Ranma/Nights
'Into Dreams'
Growing Wings
"Ranma?"
The Pigtailed voice quickly turned to the frantic voice of Akane, and wildly searched the rolling hills in the valley for its source, "Akane? AKANE!!!"
"Ranma? Help me! Ranma!" Her voice was pleading and urgent, and seeming to fade in its desperation.
"AKANE! HOLD ON, I'm COMING!" Ranma hurradly followed the voice, making a point to avoid the pools of water on the ground, and floating in the air.
"Ranma! I need your help! I can't last much longer..."
"JUST HOLD ON, AKANE! PLEASE!" Ranma felt his body become heavy with emotion; once again, he was failing Akane. She needed him, and he wasn't there with her. His mind thought back to Kiima with the curse of drowned Akane; what if someone intended to finish the job? The thought of truly losing Akane, just when he thought he had emotionally found her was nearly unbearable in its pain, hindering him like a dead limb in his pursuit of rescue. He reached the center of the surreal Jusenkyo, and started to climb the hill that stood in it. Akane's pleas seemed to be originating from there, "AKANE! SPEAK TO ME!!!"
"Ra-Ranma..."
Her voice was extremely faint, and that fact caused Ranma to stumble. The hill suddenly seemed steeper, slicker, almost impossible to climb, and Ranma felt the emotional weight increase a hundredfold. He knew he was going to fail her this time.
_____________________________________
"Wha... what am I doing here?" Akane asked, spinning around and looking at her surroundings.
"Akane? Hey, Akane!"
The raven haired girl's spirits perked at the sound of Ranma's voice, "Ranma? I'm over here, RANMA!" Akane turned in the direction that the voice was coming from, and started to walk towards it.
"Akane, what the heck's tak'n ya so long?"
"I'm hurrying Ranma, geez you're being such a jerk!" the girl huffed, starting to pick up her pace.
"Gee, no wonder you can never lay a hand on me, being so slow."
Akane's eye twitched, "Ranma, are you just *trying* to upset me?"
"I don't need to *try*, Akane, you're pathetic enough to do it yourself..."
Akane faltered in her step, "WHAT WAS THAT?!?"
"You going deaf, too? Oh man, we make a pair, I musta been pretty blind to think I saw something in you."
Akane felt a pit building up in her stomach, "Ra... Ranma."
"What? The little macho tomboy gonna cry?" Akane could feel the remarks slash into her like a sword's strike, as the tears began to form in the corners of her eyes, "Some martial artist you are."
"But... but you asked me... you were..."
"Yeah... well I plead temperary insanity on that one..."
Akane's steps became slower, as her mind began to wander why even bother. He just said he didn't care for her, something she had expected for a time, now. A void began to consume her insides, and slowed her down to lethergy. She eventually reached the center of Jusenkyo, and stared up through bleary eyes to the mountain that appeared there. Ranma's voice came from the top of it.
"Look at you, wussing out from a little hill..."
As emotionally shattered as she was beginning to feel, she wouldn't give Ranma that final satisfaction...
_____________________________________
If Zmartwan had a face, it would be smiling.
The crystal that floated in space was starting to glow more and more. Ranma's emotional energy was acting as a filter to syphon the much saught after Jusenkyo energy, while Akane's grief acted as a battery to help hasten the transfer of energy. Jackal and Reala stood to the side, observing. The last ditch effort was showing more results than they had expected, and they both smiled, as Nightopia would soon be theirs.
_____________________________________
Ranma's fingers digged into the sod of the hill, refusing to give up, though he was positive it was too late. He refused to let his tears fall out of sheer fustration and stubbornnes than actual determination. With everything against him, he reached the top of the hill, with a single pool atop it, just in time to see Akane's dainty hand sink below it's rippling surface.
"NOOOOO!!!!!" Ranma nearly screeched, as he dove for the hand. He looked down into it's murky depths, finding no sign that Akane was alive. Ranma was about to dive in, when he realized something; he was sure that Akane was no longer alive, and if he dove in, he would never be cured of his curse.
