Ranma belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. Contact belongs to Carl Sagan. The
Adventures of Pip and Flinx belong to Alan Dean Foster. The
Deathstalker series belongs to Simon R. Green. Mahou Senshi Riui (Louie
the Rune Soldier) licensed by ADV.
Back on Earth: Chapter Three
By Thermopyle (thermopyle@tds.net)
http://thermopye.anifics.com
Stuff like *words* is telepathy.
#####
[Present]
Ranma jumped across the rooftops, Aira held tightly in his arms, and
followed her directions to Nerima. The trains moving in that direction
had been stopped because of the emergency, so they had to run the
distance.
*Slow down,* Aira told him. *You need to be ready to fight when we get
there.*
He slowed slightly, but not much, and she kept silent.
Ranma set Aira down at the edge of the building, and they stared at the
piles of flesh and gore that were strewn about the street below. The
alien, one of Grendel's Sleepers, was squatting in front of a bloody
heap, eating the remains. The acidic drool that leaked from its mouth
dissolved the pavement and streams of greenish smoke rose from around
the creature.
Though the news had shown a number of cops on the scene shooting at the
Grendel, there were no marks on its silicon hide. Neither were the
police still present; all that remained were a few mangled cars, one of
the sirens still whooping though the sheet metal of the body had been
ripped apart like confetti.
*It's not hurting anybody. Maybe we should just go home,* Ranma
suggested. It was true. There wasn't anybody even close to the thing,
now.
"And if it wanders over to Juuban?"
"Okay, okay." She would bring that up.
"What is it doing here, anyway? There shouldn't be any of them on this
planet. You said the humans here haven't even gotten past the moon
yet."
"Dunno. Maybe it followed us."
"If it did...."
"Yeah." If that thing could, so might the Recreated. And the Recreated
could snuff out the life on this planet easier than he could stomp an
ant. Them included.
Ranma sighed, then dropped over the edge of the building. He hated
these things. They quit when they died, and not a second before. If he
ripped the arms and legs off, it would just try to impale him through
the neck with one of its oversized fangs. He'd fought armies of
Grendels before and they were all like that.
But he'd never tried it with his Maze-given abilities so limited. His
strength and speed were now merely human, and completely dwarfed by the
alien's. Only his link with Aira was abnormal for somebody with the
amount of training he had.
When his feet touched the ground, it looked up with its red, malicious
eyes, and snarled at him. From a crouching position thirty feet away,
it was on him instantly, clawed hands reaching for his neck, maw opening
to bite down on his head.
Ranma hit it in the mouth with a focused ki blast, hoping to blow its
head off, and it staggered back, stunned but not injured. A string of
its saliva stuck to Ranma's shirt and started to eat through. He
ignored the acid and rushed forward to attack.
A quick swipe from the alien cut through the bicep of his left arm,
leaving it hanging useless, so he slammed his right fist into its
diamond-hard throat. It grinned and he yanked his hand back before the
creature could trap him between its jaw and chest.
It blurred forward and he retreated, barely evading its attacks, unable
to make a counterstrike. Then one of its feet stomped on his leg,
snapping it completely below the knee, and it grabbed him by the head.
With a wet crunch, its wrist shattered. Ranma kicked the alien in the
chest to get away and staggered back. It continued to be pulverized by
an invisible steamroller, sections of its body compressing, the bones
breaking audibly. It roared in rage, and Ranma retreated quickly,
hopping backwards as fast as he could.
Just like his strength, Aira's tricks wouldn't be enough. Not at such a
low level. Not without being able to crush it completely. *We need to
get out of here,* he told her. *Now.*
He felt her agreement and then the Grendel was picked up and thrown into
a building across the street. Aira landed on the ground beside him,
using the last of her mental abilities to soften the impact, and they
ran.
But the Grendel didn't follow.
Aira ripped another piece of his shirt off and bound it around his arm
to slow the bleeding. It would heal on its own, but slowly. So would
his leg, though that would take longer. He'd had a lot of broken bones
since this started. "Where did it go?" she asked.
Ranma shrugged awkwardly. "Where'd it come from?" Nobody knew. It'd
just appeared out of nowhere.
Their fight had been caught on a camera that had still been
transmitting, though the news crew had already been killed. The Grendel
hadn't come back out of the building, nor had it been spotted elsewhere.
Police were cautiously cleaning up the mess the alien had left.
Identifying the partial corpses was probably going to be tricky.
It always was. Even in the other universe, where DNA matching was
commonplace and most people's was recorded. Separating different lumps
of bloody flesh into the appropriate piles was a job nobody wanted to
do.
"Your mom probably saw us."
