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I have no idea why ch. 5 keeps getting cut off, so I'm just gonna send it in 
2 parts.  I'm sorry about all the crap I've been bombarding the list with 
lately, but this should be the last, hopefully.



    Kuno swaggers forward, holding his bokken at the ready.
    “The questionably honorable Flaming Amarant hath requested that I do him 
a favor in providing information for you, the reader,” he states.  “The foul 
sorcerer Saotome, the beautiful Akane Tendo, my beloved Pig-Tailed Goddess, 
my noble self, and all other characters from Ranma 1/2 belong to the great 
Rumiko Takahashi-sama.  Also, he states that the esteemed Heihachi Mishima 
and the redoubtable Bryan Fury are the property of whoever owns them.  He 
humbly requests that none who read this work of fiction would bring forth a 
lawsuit against him, for he has nowhere near the vast resources of the great 
House Kuno.”
    The author steps forward and pats Kuno on the back, saying, “Good job, 
Kuno.  You can go home now.”
    “What?!” Kuno exclaims, outraged.  “Foul demon, to deny my right to star 
in your work!  I shall smite thee!!”  He then proceeds to beat the author 
into a bloody pulp, and finally leaves.
    “Owie...,” the author mutters.

Flashfyre5 presents,

In association with Digital Wizardry Studios, Minnesota,

A Flaming Amarant production,


Of Gods and Men
Chapter Five


A Ranma 1/2 fanfic with characters from the Tekken series.

“ “ = speech
< > = thought
/ / = panda sign
<” “> = other language where the norm would be Japanese
* * = sound effect

*   *   *   *   *   *

    A bruised and battered Akane dangled from the treetops, breathing 
heavily.  Her entire body, save for one finger, was bound in place in some 
way, shape, or form.  That finger was currently the most damaged part of her 
body, which was saying quite a lot.  <Ranma,> she thought.  <I’ve got to do 
this for Ranma.>
    “Again,” she called, seeing the boulder being pulled back.  Cologne, 
after securing the boulder, hopped over onto the branch that Akane was 
hanging from.
    “Akane, you’ve been at this for four and a half hours.  Even Ryoga took 
a break every two hours, you know that.  You need to rest,” the elder told 
her.  Akane shook her head.
    “He didn’t have someone’s life depending on him learning this stupid 
thing.  I do,” Akane declared, the fierceness in her eyes belying her 
battered state.  “Throw it again.”  Cologne sighed.
    “I’ll swing it once more, Akane.  After that, we’ll rest,” Cologne 
compromised.  Akane, sensing that this was the best offer she’d get, nodded.  
With that, Cologne sent a tiny bolt of chi at the rope securing the great 
boulder.  Freed of the force preventing it from succumbing to the pull of 
gravity, it plummeted, only to be caught in its fall by another rope, 
attached to a great, sturdy oak limb.  The boulder, forced by this rope and 
the sling it sat in, was forced to change its trajectory and swung straight 
at the young girl hanging, restrained, in her own sling.
    Akane sensed the boulder coming before she saw it, and spun to face it.  
As the great rock came into view, she felt a small tightening in the base of 
her ribs, fear for her well-being.  She pushed it down, extending her free 
arm, and prepared for impact.  The boulder, following its forced trajectory, 
gained speed through centrifugal force until it had nearly a ton of force 
behind its powerful swing.  Right at the bottom of its swing hung Akane, 
staring at the rock as though she could shatter it by force of will alone.  
As the boulder came within five feet of her, Akane thrust out with her finger 
, sensing something in the rock, some weak point.  As finger finally met 
rock, her finger crunched into the boulder, the hardened skin crunching 
through the solid granite.  When her fist caught up with her finger, it 
impacted the side of the boulder, causing a small crater to form around it 
from the force of the blow.  However, this small effort hardly slowed the 
rock, and it continued on its path, smashing into the victi- err... trainee 
with all the force of a compact car.  Needlessly to say, Akane lost this 
argument with the rock too.
    Cologne hopped down onto the rock, tapping the breaking point as she 
landed.  The rock blasted into a million pieces, leaving Akane and Cologne 
hanging from the treetops by canvas slings.
    “Ready to take a break yet?” Cologne asked wryly.  Akane sullenly 
nodded, feeling like a failure.
    “I’m never gonna get this,” she sighed as Cologne began to free her from 
her harness.
    “You’ll figure it out,” Cologne reassured her.  “Rome wasn’t built in a 
day.  I know; my mother was there,” she joked.  Akane, appreciating the 
relief of tension, chuckled as the last tie of the harness finally came free. 
 Agilely, she dropped to the ground.  She would have landed gracefully, had 
she remembered about the leg injury she’d gotten that one time when she hit 
the boulder wrong.  And the other one she’d received when Cologne had 
distracted her.  And the other one...
    “Need some help?” Cologne asked, offering Akane her staff.  Gratefully, 
she accepted the oaken rod and used it to lever herself up from the ground, 
and then as a cane.  Together, the two walked off to their campsite.

*   *   *   *   *   *

    Nabiki idly tapped her pen on her ledger, thinking.  Since this class was 
Economics, she could afford (no pun intended) to ignore the class, for the 
most part, and pursue her own agenda.  The strange man at school, the one 
who’d given her so much money for information about her sister, was worrying 
her.  <People just don’t throw money around like that,> she thought, shaking 
her head.  
    Perplexed, Nabiki leaned back in her chair, chewing on the end of her 
pen.  <Ranma’s out of it, and Daddy’s too emotionally fragile to do 
anything.  Mr. Saotome wouldn’t, regardless.  Shampoo’d probably help him, 
and Mousse too,> she thought, cycling through the list of martial artists she 
knew.  <Happosai wouldn’t do it unless I gave him a dozen panties or so.  
Save him for a last resort.  Ukyo wouldn’t care one way or the other.  
Ryoga’d help, if he’d  somehow be able to find his way over here in time.>  
Leaning forward once more, she cradled her head in her fingertips, her teeth 
gritted.  <Guess there’s no way around it.  Get some extra underwear and have 
it ready, just in case I need to pull a trump.>  Sighing, she made a note in 
her ledger to buy more underwear.  That done, she pulled out an envelope of 
pictures of Ranma(in his girl form, of course) and, counting them, calculated 
just how much she should ask Kuno for them, knowing fully well that she’d end 
up with twice whatever she asked for.

*   *   *   *   *   *


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