Notes - This story has been revised from what was originally posted some months ago. The original version was a total mess that didn't make much sense if one looked at it too closely. Over the next few weeks this story is going to be edited and rewritten into a far better story. Feel free to send me comments on this or any of my stories, I always like to hear from people.
Due to the size of this there is a good chance that I will probably miss a mistake here and there. Let me know if any major one's are found. Check out my site to find out which chapters are edited and ready to be sent out.
Site - http http://shi_hanna.tripod.com
*********
Strange Days
Chapter 07
By: Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(C)2003
*********
Tired eyes flickered open and Amy winced and closed them again as the sunlight nearly blinded her, there were spots in her eyes. This is beginning to be too much of a habit, Amy thought as she slowly allowed her eyes to adjust to the bright light of the room. She'd been knocked unconscious more times in the last week than in all the times she had been in the last 20 years. She opened her eyes again and looked around the room now that she could see it, and noticed that she was in what looked like a hospital examination room. There were certain types of equipment on the walls that gave it away.
"Where the hell am I now?" Amy mumbled to herself.
"You're at Doctor Tofu's office Amy."
Amy groggily lifted her head and noticed a beat up Ranma laying a nearby bed. "Oh that was a mistake, what happened to us to put us here?"
"We were attacked by Ukyo and Shampoo, I think they were spying on us and decided that they didn't want us to have any fun together. What amazed me even more was that they were there at 2 in the morning." Ranma said as the door to the room opened.
"Good morning Ranma, Miss. Lee."
Again Amy turned her head and took in Dr. Tofu. He was wearing a dark brown smock and had on a pair of small glasses. Amy instantly remembered that this was the man that had a major crush on Kasumi and went insane in her presence. "Morning, so..." grin "what's up Doc.?"
"If Ranma hadn't insisted other wise I would have sent you to the hospital as soon as I saw you. You took a major beating from those girls."
"Exactly how bad is it?"
"Shampoo impaled you on her sword and Ukyo nearly beheaded you."
Amy shrugged and took note of her condition, her strength was way down and her power reserves were simply gone, anymore damage like that and her body would shut down for several weeks as it repaired itself. She could feel that she was absorbing small amounts of Ki right out of the air though, along with partials of light and very small amounts of Life Force energy.
She was currently paralyzed from the waist down and her aura was flickering weakly, his was definitely the worst she had been damaged in some time, how she had avoided worse was a bit of a mystery. From the sounds of things she had died or nearly died and only her quick healing ability had saved her.
Looking over at Ranma, Amy could see that he was watching her out of the corner of his eye as he lay there. There was more than a little fear in his eyes mixed with guilt and shame for the condition she was in. Amy figured he was thinking it was his fault or something like that, he didn't know about he dark surge of energy that had happened a few seconds before the fight happened. She looked over at him and smiled tiredly.
"Don't worry Ranma, remember when I first came here and the kind of damage I had then? It's just a little slower this time because I have so little energy left, in a day or two, if I am allowed to rest properly, I should be fine."
"Indeed, if I hadn't watched as your slit throat healed itself before my eyes I would have never believed what Ranma said." Dr. Tofu said.
"I...I...w-was w-w-w-orried about y-you Amy, I thought you were dead when I found you covered in all that blood." A look of anger registered on his face as he recalled the scene. "Shampoo was just pulling her sword out and Ukyo was wiping the blood off of her battle spatula, both of them had this satisfied look in their eyes that was almost to much to believe. I have never before hit a girl in anger, but those two, I punched both of them. I did it at Amaguriken speeds, hundreds of times before I was able to control myself." Ranma growled out and looked at his hands sadly.
"I'm sorry Ranma, I never thought they would go that far." Amy said quietly.
"I wanted to hurt them..."
"Ranma, no...this is my fault." Amy said sadly and lay back down.
"What?! After what they did to you and you say it is your fault?" Ranma yelled.
"You know what I have been fighting again and why I was trying to bring a bit of fun and pleasure into the world, I told you what my presence will do the longer that I'm here."
"What?" Ranma was now confused.
"I told you when I came here that my very presence would cause this dimension to shift into a darker path, this is the exact type of thing I was talking about. They both are blameless in this, it is my fault for bringing this darkness down on your heads. I must stop it before it is too late."
