(Mike, the Bots, and Pearl are borrowed from Best Brains)
[On board the Satellite Of Love.]
[Crow is in front of a mechanical typewriter and Tom Servo is standing
nearby. Mike Nelson enters.]
Mike: What are you guys up to?
Crow: We've just learned that there are other Crows and Servos out there
that get to watch movies instead of reading fanfics all the time,
so we're writing a letter to God to complain about the situation.
Mike: Out where?
Tom: In the multiverse, Mike. Sheesh, don't you know _anything_?
Mike: How were you planning on delivering it?
Crow: We're not going to trust USPS, that's for sure.
Tom: This is far too important a letter to let it wander all over the
world for years.
Crow: You know, we haven't actually given it much thought, but I'm sure-
[Crow is interrupted by an incoming transmission.]
[Inside Pearl Forrester's converted Volkeswagon.]
Pearl: Sorry to interrupt. Actually, no I'm not. Anyway, I've decided
to give you a break and send you something from a _good_ writer
for a change.
[On board SOL.]
Mike: Uh... that's real nice, Ma'am.
Crow: Yeah, what's the catch?
[Inside van.]
Pearl: Well, since you seem to have a little problem getting in contact
with God, I thought I'd help out... Of course, I'm not sure
whether you want to deal with the Elder Gods or not, but that's
what this 'fic is about. Enjoy.
[On board SOL.]
Tom: Somehow the fact that it's from a good writer doesn't inspire much
confidence today.
[Lights begin flashing.]
All: We've got fanfic sign!
[Entrance into theatre.]
On Tue, 30 Mar 1999, Alan Harnum wrote:
Commentary is welcomed and appreciated.
Tom: Oh, sure, he says that now.
Crow: Just wait until he gets a load of this!
Mike: Come on, guys. We're here to provide insightful and productive
commentary.
Tom: Yeah, right!
Crow: What planet are you from, Mike?
Mike: Shhh! That's supposed to be a secret.
Eidolons
Ranma belongs to Takahashi. The Dreamlands are the creation of
H.P. Lovecraft, and belong to whoever now own the rights to his
works. Anyway, both are used without permission, as you no doubt
have already guessed.
Tom: We're psychic!
Mike: We're in contact with the all-knowing Atlach-Nacha.
Tom: Ia! Ia! Atlach-Nacha!
Crow: Boom, shakalaka!
One - Threshold
Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,
The earth recedes from me into the night,
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth
is beautiful
-Walt Whitman
All: o/~ Everything is beautiful... o/~
Ranma Saotome knew nothing of the basalt spires of
Dylath-Leen;
Crow: But Ryouga walked through the area one day and it's now the basalt
rubble of Dylath-Leen.
he had no knowledge of the crystalline air-boats of
the city of Yerthardt that plied the skies above the pearly
ocean that lay a thousand miles south of the pleasant land of
Sona-Nyl; nor even had he heard the old dreamers tell in hushed
voices of the Tree-Without-Roots of the Iron Forest, the sight of
which is said to bend the minds of men, that their eyes shall not
see as other men's see.
Mike: What, it turns people into Kunous?
Tom: Oh, beautiful Nyarlathotep! I would date thee!
He would not know of them before he grew
to be an old man, but in time, he would know them all and more;
Mike: Genma and Happousai finally pass on their secrets?
Tom: [as old Ranma] Come back here with my dentures, you letch.
Crow: [as _really_ old Happousai] Haha! Hundred years too young to
catch me!
he would know of the perfumed jungles of Kled; of the mad things,
no longer men, that dance in the Hills of Implan by the moon, and
sing wordless songs of praise to gods who never were of this
earth; he would know of the Doom That Came to Sarnath, and why it
had come.
Tom: For the okonomiyaki, of course!
Mike: [as Ukyou] I've lost Ranchan to Akane. Oh, well. More time for
the other two loves of my life: okonomiyaki and magick. Ia! Ia!
Shub-Niggurath!
He would even dare, though only once, to stand outside
the colossal walls of dread Thalarion and listen to the laughter
of spectral Lathi as it came drifting from within, but even he
was not so brave (or some might say foolish) as to step inside
that cursed place.
Crow: So a shrunken martial arts master with a pig-tail, often chased
by a bunch of women using walkers, is going to try to save the
world, eh?
Tom: And fail, can't forget failure.
Mike: This is part-Lovecraft, after all.
