Ah! you know what I am a gonna say!
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-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: destiny05.txt
-- Desc: destiny05.txt
SMARTALECK PRODUCTIONS
Destiny
By arun<arundude1@yahoo.com>
<arun2110@sancharnet.in>
Chapter#05 <Completed on 10/25/2001> <Revision#3>
This is a Ranma 1/2 - Sailor Moon crossover with certain
aspects of Ramayana.
Disclaimers:
Rumiko Takahashi and Shogukkan own Ranma and the cast
members of Ranma 1/2. Rumiko Takahashi is one of the most brilliant
people to walk on the face of this earth. We the fans of the anime
world are forever indebted to her for giving us Ranma and co. Thank you
Rumiko Takahashi for bringing laughter back into our lives.
Naoko Takeuchi, Toei animation and KODANSHA, owns sailor
Moon and its characters.
I do not own the characters of both these shows, nor do I
even pretend to own them. This work of fiction is but a tribute to the
above anime shows.
Guys:
*....* indicate thoughts. In the first and second chapters
<...> indicates Japanese and "..." indicates Chinese.
In all the other chapters the reciprocal is true.
***********************************************************************
Meanwhile at the Outer's..
Hotaru sighed in frustration once more. Like any other boy
or girl in her age group, she wanted some action at least some of the
time. It was for that reason that the Kami created teenagers, right? It
had been the happiest day of her life when she had realized that she
was indeed Sailor Saturn, the most powerful of all the Senshi. She
would have taken to her new job like a fish to water if it had not been
for her damned ill health. However, all her shortcomings
notwithstanding, she had risen to the occasion when it was crunching
time and they had won against Mistress-9 and Pharoah-90 and she had
thought that the threats would cease then.
They had not.
Each enemy they faced was stronger than the last one and at
times it seemed to her that the Kami were grooming the sailors, herself
included, for some great battle that lay sometime in the future. Her
belief in the kami, made her all the more comfortable when she went to
bed at night. It blocked those horrible nightmares and that ever
present urge to use the silence glaive and pushed them into the dark
recesses of her mind where they belonged.
The thrill of battle was not lost upon one so young as
Hotaru. The power and the adrenalin that flowed through her veins
during those times were more than enough to make her an addict. And she
really wanted to fight the evildoers of the world and bring them to
justice. Sure, the evildoers always bit the dust in the end and it was
bad and all but that did not mean that the sailors could not enjoy
doing it. However, it always felt wrong to feel happy when people died,
even if they were the responsible ones. Haruka-papa and Michiru-mama
had helped her to deal with her guilt and she felt more confident in
herself and in their ultimate goals than ever before.
Her parents had thought that it would be best for her to
learn about strategies and stuff so that she would a better soldier.
Setsuna-mama had joined their ranks and they had been gently nudging
her to learn strategies and the art of war as they called it. Finally,
she had relented and had joined them while they were discussing plans
to fight a new enemy of some sort. Now she realized that she had made
a huge mistake when she had joined Momma and Pappa. Who would have
thought that her mother would turn out to be such a bore in serious
discussions? And why did she have to sit through the session when she
was not even remotely interested in it?
Hotaru sighed once again in frustration. No one seemed to
acknowledge her distress and she decided to play her thrump card. She
crossed her fingers and prayed to the kami for a whole minute before
putting the first part of her plan into action. It was time to end the
torture for she was not sure whether she could survive through another
minute of it.
In all the previous fights, Setsuna-momma would approach
them with the strategy they would use and the rest of the outers
followed her lead.
Haruka-papa and Michiru-momma would discuss Setsuna-momma's
plans amongst themselves but they never contributed to it. That little
fact had not stopped them from learning about military strategies and
such though and their work had paid off bountifully this time. Unlike
all the previous times when a new threat had emerged Setsuna-momma
seemed to be afraid that something might go wrong or had already went
horribly wrong and all that.
Hotaru readily accepted that the fact that the new threat
posed greater danger than all the threats before. She had accepted
Setsuna momma's prediction that this would be their toughest challenge
yet without as much as a blink, since, all the previous ones had just
added one to the proverbial 'toughest one yet' pile.
Now, she knew about the enemy and she was afraid for the
first time. She doubted whether even she, with her power to destroy
entire worlds with a single attack could defeat a Kami in a pitched
battle. It seemed that the battle for which the Kami had been grooming
the sailors for so long was in hand at last.
Upon hearing what Setsuna-momma had to say, Hotaru AKA
Sailor Saturn had for the first time listened to the discussion and
tried to contribute in anyway she could. Her energy had lasted for all
of thirty-three minutes before her mind had started to wander. She had
never bothered with strategies until then and she had taken a vow after
the first fifty minutes that she would never even try to do so ever
again.
It did not hurt to know the best way of doing things but
she would let the others do the discussing part and let her be burdened
with only the knowing part. Was there any need for her to know tactics?
No, all that the princess or anyone of the sailors had to say was shoot
and she would shoot. After all, she was the proverbial sixteen-inch
cannon of the sailors and with the kind of firepower she possessed all
that was needed was for the blast to hit the target for it to disappear
into thin air.
She looked sorrowfully into Michiru's green eyes and sighed
once more. Her previous ploy had not worked, astonishingly and she
willed this one to work. The look was her very own-patented version of
the 'cute whipped puppy' look and she had found it to work perfectly on
her real father even when he had been under the control of Mistress-9.
She really needed to get out of the room if she had any serious wish to
see the light of another day she reminded herself once more.
Michiru caught her look from the corner of her eye and gave
her a gentle squeeze.
*Maybe momma misunderstood the gravity of the situation. Oh
well! Let's try once more...*
Again, Hotaru turned on her kawaii factor by several
notches. It was the moment of truth. Michiru-momma had to let her get
out of the stuffy room or she was going to die.
Michiru inhaled out a quantity of air that she had been
holding in the serve for just this event. She knew that her dear
daughter was too young and too full of life to listen to such a boring
discussion. She lifted her arm a little and let the senshi of Saturn
escape from the torture. She envied her daughter a little. Haruka and
Setsuna would not object to little Hotaru's escape but they would put
up on hell of a fight before they'd let her get away from them. Even if
Setsuna relented, she doubted very much whether Haruka would. They had
trained too hard to just back out when Setsuna finally confronted them
with a challenge. She let a deep breath full of wishful longing and
tried to follow the boring conversation. *The kami must hate me to put
me through all of this.*
***********************************************************************
Hotaru, gleefully, jumped off Michiru's lap and ran off
towards the couch and the television. The so-called 'idiot box' sat in
its prescribed place before the couch with its speakers projecting
rather ominously into the air from behind the cabinet. There was always
something on TV and she was willing to bet her life that even the worst
show in the world would be a whole lot better than listening to the
conversation that the family was having. She made herself comfortable
by placing a cushion on her lap and turned on the television set. With
practiced speed and efficiency, she surfed through the channels hoping
that something good was on the 'idiot box' after all stranger things
had happened.
The horror! The horr...] Flick!
Suki da..." Flick!
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Flick!
"Oh! Fuchida..." Flick!
"Meow!" Flick!
[Is it a plane...] Flick!
"Buy a pack..." Flick!
She sighed in frustration. It seemed that there was nothing
on TV whose description even neared that those powerful two words,
'worth watching'. She wanted to cry at the injustice of it all. Why did
she have to end up with such a horrible fate? Was it not sad that her
father had turned into a monster? Was it not sad that she had been a
baby thrice? Was it not sad that she had few friends outside her family
and the sailors? Of course, the rest of the sailors did not count since
they were all part of a bigger family as far as she was concerned. And
then there was Chibi-Usa. Perhaps she was the bestest thing in the
whole world that had ever happened to her. That friendship, too, had
its disadvantages. She being friends with a girl who was yet to be born
to her Queen and King made it all the more tougher for them to be in
contact on a regular day to day basis.
The television screen chose that moment to go blank. Even
though she was not supposed to behave that way, Hotaru cursed the damn
thing.
It figured. With all the things that went wrong with her
life, could she blame the 'idiot box' for failing on her?
Probably not.
*Thank God momma and papa were not here to hear me curse.*
She thought guiltily. Immediately she looked around to confirm whether
Michiru-momma had noticed it. Michiru-momma forbade cursing whilst
Haruka-papa had not been so strict about it. It fit in with their
personalities actually. Haruka-papa had been brought up around the race
track and she had picked up curses and such from being around the men
who worked there while Michiru-momma had been brought up in more
civilized surroundings and thus abhorred the use of some of the rather
coarser elements of the Japanese language.
*Why does this always happen to me?* Thought she after
having put her thoughts of guilt aside. Finding no answer forthcoming
to the question that she had posed to herself and to the Kami, her
index finger reached for the power button on the most devious of human
inventions, the remote control. As in all the other houses in the world
Hotaru was the only one who knew how to operate the thing with ease.
The rest had to use the manual whenever they had to use it for anything
other than turning the television on or off or changing channels and
increasing or decreasing the volume. It was one of the rewards of being
young and Hotaru was glad for that. The companies who designed the
things thought that their customers needed increasing levels of
sophistication and such when all they needed was exactly the opposite.
She had even read somewhere on the Japanese edition of the
Reader's Digest about a engineer who had to spend an hour or two to
learn what his wristwatch was capable of. Things had been better in
that sense in the past when people had machines, which performed the
simplest of functions and performed them well.
Haruka-papa had once been so steamed about the whole mess
that she had wanted to throw the remote control into the fireplace and
be done with it or so she had said. Honestly, Hotaru did not believe
her as taking that particular course of action would have effectively
rendered their television useless since all of it's controls were on
the remote.
Just as her finger reached the button, the screen became
alive once again and Hotaru's fingers shied away from the button as
though the button was bubonic plague itself. The JDF flag together with
the national flag and a whole lot of others were present in the
background. The prime minister sat facing the camera and one of his
aide's was bent over obviously sharing some last minute information
with him. The aide left soon enough and the prime minister cleared his
throat and straightened his coat with a barely perceivable tug with his
fingers.
On the lower end of the screen, 'emergency national
address' was displayed in kanji. "Momma, papa come and see this. The
prime minister is addressing the nation," she shouted loudly to be
heard over the din of the conversation that was going on in the
library.
There were sounds of scuffling from the library and the
rest of the outer senshi scurried as fast as they could into the room.
Haruka sat down and lifted Hotaru into her lap. The senshi of
destruction snuggled closer to her adopted _father_ glowing under the
warmth and love that radiated from the older woman. Michiru needed room
to sit and Haruka offered the space that Hotaru had just vacated.
Setsuna, for the first time ever, seemed nervous and off balance,
muttering again and again that the prime minister was not supposed to
address the nation or something along those lines. Her voice was low
and none of the others could discern her words try as hard as they may.
Her face was pale and she seemed to be in shock or something. This was
so not the Setsuna that they were used to seeing and Haruka felt the
stirrings of fear in the pits of her stomach.
Haruka shhed Setsuna as the premier came on and the
foursome sat in silence waiting for the prime minister to begin his
address.
First came the greetings and all that. The whole thing was
rushed and lasted a lot shorter than it should have. This spooked
everyone in the room and had the outer's sitting by the edge of the
seats. Decorum was not easily abandoned in Japan and to abandon it on
live television spoke a great deal about the nature of the emergency.
Something very bad had happened and they were about to find out what it
was. The prime minister's hands did not stay still and were twiddling
against his wishes, it appeared. His body language suggested that he
was tense and unsure about himself though he was looking to put on a
brave front for the sake of the nation and all those who lived in it.
*What could be bad enough to make the prime minister
nervous and send 'ice-queen' Setsuna into shock?* Thought Haruka as she
fixed her eyes upon the screen. The knots of fear in her stomach were
growing larger by the second and her mind flooded her consciousness
with visions of some of the more horrifing things that could have gone
wrong.
"Citizens of Japan," the premier finally began. Haruka
edged towards the television just a little bit more. All that stood
between the floor and her behind now was about an inch or two of
cushion. "I have some dire news to announce to all of you..."
Again, the premier paused. His eyes looked directly into
the camera and seemed to bore into them.
"Today we face the darkest day in the history of the
nation. A day that will live most probably live in infamy for all of
eternity. Generations will remember this day as a turning point in the
history of the world much like the Meiji restoration and the dropping
of the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Today..." He paused once more.
The premier did not speak about Pearl Harbor and the rape of Nan king
or any other incidents that Japan committed during the second world
war. No self-respecting country would. That could tarnish the national
image in the eyes of the world and that cannot be allowed to happen.
"Ah! Just tell us what's happened!" Haruka all but screamed
as she threw the only cushion that she could get her hands on at the
television screen.
The premier did just that though he took some more time
before he revealed all.
"Today... I am at a loss for words." he paused for the
barest of moments. His body became more taut if that were possible and
his expression became convinced for the lack of a better word. "The
Juuban ward of Tokyo has been known throughout the nation for its
eccentricities for quite sometime now..." He paused giving time for the
some of the more dimwitted citizens of Tokyo and the rest of Japan to
grasp the hidden meaning behind his words.
The speech that he was delivering to the citizens of Japan
would most certainly be broadcast to the rest of the world for it was
of such import. Even if it were not so, he would not have accepted the
existence of demons and such on live television. The western world
firmly believed that there were no such things as demons and thus
anyone who even mentioned them were scorned and ridiculed by the
scholars of the west. Since almost the entire human race wanted to
follow the model that the western world had set and become _civilized_
they too were quick to mock those whose words and beliefs went against
the firmly though wrongly rooted views of the west. It was in such a
world that the people of Japan lived in and even though they still
followed their own path of wakon yosai, 'western method, eastern
spirit' they too were afraid of going against some of the west's more
stupid notions. To do so would hurt their national pride and no citizen
of Japan would ever risk that.
Japanese tradition and culture valued face and honor more
than life and they would surely lose their face if they pointed out
this truth to the world as a whole. No self-respecting Japanese man
would invite anyone into his house unless it was pristine looking and
clean. It _had_ to look perfect or he would lose face. There is no
better example for this fact than the events that took place in the
aftermath of the Kobe earthquake. Whilst most of the world rushed to
help those who had suffered the wrath of mother earth, the Japanese
government wove miles of bureaucracy around the volunteers and would be
rescue workers and in doing so saved Japan's face though dozens of
lives were lost as a direct result of this _rescue_ mission.
The premier continued once more. "A scant few minutes ago
in that very same ward, Japan suffered the worst terrorist attack in
its entire history and probably in the history of the world. All the
evidence that we have at this juncture points in a single direction...
Today..." the premier looked directly into the camera's once more. His
eyes seemed to bore into the very being of those who were watching the
telecast. "Today... A nuclear device seems to have been detonated in
the Juuban ward of Tokyo by terrorist..."
"How can it be?" whispered Setsuna. The others attention
immediately drifted from the television set to the senshi of time. The
television continued to drone on in the back ground though, with the
prime minister continuing with the speech.
"How can it be?" she repeated over and over, her voice
barely a whisper. Her face was as white as death and for the briefest
periods of time Michiru thought that the self-proclaimed 'ice-queen'
was going to faint.
The others looked at her with concern etched all over in
their faces. They had never seen Setsuna behave like this and it was
spooking them out. "What is wrong Setsuna?" asked Haruka trying to hide
the fear and concern that gripped her heart in their vices.
Setsuna did not answer. It appeared that she was in too
deep a shock to respond to them.
"Snap out of it!" shouted Haruka as she shook the senshi of
time. She did not want the others to be afraid and seeing Setsuna in
such a condition was sure to scare anyone half to death. Michiru and
Hotaru were getting a wee bit afraid with Setsuna's strange behavior.
"Huh!" Setsuna looked around and got her bearings. Having
reoriented herself and having gained a semblance of the level head that
she was so famous for she went into hyperactive mode. "Quick! Change to
your senshi uniforms. We have to investigate this... this attack on the
princess," she all but screamed. Though she did have evidence as to
whether the princess had been attacked or not she knew deep down that
Usagi and the others were in terrible danger.
"What is going on?" questioned Haruka calmly without moving
an inch. They had been taken through too many rides by the senshi of
time and even though she greatly respected Setsuna, she was not going
to allow Michiru or Haruka to be taken into a radioactive zone without
getting some answers first.
*Of course she has forgotten that if the explosion had been
of nuclear origin then all power would have been cut off.* Setsuna
looked at the blond sailor and composed herself. The wild look of a
maniac that had been so evident in her eyes disappeared. "That... That
explosion was never meant to happen, that's what is going on! My gut
instincts tell me that Usagi and the others were in that area when this
happened. If my instincts are right then the princess and the inner's
are in great danger." said Setsuna. Tears glittered in her eyes as she
looked at her teammate. She had not told them the whole truth of
course. There was not any time for that. Setsuna's precognition
abilities were legendary during the Silver Millennium and still were.
*I am sorry that I have failed in my duties my queen.*
Pluto even with her affinity towards the time stream had
had a lot of trouble sensing the flow of river of time from the moment
the whole mess had started. Her bond with time-stream had been steadily
deteriorating with the passage of time, which in itself was a miracle
of sorts. Nothing short of the almighty could severe her links with the
time-stream. It had been only with the greatest of efforts that she was
able to see the creatures past during her investigation. She had hid
this little bit of information from the others of course. They would
lose their morale if she were to tell them the full story. The story
had been a little cloudy too for she could not risk revealing too much
about the future or the past to the other sailors, doing do would lead
to a paradox of sorts or worse.
Even though her bond was somehow inexorably being severed,
she had known the ordained future for the next three thousand years.
After all, she had been the one to design it. Thus, she had been
shocked when the premier had addressed the nation. He was not supposed
to do so, at least not in the foreseeable future. She had felt
something in the pits of her stomach and it had grown steadily as the
premier continued his speech. Her worst fears were confirmed when his
introductory speech was cut short. Such things simply did not happen in
Japan. Rigid protocols created and refined through the ages dictated
that introductory speeches should not be rushed and the Japanese were
strict adherents to traditions and protocols. If the premier abandoned
centuries of tradition then the reason must be big as was proven later.
Then just as he was getting to the nuclear detonation part
of the speech her bond returned albeit vastly weaker than normal. Even
then, she had been able to sense the flow of time from normal space and
instinctively knew that something very bad had happened. Her mind also
told her what it was that had gone wrong and she felt sick to her
stomach.
The flow of time had changed radically. She knew that such
a thing was nigh impossible to accomplish but somehow it had been done.
There was a still the slightest of chances that the Silver Millennium
could come to pass but she _did not_ know for sure. Moreover, she
doubted whether she would know for weeks to come. The time stream had
changed so radically that the path it was taking now had not been one
of the probable ones just a few days past. Such an event was un-
comprehend able to her mind. Not everything that she knew about the
time-stream and the laws that governed it told her that such a thing
was possible. Everything had its precedent and without a precedent,
nothing took place.
Setsuna had debated with herself whether the rules that
governed the time-stream were wrong after all when the truth bared
itself to her. The creature had made its first move and by the looks of
it, their war was almost lost before they had fired the first shot.
"Come on, we do not have time to just stand here." bellowed
Setsuna pushing the depressing thoughts into the darker recesses of her
mind. In a personal record of sorts, she took out her henshin stick in
the wink of an eye and transformed into her alter ego.
***********************************************************************
Ranma slowly retracted his arm. A fine spray of blood hung
in the air, which was filled with the stench of burned flesh and smoke.
He brought his arm to his face and wiped the blood and gore that had
splattered onto his face. His entire outfit was ruined though it did
not show through his cloaking technique. To any observer bar, the most
skilled in the arts he appeared as a black mist that swirled around
itself.
He bent down and retrieved some paper, which lay nearby.
The paper was singed at the edges and with his super-senses; he could
tell that it had been exposed to a lot of heat. The paper was not hot,
mind you. Since everything had lines of ki and mana running through
them and since these lines interacted with the physical world, any
change that affected the paper in the physical world would leave a
fingerprint in the esoteric world of the ki lines. It was these lines
that Ranma felt and it was from these lines that he surmised that the
flames had been close to two thousand degrees, which put the paper very
near to the explosion that had taken out the first Ashura. He wiped the
gore from his hands and face and threw it away with nonchalance. His
passive expression did not change while he was performing the gory
function and remained so after he was done cleaning himself. Any casual
observer would have thought that he was some sick psychopath but there
was something evident in Ranma's actions that can never be evident in a
murderer's movements. Even though his very conduct showed that, he had
been witness to enough murders to desensitize him to them one could not
help but feel that he abhorred the act more than anything else did in
the whole world.
He turned towards the girl and took a short step towards
her, ready to stop at a moments notice. The girl must have been shocked
by the brutal efficiency with which he had dispatched the two Ashura's
using just the right amount of power to blow them to kingdom come.
Finding no signs of revulsion, he continued to move towards the girl
who stared back at him. His movements were calculated and had the grace
of a predator stalking its prey. Ami shivered involuntarily at the
sight as primeval emotions threatened to burst through the thin veil of
common sense that shrouded her mind and he stopped. Fear, curiosity,
astonishment and shock were written clearly on her face.
*How could anyone remain as passive as him with all that
had happened?* She thought to herself. She knew the answer all right
but still could not come to grips with it. He was a warrior pure and
simple. He eliminated his opponents in the most efficient and brutal
way possible to send the message to his enemies. Nevertheless, her
whole being wanted her to retch and empty the contents of her stomach
onto the concrete. She had not thought that such brutality was possible
and combined with the efficiency it made even her worst nightmares seem
like a nice walk in the park. It also made her wonder whether anyone
capable of such disregard for life could be on the right side of the
war against evil. Her nightmares paled in comparison to the cold
aloofness with which he had executed them and she found herself
wondering about the man who had rescued her. What kind of face could he
have? What kind of man was he? Did he love his friends and family if he
had any?
And she found it hard to believe that anyone could move
that fast without 'magical powers' and no human _should_ be unaffected
by such a violent and gruesome display as she had just witnessed. All
these thoughts even made her to question whether her rescuer was even
human but grateful she was, for he had saved her life as well as her
friends. True, there had been some chance that she might have taken on
the two 'Ashura's' with the souped up one already dying but that had
been a probability. It had been he who had changed that probability
into a certainty and she was grateful for it.
Ranma saw the girl's reactions and understood them for what
they were. He had not lived for two thousand years without
understanding people. Over time, he had even developed a sixth sense
about what people's emotions were. That together with his ability to
read auras was telling him that the girl was afraid of him at some
unconscious level. In order to placate her fears he lifted his arms
into the air as a sign of peace and stood where he was. He did not want
to scare the girl if he could help it. Ami eyed him. Though she could
to look into his eyes, she eyed him. He found her eyes looking deep
into his very being and then she extended her arms to him. A little
smile came to his face. It was nice to know that people trusted him
after having seen him at his absolute worst and he took a step towards
her.
As she took his hands, Ranma took the opportunity to give
her a once over. His initial assumptions had been correct. She
possessed almost as much potential as Ryuu himself. All of her
companions did. In a way, she brought back memories of his younger days
when it had seemed that the whole world lived for him.
His thoughts drifted back to the time when he had _almost_
died at the hands of Saffron, the God of the Phoenix. He had come so
close to losing everything he loved then - as she had been close to
losing everything a scant few minutes ago. In the end, she had defeated
the Ashura with her brains alone while he had defeated his nemesis by
attaining true mastery of the art. His hands ached to get a student
like her under his tutelage. She could help Ryuu with tactics and
strategy and he could help her with honing her skills. He shook his
head almost imperceptibly. Such a waste of talent, the girl did not
look the least bit like a warrior and yet she was a warrior to the
core.
His hand had covered half the distance between them when he
sensed the slightest of changes in the ki and mana flows in the area.
The change grew exponentially in size and within moments the entire ki
and mana flow in the area had been changed. He turned his head towards
the disturbance to observe whatever it was that was going on.
His muscles tensed imperceptibly as he readied himself to
face the new threat. Four flashes of blinding light and a moment later,
he was confronted with the sight of three women and a little girl in
really small and silly looking fukus. He guessed that they were the
rest of the sailors from the way they were dressed. Who else could
radiate so much mana and dress in such silly costumes?
*Looks like the cavalry has come to the rescue and they are
late as usual!* He joked to himself. The situation looked grim and he
knew it. The girls would probably mistake him for a threat and attack
him. He could not blame them really, who wouldn't mistake him for one
of hell's minions if they looked at his current form. He knew he would
if he were faced with a similar situation. And that knowledge troubled
him. A couple of the sailors were known to be trigger-happy and he did
not want to fight with anyone if he could help it. Though they posed
him no threat whatsoever, they would still be a pain in his behind and
he did not want that to happen. He had had enough of stupid vendettas
and such throughout his two thousand years of existence to last the
most mischievous of the God's several lifetimes.
With these thoughts running prominently on his mind, Ranma
once again lifted his arms up into the air in a placating gesture. With
his fingers crossed he muttered, "Let them ask questions before they
start shooting."
***********************************************************************
Hotaru felt the wave of queasiness that came over her
whenever she used the teleportation spell as she solidified into being.
Almost as soon as her senses returned, she regretted having been
granted with them. The pungent and the acrid smell of burning flesh and
smoke hit her nostrils and she turned green. She controlled the
overwhelming urge to retch in the middle of the road and empty the
contents of her body onto the ground below. When she had gained a
semblance of control over her senses she looked around.
