Ranma ½ is owned by Rumiko Takahahsi. Sailor Moon is owned by Naoko Takeuchi. The Suffering is owned by Midway Games. I own nothing here except for the plot. But oh man, if I did. Anyways, I'd apologize for the editing, but I still haven't figured out all the little tricks and secrets of the document editor.
The battle between Lord Saffron and Saotome Ranma at Jusendo Mountain had far-reaching consequences so unlikely that only a handful of beings in existence could have foreseen, and absolutely none of them had been even the slightest prepared for them. In the aftermath of that horrifically destructive battle, the immensely powerful attacks used by the two combatants, the Hryu Shoten Ha variants that Ranma had hurled at Saffron and the Dragon Tap and Saffron's even more destructive Tenka Shunmetsu Koukyuu Dan, had done more damage than either of the two would realize for a long time, if ever.
Never mind the destruction of Mt. Jusendo's peak, as considerable as it was. The real damage was at the roots of the mountain and even further below, the ancient and long-forgotten place where the strange and mystical waters that fed the springs of Jusenkyo flowed from. It was a place that, truth be told, was forgotten for a reason. There was something eldritch down there, deep in the Stygian depths below Jusendo, something that had been ages old even in the days before the First Fall of humanity, when humans traveled fearlessly through the abyss between worlds. The incomprehensible horrors that was trapped in that place had filled the hearts of those ancient and long dead people with terror, even long after countless men and women had fought and bled and died to ensure the nightmarish things would never escape.
The creation of the waters of Jusendo were a mere side effect of the ancient prison, and when Saffron and Ranma nearly shattered ancient Jusendo they disturbed that which should have been lost and forgotten forever. For days afterwards earthquakes riddled the Qinghai province and the Bayankala Mountain Range as things long forgotten fought and clawed their way through the earth back towards the surface, though what no one realized, at least not at first, was that the waters that fed Jusenkyo's many springs had been altered.
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An eight year old Tsukino Usagi didn't like the look of the clouds she saw in the distance as she peered out the back window of her father's Toyota. Sitting on her knees, she gripped the headrest tightly, and her blue eyes narrowed behind the fringe of her golden blonde hair. She knew clouds that looked the way they did meant rain, which was always a Bad Thing when you're on a family trip to Toshimaen Amusement Park, which was probably only just the best amusement park in all of Japan, or at the very least Tokyo. According to her father anyways.
"Daaad! Those clouds look funny!" she loudly complained, alerting her parents to the rolling storm clouds, and to the fact that she was definitely not using her side of the back seat the way it was designed to be used.
"Usagi! Sit back down!" Tsukino Ikuko scolded, even as her husband Kenji glanced into his rear-view mirror with a frown, and the little girl did so with a pout so adorable that for a moment Ikuko wished her husband's camera wasn't packed in the trunk of the car. "That's weird.. there was nothing on the news about storm clouds.." he murmured to himself, though a frown found its way on Ikuko's lips as she glanced at her own window. Though it was a bright day, the clouds in the distance had the dark and ugly look. "Must've come in awfully quick... Might have to head back home and go to Toshimaen another day."
Of course, this was met with fierce protest from little Usagi and her four year old brother Shingo.
"Awww, but Daaad! Mooom! You promised!" she complained again, shortly followed by Shingo pausing from sipping on his juice box long enough to shout out "Toshimaen! Toshimaen!"
"That's enough, you too," Ikuko warned as she glanced back at her children. Naturally, Usagi pouted and crossed her arms over her chest, while her little brother began to sniffle, a clear sign of a brewing tantrum. "We didn't say that we're not going," Ikuko said with the weary smile of a mother exasperated by her trying, but certainly not unloved children. "Those clouds just look like they might be going to Toshimaen too, and bring lots of rain with them.. but if they do, we'll get dango and ice cream instead, okay?"
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Explosives are tricky, dangerous things, with varying degrees of sensitivity and stability. As anyone with experience handling explosives can attest, no two explosives are ever alike. Some explosive materials are so stable that a person could smash them with a hammer and not fear for their life, though their sanity would be questionable, to put it mildly. Other materials are so sensitive that one wouldn't dare to make even the slightest mistake while handling them.
