"FINAL ROUND! Go for broke!"
- announcer, Street Fighter Alpha 3
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ranma watched the kettle intently. It would definitely boil while she
was keeping a close eye on it, just as it had done the three previous
attempts without fail. This was not her problem, though. Every time she
filled the kettle with cold water and placed it on the stove, what she
ended up with was something that was almost hot water, but not quite.
"No, no, NO!" She poured some of it into the sink, verifying that it
was, in fact, the same red tea that her father had been carrying with
him all the way from Jusenkyo. "Look, let's try this one more time,
okay?!"
She angrily reached into a cabinet and pulled out a fresh new tea
kettle, inspecting the inside to make sure it was clean. Placing it
under the faucet, she began to try to explain things to it in sufficient
detail.
"Alright, I want some hot water. Hot WATER! Not hot tea an' not cold
tea...hot WATER! There is nothing in this pot except cold water, and
when you go on the stove..." Ranma put it on the stove. "...you're
supposed to be hot water, and not TEA!!"
Ranma, becoming more than a little annoyed, watched the new kettle
to try to sense if it was the sort that could understand all this. She
had no way of knowing that, at that particular moment, it could
understand her perfectly. However, she also had no way of knowing that
it was just as confused as everybody else.
----
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Saotome." Soun returned to the dining
room, where Genma was already seated, still wearing his pink-stained
gi. Genma had already filled Soun in regarding the training trip, the
dunkings at Jusenkyo, and the eventful ride back, so Soun just assumed
that the odd coloration was meant to be a badge of honor and endurance.
Kasumi, having just awoken, had not heard of any of these events, so
she sat down at the dining room table merely assuming that the odd
coloration was, instead, some sort of prophetic sign.
"No, not at all, Tendo!" Genma beamed. At last, his long quest to
train up his son in the ways he should go was nearing the awaited
payoff, when Ranma and one of Tendo's daughters would fulfill the
engagement planned over a decade earlier.
Soun turned to Kasumi and indicated Genma, sitting on the other side
of the table from them. "Kasumi, I'd like to introduce you to Genma
Saotome, an old friend of mine." He smiled for a moment, then looked
around questioningly. "By the way, Saotome, where did Ranma...?"
"AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!" Ranma's scream came in from the kitchen, followed
by a loud clanging and splashing sound which echoed around in the sink.
She stomped out of the kitchen, still completely dry and fuming in utter
frustration.
Upon storming into the dining room, she suddenly noticed Soun, Kasumi,
and her father staring at her in wide-eyed confusion. Slowing down, she
nervously cleared her throat and waved at the Tendo family. "Uh...hi..."
Soun regarded the girl carefully, already assured of the fact that she
was really a boy, but not yet assured that she wouldn't suddenly become
upset and smash the table over his head. "Hello, Ranma...er, I'd like
to introduce you to my daughter here, Kasumi. Kasumi, this is Ranma
Saotome, Genma's son. He's going to be engaged to you or one of your
sisters!"
"I'M WHAT?!" Ranma slammed her fists on the table, creating small
craters where they impacted. She stared incredulously at her father and
Mr. Tendo in turn.
"He's what??" Kasumi asked, though not nearly as intensely as Ranma
had. She was still a little disoriented from being Queen of the Galaxy
one minute and being tossed into an arranged marriage the next.
Genma and Soun froze, giving each other a stunned "What do you MEAN
you didn't tell them?" look. The only sound to be heard in the Tendo
house for the several awkward seconds that followed was the splashing
of some adventurous carp out in the garden pond.
Ranma, now EXTREMELY ticked off, fixed her gaze cooly on her father
and growled, "You mean to tell me you're marrying me off to some girl I
met just thirty seconds ago?!"
Soun, sweating slightly from the redhead's ferocious tone of voice,
shrugged. "Well...perhaps. I do have THREE daughters you can choose
from, and maybe...."
"Oh!" Kasumi suddenly remembered something. "Um, Father? I meant to
tell you something about Akane...." She looked down at the table,
somewhat embarassed to bring this up in front of guests, but feeling
that this was something that probably should be brought up before Soun
got the idea to engage Akane without knowing the whole story.
Soun looked over at his daughter, furrowing his brow in confusion.
"What about Akane?"
"Well, it's like...there's this boy at school, Tatewaki Kuno," she
said quietly, a blush beginning to settle on her cheeks, "and Akane
and he are kind of...you know...."
"WHAT?!?!" Soun's thunderous reaction knocked both Genma and Ranma
backwards in surprise. "SHE AND THAT KUNO BOY HAVE BEEN...?!?!"
Kasumi nodded and stayed put, used to his emotional outbursts by now.
"Yes, for several weeks now."
"And Kuno...actually KNOWS HOW to play tennis?!"
"Quite skillfully, actually. I was surprised, myself."
Soun shifted back to a calm and thoughtful mood with quite astonishing
rapidity. Cupping his chin with his hand and thinking for a short while,
he mused, "Huh. Didn't see that one coming at all...." He looked back
up at Genma and grinned. "Oh well, that's all right, then. Saotome! I
have TWO daughters your son can choose from, and...."
"THE GERBIL!!!" Nabiki burst into the house, completely forgetting to
take off her shoes as she ran by the assembled families, carrying the
small orange cardboard prop tenderly in her hands. "He's on his way
HERE! Mr. Yotsuya ISN'T here!" She reached the refridgerator and tossed
the sphere in, sparing no time as she raced back through the dining room
on the way upstairs to her room. "We have to stop him! WHAT ON EARTH IS
HIS NEW PASSWORD?!"
Her father, not missing a beat, continued, "...Kasumi would make your
son an excellent wife! She's a wonderful cook, is always gentle and
kind, and is just as beautiful as her dear departed mother...." Soun
trailed off, beginning to quietly cry in a mixture of pride and sorrow.
Ranma, by now thoroughly confused, stammered, "Well, I dunno, I mean,
I'm not sure, y'know, if Kasumi here would, uh, even WANT to be en...."
She stopped and looked down at the table, still somewhat embarassed to
even say the word "engaged" quite yet, let alone becoming such.
Kasumi looked closely at Ranma, an eerie feeling of deja vu beginning
to creep in. "...Ranma?" she started, wanting to test out her theory.
"Are you...REALLY a girl?"
The other girl snapped her head up in indignation. "Hey! I'm a GUY!"
she shouted. However, realizing who she had just yelled at, she lowered
her voice and added, "...sorry, it's just I hadn't found any clean hot
water to change back with yet...."
Feeling very strongly that this was meant to be, Kasumi turned to her
father and requested, "Father? I think that since Akane's spoken for
and Nabiki's...not quite herself right now, that I should be the one to
fulfill yours and Mr. Saotome's arrangement." She looked back at Ranma
and smiled encouragingly. "Ranma, would that be all right with you?"