The entire area looked like a battlefield if there ever was
one. A few hundred feet to her side lay a swathe of blackened and
rubble covered piece of land. *This is how the scene of a nuclear blast
looks like!* She thought to herself. Her mind was filled with awe and
horror at the terrible energies needed to accomplish what lay in front
of her eyes. The thoughts that she too possessed that very same power
did little to uplift her mood. *All those poor people who must have
been here must have died!* She thought sadly to herself.
Thinking about the victims brought more visions of death
and destruction so bad that humans lacked the words to describe them.
She had witnessed them during her life in the Silver Millennium she
realized as she lost the last bit of comfort that she harbored in her
mind. She violently shook her head as more horrifying images popped
into her consciousness from the unconscious recesses of her mind.
Anything was better than remembering the last few days of her life in
the Silver Millennium. So thinking she resumed her sweep of the area
trying to keep herself detached from the scenes of destruction that she
was confronted with.
There were conflagrations here and there and the acrid
smell of burning tires and such hung in the air resisting the gentle
but firm pressure that the wind placed upon them. The smell of death if
one could call it that was everywhere.
Piles of rubble with jagged pieces of metal jutting into
the sky above them were the only things that remained of buildings that
had stood tall and proud in their heyday. Compacted and burned pieces
of metal, which had once been cars were scattered here and there,
smoldering under the evening sky. Some of them even glowed red and she
imagined that she could feel the heat emanating from them though they
were some fifty foot or so away. Smoke from the fires poured into the
sky above and blanketed the twinkling stars from view. *
It would have been a beautiful day if this had never
happened but now it is not any more.*
She shuddered involuntarily as she continued the sweep of
the area. Her eyes finally fell upon her parents and she looked into
Michiru-momma's eyes for comfort if there was any. Michiru-momma too,
seemed to have been overcome by the scene. Hotaru thanked the kami for
not making her the only faint hearted one amongst the senshi and turned
her gaze towards Haruka-papa.
Uranus and Pluto's expression seemed to be focused on a
particular object. Their eyes were wide open and their whole demeanor
was pale. Hotaru followed their gaze and her eyes came to rest upon the
broken and battered body of Mamoru Chiba. It was clear that he was very
much dead from the way his body was bent at an unnatural angle. His
mouth was opened in a silent scream with his hands splayed out around
him. His posture seemed to suggest that he was calling for help. A
large pool of blood had gathered around his remains. She shuddered. Her
eyes automatically turned elsewhere but she forced herself to look at
him.
"Oh! Mamaoru-san!" she whispered fighting back the tears
that threatened to break the barriers that she had placed on her
emotions. She had never been that close with her future king as she had
been with Usagi and Chibi Usa but still her heart went out to him. *Oh
God!* She realized with a start, *If Mamoru-san is dead than it must
mean that Chibi Usa must be too!* The barriers broke down at that
revelation and the tears came unbidden. They flowed leaving twin tracks
on her cheeks, tracks, which glistened under the light from the fires
that burned so brightly in the background.
Chibi Usa had been her best friend when she had been weak
and lonely. That part of her life had seemed so distant just a minute
before and yet that part now loomed ominously over the horizon. Chibi
Usa had been the only one who had not treated her like some kind of
freak and had accepted her whole-heartedly as a friend. *_A Friend!_ I
have lost my best friend and I did not even get a chance to say
goodbye!* She would kill the bastard who had dared to hurt her friends.
She would make him live through the 8.4 million hells that Jainism
predicted waiting for the sinners.
Slowly but steadily the sadness and the depression that
overwhelmed her senses was replaced by anger. She would have her
revenge. No one harmed her friends and got away with it. She clenched
her glaive tightly and her face became an emotionless mask. The tears
stopped flowing as she began her sweep anew, her heart a cage of cold,
tempered steel.
***********************************************************************
Pluto was in hell. Everything that she had worked so hard
for had been destroyed. She had lost her innocence and had abandoned
her love and compassion that she felt for other creatures for the sake
of the reincarnation of the Silver Millennium and in the end, it had
made no difference whatsoever. It had all been in vain and she had
failed miserably. Her king was dead and if her intuition was anywhere
close to the mark, her queen was dead too. Usagi would never have let
anyone hurt Mamoru and would have protected him with her life as he
would have protected her with his.
"Forgive me! Please forgive me, my queen! I have failed in
my duties to protect thee and all that is yours," she moaned softly
willing the tears that threatened to blur her vision to stay back. Her
voice was drowned in the rustle that the breeze that flowed gently
through the area, created in part by the fires that raged on hither and
thither.
"I will take revenge even if I have to die taking it!" she
vowed. Steeling herself for the long and hard battle that was to come
she let her eyes wander just one more time. She wanted to remember
everything as it were. She would carry the memories of her dishonor to
the grave once she had killed the thing.
***********************************************************************
Try as she might Haruka could not take her eyes of the
lifeless body of Mamoru, the man who would have one day been her king.
His pale bruise covered face with his mouth opened in a silent scream
was haunting to look at. She knew that she was going to have nightmares
for the rest of her life. He seemed so full of pain that her heart
reached out to his. Even in death, his face commanded absolute respect.
He may have been screaming but there were those traces of nobility that
distanced royalty from a commoner. She had come to respect the man
behind the mask. As their relationship with the inner's had grown she
had learnt to admire his inner strength and the compassion that he felt
for others.
She shuddered with a suppressed cry though she tried very
much not to as images of the future and visions from her dreams of what
could have been popped into her mind. Her mind had been so full of
dreams and with love and care, she had let them grow and blossom. Now
they lay shattered all around her along with the lifeless body of her
would be king.
*Would be king.* She thought with another barely suppressed
shudder. Everything that she had worked so hard to create, every horror
that she, Michiru and their daughter had endured for the sake of the
Silver Millennium had been in vain. The queen was dead once more. She
was sure of that. Her queen would never allow anyone or anything to
harm her king whilst she was alive. With no one to wield the Ginzishou,
the new Silver Millennium would never come to pass. Dreams of joy, love
and happiness lay shattered inside her heart like so many broken pieces
of a mirror and stung her. The pain was almost impossible to bear.
She had seen her dearest Michiru die, her body riddled with
arrows and she had sacrificed her life too. Oh! How those images
tormented her in her sleep. Yet it had been all worth it, she had
thought. Her sole comfort had been the fact that they had done it for
the sake of the Silver Millennium, a long dead kingdom of the Moon
based on love.
She had been a fool all along to think that a dream castle
of glass that they had all built together with their blood would ever
happen. Dreams were just that - dreams and like every other dream it
too lay shattered along with the rest of her dreams, broken into a
million pieces but by a single stone that cruel and heartless fate had
thrown at them.
*My queen, on my honor I hereby swear upon my honor and my
lifeblood to hunt the beast to the ends of the earth and tear it apart
with my bare hands!* She vowed to herself.
***********************************************************************
Michiru was in hell. That was the only way to describe the
scene around her. Rubble and metal mixed intermittently with small
pieces of human flesh or bones was strewn around in plain eyesight for
the entire world to see. Cars, once beautiful to look at, now lay
smoldering on their roofs or on their sides or were just crumpled under
the ridiculously large pieces of reinforced concrete that had come to
rest on top of them. The few that were not crushed were burning
brightly sending jet-black streams of smoke spewing into the sky to
blot out the stars above.
Scores of people, some of whom she might have walked next
to while grocery shopping or on the side of the street were now dead.
That which remained of their bodies would not be enough to fill a paper
bag much less a body bag. The stench of blood was everywhere and she
could feel and taste the metallic taste of blood if she opened her
mouth. Blood, which flowed so freely through one's veins now floated in
a fine mist in the air allowing the breeze to carry it to heaven knows
where. It was truly horrifying, the sight that met her eyes.
The most horrifying image of all was Mamoru sprawled on the
dirty ground with his arms and legs splayed out seeking help. His once
handsome face covered with bruises and his hair and face were matted
with caked blood. Lying there in the middle with his eyes staring
blankly at the evening sky, he seemed so at peace with himself and with
the rest of the world.
She found herself repulsed by the deed that had been
committed. Someone or something had killed her Queen's future spouse in
cold blood after having tortured him to within an inch of his life.
*What kind of soulless demon would do that?* She found herself asking.
She knew the answer but she asked the question notwithstanding. It had
been a sick bastard who had killed Mamoru and she would put on that
very same mask when she ripped the bastard's heart out.
A small part of her mind thanked the kami, as he did not
have to experience the pain from those horrible wounds that seemed to
cover every nook and corner of his body anymore. Another part of her
mind wanted to scream at everything and anything and curse them all for
that which had gone so wrong.
Everything that they had worked for had been destroyed with
his death and that of her future queen. They had endured hell to make
the dream of a reincarnated few come true and though their castle built
out of the fragile glass of reality had been beautiful to look at in
their dreams, it had been destroyed, shattered like all other dreams in
the end.
She had never felt so hopeless in her life and she hated
it. She was so depressed and hopeless that she could see her very life
passing before her eyes.
*Why? Why did you do this?* She screamed mentally at the
kami. As usual, her screams of pain and despair went unanswered.
***********************************************************************
Silence. Silence and peace - these two words seem so
synonymous. Everyone craves peace and in doing so they crave silence
too. Nevertheless, are we happy when everything goes silent? No, we are
not. It is the way in which we are built. Our mind and soul fails to
take the silence at face value. Instead, we assume it to be the calm
before the storm. In addition, the worst part of all of this is that we
are right most of the time. Maybe humanity has its own storm warning
system built in... We will never know.
This very same silence prevailed around Ranma. The area was
not entirely silent mind you. There was the cackling of the fires all
around him. There was the faint rustle that his shirt produced when the
breeze blew over him. Furthermore, the air smelled of death and the
pungent odor of burning flesh permeated the air. The last two were not
sounds but they added to the electric atmosphere all around him. Ranma
did not mind the nauseating and repulsive smells at all. He had endured
far worse when the capital city of the Gupta dynasty had been sacked.
He had also witnessed the brutality of the Mongols and everything and
everyone else paled when compared with them. He knew from accounts of
survivors that the dead were considered lucky after the Mongol hordes
had ransacked their cities. They had been the main reason for his foray
into the western lands. Even though he himself advocated a certain
level of brutality in battle to gain a psychological advantage over the
enemy, he had always thought that the Mongol leader Genghis Khan,
Universal ruler as they called him, had carried it a tad bit too far.
To this day, he still felt that there had no reason for massacring
those 30,000 people at Samrakand who had refused to surrender. He had
read first hand accounts of one of the few survivors of the siege of
Nishapur, Persia. It still made him nauseous to think that the Mongols
had slaughtered, raped over 1.75 million innocent people in that
ancient city alone. It was considered a world record of its kind by the
modern historians but he had been alive around that time and he
_remembered_ how he had felt when he had read those records. He had
come to deal with the feeling of helplessness that he had felt then and
he had come to grips with it.
He did, however, mind the murderous looks that three out of
the four new sailors were giving him. He suspected that the only reason
that the fourth one was not giving him the same look was that she was
too overcome by the horror of the sights that had confronted her.
Though they were nowhere near his level in terms of skill and power, he
despaired. He had seen the same 'I will kill you or will die killing
you' looks on many an enemy in his life. He had been forced to kill
many of them and the experience was always distasteful.
He raised his hands a little higher hoping and praying to
the kami that they would notice his gesture of peace. One of them did
but to his dismay, she was the one who was in shock. The other three
definitely did not. Before he could address them the smallest one
attacked with a shout of "Wail of the Sirens!"
A concentrated beam of high-pressure waves rushed at him
from the tip of the weird looking glaive that she was carrying. Not
vocalizing the groan that came to his mind Ranma jumped over it and
scowled. *What kind of trigger-happy fools are these girls? Can they
not see that I mean them no harm?* He thought angrily to himself.
Turning at supersonic speeds he noticed that the blast was heading
towards the girl who had fought so bravely against the Ashura and
mentally smacked himself. He should have stopped the blast with one of
his own instead of avoiding it. The blast of compressed air hit the
ground near the girl and tore through rock and metal alike. The ground
blew up brilliantly sending the poor girl on a trip onto Morpheus's
lap.
"Stop this nonsense at once! I mean no harm to you nor your
friends," he shouted as he bounced of the roof of a smoldering car and
came to rest upon the rubble-covered pavement.
The speech did not have the desired effect on the senshi's
face however. Hotaru's face turned a shade of unhealthy red and steam
escaped from her ears. *How dare he speak to me in such tones after
having killed my friends in cold blood?* Her nostrils seemed to flare
as she readied her next attack. She was too late however, as Haruka-
papa beat her to it.
*Two thousand years of experience and you still cannot
figure out the right things to say to women, Ranma of the Qin!* He
berated himself as he dodged the scarlet beam of energy that the blonde
had let loose at him.
"What's with you girls?" he shouted and jumped just in time
to avoid another beam of scarlet energy from the blond haired senshi.
*Looks like they will not listen. Well, I will just have to
make them listen to good old reason then and I know just the way to do
it!* He thought as he closed the distance between punitive sailor who
wielded the glaive and himself.
Hotaru tried to evade but she was a tad bit too slow.
Realizing that she would never evade his attack she tried to swipe him
away with her silence glaive but Ranma just caught it and smirked at
her.
Turning on the Qin charisma up a notch or two he put on his
best 'you are twenty thousand years too young to beat me' smirk#29 and
paralyzed her upper body with a quick jab at a nerve cluster in her
thorax. The paralysis point was temporary and should last for about
five minutes or so before it released its holds on her. Not removing
the smirk from his face, he removed the offending glaive from her hands
and tossed it into the air. Without pausing to look at the glaive,
which landed perfectly on its tip, he turned his attention towards the
blonde one.
He rushed Haruka, weaving in and out in a complex pattern
to slow down her firing rate. She realized what he was up to and tried
to evade with speed and skill borne of 'magic' and experience. Ranma
countered her sword thrust with ease, deflecting the blow meant for his
face with one of the lesser known kata's of the I Ho Ch'uan, the
righteous harmony fist style. The technique was the predecessor of the
Tai Chi Chuan and had been used by the boxers during the Boxer
rebellion in China.
He got into her defenses and flashed the same smirk that he
had flashed the young one, before his hands blurred across her body.
Since she was not so young, as the first one her body could take a lot
more damage to her nerve clusters and he decided to make the experience
as painful as possible. His hands became visible a scant moment later
but the damage had been done by then. All the voluntary muscle groups
in Haruka's body had been temporarily paralyzed and she stood, glaring
at him with wide-open eyes. Eyes whose lashes refused to shut glared
daggers at him promising him a world of pain and hurt.
*The girl is going to have on hell of an inflammation of
the eye when this is over.*
Ranma withdrew from her paralyzed body and stood in the
midst of the rubble. He needed room to maneuver if the remaining girls
tried to attack him and this was as good as place as any.
"Now, will you listen to me? I..." he cut off in the middle
of his speech by his senses which were screaming hell. He turned
towards the green haired sailor ready to face whatever she might throw
at him.
It was a sign of his brain getting slow and dumb he
supposed. In his haste to get the speech started, he had forgotten the
fact that there had been three really pissed off sailors after him and
now he was going to pay the price for it. He mentally berated himself
for committing such an amateurish mistake and readied himself to evade
the attack. Though the amount of mana that she was gathering was not
large by any means, the way that the mana and the ki patterns in the
area were changing because of her manipulation was unique to say the
least. He memorized the pattern for later use and addressed the girl
putting much effort behind it to sound sincere to her ears.
Pluto's anger had only grown while she witnessed the ease
with which Haruka and her little darling Hotaru had fallen to the
creature. Her mission to protect the innocent and the needy from evil
had never seemed clearer to her than at that instant. With a scream of
righteous fury, she unleashed the most powerful of the forbidden
attacks in her arsenal, "Dark Dome Close!"
"Cut that out will you! I am not a threat to your friends
or to yourself in anyw..." Ranma did not get a chance to finish his
hastily prepared speech as the mana and the ki lines around him
tightened in a vice-like grip. They formed a prison so secure that it
even barred the waves of time from passing through it.
The black walls of the prison engulfed him and his
awareness of the world grinded to a halt in under a microsecond.
Michiru looked at the black veil, which now stood where the
creature had stood before. She could not decide whether he had meant
any harm to them or not. She had watched his stance and her instincts
told her that he was not about to hurt Ami and a mother's instincts
never lied. So, she had been prepared to listen to him when he had
raised his arms as a gesture of good faith. Of course, the others had
jumped the gun as usual. Even Hotaru seemed to be getting a little too
quick to take up her arms ever since they had accepted her as a member
of the team.
She was not sure whether to be disappointed by Hotaru's
behavior or not. *Maybe I should have a little chat with the little one
this is over.*
She had seen the way the others had attacked without
concern towards the safety of the innocents. That was not the way the
sailors worked. They were the warriors of justice and love. They should
not be ones who fired at anything that moved in their path. Therefore,
She had not been surprised when the man had counter attacked. Who would
be? However, she found it hard to believe that someone could move at
the speeds at which he had moved.
As things had stood, she knew without a doubt that the man
could have killed Hotaru and Haruka if he had wanted to. Yet, he had
not. He had tried to explain himself thrice but had been prevented from
doing so by their attacks.
Truth be told she had felt anger at him for no apparent
reason. Her baseless anger her grown when she had seen the way that he
had taken out Haruka and Hotaru. It was as though they were puny little
things to him. Having taken out those two, he could have taken on
Setsuna and probably beat her up pretty good but again, he had not. He
had stood admist the rubble and tried to explain himself before Setsuna
had sent him into the oblivion of timelessness.
Dropping the hands that she had raised in preparation for
an attack, she glanced at her daughter and her lover. It seemed like
they had been paralyzed. She recalled hearing about paralyzing
techniques as part of martial arts from her sensei in junior high. If
that was what he had done then they had just committed a terrible
mistake. Man or God, Michiru had no doubts about what would happen to
anyone outside the time stream for long intervals. They would die,
Setsuna had once told them so.
"Michiru!"
Michiru started and turned towards Setsuna.
"Huh!"
"I said that Haruka and Hotaru will be alright," replied
the senshi of time.
Michiru nodded meekly and looked around. She had to help
Ami. Setsuna could take care of the other two. The poor girl was lying
unconscious somewhere out there.
***********************************************************************
Ami moaned softly in pain. The pain that flooded her senses
made her wish that she had remained unconscious. With some effort, she
hefted her body from the ground. Vertigo almost caused her to lose her
balance as she pulled herself of the ground. She steadied herself by
grabbing one of the random pieces of metal that jutted out from the
rubble. She grunted in pain as even that simple action sent tidal waves
of dizzying pain through her body. Cursing the kami as well as her
luck, she gingerly clasped her stomach. She released the metal and
wiped the blood that dripped slowly from her lips. She was sure that if
it had not been for her magic she would have died from Hotaru's
careless attack.
She looked around and her eyes fell upon Neptune, Uranus
and Saturn. Putting one foot in front of the other she headed towards
them. The pain was forgotten as anger towards the outers clouded her
mind. She felt that the anger that she felt towards them was perfectly
justified.
She had been willing to overlook their trigger-happy
attitudes before due to their loyalty to the queen. Sure, they had
overreacted in some, well almost all of the situations but they had
done it out of loyalty. She had even admired their protectiveness on
some unconscious level. Now all she felt towards them was anger. For
the way they had behaved today was unforgivable. The three of them had
attacked her and then had the galls to treat her as some collateral
damage. *I am going to give those four nitwits a piece of my mind.* She
thought as she stomped towards her fellow teammates.
"What the fuck were you doing over there, you imbeciles?"
she screamed into Michiru's face. Normally she would never use such
language but in her anger, she simply did not care.
Michiru for her part stood as she was looking glumly at
her. Her face, which first shone with joy on seeing her, turned
confused. Ami stomped her foot on the ground and winced from the pain
that the action caused her. "Uuuuuhhhh!" screamed Ami in frustration at
the brainless klutz. "If you weren't part of the team I would tear you
to pieces." she announced as loudly as she could right into Michiru's
face.
"Huh!"
"Pay attention to me when I am speaking with you." shouted
Ami staring daggers at Michiru who for her part continued to remain as
still as a statue.
Michiru did not have a clue on how to react to Ami's open
show of hostility. She felt that the girl was justified in her anger
towards her and the others. However, it was not as if they had really
meant too hurt her or something. Things sometimes went wrong and even
though they were the ones to blame, the girl should not be using the
language that she was using. Her blood began to boil as she heard more
of the girl's speech. *How dare she? How dare she speak to them in such
a manner?* It was not like they were going to let her rot in hell or
something like that. _She_ had been searching for the bitch when she
could have been helping her family and this was how the bitch repaid
her. *Well two can play at the 'I am the head bitch' game!* However,
before Michiru could respond Pluto intervened.
"What is wrong with you Mercury?" snarled Pluto gripping
the key to the time gates so tight that her knuckles turned white. If
she did not know any, better she would have thought that Mercury was
actually supporting the monster.
"What is wrong with me?... What is wrong with me... Ahhhh!"
screamed Ami seeing red. They had attacked the man who had saved her
queen and in doing so had knocked her out and now they had the balls to
ask her whether anything was wrong with her. "Bitch!" screamed Ami at
the guardian of the gates of time. "Wait till Usagi hears about this.
You attack me and then you dare to ask me that question."
"Don't you dare speak that way to Pluto!?" Michiru
snarled. She had had it with the little bitch's bratty ways. She had
better watch her mouth or she would not have a mouth to watch.
Pluto however, grasped what Ami had just said. She grabbed
the girl by her collar and lifted her off the ground. Ami thinking that
Setsuna wanted a fight glared right back at her and caught hold of her
collar.
Pluto looked into Ami's eyes with hope, her anger
temporarily forgotten and asked a simple question.
"Where is the Princess?"
Caught totally off-guard by the question Ami would only
mutter, "Huh!"
Realizing that Ami would be of no help, Michiru examined
her Nan ban mirror and pointed towards one of the less damaged
buildings in the area.
"The Princess and the others are in that building along
w..."
Just then, there was an explosion of light. The light
blinded them momentarily and when the light faded enough for them to
see clearly, Ranma was missing.
"What the..." began Ami before Setsuna cut her off.
"Neptune you check on the princess and the others.
Mercury..." Pluto gave the aforementioned sailor a hard stare. "We will
continue this discussion later. For now, check on Saturn and Uranus. I
have got to find that monster and hopefully destroy it before it plays
more havoc with the time-stream."
Ami did not even have the time to respond before Pluto
disappeared via the time gate. Without giving Neptune so much as a
look, she turned towards her wards and walked towards them.
"Bitch!" muttered Ami under her breath.
Michiru did not hear the comment. She was too immersed in
other thoughts. "We will finish this later... Mercury!" she said
stressing the 'finish' part.
Ami stopped in mid-stride and glared in reply before
continuing towards Saturn and Uranus.
***********************************************************************
*What the hell is happening out there?*
Ryuu glanced over at the unconscious girls giving their
wounded bodies a once over to check for any potentially serious wounds.
They were all pretty bad beat up but from the looks of it, they would
survive. Their 'magic' seemed to be healing them faster than he
believed possible. Having ascertained that all was well with the girls
he yawned though he tried not to. He was bored. All this inaction was
getting to him and where was Ranma sensei.
As far as he could ascertain the main battle had long been
over. *Why hasn't sensei returned?* He asked himself for the fiftieth
time in less than five minutes.
He hated the job that his sensei had assigned to him. He
wanted a piece of the action and not the role of a _stupid_ nurse.
However, he dare not disobey his sensei. Frequent beatings by Genma and
the mother of all walloping by elder Cologne during his stay with the
Joketsuzoku had been more than enough to imprint in his mind to always
do as he was told.
Sure, he hated it. He hated not being able to help the
sailors when they had fought with those two things. He had wanted to
very much rush in there and take that thing on. However, Ranma had
forbid it and he had obeyed his sensei's command - unwillingly. Not
that he was afraid of a little beating. No, even after that walloping
that elder Cologne had given him he had refused to respect authority to
a certain extent. The elder had gotten her point across quite
forcefully on that day.
Ryuu snickered as images of that painful day flashed across
his mind. Now that he thought about it, he had been acting like a brat
and had deserved the beating.
He had been in the village less than a fortnight when he
had managed to piss elder Cologne royally with his rude behavior.
Growing up on the road with Genma had made him an egotistical jerk with
a very rude mouth. And he still had one - it was as if the rude trait
was a curse or something. No matter how hard he tried, he could not get
rid of it.
The elder had tried to bear with him and patiently tried to
teach him respect for elders and for those in power in vain. He had
resisted making rude comments about her and the Amazons as a nation in
general. She had been a good sport taking whatever he said calmly. It
had been a testament to her age and wisdom that she did not beat him to
death in the first week itself. However, even her patience had its ends
and he had managed to tick her off.
The elder had been instructing him on the virtues of good
manners when he had called her 'a old dried up cunt' in the council
hall not that he knew what a 'cunt' meant at that time. He had heard
his father and some of the gaijin's that he had encountered use it
often enough and thought that he would join the club too. *Why not* He
had thought. *Everybody seems to use that word often enough.*
The whole council had been mortified by what he had spoken.
Speaking in that manner to Cologne was asking for a dramatic reduction
in one's lifespan. Her aura had burst forth like a miniature supernova
and for just a moment, he had thought that he saw the true face of
death in her eyes. The fear had given way to loads and loads of pain.
