This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.
This story's main home is ranmafics。ru/fanfics/your_destiny_is_annulled/english .
(シーンブレイク)
Your Destiny Is Annulled
Chapter 12
The Charm of Natural Wilderness
(シーンブレイク)
Ranma felt immense relief when she found herself and Akane in a sparse tropical forest. It wasn't just because of the chorus of sounds proclaiming "Life thrives here. And how!"
Something reviviscent was returning, like a gulp of icy water after a parched desert. Only now, when it was gone, they could comprehend the scale of the weight that had been oppressing them.
Ki was working again. The girls flew in huge leaps rebounding off springy palm trees. Their backpacks regained the weight of a feather.
"Wait," Ranma injected between leaps. "Are we going... in the right direction?"
Her wife didn't have time to reply as the forest ended. The girls landed on a beach of white sand. A crisp blue lagoon stretched before them, covered with slight ripples. Tropical sun was pouring its heat from the sky adorned with rare puffs of white clouds.
Akane opened the medallion digging in it for a while. She then walked up to the surf where small waves were lapping at the sand. She tried to see something at the left but there was a small peninsula overgrown with palm trees posing an obstacle that way. She unfastened her heavy ankle-boots throwing them off and walked further away from the shore trying to take a look beyond the peninsula. The water was very shallow here so she had passed about twenty meters when it rose above her knees. Small waves were splashing at her threatening to wet her trousers up to her undies.
"What's so important there?" Ranma finally unwrapped the gauze from her head. She critically examined it. Blackened from radioactive·dust it probably wasn't suitable even as rags. She had to wash her clothes too! The redhead walked to the shore to taste the water. It was oceanic salty. It was better to wait until they come upon a sweet water source, or the silk will end all covered in salt splotches.
Akane walked out of the water and started bounding in huge leaps to the left, towards the peninsula. Ranma followed her. From the tip of the peninsula they managed, at last, to see a tiny blue triangle on the horizon. It was barely discernible against the sky.
"Bugger," Akane commented digging again in the medallion. "It's right in the center of this lagoon.
Ranma glanced at a chain of islands overgrown with palm trees to the left of them. It receded into distance in a relatively straight line, not exactly in the direction they needed. "What about running to the closest island first? We can go much faster by land than by swimming anyway."
"Are you mocking me?" Akane glared at her.
"No, no," Ranma backed away. "I got an inflatable air-bed! I'll tug you."
"Oh... Good thinking..." Akane peered at the screen estimating something and swearing at the awkward controls. "There are no islands at that side, only shallows and the reef. But we can go to the last island and swim from there." She closed the medallion.
"All right. All the more so it's ebb now."
The girls dashed along the coast, at times cutting by palm tree tops when the shore formed a point. But there it was, the first strait between the islands.
"It seems shallow, we probably can ford it," Ranma noted while she pulled her clothes off. She rolled them up intent of putting the bundle away in her backpack.
"Wait, you'll contaminate our things with radioactive dust," Akane tried to stop her.
"I've rolled it inside out—"
"No, that won't do," Akane cut her off flatly. "Wash it. Salt won't ruin it right away. We have our food in that backpack."
"All in plastic wrappings—"
"And our pot, without any wrappings. Try to recall what Ami told us about swallowing particles."
"I remember it, all right," Ranma grumbled as she walked deeper, in only her boxers, and started rinsing her clothing.
"Don't forget your hair," Akane added as she joined her.
Ranma glanced at her and froze, staring. Akane undressed — meaning she took off everything — and was now imitating a racoon, water foaming around her hands from the rapid motion. Then she bent down dipping her head and did the same to her hair. A goofy, dreamy smile bloomed on the redhead's face against her will.
Akane straightened up, snorting the water out. She noticed the pigtailed girl standing here staring at her. Her eyes reflected a tug-o-war of contradicting emotions that culminated in a fierce "Are you here to wash or to ogle me with that stupid smile?"