In time, he would come to know many of the delights that the
Dreamlands had to offer, and no few of the horrors as well. He
would be one of the few men to hear the voice of the Black Siren
Crow: [as Kodachi] Ohohohoho!
Mike: It's really scary how well you do that.
and not have his skin line the walls or floor of her pit. And
while he never looked upon the throne of Azathoth
Tom: [as Principal Kunou] Aloha! Wanna hair cut?
as it is said
Kuranes once did, he did once glimpse the Basalt Pillars of the
West from his perch in the crows-nest of a trading ship of
glorious Celephais, and see for a moment how all the oceans of
the Dreamlands pour off into that sear gulf of unlawful space
which lies hungry and waiting beyond to devour it.
Mike: The ravenous unlawful space... also known as Genma.
Where it all began, though, was in the kitchen of a small
Chinese restaurant, the Nekohanten by name. Ranma had gone there
for aid with an affliction of the mind.
Crow: [as Shampoo as Cthulhu] Ranma, what you do here too-too early.
Shampoo not put on her make-up yet.
A long-ago incident of
his childhood, brought on by a feckless father's imbecilic
actions, had left him with a severe phobia of all things feline.
Tom: [as Ranma] Those clocks are the worst! They watch _everything_!
That in itself would be bad enough, but with sufficient exposure,
he would cease to be terrified of cats for a time and come to
believe that he himself was one; reverting, as it was, to a feral
state.
Crow: At least he doesn't turn into a giant cat when he sees a full
moon.
Mike: Ranma, a descendant of a feline race, must save the world from
destruction by his fellow aliens.
Tom: Which feline race would that be?
Mike: I don't know. But they all start with a 'K', so it doesn't
matter. Kilrathi, Knitzi, Kobold-
Crow: We get the idea, Mike.
The complexities of Ranma's personal life need not be
explained here; the details of that alone have filled volumes.
Mike: 38 to be exact.
Let it only be said that he had, at long last, been coerced into
an evening out with Akane Tendo. One that had, astonishingly,
been uninterrupted by the intrusion of any of the other claimants
to the love of either himself or his lady.
Crow: Must have hired Nabiki.
Tom: That's just a fanfic cliche! Hiring Nabiki to have an evening
alone is as stupid as Ukyou being Ranma's best friend!
Crow: They played together as children! During a very impressionable
time for Ranma!
Mike: Calm down, guys.
A pleasant dinner
with little conflict was spent at one of the nicer restaurants in
town, and both had, though they would not have admitted it, an
enjoyable time. Walking home, however, they chanced to encounter
a stray cat wandering through the darkened streets. Stricken
with fear, Ranma fled into a nearby alley, thereupon to encounter
a dozen more cats picking through the refuse bins.
Tom: [as Ranma] It's a conspiracy, I tell you! They're out to get me!
Unaware of
this fact, Akane shooed away the single cat outside the alley and
then entered to retrieve her wayward fiancee, only to find that
the cats had surrounded him. Already nervous from the alien
events of the date, Ranma had become, in mind, a cat. Thus, he
avoided further mental trauma from his fear.
Mike: Instead he suffers the mental trauma of getting hit on the head
for things he does as a cat.
Upon spotting Akane, he grew affectionate and leapt upon
her. The precise detailing of what occurred afterwards would be
unnecessary; let it only be said that the end results were one
ruined suit, one ruined dress, and one very angry and upset
fiancee.
Mike: Well, what can you expect?
Crow: [as Akane] Oh, Ranma. You're so playful tonight.
Ranma's phobia had, in her mind, spoiled what had
otherwise been a most pleasant time. For this, she blamed Ranma
himself, rather than the phobia. Such was her wont to do;
reasonableness had never been one of her foremost points, nor had
been the proper assignment of blame.
Mike: Beware the day when all of Ranma's suitors get together and
discuss their situations in a rational manner.
Crow: [as Genma] It's not my fault! *SPLASH.* 'I'm just a cute panda.'
Ranma himself felt horribly guilty. His mental difficulties
had destroyed what should have been a very pleasurable outing for
him. His feelings for Akane, uncertain and nervous as they were,
were strong. Their engagement had been difficult before, but now
it seemed to Ranma that no chance of taking a step beyond
engagement, or even of attaining a normal life, existed while he
lay under the curse of his ailurophobia.
Tom: [as Ranma] They have a secret control center somewhere in Canada.
They watch for people like me who are afraid of them and try to
ruin our lives because they think we know something. Hehehe. And
I do. Oh, yes, I know _everything_...
