#( MICHIRU ) ┈┈ WHERE THE SEA WHIPS AND SINGS | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jaquik · 13 days

Text

Fanfic Preview: The Wild Wind And The Scarlet Sea Part 6

Hey, haven't done a preview in a bit, so here's a snippet of the next chapter of my Ranma and Sailor Moon crossover fic.

It didn’t take too long for the five of them to make their way to the campsite and sneak up to the main building, where loud sounds of combat could be heard. “What’s going on in there?” Usagi asked. It only took a few seconds for Makoto to fully recognize the noises. “Pretty sure that’s martial arts sparring,” she stated, making sure to keep the excitement out of her voice as much as possible. Apparently it didn’t work very well as Usagi nudged her in the side. “Ah, see? Aren’t you glad we decided to come here after all?” she said with a smug grin. “Eh, it’s not that big of a deal,” Makoto casually said, “but, we should probably check it out anyway.” She very nonchalantly rushed through the hallway to a door where the sounds were coming from, the other girls arriving close behind. They all took a peek inside, finding a large gymnasium-like area with a bunch of Mugen Academy students in white gis. And right in the center were two students having a judo match. One of whom, right in the process of throwing the other over his shoulder, was very familiar. “Oh crap, it’s Haruka,” Minako whispered. “Dangit, the one hottie I didn’t want to run into.” “Right, we should get out of here before he spots us,” Ami said, a noticeable bit of nervousness leaking through her voice. “Why do we need to do that?” Usagi innocently asked. “Hey, if he’s here, does that also mean…” She leaned in more and whipped her head around checking the entire room. “Usagi, we need to go!” Rei hissed out. “Hey Makoto, what are you doing, come on!” The brunette wasn’t really listening though. She was too focused on watching the blond’s fighting techniques. Something about them sparked an itch of familiarity in her mind. She also couldn’t help but notice how the bright fluorescent lights gave the boy’s hair a slight reddish sheen. It was an interesting detail, but for some reason, it felt like it was important. Why did- “Enjoying the show, ladies?” With several yelps of surprise, all five of them found themselves collapsed in a pile right in the doorway. Looking up, Makoto saw the aquamarine haired Michiru standing in the hallway wearing a cream colored gi of her own and looking down on them with an amused expression on her face. “Huh? What’s going on?” Haruka called out. Michiru hummed and responded in a slightly sing-song tone. “Oh, nothing much. Just some hikers that seemed to have wandered their way in.” “What? Oh, bunhead!” Haruka had a look on his face as though he suddenly remembered something, although it quickly shifted to his own amused expression. “So you girls are doing some camping, huh? Or did you decide to hike all the way up here to check out my awesome training skills?” Makoto growled and scrambled to her feet. “For your information, we’re doing some training of our own on this mountain!” A cocky smirk grew on the boy’s face. “Oh, well in that case how ‘bout a nice little judo spar. That is, if you think you’re actually up for it, short stuff.” “Short stuff?!” Makoto’s eye began to twitch. How dare this jerk, just because he happened to be a little bit taller than her. She was well above average height for a girl her age, even more so when she chose to ignore certain countries in the world. Stupid Sweden. “Yeah, I’m totally up for kicking your scrawny little car driving butt. Bring it on!”

It only took a few minutes for Makoto to get ready, changed into a gi and standing opposite the smug jerk. Even after the call to begin was made, Haruka just stood in place with an expectant look on his face, which only pissed her off even more. Alright, time to show pretty boy just what a Sailor Senshi can do. In a flash, she rushed into his defenses and got a hard grip on his gi. Ha! This is too- Makoto blinked and looked up at the ceiling, her mind still processing just how fast she was countered and hip tossed onto the lightly padded mats. Before she could react, Minako and Ami were at her side and slowly helping her up. “What is wrong with you?” Minako yelled at Haruka. “She could have been really injured. How dare you treat a girl so harshly” “If she can’t handle a simple throw like that, then it’s her problem,” Haruka shot back, a scowl on his face. “It has nothing to do with being a guy or a girl. If you really are strong enough, then none of that should matter.” Makoto growled as she shook her friends off and got to her feet, taking a couple of seconds to steady herself. “Oh yeah? Try me again and I’ll show you just how strong I am!” Haruka was about to step forward again when a hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Now, now,” Michiru said in a sweet, almost chastising tone, “I do believe that it’s my turn now.” “Really? You?” Makoto regretted the words the instant they left her lips. Dammit, sure the girl was a concert violinist, but she of all people understood that strength and femininity were not incompatible things. Michiru’s serene mask cracked for just a moment. “Oh, is it really that much of a surprise?” “No, of course not!” Makoto quickly realized just how much of a verbal landmine she just stepped on, and started to wave her hands in front of her in a warding gesture. “I’d love to have a spar, and I can definitely tell that you’re a martial artist too!” Haruka started to snicker, but was quickly silenced by Michiru not so lightly elbowing him in the side, although his amused smile didn’t drop. “Very well.” The calm expression was back on Michiru’s face as she tilted her head slightly as though a thought just occurred to her. “How about we try something other than judo this time?” “Uh, sure,” Makoto hesitantly responded, put off guard by the aquamarine haired girl’s demeanor, but still determined to prove herself. “Do you know kempo?” “Oh, a little.” Michiru flashed a ghost of a smile as she gave an unreadable look over to Haruka, who raised an eyebrow. Makoto smiled and gave a nod. “Okay, then maybe I can teach you a few things.” “Oh yes,” Michiru responded. “I’m very much looking forward to this lesson.”