He would never be able to help anyone
He would be a complete failure in the art.
He would be honorless, friendless...
Hopeless.
With an angry sob, Ranma dove in, willingly thowing away all he held dear for Akane's sake. He continued to plunge down, straight down into its depths, never to rise from it again.
_____________________________________
Akane made it to the top through sheer stubborn effort; scraping and clawing up the impossible hill that seemed to be made of her every inadequacy she had ever felt. As Ranma's taunts continued, it continued to get higher and harder to scale; slick with tears of her anguish and the sweat of her futile attempts to better herself in the eyes of Ranma. She scrawled to her feet, and saw the pool that she knew Ranma was in. His taunts continued to flow, even as the water she knew was filling his lungs.
"Ha! You may as well start preparing my funeral rites. No way a dead weight like you's gonna save me from drowning!" Akane began to emit a low moan, knowing her swimming skills would not be sufficient to save Ranma. She couldn't swim.
She was slow.
She was unattractive.
She was weak.
She was hopeless.
She felt complete despair wash over her, becoming akin to Ryoga at his lowest moments. She tilted towards the pool with her arms spread, not caring what fate had in store...
_____________________________________
If Zmartwan had a face, she would have stopped smiling.
_____________________________________
Like a drop of water, defying gravity and rising from a stalagtite, Ranma burst up from the pool with a shout of sheer joy. He didn't know what happened, he had been descending to the bottomless depths of the pool that Akane was lost in, and suddenly he had burst through to the other side, and found himself penetrating the clouds. He laughed with all the air in his lungs, as he performed barrel rolls in the air, flying without assistance. Without a doubt, it was the most incredible feeling he had ever felt.
_____________________________________
... there was nothing more exhillarating that the complete freedom Akane felt, gliding through the air, cutting in and out of the wispy clouds that were highlighted by the horizon sun's loving light in orange and pink radiance. All the anguish she had been experiencing vanished suddenly, like endless tons had been poofed away by a master magician...
_____________________________________
Ranma's cloths flapped in the wind, as he held his arms out as if he were an airplane. He would say the torment he had been feeling was well worth the feeling that now flowed through every iota of his being. He...
_____________________________________
...brought her hand up to brush a stray piece of hair that was flapped to the fore by the rush of the wind by her. Akane came up with a comparison that was beyond adequate for the emotions that raised her to higher levels than her flight did.
_____________________________________
To Ranma, it was like growing wings.
_____________________________________
"NO!" Zmartwan screamed. They were defeated, they had given completely into despair; how is it they overcame? The would be ruler of the land of dreams turned to the yellow glowing crystal that floated in the endless midnight void filled with stars; it had built up a great deal of energy, more than sufficient enough for her tasks. But as those who are ambitious usually find, their greed always hungers for more power.
_____________________________________
Ranma flew back below the clouds, and found a trail of musical notes. He flew closer, and found them drawn to him like he was a magnet and they were loose ore deposits. Ranma flew, performing acrobatic stunts, as he collected the notes around him. At the end of the note trail, he came to a sheet of music. From him, the notes flew towards the sheet, and settled into their places. Ranma raised his eyebrows as he noted it was only half complete, but shrugged, and continued on his way...
_____________________________________
After the music notes were absorbed by the violin, it began to play a sweet melody that sang to her heart that made all that she felt even moreso multiplied. On high from the music and her gift of flight, Akane continued on. The trail of current notes brought her through the cloud level again, and her raven hair shined with a blue luster in the light. She looped in a trail of notes, and turned to her left in pursuit of the bits of promising harmony, she saw the bells up ahead of her..
_____________________________________
And Ranma swooped down to its level, allowing the music notes to precariously float to the sheet music that already had half the music on it. Once it was complete, he heard a chorus of bells along with a violin play in the air. The song was heart wrenchingly beautiful, and he had to force himself to continue on.