Thus he found himself that day in the Nekohanten speaking
to the aged proprietor, a woman renowned for her wisdom of the
eldritch lores and judgement in applying them, if no longer for
her beauty. And so began a grand and terrifying adventure, into
a realm of nightmares and dreams, gods and monsters, beyond the
veil of sleep.
Tom: No, no. That's veil of _sheep_.
Crow: That's right. Sheep are all-important if you want to go
dimension-hopping.
"Ya gotta help me out, Cologne."
Crow: [as Mousse] If I put on some cologne, I'll be irresistible to
Shampoo! *Rubs his face against Cologne's.*
Mike: [as Cologne] *BAP.* Not in public.
Cologne regarded him with a steely gaze across the wooden
table in the kitchen of the Nekohanten. A mountainous pile of
carrot peelings was slowly obscuring her from view as she worked.
"Why?"
Mike: There's only one explanation for that many carrots.
Crow: What's that, Mike?
Mike: She bought a cabbit.
Ranma blinked. "You're the only one who can. You know
about all that mystical stuff. You gotta know a way to cure the
Neko-ken."
The peeler rasped, and another long shaving of carrot
dropped into the pile. "Assuming I did, what reason do I have
to share it with you, son-in-law?"
Mike: [as Cologne] Three thousand years of tradition say... you must
give me a back rub!
Tom: [as Ranma] *Shudder.*
"Umm... because... uhh..." Ranma grasped at straws. "It
would be a nice thing to do?"
"Who ever told you that I was nice?"
Tom: Insert-foot-in-mouth time?
Mike: Better be careful. Ranma might end up with another suitor.
Crow: Ewww.
"Err..." Ranma snapped his fingers triumphantly. "You
helped me learn the Hiryuu-Shouten Ha after Happosai stole my
strength. That's just like this."
"No, it isn't," Cologne refuted. "A weak husband is a shame
for a Joketsuzoku. The Neko-ken, on the other hand, is an exotic
and powerful technique when used correctly."
Mike: [as Cologne] And very useful, I might add. We have a bit of a
mouse problem in the village...
Straws were disappearing rapidly. "You... uhh..."
"Ranma, you done talking to great-grandma? We go on date
now?"
Crow: [as Shampoo] You done talking to great-grandma? Ready for flying
glomp now?
Ranma looked to where Shampoo stood hopefully in the doorway
leading between the kitchen and dining room of the Nekohanten,
the curtain that covered it half-drawn away by her hand. "Uh...
not yet, Shampoo."
"You hurry and finish, okay? Then we go on date."
"Uhh... maybe," Ranma said non-committally, trying to focus
on both Joketsuzoku at once.
Mike: Ranma develops the chameleon-eye-crossing technique.
Cologne was silent, watching the
dialogue between the youngsters with all the intentness of a
hawk.
"Date be very fun," Shampoo said brightly.
Tom: [as Ranma] Isn't it obvious that she's a part of it?! Oh, yes.
Turning into a cat. How very convenient.
"Shampoo," Cologne said finally, "I am in the middle of a
conversation with son-in-law. Please leave us."
Shampoo nodded, suddenly tight-lipped, and turned away,
letting the curtain fall behind her. Ranma sighed with relief
and turned his full attention back to Cologne.
"Look, old ghoul--"
A slice of carrot bounced off his forehead hard enough to
make his eyes cross. "Don't be rude."
Mike: [as Cologne] If he would come a little closer, I could suck his
life energy.
"Cologne, if you don't--" A second carrot slice smacked off
the tip of his nose. "Listen, you withered--" Flick. Bounce.
"Oww!"
Cologne's usually bulging eyes were narrowed and annoyed.
"One more try, son-in-law." The paring knife was pressed lightly
against the end of a carrot, anticipating his response.
Crow: [as Cologne] Annoy me again and the carrot dies!
Ranma opened his mouth. "I--"
"And think before you speak, for once."
Mike: [as Ranma] First not being rude and now thinking. Boy, she's
making it tough...
The knife blade cut slightly into the orange flesh of the
carrot. Ranma gulped, and, for once, thought before he spoke.
"Cologne," he asked, "please help me out with this. It's
destroying my life."
Crow: [as Ranma] I don't understand it, but I end up at the fish market
every Monday night! I know the workers at the canning factories
better than my class mates!
The ancient woman nodded in seeming approval, and a thin
smile grew on her lips. "Not bad. You even used 'please'." The
carrot fell to the table with a thump, and Cologne did something
with the knife that made it vanish.