"Yeah. She's gonna want an explanation." Tell her it was a pirate
searching for Aira, maybe....
*That's not nice.* She thought it was funny, though. *We'd better get
going.*
He stood and she quickly moved to help him stand, taking half of his
weight. Then they hobbled towards the train back to Juuban.
His mother was waiting for them with the front door open when they
arrived. She was not smiling. "That was not a pirate."
"Er," he said.
"Where's the bathroom?" Aira asked. "He's a bit bloody and needs to be
washed off."
Nodoka frowned and looked at his broken leg, which had been dragging
along the sidewalk, and his left arm, which was limp and dangling. "I
think he needs to go to the hospital."
"Just let Aira wrap my arm up and give me a crutch, and I'll be fine,"
he said. "This has happened before."
*Not in a while, though,* Aira sent.
*Yeah. Still, it should only take a few days to fix.*
Nodoka sighed, then stepped out of the doorway, letting them in. Her
back was stiff as she led them to the furo, where they hoped the blood
was least likely to stain.
*She ain't happy about this, is she?*
*Probably not. Don't worry, I'll handle it,* was Aira's response.
He nodded slightly, knowing she'd sense his agreement. *If it comes
back, neither of us can do anything about it. Are you sure you couldn't
sense anything from the Grendel?* For it to just disappear was...weird.
Usually they just kept killing and eating people until destroyed.
Almost nothing could destroy them.
*Yes. I depleted myself at the end, so my awareness of it just
disappeared.*
The floor of the furo was tiled, which was perfect--a surface that could
be easily be cleaned. Aira helped Ranma to sit at the bench, then
accepted the gauze bandages that Nodoka offered her. She quickly set
about removing the shirt wrapping and wiping down the wound. Then she
used the gauze to reapply the pressure, though it wasn't really needed
anymore. The blood had stopped already, clotting completed and the
healing had started. But the bandages would hide how quickly it was
happening. It didn't even hurt much.
For the leg, she snapped in half a bokken they had picked up on the way
home. Then she knelt in front of him. "Are you ready?"
Ranma nodded, and she cut off the silk cloth. It stuck, so she ripped
it free, and he whined slightly. A chunk of bone was jutted out from
underneath the skin, the splintered edge of it clean and white. The
rest of his leg was covered in dark, crusty red where the blood was
already dried. More of it leaked out of the newly irritated puncture.
He noticed that his mom looked rather horrified, and then Aira yanked
his leg back into the correct position. Ranma sucked air in through his
clenched teeth, slowly. That hurt.
One half of the broken bokken was placed on each side of his leg. All
three were tied together with more of the gauze. In just a few days the
leg would be fully healed, the bone regrown perfectly despite the sloppy
fix. One of the Maze's little bonuses. Hopefully by then his other
abilities would be reappearing. If not, there wasn't going to be a
rematch with that Sleeper for a while.
The Grendel would recover much, much faster than he would.
Ranma looked over at his mom, who was staring at the 'fixed' leg, her
face white. *Got any ideas?* he asked Aira.
*Yeah.* Aira stood carefully, making sure not to bump against his
injured limb, then settled herself down on his lap, her legs to either
side of him. Then shifted her body, scraping against him deliberately,
and pushed his uninjured hand against her right tit. She sucked on his
lip, hard. *This will cheer her right up.*
*Hey, wait a minute....* He glanced towards Nodoka nervously and
noticed that she'd already left. Then Aira started cutting off the
remainders of his clothes.
*I told you,* Aira said, when they found his mother in the kitchen,
humming happily as she prepared dinner. His wife's face was still
flushed from exertion and he could feel that she was still horny. His
mom looked just as excited, in that weird way of hers. He hoped she
hadn't been peeking.
*I can't believe you did that,* was his response.
*I bet you she tries to get details when we go to Takahashi-san's
tomorrow.*
*Don't go there.* That was so wrong.
Aira just smiled at him and then helped him to a seat. Then she went to
help his mother make their supper.
"So," Mom asked, "what was that thing you fought?"
Ranma chewed slowly. *She's asking you.*
*No, she's asking you, oh manly husband of mine. Fess up.*
"Er," he said again.
Nodoka looked at him expectantly.
He sighed. "It's a genetically engineered killer designed by an alien
race that nobody's ever seen. We killed a bunch in a different
universe, where I spent the past four years with Aira. How it got here,
I dunno."
His mother's eyes went wide. "It's a space pirate? Your father never
had to fight any of those...."
Right.
[Past]
Ranma gasped in a lungful of air, fighting a heavy weight that pushed
down on his chest, trying to suffocate him. He inhaled a mouthful of
damp hair. There was a naked redhead on his chest. He froze.