"Bullshit!" Ranma cursed.
Amy giggled and sighed, "Doctor where exactly did Ukyo and Shampoo go?"
"I have them in another room here in the clinic, why?"
"Have you read their auras?"
"Yes..."
"They have little streamers of black floating around in the aura energy don't they?"
"Those little steamers are what I have been trying to prevent since I arrived here, they are signs of the evil influence in this world growing more powerful in those poor girls. Do either of you think that under normal circumstances those girls would have done something like this? I don't, not even Shampoo would do some thing like this unless she was forced to. Even then she would have done a better job of killing me. She is an Amazon after all"
"That doesn't count Amy, she nearly killed you. She would have if you had been a normal human." Ranma said.
"True, but it is notoriously hard to kill me, I always come back from the grave be it a day or several years. Don't hold being under evil influences against them Ranma, they had no control over their actions while that surge was happening. Give them a bit of comfort and forgive them the help they are going to need when they wake up. By staying angry you are accepting those same evil influences into your aura. You have to make sure it doesn't happen at all."
Tofu nodded and adjusted his glasses. "She's right Ranma, I could see the dark aspects manifesting in their auras as I examined them a little while ago, calm down and forgive them. This is battle of the mind Ranma and they let their emotions rule them instead of their minds and if you lose your temper, you will join them. You'll probably hurt some one you care about if you do."
Ranma growled as she rolled off his bed and stomped out of the room. Dr. Tofu sighed and turned back to Amy. "You say this your fault?"
"In a round about way, I had no control over what happened, but it started because of what happened to me."
"Don't worry about it then."
Amy shrugged, "Let him calm down or work off his anger Doctor. I will heal, but I need to find a proper energy source that I can use to empower myself. It seems the type of energy I'm using now just isn't working."
"Energy source?"
"Yeah, my body runs like an engine usually and has to have a powerful source of energy to run properly. Most of the energy that I have left right now is barely enough to keep me alive. I'm healing slowly, it will just take time.
*********
The Time Gate swirled with power as Sailor Pluto watched the events of the last 24 hours play out. She watched Amy conning Rei out of her scroll, the spell, the monsters, the new enemy, and her nearly fatal fight at the Tendo dojo. She was an anomaly. Pluto knew that for certain now and she needed to make sure things weren't destroyed before the world was destroyed. Surprisingly there were a few minutes the night before that Pluto wasn't able to observe and that was something that had never happened before.
She had a Time Line to protect and that meant that she be forced to make some changes to protect the future that she had been trying to achieve for thousands of years. Stepping back fro the gate she concentrated and brought her staff to bare, energy formed around the Time Staff as it began to hum loudly and she smirked as she fired off a shot of deadly temporal energy directly into the scene the Time Gate was showing. She smiled as she saw the effects, exactly what she had wanted and giggled at the irony of the situation.
Though she briefly wondered why something in the back of her mind was raging at her for breaking some rule. She shrugged it off, as an Outer Planet soldier she sometimes had to take actions that went against her own personal beliefs. The ends justify the means always brought about what she wanted.
*********
The feeling came upon her like a wave and Amy's head whipped around in its direction and she gasped in shock. She was feeling the most horrid and evil presence she had ever felt in her long existence, even worse, it was familiar in some way she couldn't place. It was still to far away to confirm, but she knew it was coming straight for her. This is what she had prayed would never happen and quietly wanted since she came here.
Stopping the random bits of darkness from entering the world was relatively simple, all she had to do was just generate more passion and happiness to counter balance it. Now it seemed that the very forces she wanted to keep from entering this dimension had threatened her work, those evils that the Scouts were always dealing with were a good example.
There was a problem though and Amy was just beginning to understand it, the Scouts usually had Sailor Pluto at the Time Gate calling the shots or moving them around with the precision of a chess master playing 5 games at once and always winning. Her crossing over had caused major havoc with the time stream and Pluto was missing.
Amy had tried to look for her by following the arrogant Outer Scouts and listened in on their conversations and trying to be sneaky. After awhile she had overheard them talking about the ancient Pluto, she had been missing for some time now and no one knew how to contact her.