Tom: [as Cologne] BE NOT! That takes care of... D'oh!
"I'm more inclined to help
you now. I know the why of this. But what about the who?"
Ranma blinked. "Huh?"
"Who do you want to rid yourself of the Neko-ken for?"
Mike: [as Ranma] Kiima. She has this thing against cats, you see...
A dozen answers sprang to mind that he could give, all of
them false. Cologne's gaze was flat and hard as ice, heavy with
the weight of years. He was not, he realized, a good enough liar
to fool her in this. "Akane," he said in a whisper. "I gotta
get rid of this thing for Akane."
Cologne let out a weary sigh, and managed to look both
disappointed and pleased at once. "Very well. I'll help you."
Crow: [as Cologne] So, he isn't interested in me after all.
Ranma punched his fist into his palm in triumph. "Great!
So how ya gonna do it? Some kinda ancient Chinese secret mystic
mumbo-jumbo?"
Cologne nodded. "Something like that, yes."
Mike: [as Cologne] Oo ee oo ah ah! Ting tang! Walla walla bing bang!
She hopped
down from the chair she'd been standing on to reach the table,
and hopped on her staff to the bottom of the stairs that went up
to the second floor. "Stay here, boy, and don't touch anything."
A series of taps, gradually decreasing in volume, echoed
through the kitchen as Cologne made her way up the steps. Bored
without an immediate source of stimuli, Ranma rapped his knuckles
on the underside of the table in a rhythm only he knew for a few
seconds,
Tom: [as Cologne] *Appears out of nowhere.* I said don't touch
anything!
and then began to juggle a half-dozen uncut carrots.
>From the second floor, he heard a series of crashes, as if
someone were sorting quickly through a huge closet filled with a
lot of junk that had simply been thrown in there and forgotten
about.
Mike: [as Cologne] It's actually a very complicated filing system
developed over 3000 years.
Crow: Probably the same thing that women use in their purses.
Another series of taps, ascending in loudness this time,
alerted him to Cologne's return, and he quickly snatched the
carrots from the air and replaced them on the table. Holding
something under one arm, Cologne came down the stairs atop her
staff.
"Found it!" she crowed triumphantly, and deposited a small
wooden box atop the table after sweeping the carrot peelings
onto the floor. Still balanced on her staff, she leaned over the
table almost eagerly. "Open it up, son-in-law."
A cloud of dust puffed into the air as Ranma blew a breath
over the box. Intrigued, he traced his fingers over the carving
atop the box, and the unfamiliar letters underneath. Some of
them were recognizably English, but others weren't - a triangle,
an inverted V, an O whose bottom was two outward-facing feet.
Mike: Don't forget that line with two straight legs!
Tom: Yeah, and the 'O' with a line through it.
Crow: Horizontal or vertical?
Tom: Take your pick.
The carving itself was weathered and half-vanished, but appeared
to be a profile of a man with two faces. One face wept, and the
other smiled in a slightly cruel manner.
"What's in it?" he asked, still unable to take his fingers
>from the wooden surface.
Crow: [as Ranma] Hey, this box is sticky! What have you been using it
for?
"Open and see," Cologne said.
Ranma flicked up the tarnished brass latch, and opened the
box, which sent up another cloud of dust. Inside, the dark wood
had been lined with red velvet, and in two rows of three, six
cubes of a scintillating silvery colour lay. The composition of
them was powdery, and they gave off a fragrant smell of roses.
"Huh?" Ranma questioned with a glance to Cologne.
"Incense, boy," Cologne explained. "Burn it as you go to
sleep."
Mike: Good thing he didn't try to eat it immediately.
Crow: [as Ranma] *Opens the box and stuffs some incense in his mouth.*
Ohh... pretty...
A frown grew on Ranma's face. "I've had some bad
experiences with magic incense..."
"Happosai?"
Ranma nodded. "Happosai."
"This is different," Cologne said. "It is not the cure in
and of itself, but it is the gateway to where you may find the
cure."
Tom: Sheep-calling incense, then.
"Huh?"
Cologne looked troubled. "I can say no more than that."
"You mean you won't say more than that."
Long white hair swirled as Cologne shook her head. "No. I
mean I can't. Close the box, Ranma, and watch." Ranma closed
the box and latched it with a soft click.
Mike: Where did Ranma get a soft click?
Crow: I much prefer hard clicks.
