Gee. Only three short chapters, and I've 
already stepped on more toes than I can 
count. 

Bear with me for a bit. This part is just 
here to give some background. You can 
skip over it if you want, but I don't 
suggest it.

Everything except the idea belongs to 
someone else. [the Bet] and associated 
characters belong to Gregg Sharp. This 
story was created solely for amusement, 
so don't sue me. C&C welcome.
*******************************

Ryuromonogatari part 1c
(The big red knot)
A crossover
by SeventhOne

***
Gates of Time
Does it matter when it is?

Setsuna smiled. It wasn't exactly that she 
was happy, more that she was satisfied. 
Several people had appeared in the 
wrong era, and with the implication 
involved, it could have gotten quite 
complicated. She'd corrected it with just 
a minor bit of meddling, and it was 
worth a pat on the back. Now if she 
could only find where she'd left that 
popcorn.

***
Tokyo
June 9, 1986

We've seen this woman before. Yes, it's 
the same one who stood on that dock as 
a girl. She's a woman now, a proud lady, 
proud of who she is, and what she's 
become. 

Pride runs in the bloodline. The woman 
didn't know it, but once, her ancestors 
were great warriors of the Amazon tribe, 
and even earlier, the daughters of a lost 
prince, exiled from his land by his own 
choice. 

She smiled at the child.

"Remember, Duty creates Destiny."

***
Jusenkyo Range
Winter, 1195

Yosho stopped flying and landed on the 
pass. This was impossible. He knew his 
way through the mountains perfectly 
well, and now, for some reason beyond 
his comprehension, he was lost. 

It wasn't that far beyond his 
comprehension, though. He'd noticed 
that there was some sort of incantation 
over the range. It hadn't been there when 
he'd last visited, but he didn't think it 
would get in his way. He'd seriously 
underestimated it. 

He thought about it for a moment, then 
realized that if the spell was just over the 
mountain range, he could get past it if he 
flew high enough. 

He launched off the ground and into the 
air again. After a few seconds, he looked 
down. High enough. Jusenkyo was 
where he had expected. He began flying 
toward the valley. Wait. Ryouko was 
moving. Where . . .

He followed her.

***
Taipei 
(node 14, "Reality")
July 7, 1998

It began on a Tuesday. Not an especially 
important Tuesday, either. It was 
somewhat pleasant, or rather, it started 
out somewhat pleasant. Compared to the 
previous few Tuesday, it was an 
improvement, as it didn't start out with 
the mind-shattering hangover I usually 
got from drinking too much on Monday 
night. This was mainly because I had 
plans for today, and those plans didn't 
include trying to get over hangovers. I 
hadn't drunk on Monday night, and I 
was rather thankful come seven o'clock.

Yes, seven o'clock. I don't usually get up 
early, but I'd set my alarm clock 
yesterday. Why? Because I had a plan, 
and today was a big day. 

As said previously, the Tuesday wasn't 
especially important, but its significance 
in my plans were enormous, and I'd 
spent over two months preparing for it. 
No point in ruining the preparation now, 
eh? 

You must be wondering by now, just 
what does this idiot have planned? I'd 
tell you, but you'd have to apologize for 
calling me an idiot first. Haha. Okay, no 
more jokes. I'd been preparing for my 
first self-insert. You heard right. Self-
insert. The scientifically impossible act 
of putting oneself inside of a popular 
series. In my case, it was anime, and 
yes, I believed that I'd found a way to do 
it.

Let me tell you a few things about 
myself before we begin. My name is 
Yang Chung-chi. My friends call me 
Chung, and that's the way I like it. I'm 
twenty-three, single, and I live in 
Taiwan. I'm just out of college, and I 
teach English at a local cram-school to 
pay the rent and buy anime. Despite the 
fact that my Mom's Japanese, I have a 
very limited grasp of the language, and 
I'm hoping to improve when I go visit 
my grandmother in Tokyo next year. 

But none of that is very important to this 
story. Well, actually, my grasp of the 
language is, but you'll see that for 
yourselves later. All you have to know 
right now is that half the time my family 
doesn't know what the heck I do for a 
living. That's very important to this 
story, very important to my plan. Why? 
You'll see.