So much so in fact that he had been unable to get out of the bed for
nearly three weeks.
Somehow, the elder had managed to reign in her anger but
that did not save him from the beating that followed. The pain that he
had endured during the next hour or two (he did not know how long the
ummm... discipline session had been conducted) had been the worst in
his life. Not even the rigors of Bakusai Tenketsu training had been as
excruciating as those two hours. When he had recovered from his
injuries, he had automatically treated the elders, especially Cologne
with newfound respect.
*Spare the rod and spoil the child they say and how true it
was in my case.*
Wiping off the smirk from his face, Ryuu's thoughts drifted
off once more. Only once before had he seen, anyone display such power
as that thing during the battle.
He had been utterly awed by Cologne's display that day. He
still was. He had been once in awe of his father... before he had
realized what a moron his father was. Somehow, that special father-son
bond had waned and finally disappeared during the years on the road. By
the time the Amazons had taken him in, the only emotion that came to
him whenever he had thought of his father had been disgust. Looking
back that was not the worst point in their relationship. He had been
actually happy when the elders had decided to take him away from Genma
since he did not have to bear with the moron anymore. Genma must have
realized it for Genma had lacked that certain sine qua non he always
had while fighting when he had challenged the village elders that day.
That day Ryuu had gained a new hero... a withered old mummy
who had beaten the crap out of Genma without breaking a sweat. He had
not given her the respect that she had deserved as a martial artist
simply because he had been afraid that she too would disappoint him.
Slowly the elder had grown on him and he on her until she almost
treated him like her great grandson... almost because she never
abandoned her plans to make him her great granddaughter's husband. The
three years he had spent in the village had been the happiest years of
his short life. The evening sparring sessions with Shampoo and that
idiot Mousse as well as the morning lessons under Mascara and Cologne
had been some of the best he had had in his life. Unfortunately, all
things came to an end and he had been very sad indeed when his father
had arrived back in the village to take him away from them.
Though he had been reluctant to leave the village he had
done so not because he respected his old man but because he knew that
he was honor bound to return with the moron as was stated in the deal
that Genma had somehow managed to broker with the Amazons. He had grown
to think of the Amazons as almost family.
On the first few days with Genma, he had noticed nothing
wrong. Then he began to notice things that he had never seen Genma do
before. Genma had changed somehow. He would act like the idiot that he
was every now and then but he would actually apologize for it. Not that
Ryuu cared about what he did. That indescribable pride that a boy felt
towards his father was long gone by that time replaced only by loathing
and disgust.
He had been surprised when Genma had come with them to the
Phoenix Mountain. Of all the things that he had expected from his old
man that had been the last one he had expected him to do. After all
Genma never risked his ass for anyone. Genma had been full of surprises
in the mountain. Ryuu had seen a facet of Genma that he had never seen
before. For the first time ever he had seen the master of the Saotome
School of Anything Goes Martial Arts fight. True, Genma had not charged
in and taken on every Phoenix in the mountain. Instead he had actually
pounded anyone who came near him to pulp and the one's who had attacked
him, well it had been their ill-luck that had led them to Genma that
day. Genma had been an absolute demon mauling everyone who stood in his
path.
That had been the last time he had ever expected Genma to
fight seriously. Apparently, he had misjudged his father for Genma had
shown that warrior persona of his again. At the dojo when Ranma had
issued the challenge Genma had fought like he had never before and Ryuu
felt proud of Genma for the first time in a very long time. His respect
for his father had grown by that much during that fight and he felt
himself listening to the words of his old man for the first time
ever...
"Uhhhh!"
It seemed that the blonde bunny haired one was having a
nightmare or something and Ryuu abandoned his thoughts to check on her.
Ryuu approached her, taking care not to make loud noises
and knelt by her side. As far as he could tell, the bleeding had
stopped from the shoulder wounds. The numerous cuts and bruises were
also disappearing from her body at an alarming rate even more so than
the others were. Her breathing was still labored though and Ryuu moved
closer to her side and lifted her into his lap. Having made her
battered body as comfortable as he could he began to probe her neck
with his fingers. *Thank the kami that I paid attention to the elder's
anatomy classes.* He expertly felt around her neck looking for
blockages of any sort or more seriously hemorrhages that would indicate
internal bleeding. If her tongue were obstructing her respiratory
tract, he would have to unblock it but it was a hemorrhage he could do
nothing but hope that the bleeding was not serious enough to endanger
her life.
So focused was he on his work that he did not hear the
rapidly approaching footsteps much to his ill luck.
As it happened, Michiru rushed into the room and saw Usagi
in the laps of a strange boy who was touching her in a way that
reminded her of the attentions that Haruka gave her whenever she was
'in the mood'.
*Eeeeeew! How can I even think about that at this time?*
She blinked once and decided to give the boy the benefit of the doubt.
No one could be perverted enough to attempt that with an unconscious
girl. It was obvious from the blood splatter patterns on his dress that
he had been the one who had brought Usagi and the others into safety.
"Hey! What are you doing?" she asked him with just a touch
of aggression in her voice. If he was a pervert, well he had better not
be else he was in for a world of hurt.
Ryuu froze in his movements and began to wave his arms
around to ward off the impending beating. That particular muscle memory
was the result of living under the same roof as Akane for over a year.
During his first three weeks in the Tendo house the girl had taken
offense at anything and everything that he had done and had promptly
bashed him in the head with her hammer if he had not run off into the
beautiful sunset by then.
"It's not what you think it is!" tried Ryuu; still waving
his arms in an effort to ward off the blows that he was sure would
start raining down on him.
Michiru frowned and an unhealthy tick formed in her eyes.
*Eeeeeew! What kind of a sicko pervert is he, doing that to a wounded
girl?* "Eeeeeew! Pervert!" screeched Michiru as she rushed the
teenager.
Ryuu was in a tough position. He could easily evade the
girl if he implemented the Kacchu Tenshin Amaguriken but he dare not.
The stress might prove too hard on the bunny haired one's body. She was
badly beaten up and any more stress might be fatal to her if she was
bleeding internally. The second option that he had was to remain
kneeling as he was and wait for the girl to kick him out into the
stratosphere.
He chose the second option.
*I will not risk an innocent life.* Having made up his
mind, he closed his eyes and waited for the blow to fall. *This is
going to hurt a lot.*
As Michiru ran, a hammer made of energy formed in her
hands. She clasped it tight in her arms and swung it with a mighty
kiyaa! The hammer connected with Ryuu's skull with a loud clang.
Ryuu flew, senses stunned by the force of the impact. His
trajectory led him on a collision course with the wall on the far side
of the room and his head made an unhealthy sounding thump when it hit
it. His eyes glazed over momentarily but recovered their former shine
as soon as it had left.
Michiru grunted an unladylike curse as her hands stung from
the force of impact. She had not been expecting the pervert to have
such a hard head. She had lost her grip on the mallet and it flew out
of her hands, disappearing as soon as it left her hands.
"What is his head made of?" she muttered.
With a shrug, she went after Ryuu, who was struggling to
get on his feet in the street outside. She found it surprising that the
pervert could get up after having taken the brunt of her attack.
*Well, strong is he? This ought to teach him to never have
another ecchi thought in his sick little life!* Thinking so she
gathered the mana needed for her attack. "Neptune Deep Submerge!" she
announced and directed the energy at a peice of concrete, which took to the air.
The boulder flew up like a perfect Shi Shi Hokodan and
reached its apex staying just a moment longer that it was necessary.
Ryuu's eyes bulged to the size of saucer's as he realized the boulder's
intended landing site. Normally he would have used the 'Saotome Final
attack' and ran for his life but the mallet blow had taken a great deal
out of him. He realized now what the elder had meant when she had said
to him once that 'Hell hath less fury than a woman scorned'. Not that
he had not known that before but then he had known what he had done to
deserve the ass kicking. His mind was simply overcome by shock and
confusion and ignored all commands on his part to evacuate the premises
and make a run for his life.
"Oh... Oh! This is going to hurt!" he managed to murmur
before the judicious boulder made a judicious landing on his little
hard head.
Michiru wiped her arms and posed for the photographers
though there were none in the vicinity. *There the world is now a safer
place for little old helpless girls like me!* she thought proudly.
The boulder cracked with a metallic sound and pieces of it
fell to the sides to reveal Ryuu's battered body underneath. Michiru
gasped in surprise. *Obviously, the boy was no boy at all! He must be a
daemon in clever disguise.* Again, she was proud of herself. Surely,
she deserved a thank you for her fast thinking that had saved the
princess. She was still doing the hero of the day act when Ryuu
extricated himself from the ground and stood woozily.
Michiru physically slapped herself out of the mental back
slapping ceremonies. *This is not the time to be standing still and
gloating.* She would first kill the daemon and then thank the kami for
getting her onto the scene just in the nick of time. Who knew what the
daemon would have done to her princess if she had even been a minute
late?
Her face a mask of pure anger, Michiru attacked Ryuu once
more. Ordinarily the senshi of Neptune was not prone to give into anger
so easily but the thought of what the daemon was about to do sent her
into a wild rage.
Ryuu was in no condition to either protect himself or
counter her attack. He stood there in the middle of the road wobbling
around like the town drunkard.
Michiru had no problem getting into his defense. *This
ought to teach the hentai daemon not to mess around with the sailors!*
She thought darkly as she grabbed hold of Ryuu's arms to steady him.
Having done so she applied her knee to his groin. There was an audible
crunch and Ryuu somehow found the strength to over power her arms and
clasp his groin.
"That did not hurt... Mommy!" he squeaked and fell to the
ground where he writhed with his hands jerking like those of a
mosquito.
***********************************************************************
Ami checked Hotaru not once but thrice. Each time her
computer console displayed the same results. Obviously, the man
-whoever he had been was also quite skillful in Shiatsu. Oh yes, Ami
knew about Shiatsu. What self-respecting son or daughter of Japan did
not? Her mother had told her stories of super-powered martial artists
who could paralyze, disable or even kill their opponents with a single
touch. Her memories of the nights her mother sat by her bedside and
recited stories of courageous samurai in the days long gone were still
vivid in her mind. She treasured those memories more than anything else
in her life for that was all she had to associate herself with her
mother.
Growing up without the guiding influence of a mother in her
life had been pretty tough on her. The times that her mother was in the
house were rare enough and the times that she was free, enough to
actually spend some time with Ami were rarer still. It was no surprise
then that Ami cherished those few minutes that they spent together
everyday. Ami knew and realized that her mother wanted to help save
people's lives and her profession as a doctor meant that her working
hours were unusual in the sense that she was on call all day long. Even
though the patients that her mother cared for were sick physically and
sometimes mentally a small part of Ami was still jealous of them
because they got to know her mother so much more than she did. With a
sigh of regret and longing Ami let her thoughts drift back to the real
world.
The anger that she felt towards the outers was still there
and she doubted whether all of it would ever fade away. What they had
done today was unforgivable in her eyes and she hoped that it would be
unforgivable in Usagi's eyes too. *We were going to have a little talk
in Rei's house when this is over. This time you were lucky the next
time some innocent bystander could be killed.*
Lost in her thoughts once more Ami failed to notice the
slightest of shudders that rippled through Hotaru's body. Finally,
Hotaru started out of her paralysis with a look of pure terror in her
eyes. Ami mentally slapped herself for not having comforted Hotaru
sooner and laid a comforting hand on the other girl's shoulder. Having
no control over your body was a fate worse than death and Hotaru must
have spent the minutes in utter terror wondering about the fate of her
family.
"Its all right Hotaru. The paralysis is wearing off even as
I speak. You should be perfectly all right in a few minutes." reassured
Ami in a soothing voice. "I'll go check on Haruka and see if she is all
right!"
Hotaru's pupils dilated in anger when she heard those
words. Ami shoulders sagged and she sighed audibly. This was not the
time to lose your cool, she reminded herself. She regretted having lost
her cool before but it had to be done or the outer's would have gotten
worser and worser by the day. *Looks like living with her 'jump the
gun' family had turned Hotaru into one of them.*
"Its all right Hotaru. That man did not do anything to
Haruka. She is in the same condition as you. I just have to check on
her incase something is wrong with her..." reassured Ami.
Hotaru's pupils constricted back to their original size and
Ami allowed herself to breathe freely. A pissed off and berserk Sailor
Saturn with the power to lay waste a planet was something to be worried
about. *All the more reason why I should have a little tete a tete with
Pluto and the others.* Thought Ami as she walked towards Haruka. She
had not covered half the distance when there was a loud thump from one
of the buildings.
Ami turned and saw a Neptune attacking a boy with the
'Neptune World Shaking!'. *What the hell is that lunatic doing,
attacking a bystander?* Ami thought darkly. *She could kill him with
her magic!*
That set her off. That really set her off. *Was it not
lesson enough that they attacked me with their stupid tactics? Now,
they are attacking innocent bystanders.* She was about to stomp off
towards Neptune and take her to task when to her amazement the boulder
cracked and broke into pieces. It was Ryuu, she recognized. Though she
had no idea as to how he had managed to earn Neptune's wrath he was her
friend and Ami never abandoned her friends. However, before she could
move an inch Neptune attacked him once more and kneed him in the groin.
Abandoning all thoughts of their comradeship and the Silver
Millennium Ami ran towards Neptune intending on giving her a walloping
that she would never forget. The old mercury would have thought twice
before challenging any of the others to a fight but the recent fight
with the Ashura had worked wonders for her confidence and she was sure
that could easily defeat Michiru or any of the others bar Usagi.
Michiru grinned at the daemon's agony. *I will make this
daemon an example for those who try to hurt the princess.* She thought
as she raised her legs to kick him in his exposed mid-section. The leg
was on the apex of its backward motion when a blur swept by her and her
world exploded in pain.
Michiru flew through the air for a good fifty yards before
hitting the ground. Her body did not stop there as her inertia kept her
in motion, bouncing her off the hard concrete repeatedly until she came
to rest nearly hundred and thirty yards from where she had stood.
Hiding the veil of pain that threatened to send her into
the clutches of unconsciousness at any second Michiru stood up and eyed
her opponents warily. A man, a balding man with a scarf on his head,
stood near the daemon with a hint of concern towards the daemon and a
lot of annoyance and anger towards her written on his face. His stance
was loose and appeared quite unlike a warriors though her heart told
her that he was one.
The man spoke quietly, his voice carrying across the wind
in a gothic sort of way. With the distance that separated him and her,
he should not have been audible but somehow his voice was audible quite
clearly to her. It had a decent pinch of menace and a lot of anger and
indignity in it. "You will not treat my son in such a dishonorable
manner and get away with it, I, the patriarch of the Saotome clan swear
on my honor." he announced, not once did he turn his eyes away from his
foot where it was focused. As he made his speech a fiery blue aura of
power bloomed around him. Finally, he raised his head and looked into
her eyes. Michiru shuddered. She had seen that look before. In fact,
she had had that look before on her very own face. It was the very same
'You I kill!' look that she had worn many a time in her efforts to
protect her princess from the minions of the negaverse.
***********************************************************************
Genma was furious. He had never been that angry in his
entire life. When he had seen Neptune attack his son from the distance
his blood had boiled and for the first time since he had achieved
mastery of the art, he lost the controls that he had placed on his
anger. He had not waited for either the master's or the elder's
command. He had just attacked and a part of his mind suspected that
they would have attacked with equally deadly consequences if he had
not. No one attacked a downed opponent. It was considered so
dishonorable that even foes in battle gave their fallen opponent time
to rise and defend themselves. It was a code created by the samurai
before the barbarian Mongols had attacked the land and it stood to this
day. An opponent had to give his credentials before the fight started.
Such was the tradition of his country and yet here was a prime example
of dishonorable conduct on the battlefield right before his very eyes.
His honor and his love for his son demanded that the price
such a dishonorable act be paid in blood. *And the price will be paid.*
He thought grimly as he pushed the dark clouds of anger to the
background and focused on his opponent.
Anger was a double-edged sword that had to be correctly
controlled and directed if one was to win a fight. He had learned long
ago that it could almost as easily certify a loss if it were not
controlled properly. One had to reign in the sea of anger that clouded
one's mind and use it productively and not lash out mindlessly if one
wanted to guarantee success. Genma did exactly that and reined in his
all the anger that he felt at that moment and rode it as a wave while
his mind planned and came up with tactics.
Taking a deep breath, he expanded his senses. He sensed the
master and the elder along with his friend standing a couple of dozen
feet behind him as his vanguard while he prepared for himself mentally
for the upcoming battle.
He was about to attack when a voice, a young voice
interrupted the silent twilight air.
***********************************************************************
Ami was about to shout bloody hell at Neptune when a blur
whizzed passed her with its wake causing her fuku to flutter violently.
Her words were struck in her mouth and the seconds seemed an eternity
as the blur closed the distance between Neptune and itself. Finally,
the blur reached Neptune and wham! Neptune was flying through the air.
The blur solidified into the form a middle-aged man with a
balding head and a potbelly. The man had a scarf tied on his head and
an aura of power much like the one, which had surrounded their
unidentified helper, surrounded him. The power was miniscule when
compared with the power that the man and the Ashura had wielded but it
was powerful in its own right.
*So this is Ryuu's father!* Thought Ami. The resemblance
between the two though very small was uncanny.
Ryuu's father spoke, barely moving his lips. However, his
voice was clearly audible to her even though she was a hundred yards
from him. Without wasting time wondering how he had accomplished such a
feat Ami rushed towards him. If he had meant what he said than Michiru
was in for lots of pain. The images of Ryouga's incredible strength
were still clearly etched in her face. She was afraid what a pissed off
super-powered martial artist could do to Michiru. If what had happened
to her own team was any indication Michiru could be in jeopardy if he
carried through his threat.
"Stop!" she shouted as loudly as she could.
Ryuu's father barely turned towards her. Nevertheless,
there was a slight shift in his stance making it clear that his
attention was partly focused on her now.
Sensing that she had little time before Genma sprang into
action she cleared her throat and spoke as loudly as she could all the
while closing the distance between him and her.
"I humbly ask forgiveness for my teammates dishonorable
actions. She did not know that it was your son who helped our team when
they were in dire straits..."
"And who are you? You did not stop that woman from
assaulting my son in the first place. Why should I listen to you now?"
barked Genma glaring daggers at her. He did not drop his stance. If
anything, he seemed to go deeper into the 'zone'.
"Yes, I didn't and I know that there is no excuse for my
failure... We... Some six-handed monster assaulted us today and all of
my friends were nearly killed in the battle... My friend over there
obviously overreacted on seeing your son... She must have assumed that
he was a threat..." Ami paused. She was now within ten yards of Genma.
Genma face took on a thoughtful look, which astonishingly
lasted for a second. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally
spoke. "Perhaps I had overreacted a bit... Very well then your friend
is..." Genma never got a chance to finish the sentence as his ki senses
flared - a sign of immediate danger.
***********************************************************************
It had been the worst five minutes of Haruka's life. She
had been witness to the assault on her child. That alone was more than
enough to send the trigger-happy senshi into a blind rage. The rage had
been enough however, to beat the stuffing out of that bastard and she
too had been made to suffer the same fate as dear Hotaru. Standing
there with her senses working more perfectly then ever before had been
pure hell. She had been able to ear and see Ami as she had abused
Michiru. She cursed the kami for her current predicament. If it had not
been for her present condition she would have made the upstart inner
see a thing or two about giving her betters the respect they deserved.
Thankfully, Pluto had dealt with the situation in a somewhat
satisfactory manner and she would see that Ami got her just deserts in
the course of a week or two if she had her way.
After seeing the way Ami had treated little Hotaru, she had
decided to be a little lenient when the time came for Ami's punishment
but those thoughts had been quenched almost as soon as they had popped
into her mind. The little bitch had been in a position to do something
when that bald buffoon had hit her yet she had not done anything. The
fool had spoken in a 'holier than thou' tone and her anger had grown.
So powerful had it been that she had felt her muscles returning to her
conscious control once more. Throwing all caution to the wind she
prepared a World Shaking to send his way.
Her body quivered under the strain as the mana poured into
her. It had not quite recovered from her recent tryst with Ranma and
channeling mana was one risk too many. Of course, Haruka did not know
of such silly little things nor would she have shown some common sense
if she had known about the cause for her sudden giddiness. As it was
she just concentrated a little more and prepared the most powerful World Shaking that she had ever thrown.
She had sworn to herself that no one would ever hurt
Michiru the day they had professed their love for each other. She had
lain that night with Michiru's naked body pressing against her side and
she had given some serious thoughts about her life. She had known then
as she knew now that she was hopelessly in love with Michiru and that
she would remain so for the rest of her life.
Their relationship was everything that one could dream more
and then some more. The moments of tenderness, be it love or lust, were
frequent and cherish able for all of eternity. It had transformed her
in more ways than one. For the first time ever she had felt fear for
her life on the racetrack and it had been that very same fear of losing
Michiru forever that had made her become Sailor Uranus. If Michiru had
not been a sailor, she would not have given the Moon Kingdom or the
Silver Millennium a second thought. However, Michiru was the
reincarnated Sailor Neptune and she had donned the mantle of Sailor
Uranus to protect Michiru.
It galled her to think that she had failed miserably in all
the tasks that she had set for herself as Sailor Uranus. She had failed
to protect her princess, she had failed to protect Neo-Tokyo of the
future and most importantly, she had failed to prevent anyone from ever
laying hands on Michiru.
That was the driving reason behind her anger. She had
failed once to protect Michiru but she swore in her mind to the kami
above that she would not let that fat-assed buffoon of a man to see the
light of another day. Gritting her teeth to lift her sword and
channeled energy into it.
"Uranus World Shaking!" she announced pointing her space
blaster sword at a water tank near Genma.
***********************************************************************
The attack tank and exploded against it. The water, several tons of it, headed towards the fat middle-aged martial artist but he
proved to be a too quick to be hit by her attack. As a result, the
huge wall of water passed by him with about twenty yards or so between
him and it. The water pummeled into one of the building behind his
previous resting place and reduced it to dust, such was the energy
contained in the attack.
Genma smirked as he landed softly on his feet. The attack
may have been more powerful than most of the one's he had chanced upon
in his lifetime but against an agile opponent such as him, strength
alone was not enough. Moreover, the girl did not know that he too could
dish out such powerful attacks at random if he thought that the
situation demanded it. In his opinion, the current situation did and
therefore Genma took an offensive stance, one that belonged to the
Yamasenken. He prepared himself to deliver an attack so powerful that
he had used it only once before and that too when he had first created
it. He had not even written down the attack on the scroll that he had
handed over to Ryuu Kumon's father for it was one of the main reasons
why he had opted to seal away the thousand fist techniques. The attack
used a concept that he had learned from the master. It was well known
that the human body could focus only that much energy before the fine
balance between perfect control and absolute chaos wavered. Though the
amount of power that one could channel using one's body varied from
person to person the symptoms that manifested when that fine balance
was reached or exceeded was well documented by the masters of the olden
days. The body would be put under extremely large amounts of stress and
when the energy focused was too high, it simply ate away the body,
bones and all. The ancients had tried very hard to circumvent this
block and they had succeeded.
The answer was quite simple really. All they had to do was
find another focusing medium and what better medium than the earth
itself. The ki and mana lines that flowed throughout the planet could
channel an insanely large amount of power and they used it. It was in
techniques that utilized these 'constructs' that the Yamasenken and the
Umisenken specialized in. The entire 'construct' based attacks
channeled very large amounts of energy and were a danger to everything
for miles around should something go wrong. It was for these reasons
that he had sealed away the two schools. The attacks were simply too
dangerous to be used in anything but the most desperate of situations.
However, seeing the girl hit Ryuu had broken away those
seals and Genma etched the first construct onto the ki lines with his
aura. The second construct could be done in a less than a second and he
doubted whether the girl would channel a large amount of energy in the
time window that she had should he chose to attack.
Not realizing the danger that she was in Haruka stood her
ground and prepared another deep submerge. She felt giddy and nauseous
but discarded the warning signals that he body sent her. She would kill
the bastard and then have that some well earned sleep.
However, before things got any worse, Happousai, Cologne
and Ami interrupted the fight before it could deteriorate any further.
Happousai and Cologne let loose their aura's, which by themselves more
than scared Haruka half to death simply with the amount of raw power
that she sensed emanating from them. It was not everyday that you saw
two extremely old people with power that made a sailor's look like a
cute little puppy. Haruka prepared herself mentally for what she knew
would be the battle of her life. Though she was frightened by the power
they possessed she was determined to get her revenge at all costs.
Ami saw the look on Haruka's face and recognized it for
what it was. She lost her temper for the hundredth time that day took
the threats that the old man and woman had implied a step further. She
had grown tired of the outer's antics at the battle scenes and anywhere
else and decided to put a stop to it. The events of the day had
confirmed err worst fears about the outers. They were worsening by the
day and would continue to do so as long as no one stood up to them. Her
newfound confidence in herself as well as the realization that left
unchecked the outers would undermine the team played a major role in
the decision that she took. With thoughts of setting everything right
but without a thought about the consequences of her actions she let
loose a magical attack at Uranus.
Haruka blocked the attack as best as she could and looked
at Ami in sheer disbelief as though she had grown a second head. Even
when the relationship between the outer's and the inner's had been
young and tumultuous they had not stooped to attacking each other with
magical attacks. That was a boundary, a thin red line if you will, that
had existed between them and now that boundary had been pushed aside in
a moment of haste. She was shocked and that emotion was not the only
one that she felt. Anger at the betrayal anger disbelief that it was
Ami who had attacked her rendered her paralyzed once more. Haruka, the
proud unrelenting warrior of peace and love, stood still, her face
showing all the above-mentioned emotions and continued to stare at Ami.
