A lovely thing happened to me several months ago. My computers died... they died real good... Everything gone... Including all my stories and all my story notes... Even the manuscript I had working for a novel (probably the only thing I had backed up). One day I may work on the stuff I had before, but for now, I'll start with this.

I was recently going through my list of Ranma clichés in my profile and came to the conclusion that I was really bored. So I decided to write a beginning to a fic I may write in the future. This may either continue or fall into obscurity... Who knows?

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He wasn't supposed to remember. He knew he wasn't. He had been told he wasn't. That day he died... the second time he died... They, the very gods themselves, had allowed him a second chance. He would lose the memory of who he was, and in return he would be reborn. They'd kept to their word. He'd lost the memory of his past life and become someone else... someone new... someone different... He'd been Ranma Saotome. He'd been a damn good martial artist, and had life gone different he could've been the first real champion hero in centuries...

Unfortunately he would never have that chance. He'd racked up a pretty high karma debt in his last life; and now, in his rebirth, he was paying... Honestly, he knew he deserved it, but then again that was the problem. He deserved it. Ranma Saotome did not. Ranma wasn't any saint, he wasn't the typical good guy. He was a braggart, a womaniser and a jerk of monumental proportions; but he was also someone who worked extraordinarily hard at what he was good at, he was determined in everything he set his mind to, he continuously aided those who would gladly be rid of him in a heartbeat, and most importantly he had a good heart. He didn't deserve what happened. He didn't deserve to be treated as filth. And most of all he did not deserve this rejection.

Friends, family, it didn't matter... not even the old man had the decency to stay behind and help his own damn son... They left him alone... all alone...alone to himself... alone to the darkness... and in that darkness he had a revelation. It was this revelation that had destroyed him. It was that revelation that had awoken the ever sleeping Barbarian. He could not win. No matter how hard he fought, no matter how hard he trained, no matter how much blood, sweat, and tears he put into fighting, he could never win... That betrayal had broken him... The one that followed soon after had remade him. He could never be Ranma Saotome anymore... who he was had changed... what the name had meant, had signified was no longer.

He stared at the broken bars of his holding cell, at the dead guard at his feet... in his past life he would have revelled in the feeling of murder. It was the ultimate high. The knowledge that no matter who they were, or what weapon they held, they could not overcome his strength brought him such a feeling of euphoria... But now... Now there was nothing. Not the disgust that Ranma Saotome would have felt, and none of the pleasure that the Barbarian would have known.

He walked out of the cage, taking only a second to relieve the corpse of its sidearm. It was obviously illegal, but damned if he cared at this point. He held it softly, almost lovingly. Somehow, he knew how it worked. He knew how it functioned, and he knew how to use it. Even though he'd never been exposed to firearms somehow he knew... It didn't surprise him... They'd screwed with his body so damn much, he highly doubted that they wouldn't have tried his mind as well. Muscle enhancers, combat implants, genetic purification, behavioural suppressants; he highly wondered if the Tendos knew what they had condemned him too, then again would they even care? He didn't know, and honestly he didn't care. His mind was a cacophony of pain and confusion. Ranma wanted escape; the Barbarian wanted revenge; and a voice... a dark voice... a deep voice... a voice he had heard only once before...it, called for the world to burn...

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This can be adopted by anyone. Just PM me to let me know you're doing it.