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Due to problems with his e-mail, Kwokinator has asked me to submit this
fic to the ffml. Any comments on this should be sent to the ffml or
kwokinator@animefanfics.com
Previous chapters can be found on RAAC.
Warning: There is gore in this fic. A lot of gore. If you do not like
gore, please do not read the following.
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A Broken Casket
Chapter 2
Ranma-chan walked along the now-unfamiliar streets of Nerima,
memories playing over and over in her mind. She looked at her hands
and sighed.
"Who am I? Am I a martial artist?" she asked herself.
"What's a martial artist? What am I?"
Ranma-chan searched deep within her to find answers to those
questions, finding nothing but blanks in her mind. "What happened to
me?" she whispered. "Why can't I remember anything?"
She frantically tried to search her memory about what could've
happened recently, and came up with blank. There was only scattered
images. She could remember a monster. A big, purple monster.
Blood. Lots of blood. People. Scared people, running everywhere.
All over a ship.
A ship? She didn't remember a ship. She remembered people
running all over the ground, all over her head, and inside her head.
Or was the ground the ship's deck?
Shaking her head, she banished the train of thought and
continued making her way across her former home.
Everywhere she went, she felt people staring at her. Nobody
would leave her alone. Why couldn't they just leave her alone?
"Leave me alone!" she screamed. "Stop staring at me! Just leave me
alone! All of you!"
Sure enough, everybody started to either file off the streets
or found more interesting items in the back of the shops they were
in. A store owner was looking at Ranma-chan and turning his head as
she went by. Ranma-chan released a glowing ball of light towards the
store owner, and the attack exploded on contact, painting the walls
and the floor of that store red.
Ranma-chan looked at the place where the store owner once
stood, and paled. She looked at her hands in horror and sobbed. What
was she? What did she just do to the man? How did she do that? Wait
a second... where was the man now? She could have sworn that the man
was there a minute ago, smiling at her, but he seemed to have
disappeared after repainting his store. Deeming the matter
unimportant, she continued on her way.
Unfortunately, her way took her directly into the path of a
running woman. Just as Ranma-chan turned her head around from the
store, she collided with the woman, sending both onto the ground on
their behinds. She was about to open her mouth and complain, but one
look at the other woman silenced her.
"What the hell do you think you were going?" the woman
demanded angrily. "You should have watched the road!"
Ranma-chan sat stupified in front of woman, not saying a word.
Something about the woman seemed familiar to her. Maybe it was the
way her hair flows down to the small of her back at the two sides,
maybe it was the way she yelled at Ranma-chan, maybe it was the way
she turned around and stomped off when Ranma-chan didn't answer, but
she sure seemed familiar...
Almost in a daze, Ranma-chan got up and started to follow the
woman stealthily. After about 10 minutes and a number of twists and
turns, the woman stopped in front of an old-looking building, and
Ranma-chan found herself looking up to a sign that said "Tendo-Hibiki
Dojo".
An image flashed through her mind. An image of a bandana-clad
boy, flinging his bandanas through the air, one after the other. A
girl stood there, a cute girl with long hair. She cried out for the
girl to watch out, and the girl stood in shock as her hair was cut.
But was that really her who cried out? She sounded like a guy... but
she was a girl, wasn't she?
Another image flashed through her mind. The cute girl smiled
at her, and she felt all warm and fuzzy inside, but she insulted the
girl instead because she didn't know what else to do. She still
sounded like a guy though... wonder why?
More images flashed through her head, and she sank down to her
knees, clutching her head in pain. She remembered the bandana-clad
boy, leading her to an island, tying her up and abandoning her there.
She remembered him laughing, taunting her. She also remembered her
friends, coming in and talking to her, and leaving without a word or a
trace even when she herself couldn't get out.