I first came up with the idea half a year 
ago. I came up with it in a conversation 
with a friend. He was telling me about 
how the otaku-fics that were becoming 
so popular were sort of like dreams. 
When I heard that statement, I sort of 
did the imaginary light-bulb thing, and 
the idea was there. What if I could have 
a dream that was an anime? 

You've heard the theory, right? 
Everything we see, hear, taste, smell, 
and touch is recorded in our memories. 
As time goes on, however, the brain 
isolates the old storage cells, breaking 
the links and making new ones to 
unused cells. I've heard people say over 
and over how humans don't use over one 
fourth of all the cells in a lifetime. This 
is where I started. Theoretically, all of 
the anime I've ever watched is recorded 
somewhere in my brain. The links might 
have withered away somewhat since I 
last used them, but I could redevelop 
those links and strengthen them 
considerably. And then I would access 
them. Presto, an anime dream. And how 
would I access those memories? Self-
hypnotism. 

Of course, there I was thinking up all 
these crazy ideas and my buddies were 
looking at me kind of strange. I decided 
to quit and I took a slug of beer. I woke 
up the next morning worrying about 
schoolwork, and I never got around to 
my plan. 

That is, until two months ago. A buddy 
of mine is a psych major, and I got him 
to give me classes on self-hypnotism. To 
tell the truth, it was quite easy. In two 
weeks, I got control over what I 
dreamed every night, and when I 
dreamed. A dream come true, if you 
excuse my pun. Of course, I still didn't 
have much control over what happened 
in the dream. I could choose when to 
wake up, but overall, that was it. All I 
had to do was get into a sleep-like 
trance, lie down, and hey! There I was in 
an anime world. 

I didn't use the technique too often. I 
wanted to save it for the summer, when I 
could have more time to dream. I can 
tell you from personal experience that 
time passes slower in a dream than real 
life. An hour in a dream may amount to 
somewhere around thirty minutes in real 
life. Meaning that I could spend a three 
month break in one and a half months. A 
vacation inside my mind. 

I got a friend to fake the records for the 
car accident. Another one ensured that 
my relatives wouldn't find out. Tuesday 
morning, walk into the hospital. I'm in a 
coma. That easy. 

It still took two months.

Let's see. Notebook, check. Pen, check. 
Air-con, check. Bed, check. Computer, 
check. Popcorn, check. Popcorn? 
Where'd that - oh. Oh, well. Okay, all 
things set. When I say the word Tulip, 
I'm - aaalllshit . . . 

***
Somewhere
Sometime in the past

The man appeared in the darkness, in 
front of a small black cat.

"Penn! How'd you get here?!"

"Those who haven't received invitations 
are often the party crashers. I've come to 
make a Bet, Toltiir."

"No! No way, Penn. Last time you did 
something like that . . ."

The man smiled.

"On January 1, 1979, noon, a single 
photon flies into the fetus of a certain 
Tendo Nabiki. I change the angle at 
which it hits by 0.00000000000001 
degrees."

The man promptly vanished. Penn does 
things with style. It leaves people a little 
out of breath. Toltiir paused for a whole 
twenty seconds before he reacted.

"OOOHHH SHIT," said the cat.

Don't get me wrong. Toltiir likes 
trickery. He just doesn't like to be at the 
receiving end of a trick.

Tendo Nabiki appeared almost 
immediately after he finished 
"speaking." These things are timed.

"Lessee, Yggrisll is now owned by 
Microsoft, a sub-division of Mishima 
Heavy Industries, owned by Tendo 
Enterprises. That's pretty much all I 
want to do this month. Oh, yes, the Bet. 
That's why I'm here."

An oversized sweatdrop appeared at the 
back of Toltiir's head.

"Um, you wouldn't happen to be Tendo 
Nabiki, would you?"

"Yes. I'm here to make a Bet . . ."