As she stood, she felt her heart break for the second time in her life.
Everything that they had worked so hard to build was finally gone
forever for from this day onwards nothing would be quite the same
again.
The expression on Haruka's face broke the fog of anger hat
had clouded Ami's mind. Realization of what she had done dawned and she
collapsed onto the ground on her knees and stared at her palms. The
blood that seemed to cover it did not seem to vanish no matter how hard
she willed it to.
"What have I done?" she moaned quietly, tears pouring down
her cheeks and onto her hands where it combined with the grime and soot
to form a dirty little stream that slithered down onto the ground
below.
***********************************************************************
Michiru clutched her stomach and looked on in stunned
silence. The scene that was playing itself right in front of her eyes
would give her nightmares for the rest of her life. She was sure of
that. It was the bond she supposed. The sailors were sisters... almost
sisters. They had to depend on each other if they were to win the war
against evil and they had done so admirably till now, that is. Now,
everything was falling apart. Mamoru was dead. The Princess and her
advisers, for all she knew, may not survive to see the light of another
day. The blood that she had seen in that room had convinced her of
that.
It was saddening to see the ones that you had grown to
trust betray you in your hour of need. *And we were mostly responsible
for this.* Realization dawned upon her and she knew what had driven Ami
to such lengths. It had been them all along. The arrogant manner with
which the outer's had treated the others had been responsible for this
split. The fissures had been small but they had existed all the same.
Moreover, it was the small fissures that destroyed mountains, slowly
growing into big ones until the mountain broke into pieces. They had
chanced upon one such large fissure today but there would be bigger
ones in the years to come if they did not change their ways.
She felt sorry for the poor girl. She really did. The self-
loathing that was evident upon the girl's features was the cause. Due
to no fault of hers, Ami had been driven to do something that she
really hated. The inner's had always had an aversion to violence and
such while the outer's reveled in it. It had been the inners that had
always sought friendship with their enemies whereas the outer's mission
had always been to wipe the damned bastards off the face of the planet.
This basic ideological difference was the one that had almost done them
in this time and perhaps it would do them in the next time. *Could our
differences succeed where all our enemies had failed?*, she found
herself asking. The answer she got made her sick. IT could if things
remained the same as they were. They might owe allegiance to the
princess just like the inner's but they would never be part of the
sailor team as long as their characters and goals remained as they
were.
Horrified by these thoughts, Michiru took a step towards
Ami and almost collapsed. The man could sure hit. Her body felt as
though it had been pulverized, rubbed with salt and then pulverized
under a thousand tons of rock once more. Shaking off the giddying waves
of dizziness, she walked towards Ami with more than a little
trepidation. Something had to be done to make sure that they remained a
team for all of eternity and it was up to the outer's to take that
difficult first step.
Her heart reached out to the raven-haired senshi as she
closed the distance between the two of them. Now that she was nearer to
the girl, her tormented features were more pronounced and it the
mother's heart in her, she supposed, that made her want to reach out to
Ami and console her as best as she could. With care, she knelt by
Mercury's side, ignoring the dizzying shards of pain that sped up her
spine and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.
Ami did not push away her hands, as Michiru had feared she
would but rather clasped her hand with hers and smiled weakly. Michiru
felt the faintest rays of hope shining through the dark clouds of
despair that tormented her soul. *Perhaps there is still some hope.*
Michiru applied firm pressure to Ami's shoulders as a sign
of comfort and Ami's smile grew just a little. She wiped off her tears
with her hands and noticed how grimy they were. With a small snort of
disgust, she wiped her hands on her skirt and proceeded to wipe her
face once more. Finally, she stood.
"I apologize for attacking you Ha... Uranus." she bowed
deeply to the blonde-haired senshi and then turned towards Genma and
the others. "Please forgive my colleagues for having attacked you and
your son. I ask forgiveness for not having been fast enough to prevent
or even stop their childish behavior." and she bowed once more. This
time she bowed lower than she had ever before to signify the depth of
her shame and dishonor. It was meant to impress upon Genma and company
her regret at having failed in her duty as well as to tell them that
she was said was the truth. By allowing herself to be as defenseless as
she currently was she hoped that they would give her the benefit of the
doubt.
Genma stood, with his senses on the alert not knowing how
to respond to the girl. The few lessons that he had ever learnt were
from the master and naturally, they did not cover such grounds as the
one that he was trudging upon now. The master always concentrated on
the steps needed to get a girl into bed and somehow he knew that those
lessons would only make the situation worse should he chose to follow
them. It was at times like these that he wished that he had
concentrated a little more on the puzzle that was the fairer sex. It
truly galled him to think that as powerful as he was all a girl had to
throw was a kawaii look to send his consciousness and common sense
packing like a whipped puppy.
Fortunately, Happousai and Cologne were better equipped and
they spoke saving Genma from embarrassing himself once more in public.
"Your apology is accepted girl though I think that you
could have done better if you had used tighter leashes on these jokes
of warriors that you call friends." said Cologne as she hopped to
within a foot of Ami.
The Amazon elder and the Ami weighed each other. Try as she
might Ami could not shift her gaze from the old woman's. There was
something about the old woman that made her queasy. She could not quite
place her hands upon it but she supposed that it was the sight of a
two-foot woman trotting on a staff that caused the reaction or perhaps
it was the feeling of being stripped in her mind's eye that she felt as
the old woman gazed into her eyes. It was the same feeling of being
weighted against scales that she felt so often whenever boys leered at
her and it made her very uncomfortable.
"You are right obaa-san." she finally replied respectfully.
There was another something about the old woman that commanded respect.
Cologne nodded.
"You'd make a fine warrior one day young one," observed
Cologne.
"Thank you, Obaa-san." replied Ami. She tried to hide her
surprise and failed miserably. She had been caught completely off-guard
by that remark.
Cologne smiled.
"Tough day huh?"
Ami nodded.
Cologne sighed.
"One so young should not be so depressed young one." she
advised the sailor.
"Hai, Obaa-san."
"And you should take care lest that beautiful face be
marred with scars." interjected Happousai.
Cologne immediately gave him an evil eye.
Ami blushed at the compliment. No one had ever said that
she was beautiful before and even though the compliment came from a
very, very old man, she still felt warm and floozy all over.
"And be sure to take good care of your friends in the
future dearie. That excuse of a student over there," he pointed at
Genma, "was about to fry your friend just before you intervened. If I
had not given him the signal to stop then she might be dead right now."
he said in the same tweedling voice he had used before. However, the
tone was slightly different and it sent shivers down Ami's spine. She
realized that the man was telling the truth.
Cologne nodded from the side. Whatever attack the idiot
father of Ryuu had planned on using it would have vaporized the girl
should he have used it.
Happousai continued on. "Genma, get over here."
Genma appeared by Happousai's side in the wink of an eye.
To the untrained eye, it appeared that his form seemed to phase into
existence right by his master's side.
"Yes, master." he wailed. Though he had not prostrated
himself at Happousai's foot, he acted in almost exactly the same way
that he had always acted towards the master. The midget grandmaster was
not to be taken lightly even when he was just fooling around with
maidens.
"See if the boy needs any medical treatment."
"Hai master!"
"And you..." Happousai pointed towards Michiru who stood by
Ami's side with a pensive look on her face. By her side stood Hotaru
with her hands firmly grasped around the silence glaive. The senshi of
Saturn had been released from the hold of the paralyzing strike a
little over a minute before and had displayed some common sense by not
attacking as soon as she had been given back control over her muscles.
Cologne too hopped towards the three outers.
Haruka stood protectively over Michiru and Hotaru. She had
not still gotten over the shock and was even now giving Ami glances
that said 'Why did you betray us?' once every couple of seconds.
Happousai continued. "You better think before you act girl
or the next time your opponent may not be as forgiving as we have
been."
Haruka glared at him in reply. Her hands unconsciously went
around Michiru and Hotaru and pulled them closer to her. This sign of
affection was not lost on the matriarch or the grandmaster of Matsubetu
Katuto Ryuu. The old master snickered. He would clearly see that the
elder women were lovers from the way their ki intermeshed with each
other.
"We better be going then. Genma, how is he?"
"The boy has a minor concussion, master... I think."
replied Genma.
Cologne nodded. She would have been surprised if too much
that blow to the head had hurt any student of hers.
The sailor team looked at the old woman and the old man
unbelievably. They were acting as though they had expected the boy to
get through unscathed from the assault.
"Wha..." words failed to escape Haruka's mouth as she
watched awestruck at the scene that was unfolding around her. Daemons
hit by Neptune's World Shaking attack had fared worse than the boy had.
"See you around dearies." said Happousai and walked away
with the other martial artists in tow.
***********************************************************************
Hiring a taxi had been a good idea. Our lack of knowledge
about the area was not complete enough for us to be jumping over the
roofs with the unconscious boy in our hands.* Thought Genma as he
caressed Ryuu's cheeks with his callused fingers. The boy was still
unconscious, partly because of the fact that he had suffered some
amount of blood and partly because of the fact that Happousai had
pressed a shiatsu point to keep him in the blessed oblivion of
unconsciousness. He had done so to give Ryuu's body the time and energy
it needed to heal itself with its ki.
When the blonde-haired girl had attacked him, he had
decided to retaliate with deadly force only the situation warranted it.
Deadly force was the best way to deal with magic users. It was a
painful lesson that he had learnt in his younger days when he and Soun
were still training under the master. That had not been the only reason
he had unlocked the Yamasenken. Not only had they attacked his son but
also had the galls to try to pull a fast one on him. He had decided to
wipe her out of the face of the planet and would have attacked her had
it not been for the master's signal. Experience, many of them painful
beyond description, had told him to abandon the attack. If the master
thought that the situation did not demand bloodshed, he was inclined to
agree with him. Not only was the master more skilled but also he was
also much better at judging people. Moreover, he had learnt that you
always obeyed a command from the master and did as you were told it no
matter what situation you were in. He had learnt that the hard way and
he had not forgotten that rather painful lesson.
Without relaxing his stance, he had stopped focusing the
ridiculously large amount of ki that was needed to execute the 'Aburu
Hi Kami'. Shortly afterwards he had become sick when the realization
dawned that he had been very close to making a terrible mistake as the
girl who had approached him with the apology had attacked one of her
own in order to protect him and the others. There was a chance that she
did it to fool them but then she must have been a highly skilled actor
to pull it off in the presence of the master and the old ghoul.
*I should really ask the master to teach me the art of
judging people!* Even though the master was a pervert with a capital P,
he had always been a good judge of people. By telling him to stand
down, Happousai was really telling him that the girl had not lied when
she had apologized to him.
Cologne, too sat in the other corner of the back seat with
Ryuu's legs placed over her lap. Genma turned towards the Amazonian
matriarch and stared at her. Her lips curved upwards in a smile and
after a moment a thoughtful look came onto her face. She turned away
from him and gazed out, through the cab window. She was definitely
worried about something. He thought about what she might be thinking
about for a moment and gave up with an exasperated sigh. Their cultures
though very much same in matters of honor and love were still too far
apart. For all he knew she could have been thinking about the moon.
Genma caressed his son's cheeks once more, turned his gaze
outside the taxi, and let his thoughts drift once more. So much had
happened within the last fortnight. Things that he had never thought
would happen had happened and it had been all because of one man
-Ranma. Thinking back to the incident at the Phoenix Mountain he
realized that Ranma had been a God-send to them, arriving in the nick
of time to save Akane and then later himself from his own inner
monsters. Yes, he had fought Ranma for the right to be Ryuu's master.
He had known that he would lose the challenge even before the first
blow had been struck but there were other ways of earning the boy's
respect then just winning. That thought had struck him at just the
right time and he had tried to earn the boy's respect by giving a full
show of himself. He had lost the fight and yet he had won the battle
that counted the most. He could tell from the subtle way that the boy's
behavior had changed that he had succeeded on that account.
It had been a shame that the Tendo's had to lose their home
and the dojo. The old Genma would have been dreadfully worried about it
and would have despaired about the loss of free eats and board for the
rest of his life but the new one felt compassion and pain at the loss
of his friend's house and life. The old one had planned to use his
friendship with Soun and the engagement to freeload off the Tendo's.
Somehow, that thought revolted the new Genma. He had not been sure when
the change had happened but he was sure that it had something to do
with the disrespect with which Ryuu had treated him for close to half a
decade.
He had lost his first born because of his stupidity and he
had sworn to himself that the same would not happen with Ryuu. It had
been that pledge, which had kept him from teaching his second born the
neko-ken though he was still tempted by the powers that it could
bequeath to his son. He had also realized that his son had no respect
for him... no, he had felt it from the very bottom of his being when
they had met the Amazons. The shock of it had proved to be too much for
his system. He had always thought that he had treated his son fairly
though he realized now that his son had hated him for the greedy, honor
less bastard that he had been.
He had tried to redeem himself in front of Ryuu's eyes from
the moment they had stepped outside the Amazon village. He had actually
offered to work when they had begun freeloading at Soun's so that he
may gain some of the respect that he had lost. Soun would not hear
anything about it and he had even made it clear to the mercenary Nabiki
that his dearest friend would not be allowed to work while he stayed in
his house. It had been one of the few times that Soun had ever stood up
to her and shown her the spine that he was famous for in their younger
days.
Though Ryuu's loathing had lessened a little after that
incident, his behavior towards him had still lacked that certain
respect and pride that a boy felt and gave to his father. That had
changed after his duel with the boy's new sensei.
*Ranma could have been someone like Ryuu's sensei if I had
not put him through that stupid training regimen. Oh Ranma! If only I
could see you and ask your forgiveness for all the things that I put
you through at such an young age.* Genma sighed regretfully as some of
the _tougher_ training regimen that he had put that boy through came to
his mind. He had seen the potential in the child and his greed and
foolishness had driven him to drive the boy so hard. He had thought
that his son could take any amount of punishment and come back for
more. His assumptions about the boy had been correct but now that he
thought about it, he realized that no father would have put his son
through even half of the things that he had willingly subjected Ranma
to. In the three years that he had trained Ranma, the boy had come
close to dying nearly two dozen times. The boy had borne it all in the
name of the art and had never complained but for the Neko-ken training
regimen.
Genma's eyes filled with pride as he remembered the inner
strength that Ranma had showed when he had put him through the Neko-
ken. Letting off another sigh Genma looked at his only surviving son
(he had given up hope of ever seeing Ranma alive a decade ago) and
caressed his handsome cheeks with his hands. The boy shifted and
snuggled closer to him. Content to gaze at his son Genma let his
thoughts wander once more.
Ranma, the stranger, had been the best fighter that he had
ever fought. The duel alone had increased Genma's respect for him up
many a notch though it had been on the journey to Ranma's house in the
train that he had finally let himself respect and trust the man's
decisions completely.
***********************************************************************
Flashabck...
*I lost... I lost my last chance ever to gain my son's
respect.* Thought Genma gloomily as the trees whizzed by outside the
train. Even though he had given his all in the fight, it had not been
enough to earn the boy's respect. He still treated him in much the same
way that he had before.
With a heavy heart, Genma left another sigh and turned to
his left. Ryuu, who was sitting by him did not notice him or rather, he
supposed, did not deem it worthwhile to acknowledge his father.
Genma sighed and got up from his seat. *I do not want to
face him as a weak man with no honor!* He thought glumly as he walked
past Nabiki, Kasumi, Akane, Ryouga, Soun and _the master_. He had
thought that taking part in the challenge would have been enough but it
appeared that he had been wrong. *And why does it surprise me that I
was wrong? How many times have I been correct in my life?*
Nabiki sat by herself clutching her pen, her mind
completely focused on the book that she was writing. He had been
unlucky enough to be caught sneaking into her room and he had paid the
price for it. She had made him calligraphy the whole title and she had
been quite strict about it too. She had said something about Panda's
being needed for the Panda breeding program in the Tokyo zoo and he had
got the message. Even now, he shuddered thinking about it. *There
cannot be many fates worse than that one.* Kami, he hated the yearly
visits to the doctor as it was. If he were to be used as a err...
donor, to help in the survival of the Panda as a species he would never
live through the humiliation. Not that he hated the damn animals or
anything, it was just, ahh... a matter of principles.
Kasumi, the sweet angel that she always was, was studying a
cookbook not that she needed it. She was one of the best cooks in all
of Japan and maybe the best cook in the whole world. *Poor thing! This
whole mess must be pretty hard on her.* He truly felt sorry for the
girl. She had been the most affected by the incident during the duel.
The sight of tears on her angelic face had been too hard to bear and he
had looked away. It was the most hear-breaking sight that he had ever
witnessed in his life.
When they had arrived at the dojo, he had not known that
she was an angel in human disguise. If he had known and she had been a
little younger, he would have engaged Ryuu to her but that was not to
be. He had learnt since then that she was in love with Tofu Ono, a
local medical practitioner. The good doctor too, was in love in her
though it seemed that he did not have the courage to confront her at
times. And Kasumi thought that it was cute whenever he danced around
with his Betty every time she was anywhere within a mile of him.
Akane and Ryouga were sitting side-by-side holding hands.
Akane was still sniffling and Ryouga was trying his best to comfort
her. *How is that depressive maniac going to get her out of her
depression?* He thought as he passed them by. He was thankful that Ryuu
had err... made him see sense when they had first arrived at the
Tendo's. Even Nodoka seemed like an angel when you compared her with
Akane. The girl was definitely the worst brat that he had ever seen in
his life and her temper left much to be desired. She called herself a
martial artist and she pounded the one's who pointed out that she
lacked the control over emotions that distinguished martial artists
from martial artist wannabes.
He had chosen _her_ to be Ryuu's fianc�e when he had first
laid eyes on her but thankfully, Ryuu had refrained from making a
choice on the very fist day. In addition, Ryouga was a definite psycho
and gave him the creeps whenever he tried to start a conversation with
him. Even to his not so keen observational skills, it was clear that
the boy was mentally unstable. *The kami only knows what they see in
each other!* He shuddered at the thought and turned his eyes away lest
Akane took offense at that and decided to pummel him into the ground.
Next, his eyes fell upon Soun and Happousai. Soun was
trying to maintain a semblance of dignity but was failing miserably
much to the amusement of the master. The man was practically withering
in his seat and would whimper once or twice a minute at the horror of
it all. Genma shuddered a little as memories of the times when he had
been _alone_ with the master came racing to his mind. The old pervert
could sure come up with the most ingenious of torture err... training
methods. Even now sitting besides the frightened Soun, Happousai seemed
to be enjoying himself. He would give Soun the 'I have got a new
torturing session err... training regimen' look and Soun's whimpers
would dramatically increase in frequency. *No doubt that I too, would
behave like him if I were alone with the master. May the kami have
mercy on Soun's soul!*
Finally, there was Ranma. He was sitting with the _old
ghoul_ by the side and quietly discussing some matter with her. Upon
hearing his footsteps, Ranma lifted his head and excused himself from
the elder. Almost imperceptibly, he pointed towards the back with his
eyes. There were a couple of free seats over there in the corner of the
carriage and Ranma motioned towards them. Genma followed his lead and
took the seat opposite Ranma's.
Ranma did a nice job of flipping through the year old copy
of some sports magazine that was on the table. He flipped through the
pages at random and then finally laid the book to rest. Having made up
his mind on how to begin, Ranma cleared his throat and addressed him.
"Thank you for a worthy challenge, Saotome sensei."
Genma smiled. The smile was a thin veil that failed
miserably to hide the despair that he was feeling. "It still wasn't
enough to earn the boys respect," he murmured, more to himself than to
Ranma. It was spoken so soft as to be inaudible to everyone but him.
Somehow, Ranma heard it and took a deep breath. "It did
Saotome sensei. Did you not see the proud glances that Ryuu shot you at
the Tendo residence when he thought that no one was looking?" said
Ranma with a genuine smile on his face.
Genma perked up at this. "You really think so, Qin-san," he
asked hoping with all his being that what he had just heard was true.
Ranma nodded and Genma almost yelped in joy. *Thank you
kami-sama for listening to my prayers.* He closed his eyes to fully
experience the delicious feelings of joy that coursed through his body.
Ranma waited until Genma had cooled down a little. "The boy
is beginning to respect you once more. I can see it clearly from the
sparkle that he has in his eyes whenever he looks at you." Ranma's
smile grew in size as he looked at the nirvana that Genma was
experiencing.
"Thank you Qin-san, your words bring happiness to an old
man's ears."
Ranma snickered a little. "There aren't many old men who
can fight the way you did today Saotome sensei." he replied.
Genma remained silent not knowing how to respond to such
flattery.
"I also realized that with your considerable skills in the
art you could make a good teacher if you were a little more patient and
a little less adventurous about it." he said, obviously referring to
some of the training regimens that Genma had come up with like the
'carry your old man on your shoulder and run like hell if you don't
want to the menu list of a pack of very hungry wolves' thing.
Genma's cheeks reddened considerably on realizing what
Ranma had meant.
"I have discussed the matter with elder Cologne and she
agrees with me."
Genma nodded. He had a faint idea as to where this whole
conversation was going though he found it hard to believe that it was
really happening to him.
"I would, therefore, like to offer you the post of head
trainer in one of the dojo's that I had recently acquired. How about a
starting salary of eighty thousand yen per month?" asked Ranma.
Genma did not know what to say. *Eighty thousand... let's
hope that Nabiki never hears of this.*
"You will have two weeks paid vacation and full medical
coverage. Should these conditions be acceptable to you, you will start
work in the dojo this Wednesday."
Genma was at a loss of words. Not even in his dreams had he
expected such a proposition. "I don't know what to say." he said at
last.
Ranma smiled. "Just say that you are ready to start your
work, Saotome sensei."
Genma nodded.
"Good! If you so wish, I would like to make you my student.
Is acceptable to you?"
"That would be great." Genma managed to stammer.
"Its settled then. I think that we are done unless you have
something else to say."
"Thank you a very much Qin-san. I will take my leave now."
said Genma and stood up.
Ranma followed suit and father and son bowed deeply and
simultaneously to each other as a show of respect. Genma left and Ranma
followed looking with pride at his father.
End of flashback.
***********************************************************************
The way that he had handled himself that day continued to
amaze even Genma who knew that it was as far apart from the old Genma
as a black hole was to time. It filled him with pride to know that he
was now truly a man who worked to earn his living. For the first time
ever, Genma felt proud of himself and his son.
*Thank you kami-sama. It all worked out in the end.*
***********************************************************************
Soun sat in the front of the cab, sharing his seat with the
master. The diminutive master was puffing his pipe obviously puzzling
over something. Soun thoughts took an introspective turn. He could not
help being ashamed for the way that he had behaved for the past decade
or so. Every time he was free, he could not help thinking about the
coward he had been for a decade or so while his family crumbled around
him.
Genma had helped by being there when he had needed him all
those years back just after Kimiko had died. Otherwise, he imagined
that he would have been a whole lot worse. *Hmmm... Looks like I can
finally think of her without bursting into tears.* thought he with
surprise. *Perhaps things are returning to normal.* Soun knew that
things would have been a whole lot worse if Genma had not been there
when he needed him the most. He shuddered at that thought. He could not
imagine how things would have been worse for his family had all but
gone to the dogs in those ten years.
I abandoned my children on their hour of need.* He found
himself cursing his weak heart and cowardice once again. A lot had gone
wrong with his family and all of it could be traced directly to his
damned cowardice. He had refused to let go of his past and his family
had paid the price. And what a price it had been? His eldest daughter
had built a little fantasy world around herself blocking all the
painful things out of her mind. His middle daughter had become a ronin,
a stain upon the family's honor if there ever was one with her shady
dealings with the Yakuza. He had no direct proof of course, it was not
as if Nabiki would ever leave an open track to her mentors, she was
very careful about that but he knew all the same. His gut told him that
things were so and his training and adventures under the tutelage of
the master had honed them to a very fine edge. The worst was Akane. His
youngest daughter had become a violent brat. She thought that the only
way to show any emotion be it love or hate was with a hammer applied
judiciously onto one's head. How she had gotten that bad went even
beyond his comprehension. The others had changed after their mother's
death but Akane, his little angel Akane, had become the little demon
Akane. It made him more depressed to think about her. He could accept
the fact that she would never be a martial artist with her lack of
control over herself but she had become everything that he had hated in
his childhood. She had become a bully and he hated himself for it. Soun
lowered his head in remorse and thought about the second big problem in
the household.
Nabiki has to be stopped somehow!* He thought worriedly. He
was pretty sure that the police were aware of her dealings with the
Yakuza. It was only a matter of time before she did something really
bad or stupid or both and they put her in the slammer. The stain that
would result from such an action would be incalculable in mainstream
Japanese society and would destroy her sisters' life in the process as
well.
I have to keep her as far away from the Yakuza as
possible.* He thought determinedly. He knew that once caught in the
snake's grasp it was very hard to get away from it but he was not going
to give up without a try. It would strain his already flimsy
relationship with his middle daughter and maybe even break it but he
did not care. The family's honor would be protected at all costs even
if he had to personally erase Nabiki's name from the clan records. That
was the last resort but Soun had made up his mind to take that course
of action if things went too far. There was no way the wayward
delinquent would be allowed to dishonor the memories of her ancestors
and stain the family's good name.