#ranma 1/2 #sailor moon #fanfiction #fanfic preview #makoto kino #haruka tenoh #michiru kaioh #ranma saotome #akane tendo #fuku fic

2 notes · View notes

docholligay · 4 years

Text

Requiem for the Grand Consummation

Angstober prompt was: Michiru, breakdown 1900 words, and I hope you....uh, enjoy it? In as much as anyone enjoys Angstober?

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. It matters little what you feel.The flame might tear and burn, the steam might hiss, but you are a creature of the coldest sea, and to all appearances, you will only ever be calm and shimmering. She had been trained in all of this since she was a young child, the subtle art of composure.

To compose oneself. She thought of it often, this turn of phrase, this way of putting a smooth coat on the roughness of mortal feelings. One composed a symphony as well, and she could not note that it was too terribly different. The art of taking inelegant bursts of air and furious strokes of string on string, and turning them into something beautiful. Something calming, and erudite, inviting commentary on the art. Perhaps not all people made symphonies of their own emotions, but Michiru Kaioh would note that she was an artist in all things, and perhaps her earliest lesson was in this.

So Michiru Kaioh dressed in her neat couture, and sat straight as she sipped at champagne in the tea lounges of the upper class, and accepted condolences with that same cool, impersonal affect with which it was given. She composed, and the orchestra played on, and no one could have possibly noted that the young widow was anything other than a perfect example of the stiffly pressed perfection and breeding of the upper classes.

A sheet of ice covered the sea, and it shimmered and sparkled and did not waver or buckle as the waves churned beneath it.

But ice can only ever be cold, and be taken as such, whatever may lie beneath, and one can hardly blame those unfamiliar with the sea for seeing little else.

“Oh, like Michiru even fuckin’ cares.” Mina swigged back a beer, despite being in the middle of what was, ostensibly, a senshi meeting, “since when has she ever kept anything from last season, you know?”

Mako shrugged and nodded along with Mina, the two guards, one of them telling the truth, and one lying, and both blocking Michiru from a calm exit of the conversation.

“We need a new Sailor Uranus.” Mako added, though not unkindly.

The gentleness was meant less for Michiru and more for Usagi, who wailed in protest.

“We can’t! We can’t let someone else wear her tiara, because, because--” she let out a sniffle and a small sob, “--they won’t be her!!”

“Indeed,” Michiru added, almost a whisper to herself, “who could be?”

Rei drew her arms around Usagi. “She wouldn’t be, Usagi.” She kissed Usagi’s temple, “But she’ll be a different Sailor Uranus. But she won’t replace Haruka.”

Ami touched Usagi’s arm. “Whoever it is already has been given the power. She’s probably scared, Usagi. We can help her. We can teach her.”

Michiru folded her hands in her lap, and composed herself. Twist the brass into submission. Quell the drums. The strings do not shriek, but sing, in your hands. She softened her eyes and relaxed her face, and her shoulders fell straight and sleek under her silk blouse.

“So we don’t have a choice anyway.” Mina poured the beer down her throat and crunched the can, “We get to her or the enemy does. Sailor Uranus is dead,” a violin string snapped, “long live Sailor Uranus.”

Usagi nodded, sobbing into Rei’s shoulder, and Mako rubbed her on the back as the silence settled in, rain falling in the background as the cool wet air sneaked in the cracks old and new, whispering in small holes in sweaters, aching through slender gaps of clothing.

Michiru rose to her feet, and smoothed her linen skirt.

“Well, then, it seems decided,” She took her purse from the table, “Pluto, I assume you will have little trouble locating this person, given your affinity with the power of the moon. You certainly located us easily enough.” She nodded to Mina. “If there’s no further business, madame chairman.”

“Go on,” she shrugged, “be my fucking guest.”

Michiru did not allow herself to crescendo to Mina’s anger, simply walked to the door where her umbrella sat waiting, the fine leather of her Italian made shoes spattered so lightly with the rain’s cruelties that you would be forgiven for not noticing them. Fine leather blends well.

She opened the door, only for a small, insistent hand to close it in her face. She did not turn her head, for there was no need, only that same discordant note wishing to throw off all symphonies as she herself had been.

“I confess the vagaries of being your guest do somewhat bewilder me.” She shook off her umbrella. “May I help you?”

Mina took her hand away from the door, her eyes never leaving Michiru’s face.