Cologne dropped to the
table-top and caught her staff before it fell. With a wrinkled
hand, she touched the latch of the box and just as quickly drew
it back. The carvings twisted, and came to life. The impression
was of a badly-filmed movie playing out upon the wooden surface.
First the two-headed image turned left, until the full face of
the smiling head stared out at them.
All: Leonardo DiCaprio!
The wooden face had a
terrible look of vitality to it, and the eyes were bright and
cruelly clever.
Crow: Clever?
Mike: Definitely not DiCaprio, then.
Then it spoke, in no language known to human
tongue, inside Ranma's head:
Tom: Those human tongues never know anything.
"None whose dream-soul lies in glass-
Mike: I guess Cologne's been hitting the sake a little too much.
The head turned, wooden image blurring, and now the weeping
face stared out at them, as the voice spoke on:
-beyond the dreaming-gate shall pass"
The scent of roses was gone. Now what clung to everything
in the room was the aroma of dust and impossible age, desolation
and decay. Again the head turned, visage after visage spinning
by, laughing, weeping, laughing, weeping, laughing, weeping
inside Ranma's head--
Crow: Then the heads started doing the Macarena and _completely_
destroyed Ranma's sanity.
The table shook with the impact as Ranma's hands slapped
down atop the box. For a moment, he felt the box writhing under
his hands like a serpent, and then it was still. A deep breath
calmed him slightly, and he slowly slid his hands off the
surface of the wood. The box was as it had been before; old and
worn, the two-headed profile carved upon it without the animate
monstrosity it had possessed before.
"Do you see now, Ranma?"
Mike: [as Cologne] I've put my heart upon a shelf. Well, my dream-soul
actually.
Cologne said softly. "I am
constrained by a power beyond myself. Do not undertake this
lightly, child. Consider what chances you are willing to take
in freeing yourself from the Neko-ken."
Ranma laughed uncertainly. "What's the worst thing that
could happen to me?"
"I cannot describe it," said Cologne. "Save that it would
make you wish many times over that you had died."
Tom: [as Cologne] Though I have not experienced this personally.
"Well," Ranma said, scratching the back of his head, "that's
the worst thing, huh?"
Cologne nodded and placed an ancient hand atop the carven
lid of the box. "If you do not wish to..."
"This is the only way, huh?"
"The only way of which I know that might have some success."
Crow: [as Cologne] You would have to go to a doctor to get Viagra.
Ranma frowned. "And you can't tell me any more?"
A struggle seemed to pass across Cologne's face. Her mouth
opened, but no words came out. Beads of sweat glistened on the
parchment skin of her forehead. The hand she held her staff with
tightened until the knuckles were bone-white. Soundlessly, her
mouth worked, as if she tried to speak but something held her
voice in thrall.
Mike: No, she's just trying to speak in a language unknown to human
tongues.
At last, it passed, and she shook her head.
"I cannot." Fear, unfamiliar, showed on her face. "I am sorry,
son-in-law."
Tom: Okay, maybe she _has_ experienced it personally.
Mike: Maybe that's why she's so shrunken.
"Okay," Ranma said, frown deepening. "No hints?"
The words came from Cologne, all in a rush. "Do not be
consumed with phantoms child for within each mortal lies--" Her
voice cut off with a strangled squawk, and it took her a few
seconds to draw breath again. "I can risk no more than that."
Mike: [as Cologne] Otherwise you'll know too much and not fall into the
traps as a hero must.
Tom: [as Cologne] And if you have prior knowledge of the world you're
about to be tossed into, you won't be able to amusingly stumble
into mishaps that anyone else would avoid easily!
The box seemed heavier than it should have been as Ranma
weighed it up and down in one palm. "Okay," he sighed. "I don't
like it much, but if ya think this'll work..." Cologne nodded
and wiped damp hair out of her eyes. "...then I might as well
give it a shot."
"One thing," Cologne said wearily as she slumped into her
chair. "You'll have to be alone when you use it. Don't have
anyone else in the room when you burn the incense."
"Why not?"
"It would not be good."
Crow: I've noticed that warnings in the Ranmaverse are usually useless.
Tom: Is this going to be like 'Whatever you do, don't put the egg on
your head'?
Answers, it seemed, were not forthcoming from Cologne. The
box was a comfortably solid presence under Ranma's arm as he got
up from the table and turned to go. "Thanks, Cologne."
Suddenly, he turned back, eyes narrowing with suspicion. "Wait a
minute. What are you getting out of this?"
"Confirmation," Cologne said enigmatically. "And maybe
something else."