Soun was sure that with a little amount of persuasion from
the master and the Amazons along with his friend as well as himself,
the Yakuza could be made to see reason. There would be a price to pay
but he was willing to pay it. He would rather remain on the Yakuza's
hit list rather than on their _friends and family_ list. He was doubly
sure that the Amazon's would help him if they knew the reasons for his
actions. From what he had heard from Ryuu about them, they too were a
proud people who placed honor before life.
*Akane... Now there's a problem I have no idea how to
solve.* The girl had grown to be very much like her mother when she had
been at Akane's age. She had that stubbornness that her mother had but
while it had been hidden behind a veil of love and kindness in her
mother Akane's was not. Moreover, the fact that she was dating a
certain maniac called Ryouga gave him the jitters. There was something
wrong about the boy though he could not place his hands on what it was.
With a wistful sigh, Soun returned to gazing blankly at the
road as the taxi whizzed past the evening traffic.
***********************************************************************
Happousai thought. He was curious about Ranma. The boy had
an unreadable aura about him. During the duel with Genma, the young
Amazon had used little or no ki, a fact that greatly amazed the
grandmaster of Anything Goes Martial Arts until Genma had fired the
vacuum blade. The attack must have caught Ranma totally off guard
because just for the briefest period of time the boy's impenetrable ki
barrier had faltered. The power he had sensed during that instant had
been unimaginable. He was sure that Cologne had sensed it. He was not
sure whether Soun and Genma had been able to sense it for even then;
the ki had been cloaked by layer after layer of barriers.
He had been meditating in the evening brooding about the
enigma that was Ranma, (he had nothing else to do since Ranma had
forbidden his little hobby while he was staying in his house.) when he
had sensed a huge discharge of ki followed several minutes later by an
even larger discharge. Cologne had unceremoniously barged into the room
and had asked for his help. She had refused to reveal anything but she
did not need too. The second spike that he had sensed was undoubtedly
Ranma. The way that the ki 'tasted' left no doubt about the identity of
the person who controlled it. There was that bittersweet 'aroma' and
that balanced 'flavor' that only Ranma possessed.
They had rushed to the scene of the battle and had been
just in time to rescue Ryuu from the clutches of those _ pretty
girlies_ in _pretty little fukus_. Oh! How he had been tempted to glomp
err... caress those beauties but alas! He could not do so for he had
made a promise on his honor and he always kept his promises. Happousai
was not an honor less, perverted, son of a bitch like most people that
he was. Soun and Genma knew from the good old days when he had trained
them and they kept mum about the whole thing. If they had not known
that he was honorable, they would have thrown him out of the house long
ago. Skillful he maybe but Happousai did not think that he would be
able to stand up to two masters of his school. They were both
formidable fighters in their own way and together they might be able to
beat him on their day.
*Who or what are you boy?* Happousai sighed, his thoughts
drifting once more towards Ranma Qin, of the Joketsuzoku, who had
recently wandered into his life. From the amount of power that he had
felt on the boy, he did not think that the boy was even human. Only the
God's that he had encountered during his adventures had possessed that
level of power. He formed rings by blowing smoke out while he thought
about it. He was getting too old and his patience was wearing thin.
***********************************************************************
"Is she all right?" asked Hotaru standing clear of the
others while they worked on the princess and her wounded friends. She
tapped her fingers on her thighs in nervousness as she watched the
momma and papa work on Usagi and the others.
"Um!" Ami nodded and continued to type away feverishly away
at her computer.
The others did not even deign to reply. They were too busy
with the sailors to be answering such stupid questions. Hotaru
continued to watch from the sidelines, providing help with her healing
hands when momma or papa requested for it.
Ami's aggressive reaction towards them had been all but
forgotten when they had seen the state that the princess and the others
were in. Ami had given them a very concise explanation of the events as
they had happened stressing the 'Ryuu was the one who got the princess
and the others to safety' part. Michiru had been very ashamed about her
actions as had been Haruka. They had apologized to Ami in earnest and
had earned a cold shoulder as an answer. Haruka had been taken aback by
Ami's attitude but Michiru had been forgiving and had actually tried to
console Ami, totally neglecting Haruka in the process. Ami had not
responded as well as she could have and Michiru had withdrawn. After
that, all communications between the three had ceased except for the
word or two that was passed between them every now and then.
"Princess..."
"Uhhh!" moaned Usagi.
"Princess wake up." said Michiru and gently caressed
Usagi's cheeks.
Usagi stirred and her eyes fluttered open.
"Where am I?" she asked in a whisper.
"You are in the company of your guardians, princess,"
replied Haruka who along with Ami and Hotaru had gathered around Usagi.
"My lips are so dry," whispered Usagi.
Ami brought some water and Usagi gulped it down.
Immediately some of her natural color returned to her face though the
change was not all that noticeable against the foreground of caked
blood that was spread unevenly across her face and most of her body.
However, none of that mattered to Haruka. Her princess had
survived and she was going to be all right. Haruka smiled grimly.
*Thank God that she is all right!*
"Usagi-chan, do you remember anything at all?" asked Ami.
She was afraid that there might be some brain damage after all Usagi
had taken a beating during the battle.
"Last thing I remember... Oh God! Mamoru-chan!" whispered
Usagi. Her face grew pale and drawn as images of those last few seconds
played themselves in her mind. Usagi's face looked like a corpse with a
beating heart... a zombie for all purposes with a mind of its own. A
zombie, which wished that death would deliver it out of the miserable
existence.
The others looked on with horrified expressions. Only Ami
had witnessed the murder and if it could affect her so she dared not
think of the ways, it could affect Usagi. The girl had seen her
fianc�e's heart literally torn out of his body. The girl's stood around
the Moon princess not knowing how best to console her. A small part of
their mind knew that Usagi could bring back Mamoru from the dead if she
so wished for but the knowledge did not make the experience any better.
It hurt to see the one that you loved with your life, killed right in
front of your eyes with nothing that you can do to stop it.
"Where is he?" asked Usagi, her voice barely a whisper.
Tears brimmed in her eyes and threatened to flow any second.
"I..." begun Ami and trailed off. She was not sure whether
Usagi could handle the sight of Mamoru's body in the condition that she
was in.
"GODDAMNIT! Where is he?" shrieked Usagi. Tears that had
been threatening to break the emotional dam broke and they flowed down
her cheeks faster than ever before in her life.
Ami and the others shrunk away from Usagi in shock and
fear. They had _never_ seen this facet of Usagi's complex yet ditzy
character before. The ditzy persona was so well embedded that it was
easy to forget the fact that the girl was destined to become a queen.
This then, was part of the myriad of emotions that united to form the
Queen who would rule Neo-Tokyo if or when it came into being.
"Over there princess... I don't think that you should see
him right now," said Haruka pointing with her fingers to the corner
where Hotaru and Michiru had dragged his body. She did not think that
even the ice-queen could.
Usagi gave Haruka another look so unlike her normal
persona. "I will chose what I will do and what I will not do." she
replied in a voice that dripped with barely contained emotion. Everyone
in the room imagined that they felt the room temperature fell by a few
dozen degrees.
Haruka shuddered. She was afraid of this facet of her
future Queen's persona.
Usagi did not notice or rather she did not care. She walked
with slow, deliberately measured steps towards Mamoru Chiba's body.
"Wake up!" she muttered standing over his body as though
her words could bring him back from the dead.
Silence. A cricket was audible in the background.
"Wake up!" she spoke a little louder than before. The tears
dripped onto his forehead and slid off them in a thin line before
finally disappearing into his hair.
Again, silence.
"Wake up! Wake up!"
Usagi was getting hysterical and was screaming with her
very soul but Mamoru remained unmoving. Even the cricket stopped. It
was as though it sympathized with her loss.
"He's dead, Usagi..." said Ami from behind her.
"No! He is not. All I have to do is to use the Ginzishou
and he will be back, you'll see." replied Usagi. She waved the
Ginzishou around the room, all the while glaring at Ami, daring her or
anyone else to rebuke her words.
Ami did not reply nor did any of the others. Rather Ami
stared back at Usagi with tear filled eyes with compassion. She knew
that Mamoru was dead and truly beyond everybody's reach. That thing had
done something to him to prevent them from resurrecting him once again.
She could not explain how or why she felt so but she knew instinctively
that Mamoru was dead and will remain so for all of eternity.
Usagi for her part turned towards Mamoru's cold and
unfeeling body and began to gather energy for the process. A faint glow
of pure white formed around her and she transformed into Eternal Sailor
Moon.
After she had gathered the energy and shored up her
reserves, she released the energy. The energy was meant in anyway to
pull back the dead from the spirit realm. Rather it served as a
powerful beacon that can be felt by those whose spirits were powerful
enough to do so and act as a guide to their material bodies.
It did not work on the first try nor did it work on the
second try. Refusing to give in to the seeds of self doubt that were
beginning to take shape in her mind she tried once more and met with
the same results.
The others barring Ami were surprised when nothing
happened. There was no miraculous rising up from the dead for a second
chance at life. Only silence and the soft breeze that blew in from the
oceans greeted them. Haruka and Michiru turned towards Ami with
questioning looks. Ami quickly took out her computer, which she had
pocketed into the little space in intra-dimensional space that she
owned and began typing away. She intended to find out exactly what that
monster had done to Mamoru to render him so. Perhaps there was a way
around the barrier that thing had erected around his soul. The computer
did not know the answer and she doubted whether it ever would.
Usagi dropped the Ginzishou and stared into her open palms.
The magical artifact fell to the floor with a metallic chink and
rattled for a few moments before it ceased releasing energy in audible
amounts. With a heartbroken, hopeless sob, she collapsed onto the
floor. Her knees made a dull crack when they hit the floor and sent
little slivers of pain shooting through her spine but she did not care.
All that mattered to her was the fact that the man whom she loved more
than her life was dead and there was nothing that she could do about
it. Slowly pent up tears, which had dried when she had transformed into
Eternal Sailor Moon began to flow from her eyes to the blood stained
waxed floor below.
"Why is he not coming back?" she whispered when Michiru
laid a hand comfortingly on her shoulder.
Michiru did not reply but rather stared with tear filled
eyes at Mamoru's body. There was nothing that she or anyone else could
do. The pain that Usagi was experiencing was the worst kind and there
was nothing that they could do to sooth it. Usagi had to go through it
all alone as everyone else in the world. To see your loved one killed
in front of your very eyes was a fate worse than being burnt for all
eternity in the pits of hell. She knew because she had experienced the
very same pain when they had been fighting Mistress-9 and the witches
five.
"Why is he not coming back?" murmured Usagi in a voice
devoid of everything that makes us humans. Gone were the pain, the
anger, the joy, the love, the hope and despair that makes us what we
are. In its stead was an emotionless void that felt like it had been
rendered by a machine except for the fact that the machine would have
done a much better job. This time the words were a little louder though
it lacked emotions as before. And like the last time no one chose to
reply.
"Damn it Mamo-chan! Come back. I love you baka, come back!
Don't leave me all alone in this world," she wailed banging her fists
against Mamoru's body. Blood from the clothes rubbed off on her hands
adding to her already gory appearance. Mamoru's body shook a little
from the force of the blows but remained as still as it had been
before. The attacks that Indra had made on him had made his tendons and
ligaments more suspect to stiffening after death. As a result, the
symptoms of death were setting in faster than was normally possible.
Indra's vengeance had been complete.
"Usagi-chan..." tried Ami. She had to do something.
Anything was better than watching her friend and princess suffer. It
was heartbreaking to see the normally lively girl reduced to such a
state. Perhaps she could comfort her or perhaps she could not but she
would have the knowledge that she had tried to comfort her against the
nightmares that she was sure she would have for years to come. The
whole day was a nightmare the likes of which even the devil himself
could not imagine.
Usagi did not reply and continued to sob into Mamoru's
chest. She had prostrated herself over Mamoru's lifeless person.
"Usagi..."
This time Ami put a little more force behind her words than
was necessary and tugged Usagi forcefully away from Mamoru. The outer's
helped in her efforts. Usagi put up a mighty fight but in the end, they
succeeded in dragging her away from Mamoru.
"Usagi! Calm down."
Usagi continued to rave uncontrollably.
Slap!
Ami slapped her hard on her cheeks. Usagi felt her
reddening cheeks and stopped sobbing. Instead, she looked at Ami as
though she had grown a head. Ami gathered her in a hug and held her
there for a minute. Finally, she released the hug but held on to Usagi
by her shoulders and looked into her eyes.
"You have to take control of the situation, Usagi-chan. We
need you now more than ever." said Ami. Even though she and the outer's
had fought many battles they had always depended on either Usagi or Rei
or Setsuna to act as the commanding figure in the field. And they
needed that commander more than ever before.
Usagi nodded.
She wiped her tears and looked about carefully ignoring the
urge to vomit as she looked at her friends. They were in very bad
shape.
"Saturn..." she looked at Hotaru.
Hotaru stepped forward.
"I want you to heal as much of their injuries as you
possibly can."
Hotaru acquiesced.
"Take care not to drain all your energy. We might need it."
Once again, Hotaru nodded and steeped towards Rei, who was
nearest her. Michiru began to follow but Usagi stopped her.
"I have other work for you. I want you to take a sentry
post outside that door and warn us should anyone approach." she
ordered.
Michiru acquiesced.
"Good," she turned towards Haruka. "I want you to strip
Mamoru of everything that might identify him as a sailor. Once you have
done that, I want you to burn them."
Haruka was stupid enough to ask where.
Usagi growled.
"I do not care where!" she barked. "Now, get on with it."
Haruka did.
Usagi turned towards Ami.
"Help Haruka and when you are done with it, join Michiru at
her post. We will leave when all the sailors have regained
consciousness."
Ami nodded and followed Haruka.
When all them had left, Usagi leaned back against a wall
and slumped down. She pulled her legs close to her body and held them
there with her arms.
"Why did you leave me? You are gone and I don't know what I
am going to do." she murmurred. And she sobbed, silently, tears of
diamonds streaking down her cheeks.
***********************************************************************
"Have you brought him?" asked a voice in the darkness.
"Yes, we have, we barely got to him in time though..."
replied another younger sounding voice leaving the rest unsaid. The
implications of what might have happened should they have failed was
left unsaid for they were all aware of what would happen should they
fail.
It was true that the Dark Dome Close sealed off a part of
space from the long reaches of time. It did by displacing that part out
of space outside the time-stream in the void. The act may seem
unnatural and it was. It sent huge ripples across the time-stream
continuum in the same way that the water in a river, when met with an
obstruction formed ripples. These ripples were the most visible effect
of the attack. There was another more sinister and more dangerous
aspect of the attack that was hidden from all eyes but the most
sensitive.
Like any other technique, Dark Dome Close had to obey the
rules that governed nature. Since the attack displaced a certain part
of space into the void, a small part of the void is displaced into
regular space. Moreover, where the void went the dark one followed.
The dark one was not simply a demon. It was choas
personified and where it went chaos naturally followed. It had been the
fear of releasing the dark one into the world that had caused the
banishment of the attack.
"Good!" replied the first voice. "There is hope then."
"Yes, there is." replied a third voice sounding pleased
with itself.
All three remained silent for a while. Finally, the younger
sounding voice spoke once more.
"Father..." it said.
"Yes, little one. Do you have anything to say?" asked the
first voice.
"Why can't we directly interfere in the events that are
unraveling even as we speak?"
Somehow, one got the feeling that 'the father' grinned at
the question. Even though the room was completely dark, the feeling was
overwhelming to the senses.
"Because we forbade ourselves from doing so, Masaki." he
replied with his amusement evident in his voice.
Again, there was a minute of silence.
"Do you think that it will be enough, father?" asked the
third voice.
"Let's hope that it is so," replied 'father' sounding weary
all of a sudden. "The war has lasted too long, now, peace deserves a
chance... How is he?" asked 'father'.
"He is as well as can be expected father taking into
account the attack she used on him. It's a wonder he survived at all. I
find it hard to believe that he was able to do so." replied the younger
voice.
He is a great manythings that he does not still know about
Masaki but he will learn and he will become powerful."
'Father' had to wait a whole minute before he received a
response.
"What is the power corrupts him father? Surely, we cannot
stand up to him should he choose to go against our wishes." asked
Masaki.
"It was never my plan to control his actions, young one. He
is what he is because of his own making with a nudge or two in the
right places and he will save them all when the time comes for such is
he." replied father, sounding amused by the question that Masaki had
asked him.
"Yes, father. I think I understand."
"Good!" replied 'father'.
"There was a whoosh as though something very big had moved,
displacing all the air in its path. Beads of light popped out of
nowhere and threw light everywhere.
'Father' was over seven feet tall and made completely of
energy, which pulsed, through his body. There was no face or anything
recognizable about him but for the aura of power that radiated from
within him. Power the likes of which men only dream of was his and it
was frightening to think what he could do with that power.
'Father' was roughly humanoid in appearance though he
lacked a physical body; his astral one had its own legs, arms and all
the other parts of human anatomy but for the face, which was missing.
And most importantly, father was not fluorescent. In fact, energy
seemed to flow through him rendering him almost transparent.
In front of 'father' stood his two sons facing him. They
were not as tall as father and they had physical bodies though they too
seemed to absorb the energy that fell on them thus rendering black to
the human eye. Each of them had a shield in their hands that reeked of
power. Though the power they radiated was huge, they were drowned in
the sea of power that was 'father'.
Besides them, stood a pinkish-blue prism. The prism had no
solid walls but the energy that made up the walls behaved like a solid.
A wavering black fog of an aura surrounded it and seemed to suck energy
into the prism making it more powerful by the minute. The aura seemed
to recoil itself like a cobra, spreading its hood to warn off anyone
that might try to break the prism.
'Father' turned towards the snake and it seemed to slink
back away from him. Its aura grew in power in a display of strength
meant to keep 'father' away and strike terror into his heart.
'Father' was not intimidated and he approached the prism.
The aura grew in power and the snake reared back its head and hissed in
warning.
"Be gone, dark one, be gone to thine place." said 'father'
and made a warding motion with his hands.
The aura of power around the prism faltered and the snake
reared its head back in agony. With a flash, the aura seemed to implode
into itself and disappeared. With nothing to stop itself from
disintegration, the prism broke into shards of energy that dissipated
harmlessly in a brilliant show of colors. Ranma collapsed onto the
floor where he lay senseless.
'Father' looked relieved. Having the cancer near him was a
painful experience. He turned to his 'sons'.
"See to him, Jimmu," said 'father'.
The third one nodded and approached Ranma. He took hold of
the unconscious master and craddled him as he would a child. An aura
power burst forth from within him and the two of them disappeared.
'Father' looked at the spot where they had been a moment
before for what seemed like an eternity and then turned towards Masaki.
He sighed in a way that hinted at his enormous age and wisdom. Masaki
stood in alert, waiting for his father's orders. Finding no words forth
coming he tried himself.
"Father..."
'Father' turned slightly and with a little nod of his head
acknowledged Masaki.
"When will all this senseless destruction end?" asked
Masaki sounding incredibly tired.
'Father' looked at him and smiled a little.
"It will soon enough, young one... it will soon enough."
"But why father? Why all this destruction? Why can't they
understand that one cannot exist without the other?"
'Father' sighed deeply.
"It is their nature to fear that which they don't know
anything about, I suppose."
Masaki remained silent. Sensing his thought father consoled
him.
"Let the natural way of things take their course and all
will be well, young one."
"But still father, Chola is powerful more powerful than all
of them combined. How can he defeat his superior in almost all fields?"
asked Masaki.
"I am sure he will find a way," replied 'father'
soothingly.
"It will be so much easier father if we just involve
directly in that which is to come."
"Yes, it will, but that is not the way things are meant to
be. He will have to face Chola alone, the sailors and the others will
be their vanguard but he will be the only one who can face Chola alone
in the field of battle and strike the killing blow."
Before Masaki could reply, Jimmu returned and knelt before
'father' in a show of respect.
"Arise, young one. How fares he?" said father laying a hand
on Jimmu's shoulders.
Jimmu arose. "Father, he is weak but his reserves are
replenishing themselves fast. He will be returned when he has recovered
all the energy that the dark one had sucked off him. I have designed
the spell so," he said confidently.
"All is well then," replied father.
"Yes, all is as well as can be father," replied the two
'sons'.
'Father' nodded and drifted off in thought.
Jimmu spoke and broke the silence.
"Father..."
'Father' turned and raised an eyebrow or what would have
been an eyebrow in a human. The feature was unidentifiable but the
action was similar to raising an eyebrow.
"The guardian of time..."
'Father' nodded and his eyebrows burrowed in thought for a
minute. Finally, he spoke.
"I am aware of that problem Jimmu, what do you make of it?"
Jimmu paused. "She has forgotten her duties father and is
representing the very things that she was meant to protect against. Her
actions have become increasingly despotic over the last hundred
years... Her goals are noble but the path she had taken to reach them
are not."
'Father' nodded.
"A visit might be in order then."
***********************************************************************
Setsuna walked briskly towards the 'junction'. The
'junction' was a location in the time-stream where you could view the
past, present and the future if you so wished. There were several
'junctions' in the time-stream at any given time and d they had
received their name from one of her ancestors. The term seemed
appropriate and it had struck. The senshi of time was in many ways
connected with the time-stream. The other sailors accessed the power
through concentration and skill alone while she and the other guardians
of time did not. In order to give her a greater degree of control over
the stream the Gods had bound their souls to the time-key and thus to
the time-stream. The time-key was in fact the guardian of times
connection to the time-stream, letting them manipulate it with their
force of will, a sort of keyboard if you will. With the time-key in
your grasp, you can do amazing things like speed up time, slowdown time
or even stop it.
The key was many things but it was not a physical object
though it felt and acted like one in the real world. The key was the
_bond_ between the sailor and the time-stream and it was the sign of
the carrier's power. One did not need it in the gates of time or in the
time-stream for you needed to have it to be able to get inside the
time-stream. And it did not have powers of its own. It was plainly a
decorative item that signified the office and power of its bearer. All
this Pluto knew and all this she chose to ignore as if her ancestors
had opting to carry the 'key' in her very own hands inside the time-
stream.
She reached the gate, which was always positioned at one of
the more important junctions and examined the time-stream once more.
Her bond with the time-stream helped her sense these 'junctions' and
'gates' for they were many in number instinctively.
The time-stream had changed during her absence but it had
not been for the better. Things were much worse now it appeared. There
were more 'vortices' and what not that threatened the time-stream and
the whole situation looked much worse than before. The 'vortices' were
bigger and stronger and the ripples were becoming the size of tidal
waves.
*So the threat does not end here?* She thought worriedly.
After the thing had escaped her 'Dark Dome Close' she had thought, no
hoped that the power she had demonstrated would have been enough to
ward off the thing and it would leave them alone.
*What are we going to do this time?* She thought trying to
push away the despair that was creeping into her heart.
Fate had other things for her though and she felt her
thoughts interrupted by a pulse, the likes of which that she had never
sensed before during her entire service as the keeper of the gates of
time. The pulse was... felt natural though it was not. Pluto felt knots
forming in her stomach. Something told her that whatever was happening
was monumental and it involved _her_, which meant that it could mean
only one thing.
The gate glowed yellow and opened in a cacophony of colors.
Pluto continued to watch in horror. They could not do that
to her in their darkest hour of need. In any other time the sailors may
have been able adapt to a life without her counsel but with the events
that were happening they required her presence and her wisdom to have
even the slightest chance of surviving the thing. Her Princess and the
sailors needed her more and ever and if she left them then all that
they had endured would be wasted. There was the slightest chance that
they might be able to rebuild the future that they had lost but with
her gone then all would have been in vain. True, she had taken a chance
when she had used the 'Dark Dome Close'. The attack had not been banned
by the kami for nothing. It ripped off a part of the time-stream and
accomplished the same things that the guardians of time were sworn to
fight against. The kami had forbidden it and had warned about dire
punishments. And they were going to punish her.
Two Gods emerged from the gates.
Pluto looked at them with a sense of foreboding and terror.
The terror was so great that it threatened to devour her from the
inside out. *They are here to strip me of my powers as a guardian and
punish me!*
"Plea..." she began before they interrupted.
"Greetings guardian!" said the taller and older looking one
with the goatee. The God was looked to be in his mid-forties though he
was in all likelihood several thousand times that age. His body had a
rich tan and had curly mane of blonde hair that stretched to his
shoulders. He had a shield of jade on his left hand and a brace made of
the 'holy alloy' on the other. The brace and the shield reeked of power
the likes of which that she had not even felt around the late Queen
Serenity.
"Huh!" she managed to stammer after a moment of silence
that seemed to stretch for an eternity. Her voice seemed to have failed
her and at a lose of words. She found herself flabbergasted and all at
once terrified by their sudden appearance.
"We have come here to summon thee to face the council."
Replied the shorter one without a trace of emotion in his voice. He
looked to be in his mid-twenties though there was an ageless wisdom in
his eyes. Like his companion, he too had a tan on his body and had blue
eyes that reminded her of her father from the time of the Moon kingdom.
He too had the same pair of armaments together with a Bo staff made
from the 'tree of life'. His features seemed soft and she would have
immediately opened her barriers to him if it were not for that
something that she could not quite identify that seemed to hang about
him. *He has blood on his hands.* She realized and panicked even more.
