This side story, an alternate version of the end of Chapter Four, is straight fanservice. It has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of "Against All Odds" and is completely outside the timeline of the story. It was written just for fun and has no effect on the other chapters of the story whatsoever.

Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon and its associated characters and canon belong to Naoko Takeuchi and Kodansha. The text of this creative work was written by Dejana Talis and is her exclusive property. Not to be used without permission.


Written for Ruminant, who wanted to be rescued.

Endymion cursed repeatedly as he urged forth every bit of speed that could be had from the brown gelding. Serenity was riding one of the prized black stallions, the most powerful horses in the Moon, perhaps in the entire Sol system. He would never be able to catch up to her.

Then he saw it. The faint shimmer in the air, beyond which no grass grew and the surface of the Moon was as white as bone. The border, the edge of the atmospheric dome. The boundary between greenery and dust was crisp, clear, and sudden, but Endymion knew the horse would not recognize the barely-noticeable waver in the air as a sign of danger. He also knew the transparent dome was as solid as a marble wall.

Through the shaking, jumping world surrounding Serenity's eyes, the Princess noticed it too. The edge was close, too close; the stallion would collide with it in a matter of minutes. The foul taste of vomit burned her throat as her heart was whipped up into a panicked frenzy. Which would be worse; to crash into the barrier or the hard ground?

Throwing her head back, Serenity cast a terrified glance at the stable hand. She was beyond screaming, but through the haze of fear she could still see him clearly. He rode like the wind through the earthlight, seeming to nearly become one with the gelding beneath him, his clothing and hair torn back by the air. He urged his steed onward with his voice and every motion of his body, intent in his pursuit, face set in determination.

Suddenly, a scream from behind Endymion startled him out of his rescue mission. Steadying himself with a hand on the saddle beneath him, he twisted around to look in the direction of the sound.

It seemed to be the night of runaway horses. A young blonde woman was being swept away under the moonlight a short distance away from Endymion, clinging for dear life to the reins of her steed. From the intent pace of the animal it appeared that she had been riding too fast for the dusty terrain she had chosen and had lost control, and the excited horse was headed straight for a towering, ancient tree.

Frantically Endymion looked back and forth between the strange woman and Princess Serenity. Both were headed for certain disaster. He would only have time to save one. Sadness flooded his heart as the logic of the situation took over his mind. Serenity was riding one of the fastest horses on the Moon, which was carrying her further away from him every second. The blonde woman, however, was astride an aged russet Ranger; a sturdy but slower steed that hailed from the city of Fordu on Mars. The odds were definately in her favor.

Grief and regret choking his throat, Endymion reined in the gelding and turned the horse away from the Princess, heading toward the blonde stranger at a full run. The reddish Ranger was bolting down a dirt path and dust was flying everywhere, rising around its rider in clouds so thick the stable hand could barely see if she was still hanging on. With his faster horse, Endymion was able to catch up to the runaway animal in seconds.

Without waiting for instructions, the blonde woman stretched toward him with both arms, her face consumed with panic. The stable hand was grateful for all his years of lifting hay bales as he caught her by the arms and pulled her off the horse and across to him, to safety. She felt light as a feather, and she shook like a leaf against his chest from fear of the disaster she had narrowly avoided.

Coughing in the dust, Endymion steered the brown gelding off the dirt path and back into the grass, the woman clinging to his shirt with both hands. The stable hand reined in his horse and lowered the stranger to the ground, then dismounted himself and took his first clear look at the woman he had saved.

Behind him, there was a sickening crunch as the wild Fordu Ranger smashed into the trunk of the tree, but Endymion didn't care. As soon as he looked into the stranger's eyes, all other concerns vanished from his mind. For a long moment he just stared at her beauty; even when covered in dust, her shoulder-length blonde hair in disarray, she was the most striking woman he had ever seen.

"Who are you?" he whispered in a hoarse voice.

"My name is Ruminant."

The name sounded like bells in Endymion's ears, like the singing of the angels. In the distance there was another echoing crash as a black stallion and its white-robed rider collided with the atmospheric dome, but none of that mattered to the stable hand any longer. He had found the true longing of his heart, the woman whose company he had been missing throughout his life.