The naked redhead stirred slightly, rubbing her very naked body up
against his. Two soft lumps dragged across his torso, and his hands
were filled with slick, wet handfuls of...something naked.
"Mm, Louie," she mumbled drowsily, and opened her blue eyes to gaze into
his.
Ranma let go, quickly, and she jumped off of him and ten feet away,
hands and arms flying everywhere to cover herself, and failing. He
looked away.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"Ranma Saotome. Who are you?" And why was she naked?
"Oh, I'm Aira. Nice to meet you." She hesitated. "Why am I naked?"
"Dunno. I just woke up." Ranma frowned, then took his gi top off and
tossed it in the girl's direction. "Here."
He saw a brief glimpse of her uncovered, wet body out of the corner of
his eye, and quickly turned a bit more away. Didn't want to get caught.
He was pretty sure she'd seen him looking, though.
"Uh, okay. You can look now," she said. Yep, definitely spotted.
The shirt came down to about mid-thigh on her, since he was taller than
Aira. It still didn't cover that much, especially from this angle, with
his head lower than her body.
"Can you stand up? Please?"
"Er, right." Ranma stood quickly. The girl was starting to sound
annoyed. Where did she come from, anyway?
"How did I get here?" she asked. "I was helping Louie with a spell,
then I woke up here." She looked around, and he did, too.
They were in some weird tunnel that looked kind of like the inside of a
snail shell. Except the shell was changing colors, and the walls hummed
and vibrated with energy. So did the floor underneath them, which
alternated quickly between hot and cold, burning and freezing his bare
feet in turn.
"I was sparring with my old man and some panda attacked me. I fell in a
pool, then I woke up here." The colors had an odd pattern and flashed
quickly... He shook his head to banish the dizziness. "This place is
strange."
"A panda?" Aira looked around some more, too, and he noticed that she
was squinting. "You don't see my glasses around anywhere, do you?" She
bent slightly to look directly at the ground, and the gi top opened
slightly.
"Um, no. Don't see 'em." The floor was spinning, only not, and felt
like it was being sucked out from under his toes like sand at the watery
edge of a beach. The tunnel curved in both directions, so he couldn't
see far either way. His skull started throbbing to the pulse of the
lights.
"Do you feel anything odd?"
Ranma looked at Aira to see the girl pressing her palm against her
forehead. "You, too?"
She nodded, her eyes still clenched mostly shut, and peered around them.
"There's some weird magic in this place. I think we should try walking.
One way or the other."
Magic? "That way?" Ranma pointed left.
"Sure."
They headed left, and Ranma tried to not bump into the edges of the
tunnel, which seemed to keep moving. Aira was about as unsuccessful,
even though she couldn't see as well.
They walked beside each other, carefully navigating between the hypnotic
walls. Ranma's pants restrained him painfully as he tried to ignore the
thoughts that were being hammered into his brain. He'd been around
pretty girls before, but not like this. Not with visions so real he
could feel them brushing against him, images of Aira removing his gi and
spreading her legs, crying out happily as he plunged himself into her
over and over again, her tits bouncing with each impact until he grabbed
them for more than steadiness....
He shoved her away, towards the other side of the tunnel, and staggered
to the side, grabbing at his head. His imagination wasn't that good.
He smashed his face into the wall and the bombardment of pictures
ceased.
When he turned towards Aira, he could see her hands were at her temples.
Her face was a bit more pink than it had been earlier. "That...wasn't
us," she said. "Maybe we should walk faster."
"Yeah."
Ranma's arms and legs burned with fatigue and his heart thudded against
the close confines of his ribcage. His breath was rapid, fast enough to
let him run full-out at thirty miles an hour. He was walking at a
steady pace, yet every muscle burned with exhaustion, every bone ached
of heavy impact and bruising. Each step was a challenge beating him
down mercilessly. He'd never felt so weak, so aware of the limitations
of his humanity.
Aira kept up beside him, also having trouble. He was far stronger than
she was--he had to be--yet she was still keeping up. Every step he
took, she matched. He stared at her legs, knowing they weren't capable
of pushing with the force his were having to. Her knees should be
snapping back, her legs collapsing under the pressure, but they didn't.
They strained, but she kept up.
Somehow he knew that she wasn't fighting for each step, but instead was
fighting to be able to make herself step forward. For her, the weight
of mountains was all collapsing on her mind, not her body. Thousands of
thoughts of worthlessness, hate, rejection, and failure, thousands of
distractions that were trying to demolish her will, they all smashed
into her over and over again.
And he had no idea how he knew that. All he could do was struggle to go
at even the slow pace Aira was keeping.