Ranma blinked. So far, the day had been going completely not according
to plan. So much so, in fact, that she had (until that moment) been
seriously considering just jumping up from the table, running outside,
making a beeline for the setting sun, and not stopping until she was
too tired to run any more.
This plan had been looking pretty good up until right about that
point when, in a moment of inordinate clarity, a fairly attractive
(the he-inside-the-she had to admit) older woman had smiled that
comforting Queen Kasumi smile at her, and had actually *agreed* to
the engagement.
"Uh..." she gulped, thinking this through as quickly as she could,
"...after I, er, find some hot water and change back to a guy......I
guess...." Ranma paused, finally starting to catch up with this line
of thought. "I guess we could give it a try...." She smiled nervously.
Genma clapped his son on the back and laughed, "Well done, m'boy! Our
style of Anything-Goes Martial Arts will live on another generation! I
think this calls for a celebration, eh, Tendo? Uh...Tendo?"
Soun's face had suddenly gone pale, with his hair standing straight on
end and his eyes wide open in shock. He began to stammer unintelligibly,
finally gathering enough wits about him to whisper, "...he found us...
...I don't know how, but he found us...RUN FOR IT, SAOTOME!!" He grabbed
Kasumi's hand and jumped to his feet, running out to the front door as
as quickly as he could with her in tow.
"What?! Who?!" Genma followed hastily, Ranma trailing close behind.
"Who do you think?!?!" Soun yelled in panic, dashing outside a short
distance before stopping unexpectedly. Unable to slow in time, Genma,
Ranma, and Kasumi all crashed into him, toppling the four of them in a
heap at the feet of Happosai, who stood before them with an evil smirk
on his face.
"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S HAPPI!!!"
----
Yotsuya looked up in alarm. His proximity detectors back at the Tendo
household were blaring at him, almost halfway around the world. Deciding
to cut his current training exercise short, he grabbed his briefcase and
tossed it into his boat before jumping into the craft himself.
"No...he's too early...!" He began to rev the rowboat up to maximum
power, so as to hopefully arrive before too much damage was done. His
biggest worry was whether or not Ranma and the others would be able to
protect Kasumi, because without her, the Earth had no defense at all.
The Yotsuya Rowboat, emboldened by the gravity of the situation,
powered up to an energy level it had never before reached in any of
its travels with Mr. Yotsuya and blasted off back in the direction of
Nerima, leaving behind a good quarter-kilometer stretch of vaporized
snow and ice in its wake.
----
"No." Sanshiro shook his head. "Try a little to the north."
Sakura took a deep, steadying breath, focused on her sword, and
ever-so-slightly adjusted her grip on its handle. The small dimensional
rift floating just above the tip of the sword blurred as her scan
flitted over several miles before slowing down and stopping, giving
the two a view of a completely different neighborhood.
Pacing around the small portal to see the target area from a wider
arc, Segata Sanshiro sighed in frustration. They were now aiming even
further away from their intended target in Nerima than before, and
time was running out all too quickly.
"Let's go back to the last point and try a more gradual vector in a
northwesterly direction, and be ready. The instant you get the lock,
fire. No hesitation."
She carefully shifted back to her previous stance, a motion of no
more than a couple of centimeters, and without taking her gaze away
from the targetting rift, asked her husband, "Are you sure you'll be
able to get through in time if I launch it that quickly? And you DO
have the Orange on you, right?"
He looked up and gave her a rogueish grin. "Of course! Just get me
that tunnel..." He clapped his fist into the open palm of his other
hand. "...and that gerbil will learn what TRUE power looks like!"
Changing the sword's position by mere fractions of a centimeter,
Sakura smiled to herself. "Well, if anyone could do it...."
The rift blurred once again.
----
"So! Who wants to go first?" Happosai asked his former students,
glancing between them to see which one of them felt particularly
stupid today. "Y'know, boys, being sealed in a cave for years isn't
JUST about alternating between boredom and anger while obsessing over
revenge, but it's also an excellent way to learn patience! So, I'm
giving you boys a whole TWENTY seconds to choose! Double what I would
have given you before! Now, don't you feel grateful you have ME as
your master?" He laughed and began a timer on his watch.
Soun stood in front of Kasumi, turning his head aside and whispering,
"You and Ranma, go through the house and wait out back...we'll take
care of this." Silently, he added, "I hope...."
Genma edged up next to him, holding a hand by his mouth to try and
keep their conversation as private as possible. "Tendo. I don't think
we have a choice; he'd tear through either one of us without breaking
a sweat...we'll have to use that old combination technique."
Alarmed, Soun stared at his old friend as if he had just been asked
to go skydiving off his own roof. "What?! We've only STUDIED that, not
practiced it...!" He glanced back at Happosai, who was counting down
the seconds on his watch, seemingly uninterested in their hushed
conference.
"First time for everything! Hurry up, he's almost done...!" Genma
hissed back, then stood in the appropriate position to start the
maneuver.
Tossing caution to the wind, Soun stepped aside a short distance and
mirrored the other man's stance. With carefully measured steps, the
two of them moved inwards, performing the first motions of an ancient
and powerful maneuver, one which would provide the necessary strength
to defeat the old master and restore peace and justice to the land.
"FU......!!"
They got no further than that. Happosai, flinging his watch aside,
made an inhumanly abrupt dash at the two, then punted Genma off into
the distance. Continuing without any loss of momentum, he swung his
foot around and launched Soun off in the opposite direction. Within
seconds, both men were out of sight.
"Well," he grunted to himself, "THAT was spectacularly dull. I was
hoping they'd last as least twice as long as that." The ancient
master looked around the yard of the Tendo house, quickly spotting
Ranma and Kasumi, who had already forgotten Soun's instructions to
leave the area as quickly as air resistance would allow. With a
lecherous twinkle in his eye, he looked the two girls over, deciding
on what exactly he felt like doing that day.
Ranma stood protectively in front of Kasumi, dropping into a ready
stance, and growled, "Who are you? What do you want?" She put forth
significantly more bravado than she actually felt, after seeing her
father (who wasn't TOO terribly below her skill level) effortlessly
launched over the horizon like a pastel pink rocket by this...well,
whatever he was.
"Spunky...I like that in a girl, and I see you know some martial arts
as well! I think I'll play with you first...." He turned towards the
street, still deep in thought, and methodically paced away from the
girls. He called back, "Don't worry, I'll deal with the two of you
shortly. I just have a little unfinished business to attend to first.
After all, what good is revenge without a little gloating?"
He reached the middle of the street and stopped. No cars were on the
road for miles in either direction, and sunset had finally entered its
final phase for the day. Happosai stretched a couple times to limber
up, faced back towards the Tendo house, and hollered at the top of his
lungs.