Ranma hastily turned around and started to rinse. She failed to banish the smile from her face, though. It made her feel foolish. Her spouse's words 'for you, I will become a full lesbian' by some reason kept floating in her mind. Lately he kept catching herself... himself... whatever, thinking about going, ahem, all the way, in her current form. It was both creeping Ranma out and thrilling for some reason. But, to this day, any approaches in the female form ended only in in impressive explosions: Akane's feelings for him, which were still there, reacted violently with her allergic homophobia.
Akane returned wearing her swimsuit. She began vigorously rinsing backpacks she emptied of their content. Ranma tried to argue against playing 'overtly-safe' but Akane made her take her boxers off and rinse these along with the kung-fu slippers. Then she undid the redhead's pigtail and washed her hair with such energy that the other girl saw sparks flying from her eyes.
They returned to the shore and put their supplies back into the backpack, tying their wrung out clothes on top, to dry in the sun. Ranma's hair was put up into a pigtail, to avoid losing time. Akane, on her own insistence, tied the end of the slightly wavy tail with a ribbon, making a small bow.
"Let's go." The redhead slung the damp backpack onto her shoulders and started walking towards the strait. Wearing only her backpack and showing proudly to the world that she was a natural redhead.
Akane let out a loud, expressive cough.
"What? There's no one here." Ranma made innocent eyes gesturing around the horizon.
"Well, assume the portal leads us to a crowded place, you baka?" Akane inquired snarkily as she crossed her arms. "Ami was giving some vague hints at that when she told me about Usagi's position. How would you look then? Especially if something happens at the pyramid leavinggiving you no time to dress?"
Ranma turned beet red and hastily grabbed for her backpack, to pull her swimsuit out.
They started fording the strait. It was only a couple hundred meters wide. Somewhere around halfway water reached their chest making them take their backpacks off and carry these overhead. Ranma would reach the shore faster by swimming, but the speed of a caravan always equals the speed of its slowest camel. Despite all her efforts and training Akane still possessed the buoyancy of a hammer.
"Let's inflate the air-bed," Ranma said when water reached her necks. Akane was wobbly on her feet, biting her lip as her fear was rising. The current was pushing them, slowly but irresistibly, towards the faraway reef where waves of open ocean were crashing thunderously.
"Wait, I have an idea," Akane said handing Ranma her backpack. "Would you cover for me?"
"Of course." Ranma frowned in confusion seeing her spouse turn back towards the shore. "What are you planning?"
"Well, you aren't the only one entitled to creating insane techniques, aren't you?" Akane replied not explaining anything.
While Akane was trudging towards the shore Ranma quickly swam across the deep place. Leaping to the beach she put backpacks down on the grass under palm trees. Then she returned to the surf, utterly puzzled.
"Ready?" Akane shouted across two hundred meters separating them.
"Yeah!"
Akane aimed, then leaped onto a nearby palm tree. It recoiled launching her back at the sand of the beach. The raven-haired girl in a green one-piece started running so fast that her legs blurred, even to Ranma's trained eye. Leaving a trail of kicked up sand she dashed towards water. She ran into the sea. And continued running in a foamy swash leaving a wake like a hydrofoil boat.
Ranma boggled. Akane's rapid approach was accompanied by a battle cry growing louder. She was sinking no deeper than knee level. Now she was halfway through the strait. Now two thirds. She started losing her balance. She stumbled on an especially large wave, her battle cry turning into a shriek of terror. Windmilling her arms and legs Akane flopped flat on her belly, rebounded a couple times off the water and finally came to a stop after plowing the beach with her nose.
"Cool!" the redhead approved sincerely as she helped her heaving wife up. "But still needs a lot of work to master." Akane just nodded, unable yet to speak.
