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Dual Shadows
A Ranma ½ and Sailor Moon Crossover
By Tomas Megarson
Email: NighthawkTM@yahoo.com
Webpage: http://nighthawk.anifics.com

Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and Sailor Moon belong to their respective creators
and not to me.

Note: This story is the sequel to another fic of mine, "Twin Black
Phoenix." If you didn't read TBP, do so, because you'll understand more
about this fic. If you didn't like TBP, you probably won't like this
either.


Prologue
Life after Death

The room was darker then a starless sky. It was a place where
light had not touched in thousands of years, a place where no soul had
taken a breath of life since long before the last of the light fled.
Away from the room was nothing more then a barren, lifeless rock, a
legacy of a war so long ago that there were not even records that it had
taken place. No records existed of that war except in the memories of
those who had survived it, and those who were destine to come again.

Of those two groups, those who had survived and remembered were
the fewer of the two. There was only a single person left alive from
that time of strife, and she had not taken a breath of life since then.
She survived and slept in a magical state, a state that had taken the
last of her power to create so long ago. The timing of the effect was
the most important for if it were late, she'd fail in her mission, and
if it were early, she could die decades before she had the chance to
start her mission.

But she was the Senshi of Pluto, and she knew the consequences
of timing. She wasn't perfect, no one is, but she managed to time it
close enough. Within hours of a capsule on the Planet Earth opening and
letting a black talking cat back into life, the magical barrier
surrounding Sailor Pluto dropped, releasing her back into the world of
the living.

It was with a gasp that Setsuna took her first breath in eight
thousand years. Her legs collapsed under her, and her tan arms failed
to catch her fall. She lay on the ground breathing, feeling, and
marveling at life.

Slowly her eyes opened, the crimson orbs unable to see anything
within the all encompassing darkness. Her mind, again coming to grips
with consciousness, began to remember. As the memories of those last
few days returned, tears began to flow.

As the tears dropped to the cold stone floor, control of her
body began to return. First a finger twitched, then an ankle bent.
Within her boot, her toes began to wiggle. Finally, control returned to
her completely and Setsuna pushed herself to her feet.

With weak, trembling legs, Setsuna stumbled through the room,
knowing from years of living where everything was, and avoiding it all.
Finally, she stumbled to a stop and leaned heavily against the freezing
wall.

Reaching up with a shaking hand, Setsuna pressed a small switch
whose purpose was to open the metal shutters blocking her bedroom from
the world. There was a grating sound as the motor struggled to find
some life left in it. It's growl filled the room like a starving beast
as it ever so slowly forced the shutters back.

Setsuna gasped, stumbled, and fell on her rear. Nothing. The
world outside her room was barren and lifeless. Nothing had survived
enough to grow back. Her world was nothing more then a lifeless shell
of black and gray stone. Queen Serenity's final revenge had been more
devastating then she had imagined was possible.

Her eyes stared into the night sky, slowly calming her. She
should have known this would happen, that Serenity's Crystal would
manage to destroy everything so completely. And yet, as she gazed at
the eternal stars above her, she wondered how anything could be so
strong.

A long trembling sigh escaped her lips, and she pushed herself
back to her feet. One gloved hand went to her stomach as it growled
from hunger, and she began to stagger toward the now visible door of her
room. She needed something to eat. And then she'd have to get to work.

She had a future to save.

*

A vast emptiness surrounded him. His head spun in every
direction trying to find something to look at, anything except the
darkness that covered his eyes. No matter how he turned, nothing
entered the sight given to him by his piercing blue eyes. The tangle
mess of black hair covering his head bounced with his spinning, almost
as though it was keeping time to his movements, and the pigtail down his
neck swished back and forth.

Ranma tried to jump, to give himself some kind of different
perspective, only to find his legs unable to find any perch. He was
floating, or at least he assumed so. Trying one of his father's
techniques for changing direction in mid air, he found himself able to
twist and spin, if his moving hair was any indication.

Finally, unable to bear the total nothing anymore, he called out
in a strong voice, "Well, now what?" Ranma listened as his voice faded
into the emptiness becoming silence in only a matter of seconds. With a
frustrated growl, he tried to spin around again, and blinked as he came
face to face with a mirror. "The hell?"

Raising his hand, Ranma frowned as he couldn't see it in front
of his face, but could see it in the mirror. He began to move around,
trying to find something wrong with the mirror, only to find it followed
his movements perfectly. Finally, unable to think of anything else, he
reached out and touched the mirror.

The image in the mirror suddenly smiled at him. "Thanks."

Ranma gaped at the mirror for a moment before shaking his head.
"This is one messed up dream."

The mirror image nodded. "For now, anyway. You better wake
up."

Ranma blinked. "Huh?"

The mirror image sighed. "We don't have time. You have to wake
up. Now."

Again Ranma blinked. "Wha...?"

Finally the image dropped his head. "Great, I'm an idiot."

Ranma's dumbed face suddenly turned angry. "Hey! What's that
suppose to mean!?"

And then the darkness was shattered by a bucket of ice water.