"BEHOLD...!!" He turned to the left, facing in the direction he
had booted Genma over the horizon. "THE PELVIC GYRATIONS...!!" He spun
on one heel in a 180-degree turn, looking off towards Soun's landing
spot. "OF MY VICTORY BOOGIE!!"
Happosai boogied.
Immeditely, the cosmic gyrations began to show their effect on the
surrounding houses. Cement foundations cracked, gates and fences
spontaneously crumbled, walls folded in on themselves, and at least
two roofs in the neighborhood flew straight off their houses, inverted
themselves, and landed again, making great messes in the process. The
Tendo house remained unharmed; he wanted to save that for later. Further
destruction was prevented by a rather spectacular event, occuring just
in time, that completely threw off Happosai's groove.
Right as he began to bust out some truly impressive moves, lip-syncing
to a song he happened to be thinking of at the moment, a medium-sized
intercontinental ballistic suitcase smashed into the ground nearby and
almost immediately began to emit an obscuring cloud of steam, into which
a dark silhouetted figure rose ominously.
Happosai, uncharacteristically startled by the fact that he couldn't
even sense that coming, halted his boogie. Something was not quite right
here; he felt a lack of a presense, one he hadn't felt since....
*WHAM*
The Yotsuya Rowboat, taking advantage of this flashy distraction, flew
majestically into the back of Happosai's head. The impact sent the old
man flying forward, skidding face-first along the street before coming
to a painful stop, half-embedded in a lamp post.
Yotsuya guided the rowboat over to Ranma and Kasumi's spot over by
the house, calmly disembarked, and sent the flying boat off to maintain
a holding pattern nearby. He glanced down at the two girls. "Hello,
Miss Tendo, Mr. Saotome. Glad to see you both doing well. Would either
of you happen to know where Nabiki went off to, by any chance?"
"Nabiki? Yes, she went upstairs earlier." Kasumi responded cheerfully,
feeling much more confident now that Happosai was struggling to extract
himself from a lamp post and not bringing down the neighborhood with his
boogie instead.
'Unflappable. Absolutely astounding...it's no wonder that she's my
mother's beacon,' thought Mr. Yotsuya. Out loud, he asked, "Ranma, why
have you not changed back yet?"
"Um, uh......who are you?" Ranma asked uncertainly, making Yotsuya
realize that he was quite a bit less unflappable than Kasumi at this
particular moment.
Yotsuya put his hands on the redhead's shoulders and spoke to her,
slowly and carefully, "Ranma. You need to become male again for any of
this to mean a thing. Go back into the house and reverse the Jusenkyo
curse as soon as you possibly can." A rattling crash out in the street
alerted him to Happosai managing to work his way free by performing a
localized boogie that knocked the lamppost over.
He looked over to Kasumi. "Please, keep yourself by Ranma and, above
all else, remain safe. Your time to act will arrive soon. However, in
the meantime," he straightened his trenchcoat and walked back to the
street, "I shall keep Happosai...occupied."
"You?!" Happosai stared openmouthed at Yotsuya, finally pointing an
aged finger at him in anger and shouting, "What do you think you're
doing here, Yotsuya?! This is MY territory; you can't just barge in
and interrupt me in the middle of my fun!"
Yotsuya regarded his old colleague with feigned boredom. "Come now,
Happosai, those days are decades behind us both. Times change. Worlds
change. And at the moment, I'm afraid I'm going to have to object to
your involvement with the Tendo family." Silently, he gave mental
orders to his briefcase, which began to close up and slowly rise out
of its crater.
Happosai's face brightened. "Really? Well, isn't that nice? Mr.
Yotsuya has freed me from my obligations to lead the Anything-Goes
School of Martial Arts! Y'know, I think maybe I'll go into retirement,
living in a cave or something! Yeah, that's the ticket!" He laughed
bitterly. "Always the jokester, Yotsuya...would you like me to remind
you how badly I stomped you around LAST time? Now get out of my way or
you're gonna feel it in the morning..."
With that, Happosai advanced threateningly on Yotsuya, slowly at
first, but then all of a sudden made the same superhuman dash at his
former sparring partner as he had at his former students and swung an
equally devastating roundhouse kick at the taller man's head.
*THUD*
In an instant, Yotsuya's briefcase flew past Happosai, almost as if
it had materialized in his hand, and blocked the kick, swatting the
old master back to the ground. Yotsuya gave him a barely perceptable
smirk. "Last time was an illusion. This time doubly so. You cannot
win."
Enraged, Happosai began a swift flurry of offensive strikes, moving
almost too quickly to be seen by the human eye. With calm and practiced
ease, Yotsuya blocked each and every one, using a combination of his
briefcase, his fedora, and his trench coat, which all benefitted greatly
from his recent training expedition. Silently, the fourth piece of his
arsenal swung in low to catch his opponent off-guard.
*WHAM*
The Yotsuya Rowboat, this time taking advantage of Happosai's focused
yet careless attack, cleanly swiped him away from Yotsuya, sending him
tumbling down the street.
Yotsuya watched him, to see what his next move would be, but to his
confusion, the ancient pervert stood up, hopped over a nearby wall, and
ran off.
"What in the...NO!!" Sensing the same thing that Happosai did, Yotsuya
ran as fast as physically possible, trying to catch up with him before
he reached his target and became a threat that not even his complete
wardrobe would be able to contain.
----
"You found some?!"
Kasumi nodded at Ranma and indicated the proper door. "Yes, the furo's
all ready and filled with clean, hot water. It's all clear, so you can go
in any time."
Ranma shook her head in amazement and gratitude. After all this time,
she finally was within reach of regaining her original, male self. In
addition, she was getting more and more comfortable with this engagement
with each passing moment; the eldest Tendo daughter was nothing if not
pleasant to be around, and she had already solved Ranma's biggest
frustration of the day. The Saotome pseudo-daughter resolved, in the
back of her mind, to find some appropriate way to repay Kasumi's help.
"Oh, that reminds me," Kasumi said, noting Ranma's rather scuffed-up
and dusty outfit, "would you like me to wash your clothes while you're
in the bath?"
"Huh?" Ranma blinked in confusion. It had been several months since
she had had her clothes washed in anything more complicated than a
convenient creek she and her father had found while training in the
woods, and she blushed slightly. "You mean, you want me to give you
my clothes before...?"
The older girl laughed gently, "Oh, no, Ranma, I just meant that you
could leave your clothes in the basket in here before you go in to the
tub. After all, I don't really have anything else TOO pressing to attend
to right now," she stated, unaware of how spectacularly incorrect she
was, "and it's the least I can do, since you'll be staying here starting
today."
"Oh...okay, I guess," Ranma shrugged, inwardly kicking herself for not
having anything more confident-sounding pop into her head. With a sigh,
she entered the dressing room and began to remove her clothing into the
basket, redoubling her resolve to find something nice to do for Kasumi,
regardless of how uncomfortably new and sudden the engagement was.