***
Destiny's Garden
A few years later

There are many versions of the god of 
Destiny. Some, or in fact, many, choose 
to be called Fate, and it's found that, 
more often than not, the ones that call 
themselves Fate are not one, but three, 
and most of the "threes" happen to be 
female. There are more than a few of 
these types in the world. There are lots 
of them, and all of them coexist. 

Theologically, this might be interpreted 
to mean that there are multiple fates for 
every one person, but this isn't true. See, 
these gods don't affect humans as fates. 
That's not to say that they aren't 
powerful; they are, for if they weren't, 
they wouldn't be called gods. It's just 
that gods are the products of belief, and 
it's from those beliefs that they draw 
their power. These so-called gods of 
Fate are indeed gods of Fate, but they 
can't affect fate or destiny, as they 
themselves are bound by it. 

There is one being, however, that does 
affect fate. He goes by the name of 
Destiny, Destiny of the Endless, and for 
the most part, he created those "gods of 
Fate." 

How'd he do that? Simple. He told 
stories. And people believed. This is 
how all gods are created. Try making 
one yourself. You know, homemade 
gods. The mass-produced ones, like 
Y*** or I**** usually don't work very
 much, and you won't find many good 
ones in the supermarket, so this is the 
best alternative. Unless you happen to 
know an existing god personally. This is 
highly unlikely. 

The reason? Well, there are lots of gods 
out there, and every now and then those 
gods go through the "Reconfiguration," 
which essentially makes them into 
another person with another name. 
Whole pantheons modify themselves to 
fit the flow of the times (which doesn't 
need to be constant when you're talking 
about gods). Not to mention that there 
are different versions of the same gods 
and gods that are seemingly the same 
but have different origins altogether. 
Then you have the replacements and 
clones, and often you find a duplicate or 
two. It's almost impossible to track 
down the right god, even less talk to the 
same one twice. 

Unless there's a coincidence. And there's 
never a coincidence. There's the 
Ultimate Force. His name, as it happens, 
is Destiny. 

Some people get it wrong. God does not 
make everything in the world happen. 
He knows all and is everywhere, but he 
does nothing. His second eldest bunch of 
children handle all that. 

Why the second? Well . . . to put it 
simply, the first bunch consists mainly 
of Angels, and Angels are . . . not quite 
up to it. That meant he'd needed to 
create something else to govern his third 
and most beloved bunch of children. 
That's where the second came in. The 
Endless: Death, Destiny, Destruction, 
Desire, Despair, Dream, and Delirium 
(or Delight as she used to be called). A 
rather dysfunctional family when you 
think about it. And don't try to think 
about it. Brain hemorrhoids are common 
this time of the year. 

One of the family's more dysfunctional 
members was now wandering in his 
garden maze, wearing a robe and 
carrying a thick tome. He had the 
appearance of a monk, and he acted his 
part, silent as he walked down a path he 
would never reach the end of? Unusual? 
No. He doesn't talk much. Oh, you mean 
the path. That's not unusual either. He is, 
after all, Destiny, and this is his garden. 
A garden of mazes, choices to be made. 
The size of the garden is near infinite, 
and there are the same number of people 
wandering in it as it is big. Their paths 
are more crooked than Destiny's, 
though. Destiny doesn't have a destiny 
of his own. He just has a straight path. 

"Nice day for a walk in the garden, eh?" 
said a voice from behind him. 

He didn't turn to look who it was.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Just checking up on an interesting 
timeline."

"Which one?"

"It was the result of a butterfly effect 
from my original bet. Toltiir didn't like it 
very much, so he tried to destroy it, but 
it didn't work quite in the manner he 
expected," the man replied, chuckling a 
bit.

"What was the original bet?"

"Nothing much. I'm sure I wrote it down 
somewhere in that book of yours. You 
can check it up if you want."

"My curiosity isn't that great as of this 
moment," said Destiny.

"Oh? Oh, well. It was worth a try. The 
effects of my bet will eventually affect 
this world as well, so you better be 
prepared for it when it comes. Saotome 
Ranma has an interesting life ahead of 
him."

Destiny gasped as the man disappeared.

"Did he say . . . Saotome . . . Ranma?"