They ran forward. Kilometers were flying by, the gaps between islands were being crossed in the same way. Sometimes Akane was able to run successfully across a strait, her record being half a kilometer — after which she had to lie down for a few minutes. Sometimes she was stumbling which lead to her starting to drown. One time Ranma had to save her from a strait fifty meters wide and barely waist-deep. But if Akane started drowning even the bottom under her feet couldn't dissuade her.
But here it was, the last island. There was only the crisp blue stretch of lagoon ahead, with a foamy line of the reef to the left and a dark-blue pointy triangle of the pyramid still far away.
Straining, Ranma inflated the air-bed by blowing, her puffed cheeks reddening from the strain. Obviously, she had not deemed taking a pump necessary. The air-bed proved to be an airy thing of transparent plastic from one side and deep blue from the other. Akane took her position on it, grabbing the backpacks so tightly her knuckles went white. Soon she turned from an active participant of the jorney into an eyes-shut-tightly passively tugged object. These escapades cost her, Ranma thought as she pushed the air-bed in front of her. Challenging her greatest fear time and again, especially after her first fall, it's like I would have trained using cats!
She shuddered.
For Ranma who was able to swim across the entire Sea of Japan the remaining kilometers were a joke. There were no sharks nor barracudas. Here was the pyramid, at last. Resting on the bottom, it was flooded. Depth here was almost equal to the arch height and Ranma had to push the air-bed under the edge. The backpacks got dipped a bit, Akane felt her back submerging, accompanied with the harrowing squeaks of the air-bed rubbing against the arch edges. Panicking, she reared up and barely avoided smashing her nose against the ki-defying surface.
Ranma thought they'd have big problems if water stood just a few centimeters higher. They were lucky, this looked to be the lowest point of the ebb.
Inside the pyramid there was a familiar hall: a half-spherical faceted ceiling, a perfect mirror for the floor — flooded, lit by scattered light coming through a thick layer of water it made for an amazing sight. However, only Ranma was able to admire the beauty of it. Akane was at the limit of her willpower, her fear rising, feeding on itself. The short-haired girl did not want to be an useless load anymore. There was water all around her, yawning predatorily, waiting, ready to swallow her. She felt nauseated, so strong was her fear. Akane hastily tapped in a command to open the portal, not only foregoing to check the coordinates but not even giving herself time to think about consequences.
The familiar mechanical voice rang under the multifaceted dome voicing a warning: "Attention! Safety condition 18 detected! Preemptive blocking will be employed! Five seconds to cancel!" Akane didn't cancel anything, so five seconds later they were submerged in complete darkness as the only entrance closed cutting them off from the outside world. The mechanical voice continued its monologue in darkness reciting safety conditions this and that, urging to take measures according articles twelve and one hundred thirty five, droning and droning on.
"Don't you, screw something up," Ranma's voice reached Akane from somewhere nearby. Akane had opened her eyes a while ago, but there was little use. There was nothing to look at beside the medallion screen displaying countdown.
"Don't worry, I know what I am doing," Akane replied irritably, beginning to worry herself.
"Says you," Ranma echoed without enthusiasm.
And the countdown reached zero. And the hall was flooded with light, accompanied with a victorious roar of a thousand cubic meters of water rushing through the wide opening of the portal. With said water containing summarily two girls, one air-bed and two backpacks.
Ranma would've held against the current on her own. But as the portal opened in an arch close to them, the resulting whirpool immediately started sucking the air-bed in, rotating it rapidly. Akane screamed in terror, started thrashing and tumbled off of it. She was sucked in instantly. Ranma dove after her. They were already outside, in the raging water jet, when she caught up with her wife and grabbed the drowning girl with both her arms trying to shield her with her body.
The girls crashed through sharp remains of broken tree branches. They splashed down into liquid dirt. Then a half thousand tons of water landed on top of them spinning them like twigs as it washed them away.
As they cleared up their lungs and wiped their eyes, they found themselves lodged deeply in mud: they managed to land in a small bog encircled with huge trees. A receding waterfall was flowing noisily from high on in the branches of the nearest tree as the portal was disgorging the last bits of ocean water. Then the portal disappeared with a resounding click. Without water flowing, one backpack and shreds of blue plastic became visible among the broken branches.