As she was removing her outer shirt, a sudden draft whooshed in under
the door, causing Ranma to sneeze. She decided to hurry up, so she could
relax in some hot water and be her old self once again.
----
"RANMA!!"
Ryoga ran onward, nearly tirelessly. Years of wandering the world had
gifted him with almost superhuman stamina, which was coming in quite
handy at the time.
"THIS IS PRETTY MUCH MOSTLY YOUR FAULT!!"
He would have been yelling with fewer qualifiers in his accusation of
responsibility, but years of wandering the world had taught him that
Ranma, though an arrogant bread-snatcher and a guy who couldn't even
stick around at a duel site a lousy four days, was nowhere near China
at the time Ryoga had acquired his own Jusenkyo curse.
"O-HOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!"
That and the weird, scantily-clad girl flying behind him wasn't TOO
much of a downside, he considered, except for her constant pursuit and
the fact that, whenever other girls got too close to him, she had a
worrying tendency to stop them, announce her name and titles, then
proceed to launch giant icicles or huge fireballs or make the ground
explode or something else equally violent.
After the first couple of such incidents, he decided to simply try
and get away from her. This strategy was meeting with considerably less
success than he had hoped, as she kept doggedly trailing him, even after
he doused hot water on himself to negate the female-attracting effects
of his curse. He figured that she was just REALLY enamoured of him,
though he wasn't really a big fan of having to take responsibility for
the damage she kept causing.
Naga, on the other hand, was (for the most part) merely having more
fun with Ryoga than she had had in years. She was consciously aware of
his curse and the effects it had on females, but that was definitely
not the full reason she kept up her relentless chase. It was also a....
*BAM*
Ryoga, running ahead of her, hit the ground facefirst, twitching
slightly. She was so focused on his sudden stop that she didn't see
the reason for it until it was nestled lecherously on her ample chest.
"SAH-WEEEE-TOOOO!!!" Happosai exclaimed, drawing more energy in
seconds from the floating sorceress than he would have gathered from
hanging around an entire room full of bikini models for a day. Ki, both
mystical and martial, surged into the old man, and he greedily absorbed
every bit of it.
"WHAT THE...?!?! GET OFF ME!!!" Naga shreiked, attempting to fire a
blast into the pervert's head from point-blank range. However, flipping
effortlessly, Happosai spun around, amplified her intended shot, and
sent it right back into her, blasting her miles out to sea.
He floated down to the ground, wielding the residual effects of her
Raywing as it faded. "And thank you, ma'am! Too bad you had to leave,
but even *I*, sometimes, gotta put business...," he grinned and looked
over at Yotsuya, hopping over a fence and arriving just moments too late
to stop his powerup, "...before pleasure."
----
Ryoga, in a surprising turn of luck, had leapt up from the ground with
quite astonishing rapidity, run down an alley, and gotten himself safely
lost while trying to chase down and punish whoever it was who had just
slammed his face into the dirt. Furious, he ran tirelessly, directly
away from the fight while shouting, "WHOEVER YOU WERE, THAT WAS *ALL*
YOUR FAULT!!"
----
Crackling with his newly stolen energy, Happosai slowly advanced on
Yotsuya, smirking with newly charged confidence. "Now, would you like
to try that last round one more time? I bet it'll be much more fun!"
Yotsuya grimaced, holding his suitcase in a defensive posture, but
knowing all too well that the older man had the overwhelming advantage
at this point in the fight; he had only trained to hold him off
defensively, but Happosai now had more than enough power to punch
through his suitcase and outfit with ease. Calling his rowboat again,
his only real offensive weapon, Yotsuya made a feint towards Happosai
to try and catch him off guard.
*CRACK*
Happosai, without looking, swung a fist backwards, catching the bow
of the Yotsuya Rowboat dead-on and shattering it with a single hit.
The jagged shards of wood clattered to the ground harmlessly, and
Happosai laughed in triumph. "Ready to surrender and let me have my
fun NOW, eh, Yotsuya?"
Yotsuya's worried expression suddenly froze, then returned to its
usual emotionless state. He turned his back and stepped back a few
paces, calling out, "No need to surrender. Your fight is just starting,
while mine...is nearing its end."
Happosai stopped, momentarily confused, but he was unceremoniously
interrupted by a wobbly rift forming in the air behind him, as well as
the techno remix of a certain heroic theme song blaring forth through
it.
With an ethereal female shout | Aoi oozora shiroi ukigumo
of, "HAJA KENSEI...OUKA HOUSHIN!!" | Makka ni tagiru asobi no chi
a bolt of energy burst through the |
rift, tearing it open. Happosai | Mattaku betsu na jikuu ni wa
dodged it, but he was nowhere near | Katana ni todokesaseru zo!
quick enough to dodge Segata |
Sanshiro, who ran through and | SEGATA SAKURA! SEGATA SAKURA!
grabbed him in a painful headlock. | SEGA SATURN, SHIRO!
Moving with almost poetic ease, Segata Sanshiro flipped in mid-air,
tossing Happosai into a neighboring house at such a great speed that
it appeared as if Happosai was one solid blurred streak, visible for
but an instant and then fading from view. The house, empty for the day,
promptly collapsed on him.
"Good day, brother," Yotsuya greeted Sanshiro, tipping his fedora in
respect. "I assume you brought the Orange?"
"Here. Where's the gerbil?" Sanshiro handed over the device, while
looking around trying to sense any enemies nearby other than Happosai,
who was rapidly boogying his way out of the rubble.
"Hiding." Yotsuya took the Chocolate Orange and hid it in his
trenchcoat, turning to leave back to the Tendo house. "We deal with
Happosai for now, but keep your eyes open. He may attack at any moment.
Mother has already left home, so I shall go and get the Tendo girls
ready."
Sanshiro snorted in disappointment, having hoped to encounter a REAL
fight upon arriving in this dimension. Happosai, even at his new energy
plateau, was not that much of a challenge for the veteran judo master.
Happosai finished extracting himself from the rubble and charged at
Segata Sanshiro, ready to begin an all-out, knock-the-Earth-down fight.
Sanshiro flexed his fists and cheerfully obliged.
--
Yotsuya ran into the Tendo house, noting with no small amount of
relief that Ranma was currently male and relaxing in the furo upstairs.
That segment of the mission out of the way, he entered, uninvited, into
Nabiki's room.
"Go away." Nabiki mumbled, not bothering to see who it was. She was on
her bed, her voice rather muffled as a result of the makeshift shelter
she had placed on it.
Yotsuya shook his head in disappointment at the particular way
Nabiki was choosing to handle this crisis; although, with her sane part
detached, it was not too terribly surprising. He walked over and knocked
on her shelter, which was little more than a large overturned cardboard
box with the words "Nabiki's House" scribbled on one side.