This tunnel was pissing him off.
Aira stumbled and dropped to her knees, chest shaking as she tried to
cry. Ranma wasn't much better off. He struggled through the wall of
granite air towards her. She was only a few steps away, but each bit
closer only made movement more difficult.
He fell forward when his ankle collapsed. The instant his hand touched
her shoulder the pressure disappeared. The dizziness subsided, the
images stopped, and he felt normal again.
The tunnel around them disappeared, replaced by frozen steel walls that
radiated coldness from bladelike protrusions. The chill traveled up
through his feet, his legs dipped in ice to the knees, and his bare
chest was assaulted by a wave of icy air. Aira shivered beside him,
just as exposed as he was. The images of sex were no more, so he held
her close to him so that they could share in each other's warmth, and
they moved forward again.
This time there was more than one path, and the road they walked
branched off on both sides repeatedly. Eventually they came to a dead
end, where they could no longer go straight but instead had to choose
left or right.
"Let's go left," Aira said. "If we always turn the same direction, we
should get out of here eventually."
Ranma nodded, and they resumed walking.
There were again passages on each side, and every time he passed one,
he'd look down it, to see if there was anything more than a twisting
tunnel of tortured steel walls. Instead, he'd see pictures of Aira in
other places. She was talking to a tall guy with blue hair, or waving
around a wooden stick, or studying at a desk piled upon with books....
"Quit looking," she said sharply. "It's more of this place's tricks.
You're seeing me, right?"
"Yeah." Now she was wearing some tight purple thing.
"I'm seeing you, learning martial arts, going to some weird school, and
fighting with your father or somebody. It's showing us each other's
past. So don't look."
"Why not?"
"Because it could start showing us other stuff. There's no way to tell.
Just ignore it."
He frowned. It wasn't quite that easy.
Ranma remembered fighting with his father, then getting knocked into the
spring by a panda. Then he saw himself swimming to China, his heavy
pack a lead sinker trying to drag him down. He remembered waiting for
that kid from highschool, then winning the bread every day, then
training with his father, transferring between schools, and training
some more. It's not real! When he saw himself being thrown in the pit
of cats, their glowing eyes shining with malice as they clawed at his
younger form, he tried to fight the images off, to return to the
maddening maze.
And he shrieked as the cats became real and the pain tangible, ripping
into him, scraping through his gangrenous mind with rusted spikes. It's
not real! His skin ripped, stretched, and tore free, then blood oozed
through his damaged muscles, the cats' rough tongues sandpaper on a
salted wound as they devoured him piece by twitching piece.
"It's not real!"
Ranma's skull shattered and the cats, and everything else, fled into the
darkness.
Pandas did somersaults on his head, their weight making bits of brain
spurt out his ears and nose from the pressure. It hurt.
Ranma opened his eyes and saw Aira staring down at him.
"Hey," he said. A thousand marching bands stomped in unison, drums
pounding joyously. She had a piece of cloth pressed firmly against his
forehead. Why?
"Are you sane now?" she asked.
"I think so." The last thing he remembered...best not to think about
it. Stupid Pops--it was his fault. "Why's my face hurt?"
"I smashed it against one of the walls."
"Oh."
He sat up slowly and noticed a flat section of their metal surroundings
had a blot of blood on it. She was stronger than he'd thought. He
stood, and Aira did the same. Ranma looked the other way as she used
the now-bloody dogi belt to retie her top closed.
When he touched his forehead he felt where the blood had come from, and
quickly pulled his hand away. At least it wasn't bad enough to get in
his eyes. Or maybe it was, and Aira had already slowed it by the
applied force.
"It was bleeding pretty badly," she said.
Ranma turned and saw how much of the belt was stained red. "I guess.
You okay?"
Aira nodded, and they resumed their maze traveling.
His headache was gone, and he felt like he could rip a god apart with
his bare hands. One-handed, even, and just using a pinky. He felt
good.
"You feel that?" Ranma asked. Aira looked like she had discovered
herself to be a genius, the world's problems cowering before the
solution that only she knew. He'd seen the look before on his father's
face.
"Yes. Don't be fooled. It's another trick."
"Right."
The tunnel opened up into a wide, circular chamber. In the center was a
glowing pillar of white that grew to chest-height from the floor.
Placed on top was a small baby.
"What the hell?" he whispered. The walls flashed a rainbow of colors at
him, the protrusions absent in this place. Aira stepped forward and he
followed. The infant's chest filled and emptied silently as they
approached. "What's it doing here?"
"The Darkvoid Device is sleeping, just as it has for the past thousand
years. Who are you?" a rough voice growled from behind them.