Crow: [as Cologne] I bet he'd look cute a hundred years older, all
shriveled up like I am.
"No strings?"
Her smile was thin and humourless. "The strings you tie
yourself are more binding than any I might."
Mike: Right, Cologne only knows how to tie _granny_ knots.
The urge to scratch his head was there, but he resisted it.
"Okay."
"One more thing."
"What?"
Cologne pointed. "Go out the side door. Shampoo will be
waiting in the dining room."
..
Mike: ...
Tom: Panda sounds, perhaps?
For the next three days, some force unseen appeared to be in
conspiracy against Ranma Saotome's efforts.
Crow: Great, now the _writer_ is mentioning conspiracy.
Tom: [as Ranma] It's the cats, I tell you! The cats!
It was enough alone
that he was forced to share a room with his sire (the source, as
he saw it, of so many of his ills), but each effort he made to
find a secure place to take rest while burning the incense met
with failure. The first night, he waited until his father slept
and absconded from their bedroom after retrieving the carven box
>from beneath his underclothing in the drawer, only to encounter a
somnolent Akane Tendo on her trip back from the bathroom.
Mike: The language used here is nice. Doesn't sound like a Ranma 'fic
at all.
As
this encounter happened to take place outside the door of her
room, and as Ranma happened to have looked inside the open door
on the off chance that something was wrong with his
supposedly-sleeping fiancee, the end result was a sound thrashing
due to Akane's presumption that Ranma had some nefarious end in
mind - 'walking around the house in the middle of the night and
peeking into my room like some sort of weirdo pervert' were her
words, more or less.
The second night, Ranma made the excuse of practising late
in the dojo, intending to sleep there that night and make use of
its isolated status from the rest of the house. Unfortunately,
the arrival several hours after dinner of a rival of his, one
Ryoga Hibiki, resulted in a rousing battle of several hours that
ended (as many of their battles did) with no clear victor either
way. By the end, Ranma was in such an exhausted state that he
was incapable of considering anything beyond simple sleep.
The third night, he again used the pretext of a late night
training in the dojo to avoid his regular sleeping-hour. When it
was pointed out to him that his conflict the night before had
left a large hole in the roof of said dojo, he rebutted that he
would enjoy sleeping under the stars. When it was pointed out
that the forecast called for rain that night, he said that a
little rain wouldn't hurt him. When it was suggested by Akane's
father that he simply spend an hour patching the roof that he
had indirectly damaged, he had already left the room. That
night, he carefully made a bed in the corner of the dojo, far
>from the hole, and waited until such a late hour that he was sure
the rest of the household would be abed. Then, carefully putting
light to a single cube of the incense placed in a small burner,
he settled into his sleeping bag and stared up at the small
amount of ceiling that remained, his head pillowed upon his
hands.
Tom: So instead of putting all this at the beginning of the 'fic, you
put it in the middle? Think we wouldn't notice all the cliches
this way?
Crow: What do you take us for? People who sit around all day watching
soap operas and daytime talk shows?
Mike: We're much more cultured than that. We spend all our time
watching Anime.
Soon a scent of roses such as the incense gave off, but
multiplied, began to fill the dojo.
Tom: This isn't going to become an Utena crossover, is it?
Ranma's nose quivered at the
soporific odour,
Crow: Ooooh. British spelling, even.
and his lids felt suddenly heavy. Arms and
legs, his body, they seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. He could
not lift them. Panic filled him for a moment, and then panic
went away under the lovely scent of roses.
The floor, he thought, is rising, bearing me up with it
towards the holes in the stars. Laughter came, and went. The
ceiling dipped and bulged, and the walls ran like wax in
polychromatic shades. His body was a prison. Flesh was hateful.
The stars laughed at him. Roses rotted on the vine. Thorns
pierced his skin. Vines wrapped around his limbs. Vines
covered his eyes.
Mike: Must be a Yu Yu Hakusho crossover.
Crow: Certainly sounds like Kurama is attacking him.
Tom: Out of jealousy, maybe?
Crow: [as Kurama] Why couldn't I get a curse like that?
The wooden floor was alive, trees rising, mist
twining about the tangles of their roots. They waved their
branches and danced for him. For a moment, he was sure he saw
two worlds, one the dojo with the hole in the ceiling, the other
the night-forest with trees so tall that their limbs had twined
together and almost blotted out the stars. Then there was
nothing at all but sleep, and what lay beyond.
..
