Of Worlds to Fall
Chapter Three - Jaded
by Apollymi

Main Series: Sailormoon, Dragonball Z, Gundam Wing
Genre: Crossover, Romance, Supernatural
Word Count: 1,419
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.

Thankfully, she did not have long to wait before he started showing signs of waking. Well, she thought that, but in truth, all the warning she really had before he was wide-awake was a slight flutter of his eyelids. And then she was staring into eyes even more blue than her own.

Hoping to avoid any loud noises that might draw unwanted attention to the two of them, she whispered, "It's all right."

To his credit, he seemed to recover a lot more quickly than she had, taking in everything around him, including the makeshift club she had only just set down beside her, and visibly relaxing. His voice was amazingly calm as he asked, "Who are you?"

She offered a very quick and probably strained smile. "My name is Usagi. What's yours?"

It took a few minutes, more than one of which were punctuated by blue eyes growing huge before the answer obviously finally came back to him. Again, in this too, he seemed to be recovering a whole lot more quickly than she had. "Trunks."

What an odd name, but who was she to say such things? It wasn't like Usagi--or especially Serenity or Sailor Moon--was that common a name. Besides, it was an unusual name for an unusual looking man. "Pleased to meet you, Trunks-kun. Let's see about getting you out of here, shall we?"

The grin he briefly wore could be called a smirk, and she didn't need to be thinking about how he wore it quite well. "Yes, let's."

She hadn't been able to budge him when he was unconscious, so she was going to have to have his help to get him out. She almost opened her mouth to say so, when he slowly and cautiously pushed up on the machine that had been half covering him. As huge as the thing was, she was quite surprised that it seemed to move easily--or maybe she was underestimating just how strong he really was.

With the machine moved, he was able to pull the lower half of his body out from under it. The boots were odd, the grey pants looked both sensible and comfortable, and the bright orange belt stood out in contrast.

She had to wince sharply though. Somehow either the weight of the machine or the glass from the dome or any number of other things that had been on the street had done something to his left leg. All she could tell immediately was that there was a lot of blood.

He didn't seem to be giving it any thought, carefully pushing himself to his feet, though without putting any real weight on it. Without even thinking about it, she maneuvered herself beneath his left arm to act as a crutch.

Once he was standing, he leaned back against the machine carefully, making sure it didn't move this time if possible, with some success; it did move but only slightly, not enough to require readjustment.

"Where are we?" he asked quietly. She could say, if she wanted to, that he seemed a bit withdrawn.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I woke up just over there," she nodded to the location she had been when she awakened, "not half an hour ago. I don't know how either of us got here, but I know that this wasn't where I was before." She paused, not entirely sure if that had made a word of actual sense. She still wasn't certain, but it would have to do. "You don't recognize this place either?"

He shook his head slowly. "It's not like anywhere I've ever been." He sighed. "In a way, it looks familiar, but only in that it's hard to forget what a world that has been destroyed looks like."

He sounds so jaded, she thought sadly to herself. Unable to stop herself, she placed a gentle hand on his arm in silent sympathy. And yet, that sounds very much like something I thought earlier: that this place looks like the destruction of Tokyo under Galaxia. A world that has been destroyed, like he said. It might have been a coincidence, but she wasn't discounting anything at this point.

Even if it was a coincidence, it was a very strange one: two people who both knew what destroyed worlds looked like. How many people out there could say something like that?

Trunks-kun seemed to draw himself back out of whatever it was he was thinking to glance back at her, over to the metal rod she had commandeered as a makeshift weapon, and back to her. "You were keeping watch over me?"

For some reason, that was actually a bit embarrassing, and she could feel her face flush slightly. "There is some kind of creature here. I've never seen anything like them before. I wasn't going to leave anyone to them."

"What kind of creatures?"

She shook her head. It was a valid question, but she didn't particularly want to recall the one she had seen. "Not much bigger than me. Lean and very fast. The one I saw, all its teeth were razor sharp. It tried to grab me, and I--and I ran." She paused, uncertain about continuing. She had kept this a secret for so long that she wasn't sure she wanted to venture into too much of it even now. "Some of the things I should be able to do, they don't seem to work here for some reason. I don't know if it's just me, though."

That was good enough, she decided. It wasn't as if she were saying aloud that she was Sailor Moon, but it was bracing Trunks-kun for any inevitable shock if he wasn't able to do something he was used to.

Wordlessly, he lifted one hand, palm facing out at one of the buildings across from the one she had claimed as her own. He held out for a long minute before slowly, reluctantly, lowering. "It's not just you."

So obviously there was something that Trunks-kun should be able to do that he wasn't currently able to right now either, just like she couldn't transform into Sailor Moon. That didn't bode well.

What kind of a place was this, then, to contain creatures like the one she had seen and to take away talents that would have allowed them to better protect themselves?

She didn't even bother trying to apologize for it. Trunks-kun didn't seem like the kind to accept sympathy, even if in this case it was more empathy than that. She didn't want apologies for her own powers not working; she just wanted them to work.

"We should get out of the open like this," Trunks-kun finally interrupted her thoughts to say. Just as well, since they were turning a bit banal and melancholic. "Do you know of a place we can go, or...?" He let himself trail off, giving her a chance to speak.

"I haven't been here and awake that long," she admitted again, "but I've been staying pretty close to that overhang over there." She nodded in the direction of her crevice and the half-collapsed shelter over it. "It's not much and I don't know how safe it is, but the creature I saw didn't follow me back there."

He nodded. "That's good enough for now." Slowly, carefully, he pushed himself to his feet then looked around again. "You didn't, by any chance, see a sword, did you, Usagi-san?"

She shook her head. Honestly, if she had seen a sword, she wouldn't have been wielding a metal pipe. "I haven't."

Without a word, he limped the few steps over from where he had been leaning to the open hole leading into the machine, what presumably would be the top and the pilot's area, and cautiously around the broken glass, he rummaged in there until he came out with exactly what he had been looking for: a long, European-style sword in its sheath. She didn't know a lot about that kind of weapon herself, but it looked as though Trunks-kun did. That was good at least. It was something they could use to defend themselves.

In an easy, practiced motion, Trunks-kun unclipped the clasp, positioned the sword quickly over his back, and clipped it shut again. So the sword was definitely his then. No one got that used to doing something like that so rapidly on the first try.

That solved that then. As long as she could trust Trunks-kun--and she had this feeling that she could--then they'd be safe here.


22 August 2012

All right! The story is coming along nicely. I know I'm certainly enjoying writing it. The prompt for this chapter was, obviously, "jaded", and yeah, I might have played a little hard and fast with it.

I finally put in my formal claim to Table 7 of Fanfic50 for this story today, so it will be showing up there, on my Dreamwidth, on DarkmagickNet, and of course here.

And now to get back to writing. I'm on Chapter Thirty-Three, but I want to be sure that there is enough time for me to have a bit of leeway, in case I get behind. It's been known to happen, yeah?

See you in the next chapter!
Apollymi

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