#####
To be continued.
Adventures of Pip and Flinx belong to Alan Dean Foster. The
Deathstalker series belongs to Simon R. Green. Mahou Senshi Riui (Louie
the Rune Soldier) licensed by ADV.
Back on Earth: Chapter Three
By Thermopyle (thermopyle@tds.net)
http://thermopye.anifics.com
Stuff like *words* is telepathy.
#####
[Present]
Ranma jumped across the rooftops, Aira held tightly in his arms, and
followed her directions to Nerima. The trains moving in that direction
had been stopped because of the emergency, so they had to run the
distance.
*Slow down,* Aira told him. *You need to be ready to fight when we get
there.*
He slowed slightly, but not much, and she kept silent.
Ranma set Aira down at the edge of the building, and they stared at the
piles of flesh and gore that were strewn about the street below. The
alien, one of Grendel's Sleepers, was squatting in front of a bloody
heap, eating the remains. The acidic drool that leaked from its mouth
dissolved the pavement and streams of greenish smoke rose from around
the creature.
Though the news had shown a number of cops on the scene shooting at the
Grendel, there were no marks on its silicon hide. Neither were the
police still present; all that remained were a few mangled cars, one of
the sirens still whooping though the sheet metal of the body had been
ripped apart like confetti.
*It's not hurting anybody. Maybe we should just go home,* Ranma
suggested. It was true. There wasn't anybody even close to the thing,
now.
"And if it wanders over to Juuban?"
"Okay, okay." She would bring that up.
"What is it doing here, anyway? There shouldn't be any of them on this
planet. You said the humans here haven't even gotten past the moon
yet."
"Dunno. Maybe it followed us."
"If it did...."
"Yeah." If that thing could, so might the Recreated. And the Recreated
could snuff out the life on this planet easier than he could stomp an
ant. Them included.
Ranma sighed, then dropped over the edge of the building. He hated
these things. They quit when they died, and not a second before. If he
ripped the arms and legs off, it would just try to impale him through
the neck with one of its oversized fangs. He'd fought armies of
Grendels before and they were all like that.
But he'd never tried it with his Maze-given abilities so limited. His
strength and speed were now merely human, and completely dwarfed by the
alien's. Only his link with Aira was abnormal for somebody with the
amount of training he had.
When his feet touched the ground, it looked up with its red, malicious
eyes, and snarled at him. From a crouching position thirty feet away,
it was on him instantly, clawed hands reaching for his neck, maw opening
to bite down on his head.
Ranma hit it in the mouth with a focused ki blast, hoping to blow its
head off, and it staggered back, stunned but not injured. A string of
its saliva stuck to Ranma's shirt and started to eat through. He
ignored the acid and rushed forward to attack.
A quick swipe from the alien cut through the bicep of his left arm,
leaving it hanging useless, so he slammed his right fist into its
diamond-hard throat. It grinned and he yanked his hand back before the
creature could trap him between its jaw and chest.
It blurred forward and he retreated, barely evading its attacks, unable
to make a counterstrike. Then one of its feet stomped on his leg,
snapping it completely below the knee, and it grabbed him by the head.
With a wet crunch, its wrist shattered. Ranma kicked the alien in the
chest to get away and staggered back. It continued to be pulverized by
an invisible steamroller, sections of its body compressing, the bones
breaking audibly. It roared in rage, and Ranma retreated quickly,
hopping backwards as fast as he could.
Just like his strength, Aira's tricks wouldn't be enough. Not at such a
low level. Not without being able to crush it completely. *We need to
get out of here,* he told her. *Now.*
He felt her agreement and then the Grendel was picked up and thrown into
a building across the street. Aira landed on the ground beside him,
using the last of her mental abilities to soften the impact, and they
ran.
But the Grendel didn't follow.
Aira ripped another piece of his shirt off and bound it around his arm
to slow the bleeding. It would heal on its own, but slowly. So would
his leg, though that would take longer. He'd had a lot of broken bones
since this started. "Where did it go?" she asked.
Ranma shrugged awkwardly. "Where'd it come from?" Nobody knew. It'd
just appeared out of nowhere.
Their fight had been caught on a camera that had still been
transmitting, though the news crew had already been killed. The Grendel
hadn't come back out of the building, nor had it been spotted elsewhere.
Police were cautiously cleaning up the mess the alien had left.
Identifying the partial corpses was probably going to be tricky.
It always was. Even in the other universe, where DNA matching was
commonplace and most people's was recorded. Separating different lumps
of bloody flesh into the appropriate piles was a job nobody wanted to
do.
"Your mom probably saw us."