Ranma blinked. He was lying on a stick, which was poking
him in the small of back. That had been... weird. Had the
incense been hallucinogenic, or something?
He then realized that there was not just a stick, but an
entire forest.
Crow: An entire forest was poking him in the back?
Mike: That must be really uncomfortable.
A vast forest of towering oak trees, the upper
branches entangled with one another to form such a thick roof
that only in patches were the stars of the night sky visible.
There was no difficulty in seeing though, for many of the oak
trees were covered in luminescent green fungi that clung to the
trunks or hung in long streamers reminiscent of tentacles from
the branches.
Mike: Since this is a Lovecraft mix, it wouldn't be too surprising for
the trees to have tentacles.
The light was eerie, turning the leaf-strewn
forest floor a strange sickly colour. Extracting the stick from
under him, Ranma sat up and looked around. Trees stretched off
as far as he could see.
"Well," he said quietly. "This is damn strange." Something
skittered in the underbrush nearby, a quick darting shape, and he
sprang to his feet and warily cast his head from side to side.
"Someone there?"
Tom: [as quick darting shape] Yer after me Lucky Charms, aren't ye?
Was he dreaming? It didn't feel like a dream. The forest
floor felt solid and real beneath his bare feet, though the
verdant greens and browns of the forest had a murky quality to
them. A piping sound rose from somewhere deep within the forest,
and Ranma turned and took a few steps in the direction of it,
before he heard it sound again from behind him.
Tom: [as quick darting shape] We're on me home turf, now. Never catch
me here, cereal-boy!
Frowning, he stopped and thought for a moment. The voice in
his head from the carven box had spoken of the dreaming-gate, and
he had to have come to this place somehow. Oddly, he was no
longer in his pyjamas, but wore his familiar red shirt and black
pants. He pinched the fabric of his shirt between his fingers;
it certainly felt real. Weird.
Tom Servo: Certainly sounds weird to me. Pinching your shirt?
Mike: Yeah. Don't people normally pinch themselves to see if they're
dreaming?
Crow: Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not usually interested in
pinching _myself_ when I dream.
Deciding to get better oriented, he crouched, sprang, and
grabbed a tree limb a dozen feet overhead. It bent slightly
under his weight, oddly springy for its size, but held, and he
hauled himself up onto it and balanced on the broad span of it.
Another leap grabbed another branch, and he quickly and
acrobatically worked his way up the hundred-foot height of the
tree. Near the top, he had to slow down to pick his way through
the tangle of branches, but at last he emerged atop the tree and
gazed off from a perfect vantage point at the land beyond.
It breathtaking. Beyond the forest, a blue ribbon of a
river wound through lush fields. Tiny cottages and farms dotted
the land, and further off he saw clusters of houses that looked
to be villages. But what stunned him were the mountains. Two of
them were visible,
Crow: Sounds like my kind of dream. Lush fields and twin peaks.
Mike: Crow!
forested on their lower slopes and rising tens
of thousands of feet into the air to peaks capped with frost and
snow that glowed blue beneath the starlight. They were bigger
than Fuji-san - bigger perhaps even than Everest - and Ranma
realized then that wherever he was, it was not of earth.
He looked up at the stars. None of the familiar
constellations were there, no North Star or the bright glow that
was Venus. A sudden sense of smallness overwhelmed him, and he
felt tiny and insignificant as he gazed up at the night sky.
Mike: My god, it's full of stars!
The
moon was bright, and seemed too big. While he watched, a far-off
shape passed across it on too many wings, or perhaps too few.
Crow: Too few wings, too many tentacles.
Suddenly, he no longer wanted to be atop the tree, staring
at alien stars and unknown mountains. He regretted going to
Cologne, regretted burning the incense. The flying thing,
whatever on earth or elsewhere it was, was lost against the sky
now - perhaps he had not seen it at all. Branches had not seemed
so thickly strewn when he'd climbed up, but as he made his way
down, they seemed to clutch at him as if they wanted him to stay.
A misplaced hand squashed a glowing green fungus that looked like
a malformed football, and it burst with a wet explosion to spray
phlegmy liquid on his shirt sleeve and hand.
Grimacing, he dropped the remaining short distance to the
ground and wiped the mess off as well as he could against his
pants.
Crow: Classic mistake. When something green and phlegmy squirts on you,
never spread it around.
Tom: Once again, Ranma's limited knowledge of fantasy and science
fiction shows through.