Even considering these facts, there are times when explosives simply do not react the way common convention says they should, which is why the making of explosives is, as a general rule, best left to experts and professionals who've studied and learned from the mistakes of their peers and predecessor to minimize the the odds of the unexpected occurring Any professional will whole-heartedly affirm that explosives are not to be dabbled with, and never should one attempt to make them. Ever.
Kuonji Ukyo was not a professional explosives handler.
Neither was Konatsu, who was the slightly more knowledgeable of the two when it came to making bombs, even considering Ukyo experience mixing crafting stun bombs out of tempura and gunpowder. That didn't stop Ukyo from making as many of her special celebratory okonomyaki as she could carry. Shampoo and Mousse also were most assuredly not experts with explosives, though fortunately for them Cologne was, and the Joketsuzoku matriarch took great care in making sure that her great-granddaughter's volatile dumpling bombs turned out exactly as they were supposed to, rather than blow off the younger Amazons' fingers as a few of them very nearly did.
Cologne had also pointedly made certain that Shampoo's dumpling bombs weren't too dangerous, something that Konatsu failed to do for Ukyo which resulted in a few of her special okonomyaki having more explosive power and being more unstable than she realized Had the okonomyaki chef been aware of the potential lethality of the stack of okonomyaki she carried in her take-out box as she made her way to the Tendo dojo in her finest kimono, she would've at the very least paused to reconsider her current course of action.
Shampoo was waiting for Ukyo outside the Tendo Compound with a take-out box of her own and wrapped in an utterly exquisite Chinese gown that accentuated the Joketsuzoku's body in ways that Ukyo's own formal kimono never could. She nearly bristled, until she reminded herself just what they were about to do. Though normally rivals for Ranma's affection, this was a rare and necessary moment of cooperation for both of them.
"Aiyah! Spatula girl take long enough!" Shampoo said as she eyed her rival. "Is ready?"
"Yeah, Sugar." Kuonji Ukyo's lips curled into a smirk that was mirrored by the Chinese girl before her. "Let's go say hi to Ranchan and Akane before they seal the deal."
As one the two vengeful fiancées made their way inside the Tendo Compound and to the dojo. In the distance behind them, the sky darkened as the storm front rushed ever closer. Four minutes later, Nerima went to hell in a hand basket like never before.
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"I-it's ok, Kuno-baby, now stop bleeding all over my damn kimono," Tendo Nabiki nervously snapped as she desperately tried to staunch the flow of blood pouring out of Kuno Tatewaki's body with a rag torn from her ruined kimono and keep the badly wounded would-be samurai from clinging back to his feet. The latter was easy, given how battered he was and how much blood he'd lost already, both from the five ragged puncture wounds in his right shoulder and pectoral and from the five cuts slashed across his pale and pain-contorted face. Only luck had saved the kendoist's eyes, but his blood was everywhere but inside of him. Especially on her hands, and in more ways than one.
"I-I.... f-f-fight..." Tatewaki croaked hoarsely as he tried to sit up, though Nabiki didn't even need to push him back down. With an agonized groan he sank back down to the blood-soaked floor he lay on. For a moment she thought him dead. Then he began his soft, ragged wheezing once again, and Nabiki was so reliefed that she almost could've kissed him. Instead she was utterly, completely terrified, more so than she'd never been before in her entire life. Not even seeing her mother slowly dying in the hospital had been so frightening. Behind her, she heard the sounds of vicious and brutal combat, soft grunts and gasps, nearly drowned out by the pouring rain that fell through holes in the walls and ceiling and the thunder that accompanied it. There were no taunts or battle cries. Not this time. She cringed as a cry of pain reached her ears, but she didn't dare move from where she knelt over the fallen Kuno.
The dojo was so completely devastated that Nabiki was amazed that the building was even still standing, and everywhere she glanced she could see blood. The other guests, the non-fighters, had all fled. The others that she had 'invited' to the wedding under the hopes that they'd violently object to Ranma and Akane's marriage, and of course they had, were either unconscious or dead. She found herself praying like she never had that it was the former instead of the latter.