"Yeah. She's gonna want an explanation." Tell her it was a pirate
searching for Aira, maybe....
*That's not nice.* She thought it was funny, though. *We'd better get
going.*
He stood and she quickly moved to help him stand, taking half of his
weight. Then they hobbled towards the train back to Juuban.
His mother was waiting for them with the front door open when they
arrived. She was not smiling. "That was not a pirate."
"Er," he said.
"Where's the bathroom?" Aira asked. "He's a bit bloody and needs to be
washed off."
Nodoka frowned and looked at his broken leg, which had been dragging
along the sidewalk, and his left arm, which was limp and dangling. "I
think he needs to go to the hospital."
"Just let Aira wrap my arm up and give me a crutch, and I'll be fine,"
he said. "This has happened before."
*Not in a while, though,* Aira sent.
*Yeah. Still, it should only take a few days to fix.*
Nodoka sighed, then stepped out of the doorway, letting them in. Her
back was stiff as she led them to the furo, where they hoped the blood
was least likely to stain.
*She ain't happy about this, is she?*
*Probably not. Don't worry, I'll handle it,* was Aira's response.
He nodded slightly, knowing she'd sense his agreement. *If it comes
back, neither of us can do anything about it. Are you sure you couldn't
sense anything from the Grendel?* For it to just disappear was...weird.
Usually they just kept killing and eating people until destroyed.
Almost nothing could destroy them.
*Yes. I depleted myself at the end, so my awareness of it just
disappeared.*
The floor of the furo was tiled, which was perfect--a surface that could
be easily be cleaned. Aira helped Ranma to sit at the bench, then
accepted the gauze bandages that Nodoka offered her. She quickly set
about removing the shirt wrapping and wiping down the wound. Then she
used the gauze to reapply the pressure, though it wasn't really needed
anymore. The blood had stopped already, clotting completed and the
healing had started. But the bandages would hide how quickly it was
happening. It didn't even hurt much.
For the leg, she snapped in half a bokken they had picked up on the way
home. Then she knelt in front of him. "Are you ready?"
Ranma nodded, and she cut off the silk cloth. It stuck, so she ripped
it free, and he whined slightly. A chunk of bone was jutted out from
underneath the skin, the splintered edge of it clean and white. The
rest of his leg was covered in dark, crusty red where the blood was
already dried. More of it leaked out of the newly irritated puncture.
He noticed that his mom looked rather horrified, and then Aira yanked
his leg back into the correct position. Ranma sucked air in through his
clenched teeth, slowly. That hurt.
One half of the broken bokken was placed on each side of his leg. All
three were tied together with more of the gauze. In just a few days the
leg would be fully healed, the bone regrown perfectly despite the sloppy
fix. One of the Maze's little bonuses. Hopefully by then his other
abilities would be reappearing. If not, there wasn't going to be a
rematch with that Sleeper for a while.
The Grendel would recover much, much faster than he would.
Ranma looked over at his mom, who was staring at the 'fixed' leg, her
face white. *Got any ideas?* he asked Aira.
*Yeah.* Aira stood carefully, making sure not to bump against his
injured limb, then settled herself down on his lap, her legs to either
side of him. Then shifted her body, scraping against him deliberately,
and pushed his uninjured hand against her right tit. She sucked on his
lip, hard. *This will cheer her right up.*
*Hey, wait a minute....* He glanced towards Nodoka nervously and
noticed that she'd already left. Then Aira started cutting off the
remainders of his clothes.
*I told you,* Aira said, when they found his mother in the kitchen,
humming happily as she prepared dinner. His wife's face was still
flushed from exertion and he could feel that she was still horny. His
mom looked just as excited, in that weird way of hers. He hoped she
hadn't been peeking.
*I can't believe you did that,* was his response.
*I bet you she tries to get details when we go to Takahashi-san's
tomorrow.*
*Don't go there.* That was so wrong.
Aira just smiled at him and then helped him to a seat. Then she went to
help his mother make their supper.
"So," Mom asked, "what was that thing you fought?"
Ranma chewed slowly. *She's asking you.*
*No, she's asking you, oh manly husband of mine. Fess up.*
"Er," he said again.
Nodoka looked at him expectantly.
He sighed. "It's a genetically engineered killer designed by an alien
race that nobody's ever seen. We killed a bunch in a different
universe, where I spent the past four years with Aira. How it got here,
I dunno."
His mother's eyes went wide. "It's a space pirate? Your father never
had to fight any of those...."
Right.
[Past]
Ranma gasped in a lungful of air, fighting a heavy weight that pushed
down on his chest, trying to suffocate him. He inhaled a mouthful of
damp hair. There was a naked redhead on his chest. He froze.