_____________________________________
Akane descended through the candy colored wisps, following a trail of notes through it. She weaved in the air like a kite struck in a Spring gust, and tumbled lower through the air as a sphere of music notes encircled her. She approached the flute, and hovered in the air as the notes merged with the harmonic intrument and began to play. Ahead lay the mountain, where at the top had lay before a living pheonix.
_____________________________________
Somehow, Ranma knew that Saffron wouldn't be the one that met them at the top. The pigtailed boy ascended it's dizzying heights, while evading bubbles that rose from below and reflected the light of the glorious sun, and weaving trough the springs that hovered in the air. Ranma's confidense was at new heights, beyond anything his false bravado and arrogance ever produced. And without it, he would had never made it to the top of Jusendo.
_____________________________________
Akane pushed on the barrier that imprisoned NiGHTS on the top of the mountain, but finding it wouldn't give, regardless of her strength. She knew there had to be a way to reach him through the prism that imprisoned the harlequin, but her might alone couldn't budge it. Akane suddenly realized what it was that suddenly gave her strength. As she climbed that mountain of her own agony, she felt the weight was on her shoulders alone, only for her to bare...
_____________________________________
He had to save everyone, that was his belief in whole. He was the hero everyone looked up to, he couldn't fail. It was too much pressure for one to bare by himself. As he was flying, it felt as if someone was there, halfing his burden for him. No, more than just sharing it, obliviating it. He finally knew...
_____________________________________
She finally knew...
_____________________________________
Ranma/Akane were no longer alone.
As Ranma/Akane's body started to fade into view, Akane/Ranma did not bother to turn and acknowlege the one that was there to share their burdens of the world. They simply felt their strength grow together.
In unison, they gave one final push...
_____________________________________
Ranma and Akane looked down at themselves, finding themselves garbed in the Harlequin's clothing. They looked towards each other, and though the face looking back at them wasn't Ranma or Akane's, they knew anyway. Around them was a space of midnight and stars, each one twinkling like a fine and tiny diamond against dark navy blue velvet. In the distance, lay a large glowing yellow jewel.
"YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING!" a feminine voice shouted. The cry was then followed by a deafening boom, that separated Akane and Ranma. Wraith-like woman with shock red hair shaped like a cone that jutted out from the back of her head, wearing fine velvet burgundy and teal robes towered over them, positioned between the two flying harlequins and the jewel. Without consideration, Ranma and Akane both knew that the jewel was their target, and that only their combined might would win.
Zmartwan waved her hand, and suddenly the air was filled with interlocking helixes like a 3-D fence that extended to all plains. Ranma and Akane weaved between the openings that were wide enough to squeeze through, feeling the charge of remourse flowing through the helixes like electricity through a metal fence. Zmartwan was surprised, as they both passed on opposite sides of her, joined hands, and looped her jewel. A hairline fracture formed on its surface.
"AAAAHHH!!!" She screamed, as she sent a sudden wind into them, pushing them away. Akane and Ranma got their bearings together, and flew againt the howling winds of rejected affection; finding the least resistance in the wind and flowing through it. Once again they overcame the obstacle, and Zmartwan couldn't recover fast enough to stop them from forming a vortex around the crystal again...
In desperation, she raised her arm, causing the jewel and herself to raise into the air. From her vantage point, she rained down sleet and hail of depression. The jewel looked beyond fragile at that moment, and Zmartwan knew that if she could just keep the troublesome brats at bay just long enough, they would wake up, and she would have won...
Neither Akane or Ranma could stand before the hard fall upon them, but as of one mind, they quickly moved towards each other, holding each other tightly. Their power increased further than even two halves of the whole, and the powered through the downpour. Zmartwan gasped, as the two zoomed past her, and above her a brilliant yellow light enveloped the darkness, and Jusenkyo's energies overwhelmed her.
Zmartwan's scream died well before the light did, and Akane and Ranma were left flying by themselves in the space their last battle took place. Like a shimering illusion, the NiGHTS facade melted from them, starting from their heads. Ranma stopped, and turned to Akane, and he knew his smile was as big, and as bright as Akane's. A sight indeed worthy of ending a dream.
