Disclaimer: Do not own Ranma 1/2. Do not own anything having to do with Ranma 1/2. Do not even own the series, just read it off the internet and watched it at my sisters.
Agent of Chaos
Chapter VI: Chaos Unabated--and Really Nasty, Too
In a fine little okonomiyaki restaurant filled with eager customers, where the items on the toppings menu ranged from the Usual, to Fried Onions and Hamburger, to Strange, Salad-Like Stuff that was Found Growing Out Back, Ukyo Kuonji frowned at the woman across from her, an annoyed light reflecting out of the corner of one eye.
Ukyo had thought she'd grown rather used to some of the odd things that happen in Nerima-ku. Ghosts, demons, spirits, evil creatures, martial artists, food that tries to eat you--she was all rather used to that. Being with Ranchan for any amount of time, you had to come to expect SOME unusual types of things. Besides, it's what brought her half her business! She would never survive if not for the sheer number of wackos that haunt this berg. But still...
"What do you MEAN, 'it's just gone?'" she snapped with an agitated flick of a spatula.
Nodoka Saotome sighed, and waited to answer while a large gangly thing with excessively large purple dreadlocks ambled by. "I mean it's gone, as if some ornery nighttime-wandering giant had taken a liking to Tendo-ke and took it home to show off to his friends."
Ukyo paused to think about it.
"You DID check for huge footprints, right?"
Mrs. Saotome nodded.
Ukyo muttered vexedly as she took an order from an enormously tall man with what appeared to be three nostrils, and a huge iron fist instead of a hand. In a flash, she whipped up his Noodle and Old Pastrami, and sent him to sit down next to a rowdy group of people who had huge battles over the last scraps of food, which a redhead in black almost always won.
"Well," Nodoka sighed, standing slowly, "I suppose I had better go now. I've got a number of errands to run, and an appointment with my dentist."
Ukyo nodded, snatching up her plate and whirling it through a dishwasher. "Thanks for the info, Mrs. Saotome," she said. "Maybe I'll be able to find where they all went to."
"I hope so, my dear. I'll see you soon, then."
"Bye!" Ukyo waved as Ranchan's mother made her way out of her restaurant, passing a blue, long nosed creature that made his way in and sat across from a rugged-looking man with a large blaster-like gun holstered at his side.
More and more people began to file into Ucchan's, and Ukyo's annoyance was mounting by the second. Why did Konatsu have to choose today, of all days, to use the vacation time Ukyo had given him? After all, he usually didn't know what the word 'relaxation' MEANT, much less go off for a week of it. She wanted to go ask Cologne if she knew anything about this. It wouldn't surprise Ukyo at all.
And why didn't somebody tell her earlier that Tendo-ke and everyone in it had gone missing? She could have arranged for a substitute cook, or closed shop, or--
Her attention was caught by a cheery-looking man with a black, spiky hair style, dressed entirely in orange and blue who was waving his hand frantically at her.
"Excuse me! Miss? Could we have more please? We're all still really hungry!" He gestured to the two men beside him, a sour-faced older man with spikes that went almost straight up and who looked like he glared at everything, and a younger smiling man that looked a lot like the man in orange.
Ukyo forced a smile. "Sure thing, sugar. One second." With an angry flare of her aura, she produced their seventeenth pan of super-large Anything-Goes okonomiyaki in record time, and sent it flying across the room the three of them.
After a moment of slight surprise, the men went at it. In another few seconds, it was gone.
"More please!" the man called again.
"Yeah, that was really tasty!" the younger man added.
It was all too much for Ukyo. With a battle cry and a leap, she was suddenly right beside the three men, two of whom cowered away from her and one just eyed her warily.
"All right!" Ukyo snarled, grabbing the man in the orange gi and putting her face close to his. "Do you know how to cook at all?"
"W-well, yeah, a little bit, but--"
"GOOD!" She hauled him to his feet, dragged him across the room, pushed him behind the counter, and in one smooth motion took off her apron and three of her mini-spatulas and whipped them onto him.
"Good luck!" she told him stoutly, clapping him on the shoulder--and winced as she did, because it felt as if it were made of iron. Shrugging, she made her way swiftly out of her restaurant, her aura still lighting the air around her.
Son Goku blinked and looked down at himself, wondering what had just happened.
"Come ON, Kakarot," Vegeta snapped. "Stop admiring your new dress and start cooking!"
"But--"
"No buts! I'm hungry, you clown!"
"Okay, okay, jeez! Now... how do I start this thing?"
"Ah... you pour the batter, Dad."
"Oh! Right!"
***
The shiny wisps of a small rain cloud flickered in the afternoon sun like so many evil-looking tentacles, reaching down out of the Italian sky above the Coliseum. Anyone who came late to the gladiator battles that day would have looked down on the arena only to find half the Roman legions lying in ruins, and in a lot of pain, too. Then, the wise citizen would quite promptly leave the scene, sure that whatever god had thrown a temper-tantrum here was best left alone.