The naked redhead stirred slightly, rubbing her very naked body up
against his. Two soft lumps dragged across his torso, and his hands
were filled with slick, wet handfuls of...something naked.
"Mm, Louie," she mumbled drowsily, and opened her blue eyes to gaze into
his.
Ranma let go, quickly, and she jumped off of him and ten feet away,
hands and arms flying everywhere to cover herself, and failing. He
looked away.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"Ranma Saotome. Who are you?" And why was she naked?
"Oh, I'm Aira. Nice to meet you." She hesitated. "Why am I naked?"
"Dunno. I just woke up." Ranma frowned, then took his gi top off and
tossed it in the girl's direction. "Here."
He saw a brief glimpse of her uncovered, wet body out of the corner of
his eye, and quickly turned a bit more away. Didn't want to get caught.
He was pretty sure she'd seen him looking, though.
"Uh, okay. You can look now," she said. Yep, definitely spotted.
The shirt came down to about mid-thigh on her, since he was taller than
Aira. It still didn't cover that much, especially from this angle, with
his head lower than her body.
"Can you stand up? Please?"
"Er, right." Ranma stood quickly. The girl was starting to sound
annoyed. Where did she come from, anyway?
"How did I get here?" she asked. "I was helping Louie with a spell,
then I woke up here." She looked around, and he did, too.
They were in some weird tunnel that looked kind of like the inside of a
snail shell. Except the shell was changing colors, and the walls hummed
and vibrated with energy. So did the floor underneath them, which
alternated quickly between hot and cold, burning and freezing his bare
feet in turn.
"I was sparring with my old man and some panda attacked me. I fell in a
pool, then I woke up here." The colors had an odd pattern and flashed
quickly... He shook his head to banish the dizziness. "This place is
strange."
"A panda?" Aira looked around some more, too, and he noticed that she
was squinting. "You don't see my glasses around anywhere, do you?" She
bent slightly to look directly at the ground, and the gi top opened
slightly.
"Um, no. Don't see 'em." The floor was spinning, only not, and felt
like it was being sucked out from under his toes like sand at the watery
edge of a beach. The tunnel curved in both directions, so he couldn't
see far either way. His skull started throbbing to the pulse of the
lights.
"Do you feel anything odd?"
Ranma looked at Aira to see the girl pressing her palm against her
forehead. "You, too?"
She nodded, her eyes still clenched mostly shut, and peered around them.
"There's some weird magic in this place. I think we should try walking.
One way or the other."
Magic? "That way?" Ranma pointed left.
"Sure."
They headed left, and Ranma tried to not bump into the edges of the
tunnel, which seemed to keep moving. Aira was about as unsuccessful,
even though she couldn't see as well.
They walked beside each other, carefully navigating between the hypnotic
walls. Ranma's pants restrained him painfully as he tried to ignore the
thoughts that were being hammered into his brain. He'd been around
pretty girls before, but not like this. Not with visions so real he
could feel them brushing against him, images of Aira removing his gi and
spreading her legs, crying out happily as he plunged himself into her
over and over again, her tits bouncing with each impact until he grabbed
them for more than steadiness....
He shoved her away, towards the other side of the tunnel, and staggered
to the side, grabbing at his head. His imagination wasn't that good.
He smashed his face into the wall and the bombardment of pictures
ceased.
When he turned towards Aira, he could see her hands were at her temples.
Her face was a bit more pink than it had been earlier. "That...wasn't
us," she said. "Maybe we should walk faster."
"Yeah."
Ranma's arms and legs burned with fatigue and his heart thudded against
the close confines of his ribcage. His breath was rapid, fast enough to
let him run full-out at thirty miles an hour. He was walking at a
steady pace, yet every muscle burned with exhaustion, every bone ached
of heavy impact and bruising. Each step was a challenge beating him
down mercilessly. He'd never felt so weak, so aware of the limitations
of his humanity.
Aira kept up beside him, also having trouble. He was far stronger than
she was--he had to be--yet she was still keeping up. Every step he
took, she matched. He stared at her legs, knowing they weren't capable
of pushing with the force his were having to. Her knees should be
snapping back, her legs collapsing under the pressure, but they didn't.
They strained, but she kept up.
Somehow he knew that she wasn't fighting for each step, but instead was
fighting to be able to make herself step forward. For her, the weight
of mountains was all collapsing on her mind, not her body. Thousands of
thoughts of worthlessness, hate, rejection, and failure, thousands of
distractions that were trying to demolish her will, they all smashed
into her over and over again.
And he had no idea how he knew that. All he could do was struggle to go
at even the slow pace Aira was keeping.
