I've had some new ideas about how Akane's mind works and there's been a few
things about this fic that have been bugging me lately, and since I really
have nothing better to do. . .
Anyways, there wasn't much I changed about this chapter, so it's more of a
repost then a rewrite.
C&C is always welcome,
Agreeable Komodo
He who bought it, supplied it.
Just say yes to prophylactics.
"I'm afraid I was a little abrupt recently with a producer who sent me a
screenplay," he once confessed. "It was rubbish, really. I sent it back with
a polite rejection. Then he came back with the plea that 'we tailored it just
for you.' I replied simply, 'But no one came to take the measurements.' "
-Sir Alec Guinness
1914?-2000 R.I.P.
******************
Akane Tendo was having a bad day. One of those where nothing goes right and
sooner or later you get the feeling that someone up there has a box marked
"things that can go wrong" and is just emptying its contents one by one into
the cauldron that is your life.
So, it was understandable that when Upperclassman Kuno, the self-styled "Blue
Thunder" of Furikan High, attempted to ask her out on a date in his usual
fashion, Akane, who's legendary short temper had been shortened down to the
bare edges by the day's events, responded by driving her feet into several
vital areas of his body before throwing him into the dumpster just inside the
mouth of a nearby alley.
As she stood there contemplating the sight of Kuno's bare feet sticking out
of the trash, her eye was caught by a faint green light from further up the
alley. Curious, Akane went to investigate.
The source of the light proved to be a jade sculpture in the shape of a paper
lantern. "Wow," she said softly as she knelt to pick it up by the handle. As
her fingers made contact, the light died away. For a moment, she was startled
and then logic asserted itself. "Baka," she muttered to herself. "It's
probably one of those one touch lamps or the batteries died just when you
touched it. Don't get excited." Standing up, she turned to leave when she
noticed a jade ring lying on the ground. Picking it up, she noticed that it
seemed to be carved from a single piece of jade and was adorned with a
miniature of the lantern she held. "Wow," she said quietly and then slipped
it onto the middle finger of her right hand. Instantly, the ring blazed to
life and then died. Looking down, Akane saw she was dressed in a form-fitting
green and black costume with white gloves. Feeling something on her face, she
touched it. It felt like some kind of mask. "What the hell is going on?" She
said to no one in particular.
"Akane!" came a voice from behind her. 'Oh no!' She thought, fighting panic.
'Ranma!' Pulling hard, she jerked the ring off of her finger and sighed in
relief as the costume and mask vanished, restoring her clothes.
"Hey Akane!" came Ranma's voice again, closer this time. "Where are ya?"
"Over here!" Akane called, slipping the ring into her pocket. Maybe Doctor
Tofu would understand what was going on.
"There you are," Ranma said, vaulting over the fence at the other end of the
alley. "Wha'cha doing back here?"
"None of your bisnuess!" Akane retorted.
"Maybe I'm curious!" Ranma shot back.
"Well be curious somewhere else!" Akane snapped and turning on her heel,
marched out of the alley.
"Girls," Ranma grumbled to the piles of trash. "Go figure."
*********************
Much later that night, Akane sat cross-legged on her bed looking at the
lantern on her desk. Surprisingly, no one had commented on it unless she
called it to their attention. It was almost as though it hadn't wanted to be
noticed. "Now I'm just being silly," she grumbled and looked at the jade ring
on her night stand and remembered what had happened when she had put it on.
"Or maybe not. . ."
Groaning, she fell back on then bed and pulled the covers over her as she
switched off the light. "I'll deal with it in the morning."
It wasn't until she was fast asleep, that the ring began to glow softly,
pulsating to some alien rhythm.
*********************
Akane stood before the fire dressed in a white silk gown under a white robe.
The flames suddenly turned green, reared high and then leapt out of the fire
pit, forming a blazing circle around her before stretching towards the
ceiling. Turning away from the pit, her body suffused with a strange sense of
detachment, Akane's eyes widened as the flames leapt hungrily towards her.
Then she was floating over a city square ringed with skyscrapers made of
glass and green steel. Below her, thirty-six hundred-where did that number
come from?- beings stood, surrounding a curious structure shaped like a
lantern. Each of them had her? His? Its? Arm? Tentacle? stretched towards the
blazing green light emerging from the structure and she could hear their
voices.
"In darkest day, in blackest night," the voices chanted. "No evil shall
escape my sight. Let those who worship Evil's might beware my power, Green
Lantern's Light!"
As the voices died away, she found herself wiping away a tear. There had been
such a sense of grand majesty, of honor and loyalty about what she had just
witnessed.
Then, from somewhere in the middle of the crowd, a human, a young man, his
brown hair shot with gray, suddenly erupted into green flames, a fire which
quickly consumed the entire square and Akane had to turn her head away to
protect her eyes from the blazing light. When she could see again, the city
was in ruins, corpses littered the ground, and a pile of ash covered the
square. Then from the ash, a blazing pillar of light shot upwards, carrying
with it a dark-haired young man, his clothing evocative of armor rather then
a uniform. Rising with him were other shapes, half-formed blurs and ghosts of
what might be.
"From the ashes, rises the new," said a voice behind her. Akane spun and
found herself looking at man. He was the same height as Happosai,
blue-skinned, with white hair pulled back in a ponytail and dressed in a red
robe.
"What?" Akane asked and then realized that the city was gone and they were
simply floating in a strange cloud-like mist.
"Your place is prepared," the man said. "Do you want it?"
"I don't understand!" Akane yelled. "Take what place? Want what?"
"Violent girl never understand," said a new voice and Akane spun again to see
Shampoo and Ukyou flanking Kodachi. All three were dressed in red armor with
hair made out of living flames. Then she gasped. Lying at their feet was the
burnt, blackened bodies of her family, friends, and anyone she had ever cared
about. Behind them, hidden in the mists, she could just make out the shapes
of others like them, legions ready to do battle. And behind those legions,
strange, alien figures that radiated a weird and terrible power.
Then she realized that the pile at the feet of her rivals did not have Ranma
in it. But as that realization came to her, a soft ugly chuckle drifted past
her ears. Not wanting to look, but driven by a force that said she had to,
Akane looked behind her and saw Ranma, also dressed in armor, his hair a
living, burning effigy. There was no sign of kindness or compassion on his
face, just a sadistic smirk.
"Ranma?" she asked fearfully. But there was no answer, instead, he stretched
his hand out towards her and a wall of pure flame leapt at her. As the flame
reached her, she saw Earth etched in the flames, consumed by the fires of
greed and need for control. Then the flames touched her skin and she screamed
as she was consumed.
How long she screamed she could never be sure, but gradually, she became
aware of someone shaking her and yelling her name. Then the world exploded in
stars and she was staring at Ranma's face. His human face.
"Burning," she realized she was saying. "Burning everywhere, nobody human,
all of us are slaves!"
"Akane!" Ranma shouted again as he shook her. "Snap out of it! It was just a
dream. You had a nightmare!"
"N-Nightmare?" Akane asked, her throat raw from screaming.
"Yeah," Ranma said smiling as he handed her a glass of water proffered by a
worried looking Kasumi, who stood nearby as the rest of the Tendo Household
was jammed in the doorway to her room. "Just a nightmare. You're okay. You're
safe."
"But it was so real," Akane protested.
"Dreams often are," Kasumi said as she took the glass back. "Perhaps someone
was trying to tell you something?"
Akane did not sleep the rest of the night. Instead, she sat on her bed
staring at the ring on her night stand, Kasumi's words going over and over
through her head.
"If someone was trying to tell me something," she said to the dim stillness
of her room, "I wish they had been a little quieter. . ."