"Our flotation means is totaled," Ranma stated as she tried to move towards the shore but only managed to sink deeper. "Could you have aimed it more precisely? So that we'd land in the exact center of this quagmire?" The bog was tiny, no more than a half hundred meters across.
There were no signs of their second backpack. The liquid dirt mixed with moss and roots, mixed up and diluted with a good helping of sea water wasn't holding them at all. It was slowly sucking the girls into its putrescent embrace. They were already deeper than their waist and the process wasn't stopping.
"Do you see your backpack?" Ranma started pulling forcefully, rowing with her arms to overcome the resistance of the quagmire. Like a fly on fly paper.
"No!" Akane snapped angrily. "How could I?" She wasn't trilled at all to be stuck in the slime and vile. Especially when her thrashing, no less forceful than Ranma's, only led to her sinking up to her chest. "Err, It's embarrassing to say this, but could you save me please?" Her ki-reinforced body was easily overcoming any resistance the quagmire could put, but sadly, any movement led her down. The fear of drowning that seemed to release her returned with vengeance plunging its icy tentacles into the core of her being.
"A moment, I'll just climb out myself!" Ranma said as she tore towards the shore with splorching and slurping sounds, time and again grabbing at huge leaves, some green strands and other plant stuff. The greenery kept tearing out but that couldn't stop her advance.
Akane froze trying not to breathe. And still she continued to submerge, millimeter by millimeter. An icy paw of fear was caressing her, making the sinking girl breathe through her teeth.
Gradually peace returned to the upheaved bog, its habitants renewing their warbling, singing and croaking. The medallion's shrill and rattly voice joined this chorus: "Alarm! Detecting a multitude of sanguivorous life forms in the air! Deterring system power is insufficient!"
One didn't need this yell to notice a gray mist of mosquitoes starting to billow over the untouched parts of the bog.
"Catch!" Ranma broke a small tree with a sharp crack so that its leafy crown landed on top of Akane of whom there was only the head visible. The panicking girl clutched at the branches with a death grip. The redhead plucked her out like a carrot.
"Thank you," Akane breathed out trying to catch her breath. She lost it more to fear than to exertion. "You know, I don't want to stay here in only my swimsuit," she added as she smacked rapidly at several mosquitoes who already managed to molest her. The main cloud hadn't even reached them yet.
"Don't worry, I'll just grab my backpack and we're outta here!" Ranma rapidly climbed the tree. "Oh! Look, there it is, your backpack!" She pointed at somewhere in the bog.
Akane saw her backpack now, barely sticking out of the mud. Not wasting time, she broke a thicker tree with a loud kiai. It fell not exactly as she planned but she never the less ran along the trunk hurrying to fish her backpack out while it wasn't sucked in yet. She climbed to thin branches, these bent under her weight making her sink up to her knees. Hesitating for a moment she laid down into the muck with an outcry of disgust. She started crawling towards the backpack while holding onto a branch with her feet and quickly sinking deeper. Grabbing the backpack she started wriggling out of the sticky goo pulling herself in with her legs and barely avoiding dipping her face in.
"Do you need a hand?" Ranma asked worriedly.
"I'll manage by myself!" Akane waved her concerns aside as she grabbed a branch with her hand. She was again up to her neck in the quagmire but now, having purchase, it wasn't that scary. She quickly pulled out tearing herself out of the sticky muck with a mighty jerk. She was already standing up on the tree trunk when she felt something touching her thigh. Akane almost fell back down in her panicked grab for it. She felt something thick and wriggling in her grip and tore it away from her leg.
"Aargh, it's disgusting!" she howled when she saw her catch.
"What? What is it?" Ranma ran up to her wife. The tree started sinking under their combined weight, their feet disappearing in the dirty water. "Whoa! Is that a leech?"