Though there was no blood on his hands it was clear from the manner in
which he carried himself that he was a blooded warrior who had killed
before and who will not hesitate to kill if circumstances called for
such a course of action.
Pluto's face whitened. *They are really going to revoke my
powers and kill me if I refuse.*
She nodded mutely and followed the two Gods into the gate.
***********************************************************************
The cab stopped in front of the Qin residence. The cabby
charged a little extra for having to put up with foreigners and the
little old Grandmaster of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts.
Happousai was famous throughout Japan it seemed. Cologne paid the man
and turned towards Genma. Soun had Ryuu in his hands and he together
with Happousai carried the boy into the yard.
"Genma Saotome..."
Genma turned astonished at the respectful way that the
Amazonian elder was addressing him.
"Yes, elder," he replied giving her the same respect that
she had given him.
"I want you to tell Kasumi to prepare some tea." she said
poggoing on her staff beside him.
Genma stopped in his tracks and stared at the retreating
matriarch. All his thoughts and emotions at that announcement were
summed up in a single word.
"Huh!"
Cologne turned towards him. Her staff grinded to a halt,
burying itself an inch or two deep into the soft earth. An owl hooted
in the distance. She gave him a once over as though she could not
believe how stupid men were.
"Its for Ryuu. Get my great granddaughter Shampoo and tell
her to help Kasumi in preparing Formula #819. Shampoo will know what to
do."
"Hai, elder!"
Genma's bulky form disappeared fast behind the walls of the
house. Cologne stood as she was and watched him long after he had
disappeared. Finally, she too hopped into the house.
She poggoed upstairs into Ryuu's room. Akane and Ryouga
stood by the door while Happousai sat beside the boy pressing a shiatsu
point or two as he tried to adjust the ki lines in Ryuu's body.
She pushed through the crowd and joined the old grandmaster
of Matsubetu Katuto Ryuu. Soun arrived a minute later with the first
aid kit and proceeded to make himself useful. The three of them
continued to work in silence.
"What happened to Ryuu?" asked Akane at length.
Before anyone could answer, Kasumi arrived with the tea.
Shampoo followed close behind and she too joined Akane and Ryouga
outside the door.
Happousai released the sleeping point temporarily and made
Ryuu drink the tea before reactivating it once more.
Finally, all three got up.
"See to it that no one disturbs the boy." said Cologne to
Kasumi and poggoed away.
Kasumi nodded and pushed the others out of the room.
***********************************************************************
Author's rants:
Sorry about having taken so long, I had the worst case of
writer's block while writing this chapter and all things were shot to
hell.
To those of you who think that Genma's skills in the art
are OOC PPPPPLEEEEEEAAAAASE! You don't think that a half-competent
moron could create the Yamasenken and the Umisenken do you?
I think that Genma in canon is a greedy, cowardly survivor
who conceals quite well his skills in unarmed combat. Of course, these
are my views, you may think and believe what you want but for this
story Genma is powerful in his own right.
C&C is most welcome.
The story is hosted at the following sites:
1. Mine (http://samrtaleck.anifics.com)
2. Lady cosmos (http://www.crosswinds.net/~ladycosmos/)
3. Rakhal's Penultimate Ranma Fanfic index
(http://www.rakhal.com/FFIndex/lstmain.html)
4. FFML archives
(http://miniarchive.dyndns.org:123/cgi-bin/MiniArchive.exe)
5. Mediaminer fanfic archives (www.mediaminer.org/fanfic)
I would like to take this oppurtunity to
prostrate myself in front of my pre-readers. Thank you, guys! This
couldn't have been possible without all of you:
jakub [jpilecki@poczta.onet.pl]
Kaz [kazblah945@aol.com]
Madcat [madcat08@hotmail.com]
Brain [bmccullough@nucles.com]
James Merritt [j.merritt1@home.com]
Philip Penty [plainswaker@hotmail.com]
Nathan Shuker [rezantis@hotmail.com]
Zero [shinzero@home.com]
Hints for you readers from the author:
Hint #1: Arun does not write to a schedule, he really has
to spend a lot of time with his psychiatrist.
Hint #2: (for those out standing critics out there[;)])Call
Arun anything you want in your mail provided (though he won't) he has
the right to call you by these same names. Arun appreciates
constructive negative comments and he really loves the positive
comments. Its the 'Go to hell you mother F***ing Freak of nature' and
such that he hates. Please send me your negative comments though I
would be most grateful if you would tone down the I hate you part a
little.
Hint #3: The truth is out there, hey, don't ask me where
but is out there since Fox 'spooky' Mulder says so.
Hint #4: There is no hint #4.
Hint #5: Read the author's rants section if there is one.
It would clear some of yer questions as well as create some totally
unrelated ones.
-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: destiny06.txt
-- Desc: destiny06.txt
SMARTALECK PRODUCTIONS
Destiny
By arun<arundude1@yahoo.com>
<arun2110@sancharnet.in>
Chapter06 <Originally completed on 10/25/2001> <REVISION
#0>
This is a Ranma 1/2 - Sailor Moon crossover with certain
aspects of Ramayana.
Disclaimers:
Rumiko Takahashi and Shogukkan own Ranma and the cast
members of Ranma 1/2. Rumiko Takahashi is one of the most brilliant
people to walk on the face of this earth. We the fans of the anime
world are forever indebted to her for giving us Ranma and co. Thank you
Rumiko Takahashi for bringing laughter back into our lives.
Naoko Takeuchi, Toei animation and KODANSHA, owns sailor
Moon and its characters.
I do not own the characters of both these shows, nor do I
even pretend to own them. This work of fiction is but a tribute to the
above anime shows.
Guys:
*....* indicate thoughts. In the first and second chapters
<...> indicates Japanese and "..." indicates Chinese.
In all the other chapters, the reciprocal is true.
***********************************************************************
Nabiki tapped her fingers impatiently against the table. Her assistant
Yuchida Yanega was taking and wasting a lot of her precious time.
Didn't the fool know that time was money and that wasting it by being
late for the meeting was costing them money?
The restaurant that she was seated in was in the far north
corner of Juuban. It was a quiet place she had learnt from her
enquiries and she knew from personal experience that it was so. Her
business dealings had made her more aware of the modern world and Tokyo
in general. An Ishida Tokugawa owned the restaurant. A quiet man whose
ancestors, the Tokugawa shoguns had ruled Japan before the Meiji
restoration. It was ironic that the descendants of the powerful shoguns
had been reduced to running a restaurant and yet such were the ways of
the modern world.
The restaurant, aptly named 'The Flower of Spring' had been
started about a decade ago. It had done well though not particularly
so. Then one fateful day three years back poor Ishida's wife had met
with an unfortunate accident. Ishida lacked the monetary resources to
take care of her medical bills and it was at that time that a kind
gentleman from one of the 'houses' had stepped in. Ishida had held out
at first refusing to have any part to play with the Yakuza but the man
had assured him that they only wanted to help his wife and did not have
any ulterior motives.
Love had won in the end and Ishida had gone against his
better judgment. The Yakuza had helped but had asked for a small favor.
One little favor had led to another slightly bigger favor and soon word
had spread of Ishida's connections with the underworld. His clientele
had stopped and business had ground to a halt. Ishida had found himself
in dire straits with naught a rope to haul him onto the safe shores
that lurked just beyond his arms reach. The Yakuza had moved in then
and 'The Flower of Spring' had become a front for them.
Ishida and his family got a pittance of the profits while
the Yakuza took the lion's share for the friendly protection that they
were giving him and his restaurant as well as his family members.
The business had returned but this time the clients were
not the innocent white collars and the hard working manual laborers
that had kept the place afloat before. Instead the clients were
hardened criminals and in some cases murderers as well who worked for
the different clans such as the Yamaguchi-gumi, one of the premier
'families' of the Japanese underworld.
*The poor fool!* Thought Nabiki absent-mindedly as she
caught a glimpse of Ishida behind the counter. There was no one else in
the restaurant at the time all thanks to her contacts in the Yakuza.
The Yamaguchi family had plenty of interest in cultivating her 'gifts'
and they treated like one of their high-ranking family members.
'Father' had told her many times that she was destined to be one with
the family and that she would rise amongst its ranks to the throne some
day in the future. She believed him for who could outsmart Nabiki
Tendo, businesswoman extraordinaire.
Ishida had paid the price for being the sheep when the
wolves were prying around. *Too bad sheep's and wolves do not mix. It
seems ironical though, the wolves cannot survive without the sheep and
the sheep cannot survive without the wolves.* She thought to herself.
The fools in the government did not realize that without the wolves to
keep the sheep strong, the sheep would grow weak and die off
eventually. It was simple Darwinism at work really. The sheep needed
the challenges posed by the wolves to survive, else they too would
stagnate and they _were_ complex animals though their behavior seemed
to be simple to those who observe them daily. And the chaos theory says
that any system that stagnates would collapse in on itself and be
destroyed by its own complexity or something like that. She had never
been good at analogies and though she implemented the various theories
of Chaos mathematics in the business frequently, she had never been
good at explaining the theory to her aides and such.
Taking a deep breath to calm her rising temper Nabiki
looked at her wristwatch for the thousandth time. It seemed that
Yuchida was nearly an hour late. She decided that she would wait
another hour before calling it quits.
"Where is the damned fool?" she spoke aloud in frustration
though not loud enough for Ishida to hear.
*I might as well order something to eat.* Thought Nabiki
and tapped the table a bit louder than before. Ishida did not need a
second hint as he was at her side in the wink of an eye. The Yakuza did
not pay you in monetary terms but they did spare your life for which
you had to be eternally grateful.
"Do you require anything mistress?" he asked her in as
humble a tone as he could manage.
Nabiki nodded. "Yes, I would like some sushi and pork buns
please." she said playing the part of the customer all too well.
Ishida for his part kept up the charade. He knew that she
always ordered the very same dish every time she visited the restaurant
and yet they played the game time and time again.
"As you wish, mistress!" *Bitch!* He turned towards one of
only two waitresses who still worked for him and ordered her to fetch
the food. The food had been prepared just a minute or two ago in
anticipation of her orders and not a minute too soon, he thought
thankfully to himself. You do not keep influential members of the
Yakuza waiting.
The waitress arrived with piping hot plates of the Japanese
cuisine and Nabiki took a little bite of a pork bun.
"Hmmmm..." murmured Nabiki as she lost herself for a brief
moment enjoying the delicious buns. She nodded her approval and Ishida
left her to her ministrations.
She was done with the buns and was moving on to the sushi
when Yanega finally showed up. She cast him an evil eye and the boy
gulped audibly. No one wanted to get on Nabiki's bad side it was _not_
healthy to one's life to piss her off.
With a little flick of her chopsticks, she offered him a
seat and he took it. Sweat was beginning to emerge on the young man's
forehead.
Nabiki took her time and Yanega had to wait almost two
minutes, which would have been better spent in hell (there you knew
what they were going to do and therefore the anxiety attacks did not
take place.) before she spared him a glance again. She pushed the plate
aside and took a long sip of the red wine. Finally, she wiped her mouth
and the waitress scurried to clear the table.
"So..." she began.
Yanega felt his heartbeat quicken by just that much. She
used that tone of speech whenever she was furious.
"Umm..." he stuttered not knowing how to apologize.
Nabiki gave the poor boy an evil eye, which did not help
him any. His stuttering only grew worse.
"I am waiting," she said impatiently.
Yanega still could not overcome his jitters.
"Well..." Nabiki's voice was assuming that emotionless tone
she used whenever she was extremely angry.
*The calm before the storm.* Yanega gulped and began. The
bitch never failed to scare the shit out of him.
"I am sorry that I am late ohaya-bun." he tried with his
fingers crossed under the table.
Nabiki did not deign to reply. Instead, she raised her
eyebrows and waited for his explanation.
"I... there has been what appears to be a terrorist attack
on the other side of Juuban and all traffic had ground to a halt.
Getting here from Nerima-ku was a miracle on his own," he ventured.
True, it had been difficult to get on the subway or even on the buses
but it had not been as bad as he was implying. Saving his skin took
precedence over all the things about honesty that 'the bitch', as he
usually referred to Nabiki in his mind, had taught him had been
forgotten.
Nabiki arched her eyebrows a little higher.
The beads of sweat now began to trickle down Yanega's skin.
Seeing it, she smiled inwardly to herself. It was fulfilling to see the
SOB sweat it out in front of her. She knew that he would do the same if
he were in her position so it made sense to put him through hell every
chance she got.
"Accept my humble apologies Ohaya-bun." Yanega tried again.
Nabiki nodded and drooped her eyebrows. Yanega let out a
breath that he had not known he had been holding.
"Have you got the information that I wanted?" asked Nabiki.
Yanega nodded and handed over two medium sized folders to
her. "This is all I and the others could get on him on such short
notice." he replied.
A small grin bloomed on Nabiki's face. *Not bad! Not bad at
all!* She had not expected him to gather this much information on their
host in such a short time.
Yanega continued, "Mr. Ranma is from the Honshu Island, a
small village near the Agano River. His birth records seem to indicate
that he is nearly thirty five years old..."
Nabiki interrupted him. She could have sworn that Ranma was
not thirty from his appearance. "Thirty-five... have you verified it?"
Yanega nodded. "We double checked it, went through all the
proper channels and all that. There was not much information about him
in the public archives but when we used some of our contacts inside the
government we learned some interesting details..." Yanega paused to let
the information sink into Nabiki's brain.
"He is well off apparently and the source of his wealth is
a mystery... The government knows more than it is willing to reveal
though. There are three folders marked 00 and our contact refused to
reveal the information in them.
"He is currently staying in the Juuban prefecture and he
has a job as a physical education instructor in Juuban high."
Nabiki remained thoughtful for sometime. "I want you to get
the information on those top secret folders. I do not care what you do
to accomplish it. I want two 'dogs' on his back at all times."
Yanega scribbled the instructions down.
"Now, it seems that it will be quite a while before I
return to Nerima. I want you and Sakura to prepare a more detailed
report on the business every weekend. I will come down there this
Friday and I expect everything to be running smoothly. We do not want
to lose money."
Yanega nodded.
Nabiki shifted through the Ranma Qin folder and gave Yanega
the look. The boy withered.
"Well, what are you waiting for? An invitation maybe? How
many times do I have to tell you that time is money? Now, get lost."
she sweetly barked at him.
Yanega was only glad to acquiesce.
***********************************************************************
They walked. A blind led by two guides. One in front and
another at the back. An armed escort of sorts if you will. All around
them there was nothing but darkness, the likes of which one cannot
imagine let alone explain.
And they walked. The distance they walked might have been a
few hundred kilometers or a few kilometers. They did not know which nor
did they care. For without points of reference time was of no import.
Still they walked. For there was nothing else, they could
do.
There is an old Chinese saying - The journey of a thousand
miles begins with a single step. The truth in those words is profound
for we can only finish that we have started or that which has been
started.
So they walked, intent on finishing the journey that they
had started. Two spirits of the old leading a guardian - a watcher of
the gates of time.
They walked and Pluto followed in their footsteps. Her mind
was torn asunder by the silence and by her fear. Her thoughts whirling
around like a hurricane of monstrous proportions.
She was afraid and anxious and she had plenty of reason to
be. Never before in the history of the gates had such a thing happened.
She felt that it definitely did not bore well for her. She was aware of
the things that she had done and her awareness made her fears burn like
a maelstrom of fire.
There were many things that she had done to make the Neo-
Silver Millennium of the future possible.
She had killed. More than once and not always the guilty.
Sometimes it had been the innocent to whom she had dealt the cards of
death. Oh the nightmares that she had whenever she had killed an
innocent man/woman! However, the nightmares had never stopped her. She
had been like a woman possessed by the holy fires of the God's. Good
and evil had not mattered nor had innocence or guilt. Not even the path
had mattered. With but the goal in mind she had acted and acted quickly
and decisively without conscience or the other bric-brac. True,
innocents had died and her hands would forever retain the saffron hue
of their blood but she was willing to live with the memories of her
terrible acts. The looks on their faces were forever etched into her
mind and they would never go away serving as remainders of the
sacrifices that had been done for a bright and wonderful future. She
could never forgive herself for having done what she had did to them
but she had sworn upon their souls that she would ensure that the
planned future for which they had all sacrificed their lives would come
to be.
So many had died she thought with a shudder. So many had
died by her hands and so many had died by the hands of those that she
had let live. Hitler, Syyed Qutb, Stalin, Mao Zadong... the list went
on and on. So many and yet, all had been in vain.
The sailors were about to face their darkest hour and she
would not be there to guide them with her knowledge and wisdom. The war
was lost even before it had begun she thought bitterly.
She had reasons plenty to be bitter.
Her innocence and the Silver Millennium were just two of
the numerous things that she had lost and what had come of them...
nothing.
"Are we there yet?" she asked, partly to strike up a
conversation in the hopes of learning more but mostly to rid her mind
of those thoughts. Slowly but surely, the silence was driving her mad.
"We will be," replied the young one in front of her.
She had hoped that for something better than a short and a
straight to the point answer but it was not to be. She kept her silence
realizing that there will be no conversation.
Madness tried to creep into her mind but she fought it
back. Like a tidal wave of immense fury, it pressed forward and she
held it back, her cup against the overwhelming power of the ocean. In
the end, she was destined to fail but against all odds, she struggled.
Hope flickered in her mind and as long as it did the madness could not
break in.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the God's
stopped and so did she. The tidal wave receded to the edges of her mind
once more and anxiety took its place.
She stood in the middle of nowhere, not sure of what she
must do or what will happen.
Seconds stretched into minutes and minutes seemed to
stretch into an eternity. Abruptly the silence ended.
"Guardian..." said a voice, rich with power, age and
wisdom.
She knelt. There was something about the voice, something
that her little mind could not comprehend that made her want to kneel
and expose her very soul to whoever was behind that voice. She knelt
and looked to the ground fearful that laying her eyes upon the source
of the voice would destroy its sanctity somehow.
She felt the face behind the voice grin and she felt
herself growing giddy at the thought that she had measured up to the
standards.
"Arise guardian!"
She arose but still refused to take her eyes of the ground.
Tears of joy trickled down her cheeks.
"Tell me child, why are you here?" the voice asked.
"Father..." she found herself surprised by the words that
had come out of her mouth even though they seemed to be the most
natural thing to say. " I am here to be judged."
A pause. She imagined that she felt 'Father' frown and she
felt her heart weigh down with guilt.
"No child, you are not here to be judged."
She was shocked out of her wits when she heard those words.
*Why am I here then father, if not to be judged?*
"Patience child, patience. You will learn all when the time
is ripe." he replied. 'Father' had gleamed her thoughts from her mind
to answer them for her.
She nodded.
"You are strong. Not many can pass through the hall of
eternity and retain their sanity," he said.
She blushed. Somehow, hearing those words from him filled
her with unimaginable joy and pride.
"Thank you father!"
'Father' burst into laughter.
"The pleasure is all mine child."
She cheeks reddened some more.
"You are beautiful child. And you are strong and fragile at
the same time." He paused. "Tell me child, why are you confused?" he
asked feeling her thoughts.
She remained silent. He had said that she would know all
when the time was ripe and she was willing to wait for it. *Anything...
Anything for father.*
'Father' sensed her thoughts and chuckled a little. She
felt his face assume a more serious expression.
"Impatience is ill befitting one in your post child," he
chided.
She lowered her head further in shame.
"I am sorry father."
He grinned and she felt happy once more.
"Child, you are here because of your actions... you are
here to get a glimpse of the future and make a choice," he said at
length, his voice acquiring serious tones as he spoke.
She remained silent waiting for him to fill in the details.
Then she would speak.
"Look guardian... look into the future and see what maybe,"
he said.
And she did. Images of two separate futures filled into her
mind and collapsed onto the ground, clutching her head in pain as the
filtered through her mind.
It seemed to take an eternity - the images filtering into
her mind and she screamed a voiceless scream that had enough agony
behind it to rattle the very foundations of heaven and Earth. Madness
would have been a comfort in her condition but mad, she was not.
Finally, the flood diminished into a trickle and she got back onto her
feet.
"Why?" she asked him.
"Did you not know guardian that one must act without
acting?" he asked her gently. "For someone with such inner strength
your lack of hindsight is appalling." he chided.
She felt like a piece of garbage when she heard those words
from his mouth. And she felt a hate, pure and complete, grow in her
mind. It was directed towards her and her face paled as all the
terrible things that she had done came back to haunt her mind. She
collapsed onto the ground once more and she sobbed.
She sobbed and she sobbed until her heart was pure once
more. Her innocence was returned back to her and her guilt thrown away
but she did not stop. So great was her despair.
For an eternity or was it a minute or a day or an hour or a
day or a week or a month or a year, she did not know and she did not
care, she cried. Finally, the flood of tears trickled down and stopped
altogether.
She felt a comforting hand on he shoulders. She wiped her
wet cheeks and she looked up and saw 'Father'.
He smiled.
Her fears and tears melted away. She smiled back.
"Do you realize where you went wrong, child?" he asked in
the softest, sweetest voice possible.
She nodded her head in the affirmative.
He hugged her and she melted into it. She was like a child
in his arms and she cried, this time in joy in his hands. Her innocence
shone around her like a star.
'Father' held her there for the longest time. Finally, he
withdrew. She looked disappointed but the emotion was gone from her
visage as soon as it had appeared.
He kissed her on her forehead and drew back to arm length.
He smiled and she smiled back at him, her eyes shining with
unconditional love.
"Do you realize what you must do then, child?"
She nodded. "Yes, father, I do."
He did not reply but the twinkle in his eyes said that he
was pleased. She basked in their luminescence.
"I am sorry father... I am so very sorry for..." words
failed her and she looked at him with regretful eyes.
He hugged her and comforted her, telling that everything
was all right.
***********************************************************************
Slowly Ranma opened his eyes and looked at the heavens.
He could feel the grass against his arms and he could smell
them too. With little effort he turned sideways as he lay and came face
to face with a rabbit feeding just a couple of feet from him. It paused
in its feeding, ready to flee at a moment's notice and looked at him
for the longest minute. Then it continued having decided that he was
not a threat.
Ranma lay as he was, supporting his head with his right arm
and looked on. His eyes had a blank look in them as he tried to process
and sort out him memories.
The ki and the mana flows told him that he was within fifty
miles of Tokyo and that was enough for him for now.
*What happened?*
The last thing he remembered was the fight with the girls
and the last girl trying to fry him with some attack... He could not
remember anything after that point. His memory was cloudy at best and
completely blank at worst.
*And then what?*
Try as hard as he could he could recollect nothing. The
memories lurked just beyondhis grasp.
*What is going on?*
He brooded for a little while and gave up. If he could not
recollect what had happened then he might as well pursue other avenues
or think about other pressing matters.
*And what do I do about the sailors?*
He was worried about that situation. Not that they would
hurt him or anything like that but he was afraid that if they persisted
in their kill Ranma policy he might have to take a hard stance. He was
afraid that the situation would come to that.
*Shoot and ask questions later, what kind of policy is
that?* He would not have been worried too much if they did not have
that mush power in them. The girl's practically oozed power when they
were mad! Worst of all they seemed to be pretty stuck up with the idea
of eliminating him.
*And I will be damned if I know why?* He thought grimly to
himself.
Sure, it was easier to assume that the girls had
overreacted on seeing the battle scene but he was not a dumb sod. He
had felt and tasted their ki and they had been filled with hatred
towards him.
Less knowledgeable people would have thought that the
energy-absorbing aura that had surrounded him had made them respond as
they had and he wanted to believe it too. But that was not the truth
and he knew it. Everybody's ki was 'entangled' and they had definitely
been on the lookout for him.
Ranma sighed in defeat. It had always been like this
through most of his two thousand years of wanderings and it would
remain so as long for as he lived. It was human nature, he supposed but
that explanation provided more questions and answers. Finally, he
abandoned that line of thought and focused on the ki and mana patterns
that he had memorized during the last few moments of his battle with
the sailors.
The change in ki and mana patters had been subtle, more so
than most of the techniques that he knew of and the aroma and the
texture had also been different. He did not know of any technique that
accomplished these last two effects and he was curious as to the
purpose of such a technique.
*Could it have been a teleportation spell? Naaah! It that
were so I would have tasted something similar when those girls
teleported to the battle scene.*
The train of thought was logical and correct he decided.
Yet, it puzzled him. If the technique was not a teleportation spell,
how had he ended up fifty miles outside Tokyo?
*Let's go through the facts once more.*
He recalled the events once more and tried another set of
logic but in the end realized that it was flawed.
*Which means that I was proceeding down the right road
before? Then...*
This time around, Ranma began concentrating on the flaws
that he had seen in the technique instead of trying to deduce what the
technique achieved. The fact that he was a true master of the art
helped a lot too.
His innate bond with ki and mana allowed him to see both
the forces and thus he had been able to see and feel the forces to an
extent that would have made any master of the art green with envy. With
this bond, he had felt and tasted the unnatural flows that the
technique had created and within moments had perfected an in sync with
nature variant of the technique.
*Now, let's examine the other clues...*
Concentrating just a little bit, Ranma tasted the ki in his
shirt and blacked out the ones that he could recognize. There was the
familiar ki signature from the air and from himself. Then there was the
ki signature of the Ashura that he had killed. The taste was quite
different from any that he had experienced in his life.
*How queer?* He would have never thought that the Ashura's
were finetuned to such a level.