Nocturnal rustles came from tangled undergrowth through
which a few rudimentary trails had been worn, and he glanced
around nervously as he remembered the vast shadowy not-bird thing
that had been framed against the moon.
Mike: A pterodactyl. Ranma's been transported to Land of the Lost.
Still brushing at his sticky sleeve and scratching absently
at his hand, which had started to itch, he began to walk along
the trail that he believed would lead him from this alien and
disturbing place to the pleasant fields beyond. All around him
the woods murmured,
Tom: [as quick darting shape] Get ready, me friends. His hand's begun
to itch. Can't be too long now.
and once, as he stepped over a fallen and
rotted log, a moth big as his hand with glistening blue wings
flew by.
Mike: A Luna moth.
Crow: Or since it's blue, maybe it should be an Ami moth.
At last, with the burning itch of his hand having grown only
worse, the trees began to thin out and he saw the fields
spreading beyond. For a moment, he paused under the towering
limbs of one of the great oaks and looked at his hand.
"Oh god," he whispered, as he realized why it had itched all
this way. Somehow, he had never looked at it in all this
walking. Pulsing tendrils of green moss were slowly growing from
his palm; around them, squashed stains of the ones he'd rubbed
away in his itching were spread in patches on the flesh of his
hand. From them, tiny fibrous roots were beginning to emerge.
As if his eyes upon it had been the trigger for some
terrible vitalistic purpose, the moss began to writhe across his
entire hand, enveloping it in a verdant glove.
Mike: You want power, boy? Which will it be: a glove of green moss or a
sandtrout glove? Terrible Purpose comes free of charge.
Numbness coursed
up his wrist, his arm, his shoulder, and stretched tight across
his brain like an enveloping veil. Horrified and paralysed, he
stared as moss crawled up his arm like the tide creeping up a
beach. Swayed, staggered. Shapes and colours blurred before his
eyes as if the world were melting. Overhead, the stars spun
madly.
Crow: Great. Now the stars are doing the Macarena.
With a thud, he hit the ground. Half of his body felt as if
a mountain had been laid atop it. The other half could barely
move. Unable to scream or cry out, he felt his stomach twist in
wretched disgust as the moss grew upon his clothes, and, even
worse, upon his skin. Tangled fingers stroked his hair, kissed
his forehead. The last thing he saw as the moss drew a reeking,
faintly-glowing mask across his face, were the quick dark shapes
flitting from the underbrush, weird eyes glinting with green
light and hunger.
Tom: [as quick darting shape] Somethin' other than cereal. Tis all we
ask.
FIN ONE
Mike: Well, time to go.
[Exit from theatre.]
[Tom Servo is doing a strange dance while Crow watches. Mike Nelson
walks up.]
Tom: [While dancing.] Ia! Ia! Cthulhu!
Mike: What are you doing now?
Crow: Pearl gave us instructions on how to contact one of the Elder
Gods. We're going to see if it will take our letter to God for us.
Mike: I... may not know much about Elder Gods, but isn't this a
little... dangerous?
Crow: Dangerous? Don't be silly, Mike.
Tom: Ia! Ia! Hastur! [Continues dancing.]
[Inside Pearl's van.]
Pearl: Don't interrupt the ritual, Mike. That could have disasterous
consequences.
[On board SOL.]
Mike: Well, what _exactly_ is Tom doing?
Crow: The dance is part of the Call. Funny, but it's the Macarena
backwards.
[Tom stops dancing.]
Tom: Ia! Ia! Aneracam!
[With a flash of light, a being appears that is far too large to fit in
the Satellite of Love. It has a golden-red color and looks something
like a cross between a phoenix, a dragon, and an octopus.]
[The Ancient One grabs Mike and the bots with its tentacles and
disappears in another flash.]
[Inside van.]
Pearl: Hey! _Nobody_ gets away with kidnapping my lab rats!
[Starts pushing buttons on her console.]
Pearl: Don't worry, boys. I'll figure out where that thing took you and
get you back!
(Until the next part!)
Note: Alan pointed out that Kiima doesn't appear to have a problem with
cats (Volume 37, Page 118), but I left the joke in.
Also: This part of 'Cologne's' dialogue: "And if you have prior
knowledge of the world you're about to be tossed into, you won't be able
to amusingly stumble into mishaps that anyone else would avoid easily!"
was written by Alan. I liked that too much to let it go to waste! :)
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Josh Green, aka Pi -- SORT@BUCKET.UALR.EDU
http://bucket.ualr.edu/~sort/fanfic/
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