"Miss Tendo, it is time. Your destiny awaits, and the future of all
humanity rests upon you," he spoke gravely, so as to force his words
through the cardboard with their intensity fully intact, "so it would
be very nice if you got out of this box right about now."
"Mr. Yotsuya? Are you here? I mean, REALLY here?" The top flaps of
the cardboard box known as Nabiki's House popped open, and Nabiki got
up to see if he was actually where he said he was, and not Not Here as
he was earlier.
He sighed, slightly frustrated by Nabiki-II's absence; he really
wanted to be dealing with the sane one right at the moment. "Yes,
Nabiki, I am here, because if I WASN'T here, I wouldn't be able to
give you this." He handed her the Chocolate Orange, carefully using
both hands.
She reached up to take it, but almost lost her grip, startled by how
amazingly heavy it was. Alarmed, Yotsuya quickly clasped his hands over
hers, making sure that she wouldn't drop it accidentally.
"Be careful!!" he warned her sternly, breathing a sigh of relief.
"Do NOT drop it, except when I tell you to! You have the fate of this
entire galaxy resting in your palm, and I would be most grateful if
you did NOT break it prematurely...."
Nabiki, shocked by Mr. Yotsuya's sudden burst of volume, decided to
hold the Orange much more carefully, using both hands. Yotsuya, however,
trailed off, his Gerbil Sense tingling.
"He's close...," he got up and walked around her bed to look out the
window, realizing that Pereshte was finally showing himself. His eyes
shot wide open in panic. "No, HE'S HERE!!"
Mr. Yotsuya kicked out Nabiki's window and jumped out, hitting the
ground running. Even with his trenchcoat-enhanced speed, he knew he
probably wouldn't be able to arrive in time to stop Pereshte, but
he had to try. There was no alternative.
Nabiki, still sitting in Nabiki's House with the top open, watched
him leave, remaining fully confused while tenderly holding the single
most powerful destructive device in the galaxy.
"Um...now what?"
--
The fight between Happosai and Sanshiro was anything but even. The
master of Anything-Goes Martial Arts, even supercharged with Naga's
drained power, was getting tossed around the street like a ragdoll. All
of his attacks were getting parried and redirected, and his strength
was not nearly enough to even cause a dent in his opponent.
Segata Sanshiro, hoping to finish the fight soon, grabbed Happosai
by the scruff of the neck and flung him straight upwards. Immediately
after the launch, Yotsuya skidded to a stop right by his brother.
"Sanshiro! Pereshte is HERE! We've got to...!!" Yotsuya shouted, but
it was already too late. With a remarkable leap for such a small rodent,
Pereshte shot out of his hiding spot in the neighbor's front yard, flew
straight at the airborne Happosai, and skewered him with his bamboo
drinking straw.
Almost immediately, a brilliant explosion of light rocked the skies
of Nerima, dimming the sun in comparison and causing both Yotsuya and
Sanshiro to have to shield their eyes. As the light faded, the two of
them stood alone in the middle of the street, an eerie silence settling
over the neighborhood.
"Where...where is he?!" Sanshiro couldn't see either Happosai nor
Pereshte anywhere, and Yotsuya's Gerbil Sense had gone silent as well.
The silence only lasted a few seconds, as it suddenly started chirping
at him, about a quarter-second after Pereshte materialized right in
front of his face.
"Boo."
Yotsuya could not even think quickly enough to dodge in time as
Pereshte, now several times larger and significantly more powerful
after absorbing Happosai, spun around and slammed him on the chin
with his tail. The extreme reality warp that the gerbil possessed
amplified the strike to the point that it launched Yotsuya cleanly
off his feet and in a shallow arc over the neighborhood.
Turning back to face Segata Sanshiro, Pereshte said nothing, but
merely floated to the ground and twitched his newly-enlarged whiskers
at him. He knew the fight was over, and it was only a matter of time
before his absolute control over this world was achieved.
----
Nabiki finished folding up Nabiki's House for storage, in the off
chance she might need it later. With the psychological roller coaster
that seemed to be intent was dragging her along that day, one never
could be too careful.
This turned out to be very convenient accidental foresight, for just
three seconds later, Mr. Yotsuya smashed through her wall and landed
on the bed, now cleared of all cardboard. Having sustained only minor
injuries, he rolled off of the bed and to the floor, which was also
conveniently cleared of all cardboard.
"Mr. Yotsuya! What happened?!"
He began to scramble to his feet, a nasty bruise beginning to form on
his chin, and all but shouted, "We have no more time! Take the Chocolate
Orange to the furo, now!"
Nabiki hesitated. Whether it was from Yotsuya's annoyingly sudden
reapparences or the fact that she would now have to pay to have both
her window AND her wall repaired, she was not sure. She started to pick
the Chocolate Orange back up when Yotsuya picked her up bodily and ran
with her over to the furo.
Right before reaching the furo itself, Yotsuya and Nabiki ran into
Kasumi, who was carrying a basket full of Ranma's clean clothes. Not
wanting to waste any time, Yotsuya grabbed her as well, kicked down
the door to the bath, and rushed everybody inside, where Ranma was
still relaxing in the tub.
"HEY!! What are you guys doing in here?!" he loudly protested, trying
to cover up as much as possible. Yotsuya put the two girls down,
Kasumi blushing heavily and averting her eyes from her fiance, and
Nabiki too confused to bother. Yotsuya pointed at the surface of the
water and looked urgently at Nabiki.
"Put it in, now!"
"Wait," she hesitated yet again, causing a vein to pop out on the
otherwise calm and bruised face of Yotsuya, "what does that do?"
A massive explosion from outside shook the house, and half a moment
later, Segata Sanshiro came crashing in through the ceiling, landing
facedown right next to Ranma's tub.
"Um, hello? Anyone listening?" Ranma asked, though not really feeling
as if he'd get an answer.
Yotsuya closed his eyes, slowly counted to pi, and restated in that
slow, methodical, I-wish-Nabiki-II-were-in-there manner he had come to
know and despise, "Put the Chocolate Orange in the hot water or I will
throw you out the window and let the gerbil take you."
She needed no further persuasion. Hefting the Orange high above her
head, she brought it down onto the surface of the water with a rather
satisfying *WHACK*. The Orange did not submerge, however, but merely
melted off its outer covering, separated into twenty brilliantly glowing
wedge-shaped segments, and promptly detonated.
--
The Chocolate Orange, an ancient and mystical weapon of extreme
destructive power, was forged long ago in the bakeries of a civilization
so advanced that it annihilated itself (as civilizations that advanced
had an annoying tendency to do). Chocolate in name only and Orange in
color only, these spheres were designed for one use and one use only:
the complete reformatting of an entire galaxy.