He blacked out all these signatures and was finally left
with two. One was so weak and contained so much chaos that he could
scarcely identify it whereas the other was 'holy'. That was the word he
decided that fit the signature most.
*Hmmm! A demon and a God... what the hell happened to me?*
He thought with surprise.
And then he laughed at the answer. It had been right in
front of him all along. The rabbit should have run away from anyone who
had that much blood splatter on his body and emitted such a powerful
aura. It had not and that meant that he was either a God or he had been
in the presence of God's.
Since, good and evil aura's tend to cancel each other out
he must have been in the presence of God's long after the demon had
departed.
It must have a powerful demon if its ki signature was any
indication. To resist its counterpart it must have possessed an
insanely large amount of power comparable to his own.
*I must have been trapped in the void by that technique,
which means...*
Ranma found hard to believe the conclusion that he had
arrived at and yet he did. All the evidence was in front of him and
everything that he knew pointed in the direction.
*She used a goddamn time warping technique on me!*
He fumed and the rabbit looked at him with wide eyes.
Gradually, Ranma controlled himself and assumed the lotus position.
He had to sort out his thoughts and then he would return to
home sweet home.
***********************************************************************
Ryuu dreamt.
There were trees from the tropics all around him and the
ground was lush with vegetation. The sky above was filled with clouds
and birds sang their songs of love in the canopy above.
It did not take a genius to figure out that he was no
longer in Japan and Ryuu was a genius in his own right.
>Where am I?< he spoke aloud. Feeling incredibly foolish at
having asked that question, he banged his head against one of the
trees.
It hurt like hell, his head.
>Ouch! What's that tree made of?< he groaned, rubbing the
sore spot on his head.
>Hello!<
The voice was feminine and whomever it belonged to,
radiated a lot of power.
Ryuu turned slowly and looked at the most beautiful and
scantily clad girl he had ever laid eyes upon. Even his experience with
the Amazons had not prepared him for the image before him and his hands
went to his nose automatically.
It was a great deal too slow as blood jetted out of his
nose. Ryuu decided to embrace the oblivious hold of slumber once more.
***********************************************************************
>Idiot!< said a soft voice.
>Uhhh! Where am I?< Ryuu moaned as he regained
consciousness once more.
Only to feel his head pressed against the softest pair of
breasts in all of creation.
Ryuu's eyes widened to the size of saucers and he began to
lapse back into unconsciousness.
The girl realized where his thoughts were and withdrew
immediately. Ryuu fell to the ground with a thud. He got back up and
rubbed his sore behind.
>What did you do that for?< he complained to the girl.
>You are a pervert,< replied the girl.
>Huh!<
>And I am kami-sama,< continued the girl without missing a
beat.
>Huh!<
Thwack!
Ryuu rubbed his head and eyed the girl with annoyance.
Almost all the women he knew beat him. It was not his fault that he was
better than them, was it now?
>Stop hurting me, will you?< he complained, giving her the
old 'I am a whipped puppy look'.
Sadly, the effect was lost upon the girl. She just grabbed
him by his ears and hauled him to God's knows where.
>You are the reason that I look like this right now and I
am not going to hear you a single word about how big a bitch your life
is, okay?< she announced.
Ryuu struggled in vain and made a fuss but it did not help
him any.
The duo disappeared in a fog.
***********************************************************************
Genma tried to sleep. However, he could not.
Never before had he realized how insecure he was. Perhaps
it had been that very same insecurity that had made him a greedy cheat.
Perhaps it was and perhaps it wasn't.
He was a completely new person now. Gone were the anger,
the greediness and the incredible stupidity that had brought him so
close to losing everything that he had ever held dear in his life?
He had come very close to losing Ryuu as he had lost Ranma
all those years back. He was afraid of what might have happened if he
had been a minute of two late. That self-righteous bitch would have
murdered Ryuu.
*Power without control... Why does it always has to be that
way?* he asked himself. He did not have an answer and he doubted
whether he ever would.
It surprised him and filled him with no small amount of
revulsion that he had been very much like that girl only a couple of
months ago. Thinking that whatever he did was right and lauding it over
the others, like Ryuu for example. Thankfully, Ryuu had not respected
him then and thankfully, he respected the new Genma now.
Genma allowed a smile to adorn his face. He had gotten his
son back. Now, all he had to do was to make Nodoka burn that stupid
seppuku agreement.
*I'll discuss it with Soun in the morning.* He decided and
closed his eyes and tried meditating.
It had always helped him with his sleep before and it
helped now. No sooner had he closed his eyes he was fast asleep.
And then Genma dreamt.
Genma-panda sat in the midst of a bamboo groove, munching
those delicious shoots of fresh bamboo. It had rained the day before
and the new sprouts had begun to appear all over the bamboo grove.
*Yummy!*
Genma-panda playfully swatted away the fly that had
alighted on his nose and growled in warning.
*Why can't the damn things realize that no one disturbs
Genma during his meal?* Genma-panda thought annoyedly as another one of
the little pests landed on his nose.
The panda made a good imitation of a shooow with his mouth
and pranced about trying to strike down the enemy. The fly quite
unaware of the crime that it had committed flew deftly in and out of
the Genma's range adding to his woes.
Finally, Genma-panda gave up and squatted near the bamboo
groove where he resumed his snack. With care and precision that would
have done any master proud, Genma-panda carefully stripped the bamboo
shoots of their bark and ate them unaware of the muscle-bound master
who had somehow appeared miraculously behind him.
>Gwargh! Mwargh! Sraohohh!< went Genma-panda as the bamboo
groove disappeared into his mouth with alarming speed.
The man waited as long as he could before impatience gained
the better of him. First, came the tapping with his foot and then came
the snort of disgust. Finally, the man bonked Genma-panda on the head
nicely.
>Yowrgh!<
Genma-panda jumped up and rubbed his head with his paws. He
did his best to look as annoyed as he could and produced his board.
+What did you do that for?+ He signaled towards the man
with rapidly produced kanji.
The man sighed. *Like father, like son!*
>Come on, we ain't got time to be wasting,< replied the man
nonchalantly.
Genma-panda thought. The man looked like a master of the
art - at least his person fulfilled everything that Genma had thought a
martial artist should be. The strength and the power hinted at by the
body were enormous.
*Maybe he has come in search of Ryuu. I did engage him to a
dozen girls or so and sold him another two dozen times - I think, I
lost count after the thirteenth one.* In order to clear his confusion
Genma-panda did the best thing it could. It signed to the man asking
him to elaborate in as simple a way as possible it's thoughts on what
his relation to it was.
+Huh!+
Never let it be said that the men of the Saotome line do
not know anything about communication. They do but they always chose to
use the most efficient method possible, which unfortunately is not
always the best method around.
The man smacked himself on his head and muttered something
on the lines of 'whaddamoron!' Then, he turned towards Genma-panda and
addressed him.
>You don't want to make your son wait, do you?< he asked
trying to maintain his composure, which was showing every sign of
failing.
Genma-panda replied in the true tradition of all men of the
Saotome line.
+Huh!+
The man shook his head and muttered something to himself.
Perhaps, he was cursing his luck.
Genma-panda decided to help the man since he was acting
dumb and all.
+Who are you and what are you doing here?+ he asked or
rather signaled to the stranger.
>I am kami-sama and I am here to get you,< replied the man
trying to look as ordinary as possible and failing miserably.
Genma-panda thought about it and then signaled once more.
+Of course, it is only natural that kami-sama should decide
to meet me. After all, I am a... a... a...+ The board ran out of space
and Genma-panda turned the other side. The stranger stopped him.
>Shut up will you. I am struck up in this stupid body
because of you. The sooner I get you to the others, the sooner I will
be rid of this ridiculous body,< said he and begun towing Genma away.
+Hey! Wait a minute! I still have not finished my snack!+
he signaled. >Gworgh!<
Kami-sama paid no attention to Genma's lamentations and
towed him away.
The duo disappeared in a fog.
***********************************************************************
Happousai lay back on the tub and sighed as the warm water
made him tingle all over.
*This is the life.* Thought the puny Grandmaster of
Matsubetu Katuto Ryuu. Sure, chasing after young things - young and
beautiful things - for their panties beat the heck out of anything but
he was not complaining.
What was there to complain about anyway? Four beautiful
women in the house, there was Cologne with whom he could reminiscence
about the 'good-old' days, there were his two torture subjects err...
students to poke fun at and then there was Ryuu and Ranma. One was a
master in the making and another he suspected was a true master. Both
were a joy to watch at and what a show he got, with Akane and Ryouga,
Genma and Soun, Nabiki and practically everyone else, and Ranma and his
students. It was very close to his idea of heaven and he was having the
time of his life.
Now that he had found those pretty girls in sailor fukus,
he was sure that the fun was going to get all-better.
*This definitely is the life.* He thought happily to
himself.
And then he drifted to sleep almost as if by magic.
And he dreamt.
He was in a strip club and they were putting on quite a
show.
He felt the pains of old age go away. The young things were
just so soothing on his old eyes that he wanted to never take their
eyes of them.
The way they wriggled and shed their two-sizes too small
brassieres and panties was absolutely wonderful to watch. God, how he
wished that he was in his younger days.
And the amazing thing was, he was young he realized as he
looked down at himself.
>WHAT THE...< shouted Happousai and felt himself.
He was young all right and his tubing was all there, only
now, it was better than before. It looked like all his wildest dreams
had come true.
*Man, I cannot wait to test this new plumbing!* Thought the
old lecher lecherously to himself. It was then that he laid his eyes
upon the most beautiful, scrumptious thing ever.
>Sweeto!< whispered Happousai.
He controlled all his urges to 'jump the gun' and snuggle
against her luscious milk white breasts. This was not the time to be so
aggressive. He would have to put on the old 'perfect gentleman who does
not think with the thing in-between his legs' mask and play it to
perfection if Operation Shacking Up was to be a success.
He walked up to her but not before seeing to it that his
plumbing did not draw attention to itself. *At least not now!* He
thought wickedly. It can draw all the attention it wanted later.
There was a jump in his stride naturally.
He approached her and turned on his charms to their most
powerful setting.
*Let's hope that they work perfectly well.* After all it
had been over two hundred and fifty years since he had bedded a woman,
so there was a chance that he was a little bit rusty, right?
>Hello there! It's not everyday that one sees a pretty face
such as yourself...< He paused. >Allow me to introduce myself; I am
Happousai Mishima, Grandmaster of Matsubetu Katuto Ryuu. My friends
call me Happy,< he finished with a big smile.
She did not look swept off her feet. In fact, her
expression was entirely opposite to that. Her beautiful chin twisted in
revulsion and she glared at him.
>EEEEEEW!< she screeched and stomped him on the foot for
good measure. >I cannot believe that you are trying to pick me up.<
Naturally, Happousai was perplexed. He stopped dancing
around on a single foot while clutching the other with his hands and
looked at her.
>My dear,< he said in his most innocent voice. >Why can I
not try to pick you up as you so crudely put it?< he asked.
She sighed. >This night cannot get any worse than this,<
she moaned to the skies above.
Happousai eyed her quizzically.
>Whatever are you talking about, my dear?< he asked. Here
was a maiden in distress and for once, he was not the reason for her
distress. At least, he believed that he was not!
>Whatever, he says!< she muttered.
Happousai raised an eyebrow at her statement.
>Do you have any idea who you are talking to?< she asked.
Happousai shook his head. >No, but I think that it will not
hurt me to know your name,< he said and smiled broadly.
>I am kami-sama,< said the girl and shrugged her shoulders.
Happousai gave her a once over.
>I am not sure about the kami-sama bit but you sure as hell
look like a goddess to me,< said he as he forgot his chosen course of
action and ogled at her breasts.
Thwap!
>I am kami-sama moron, and I look like this because this is
how you think I will look like in that perverted mind of yours,< said
she and dusted her hands.
Happousai gingerly rubbed the sore spot on his face. He
could tell that he was going to have a nice set of impressions as a
souvenir for this affair. He had hoped that he would have impressions
for a long time to come but these were not the kind he had been
hoping... no, praying for.
>Oh! And exactly why are you here?< he asked feigning
indifference.
>I am here to meet you,< spat back the girl.
>Now that you have met me what are you going to do about
it,< he asked, feeling sorry at himself that he wasn't going to get
some.
>I am going to drag you back to the others, that's what I
am going to do,< she replied and grabbed him by his ears.
>Ouch! Hey, where are you taking me?< complained Happousai
to no avail.
The duo disappeared in a flash.
***********************************************************************
Cologne meditated.
Things were happening fast. And she did not have a faintest
clue as to what was happening. She found herself in the dark but there
was nothing she could do about it, at least not until Ryuu gained
consciousness.
She had never liked mysteries and found herself liking them
lesser still. Her ancestor had revealed some of his powers and that was
frightening as well as awe-inspiring at the same time.
There had always been disagreements in the council about
the extent of the dragon's power and she realized now that they had all
been wrong. The Amazon's had had the capability to conquer the world at
any time of their choosing if the power that she had felt was any
indication.
And who were these new enemies and how powerful were they
to make the dragon unveil his powers?
She found herself asking these questions repeatedly. The
evidence at hand did not provide her with the answers and she found
herself liking the situation even less.
The Amazon's and the Musk were at war, that much was clear.
But who were the fighting against and why had the dragon felt compelled
to take part in the battle?
For the first time in many years, Cologne felt weary. The
tribes was ill prepared for a war but they would follow the dragon
wherever he might lead them.
And who were those mana-wielding girls? It seemed that they
were powerful but also exceedingly foolish. Power and foolishness did
not meld well and Cologne felt the beginnings of a major headache.
She opened her eyes to ask Shampoo to get her some tea. She
had always found tea to be relaxing. Perhaps it would soothe her pain
and allow her to think freely.
However, no sooner had she opened her eyes she felt drowsy.
Recognizing the symptoms for what they were, she embraced the trance.
She fell asleep almost immediately and she dreamt.
She was in one of the glades near the village by the pond
that the dragon had created all those centuries ago. The scenery was
now beautiful with lush trees and greens. The icy waters of the lake
sparkled under the noon sun and she found herself captivated by it.
>It's beautiful, isn't it?<
Cologne turned towards the source of that voice; surprised
that anyone could get so near her without her finding out.
It was a hag, an old hag of about four hundred or five
hundred years. She balanced herself with her staff and her eyes had so
much wisdom and experience behind them.
>Honored grandmother...< said Cologne with tears in her
eyes.
The old woman smiled and clasped Colognes hand with her own
when it was proffered.
>Honored grandmother, I missed you.<
Tears were now flowing freely but Cologne did not care.
>I missed you too child,< said the old woman. >My, you have
grown to be a beautiful woman.<
Cologne looked surprised and looked down at herself. Sure
enough, she was young once again. Hiding her shock behind the veil of
happiness, she thanked honored grandmother for the compliment.
>Come child,< said grandmother and took Cologne's hand. She
began to lead Cologne away from the village.
>Where are we going grandmother?<
Grandmother only smiled.
>You will understand all when the time is right,< she said
and beamed in a smile.
They disappeared in a fog.
***********************************************************************
Ryuu awoke and decided not to open his eyes.
It felt so cozy inside the soft, welcoming embrace of the
blanket. He was more comfortable then he had ever been in his entire
life, not even at the Tendo's and the Amazon's, the only two families
that he could truly relate to. He decided that the real world could
wait just a few more minutes for him then it had already had.
True, he had a mother and a father but they had been mere
namesakes for most of his life. Never had he felt the comfort and love
that one expected from one's parents. He was beginning to look up to
his father again in a very long time but it was still too early to
trust him implicitly and the lessons from the past still made him wary
of Genma.
And there was Nodoka, his mother, if she could be called
that. She was still stuck up in her fantasy world and was ever ready to
make him undergo that stupid seppuku pledge.
It really pained him to have and yet, in all sense of the
word not to have a mother in his life.
Ryuu pulled the blanket closer for comfort and sighed in
heart's content. It was really cozy!
Having made himself comfortable, he let his thoughts drift
to the fight.
He knew without a shadow of a doubt that the girl had
attacked him with murderous intent. He had seen the look of madness and
murder in her eyes and he could not for the life of him fathom why.
What had he done that was so wrong that it had driven her into a
murderous rage? *What am I thinking about? It's not my fault that she
attacked me. I was trying to help her friends for crying out loud!*
He thought it over some more and finally gave up in
frustration, accepting the fact that he would never truly understand
women.
*Maybe it was her time of the month!* But that idea too
sounded too hollow in his mind. He knew that it made them all jumpy and
irritable but would it drive them to a murderous rage. He thought not.
"Do you think that we should wake him?"
Ryuu started.
His confusion was understandable. There were only a handful
of people who were able to sneak up on him and the woman that he had
just heard speak was definitely not one of them, at least she was not
someone that he knew. With speed born of years of rigorous training as
well as the huge amounts of adrenalin that was pumped into his body, he
got to his feet and assumed a fighting stance. There were three of
them, two strangers and Genma with _hair_ on his head. The woman and
the man stood beside Genma with a smirk that he considered annoying on
their face.
She was short and lean. Though she was not a major babe, he
could tell that she was as dangerous as they came from the way that she
carried herself. Her movements were short, precise, efficient and
literally, poetry in motion.
*I definitely do not want to get on her bad side!*
The other stranger, who stood by her was similar to the
woman in all departments except for the rather glaring gender
difference.
The woman spoke first.
"Well! Well! Well! He is a cute one all right. No wonder
Shampoo and Wu Li were smitten with him so!" she said in teasing tones
while giving him a once over.
Ryuu realized that he was naked and that she was looking at
him in a manner that could have made even Cologne flinch. It was really
unnerving, the way that her eyes lingered at her waist. It triggered
his danger sense like it had never before and made him want to crawl
under the bed and hide.
*Man! And here I was thinking that the Amazon elders were
bad!*
"Huh!" said Ryuu in the true fashion of men of the Saotome
line. How had the woman known about his days at the Amazon village? To
say that Ryuu Saotome, heir to the Saotome branch of Matsubetu Katuto
Ryuu, was bewildered was like saying that the universe is the size of a
dime.
Finally, the thought processes in Ryuu's mind took over and
he scrambled to cover himself with a blanket.
The woman laughed at the sight and the other two joined
her.
"Pops! What the hell is going on?"
The woman paused in the midst of her laughter to add
another comment. This too, the others found quite amusing.
"And he is as clueless as ever too," she added.
Ryuu could only sigh in exasperation and clutch desperately
at the blanket, which slipped off of him. It looked like he would have
to wait until they regained their senses.
Finally, they quieted down and Genma begun the
introductions.
"Boy," he said in that righteous voice, he usually reserved
for his 'I have got a new technique that I want you to master' speech.
"Allow me to introduce the founder of the Anything goes school of
martial arts, Grandmaster Happousai and the matriarch of the
Joketsuzoku Amazons, Cologne," he finished with a flourish.
Ryuu stared at his father for a long minute. "Pops! Have
you flipped your mind or something? Cologne and Happousai look like
dried up mummies and they are two-foot tall, you know this big," he
pointed with his hand. Unfortunately, the blanket chose that moment to
slip off him again.
Ryuu scrambled desperately to cover himself. When he was
done, he secured the blanket with one hand and pointed to Genma how
tall Happousai and Cologne were.
"Well I never!" said the woman, sounding outraged.
"Yadda! Yadda! Now shut up will you!" replied Ryuu.
"Grrrrrr! I swear Genma, that son of yours is the most
irritating brat on this planet," complained Cologne.
"So, what's new?" he turned towards his father. "Pops! Now
tell me what the hell happened to your hair and who are these two
geezers?"
"Boy, I am so ashamed of you. Oh! The shame of it all. My
son does not respect his elder's," moaned Genma, doing the tried and
trusted 'I am ashamed of you' routine.
Happousai and Cologne bonked Genma on the head. He
shriveled up and addressed Ryuu once more, this time seriously.
"Boy, I don't know how I got my hair back and these two are
elder Cologne and the master."
"All right pops, I believe you. Now tell me what is going
on here and why am I buck-naked?"
"I can answer that question young man," said a new voice.
To Ryuu's amazement, everyone knelt when they heard the
voice. He felt the compulsion too but overrode it and turned towards
the man who had spoken the words. The voice had seemed so familiar and
yet so alien to his senses that he could not quite place his hands on
the face behind it. It was as though he had known the speaker
throughout his life though he had never met him face to face.
As he turned and the compulsion to kneel increased a
thousand-fold. Finally, it was so great that he just had to kneel. He
did as his mind wished him to and bowed his head in a show of utmost
respect. It was the voice that was making him do it, he realized at
last. There was something in that voice that commanded the utmost
respect and love that one could give.
"Father," addressed Ryuu, surprised at the fact that it
seemed the most natural way to address the man. Love filled his heart
until he felt that it could burst. He had never felt so loved in his
entire life.
All of them felt 'Father' smile at the words at the address
Ryuu used and tears came unbidden to their eyes. It was as if
'Father's' smile was the only thing that mattered to them in the world.
"Arise children, arise," said 'Father'.
They did but dared not look into 'Father's eyes. No one
dared to speak for a while lest they destroy the sanctity of the
moment.
Surprisingly it was Genma who asked 'Father' the first
question.
"Father where are we?"
"We are in the dream plane, children. You are all asleep
and you are all having the same dream."
"Why are we here?" asked Genma. Happousai and the others
looked at him as though he had grown a head or two.
"A darkness, the likes of which the world has never seen
and will never see again is coming. The weapon to defeat this darkness
has been forged but the time to unveil it has not yet come.
"You, my dear children, will be the guardians of this
weapon. Because he is so powerful others who fight on the same side as
you will be afraid of him. It will be your duty to protect the weapon
from these threats."
"Hai, father," chorused all, happy at the fact that they
could help 'Father' in some way.
'Father' nodded and continued. "The forces that you will be
facing will have a significant advantage in numbers and overall power.
In the end, they might get lucky and that cannot be allowed. As a
result, I am going to give you powers that will be helpful in
fulfilling your duties as the guardians of the dragon."
With that, 'Father' asked them to stretch their hands in
front of them. They did and there was a small flash of light in each of
their hands. When they could see again they saw that a bracelet of the
greenest Jade adorned their hands as braces.
"Children, those braces will be the sign of your offices as
guardians of the dragon. They will remain invisible to all eyes unless
you wish them to see it. Magic has been woven into them and into you
such that you are both one and the same.
"The magic also allows you to hide your real identity
behind magical barriers. The magic also links your souls to the mana
flows and some of you can manipulate in any matter that you want though
you will find that you are most proficient in a particular field.
"Cologne, you are now the watcher of the gates of time.
Happousai and the others are warriors. They can manipulate mana in its
raw form and can will it to do anything they want it to do."
Father continued on with the lecture and they listened and
learnt.
***********************************************************************
Ranma flew.
It was an indescribable feeling, the power of flight. The
freedom, peace that one felt was incomparable, and language lacked the
words to communicate the feeling.
Sure, he could have just transported to Juuban but he did
not feel like it. He preferred flying to teleporting anytime of the
day.
It was the first time in over four hundred years that he
had truly enjoyed the simple pleasure of flying. The westerners were
afraid of dragons and on most other times, he had been in a hurry to
enjoy the feelings that coursed through him whenever he flied. It was
like a bottle of champagne, it had to be savored and not hurried
through.
With an idle flip of his wings, he changed direction and
executed a double flip. The scenery above and below him was absolutely
enchanting to watch. Even though it was dark, his super sensitive
dragon vision had no problems adjusting to the light or the lack of it
therein.
Tatsu-Ranma now stood at a proud seven-foot five. (He was
still very young when compared with the impossibly long lifespan that
dragons lived.) He looked like a curious cross between the traditional
western and eastern dragons.
There was the long and slender, almost serpentine body that
any Asian would recognize as a dragon coupled with the veritable
Chinese beard that gave him an old and wise look. The bat like wing,
barbed tail and powerful legs were most like that of the traditional
western dragon. True, he could not throw fireballs out of his mouth but
the amount of ki he produced and stored was phenomenal compared to even
his normal levels.
Tatsu-Ranma was a ki reactor of sorts, producing more ki
and thus storing more energy than most of the nations of the world used
in a single year. The few other dragons that he had encountered in his
travels produced much less than a hundredth of the ki that he normally
did and it seemed that he was the mutant in the dragon side of his
family too.
The wings were truly magnificent to look at. His wingspan
was a cool fifteen-foot eleven inches the last time he had measured
them and that was nearly two hundred years ago. Now they had probably
grown another foot. They were skinny like a bat's and most certainly
did not provide the lift needed to carry him at great speeds through
the air. He was capable of speeds greater then Mach-2 for extended
periods of time and if he really pushed it could reach Mach-7 for small
periods of time, a fact that the air force of the PLA could attest to
very well with their numerous 'close encounters of the dragon kind'
over Chinese airspace.
*Land ahead!* Tatsu-Ranma thought comically to himself. If
his draconian form were capable of speech, he would have laughed at his
own joke. As it stood all Tatsu-Ranma could manage, were a couple of
grunts that reminded one of a pig as he steadily lost altitude.
He touched down on one of the botanical gardens and quickly
changed forms.
*Good thing I know hidden weapons. Otherwise, it would be
really embarrassing to walk around naked every time I change forms!* He
thought as he hastily donned his clothes.
Then he jumped out through one of the many holes in the
skylight at the place and headed towards his house. He expected his
great great granddaughter to be worried stiff about him.