The sight of Kuonji Ukyo's unmoving body not twenty feet away put a severe damper on that particular prayer. Ranma's cute fiancée's glassy, unblinking eyes stared in her direction, though she doubted the okonomyaki chef was seeing anything at all. Her face was pale and her hair and kimono were ragged, bloody messes. Her pale hands were no longer trembling as they were earlier, but simply rested on the gory mess that was her belly.
Nabiki couldn't see Konatsu, and hoped that meant the male kunoichi was still on his feet and trying to avenge his mistress, instead of laying somewhere dying where she couldn't see him. But she did see Shampoo kneeling over a screaming Mousse as she tied a tourniquet around his left thigh with shaking hands as blood-drenched as the middle Tendo's, trying to staunch the flow of blood from a gash that looked bone deep. Her cheongsam was in bloody ribbons around her arms and back. Then her head shifted, and Nabiki had to look away. But she couldn't, no matter how hard she willed it, unsee the Glasgow smile that had been carved across the once-beautiful Amazon's face nearly from ear to ear. No, Nabiki couldn't look over there again.
Her eyes caught sight of Kuno Kodachi's badly broken and bloody legs peeking out from underneath a collapsed table, and a dainty, pale right hand that lay just far enough away from the table to let her see ragged and burned flesh and shattered bone where a forearm should have been. Nabiki quickly tore her eyes away as bile burned in her throat. No, she couldn't look there either.
She caught sight of a stunned, vacant Saotome Nodoka cradling Ninomiya Hinako's child form in her arms, and seemed completely unaware of the burns on her left cheek, and her kimono had been burned away from her left shoulder to elbow to reveal blackened and bleeding skin. Only the fact that the teacher's face was twisted in agony told that she was alive, despite the strangely colored veins pulsing and throbbing underneath her skin, otherwise she was as limp and unmoving as Ukyo. Next to them, Saotome Genma lay face-down on the floor, his head in a pool of blood with broad, ugly red gash in his tuxedo that stretched across his back from shoulder to hip.
Her father Tendo Soun lay nearby as unmoving as his friend and his head in her sister Kasumi's lap. The eldest Tendo daughter was absentmindedly sliding her fingers through their father's hair, though her face was haggard and pale and her makeup stretched from her tears, though her gaze was even more lost and empty than Nodoka's as she stared unblinking at the fight that took place behind Nabiki.
There were other bodies too, strange and broken things that lay scattered in pieces that she didn't dare to even think of looking at, body parts that made her eyes burn, her head ache and her heart falter in her chest. Most Nabiki couldn't see, and for that she'd be grateful for until the day she died. But there was one thing, shaped like open three-fingered hand but with thick fingers easily a foot long, and leathery, save for at the underside where black fang-like teeth ran the length of the unnaturally jointed digits.. That hand, she knew she'd see in her nightmares for the rest of her life.
Then something screamed in agony behind her and the middle Tendo cringed at the sight of Happosai, brutally battered and bruised and blood spraying from his tiny chest and the ragged tear in his sleeve, tumbled past her across the dojo's floor, only to have his flight stopped by an equally battered-looking Cologne. The ancient woman's ever-present staff was missing, and blood dribbled from her mouth as she stared warily at Nabiki.. no, past her, the middle Tendo realized.
A moment later, she heard the deep, heavy breathing of something that couldn't have been human, heard the loud clicking and scraping of something like a dog or a cat's claws against the wood behind her, combined with foot falls far too heavy to be such an animal, along with a soft, pained groan. A massive shadow suddenly eclipsed her, and Tendo Nabiki began to shake uncontrollably.
Hibiki Ryoga's body hit the floor at her left, his head narrowly missing Tatewaki's. And Nabiki heard someone begin to whimper as she glanced at the lost boy. He looked like he'd just gone ten rounds against a freaking chainsaw, she idly noticed through the haze of her own terror. Then a moment later he began to shake, and tried to pick himself up off the floor even as his blood began to mingle with Tatewaki's, who by now was mercifully unconscious. Or so Nabiki hoped.