Once activated, the energies within would begin to deconstruct
the fabric of reality itself at a low level. In its place, the Orange
would then introduce its own matrix, rebuilding upon itself in a chain
reaction until it ran into the relatively matter-free edges of deep
space, transforming an entire galaxy into a colossal orange plastic
frisbee.
Due to concerns over misuse of this device, very few of them
were ever forged, and they were sold only to select deities and
others considered responsible enough to only use them in appropriate
situations. Once formatting had begun, the process was completely
irreversible; the galaxy could not, by any means, be returned to its
previous state.
Oddly enough, in a bizarre coincidence, remarkable fascimiles of
this weapon were produced on several versions of Earth, produced
for food rather than programmed for destruction. A certain prominent
interdimensional researcher, when asked about this coincidence, gave
this comment: "They're just weird that way."
--
"IT DOES WHAT?!?!"
The bath of the Tendo house had become the focal point of a galaxy-
wide reformatting process, which proceeded swiftly and quietly behind
the scenes, out of sight of human vision. The explosion of the Orange
above the bathtub had not destroyed anything right away, but had merely
phased the fragments of the Orange into the appropriate realms of space
and time, where they would begin their assigned mission.
"Miss Tendo, if I had explained this beforehand, you would most likely
not have agreed to do it, and that would have been very tragic indeed."
The people of this particular Earth, at that point, had approximately
three minutes before the Orange's effects would start to intrude upon
their reality in a visible way, rearranging matter and energy at will.
Unfortunately, anyone left on the planet by that time would become
part of the colossal orange plastic frisbee.
Nabiki, incorrectly assuming that she had directly caused the
extinction of the entire human race, calmly passed out with a fever.
"Well, that part went smoothly...." Yotsuya mused, knowing Nabiki
wasn't necessary for the next phase of the strategy. "Ranma, get a
towel on. We need to you help Kasumi get us all off this planet."
Segata Sanshiro stood up unsteadily, preparing himself for another
bout with the gerbil, only this time remembering to dodge. What occurred
next, though, surprised both him and Yotsuya.
"COME FOOOORTH, SQUARE GUITAAAAR!!!"
Pereshte's squeaky little voice boomed through the neighborhood,
followed by a low rumbling that shook the house. Kasumi, Yotsuya, and
Sanshiro wobbled and tried to remain standing, while Ranma remained in
the tub, its hot water sloshing about in protest.
With a sound that closely resembled five thousand people zipping up
their jackets in unison, Pereshte's newly-summoned Square Guitar, which
vaguely resembled a floating tank in the shape of a square guitar,
locked up the dimension.
"He knows our plan...he's not going to fight us; he's trying to lock
us in!" Yotsuya realized, surprised that Pereshte had become that
desperate. With the Orange beginning to overwrite his control routines
of the dimension, he had apparently decided to use the last of his
remaining power to take all his enemies down with him. "Sanshiro, we
must...Sanshiro?!"
The judo master was beginning to fade out, becoming increasingly
translucent. He looked at himself in shock, then up at Yotsuya. "He
severed the link! He's trying to force me back with that...that
guitar!!" An expression of extreme frustration came over his face.
"Sanshiro, Mother cannot get us out of here with the Guitar sealing
off this dimension," Yotsuya said, trying to come up with a new plan
in the two minutes and fifteen seconds the Earth had left. "Now, if
I made a distraction with...."
Sanshiro held up an almost see-through hand. "No. You tell those two
what they need to do." he gestured at Ranma and Kasumi, then stood up,
glancing out the window with an ever-increasing righteous fury. "The
gerbil is mine." With that, Segata Sanshiro leapt out the hole in the
ceiling and ran across the roof, powering up despite his handicap and
preparing for one final last-ditch attack.
Yotsuya smiled at his brother's courage, then sighed and decided to
get back to business. Ranma, not quite following this conversation,
had gotten out of the tub and put on a towel. Kasumi, off in the corner
of the room, was still averting her eyes out of modesty.
"Ranma, Kasumi, come over here." He took Ranma by the hand and walked
him over to his fiancee. "Now, you two are about to perform the single
most important act ever done on this Earth, so listen carefully. We only
have eighty-six seconds to do it in."
Ranma's eyes bugged out, and Kasumi's blush grew even more intense.
Yotsuya paused, then shook his head. "No, not that. Just listen up and
listen carefully. What I want you to do is...."
----
Pereshte boldly stood atop the Square Guitar, relaxing slightly with
the knowledge that, even if those meddlesome brothers had managed to
cause the galaxy's self-destruction, that his interdictor would force
them to share in its fate. He, personally, had designed more than enough
safeguards that even the Chocolate Orange could not destroy him, but
merely rearrange his surroundings.
"PERESHTE!!!" Sanshiro jumped off the Tendo roof, leaping high into
the air in an obvious frontal attack. Pereshte looked up nonchalantly,
knowing full well he could swat aside such a barefaced tactic that he
didn't react until it was too late.
The undisputed master of all things Sega Saturn suddenly adjusted his
trajectory in mid-air, bounced off the wall of a house behind Pereshte
and, faster than the gerbil could react, grabbed him in a bearhug and
began to power up to his limits, and beyond.
"IT'S OVER!! ROUKO MEKKYAKU...!!!"
----
"Um, what?" Ranma shook his head, not quite believing what he and
Kasumi had just been told.
"Touch your index and pinky fingers to Kasumi's and repeat, 'There's
no place like somewhere else! There's no place like somewhere else!'
It's really quite simple."
Kasumi stood there silently, slowly realizing that what Yotsuya was
saying actually did make sense, even though she wasn't quite sure why.
"Okay......and why are we doing this?" Ranma asked tiredly, not
realizing that they were down to sixty-two seconds before it was too
late.
Putting as much urgency into his words as he possibly could, given the
time alloted, Yotsuya explained hastily, "Kasumi Tendo is this world's
current chosen beacon for my mother. She is the one who is going to
breach this dimension, take all of us with her, and drop everybody off
in a nice, Pereshte-free reality. However, with all the interference in
interdimensional travel, it is unconditionally imperative that she and
you, in unison, perform these exact, universally-recognized steps so
that my mother can locate us and so that we are not all killed in forty-
six seconds. Is THAT clear enough for you, Mr. Saotome?"
Ranma gulped. "Um, okay. Makes sense, I think...." He nervously
looked over at Kasumi, who gave him that encouraging Queen Kasumi
smile again and took his hand in hers to help him resolve to do
the right thing.
"Let's begin."
----
"I AM JUSTICE!!!"
Segata stood on top of the Square Guitar and held on to Pereshte with
all his might. Dauntlessly, the huge gerbil struggled, shouting at his
captor incoherently in an ancient rodential language, but in vain.