She was dressed strangely, in thick blue trousers that hugged her long legs and brushed the tops of the sandles on her feet. She was wearing the smallest shirt Endymion had ever seen, which left both arms and shoulders completely bare and had a low neckline exposing the rise of her breasts. As Ruminant ran her fingers through her blonde hair to untangle it, Endymion was overcome by a desire to take her in his arms and arrange her gentle curls himself.

"Thank you for rescuing me," Ruminant said shyly, looking up at her rescuer with shining eyes. What luck; she'd been reckless and was riding that horse much too fast, and had been saved by an incredibly handsome man! "Oh, my horse," she remembered suddenly, turning to peer into the settling clouds of dust.

"Don't look!" Endymion seized the slender woman and pulled her against his chest to prevent her from seeing the broken body of the animal at the base of the tree. Ruminant's heart skipped a beat as she was pressed into the well-defined chest of the tanned stable hand. She breathed, and an unexpected scent filled her nose. The man smelled of roses.

"My horse is dead, isn't she?" she said quietly into her rescuer's shirt. Her fingers trailed idly over the muscles beneath the cloth, and it took all the willpower she could muster to prevent her hand from dipping lower on the man's body to see what else he had to offer.

"Yes, I'm afraid so," Endymion admitted. "I am sorry."

"Oh, what will I do now?" Ruminant moaned, pulling free of the man's embrace. "My hus- er, my father will kill me!" Swiftly she shoved both of her hands behind her back and slipped off her wedding ring, dropping it into her pocket before her rescuer could see it, then smirked to herself. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


Once they had rested, Endymion and Ruminant headed back toward the castle grounds at a casual gallop. Endymion's palms were sweating where he held the reins of the brown gelding. His heart was racing as he tried unsuccessfully to ignore the slender arms wrapped around his waist.

It was better this way, really. He was a stable hand; what chance did he have with a Princess? Ruminant was beautiful, and from the look of her she was no noblewoman; surely a relationship between them would work out easily. She seemed to be interested in him as well, by the way her hands kept slipping lower on his body.

As they rode, Endymion listened to the woman talk, which she did at great length. She babbled on endlessly about her occupation, and the people and tasks who frustrated her, and her hobbies of writing and artwork. The stable hand listened patiently, attributing Ruminant's ramblings to the stress of her near-accident. For his part, Endymion was nothing but nervous. The warmth of the the woman's body pressing up against his back was sending tingles up and down his spine. She vomited all over him a few times for no apparent reason, but he didn't care.

Suddenly, the Moon itself made a strange groaning, creaking sound. The surface of the world began to quake beneath the horse's hooves. Endymion looked up, and discovered to his horror that the atmospheric dome was cracking. He slid off the horse to the relative stability of the ground, pulling Ruminant down beside him, and as the moonquake continued they both collapsed in the grass. The horse, terrified, bolted away across the fields.

"What's happening?" Endymion yelled over the roar of distant rocks tumbling and the very ground itself tearing asunder.

"It's a continuity violation!" Ruminant moaned in dismay. "The future of the universe depends on Princess Serenity, and because of me, she died! Reality is falling apart!" She clung to the stable hand's shirt. It was worth it. This moment in his arms was worth the destruction of everything.

Looking up again, Endymion's eyes widened in shock as he realized the cracks were not in the shimmering dome but in the starry sky itself. Voids of nothingness were beginning to appear as the universe itself crumbled away at the edges. The Moon trembled violently beneath him, and the landscape was beginning to look blurry and indistinct.

"It's all over!" Ruminant cried, desperately seizing the man by the shoulders. "We have only a few moments! At least let us have this memory of our love, as brief as it was!"

Endymion understood. He wrapped his arms around the woman's waist, pulled her close to him, bent his face toward hers, closer, closer-

-and the universe shattered. Fragments of sky burst apart and crumbled into dust. Within moments, all of reality had vanished into the void of nonexistance, including the young couple on the surface of the Moon.

Afterwards, there was only silence.

The End

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