The memories subsided, and she stood up. She remembered it
all. The one named Ryoga, his friendship long forgotten, his rivalry
with herself, and his final betrayal. She remembered the girl called
Akane, the cute, sweet girl she once knew and loved. She remembered
Ryoga's cruel laugh, mocking her and laughing at her while taking
Akane away from her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman enter the
house and a bandana-clad man welcoming her with a kiss. She now
recognized that the woman was Akane, although grown-up. Could the man
be Ryoga? Curiousity overwhelming her, she jumped up onto the wall of
the house and watched.
Now that she saw the bandana-wearing man up close, she
instantly recognized him as Ryoga, grown-up just like Akane. She also
saw him taking Akane by the waist, pulling her in for a deep kiss.
Her blood boiled in rage and she clenched her fists tight, but she
kept silent.
When Ryoga started undressing Akane, Ranma-chan unconsciously
punched the wall she's kneeling on. Both Ryoga and Akane jerked
their heads towards her, but she was too far for them to recognize.
Ryoga kissed Akane quickly, and jumped up onto the wall in front of
Ranma-chan with an effortless leap.
Ryoga narrowed his eyes at her, and concentrated as if in deep
thought. Suddenly, he paled. "R-ranma?" he asked, disbelieving.
Ranma-chan opened her mouth and started to speak, then closed
her mouth without making a sound. Ryoga's throat had grown tiny
mouths, and they were screaming out "Snap me! Snap me like a twig!"
It was Ranma-chan's turn to turn pale. She saw, in slow-
motion, various of Ryoga's body part also starting growing tiny
mouths. As if performing a symphony of pure cacophony and horror, the
mouths were all saying either "Break me!" or "Snap me!". With a cry,
Ranma-chan leapt off the wall and sprinted away from the dojo.
She ran and ran without a direction, until she could no longer
hear the harmony of convoluted voices.
"Who was it, Ryoga?" Akane asked.
"I don't know, Akane-chan," Ryoga lied. "Just some kid who
wanted to challenge me, then ran away. You know how things are."
"Of course, Ryoga." she kissed him. "Ever since you beat
that new Dojo Destroyer who wrecked most other dojos in Japan, we've
had countless of challenges but you came on top every time." Sadness
crept into Akane's voice as she though of another man who used to come
out on top in every challenge, but she tried to hide it. It didn't
fool Ryoga though. He knew what she was thinking about, and fumed in
rage.
Damn you, Ranma! Why did you come back? Ryoga thought. Wait
a minute... I sealed Ranma up twenty years ago! It CAN'T be Ranma!
It CAN'T be! But... but if that wasn't Ranma, who else COULD it be?
Ranma-chan looked around when she stopped running, and found
herself in an empty lot. She remembered that this was where she tried
to disguise herself and learn the Shi Shi Hokodan from Ryoga, only to
have a kettle of hot water poured over her and get blasted again. Hot
water? What was so important about hot water that it revealed her
disguise? All she could remember was a picture of a man with a black
pigtail in her mind's eye. Black pigtail? She knew that her hair was
braided in a pigtail, but her hair was red. She didn't know a man
that had a black pigtail... or did she? And why did that man look so
familiar? Absentmindedly, she starting walking off while thinking
about the man and hot water.
Passing by a tall forty-story office building, she had a flash
of recollection about her past yet again. She could remember a young
doctor by the name of Tofu, and a skeleton named Betty-chan. She
remembered hot water kettles, and painful realigning of broken bones
caused by a girl she called kawaiikune. That girl reminded her of
Akane, but she remembered that Akane was much nicer, and her smile was
really cute when she asked if Ranma-chan wanted to be friends with
her. The "kawaiikune" was full of fury, as if she was only a clone of
Akane, fueled and kept alive by anger.
Perhaps she stood unmoving in front of the building too long,
because a hulking man standing at the door called out to tell her to
"move along". He was carrying what seemed like a gun, but it was
also clearly different. The "gun" was the size of a machine gun, but
it also had a silver-metallic chrome surface, making it different from
any gun she could remember from seeing on television.
"If you have no business to conduct here, lady," the man said,
waving his gun threateningly, "I suggest you move along."