The balack, wriggling slug-alike body was half a meter long, thick as Akane's biceps. It displayed impressive incisors, almost like that of beaver. Akane realized that this thing·almost got her femoral artery. She felt ill. (note 1) Dismayed, she dashed towards the shore almost jostling Ranma off the log.
"Alarm! Biologic threat! Aggressive environment!" the medallion yelled belatedly. "Detecting approach of eighty three analogous life forms!"
Ranma glanced at her feet. She was knee deep in the goo as the log continued sinking. A blink of an eye later she was on the shore. "By the way, I'm still interested in finding out where we are," she reminded her not-too-subtly about someone's blunder. "Is this even the right world?" She punted a few leeches back into the bog as they crawled out. Then she started slapping at incoming mosquitoes. "Hurry up. If we have to go back, better to do it while they haven't arrived en masse."
"A moment!" Akane grabbed for the medallion but realized she was still holding the leech. Willing her locked up fingers open with a supreme effort she threw the thing into the bog, then finally opened the mud-covered medallion. "No, it's the right world. I just... missed a bit. It's six kilometers that way." She pointed with her arm.
"All right, let's go!" The redhead grabbed her backpack. Then she blurted out, tempting fate: "So far no other beast had crawled in on us!"
Of course her asking for it bore fruit.
"Danger!" the medallion howled "Detecting a large carnivorous life form!" This was a cue for an immense T. rex to emerge from the thicket. The girls stared wearily up at the carnivorous theropod. The carnivorous theropod stared appraisingly down at the girls as it cocked its head to the side.
"Here we go..." Ranma sighed crackling her knuckles.
The dinosaur rushed them unhurriedly, sure of his superiority. The girls exchanged glances and performed a synchronous kick to his jaw when the beast tilted down to chomp on them. He was too high to punt him properly otherwise as they wouldn't reach his scaly belly. Kicking at the legs thick as a bear would just drop him to his side at best.
The T. rex didn't fly far: he weighed around six tons, after all. Still, he landed ponderously on his back breaking several trees, his legs dangling in the air for a moment.
"Heh, he isn't as badass as they paint him," Ranma snorted derisively. "Let's go?"
"I hope we didn't kill him?" Akane asked as she lifted her dirty backpack onto her even more dirty shoulders.
"Nah, don't worry," Ranma said nonchalantly. "He'll come to till evening. Next time he'll think twice whom he intends to eat."
They had walked around the bog when an angry roar washed over their backs like a tangible wave. It sounded extremely low and menacing. The girls turned around. The tyrannosaur was already up. He stood with his head low, his tail swishing angrily left and right, held high in the air. Seeing them looking at him, he roared again, ploughing ground up with one foot, then with another one. He looked like an incarnate of vengeful malice, there were only glowing eyes missing.
"Creepy." Akane shievered.
"Screw him," Ranma muttered irritably as she leaped onto a suitable tree. "Come on, let's run. We can reach Usagi in half an hour or less. Besides, I'm itching to wash up. After that bog I feel smeared in shit."
The dirty girls clad in swimsuits barely visible under the layer of stinky grime started moving quickly leaping from tree branch to tree branch. They were followed by a receding angry roar: the T. rex went totally apeshit when he saw the insolent mammals weren't staying for a séance of retribution.
Tree-hopping ninja style requires concentration as one's attention is always on choosing a next suitable branch. This method of locomotion isn't conductive to admiring scenery. So they haven't even noticed at first that their path started curling upwards. However, after one more minute the jungle ended, replaced with a rocky mountainside covered with copses of bushes. They had to go up as their destination lay in the direction at the shining snow-covered peaks. Luckily it was much closer.
"We'd better wash up somewhere and dress, if there are people going to be there," Ranma noted. Then she added under her breath: "She's calling that 'missed a bit'... It's good ki works here." She touched a smarting spot on her side, a reminder of her slamming smack into a sharp, iron-hard broken branch when they fell out of the portal.