'Into Dreams'
Growing Wings
"Ranma?"
The Pigtailed voice quickly turned to the frantic voice of Akane, and wildly searched the rolling hills in the valley for its source, "Akane? AKANE!!!"
"Ranma? Help me! Ranma!" Her voice was pleading and urgent, and seeming to fade in its desperation.
"AKANE! HOLD ON, I'm COMING!" Ranma hurradly followed the voice, making a point to avoid the pools of water on the ground, and floating in the air.
"Ranma! I need your help! I can't last much longer..."
"JUST HOLD ON, AKANE! PLEASE!" Ranma felt his body become heavy with emotion; once again, he was failing Akane. She needed him, and he wasn't there with her. His mind thought back to Kiima with the curse of drowned Akane; what if someone intended to finish the job? The thought of truly losing Akane, just when he thought he had emotionally found her was nearly unbearable in its pain, hindering him like a dead limb in his pursuit of rescue. He reached the center of the surreal Jusenkyo, and started to climb the hill that stood in it. Akane's pleas seemed to be originating from there, "AKANE! SPEAK TO ME!!!"
"Ra-Ranma..."
Her voice was extremely faint, and that fact caused Ranma to stumble. The hill suddenly seemed steeper, slicker, almost impossible to climb, and Ranma felt the emotional weight increase a hundredfold. He knew he was going to fail her this time.
_____________________________________
"Wha... what am I doing here?" Akane asked, spinning around and looking at her surroundings.
"Akane? Hey, Akane!"
The raven haired girl's spirits perked at the sound of Ranma's voice, "Ranma? I'm over here, RANMA!" Akane turned in the direction that the voice was coming from, and started to walk towards it.
"Akane, what the heck's tak'n ya so long?"
"I'm hurrying Ranma, geez you're being such a jerk!" the girl huffed, starting to pick up her pace.
"Gee, no wonder you can never lay a hand on me, being so slow."
Akane's eye twitched, "Ranma, are you just *trying* to upset me?"
"I don't need to *try*, Akane, you're pathetic enough to do it yourself..."
Akane faltered in her step, "WHAT WAS THAT?!?"
"You going deaf, too? Oh man, we make a pair, I musta been pretty blind to think I saw something in you."
Akane felt a pit building up in her stomach, "Ra... Ranma."
"What? The little macho tomboy gonna cry?" Akane could feel the remarks slash into her like a sword's strike, as the tears began to form in the corners of her eyes, "Some martial artist you are."
"But... but you asked me... you were..."
"Yeah... well I plead temperary insanity on that one..."
Akane's steps became slower, as her mind began to wander why even bother. He just said he didn't care for her, something she had expected for a time, now. A void began to consume her insides, and slowed her down to lethergy. She eventually reached the center of Jusenkyo, and stared up through bleary eyes to the mountain that appeared there. Ranma's voice came from the top of it.
"Look at you, wussing out from a little hill..."
As emotionally shattered as she was beginning to feel, she wouldn't give Ranma that final satisfaction...
_____________________________________
If Zmartwan had a face, it would be smiling.
The crystal that floated in space was starting to glow more and more. Ranma's emotional energy was acting as a filter to syphon the much saught after Jusenkyo energy, while Akane's grief acted as a battery to help hasten the transfer of energy. Jackal and Reala stood to the side, observing. The last ditch effort was showing more results than they had expected, and they both smiled, as Nightopia would soon be theirs.
_____________________________________
Ranma's fingers digged into the sod of the hill, refusing to give up, though he was positive it was too late. He refused to let his tears fall out of sheer fustration and stubbornnes than actual determination. With everything against him, he reached the top of the hill, with a single pool atop it, just in time to see Akane's dainty hand sink below it's rippling surface.
"NOOOOO!!!!!" Ranma nearly screeched, as he dove for the hand. He looked down into it's murky depths, finding no sign that Akane was alive. Ranma was about to dive in, when he realized something; he was sure that Akane was no longer alive, and if he dove in, he would never be cured of his curse.