Then suddenly the something behind her let out a deafening, inhuman roar, one that made her ears ring and rattled her teeth. Cologne and Happosai, who had managed to raise his head off of the floor, both cringed, and the now-annoying whimpering that Nabiki could somehow still hear grew louder. She shuddered, and only then realized that she was the one whimpering as a puddle of urine soaked the lower half of her kimono and formed a puddle that joined with the blood leaking out of Ryoga and Tatewaki.
The roar stopped, and moments later Nabiki squeezed her eyes shut as she felt hot breathe suddenly caress the back of her neck. She suddenly couldn't seem to breathe deeply enough as pain flared in her chest and neck before shooting down her left arm as she grew dizzy. Then something touched her shoulder, and she let out a terrified scream.
"It's okay, child. Ranma's gone now," Cologne said in a grave, weary voice as she appeared beside her.
"H-he... h-he..." Nabiki stammered as she hyperventilated, barely able to see the Joketsuzoku matriarch through the tears that poured down her cheeks, and the pain in her chest and arm grew worst.
"Nabiki? Nabiki!!" Cologne shouted, but the middle Tendo was already collapsing. Just before she lost consciousness, her eyes finally caught sight of Akane, still standing despite the ugly burns on her arms and chest and the blood that half-drenched her ruined wedding dress. She had just enough time to notice that her little sister was utterly gone, staring off vacantly at nothing in particular. There were bloody scratches on her cheeks even as she kept pawing at them with her red fingers. Her lips moved, but if she made a sound, Nabiki couldn't hear it. Then the middle Tendo's eyes closed.
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"Usagi.. c-close your eyes, baby.. d-don't look..." Tsukino Ikuko softly croaked from where she lay on the roof of the upside-down car. Her voice was barely audible over the pouring rain and deafening thunder and the unsteady warbling of the wrecked car's horn. And there was laughing. Wild, giddy, unhindered laughing and cackling and screaming as things moved around the flipped-over car. Usagi stared at her mother in horror from where she cowered underneath the blood-drenched driver's seat, which had been ripped free of its moorings when something had dragged her screaming father out of the car. She couldn't hear his screaming anymore.
Tsukino Ikuko was covered in bruises and drenched in blood. Her skirt was raggedly torn at the knee, but her legs weren't there anymore. One of Shingo's shoes was clenched tightly in her pale hands, though the blood that soaked it wasn't their mother's. Then several somethings, what looked like tentacles covered with slime and sharp pointy teeth, reached in through the shattered passenger window.
"D-don't look Usagi.. don't look!" her mother screamed as the tentacles wrapped around her and sank their teeth into her flesh, then almost faster than Usagi's eyes could track her mother was gone, with only a bloody smear left where she had been. The little girl stopped breathing as she stared wide-eyed at the spot where she'd last seen her mother.
"... Mommy?" she softly whispered. Then she screamed as the car began to violently rock and shake around her and the sound of metal being torn reached her ears over the sounds of the storm around her. Then the insane laughter was replaced by something far, far worst.
"Mommy, mommy, mommy!" a high-pitched voice gibbered. "Usagi, don't look Usagi!" jeered another, and the little girl screamed again as the wild laughter outside the car grew even louder. Then suddenly half the car was ripped away, and things, things like the things that took her father, her brother, her mother, began reaching into the car for her. The seat she'd been hiding behind was yanked away, and Usagi covered her eyes and screamed again.
"Mommy! Mommy!!" she shrieked, and for an instant her skin grew warm and her clothes began to smolder as a golden crescent flashed into existence on her forehead, and had her eyes been opened, the little girl would've seen the blonde of her distinctive odango pigtails fade away, leaving them a bright silver.
Then there was more screaming, this time screams of pain and anger from the things that had taken her mother. Loud crunches and wet squelches reached her ears, and something hot and sticky splashed across her face and tingled before the pouring rain washed it away. She let out another terrified scream, and then suddenly she could hear nothing but the pouring rain.
For a moment, all Usagi could do was shiver and cry. Then a woman's soft voice reached her ears.
"Hey. Kid. You can come out of there. It's okay now." The voice was weary and pained. Slowly, Tsukino Usagi opened her eyes to stare up at the bloody and battered woman that stood over her.