“You’re so hollow inside, I wonder if her scream’s still echoing there, or if you just...absorbed it.” MIna shook her head, and their eyes met, “Did you ever love her?”

“You are a cruel person, at heart, Minako Aino. But I suspect you know that.” She opened the door and her umbrella both, in one fluid motion, “Haruka’s taste was always a bit self-flagellating, wasn’t it? Choosing us.” She stepped out into the rain. “Not all of us are so prone to drunken dramatics.”

“Fucking leave, Michiru.”

“Oh, are we precisely certain I have your leave?”

MIna slapped the door in her face, but Michiru did not justify the cymbal crash with so much as the raise of an eyebrow.

It took her longer than she might have expected to return to that yawning condo in a sparkling building, the rain settling on the windows in a single sheet, beginning to freeze until it weighed to heavy before dramatically cracking and falling to the ground.

Her apartment was the same as it ever had been, neatly appointed, and her girl had left a bottle of champagne and a plate of olives and cheese in the fridge, as requested. They said good help was hard to find, but Michiru did not agree with this assessment. Good help was very easy to find, so long as one’s wallet was sufficiently open.

She popped the bottle with its percussive note, the bubbles rising to the surface of the glass in their high accenting chirps. When had she changed into her robe and gown? She couldn’t remember, but it hardly mattered. It was perfectly acceptable for a woman alone in her apartment to lounge a bit in the evening.

The glasses went down fast, tonight. Mina had not been wrong to say that she was hollow, for no matter how much she drank, Michiru could not fill that deep, dry well inside of her. Or maybe it had always been full, but full only of the sea, bitter and cold, withering everything that drank it.

MIna had been right about another thing. She was cruel and a liar, but she hadn’t lied then. That well inside her heard the screams, and it echoed high above the elegiac symphony of her own heart and soul, far beyond taming. It dulled the song and it slipped under the ice, and it screamed and screamed and screamed.

She staggered to her feet. She was conducting, but the players were beginning to falter, playing their own tunes, Mozart against Tchaikovsky, Salieri coming through the back, a note of Monteverdi, the piano player hammering out Chopin’s softness with an indelicate rage. It was too loud for the small apartment, the clashes and bangs of instruments no longer obeying that leader. What a fool she ever was to believe that she could have brought them to heel with a small stick!

No one had asked the conductor how she tired, how rebellious the woodwinds, how obstinate the percussion, and how difficult it could possibly be to coordinate it all on a bucking sheet of ice. And who could blame them? They had not seen the difficulty, for Michiru never allowed this to be difficult. It was her own perfection that led to this grand revolution, every carefully chosen note deciding its own fate in this moment, in an apartment which once held something killed by cold, a daisy in December.

Michiru flung wide the doorway to that elegant balcony, the lines of song which had been straight and true twisting themselves into the wrought iron, mocking her composition. Her composure. She stared at them, glass still in her hand, and they rocked and moved and then they were the waves of the sea, clashing against that ice as the rain fell around her. It built and built and it broke, for how could it not break when there was so much underneath it. The wind rose and whipped under that sheet of ice, and Michiru felt a great crack inside of her, a crack like an explosion. Oh, that great sea ice broke indeed, and it broke with the great thunder of bass and timpani, and the waves became a song again, and twisted, and the sea again, breaking, and then they were her face, her face twisted most of all in those final moments, and Michiru looked up to the sky and she cried out in the one and only vocal solo of her life, accompanied by the horrible orchestra of her own great creation.

She stopped. Everything stopped. The strings grew still, and the sea ice drifted away, and it all simply stopped.

Haruka called herself the senshi of the wind. It was silly, and it was a lie, but it was a lovely one, and in the years after she had fallen in love, she continued on with it in her teasing way, telling Michiru how the wind whispered she looked beautiful in that dress, or howled over the discontinuation of a candy bar.

But she wasn’t lying, and she wasn’t joking, for Michiru could feel her, caressing her face, kissing her lips, brushing tenderly against her collarbone. Haruka had quieted it. She had always quieted it, for the wind was not the great enemy of the sea, but its partner, was it not? It is only the wind that allows the ocean to guide and to bring the world across it. The wind caresses the sea in love, and those are not waves of horror, but of delight. The screams all sound the same.

Michiru took her glass, and drank deep of it, smiling brightly as she flung it over the side of the balcony, a high, bright note of an angel’s bell below.

She rested a hand on that iron, and felt it lay still and freeze beneath her hand. The ice, returning. So heavy. Impossible to hold on a building like this one. But there was no need, the wind said to her, to hold it at all. Let the sea rage, and let the song die, and I will carry you in the great unwritten song of the wind.

Her robe fluttered like a petal as she slipped a leg over that useless, ugly, arrogant iron. She held her hand out to the wind, the wind that came from the sea and still carried the water inside of it, and with a close of her eyes and the whisper of Haruka’s name, she released that flower into the wind.

When they found her on the car in the misting rain, she was calm and shimmering.

Just as she’d been taught.

#Holligay Angstober

31 notes · View notes