***
Jusenkyo
Winter, 1195

George sat on the tree stump, looking up 
at the mountain range. They weren't 
especially interesting. He was looking at 
them because they'd changed so much in 
the past year. 

Volcanic activity wasn't very common in 
these parts, and for the mountain range 
to have changed so much in so little time 
was, to say the least, unnatural. He knew 
the reason, though. They'd been 
"practice partners" to the greatest known 
martial artist in the history of humanity.

George shuddered a bit, wondering what 
his fate might have been if he'd agreed 
to Ranko's little proposal last year. He 
took a moment to imagine SD George 
getting his limbs bent into interesting 
positions and shuddered again. Not 
good. 

He mentally compared the more notable 
martial artists he'd personally met with 
Ranko. A whole lot of them had superior 
strength and superior stamina, but the 
skills didn't even come close to 
matching Ranko's. The girl was simply 
too good.

Boy, he corrected himself. Ranko was a 
boy. Had to remember that. He 
remembered what happened to the 
visiting Musk lord last month when he'd 
asked for her hand in marriage. The poor 
boy had barely missed getting some vital 
organs severed from his body. Eww.

Chen had assured him that Ranko's 
claim of having been a boy was 
probably true. After all, this was 
Jusenkyo, and with the apparent 
education in martial arts Ranko had 
possessed, the idea was believable. 
Amazonian origin was unlikely, given 
the population of the village and their 
restrictive laws, it was hard to believe 
otherwise.

It'd be slightly more believable if she 
changed back with hot water, though. 

He'd asked Chen about it. Chen was just 
as confused. None of the curses caused 
irreversible change, and supposedly, this 
one was just like every other. Not that 
any other spring was called "sealed 
spring." Chen didn't know what a victim 
was supposed to turn into after falling 
into the spring, just that very few people 
had, and none of those people had 
changed. Ranko was the first to have 
been effected, and the change was 
similar to the one caused by the Spring 
of the Drowned Girl. Was that supposed 
to imply anything? George hadn't a clue.

He looked at his student. Blue hair, 
bound back in a pigtail. She was 
probably Japanese, as it was the only 
language she'd originally been familiar 
with. A day after he'd initially found her, 
she began speaking Chinese. Fluently 
too. She said that she just picked up 
things faster than most people, but 
George didn't exactly believe her. It 
didn't matter whether or not she'd 
learned the mystic technique, to be able 
to learn the separate meanings of five 
thousand different characters in a single 
day was ridiculous. Yes, she could read 
and write as well. He'd tested her 
himself. 

Then again, it was a relief she could 
speak Chinese. He wasn't quite fluent in 
Japanese as he wanted to be, horrid 
language. The verbs and the nouns were 
all mixed up, and there were all those 
little noun modifications you had to add 
to the ends of names in order to get it 
straight. The only one he'd learned was 
"-san" and that was useful enough in 
everyday speech, but any more than that, 
and he was lost. What the heck did "-
sama" mean, anyway? 

He turned to watch Ranko do another 
one of her chi-manipulations. She was 
quite a nice girl, actually, discounting 
her little problem with gender. She 
claimed to have been a boy, but seemed 
to accept her "new" body well enough. 
Almost as if she'd been a girl all 
along . . .

Which meant something along the lines 
of "she's using Jusenkyo as an excuse to 
suppress her real sex in favor of her 
sexual desires." She was a lesbian. She 
just didn't want to admit it. 

It was only a theory, though. Ranko had 
told him close to nothing of her past, 
just that'd she'd been a martial artist, and 
that she'd been somewhat a criminal. 
Apparently her mind was in some state 
of turmoil, but from what he didn't 
know, and he wasn't sure he wanted to 
know. To top that, nothing told him the 
answer to his greatest question: How did 
she end up here? 

He sighed. Such a mystery. 

He turned his thoughts back to the girl's 
training. It was coming along well, and 
if he'd had the credit of being her 
teacher, he would've been proud. But no. 
Most of the skill she had, she'd 
possessed since she woke up. It was 
pure natural talent, and since she'd 
awoken, she'd developed it. Chi 
manipulation was as easy to her as 
breathing, and considering that breathing 
was in many ways similar to Chi 
manipulation, he wouldn't have been 
surprised of she did it with each breath. 
A little more effort, and she'd been able 
to summon the equivalent of a meteor 
shower out of thin air. What would even 
more effort yield?