He would never be able to help anyone
He would be a complete failure in the art.
He would be honorless, friendless...
Hopeless.
With an angry sob, Ranma dove in, willingly thowing away all he held dear for Akane's sake. He continued to plunge down, straight down into its depths, never to rise from it again.
_____________________________________
Akane made it to the top through sheer stubborn effort; scraping and clawing up the impossible hill that seemed to be made of her every inadequacy she had ever felt. As Ranma's taunts continued, it continued to get higher and harder to scale; slick with tears of her anguish and the sweat of her futile attempts to better herself in the eyes of Ranma. She scrawled to her feet, and saw the pool that she knew Ranma was in. His taunts continued to flow, even as the water she knew was filling his lungs.
"Ha! You may as well start preparing my funeral rites. No way a dead weight like you's gonna save me from drowning!" Akane began to emit a low moan, knowing her swimming skills would not be sufficient to save Ranma. She couldn't swim.
She was slow.
She was unattractive.
She was weak.
She was hopeless.
She felt complete despair wash over her, becoming akin to Ryoga at his lowest moments. She tilted towards the pool with her arms spread, not caring what fate had in store...
_____________________________________
If Zmartwan had a face, she would have stopped smiling.
_____________________________________
Like a drop of water, defying gravity and rising from a stalagtite, Ranma burst up from the pool with a shout of sheer joy. He didn't know what happened, he had been descending to the bottomless depths of the pool that Akane was lost in, and suddenly he had burst through to the other side, and found himself penetrating the clouds. He laughed with all the air in his lungs, as he performed barrel rolls in the air, flying without assistance. Without a doubt, it was the most incredible feeling he had ever felt.
_____________________________________
... there was nothing more exhillarating that the complete freedom Akane felt, gliding through the air, cutting in and out of the wispy clouds that were highlighted by the horizon sun's loving light in orange and pink radiance. All the anguish she had been experiencing vanished suddenly, like endless tons had been poofed away by a master magician...
_____________________________________
Ranma's cloths flapped in the wind, as he held his arms out as if he were an airplane. He would say the torment he had been feeling was well worth the feeling that now flowed through every iota of his being. He...
_____________________________________
...brought her hand up to brush a stray piece of hair that was flapped to the fore by the rush of the wind by her. Akane came up with a comparison that was beyond adequate for the emotions that raised her to higher levels than her flight did.
_____________________________________
To Ranma, it was like growing wings.
_____________________________________
"NO!" Zmartwan screamed. They were defeated, they had given completely into despair; how is it they overcame? The would be ruler of the land of dreams turned to the yellow glowing crystal that floated in the endless midnight void filled with stars; it had built up a great deal of energy, more than sufficient enough for her tasks. But as those who are ambitious usually find, their greed always hungers for more power.
_____________________________________
Ranma flew back below the clouds, and found a trail of musical notes. He flew closer, and found them drawn to him like he was a magnet and they were loose ore deposits. Ranma flew, performing acrobatic stunts, as he collected the notes around him. At the end of the note trail, he came to a sheet of music. From him, the notes flew towards the sheet, and settled into their places. Ranma raised his eyebrows as he noted it was only half complete, but shrugged, and continued on his way...
_____________________________________
After the music notes were absorbed by the violin, it began to play a sweet melody that sang to her heart that made all that she felt even moreso multiplied. On high from the music and her gift of flight, Akane continued on. The trail of current notes brought her through the cloud level again, and her raven hair shined with a blue luster in the light. She looped in a trail of notes, and turned to her left in pursuit of the bits of promising harmony, she saw the bells up ahead of her..
_____________________________________
And Ranma swooped down to its level, allowing the music notes to precariously float to the sheet music that already had half the music on it. Once it was complete, he heard a chorus of bells along with a violin play in the air. The song was heart wrenchingly beautiful, and he had to force himself to continue on.