The land looked arid, so they used their chance when they came upon a creek streaming its icy waters through round pebbles and boulders. They tore their swimsuits off, these were starting to dry and glue to their skin. They washed themselves in the painfully cold water, then started washing their swimsuits along with their other clothing: tied on top of the backpacks it got its fair share of swamp muck.
After that it became obvious what sticky, vile things their backpacks were. They didn't want to be held up so close to their goal but putting these backpacks on would be wasting all their washing efforts. So they hurriedly emptied the backpacks and went to wash them after they hung their clothing around on the bushes. It wasn't going to dry completely, but they hoped it'll do some. There was a weak but piercing wind blowing from the peaks.
Akane's ability to sense killing intent was the only thing that allowed her to dodge. There was no sound, not a single branch popped, when she suddenly found herself rolling desperately to the side, not even comprehending yet why. Five-inch teeth snapped shut where she was a moment ago! Akane stared in bewilderment up at the tyrannosaurus looming over her. He repeated his attempt to make mince-meat of her, forcing the girl time and again to roll across round rocks in the icy water. The only sounds of battle were splashing, rocks grinding under the feet of the trampling dinosaur and the snapping of his teeth.
A second later Ranma's shout joined in as the redhead slammed outstretched leg first into the dinosaur's head. He stumbled but did not fall. Akane jumped onto her feet and bounded away. Seeing that his sneak attack failed, the tyrannosaur lowered his head and roared, directing angry glares at both girls in turn.
"How did this hulk sneak up on us?" Ranma said with mixed annoyance and admiration.
"I don't know, but now we have to defeat him somehow. We need to dress!" Akane said stating the obvious.
"We have to deal with him permanently, at that," Ranma added as she squinted nastily at the overgrown predator. "Coming out to people with this thing trailing us would be crassly irresponsible."
The dinosaur roared rushing her with persistence worth of better uses. The redhead jumped away with ease...
"Our things!" Akane shouted out in panic as she dashed to intercept. "Watch where you retreat!"
Ranma saw that the multi-ton beast was almost on top of their supplies. She hurriedly jumped aside, then moved closer opening deliberately to lure him away: "Here! Here!"
The T. rex turned around and managed to step on something as he stepped in place. Lowering his head again he roared at Ranma angrily, promising he'd tear her to itty-bitty pieces, just let him catch her!
"Aren't you like Kunou!" Ranma smirked. "Got any common relatives?"
The dinosaur tried to incinerate her with his glare - unsuccessfully - and dug the earth up with his legs like an angry bull. Supplies he haven't trampled yet flew in all directions, mixed with rocks and clumps of earth.
"Why, you!" Akane roared. "Take this, you jerk! Raitsui Dan!"
The ki blast slammed into the dinosaur's side. But it just made him stumble, throwing him back a bit. He stepped backwards, right into the bushes where their clothing was hanging. Crushing them noisily.
"Mokou Takabisha!" Ranma launched her own ki blast as she saw they were about to be left without clothing and supplies. It slammed right into the maw opened wide to let out another roar. But even that did not stop the dinosaur. Shaking his head he sat on his tail, flattening bushes and clothing alike under his weight. Akane leaped at him while he hadn't regained his senses yet, afraid he'd grind the clothing to dust.
The T. rex managed to see through her move — it was that straight right punch, telegraphed widely and visible from a kilometer away, that was her shameful undoing in her first duel against Shampoo, but who could have thought an animal·would be able to read it? — and bit preemptively with amazing precision. Akane was saved only by her reaction speed. Twisting in mid-air, she slammed with her parted feet into the tip of his jaws instead of crashing into the gaping maw. Rebounding awkwardly, she landed in a vulnerable position and had to roll around again dodging the snapping jaws. A couple of broken teeth didn't discourage the beast in the slightest.
