Hi all , this is my first post in a while, hopefully, I will be able to
get all the stuff I keep promising, posted in a few days.....
Authors forward:
Here is a short story that I have wanted to pen. I cannot claim
any credit for it at all however, this is totally based off of a story by
the great Alan Moore. Wildstorm Spotlight, issue 1 by image comics. I
read this story, and struck by the grandeur of it, I decided to try to
translate it to an anime story. I chose Ryoga as my man and the rest is�
well, tell me what you think.
C&C Tryoga@juno.com
Ranma �
Disclaimer: Ranma � and all other anime characters are copyright their
respective companies. This story concept copyright WildStorm comics and
Alan Moore.
Unbeatable.
I was sitting here reflecting, just thinking about how it all
began. It's amazing that I can still remember the names and events of my
beginnings when so much has been forgotten.
I remember being 16 years old, so young. I can recall stumbling
into an ancient temple somewhere and finding an ancient scroll. To my
surprise I was able to read it and was able to decipher its techniques to
become 'unbeatable'. Imagine, Ryoga Hibiki, unbeatable. I eagerly
consumed its teachings, ignoring all the warnings and the implications
that the power was one I would not want. After all, who wouldn't want to
be unbeatable?
I accepted the scrolls teachings and tapped into the 'universal
source' and became� unbeatable. Even now, I can remember the look on
Ranma's face when I beat him he first time. And the second� and the
third. By the tenth defeat, I revealed to him how I defeated him and can
still recall his reaction.
He spoke with the old witch�. Cologne, I think her name was.
After that, he was� different. He accepted his defeats and used them to
sharpen his skills. And he always looked at me with a strange gleam in
the back of his eyes. Much later, I recognized it as a combination of awe
and pity. Cologne must have heard scattered legend and rumor about the
ancient scroll and told Ranma what it meant. I should have asked her
myself, but I didn't care.
Defeating Ranma exorcised a lot of demons for me and I saw things
in life with much more clarity. I settled down, gave up my childish love
for Akane and tried to be a good friend to both of them. I traveled the
world, trained, accepted challenges and defeated every one. When I was
about thirty, though, it all changed.
I was coming home on an airplane that landed short on the runway.
367 of it's 368 passengers and crews did not survive. I did. I didn't
really think about it, simply attributing it to luck and to my own
martial arts training. But then I saw the headline of a newspaper.
'367 dead in tragic crash. One man beats death!'
Beats death.
I felt a chill inside me as I realized that perhaps this
'universal source' that made me 'unbeatable' would allow me to beat�
everything.
It did.
I stopped aging about when I turned fifty. I stood by in
helplessness as my friends began to die. First Akane. Then Ranma. Then
all the rest of the people I had ever known. The magic energy that
coursed through my body kept me from being defeated by hunger, by age, by
death. For a while, I simply wandered, and saw the world. After I'd seen
it all, I went into seclusion, became a hermit for a few hundred years. I
came down from the mountainous region I had settled in and discovered
that during my self-imposed exile, man had reached the stars. With the
invention of the personal transport, I started to explore the galaxy. I
found that the universal part of the scroll was not a lie. For the
longest time, I simply traveled space, looking for a challenge. And
finding none.
I tried not to make new friends, but sometimes it can't be
helped. And even the longest lived of them died eventually. A-Ko.
Abraxis. Lord Killiam. The Red God, Jimjimotu. Washuu. The Wandering Jew.
I journeyed the universe in the company of these and others. I became a
crusader, a wanderer, an adventurer. I was known on a thousand worlds,
respected on some, cursed by tyrants on others. Eventually though, time
passed. And passed. And passed.
Until the end.
My last companion was a great platinum dragon, by the name of
Vorholas. By interesting coincidence, he had spent some time on my home
world, calling himself 'Bahamut'. Even though we could both recall some
places, neither of us could recall the name of the planet.
It began with an 'E'.
We traveled together through cold space, exchanging tales as
entropy began to surround us. We passed cinders that were once suns. In
dulling gobs of gas and ore, they spat their lives out like consumptives.
We swapped stories of heroes and villains, long gone as we journeyed
onward, surrounded by grim and marvelous sights.
We saw where black holes had healed into colossal scabs of
lightness baryonic matter. We passed monstrous gaseous nebulae contracted
by the cold to snowballs barely larger then a solar system. Vorhalas,
finally began to tire, and begged to be left alone in his final moments.
I bid him a sad farewell, and left him on a funeral barge of ice, sailing
through the blackness where once stars shone.
So I find myself here, sitting atop a stone that once was a
planet. It is the final day of all creation. There is nowhere left to
run, nowhere left to go. All life has been extinguished, save I. I can
finally rest, knowing that even the power within me cannot stop the
annihilation of final entropy.
I lay back as darkness reigns. It is so very cold, yet I can feel
a stirring in my body. The energy that is within me courses yet, trying
to find a way to defeat the undefeatable. I rage against it, yearning to
be free when I suddenly realized what it is doing. I have been
transformed into a being of pure energy, a pure intelligence. For a
moment I am horrified. Will I drift here alone, as nothing but sparks of
energy in a dead universe forever? But then I remember lessons in science
I learned long ago. Of how things reach superconductivity as absolute
cold is approached. And it will never be colder then now.
The entire universe is now a vast superconductor where the
weakest impulse will be amplified across eternity. Even the impulse of a
single thought. A single thought, reamplified and echoed, could set all
the universe ablaze.
All of this flashes through the intelligence that I know am, in
an instant. Zero approaches and I must hush my thoughts until I am sure
that I have the right thought.
Heat dies. Absolute cold everywhere, my silent mind spreads out
through every particle of the dead universe.
Everywhere is so empty and so dark, involuntarily a thought
occurs to me. Before I can even curse at myself, I realize that it is the
right thought:
"You know, there really should be light."
And lo, there is.
And the evening and the morning, are the first day.
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