He looked at the mock fireworks that 
were going on above his head. 
Levitation, phasing, and teleportation. 
Chi manipulation powerful enough to 
move mountains. Over a year ago, he 
would have thought most of these 
impossible, but he'd been proven wrong. 
Well, not levitation. Levitation was 
simple, the easiest of all chi 
manipulation except making it visible. 
The others, though . . .

The girl had no more chi than any other 
person. Well, actually, she did have a 
little more, but less than most chi-kung 
masters he knew. Much less. Which was 
why her manipulation of chi was so 
remarkable: to manipulate chi from 
outside of the body was highly difficult, 
and the amount she was swinging 
around was around ten times the amount 
an accomplished chi-kung master could 
using their total potential, internal and 
external. She was just using external.

What was even more scary was that she 
knew the physics associated as well as 
she knew own body. She hadn't changed 
the mountain range. They changed by 
*themselves* under a chi *incantation.* 
A *magic spell.* 

Magic hadn't existed until Ranko came
along. 

George knew that it was for the better, 
though. It was now impossible for an 
outsider to enter Jusenkyo valley by a 
mountain path; the paths redirected 
themselves whenever somebody entered 
Jusenkyo range. Ranko had made a 
tunnel underneath the mountain so that 
Chen could get back to his village 
without having to climb. It was the only 
entrance, and the only exit. As it was 
protected by Ranko's spell, the tunnel 
couldn't collapse and couldn't be hidden. 
At the other end was the village, and if 
anybody wanted to get into the valley, 
they couldn't do it without having to 
pass through the village first, and that 
meant authorization. This reduced the 
cursed population by a lot.

Pheonix mountain had exclusive rights 
to Jusenkyo, as did the Musk, but other 
than these two tribes, Jusenkyo had very 
little publicity. Most cursings were 
accidental, and if this factor could be 
deleted, there wouldn't be any more 
"tragic" stories. 

George stiffened. He blinked, and 
blinked again. He stood up and looked 
where Ranko was. She too had noticed 
it, and she was standing in mid-air, 
doing nothing but staring south. George 
used the teleportation trick he'd picked 
up from Ranko and flashed into 
existence at the other end of the 
Jusenkyo tunnel. 

What met him there appalled him. Rows 
of warriors had lined up around the 
mountain wall, all bearing the uniforms 
specific to the different schools. Ranko 
emerged from the tunnel, a look of 
shock frozen on to her face.

"What . . . why are all these people here?" she asked George.

"I don't know."

The sound of someone eating popcorn 
caught George's attention, and he turned. 
George didn't know what popcorn was, 
but that's beside the point right now. 
>From George's point of view, there was 
now a young man sitting on a rock 
behind him, where there hadn't been 
anyone before. To some interest George 
noted that he was wearing outlandish 
garb and that he didn't look to be the 
martial arts type. The only conclusion he 
could reach was that the boy had been 
brought there.

There is something known as the 
Archetypal Weenie (AW tm). That's 
what the boy looked like.

"And who might you be?" asked 
George.

The boy looked around for a moment, 
then looked at George. 

"Who me?"

"Yes."

"Uh, I dunno. I think I'm supposed to be 
somewhere else."

"And where might that be?"

The boy held tight to his package of 
popcorn, sweating hard.

"Uh . . . could you, sort of like . . . 
uh . . . not . . . notice me?"

George sighed and decided to just ignore 
the poor fellow.

You know who he is, right? He's a 
Legendary Self-Insert Character (LSIC 
tm), and he's here to wreck havoc on 
innocent anime timelines. Unlike most 
LSIC's, he's not the Main Character, and 
therefore he doesn't have Invincible 
Main Character Protection (IMCP tm), 
which makes his powers considerably 
smaller. Because he's an Archetypal 
Weenie (AW tm), he's technically 
reduced to an average human. No, 
average humans are not trademarked, 
but if you're going to trademark them, 
you'll have to go to the Big Man 
Upstairs. 

