Ranma ½: The Enemy Within! Prologue
The storm seeded the entire area with a heavy downpour. Rain pelted down like silvers of glass upon a hard, rustic surface. Thunder crackled with deafening sound in the clouds and lightning shot across the sky like a bullet through the air, filling the night with unbelievable raw power!
Below this chaotic benevolence, located at the base of Mount Quanjing, in the Batankala Range, in the Qinghai Province of China -- lay the ancient grounds known as Jusenkyo, where a cursed group of pools brought with them a terrible consequence for whoever fell into them!
Damned and isolated, a Guide stood guard over them and warned any travelers of their terrible curse, but not tonight. He had retired for the evening due to the storm. But if he were here, he would have screeched at what he would behold. The entire area was flooded, and all the springs were intermixed.
A blinding, hot, white flash of lightning shot down from the clouds and hit the flood water. Its energy was absorbed, and within moments a crackling, green energy began to emanate beneath the surface. It pulsated with life and soon strings of hot green energy began to dance across its surface like streamers. And from this act came a supernatural energy of unprecedented magnitude!
This chaotic malevolence rose from the water in a pillar of violence energy. Blanked inside like a cocoon, it roared a horrible cry of pain and anguish. Taking human form, it stepped out of its cage and walked on the water until it reached solid ground. Then it rose in the air and took its place on a cliff overlooking the grounds. It looked down at Jusenkyo. It was free! Free of its eternal prison for which it was sentenced centuries ago to reside between world without rest.
It bellowed out a with a wraith centuries old, angry that it had lost so much time.
Born to the mortal world but condemned to a hellish limbo it waited for this day to come.
The storm had set it free and now it was free to reign its revenge upon that who had done this to it, an ancient foe that now lived in a new age. He was reborn with everything he needed to know. The souls who perished or who had fallen into Jusenkyo gave it the knowledge it needed. And there was something else it knew. It knew its enemy had also fallen prey to the curse of these springs. But unlike itself, its enemy had not died. The last of the bloodline of its enemy was alive!
"I will find you and I will kill you!" It shouted into the storm. "You will not be able to hide from me!"
Altering its form, its energy departed with the storm, leaving Jusenkyo to find its enemy, whispering the name… "Saotome!"
-- to be continued…