Amy's highly honed senses were able to pick up the subtle shift in the flow of time if she looked for it, she just had to concentrate. Her presence was doing even more damage to this world than it normally would have. She was responsible for the shift in events and situations and had to find some way to make amends before she was erased from existence to correct things.
Never had she expected things to be this bad, but Bellandy had hinted about the night before and she had missed it completely. Now she had to deal with this problem, she reached her senses out and touched Shampoo and Ukyo, Amy was not surprised that she could feel the darkness that had affected them slowly vanishing even as she lay there recovering from her recent injuries.
The thing, leaching it from all the living things around them, was absorbing the darkness. This had the side effect of making things a little more normal among the people around her, but would make this thing monstrously powerful. The danger would be grave, the upcoming fight would be glorious win or lose, and she wondered again what was to come.
Groaning in pain as the feeling in her legs finally returned, Amy sat up and rolled off the table in Dr. Tofu's clinic. She was naked except for the bandages which seemed to cover her up good enough for modesty's sake. She searched around for a few minutes until she found her pants and a t-shirt.
Staggering to the door, Amy opened it up and lurched down the hall and out into the back yard of the clinic, she needed some time to herself and several hours of meditation would be just what she needed.. The yard was a little small and stood between two larger buildings and was connected to a small park beside the canal, only a tall fence and a door separated them.
The ground was covered in a finely trimmed grass and looked healthy enough to be able to help her. Moving to the center of the yard Amy sat down and groaned in pain, getting into a lotus position she took a deep, painful, breath and went into a trance. Her body was in to much danger and with a danger like the one she sensed coming she needed to be in top form.
So she had no choice, this needed to be done and it was only 20 years, barely a drop in the bucket for her. She quickly found her center and sent her mind deep into her soul, even further than Cologne had ever reached in three hundred years.
An aura of pure red power enveloped her as she delved deep into her being calling on her two friends Midory and Aho for help. They agreed and complained at her for taking so long about it in the first place. Amy just sighed and delved deeper into her immortal soul and gathered in the Solar energies around her and added them into the aura increasing it's size by several times. Then it was done and she sighed in relief as her powers began to increase exponentially, what wounds she had left began to heal at a visible rate and her strength swiftly returned to the levels she hadn't felt since she was kidnapped a few weeks ago.
That was it, she was now synqued to this reality for the next 20 years. She stood up and stretched out the kinks in her overly punished body. In the clinic behind her several people watched her quietly, some in fear and others in awe at the amount of power the girl was displaying. Ranma, who was watching her from the roof, was shocked that anyone could hold that much power and not die, he had to find out how she was doing it and add it into his own skills. He had that technique his father had just taught him, but it was very dangerous to use and even harder to practice within city limits.
Cologne and Shampoo watched Amy from the clinic and grew even more worried. Cologne could feel the power flowing off the girl and knew that Shampoo would never be able to take her now. How could she when her opponent could hold enough power to level an entire mountain chain or fire off a blast that could carve letters in the lunar surface? Shampoo was speechless and in shock, the obstacle between her and Ranma was a monster of incredible strength and power. She knew that there was no way of beating her in a fair match now, but she was an Amazon and that meant she could do it by other routs. She sighed and turned to her Elder and silently asked for permission to unlock certain techniques she had been taught.
Ukyo was oblivious to all this, she was crying, her eyes were red and she felt as if she had lost the center of her life. Ranma had told her what she did and simply asked why she had tried to kill his friend. His eyes had shown more anger and hatred toward her than she had ever seen in her life, even when she had pushed him to the brink when she tried to kill him 2 years ago. He hadn't yelled at her, he had just looked at her with that hurt and pain in his eyes and she knew she had gone too far and done something she would regret for the rest of her life. Ranma had left her there, begging for forgiveness. She had lost him.
**********
Ranma's life had been getting crazy lately and he knew it, he was up on top of the clinic looking up at the sky. He had just gotten done talking to Ukyo and felt bad about how he had treated her, but she had tried to kill one of his friends and enjoyed doing it. He had seen her face as she wiped the blood of her giant spatula. He had never seen something so horrifying in his life, his friend had killed and liked it.