Fading rapidly, yet wielding more raw power than he had ever amassed
in one attack, Segata Sanshiro gave one final push and unleashed his
ultimate attack.
"SHIN-TEN....DOOOOOOOUCHI!!!"
A thundering explosion of ki erupted out of him, searing through
Pereshte and cracking the Square Guitar. The houses that immediately
surrounded the Guitar, previously damaged and evacuated after Happosai's
Victory Boogie, took that opportunity to vaporize completely. Sanshiro,
having done what he came to do, vanished completely, being snapped back
to his home dimension.
The Square Guitar, having become irreparably damaged, lost its ability
to levitate and fell the whole four feet to the street below, crumbling
into bits. Pereshte landed amidst the wreck, mostly unharmed. His recent
absorption of Happosai meant that the damage he took was merely limited
to singed fur.
"Well, THAT was rather dull," the gerbil grumbled to himself, honestly
surprised that that mere human had been able to wreck his Guitar less
than two minutes after he had built it. So surprised he was, in fact,
that he didn't hear the enormous dimensional rift forming behind him
until what came out of it smashed into the back of his head.
*W*H*A*M*
Tsunami, First Tree of Jurai, the most powerful ship of her own and
many other universes, and Mr. Yotsuya's mother, burst through the rift
and sent Pereshte uncontrollably flying down the street. With the Square
Guitar destroyed, Ranma and Kasumi's signal had come in loud and clear,
and she arrived in Nerima with approximately twenty seconds to spare.
"Yotsuya!" she telepathically called her son, "is everybody ready to
go?"
His voice sounded in her mind, loud and clear, "Indeed! Begin the
transport, and I'll keep Pereshte at bay!" She could see him a couple
of blocks away, climbing out of the hole in the roof of the Tendo house
and gathering his briefcase.
"Good. Here we go...." Tsunami concentrated, and began teleporting the
entire population of Earth, in compacted form, into herself for the
long interdimensional journey out of this world.
Pereshte got up, mildly stunned by the impact of one of the most
powerful starships in existence on the back on his head, and in a
single terrifying instant, realized what she was up to.
"No...no! NO!!" He sprung to his feet, and utilizing all the power he
had absorbed from Happosai and, through him, Naga, formed a brilliantly
intense ball of energy between his paws and flung it, in beam form,
directly at the bow of Tsunami.
The resulting explosion rocked a large portion of Nerima, bringing
almost all the rest of the partially damaged buildings that had survived
thus far to the ground in flaming ruin. When the smoke cleared, though,
what he saw was Mr. Yotsuya, standing in front of Tsunami, holding up
his glowing Briefcase of the Light Hawk, which had completely absorbed
the main brunt of the blast.
Yotsuya smiled at Pereshte. "Like mother...," He opened the briefcase
and walked into it. "...like son." The briefcase flashed brightly for
a moment, and was gone.
Having loaded the entire world's population into her storage bays,
Tsunami reopened the rift behind her, went into reverse, and likewise
disappeared.
The Chocolate Orange, having completed its three minutes of behind-
the-scenes preparation, began to tear down Pereshte's fortress reality
and replace it with its own design. Pereshte threw back his head and
shreiked powerlessly against the destruction of space and time bearing
down on him.
----
On board Tsunami, things weren't going much better. With billions of
humans in storage, the journey between dimensions, already fairly
difficult, had become downright dangerous. Even in compact form, that
many people on board made the ship's manuevering incredibly awkward.
"Hey, where am I?" Ranma stood, a towel wrapped around his waist.
Next to him was Kasumi, equally confused. The two stood in a huge, dark
room, filled with trees and ponds as far as the eye could see. In fact,
it would have been a rather relaxing sight, if not for the fact that
the whole set was shaking and rumbling as if in an earthquake, only
worse.
"Kasumi Tendo!" a vaguely familiar voice spoke up behind them. They
turned to see a woman with long blue hair and brilliantly regal robes,
which Kasumi instantly recognized from her earlier dream. "It is good
to see you here, but I'm afraid we don't have time for pleasantries."
"Tsunami...." Kasumi voiced quietly, not sure how exactly she knew
the older woman's name, but unmistakably certain nonetheless. She
straightened her dress and bowed humbly. "I'm ready. Let's do this."
"Do what?" Ranma asked, trying to keep his towel from being shaken
off by the turbulence reverberating through the ship.
Tsunami turned to him. "Ranma, I am bringing all the people from your
world to a new one, safe from the threat of that gerbil warping the
normalcy of the planet in his own image...." Her voice took on a more
melancholy tone. "However, if Kasumi and I do not merge into one, we
may not even survive the journey there."
The shaking began to intensify, causing ponds to half-empty through
splashing onto their shores, and one or two trees in the distance fell
over, uprooted by the tremors.
Kasumi looked over at Ranma. "I'm sorry, Ranma, but I must do this.
Before I go, I just wanted you to know...." She smiled sadly, tears
beginning to appear in her eyes. "I wanted to thank you for all you
did to help."
Ranma looked at Kasumi in confusion, not quite sure what it was he
did, and knowing that they were only engaged for fifteen minutes before
the Earth swallowed itself up, but he managed an uncertain smile anyway.
"Uh, thanks." He immediately slapped his palm into his face and groaned
for not coming up with anything more memorable than, "Uh, thanks."
Kasumi walked over to Tsunami, no simple feat with the increasingly
irregular motion of the ground under her feet, and the two promptly
vanished.
----
The ship spun erratically through quasispace, slightly energized
by the fusion of Tsunami and Kasumi, yet still mortally damaged by
the turbulence.
A fresh, clean dimension appeared off the bow, and the newly renamed
Kasunami lurched towards it, beginning to transport the inhabitants of
the doomed Earth forward into their new home, even as the ship began
to develop significant cracks in its superstructure. With a final push,
her engines screamed out in protest as the ship literally shook itself
apart.
With that, the last remnants of the ship formerly known as Tsunami
shredded away into the void.
----
"Well, that was odd." The portable monitor showed the diagram of a
dimension sealing itself off and another one shifting its contents
radically. "That was one of the human dimensions, wasn't it?"
The scientist on the other side of the table looked over her readouts
and shrugged. "I suppose. Looks like someone set off a Chocolate Orange
over there, or something." He frowned. "Hey, I thought you were busy
looking up for grants or funding or something; what are you doing
monitoring those lower dimensions again for?"
She shook her head and smiled, picking up a few more lunch cubes.
"Hey," she replied with a shrug, "I just like humans, that's all. I do
agree, they're definately weird, but they're a FUN weird. These upper
dimensions can get so boring sometimes."
"Where on Earth am I NOW?!?" lamented a familiar voice from the other
side of the restaurant.
All conversation in the room stopped as they realized a human, under
his own power, had somehow managed to end up in a dimension he should
have, by all rights, been completely unable to enter.