This tunnel was pissing him off.
Aira stumbled and dropped to her knees, chest shaking as she tried to
cry. Ranma wasn't much better off. He struggled through the wall of
granite air towards her. She was only a few steps away, but each bit
closer only made movement more difficult.
He fell forward when his ankle collapsed. The instant his hand touched
her shoulder the pressure disappeared. The dizziness subsided, the
images stopped, and he felt normal again.
The tunnel around them disappeared, replaced by frozen steel walls that
radiated coldness from bladelike protrusions. The chill traveled up
through his feet, his legs dipped in ice to the knees, and his bare
chest was assaulted by a wave of icy air. Aira shivered beside him,
just as exposed as he was. The images of sex were no more, so he held
her close to him so that they could share in each other's warmth, and
they moved forward again.
This time there was more than one path, and the road they walked
branched off on both sides repeatedly. Eventually they came to a dead
end, where they could no longer go straight but instead had to choose
left or right.
"Let's go left," Aira said. "If we always turn the same direction, we
should get out of here eventually."
Ranma nodded, and they resumed walking.
There were again passages on each side, and every time he passed one,
he'd look down it, to see if there was anything more than a twisting
tunnel of tortured steel walls. Instead, he'd see pictures of Aira in
other places. She was talking to a tall guy with blue hair, or waving
around a wooden stick, or studying at a desk piled upon with books....
"Quit looking," she said sharply. "It's more of this place's tricks.
You're seeing me, right?"
"Yeah." Now she was wearing some tight purple thing.
"I'm seeing you, learning martial arts, going to some weird school, and
fighting with your father or somebody. It's showing us each other's
past. So don't look."
"Why not?"
"Because it could start showing us other stuff. There's no way to tell.
Just ignore it."
He frowned. It wasn't quite that easy.
Ranma remembered fighting with his father, then getting knocked into the
spring by a panda. Then he saw himself swimming to China, his heavy
pack a lead sinker trying to drag him down. He remembered waiting for
that kid from highschool, then winning the bread every day, then
training with his father, transferring between schools, and training
some more. It's not real! When he saw himself being thrown in the pit
of cats, their glowing eyes shining with malice as they clawed at his
younger form, he tried to fight the images off, to return to the
maddening maze.
And he shrieked as the cats became real and the pain tangible, ripping
into him, scraping through his gangrenous mind with rusted spikes. It's
not real! His skin ripped, stretched, and tore free, then blood oozed
through his damaged muscles, the cats' rough tongues sandpaper on a
salted wound as they devoured him piece by twitching piece.
"It's not real!"
Ranma's skull shattered and the cats, and everything else, fled into the
darkness.
Pandas did somersaults on his head, their weight making bits of brain
spurt out his ears and nose from the pressure. It hurt.
Ranma opened his eyes and saw Aira staring down at him.
"Hey," he said. A thousand marching bands stomped in unison, drums
pounding joyously. She had a piece of cloth pressed firmly against his
forehead. Why?
"Are you sane now?" she asked.
"I think so." The last thing he remembered...best not to think about
it. Stupid Pops--it was his fault. "Why's my face hurt?"
"I smashed it against one of the walls."
"Oh."
He sat up slowly and noticed a flat section of their metal surroundings
had a blot of blood on it. She was stronger than he'd thought. He
stood, and Aira did the same. Ranma looked the other way as she used
the now-bloody dogi belt to retie her top closed.
When he touched his forehead he felt where the blood had come from, and
quickly pulled his hand away. At least it wasn't bad enough to get in
his eyes. Or maybe it was, and Aira had already slowed it by the
applied force.
"It was bleeding pretty badly," she said.
Ranma turned and saw how much of the belt was stained red. "I guess.
You okay?"
Aira nodded, and they resumed their maze traveling.
His headache was gone, and he felt like he could rip a god apart with
his bare hands. One-handed, even, and just using a pinky. He felt
good.
"You feel that?" Ranma asked. Aira looked like she had discovered
herself to be a genius, the world's problems cowering before the
solution that only she knew. He'd seen the look before on his father's
face.
"Yes. Don't be fooled. It's another trick."
"Right."
The tunnel opened up into a wide, circular chamber. In the center was a
glowing pillar of white that grew to chest-height from the floor.
Placed on top was a small baby.
"What the hell?" he whispered. The walls flashed a rainbow of colors at
him, the protrusions absent in this place. Aira stepped forward and he
followed. The infant's chest filled and emptied silently as they
approached. "What's it doing here?"
"The Darkvoid Device is sleeping, just as it has for the past thousand
years. Who are you?" a rough voice growled from behind them.
#####
To be continued.