Ranma-chan looked at the man, and blinked. The man's gun
suddenly disappeared right before her eyes, and his features morphed
into a familiar one. She blinked again, and launched herself towards
him, screaming a cry of outrage: "Die, Ryoga!"
Before the man could blink at Ranma-chan's battlecry, she was
on him, grabbing his arm and various other places. All he saw was a
red-headed blur moving all around him, and all he heard was his bones
breaking one by one, limb by limb. For some reason, he couldn't faint
either, no matter how much he wanted to. Throughout the entire
painful process, he remained painfully aware of every single hit he
took. Even being in the Special Task Force for the better part of his
thirty-years of life didn't prepare him for this. From what he could
remember of high school biology, there was supposedly hundreds of
bones in a human body. What he's finding out right then was that the
majority of them could somehow be broken.
After many painful minutes of having his bones snapped and
broken, Ranma-chan seemed to have gotten tired of bone-breaking, and
the man breathed out an audible sigh of relief as she stood up. He
regretted doing that mere seconds later, when Ranma-chan knelt down
beside his right arm and grabbed it. He tried to struggle against
her, but the lack of bones left in his legs prevented him from doing
so. With a brutal, unmerciful pull, she tore his right arm clear
from the torso. Even as the blood was fountaining out, he was
watching the proceedings with a detached, morbid fascination. He
didn't scream, he couldn't. No matter how much pain he was in, no
sound ever came out of his open mouth.
He continued to observe as Ranma-chan torn off his left arm as
well. Now blood was fountaining out from where both of his arms had
been. Briefly, he wondered how much blood he could lose before he
died and found himself welcoming that prospect. Luck wasn't with him
that day, however. This time around, the girl seemed to want to
introduce him to more pain, as she torn off his left foot with barely
a yank. He tilted his head to see what was left, and found only a
pool of blood. A second later, his calf was gone as well. His leg
now looked like it was badly amputated at the knee. Not for long
though. Sooner than he thought possible, his thigh was ripped from
his hip as well. His consciousness started fading away, and he
smiled.
Ranma-chan noticed that, and growled. "You're not getting
away that easy, you bastard." She put a hand on "Ryoga" and channeled
ki through her arm into him. Even though she couldn't remember much,
she somehow knew that channeling ki would work. It was something
involving a monk, a monastery and life-preserving techniques, but that
was all she could remember clearly.
The man's eyes widened in surprise as a warmth passed through
the girl's hand and into his body, returning him to the glorious world
of unimaginable pain. Then, without any fanfare, the girl performed a
karate chop and severed his remaining limb. As if unsatisfied, she
held his leg up for him to see, then pushed at the two ends and
crunched the leg into something no bigger than sawdust. Even though
he had only pools of blood where his limps should have been, he was
happy because now he could finally die. His happiness was
short-lived.
Ranma-chan knelt in front of him, and punched straight through
his abdomen. Terror-strickened, he watched as she reached inside his
abdomen, pulled out his stomach, and severed the connections to his
nervous system. She then set his stomach onto his right breast and
released a glowing ball onto the detached stomach after she stood up.
It exploded on contact, and the stomach acid started to erode away the
right side of his rib cage, going straight through his lungs. Mere
minutes later, there was nothing left of the right side of his chest
except a hole and partly exposed tissue. This time, he did scream.
He kept on screaming and screaming, then he felt his larynx explode
from the pressure and blood came flying out from his mouth. He
wondered, not for the first time, why there wasn't anybody around and
why hadn't he died yet.
Ranma-chan channeled ki into "Ryoga" again to keep him alive
and aware. She reached into his abdomen once again, this time pulling
out his liver kidney, crushing it within her small fingers. She then
put her hands on both sides of the hole in his stomach and pulled.
The man felt one moment of excruciating pain, even worse than before,
then nothing.
Ranma-chan stood there, her body covered with blood. Around
her lay the two halves of the man and his various limbs.
"Burn in hell, you bastard," she said as she spat on the
blood.
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