Raido Isa

Draft the first

Prologue

Happosai's invisibility trick had been floating around like driftwood in his head all day. Dimensional Warp. What a stupid name. But still, the old pervert actually slipped behind the curtain so to speak and hid in a place that was both here and not here in the same time. It was impressive.

"I wonder how far it goes?" The pig tailed boy asked. Can you warp further from there? Take another step back from reality? If so what would that be like?

"Well I guess there's only one way to find out." Ranma summoned up his spirit and wove a curtain of force around himself. Drawing the curtain taught like a sheet he folded himself out of reality.

Nothing changed. Ranma looked around in disappointment. "Damn it! I know I did what the old troll's scroll said!" He had expected that everything would go slightly rose colored and a haze would spring up. That's what Happosai's notes had indicated. This sucked. He tried again. Nothing.

For over an hour Ranma tried to jump back from reality. Eventually he got bored and sat down. Looking around he noticed that everything seemed unnaturally still. A bird hung frozen in the sky.

"Weird." He muttered. "Ah well I guess I'll give it one more go." As he drew his power around him it suddenly hit. He had been going the wrong way. Time was also a direction. He had been staying in the same spot but moving back from time. As he felt the curtain pull tight around him he had a brief moment to wonder if there was a limit to how fine you could slice a second.

Ranma's mind explodes. Reality swims about him in and out of focus. He sees his mother a waiflike figure with a burning sword her only connection to reality. Friends and enemies seem to flicker in and out of existence. His father, impossibly fat, stumbles over his own gut and falls to the ground bursting into a mass of moths. This is the only vision he enjoys. Suddenly there is a house of cards surrounding him. Kings and queens watch him, clutching royal scepters to silk bedecked breasts. In anguish he manages to force some noise from his throat. The sound that emerges is strange and perplexing to him. He has heard it before. A childhood memory of a monk praying over fire springs to his thoughts. It feels appropriate some how. He licks his lips and tries to summon up the strength to speak once more. Aum. The air shivers as waves warp and twist away from his mouth. The sound is changing something he realizes. Suddenly the universe tolls like a bell. The house of cards sways and begins to collapse in on it self. In horror he realizes that the figures drawn on the deck are all pictures of him. They are screaming as they fall. His fingers and hands begin to fade from existence. Folded over in agony he dissolves into a scattering of dust. He is destroyed.

For a moment all is silent.

Ranma's mind explodes. Reality swims about him in and out of focus. He desperately tries to grab hold of something to anchor him. He reaches for his mother's arm but she is to insubstantial to help him. With growing urgency he moves from friend to enemy trying to hold on to something. Anything. His father falls quickly flying away on thousands of delicate wings. Cards appear around him stacking like mah-jong into a paper prison. He lashes out in an attempt to stop what is happening around him. As his fist connects waves of sound dance from his fist and he hears it again. Aum. The sound is changing something he realizes. He is inside a giant bell. He presses his hands to his ears trying to force the sound from his head. It does not work. Cards fall around him and he screams as he realizes that he is ringing too. He falls apart like sand. He is destroyed.

For a moment all is silent.

Ranma's mind explodes. Reality swims about him at high speed. His mother zooms past him her sword leaving a glowing trail to mark her wake. He can no longer react quickly enough to keep up with his surroundings. Moths beat against his face as his father hits the ground. Cards. His scream echoes in the turbulent and shifting blackness. A giant monk shout fills the world with ripples. He hears it clearly now. OM! He falls to dust. He is destroyed.

For a moment there is silent.

Ranma's mind explodes into family friends bells and dust. Over and over again now so fast he can no longer tell when he is created and ripped apart. Over thousands of deaths and millions of births he manages to form a coherent thought. In the fragments of his mind spinning by like frames of film he sees three sisters. One is tall and dark. She is exotic with coffee colored skin and platinum hair. The next is short and cute clutching a high tech toy to her tightly. The last is the most terrible. She kills the small child over and over again taking huge bites out of her body and handing them to her sister. He wonders how anything could survive such terrible abuse. In a flash of inspiration he realizes the last woman's name. She is constantly destroying the world and killing everything in it only to forge a new existence from the ashes of the old. He now hears only the ringing of the bell growing louder and louder. Still he knows that there must be moments of silence. Bracing himself he reaches out with something other than flesh and when the darkness of destruction flickers in front of him he pulls on it with all his might. In the silence he shouts her name.

And from the nothing something answers.

"Oh my! How did you get here?" A pleasant voice asks. "Ginnungagap is dangerous." He finds there is something under his feet. A river of ice. If only he could stand.

"What..wh." He gasps desperately even though some part of him knows that here there is no air left to breath. "C..ccoold." Mind numbing amounts of nothing flood out around him in all directions. He forces his chattering teeth together and says her name again. "Verdandi."

He looses all hold of himself and becomes one with the ice, drifting away to join the emptiness all around him.

When he awakes it is to something warm and wet brushing his face. Groggily he tries to brush whatever it is away. Something large moves around him. Cracking an eye open he stares up into a pure white sky. After a moment of contemplative confusion the white moves back and he sees a giant cow. His face feels warm with spit. Grass tickles the back of his neck. He comes fully awake.

Ranma rubbed his face trying to wipe the blurriness, and the cow drool, from his eyes. He propped himself up on an elbow and took a look around. It looked like a pasture. Still, after what he vaguely remember happening he wasn't prepared to accept something as shifty as scenery at face value. The cow gave a soft moo and nudged him gently on the shoulder. "Yeah yeah, I'm up." Ranma glared irritably at her. With a heave he bounced up to his feet. Immediately his stomach tried to crawl up into his brain and hide. He sat back down.

"Urgh." He moaned. "I don't feel so good." He shivered. "Damn I'm really cold too." He looked down at his arms and noticed goose bumps. And frost. "It's the middle of summer and I'm lying passed out on some ranch covered in ice!" He shook his head. This proved to be a mistake. When he finally let go of his head and stopped rocking back and forth he took a deep breath. "Alright. First things first. Figure out what happened." He looked around again. "No impact crater so I didn't land here." He brushed a damp lock of hair from his face. The melting ice was soaking his clothes.

"Auum!" The cow mooed at him.

Ranma glanced at it irritably. "I guess I musta ate something the tomboy made and wandered off here till I passed out." It seemed like the only answer that fit. With a sigh he pushed himself slowly back up to his feet. He swayed for a minute trying to keep his balance. "Guess I'd better get back." He looked around and spotted a fence and a dirt road to his right. "Well thanks for the bath." He patted the cow on the head. She seemed pleased and rolled her eyes at him. Turning he started toward the road waving a hand over his shoulder as he went. "Thanks again!"

Ranm leaned on the fence and stripped his shirt off to wring it out. As he twisted the silk in his hands it hit him. "I'm still a guy! I'm cured!" He started jumping around in great excitement. After a minute his chest started to hurt. Curiously he looked down. A nice pair of breasts swayed in front of him. "Ah crap." The curse must just have taken effect. Strange how it almost seemed to wait for him to remember about it.

Author's notes:

This is just an idea I came up with while wasting away an evening. The tense switches so far are on purpose, sorry if it's confusing. I'm trying to underline the fact that he's Ryoga'd himself into Verdandi's realm of, you got it, the present. I'm also going to try and bring in a lot of other norse mythology 'jus for the hell of it. Anyway let me know what you think.