Your favorite Ranma ½ idea or Sailor moon prompt
Under the Ice
I drew my parka closer to me and shivered as I climbed the stairs up to the surface. Almost nobody came up here these days, and the heating systems had been shut down and stripped for parts lower down in the bunker. And it was even colder for me, since I spent my time in the most heated portions of the bunker, in the rec rooms and common areas.
But if I was ever going to get a chance to talk, just one-on-one, I had to do it
now, while she was by herself. And I could hear her, up a flight of stairs. I swallowed as I stared up the dark shaft. I didn't thin that I had
ever gone this far up the top reaches of the bunker. Especially not by myself. Okay, I was a wimp, I was comfortable admitting that! But now there was something worth more than proving myself to a bunch of lunkheads.
"
Hai. Hai," she said, in a very sweet voice that made me swallow and straighten my shoulders. Then some more words in another language that went by too quickly for me to tell apart from one another.
Then there was a long pause and I forced myself up the stairwell, the treads shaking underneath my feet as I climbed. I blinked as I emerged into a dark chamber. There was a lighted screen close by and in that light, I could see the blue hair and face of Sailor Mercury.
I had my hands in my parka pockets, with gloves on and my fingers were cold. She was wearing a skirt that stopped halfway down her thighs and her arms were bare and she seemed entirely comfortable, her bare skin pressed against the metal of the bench she was sitting on.
"Hello," she said, looking up at me and giving me a sweet smile. "It's… Esteban, isn't it? The dancer? What brings you here?"
"You, ma'am," I said, standing in front of her and feeling my hands nervously opening and closing. "I, um, I wanted to thank you for helping with the bunker's reactor. We're all really grateful for you giving us the parts we needed."
"Of course," she said, nodding, a sad smile crossing her face. "There's so few sparks of light and life left, my friends and I," she tapped the screen she was holding as she put it to the side, "would do everything and anything to help keep them burning."
"Thank you, again," I said, trying to think of a way to get at why I was really here. "And, um, I'm sorry if you're busy, but if you have the time," she nodded, "I was wondering…" I took a deep breath. I had ran the words through my head time after time, trying to think of the best way to put it and now that it was time, it was all coming out as a jumble. "My great-gran, she said that when she was my age,
her great-grandmother told her stories about living," I waved a hand at the ceiling, taking in the meters of concrete, frozen earth and snow between us and the surface, "up there. Could you tell me about what it was like? You were there, right?"
"Yes, I was," Sailor Mercury said with a sigh, waving a hand at a spot next to her. I sat down on the bare metal bench and pulled out a pen and paper that I had spent a month's savings on. "Most of my life, actually. It was… very different. Far more people, far more warmth, far more space." She looked down at the staircase, that led to people and light and the entire world I had ever known. "One thing that I remember…"