"That's it," growled Ranma. "You asked for it!" The tyrannosaur had trampled the bushes where their clothing was hanging into a broken mess while he was rising up to his feet. "If you left me without my favorite shirt..." She dashed towards the insufferable predator. He managed to kick at her with his left leg without interrupting his attempts to chomp down on the rolling Akane, his tail sticking almost straight up. Ranma dodged easily, raining hard blows on his right leg. The dinosaur lost his balance and stumbled, trying simultaneously to back away and bite her to get her out from between his legs.
Freed, Akane leaped at him, aiming at the neck. But the dinosaur managed to dodge, backpedaling with sudden swiftness and almost stepping on Ranma in the process. The long-suffering bushes were crunching again, the creek shores rapidly turning into a mess of broken branches. This had no effect on the dinosaur while posing some obstacle for the girls.
It was awkward to hit the long-legged, dodging thing: while standing on the ground, they could only reach his legs bulging with stone-hard muscles and the snapping maw. Beating at the latter was dangerous. Beating at both wasn't bringing any discernible results. A few more broken teeth only made the tyrannosaur angrier.
They tried to leap so they could hit his neck and other vulnerable spots. But doing that, they were losing their advantage in agility. They had to move by predictable trajectories while he kept his agility as he was standing on the ground. The bastard could bite preemptively seeing through their moves. Ranma kept twisting away and even managed one solid hit at his eye. Akane twisted once, twice, then fumbled and barely managed to jerk her shoulder and arm out from between the closing teets.
Ranma felt cold when she noticed a reddish imprint on her beloved's shoulder. These teeth looked able to crush solid rock! Granted, the T. rex was much smaller than Orochi but he could still snap your arm off with ease.
She gestured to Akane: let's flank him. The raven-haired girl understood her instantly, used to fighting together in their endless battles against the youma.
He couldn't defend from two opposing directions, especially with one eye bruised. They started inflicting rare but powerful hits as they kept leaping at the dinosaur. He countered this by backing into the bushes, where they couldn't jump. There was only the gaping maw left sticking out. Akane tried to get close by just breaking through the mess of branches, but these proved durable enough to slow her down, thus negating her main advantage. This mistake almost became her last. She barely managed to dodge by diving into the cramped space below the lowest branches. She then had to scramble madly on all fours, zig-zagging to flee from the snapping death.
"Mokou Takabisha!" Ranma fell literally from the sky as she jumped a dozen meters up, over the bushes, slamming her ki blast into the thing's spine. He sagged from the blow, then turned towards the rustling that gave away her landing spot. He roared angrily.
"Raitsui Dan!" Akane didn't waste time. Rolling onto her back, she launched her ki blast from below. It hit the dinosaur under his tail, making him choke on his roar and fall on his muzzle.
"What does it take to bring this thing down!" Ranma exclaimed indignantly when the T. rex started getting up, pulling his legs in one by one and helping himself with his small forepaws. Letting out a short growl, he rushed at her, limping on his right leg. Ranma thought of jumping onto his back and beating him from there. Then she saw Akane gaining on him along the path he made in the bushes. She was stumbling on broken branches. She'll get caught again! Ranma decided to take a calculated risk. After all, this worked with crocodiles, so why not? Her wife had too many close calls already and could use some breathing room. "Akane, start beating him with all you got! I'll hold him up!" She jumped right into the descending maw. Her knees shot out, each one slamming into the jaw tip right inside the narrow arch formed by the front teeth. The dinosaur tried to close his jaws, and her eyes widened in sudden fright: the biting force of this thing was phenomenal, no crocodile could even compare! Ranma grunted, shuddering in desperate effort to keep this trap from shutting. The T. rex put all his might into crushing her. This was insane! How many tons of force could he bring to bear so that it was almost too much even for her? Was his prey made of steel? Refusing to become dinosaur chow, the redhead put all she had into straightening her legs into a perfect split. Finally she succeeded, forcing the jaws even wider. Now she was lodged fast, no chance of him opening wider to shake her out. As a bonus benefit, her leg and hip bones were now taking the brunt of the effort, letting her aching leg muscles rest a bit. This was... "Ack! Yeech! Why, you!" The dinosaur tried to push her out with his tongue, so now she had to fight this appendage too, using her arms to keep it away from her. It was all muscle and rough like sandpaper. "Akane, don't dawdle there!"