The slightly less wise ones would have creeped closer for a better look, and would have discovered that somebody had gone and built houses on the arena floor since yesterday. They would then realize that something very wrong was afoot, and promptly run for their lives.
Even further down the brain-trust scale, some would wander down into the bottom of the Coliseum and realize that the architecture wasn't Roman at all, but was almost... oriental. They would wander up to the house--stepping over soldiers and gladiators alike--and try to peak into the windows, but still keep their distance.
The village idiot opened the door and walked right in. Thirty seconds later, the spectators had the chance to see the poor dumb jackass be ejected into the air, quickly reaching what is know in a time and place miles and years away as Lower Earth Orbit.
There was scattered applause. Galtolimus had not been a well-liked man.
Inside the main building of Tendo-ke, people were kicking back and relaxing for a bit--that is, everyone but Soun Tendo and Genma Saotome, who were valiantly trying to untangle themselves from the knots they'd been tied into.
Ranma and Akane had woken up grumpy.
But everyone else was trying to take a break, and nothing especially weird was going on. Then the front door banged open. "That's MR. Weird to you, author," the midget himself grumbled, glaring around at the ceiling. Ranma sat up to look at him, and noticed with some satisfaction that the little man was once again looking decidedly pale and rumpled, with dark circles around his eyes.
"Bad morning, little man?" he sneered. "Oh, the poor midget isn't feeling so good, is he?"
Mr. Weird said a dirty word.
Ranma said one back.
Mr. Weird described quite graphically what exactly he thought of Ranma, using an astounding number of four-letter words.
Ranma retorted by telling a number of crippling, maiming, really nasty, and overall painful things he would do to Weird if he ever got the chance.
Weird replied by bluntly pointing out and describing Ranma's flaws, which ran from everything to his ego to the color of his eyes to his disrespect for the fine cuisine of Cheese-Whiz and Spam. After calling Weird a number of names that made even Nabiki wince, Ranma demanded to know what exactly Spam was. Weird refused to tell, and instead called Ranma something unrepeatable and blew a raspberry at him.
After that, things just kinda went downhill, and they eventually degenerated into shouting "MIDGET!" and "GIRL-BOY!" over and over. It was about then that Akane's patience "went out," rather in the same way a nuclear bomb "makes its presence known" or a particularly angry Super Saiyan "says hello."
When the dust cleared, Akane was panting for breath, Ranma was looking pretty uncomfortable, and Mr. Weird appeared to be desperately clinging to life. And, because of the quick thinking of the family who knew Akane's temper well, the room's furniture had been safely moved out into the hallway.
"Finally," Akane huffed, swaying slightly. "You shut up."
Looking far worse for wear then he had just a few moments ago, Who W. Weird struggled to his feet, his face beat, er, beet red and his nostrils flaring. "Alright!" he thundered, trying to pull the desecrated remains of his hat down lower over his forehead, "That takes the straw! I'll make sure you regret doing that, stupid girl!"
Abruptly, he began to skip furiously in a circle, whistling "If I Only Had a Brain" and blowing bubbles from a long stick that had PROPERTY OF MICHEAL JACKSON engraved in silver on one side. He stopped skipping suddenly, and then blew a particularly large bubble at Akane, which hovered a moment in front of her nose, then popped with a sound like somebody had stepped on a yak.
Akane blinked and sneezed, trying to rub whatever-it-was out of her eyes. Then, as she removed her hand to glare down at the little man, her skirt stirred as if it were in a gentle wind. After a moment, while everyone watched it curiously, it started trying to take off into the air on its own.
Whipping her hands down and holding it to her knees, Akane shouted "You're nothing but another perverted old--"
Mr. Weird laughed. "Wait. Not finished yet, girl."
Akane opened her mouth as if to reply, but suddenly there was a blur in the air around her, and Ranma watched slack-jawed as she started to fall.
Now, normally, Akane seems to be falling a lot. Thrown from a cliff by a kidnapper, knocked off her feet by an errant ki-blast, carried along for a ride in a massive mid-air battle that totally destroyed a mountain--it goes on. And every single time, Ranma was there to catch her when she needed him most, like a pigtailed guardian angel.
The problem was, she was falling in the wrong direction.
Akane Tendo hit the ceiling with a startled grunt, her skirt and hair hanging down obediently to the normal laws of gravity, but the rest of her adamantly refusing to be law-abiding molecules. With a muffled scream, she pulled her skirt down over her again, and looked down--or is that up?--at Ranma and her father.
"Get me down!" she said desperately, waving her manacled hand down at Ranma.
Ranma, his hand already pulled up into the air, dubiously took hold of the chain and tugged on it. With a startled yelp, Akane shot upward--er, downward and turned herself upright, grabbing hard onto Ranma's shoulders and pressing close to him. Ranma suddenly felt very light.
After a moment, though, Akane's face started to turn red. Ranma blushed.
"What?" he tried to snap, but it came out as almost a whine.
Akane looked up at him dizzily. "All the bloods starting to rush to my head."
He blinked. "Oh..."