The Vry'cian graduate scientist, much more experienced in humans than
anyone else in the room, also noticed that this particular one had a
rather intruiging set of pheremones on him.
She shot him a predatory grin from across the room. "Fun and weird
INDEED...."
----
Pereshte fumed in outrage. It wasn't so bad that he had been thwarted
at the last possible second by Yotsuya and his associates, or even
that his dreams of ruling an entire planet with phenomenal cosmic
power were slapped down by Tsunami.
What really made him mad was that standing atop a galaxy-sized smooth
plastic orange frisbee was intensely boring.
Sure, he could survive indefinitely standing in the vacuum, but
with nothing to explore except orange plastic for light-years in all
directions, and his hacking into reality completely locked off by the
conformity imposed by the Chocolate Orange, it was shaping up to be a
spectacularly dull eternity.
He stomped in frustration. It felt refreshing, so he did it again.
A couple more stomps and, to his surprise, a fridge popped out of the
ground nearby. Curiously, he walked over and, his paws calm and not
trembling in the slightest, he carefully opened the door and looked
inside.
It was filled with Snapple and Jell-O.
"Well," he mused, a little more contentedly, "the consolation meal's
not too bad...."
----
Segata Sanshiro materialized several feet above the ground, which
cheerfully rushed up to meet him.
"Sanshiro!!" Sakura, still standing in her Ouka Houshin pose, dropped
her sword and ran over. She kneeled down and asked, "Sanshiro, are you
all right? Did it work?"
He coughed, still wobbly from the exertion of performing his Shinten
Douchi attack, and reached into his gi for his interdimensional cell
phone. "Well, there's one way to find out...."
----
The phone rang. Kasumi, busy preparing lunch for herself, her father,
and Mr. Saotome, called from the kitchen, "Nabiki! Could you answer
that?"
Nabiki rushed down the stairs, wearing her school uniform and ready
to head out. On her way by it, she picked up the phone. "Hello? Oh,
hi, Mr. Kobuchizawa! Yes, I'm fine, how about you? Uh huh...yes, she's
here, just a moment...." She put the phone down and jogged over to the
kitchen. "Kasumi, it's for you! I gotta go, bye!"
Kasumi dried her hands and went over to pick up the phone. Akane's
voice rang out loud and clear from upstairs, loudly complaining that
Ranma wasn't even dressed yet and that he was going to make them both
late for school. His response, equally loud, was along the lines of
he overslept because of having to fight with Mousse, Kuno, AND an oni-
possessed Ukyo at three in the morning, and that the school really
ought to just let him sleep.
Kasumi answered the phone. "Hello? Ah, yes, we're all doing fine.
Ranma WAS a bit noisy with his friends last night, but nothing he
couldn't handle. Uh-huh? Yes, I'll make sure they all play nicely.
Ok? All right then, goodbye...."
She replaced the phone, just as Akane and a still-getting-dressed
Ranma raced down the stairs and out the door, each giving a quick,
"Goodbye, Kasumi!" before running down the street towards school.
She sighed and walked back to the kitchen to finish up.
A sudden familiar presence nearby made her pause, and she walked
over to the kitchen window to look out and see her son standing in
the distance, wearing his usual trenchcoat and fedora combination
and perching on top of a bathhouse chimney.
"Now, Yotsuya," she telepathically called to him, "I want you to
behave yourself in this new world, okay?"
His response came back, calm and composed as usual, "And when,
Mother, have I ever behaved less than such?"
Kasunami smiled. "I know how you think; I may have changed with
this fusion, but I'm still your mother, and it IS my job to know
these things, you know."
----
Yotsuya chuckled quietly. "As always. Don't worry, I can take care
of myself just fine. I am going to miss the old homeworld, though."
Kasunami's voice resounded in his mind, "I know you will. Good luck
out there." With that, she went silent, getting back to preparing
lunch for her newly adopted family.
Yotsuya breathed heavily and surveyed the landscape. It was not
exactly the old Nerima, but it was definitely close enough. The
gerbil was infinitely far away, and the possibilities for entertainment
on this new world were endless.
He hopped down from the chimney, landing on the street below with
ease. Ignoring the startled expressions of the pedestrians around him,
he quietly walked down the street and towards the sunset, snacking on
an orange.
========================================================================
========================================================================
Chocolate Oranges endtheme:
SEGA SATURN, SHIRO!
Vocals: Hiroshi Fujioka
Music: Ichirou Tomita
Composed by: Fumio Okui
Released by: Warner Music Japan, 1998
(WPDV-7138)
----
Asobi no michi ni tamashii kometa
Hitori no otoko ga kyou mo yuku
Majime ni asobanu yatsura ni wa
Karada de oboesaseru zo!
SEGATA SANSHIRO! SEGATA SANSHIRO!
SEGA SATURN, SHIRO!
TENISU ya KARAOKE NAMPA ni KURABU
Hoka ni suru koto aru darou ga
Murenakya asobenu yatsura ni wa
Kokoro ni toi kakeru zo!
SEGATA SANSHIRO! SEGATA SANSHIRO!
SEGA SATURN, SHIRO!
"Wakamono yo!
Shinken ni torikunde iru mono ga aru ka!
Inochi kakede ochikonde iru mono ga aru ka!
Sega Saturn, shiro!
Yubi ga oreru made! Yubi ga oreru made!!"
Setsuna no kairaku oitsuzukete mo
Munashii yosei ga nokoru dake
Tokoton kiwamenu yatsura ni wa
Karada ni tatakikomu zo!
SEGATA SANSHIRO! SEGATA SANSHIRO!
SEGA SATURN, SHIRO!
Aoi oozora shiroi ukigumo
Makka ni tagiru asobi no chi
Tochuu de nagedasu yatsura ni wa
Karada de oboesaseru zo!
SEGATA SANSHIRO! SEGATA SANSHIRO!
SEGA SATURN, SHIRO!
SEGATA SANSHIRO! SEGATA SANSHIRO!
SEGA SATURN.......SHIRO!
<Owari>
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Author's Notes:
Wow. It's done. Didn't see that one coming... :)
Chocolate Oranges, the original shortfic, took about forty minutes
to write, from the initial concept to posting on the FFML. I wrote
part two, Peelings Reloaded, because I felt that people were getting
the wrong idea about what was going on.
A couple of months passed, and I was getting frustrated about what
to write, so I took the ending of CO2 and decided to write the third
installment, A Glass of 2% Time, just to write myself into a corner
so I'd finish up the series sometime later.
This fic, Chocolate Oranges Pi, took the next five months to work on,
and is being posted tonight so it would be online before 2002 ended.
If I had more time, I'd rework things a bit, but for the time being,
this feels like a fairly decent initial draft. :)
Ah well, gotta head off to work, now. Happy New Year to one, pi, and
all!
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