***********************************************************************
The front door was locked. Obviously, everyone had gone to
sleep.
Ranma found the situation quite amusing. He, the master of
the house, had been locked out and left to spend the night in the open.
He could wake them up but he did not want to. Of course, he was capable
of spending the night in the near freezing temperatures of late autumn
but it did not have to be, not while he still had a warm house of his
own to live in.
*Cologne must not have informed them of my disappearance.*
He thought and felt grateful towards his great granddaughter for that
bit of insight. Now, he would not have to explain everything to them. A
short summary would suffice.
*Oh well! Gotta use the second doorway then.*
He smiled to himself. Breaking into his own house, what
would Li Pan and the others have thought of him if they were alive
today. He would have never lived through their jibes at his slip: The
great Ranma Qin forgot the keys to his own house.
With scant an effort, he was airborne and on the
windowsill. *Thank the kami, I have always kept this window open.*
He extended his ki senses to check on the other inhabitants
of the house. He would be surprised if Cologne wasn't awake.
And she wasn't. It appeared that she was dreaming about
something pleasant from the taste of her ki, which pulsed with joy
every now and then. He thought about visiting her but gave up the idea,
there were more pressing matters to attend to. Ryuu was hurt, it
seemed.
That made him mad. No one hurt his brother. It was bad
enough that the trigger-happy buffoons had attacked him but to attack
his brother, who had just stood by and watched the whole damned fight,
well, they had gone too far.
His face, a mask of pure anger, he walked out through the
door and straight into his little brother's. The boy looked so at peace
with himself and with the universe that it mollified his anger some but
the girl's would rue the day they crossed paths with Ranma of the Qin.
He quickly summarized Ryuu's injuries. There was no serious damage
though there was a scratch or two and the concussion that he had would
take a week to heal even with the pressure points that the elders had
applied.
His fears allayed, Ranma turned to leave the room. At the
door, he stopped, turned and walked up to Ryuu once more. "Sweet
dreams, little brother," he said and caressed Ryuu's face with his
hand. Finally, he left the room.
Ryuu opened his eyes and stared at the door with wide-open
eyes. *Brother!*
***********************************************************************
If anyone had ever asked Kasumi what was the best time of
the day she would have said early morning readily. It was during the
wee hours of the morn that she got some time for herself. It had always
been this way.
Before her mother's death, Kasumi would wake up early and
spend the morning helping her mother with her chores in the kitchen.
After her death, when she had taken up the mantle of the housekeeper,
the mornings had been the only peaceful hours in her life.
Now, it was all changing for the better. Her father had
shown signs of the spine that he was so famous for a decade ago. And it
was all thanks to Ranma. He had brought that something that had gone
missing from her father when mother had passed on.
She looked to the sky through the open window in the
kitchen. The sky was devoid of clouds and the stars and the Moon shone
bright, their light filtering into the room and painting her face with
their glow. Kasumi's eyes shown under the light in contentment. To all
others, the Moon was a symbol of romance and love but to her it was a
symbol of peace and a sign of the ways things could have been.
Presently, she felt a presence in the room. She paused in
her work and turned towards the doorway.
It was their host, Ranma. He was standing by the door,
leaning against it with a dreamy look on his face. There was something
in his face that she could not quite fathom.
"Good morning, Ranma-kun," said Kasumi in her sweet voice.
That startled him.
"Huh..." he said. "Good morning Kasumi-chan."
"I see you are up early Ranma-kun."
"Yes, well, I could not sleep... so..."
Kasumi smiled. She understood his feelings all too well.
She, too, had spent many a sleepless night in the Tendo home. "Would
you like some tea Ranma-kun?" she said as she wiped her pristine hands
against her apron, more out of habit than out of need.
Ranma returned the smile. "That would be nice Kasumi-
chan... You have to forgive my reaction just now. I was lost in my
thoughts..." he said, with his fingers crossed behind him. *Let her
accept my excuse.*
Kasumi's smile did not fade. "So tell me Ranma-kun, what
were you thinking about?" she asked quite aware of where his thoughts
had been. It felt nice to be treated like a woman once in a while.
Ranma congratulated himself on the fact that she had
accepted his excuse. "I was thinking about times gone by..."
"Oh!" She tried to sound nonchalant but failed miserably.
She was incredibly curious about his past life.
"Yes," continued Ranma. "You know Kasumi-chan, you remind
me so much of someone I loved dearly."
Kasumi paused in her ministrations and turned to face him,
carefully placing the tea leaves by the stove. She wiped her hands
across her apron and eyed him quizzically.
"Her name was Jasmine. She was the most beautiful, kind
hearted creature that ever walked this Earth... she was very much like
you..." he paused once more, not wanting to continue any further and
yet wanting to continue. For some reason, he felt that he could
unburden his heart to the girl who stood before him.
Kasumi blushed. It was the first time that anyone had ever
complimented her on her looks. She lowered the burner to a lesser
setting and took a seat opposite Ranma's.
"Do continue, Ranma-kun," she said and handed him the tea.
He looked up at her, his eyes full of sadness. "She's
dead... She's been dead for so long and I miss her. I..." he choked
back the tears that came and rose. "Thank you Kasumi-chan, your tea is
wonderfuul as always," he said and moved into the hallway.
Kasumi looked at him long after he had disappeared. She
felt an overwhelming urge to console him and make all his pain go away
but she did not have the faintest idea as to how she should go about
it. Finally, she returned to her chores, breakfast had to be readied
before the rest of the household woke up. Ranma Qin was a puzzle she
was determined to unravel but he would have to wait for some other
time.
***********************************************************************
Ryouga was lost. There was nothing surprising in that.
After all, there had been precious few times in his life when he had
been where he had wanted to be. Yet, he could not help feeling
disappointed.
The night before, he had gone to satisfy the call of nature
and had somehow ended up in the opposite side of Juuban. *Maybe I
should have asked Akane for help...* But he knew that it could not have
been helped. She had been busy watching that emergency national address
and he had not wanted to disturb her. None of that mattered now. All
that mattered now was that he was lost and Akane was alone in her
house.
*Kami-sama! A nuclear bomb,* he thought in horror.
Naturally, Ryouga being the gullible soul that he was had completely
misinterpreted the premier's address. Having grown up alone for most of
his life, small things such as subtlety went right past him. He also
did not know that the nuclear bomb alert had been called off a scant
half an hour after it had been announced by the big shots at the Diet.
American spy satellites had established without a shred of doubt that
the explosion was not nuclear in origin.
Naturally, thinking about the previous day's happenings
made the lost boy depressed. And like always he begun to glow an
unhealthy shade of green as he wandered through the streets of Juuban,
two blocks from the Qin residence. People around him, noticed the glow
and fled from the scene afraid that it was another power hungry maniac
or monster or whatever.
"WHERE AM I NOW?" screamed the lost boy in frustration at
the skies above as though the kami would provide him with some sort of
sign or something.
The remaining few, who had been bold enough to remain in
his vicinity fled the scene and Ryouga had the decency to blush. It was
all someone else's fault, he could tell but for the life of him, he
could not tell who it was.
***********************************************************************
Shampoo moved through the kata, graceful as a predator
stalking its prey. Her bonbori's swirled in complex patterns that were
as old as the Amazon nation itself.
The dance of death continued for near an hour until she
came to an abrupt halt, pointing the maces to the ground.
Akane could not help feeling jealous of the purple haired
girl. It seemed that everyone in the house was her better in the art by
a wide margin. She could only hope that one day she will be as good as
the rest of them.
She sighed to herself in resignation and turned to the
other side of the front yard. Happousai, Cologne and Genma were
fighting against Ranma. All she could see of that battle were blurs and
every once in a while one of the trio would be unceremoniously thrown
out of the melee. Amazingly, it looked like Ranma was winning against
their combined might easily.
*Maybe I should get Ryouga to train me,* thought the
youngest Tendo to herself. She did not like being left behind in the
art. It seemed that everyone was improving while her skills had been
more or less stagnant for nearly a year or two.
*Thinking about Ryouga, I wonder where he is?* It always
irked her that her boyfriend had such a bad sense of direction. He was
never there when she needed him the most.
*I bet that he got lost as usual trying to find his way to
the toilet.*
She doubted veryily whether she could learn anything from
him though. His technique was based on brute strength and though she
was powerful, she was leagues behind Ryouga or even Ryuu in terms of
brute strength. Even if she had the strength, she doubted whether she
would be able to use his training methods. He used depression as the
source of his power and though she got angry easily, she could not
maintain that anger at the levels that Ryouga maintained his
depression. Finally, if everything worked out fine, she had to contend
with his sense of direction. It would not do for him to go missing for
weeks on end at a time. Her training would suffer and she did not want
that to happen, not ever again. Something had to be done about his
sense of direction and she had just the thing in mind though she knew
instinctively that it would not change anything when he started
training her. The more she thought about it the more unlikely it seemed
that Ryouga would ever be a good teacher.
*I will just have to swallow my pride then,* thought Akane
as she walked down the steps and into the living room.
***********************************************************************
Ranma was having the time of his life. It had been a long
time before he had faced such a challenge. He could not help grinning
as he weaved in and out of the blows from the three masters that he was
facing against. Even though they had little experience fighting side-
by-side, they were doing an admirable job of trying to tag him.
He held up his hand as a signal to stop just as one of
Genma's fists blurred towards him at speeds that put the Amaguriken to
shame. The bald martial artist did just that and so did the others.
Ranma wiped the small beads of sweat of his face and turned
to face the youngest Tendo. Evading the three masters using as little
ki as possible was tough.
"Yes, Akane..."
"I... I... Iwouldliketotrainunderyou," she finished in
rapid-fire speech.
Ranma smirked.
"Is that so?"
Akane nodded in the affirmative.
"Are you sure that you would not back down once the
training begins, for I assure you it will be no walk in the park?"
Akane could feel her fuse melting. "Are you telling me that
I am not a martial artist?" she said between her teeth with
unmistakable menace.
Ranma nodded. "There is no need for me to tell you the
obvious, is it not?" he asked, not ruffled by her outburst.
Akane's temper chose that moment to give and she rushed
forward, her hammer appearing in her arms out of thin air.
Ranma neatly sidestepped the attack and sent her into the
koi pond.
"I said that you are not a martial artist but I did not say
that you cannot be one. However, if you give into your anger as easily
as you do then you shall never be a martial artist," he said neutrally.
Akane sputtered and thrashed about in the water, trying in
vain to stay afloat.
Ranma continued. "You may have a chi attack but it would
not do you any good if you lose your temper like that. A martial artist
is a master of self more than anything else and I am sorry to say that
you are lacking sorely in that department."
Akane sputtered some more and thrashed a lot more.
"Kho Lon, please help Tendo-san out of the water. I think
that between the three of you, you will be able to teach her self
control and the basics, won't you."
Cologne nodded and the others acquiesced.
Ranma turned and left, speaking over his shoulders, "I will
train you when you are ready Akane but not before."
***********************************************************************
Ryuu woke up to the smell of freshly cooked food. He tried
to sit up but his head hurt like hell.
"Ugh!" he moaned. "Where am I?"
"Shhhh!" soothed Kasumi's sweet voice. "Everything's
alright Ryuu-kun."
Ryuu tried opening his eyes but he could not handle the
brightness. His lips felt dry and he had the mother of all headaches.
"Kasumi..." he croaked softly.
"Shhhh! Don't speak Ryuu-kun. You are weak. Everything's
going to be all right. Here try to sit as slowly as possible and I will
feed you your breakfast," she soothed.
Ryuu tried to nod but the action sent huge waves of pain up
his spine and head. Groaning did not help too. Slowly and silently, he
assumed a sitting position and allowed himself to be fed by the girl he
had come to think of as a mother.
Kasumi was patient the whole time, feeding him slowly and
firmly rebutting all his efforts to stop feeding with a firmness that
only a mother can. Finally, he was done, having ate twice the normal
amount that he had for breakfast.
Ryuu burped unceremoniously and Kasumi could not help
giggling at his antics.
"Kasumi, could you get oyagi to come here?" he asked in a
much stronger voice.
"I will tell him that you wanted to see him Ryuu-kun. Now,
lay back and try to get some sleep and that concussion will be gone in
no time."
She left, giving him an affectionate kiss on his forehead,
and in a few minutes, Genma arrived.
"Boy..."
"Old man, I want to talk to you about my elder brother,"
said Ryuu as he pushed himself into a sitting position.
Genma's face showed his surprise. He sat down by the bed
and looked questioningly at his son.
"Old man, what was my brother like?" he asked. He had never
seen a picture of his brother and Genma scarcely spoke about him.
Genma remained silent for a long time. Finally, he took a
deep breathe and begun. "What can I say about Ranma?... I... I realized
early on that your elder brother was a genius when it came to the art.
He took to it like a fish to water.
"Naturally, I pushed him harder. Ryuu, have you ever heard
of the Nekoken?"
Ryuu shook his head. No, he had not.
"It was a technique that was supposed to make a martial
artist nigh invincible. Unfortunately, it also damages the users mind
very badly. I knew about the risks but I thought that Ranma could
retain his sanity when the training was done.
"I was foolish then... very so. I thought that he could
take anything that I threw at him... I mistreated him... I pushed him
to the edge and then kept on pushing him further. Through it all, he
learnt, faster then I had ever thought possible... That was one of the
things that made me want to teach him the Nekoken.
"I ignored his pleadings... for the sake of the child and
for the art, I managed to convince myself. And he bore it. Your elder
brother Ryuu, was easily a hundred times the man that I will ever be.
"Then something happened. I think it was the kami or
something... I do not know. One minute he was in the pit with the cats,
screaming for my help and the next all was silent. I went there and
what a sight I saw."
Genma choked back his tears.
"He was suspended in the air and a glow surrounded him. He
opened his mouth to say something but either I could not hear it or he
could not speak... I do not know for sure. Then there was a flash and
he disappeared."
Ryuu silently filed away this information. He had never
seen Genma this emotional in his entire life.
"What did he look like?" asked Ryuu.
Genma wiped the tears from his eyes and his face assumed a
dreamy look.
"He was honorable, more so then even you. He had eyes like
your mothers and he had a pigtail... He was cursed, you see," said
Genma.
"I can just see how he got that curse," remarked Ryuu
mildly.
Genma almost smiled. "It was my fault... It always was in
his case. He was too young and he did what I told him to even though I
could see that he did not like some of the things that I did to him.
Anyways, why this sudden interest in your brother?" asked the Saotome
patriarch.
"Nothing pops, I was just curious is all."
Genma rose. "Well, go to sleep, I want you back to your
healthy self in no time."
"Alright pops, I will get better and kick your ass all over
the place."
Genma grumbled something and left.
***********************************************************************
"What do you mean they failed?" boomed Chola.
Chitan shriveled into himself. *Why did it have to be me?*
He knew very well that when the Lord was angry, he was prone to
vaporizing anything and anyone who was near him. As a result, he and
the other messengers had drawn straws and unfortunately, he had drawn
the smallest one.
Chola paced back and forth, his face showing not the least
sign of his anger. Nature did, however. The lighting the cavern
darkened and the temperature in the cavern dropped steeply as energy
was pulled into him.
"How did they fail?" he asked, his voice calmer than the
calmest waters in a lake.
"We are trying to find out My Lord," replied Chitan.
Chola stopped in his tracks. "In other words you do not
even know how they failed," he spoke. His voice remained as calm and
steady as before. However, his eyes seemed to bore into Chitan's very
soul now.
Chitan trembled and nodded. It was getting too cold to bear
in the room. Sheets of ice were forming on the cavern walls.
Chola's eyes flashed. Chitan was thrown into the air, where
he hung, suspended nearly a hundred feet above the ground. His hands
and legs were stretched to their fullest and then some and his face was
contorted in pain.
"Then why Chitan, pray tell why do you stand before me if
you had so little information?"
"My Lord, I beg pardon," screeched Chitan. The skin in his
shoulder joint was breaking apart as his arms were pulled out of their
sockets by some invisible force.
Chola nodded. "Go now! Go find who killed the Indra and
Surya and return to me. I will expect better from you next time."
Chitan nodded and he slowly floated back on to the ground.
He excused himself and retreated as fast as he could happy
that he had been spared.
Chola stood in the center of the cavern and mused. He had
felt the two scouts die. He had even felt their executioner and he knew
what it meant.
"Cowards!" he muttered to himself. *They cannot face me
therefore they create a weapon... no matter, I will destroy all of them
in the end. Anita we will have our revenge.*
He could play their game too. If they were afraid of mixing
it up with him then what was he to say about it. The more afraid they
were, the sweeter would be the revenge.
"Shankara," he clapped his hands.
"Yes, My Lord!" came the reply momentarily from Chola's
back.
Chola did not even deign to turn towards the new Ashura nor
did his eyes drift from the crystal formation at the top of the cavern
as he spoke. "Surya and Indra have failed," he stated.
Shankara did not reply rather opting to wait for his Lord
to provide him with the details. He did not have to wait for long.
"The enemy is stronger then I thought he would be... I want
you to take the best troops under your command and go amongst the
humans. I want you to hunt down all the sailors and the one who killed
Indra and Surya not necessarily in that order."
Shankara nodded. "My Lord, are the tears big enough to
allow a large contingent of troops to pass at this time?"
Chola smiled at the question. Shankara had always been a
brilliant thinker, a fact that had stood him in good stead during their
war with the Moon kingdom.
"Yes it is but the energy needed is uneconomical. So much
so that it would be impractical to try it frequently."
"Yes My Lord..."
"Good. Now, I want you to scout and find as much as you can
about the mortal world. It has changed much over the ages it appears."
"I could take a few scouts with me My Lord. I hear that
Veeraraghavan of the Poonai clan is one of the best."
"Do as you please but I expect results. The enemy is strong
Shankara, much stronger then you can imagine. Be careful and may the
lady be always with you."
"And may she be with you My Lord."
***********************************************************************
Akane was in hell. *Ohhhhhhh! I hate that bastard!* She
thought angrily to herself and sure enough it showed in her aura.
"Sweetums," croaked Happousai from atop his seat on her
head as he tipped the boulder from her head and on to the ground.
"Arghhh!" screamed Akane in frustration. Now, she would
have to do the whole damn thing all over again.
Happousai giggled. "Run cutie or grandpa will _punish_
you."
Akane shivered at that word. She knew fully well, what the
old pervert meant when he said that. She would rot in hell rather than
let the old lecher touch her in _that_ manner.
"Keep your hands to yourself..." *PERVERT!*
She ran as fast as her tired legs could carry her to the
front lawn where her father's friend stood with another boulder for her
to carry.
She really hated the perverted bastard.
***********************************************************************
Ranma whistled to himself as he stepped out of the furo.
Gingerly, he dried himself with the towel, taking care not to ruin the
polished floor.
There is nothing like a warm relaxing soak in the tub, he
mused contentedly to himself. Of course, the silence could not last
forever. He almost last his balance as Akane's scream went Ultrasonic.
*Happousai must have gotten to her,* he thought lazily, his
hands dropping down to his waist. Sure enough, Happousai broke through
the wall and landed heavily on the polished floor.
He was up as soon as he had landed and jumped out through
the exit that he had so recently created with a cry of 'I am coming
sweetums'.
Ranma shook his head. *Man all that for nothing, now the
floor is wasted once again.*
"Hey, will you keep it down you guys," he shouted through
the hole and continued towards his room.
As he rounded the passageway, he nearly smashed into
Kasumi. Recovering quickly, he brought the renowned Qin charm to the
fore.
"You should look where you are going Kasumi-chan, or you
might end up like Ryouga."
Kasumi smiled, "Ranma-kun, here you are! I have been
searching the whole house for you."
Ranma looked confused. "I did say that I was going to take
a bath, did I not, Kasumi-chan?"
She blushed in reply. "Oh my! You did Ranma-kun."
He shrugged it off. Even the resourceful Kasumi (he had
found that out during the last two days) was human.
"So, Kasumi-chan, what were you searching me for? Any
errands to run?" He had been hoping that he could lay back, relax and
ponder about the yesterday's events. It was a local holiday after all
and he wanted to use it to its fullest.
Kasumi wiped her hands on the apron. He noted that she was
doing it even when it was not dirty. *Must be a personality quirk or
something.*
"No no no! Ryuu-kun was asking for you..."
"Well, I'd be going to meet him then. No use making him
wait for me, is there?" said Ranma and beamed his brightest smile.
"Catch up with you later Kas-chan."
Ranma disappeared, leaving a blushing Kasumi behind.
*Kas-chan... I think I like that name.*
***********************************************************************
Knock. Knock.
Ryuu shifted in the futon, yawned and stretched. "Who is
it?" he asked loud enough to be heard through the door.
"It's me," came the muffled reply.
Ryuu rubbed his eyes.
"Come in sensei." *or should I call you elder brother?*
Ranma peeked into the room. "What's up Ryuu? Kasumi said
that you wanted to speak to me."
"Nothing. Sensei could you sit with me?"
Ranma grinned. "Of course Ryuu. Anything for my student."
He took a seat by the bed and looked at his student
quizzically. Ryuu just stared into his eyes for an eternity.
"Ummm Ryuu... Anything you want to talk about."
Ryuu sighed. "It's just that I have been thinking about my
brother and..."
Ranma interrupted. "You have a brother," he asked, trying
to sound surprised.
Ryuu looked right into his eyes and nodded. "Yes, I had a
brother... My father tells me that he died in an training accident just
after I was born." He turned his gaze once more onto Ranma. "Sensei,
are you my brother?"
Ranma was caught off-guard by that remark. He let his
surprise show for just an instant and then burst out laughing.
"Whatever gave you that idea kohai?"
"You did sensei." A pause. "I was awake when you entered my
room last night."
The seconds ticked by as Ranma formulated an appropriate
answer. "I... I... Yes, I am your brother," he quoth at last.
Ryuu nodded. "I figured that much."
"Look Ryuu..."
"Shhh! Let me speak big brother."
Ranma nodded. What else could he do? In the end it would
all be easier this way, he thought to himself.
"Where have you been all this time brother?" asked Ryuu,
curious about his brother's lost decade to say the least.
"I have been around," replied Ranma evenly.
"Around is not good enough an answer brother."
"Look Ryuu, I am here, aren't I? I don't think there is
nothing much that matters beyond that."
"It matters to me," muttered Ryuu to himself.
Ranma heard it.
"Ryuu, I was lost for a very long time but now I am back
home again. I think that is all that matters in the end."
Ryuu nodded. It was not a perfect explanation but he could
live with that.
"So brother, when are you planning on telling father and
mother?" he asked hopefully.
Ranma took a deep breath. "Ryuu... I don't think that this
is the time to tell them but I promise you, I will tell them when the
time is right."
"And when will the time be right? When they are on their
deathbed maybe?" asked Ryuu sarcastically. How could he not take
offense? Here was his elder brother, thought to be dead yet, very much
alive and with him refusing to even acknowledge to his parents that he
was their son.
"That was totally uncalled for. I... I don't know when the
time will be right but I will feel it when it is time..."
"So, you are going to keep acting like a stranger till
then?"
Ranma placed his hands on Ryuu's shoulders. "Yes
_brother_... Now, I want you to make a promise."
Ryuu stared dumbly at his brother.
"I want you to promise me that you will never tell the
truth about me to anyone until I say otherwise that is. Okay?"
*Can't win for losing.* "Alright," Ryuu sighed. How had he
been maneuvered into this position?
"Everything's alright then. Do you want me to stay with you
squirt?"
*Squirt?* "Naah! I am going to sleep."
"'kay then. See you around squirt."
Ranma walked out of the room with a brotherly pat on Ryuu's
shoulders leaving Ryuu to stare at the door long after he had gone.
***********************************************************************
Author's notes:
Well that about does it for the sixth chapter. I know, it
is smaller then the previous chapters but I think that I got everything
that I planned to put into this chapter just right.
Anyways, I have good news for all of you. My semester
holidays are beginning and I am going to be free. I will try to cram in
as much writing as I could during the holidays. One more thing, I have
finalized the plans for this story and it will all be over in eighteen
chapters. Heyyyyy!
Till next time, Seeya!
Oh almost forgot! C&C would be most welcome.
I would like to take this oppurtunity to
prostrate myself in front of my pre-readers. Thank you, guys! This
couldn't have been possible without all of you:
jakub [jpilecki@poczta.onet.pl]
Kaz [kazblah945@aol.com]
Madcat [madcat08@hotmail.com]
Brain [bmccullough@nucles.com]
James Merritt [j.merritt1@home.com]
Philip Penty [plainswaker@hotmail.com]
Nathan Shuker [rezantis@hotmail.com]
Zero [shinzero@home.com]
Hints for you readers from the author:
Hint #1: Arun doesnot write to a schedule, he really has to
spend a lot of time with his psychiatrist.
Hint #2: (for those out standing critics out there[;)])Call
Arun anything you want in your mail provided (though he won't) he has
the right to call you by these same names. Arun appreciates
constructive negative comments and he really loves the positive
comments. Its the 'Go to hell you mother F***ing Freak of nature' and
such that he hates. Please send me your negative comments though I
would be most grateful if you would tone down the I hate you part a
little.
Hint #3: The truth is out there, hey, don't ask me where
but is out there since Fox 'spooky' Mulder says so.
Hint #4: There is no hint #4.
Hint #5: Read the author's rants section if there is one.
It would clear some of yer questions as well as create some totally
unrelated ones.
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