wounds would have been lethal as they struck at non-vital areas. He -- she was certain it was a he -- wasn't trying to kill her.
Yet he positively reeked of death. Most beings who stank this foully didn't tend to strike to debilitate when they did choose to strike. And there had been a kind of...professionalism about him, that she wouldn't ordinarily expect.
Not someone playacting, then, but an actual ninja.
Except that profession had been dead for well over a century. If any ninja truly remained, they wouldn't be so casually ninja as this one behaved.
"Ninja-san." She spoke quietly, but her will made the whisper be carried everywhere for about thirty meters. The Glaive vanished from her hand, and she lowered her hand to her side. "If you wish so badly to talk, then let us talk."
No reply came. Saturn waited patiently while silence began to settle around her as softly as gentle snow.
The faint, sweet smell of healing energy took her by surprise. Curious, she oriented on it, but before she could take a step forward the scent abruptly vanished.
Tension pulsed in the air. Moments later, the ninja stepped slowly around the base of a broad tree. She saw now that the mask bore an abstract avian design, one that evoked the feeling of a majestic bird of prey. The vest was a flak vest, scoured with rips that revealed additional armor beneath the surface cloth. His skin also bore marks of similar damage, and there were slashes in his black clothes. Pouches ringed his waist, some flaccid, some still full. The one arm was still held tightly against his side. The other ended with a hand that grasped a katana in a reverse grip.
He cocked his head momentarily to the side momentarily. "You see me." He had a baritone voice, only slightly muffled by the mask. His statement contained as much expression as a mountain's face.
"You see me," Saturn returned, her interest piqued. This was the first time she had encountered a human with superior night vision who wasn't being in some way influenced by a youma. "Who are you?"
"Falcon." A beat. "And you?"
Two could play at this. "Seeraa Sataan," she returned. While she could speak the English words better than even Minako, to judge by his accent those sounds would be difficult for him. Therefore she used the katakana pronunciation.
The name clearly meant nothing to him. To everyone else in Japan, sailor plus a planet's name invoked a reaction of some sort, usually one of recognition. His reaction was a complete non-reaction.
Interesting.
The silence stretched on.
"Why are you here, Falcon-san?" Saturn finally asked.
He took his time in responding.
"A better question, perhaps, is where am I."
Saturn frowned, faintly. She still held the wires in one hand while the knives were still wrapped around her Glaive's staff. "You're in Musashino, Tokyo," she answered. She kept her voice neutral so she could better judge his response.
Falcon cocked his head to the side in a quite birdlike manner, and there was another silence before he spoke. "I know not this place."
"I see," she murmured. Moot point asking where he was from. "Perhaps, Falcon-san, you would let me help you? You are in a strange place, for one, and you're injured as well."
"You can self-heal, but does that make you a healer?" he asked.
"No. My ability to properly assess injuries and the ability to heal same makes me a healer."
"Point," he conceded. "Very well, Sailor Saturn." He slid the katana into his scabbard without even moving his head.
His posture shifted from 'on guard' to 'warily cautious'. She attempted to unwind the wires from her staff, but when that looked to take more time than she wanted, she used one of the knives and a bit of force to cut the wires.
She had taken two steps when she felt that familiar something that was Pluto sliding into this time. Falcon didn't notice, which was--
Metal slid sharply against metal, causing Saturn to jerk back reflexively and snap her Glaive in a guard position. She stared at the tableau before her: Pluto's keystaff sliding off of Falcon's katana, her bangs still falling from the momentum of what had to have been an impressive overhead attack; and Falcon between Saturn and Pluto, in a stance where the taller man would have been protecting Saturn had she been in actual danger.
"Puruuto!" she cried out, again with that careful pronunciation, "Wait!"
The ageless senshi turned her riposte into a flourish that slapped the sword away from her throat. Again Saturn blinked her surprise; she hadn't even seen the ninja's counter-attack. Falcon's response was once again nothing. He instead adroitly spun his sword into a forward grip and half-turned his head until Saturn could see just a hint of the mask's dark eyehole. "Sailor Pluto is a friend," she told Falcon. "A fellow soldier of mine."
"Saturn," Pluto said softly, pressing for answers to obvious questions. Her expression was stern, her garnet eyes dangerous, and the Garnet Orb at the end of her keystaff glowed with faint luminescence.
"He calls himself Falcon. I can't say where he's from."
"Where he's from matters less than how he got here in the first place," Pluto just about snarled. "He's from beyond the Fourth Dimension."
Pluto was the Guardian of Time, the Keeper of the Keys, her station at the Gates of Time. Through the Gates were Time and Chaos, where openings in space and time and matter to other realms could be found. That place was called the Fourth Dimension. Trespassers through that place always meant trouble, and Saturn knew that Pluto maintained potent protections. That this ninja had managed to get through them... No wonder Pluto was so angry.
"The what?" he demanded. He had no clue of what she meant, going by his tone.
Saturn thought quickly. "Ninja-san, what do you last recall before you were here?"
"Fighting, and a torrential thunderstorm that rained as much lightning as water. A brilliant bolt that obliterated all sound and vision, then I was here."
That was enough for Pluto to give him a less hostile glower as she studied him intensely. "He still trespassed," she stated. "The law on that is clear."
Death.
"I don't believe he a threat to us," Saturn told her. "Perhaps there is a reason he is here besides one that is harmful to us."
"Such as?"
Saturn smiled slightly. "Such as you're listening to me versus trying to eliminate him," she answered.
Pluto's gaze remained on the ninja while she circled slowly around to close to Saturn. "If you don't mind?" she asked.
"Right." Saturn focused her will, and the quiet sounds of the park vanished. Such was the sound-warping that surrounded she and Pluto.
"Something is wrong," Pluto said as soon as the warping was in place. "I couldn't see what will happen."
"Puu-chan, you know that in regards to your own future, you can see glimpses at best," Saturn chided her gently.
"Yes," Pluto replied somberly. "But I couldn't even see that. It was..." She trailed off, a quiet huff of frustration hissing through her teeth. "...blocked, for lack of a better term. I saw nothing. Just the equivalent to television snow."
"Odd," Saturn commented with a frown. She moved her free hand as if to hold her chin, but stopped when she remembered she still had Falcon's knives. "Very odd. But perhaps we should play it cautious, for now. You saw how fast he moved, and he's obviously willing to talk instead of fight." Something no youma or Enemy ever wanted to do, or not for very long. "At least allow me to heal him. He may be even more willing to speak if he is not in pain." Not that she technically needed Pluto's permission, but asking may help soothe some of the worry.
Pluto was quiet a few moments before she nodded. "All right."
Saturn nodded in reply and dropped the warping. "Your knives, Falcon-san," she said, holding them out to him.
-end chapter one-
Table of Contents | Chapter Two