The dinosaur was swishing his head from side to side, stumbling through the bushes blindly like a drunk. The pigtailed girl kept holding his maw wide open. The other girl kept hitting the unyielding underside uncontested while the predator tried to pick the oh-so-wrong prey out of his mouth. He bent his neck, trying to get at her with his smallish forepaw. This pose was even less stable and he couldn't even kick. Akane used this to her full advantage, punching at his neck or tail, whatever happened closer to the ground. Ranma dodged a couple of times, displaying amazing feats of flexibility. Then she abandoned the tongue and grabbed the muscled forepaw in an unbreakable hold. After which the tyrannosaur started spinning in place, occasionally kicking at Akane who was beating him up. He concentrated all his efforts on freeing his forepaw. Ranma was groaning from the strain, swearing at the tongue slobbering her up, but she didn't let the extremity go. An Anything-goes practitioner isn't some triceratops for you!
Finally, the sum of received bruises outweighed the theropod's attitude. The animal turned tail and started fleeing, accompanied with Akane's yells "Stop! Stop, you jerk! Give my Ranma back!" Consumed by worry for her spouse she gave the opponent an opening, and the dinosaur sent her flying with a deft flick of his tail. Tumbling head over heels she landed in broken bushes and stuck thrashing there without a purchase. The T. rex stomping and Ranma's swearing quickly receded disappearing in the distance.
"Ranmaaaa!" Akane tore free, at last. She rushed along the trail of broken bushes the predator left in his hasty retreat.
"I'm here!" The redhead appeared from the thicket ahead, wiping at herself with disgust. Her disheveled hair was sticking to her skin, the pigtail long ruined. "Yuck, he slobbered all over me!" She hurried to the creek to wash up.
"Wait! He got you!" Akane shouted in alarm as she noticed a bloody stripe across Ranma's side.
"Nah, it's back when we fell out of the portal," the redhead waved her concerns aside. "Fell smack into a branch. Stop fretting so much, it's just an abrasion." She flopped down into the icy water. "Brr! You'd better check if we have at least our panties left. Or would we have to go out in some kind of grass skirts?"
Akane hurried towards the place where their things were stashed. The losses turned out to be amazingly light: all the instant ramen got ground into the ground, as well as Ranma's swimsuit which was useless even as rags now. Everything else was relatively intact, if dirty and rumpled. They washed their clothing for the third time and pulled it on, wet as it was. They were suddenly very aware of the wind they hadn't been noticing during the fight.
"What would we eat on our way back?" Akane asked as she finished bandaging Ranma's side with an adhesive patch. Unlike her husband, she had practically no wilderness survival skills. Well, except the usual 'take more supplies from the fridge, ride a train as close to your destination as possible, go the rest of your way on foot'. Their mutual experience of surviving in Jadeite's world was of little help here: they only had to steal from the enemy fields where everything was already grown by someone else.
"Things we could hunt for, what else?" The redhead tied her shirt up. "Rabbits, whatever you have." She cast a vengeful glance in the direction the T. rex had disappeared to. "I now feel sorry I let the bastard go. Should have finished him off and used for ham."
They ran on forward: Usagi was at an arm's length!
(シーンブレイク)
May 28, 2012. Translated June 22, 2012.
Ding! Tropes unlocked:
Super Persistent Predator
Author's notes:
1
Femoral artery passes very close to the surface on the inner side of the upper thigh, making this spot as fatally vulnerable to slashing damage as one's throat.
Thanks for C&C to:
— Crystal
— Pusakuronu
— Orphus users (21 bugs so far)