With a sigh, Akane let go of him and fell to the ceiling, this time landing on her feet with a soft tap. Looking up, er, down at everyone, she tied her skirt around herself and glared at Mr. Weird.
"Okay!" she snapped, moving her flying hair out of her face, "What is it gonna take to get me down?"
Weird smirked. "You have to say you're sorry."
Akane shrugged. "Okay, I'm sorry. Can I get down now?"
"Mmm... no."
Akane took a deep, calming breath. "And why not?" she grated out.
"Because I want you to think about what you've done."
"For how long?"
The little man positively grinned, shaking a finger at her. "Oh, no more than a week or so, I suppose." He turned on his heel and started heading for the door, a merry skip in his stride again. "Well, I'll be seeing you tomorrow, then!" he said over his shoulder.
Suddenly, Ranma and Mr. Tendo loomed over the midget, complete with black shrouds and all white glowing eyes and teeth that looked like they had better be kept away from children.
"And just where do you think you're going?" Tendo rumbled, toting a large and nasty looking bladed staff over one shoulder. Ranma nodded menacingly, cracking his knuckles and casually bending a crowbar into a pretzel.
Weird grinned amiably, but nonetheless backed away. "Heh heh... Ah, don't worry, boys... only temporary, after all... wouldn't want any unpleasantness, now would we?"
The looks Ranma and Soun gave the little man said quite a large amount of Unpleasantness was impending, and had much to do with the very painful things Ranma had mentioned earlier, along with throwing him in the Spring of Drowned Man Passing Golfball-Sized Kidney Stone and a number of other quite Unpleasant things.
Eyes darting, Weird whipped out a small silver box, and flipped the top open with a series of strange noises. "Beam me up, Drooly!" he squeaked, and he shimmered briefly in a nice shade of chartreuse, and then was gone.
Ranma and Mr. Tendo blinked, totally ruining the "looming menace" effect. Nabiki sighed.
"I'll go get you some pants, okay Sis?"
"Um, yeah. Thanks, Nabiki."
***
Ah, Wednesday! Also called the Hump Day (no jokes, please), Wednesday is the day of the week where you look back on what you've done in the first half of the week, considering your triumphs and failures, the joy and sadness, the good and the bad.
Unfortunately for Ranma, it looked as though the Bad had the Good in a sleeper-hold, and was repeatedly pounding one of its knees into the kidneys.
Ranma slowly opened his eyes, and instinctively cowered away before he remember that Akane was SUPPOSED to be on the ceiling. They had had to set up a sort of makeshift bunk-bed last night so that they could both be able to lie down. It still left his hand hanging in the air, though.
He shook his chained hand, trying to force blood into his arm and gently wake Akane at the same time. She snorted and muttered, rolling over fiercely. Ranma was thrown off-balance and fell off the "bunk," yanking both of them up and down for a moment.
"What is it?" Akane said groggily, rubbing her eyes.
"We'd better check where we are," Ranma told her. "I ain't sittin' around here waiting for some huge green demon thing ta' spring in on us."
Akane sighed, standing up. "I guess you're right."
Together, they walked over to the window and gazed outside. After a moment, they looked at each other.
"Do you remember when we used to get assaulted by wacko martial artists and evil spirits?" Akane asked him.
"Yeah," Ranma said longingly, "I miss those times. So peaceful, ya know? You could just look out the window, and see the same good old quiet Nerima every morning."
"Yeah, I miss those times, too."
***
Nabiki looked decidedly ill. "You're quite sure?"
Ranma and Akane nodded. "Haven't you looked out a window?" Ranma asked.
Nabiki shook her head. "I didn't have the courage." There was a pause, while the middle Tendo girl looked at them. "You're POSITIVE?"
"Nabiki," Akane snapped, rolling her eyes, "Who ELSE goes around in different colors of spandex with funny helmets, posing and shouting their names, and then calling on huge robots that look like they'd crumple under a good sneeze to destroy a monster's base about the size of a port-a-potty?"
Nabiki Tendo sighed. "I know, but...." Her face took on a green cast. "Power Rangers?" she gasped, nauseated at the very words.
Ranma opened his mouth to reply, but a large robotic voice roared "YOU IN THERE! COME OUT AND IDENTIFY YOURSELVES!"
Ranma's eye twitched like it was trying to leave his head. He stomped over to the door, threw it open, and took one step out with his unchained arm extended.
"MOKOU TAKABISHA!"
There was a loud crash and a steely groan, like something large and built with poor metal material was being wrenched backward, and an even louder crash as said shoddy alloy impaled itself on top of a large building. As the dust settled, the sound of wild cheering could be made out somewhere in the distance.
"They'll be back," Ranma sighed, leaning against a wall. "Wake me when they finish with the speeches and the light show."
Author's notes:
Well, this one took me much longer than the others, and it kind of went on a long time before I introduced the People in Spandex, but that's just the way it goes sometimes. Next chapter will be more with Pwr Rngrs, and an unfortunate incident with a deranged donkey.
See you then,
AJ Andreason