_____________________________________
Akane descended through the candy colored wisps, following a trail of notes through it. She weaved in the air like a kite struck in a Spring gust, and tumbled lower through the air as a sphere of music notes encircled her. She approached the flute, and hovered in the air as the notes merged with the harmonic intrument and began to play. Ahead lay the mountain, where at the top had lay before a living pheonix.
_____________________________________
Somehow, Ranma knew that Saffron wouldn't be the one that met them at the top. The pigtailed boy ascended it's dizzying heights, while evading bubbles that rose from below and reflected the light of the glorious sun, and weaving trough the springs that hovered in the air. Ranma's confidense was at new heights, beyond anything his false bravado and arrogance ever produced. And without it, he would had never made it to the top of Jusendo.
_____________________________________
Akane pushed on the barrier that imprisoned NiGHTS on the top of the mountain, but finding it wouldn't give, regardless of her strength. She knew there had to be a way to reach him through the prism that imprisoned the harlequin, but her might alone couldn't budge it. Akane suddenly realized what it was that suddenly gave her strength. As she climbed that mountain of her own agony, she felt the weight was on her shoulders alone, only for her to bare...
_____________________________________
He had to save everyone, that was his belief in whole. He was the hero everyone looked up to, he couldn't fail. It was too much pressure for one to bare by himself. As he was flying, it felt as if someone was there, halfing his burden for him. No, more than just sharing it, obliviating it. He finally knew...
_____________________________________
She finally knew...
_____________________________________
Ranma/Akane were no longer alone.
As Ranma/Akane's body started to fade into view, Akane/Ranma did not bother to turn and acknowlege the one that was there to share their burdens of the world. They simply felt their strength grow together.
In unison, they gave one final push...
_____________________________________
Ranma and Akane looked down at themselves, finding themselves garbed in the Harlequin's clothing. They looked towards each other, and though the face looking back at them wasn't Ranma or Akane's, they knew anyway. Around them was a space of midnight and stars, each one twinkling like a fine and tiny diamond against dark navy blue velvet. In the distance, lay a large glowing yellow jewel.
"YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING!" a feminine voice shouted. The cry was then followed by a deafening boom, that separated Akane and Ranma. Wraith-like woman with shock red hair shaped like a cone that jutted out from the back of her head, wearing fine velvet burgundy and teal robes towered over them, positioned between the two flying harlequins and the jewel. Without consideration, Ranma and Akane both knew that the jewel was their target, and that only their combined might would win.
Zmartwan waved her hand, and suddenly the air was filled with interlocking helixes like a 3-D fence that extended to all plains. Ranma and Akane weaved between the openings that were wide enough to squeeze through, feeling the charge of remourse flowing through the helixes like electricity through a metal fence. Zmartwan was surprised, as they both passed on opposite sides of her, joined hands, and looped her jewel. A hairline fracture formed on its surface.
"AAAAHHH!!!" She screamed, as she sent a sudden wind into them, pushing them away. Akane and Ranma got their bearings together, and flew againt the howling winds of rejected affection; finding the least resistance in the wind and flowing through it. Once again they overcame the obstacle, and Zmartwan couldn't recover fast enough to stop them from forming a vortex around the crystal again...
In desperation, she raised her arm, causing the jewel and herself to raise into the air. From her vantage point, she rained down sleet and hail of depression. The jewel looked beyond fragile at that moment, and Zmartwan knew that if she could just keep the troublesome brats at bay just long enough, they would wake up, and she would have won...
Neither Akane or Ranma could stand before the hard fall upon them, but as of one mind, they quickly moved towards each other, holding each other tightly. Their power increased further than even two halves of the whole, and the powered through the downpour. Zmartwan gasped, as the two zoomed past her, and above her a brilliant yellow light enveloped the darkness, and Jusenkyo's energies overwhelmed her.
Zmartwan's scream died well before the light did, and Akane and Ranma were left flying by themselves in the space their last battle took place. Like a shimering illusion, the NiGHTS facade melted from them, starting from their heads. Ranma stopped, and turned to Akane, and he knew his smile was as big, and as bright as Akane's. A sight indeed worthy of ending a dream.