*

"Keikan!" The voice that called through the young man's wooden
door was a screech. "You wake up this instant!"

Rolling over in his bed, the man pulled his pillow over his
head. "Damnit, quit calling me by my middle name!"

"Don't you DARE talk to your mother like that!" The door to the
bedroom shook as the woman tried to open it, only to find it locked,
barred, and with the dresser pushed in front of it. Like every morning.

Calling from under his pillow, and wishing that his mother would
just go away, he called "Then don't call me by my middle name!"

"Young man, open this door this instant!"

"No. Now go away and let me sleep." Grabbing his blankets,
Keikan pulled them up over his pillowed head. There, now it was dark
enough to sleep. He wondered if he could get that dream again.

"Keikan, open this door or I'll call the fire department!"

Keikan's eyes opened and he sat up, the blankets and pillow
falling from his head and down his bare chest. He reached up to rub the
sleep out ofhis emerald eyes. That was a threat he had to take
seriously. She'd already done it twice this month. The firemen weren't
real happy about it either. Neither was his wallet, as he'd had to pay
for the new doors. "Okay, I'm up, let me get dressed, sheesh."

"Come down stairs when you're done, and don't forget to bring
your stuff. You had better be packed, young man!"

Keikan grimaced and looked at the stack of bags in the corner of
his room. "Damn it, I don't wanna move to Japan." He had thought he'd
kept his voice down, but his mother had clearly heard him.

"I don't care what you want, we ARE moving to Japan! With your
father dead we can't afford to live here! We've had this discussion
before!"

Keikan grimaced. Yeah, they had had it before, and everytime
he'd lost. His mother was just being too damn stubborn about all this,
and too damn lazy to get a job. Life, he thought, was just going to
suck.

*

"Wha...?" Usagi Tsukino turned around, staring at all the
people. The place looked like a curch, and everyone was dressed fancy,
but it didn't feel right. Returning her gaze toward the front of the
room, she blinked, seeing a pair of familiar braids. "Hey...that's
me..."

With a bemused expression, Usagi walked down the long aisle so
that she could get a good look at herself. The her of the dream was
dressed in a white gown that almost looked like a nighty she'd seen in
the mall the other day and had the same bubbly expression that she saw
in the mirror.

Happy with herself, she turned to look at the rest of the room.
Everyone seemed to be as happy as she was. The few who weren't looked
completely content though, so it didn't bother her any. Walking down
the aisle, she wondered what else she could find in this dream.

As she approached the door in the back, however, she stopped and
frowned. In the deep shadows of the doorway stood a young man. He
looked somewhat familiar to her, but she couldn't place it. He wasn't
happy like everyone else, either. There was a grim frown etched on his
face and his black hair hid his eyes from view. She turned to see where
he was staring at, and realized it was her dream self.

Swallowing, she turned back to look at the man, and finally
noticed something else, the fact that he was in some kind of uniform.
As the man shifted slightly, a golden crescent gleamed in the light.
The sight of that mark made her smile, as it was one on her new cat's
forehead. That made everything alright.

Turning back to the front of the room, she frowned. Some girl
had just come in dressed in black robes and moved to the front of the
room. Something suddenly made Usagi stumble back into the guy behind
her, who took no notice of it. Something felt bad about the room. As
the feeling grew worse, Usagi began to get afraid.

Then the woman in the front dropped her robes to reveal her
naked body to everyone. Trembling slightly, something in Usagi forced
her to watch, but still she commented to herself, "This dream is
freaky..."

As a child was dragged into the room, Usagi could barely make
out the chanted words, but they all felt icky and wrong to her. She
watched with unmoving eyes as the child was bent over the alter in the
front of the room.

And as the dark hair girl drove the knife into the child's
chest, Usagi Tsukino awoke screaming.

*

Standing before the Gates of Time, Setsuna sighed. They no
longer showed her anything. The power to view the worlds from this one
place was gone, dead with the life of her planet. Without that life to
strengthen the gates, she could no longer see through time and space.
She was trapped now, forced to enter the world unknowing and unprepared,
and forced to do her own legwork on finding everyone.

That thought made her grimace. The last time she had done her
own search for someone without the Gates for aid had been over a year
before she'd become a Senshi. Having to relearn all the tricks now was
going to be hard. But it wasn't as though she had any choice. She
needed to find the Senshi and her Knight. Or Knights, if he'd managed
to come forward as well.

On a second thought, finding the Knights wasn't too big a deal,
as their memories would awaken if enough Dark Energy filled the Earth.
That was how she'd triggered the spell, anyway. Whether it would work
or not, she wasn't sure. But it was a decent thing to hope.

The Senshi were the priority, however. She had to keep them
from being corrupted by their past. If she managed that, there would be
no need of her Knights.

Knowing that time was short, she stepped into the Gates, her
mind and heart wishing herself to Earth, and the Gates responding. It
was time for her to get to work.



Author's Notes: There we are, the prelude for Dual Shadows. Chapter 1
will skip forward three years and pick up the story. Let me know what
you think of the beginning.