There are two general types of self-
insertions. The first type is commonly 
known as the "In the End there can only 
be One" type. The character becomes 
the strongest character in the specific 
reality that he goes into. This type is 
rather common. So common that it 
sometimes leads to hybrid types. You 
know. Ones in which they become 
second class gods and youmas. Nothing 
too earth-shattering. 

The other type of self-insert is known as 
"Godzilla versus Bambi" type. The lives 
of the characters are ugly, brutish, and 
short. They do have the annoying habit 
of coming back to life, though.

Neither fit into the category of the 
average human. The average human is 
just so . . . uh, average.

That can't be said of the other people in 
front of the tunnel.

Not just a few of them were ridiculously 
overmuscled. The artist of "The Fist of 
the North Star" would have been 
overjoyed with the number of potential 
models available in the crowd. And 
enough fat for a sumo wrestling school 
to last for a generation or two. Not 
exaggerating. The tall ones were 
invariably slit-eyed cut-throats, and 
quite a few of them were assassins. 

Of course, there were "normal people" 
in the crowd, but judging by the way 
they carried themselves, they were 
probably the most skilled of the martial 
artists. Either that, or apprentices. It's a 
well known fact that the word 
"apprentice" is derived from the ancient 
Sumarian word for "sacrifice." Oh, it 
isn't? Well, it is now.

These people didn't look like they were 
having a nice day. In fact, they looked as 
if they'd been dragged out of bed by 
someone they couldn't beat up and 
forced to stand here. The truth probably 
wasn't far off, but if you'd asked them, 
they'd respond by giving you a nice, 
meaty knuckle sandwich. You wouldn't 
be able forget the taste anytime soon. 

Thoughts like these were now passing 
through Chung's head at an alarming 
rate. He was doing his best to assure 
himself that this was all really a dream 
and that he couldn't possibly get hurt in 
a dream. After pinching himself several 
times, he decided that it would be a good 
idea to shrivel up and die. 

Now, what went wrong with this self-
insert? You know? I'll tell you. Chung 
read the wrong theory. The correct 
theory goes like this: There are an 
infinite number of alternate universes. 
When a writer writes a piece of fiction, 
he's actually using his brain to tap into 
the universe that he's writing about. Of 
course, he thinks that he's controlling the 
plot, but in reality, it's the plot that 
controls him. It's the same thing with 
dreams. When Solomon said, "There's 
nothing new under the sun," he meant it. 

Chung, by using the hypnotic method, 
induced a short trip into an alternate 
universe. He's there in flesh, but if he 
dies there, he just wakes up. He can still 
wake up whenever he wants to, but it's 
just one of the many methods. One of 
the least painful too.

The men in the crowd eyed him, as if 
hungering for someone to pick on. 
Chung wiped a few beads of cold sweat 
off his forehead. 

This was going to be a long day.

Cut to part 1d

***
Author's Notes

Yay! One more part and this chapter's 
done!

First off, I want to tell you that Chung is 
a fictional character. He's not me, and he 
bears absolutely no resemblance to me 
whatsoever. Therefore, he's not a self 
insert character. More of a plot device. 
He's there for a purpose, at least until the 
end of this chapter. Then maybe I'll give 
him a chance and he'll join the real cast.

Second, yes I did borrow a whole lot 
from Vertigo, but DC Comics aren't 
going to figure into the plot greatly. 
They're there though.

Third, sorry about the misuse of Toltiir, 
Gregg. [the Bet] belongs to 
MetroAnime, and doesn't belong to me 
at all. It is going to be fairly important to 
the plot.

I really want some feedback for this 
part. What should I do next chapter? 
How am I going to kill Chung? What do 
I do with that popcorn? Send your 
comments to
nanashi96@hotmail.com

*Spoiler (Don't read on if you're not 
going to C&C)*











Next part:
There's going to be a big fight, and those 
annoying reality jumpers are going to be 
sent where they're meant to be as a 
result. Is that good or bad?