Just the image of her smile made him shudder as he lay there, but Amy had said that they were not in complete control of their minds. Amy was a lost a bit of a problem for him, he was liking her better and better as the days passed. She treated him with respect and let him make his own decisions and yet let him know when he made a mistake and what he had done wrong.
If she wanted to be friends he could live with that, but because of his family honor they could never be married if such a thing ever even came up. Over the last few weeks she had been trying to get Kanatsu to pursue Ukyo and they were working out fine, though Ukyo had refused to give up on Ranma. Ranma had never get over the cross dressing nature of either one of them.
It was just too weird. Now things were getting even stranger, there was a new girl in his life and she admitted that the curse didn't bother her in the slightest. Everyone else had stated that they would prefer him without the curse and pretty much ignored it, not Amy though. She took him out to have fun, they played together and actually laughed.
Why couldn't Akane ever do that, Ranma wondered, it would have helped things between them over the last 3 years. Instead it had turned into a ritual of some kind, wake up and get malleted, go to school and get splashed by the old lady and her perfect aim, then get ambushed by Shampoo, glomped and slammed head first into the concrete by Akane's mallet, etc...
How in the world was he supposed to react to that, at first Akane had been the first human being to ever show him even the slightest amount of kindness, then because of the dammed curse all her friendliness had turned to hate and no mater how many times he saved her, protected her or even attempted to be nice to her, it all ended in a ride on Mr. Mallet!
Ranma's aura sparkled into existence as he considered the way things have been going. Then there was this other problem that Amy was trying to stop, this darkness. Until she mentioned it he hadn't mentioned it, but now that he knew about it he could feel it in the air.
He could tell that something was out of place, not with his body, but with the fundamental way things always felt. It hadn't been like this a few minutes ago, there was something in the air, almost like it was electrified. What in the world was going on, he thought to himself? Ranma headed outside, his injuries forgotten as he unconsciously moved along with a cat like grace granted to him from his Neko-ken training.
There was crackling of dark energy in the sky above the clinic, he watched silently as it flared and fired at him from the clouds. It kind of reminded him of the day he had met Amy for the first time, but on a much lower power scale. He tried to dodge, but it adjusted itself in mid-air and hit him in the chest to explode. He was hurled back through the clinic, shattered several walls with his body, and landed in the back yard near where Amy was just getting up to see what was going on.
She came running over to him and dug him out of the crater he had created. Smoke was wafting off him as she cleared the dirt away, but there was no visible signs of damage to his body. It seemed that only his clothing had been damaged. She couldn't help but blush at the sight of a very defined man in her arms. She picked him up and formed a shield of power around them as she carried him back into the clinic. Dr. Tofu dragged a stretcher out so that she could lay Ranma out on it. Dr. Tofu had said something, but she was so worried about Ranma that she didn't even listen to him.
Dr. Tofu waited patiently for Amy to drop her shield, the look of pain on her face was a bit of a shock to him, but when it came to Ranma he had learned to expect it. The boy had a talent for attracting girls unlike anyone he had ever met. His patients paid off as Amy powered down and looked around the room, his hand lashed out and hit Amy's sleep point.
She collapsed into his arms and he carried her back into the clinic and over to a nearby bed. He felt a little guilty for the look of betrayal on her face but Ranma didn't need anyone hovering over him while he rested. Turning back to Ranma he ignored the damage to his clinic. I wasn't the first time it had happened and wouldn't be the last, though Nabiki was going to get a call about this.
*********
Ranma's eyes fluttered open and he noticed that there was fog all over the place, it seemed to gloom all around him glow in an eerie way. He didn't know what was going on, but this was beginning to make him a little ticked off. Just how many times was his strange form of bad luck going to make his life miserable? There was a sudden noise from the gloom and he turned his head to see an older version of himself stagger out of the fog and fall drunkenly at this feet. He scrambled back at the smell of alcohol wafting off the thing that looked just like he did.
"What the hell are you supposed to be?" Ranma snapped in disgust at the sight.
His doppelganger started to laugh hysterically and pointed at him, "I-I'm you in about 3 weeks."
"Bull shit! I never drink..."
"You will! Bottoms up!" He yelled loudly and chugged down an entire pint of malt liquor.
Ranma growled, grabbed his copy and beat the crap out of it while it laughed at him the whole time. Eventually he got bored and tossed him out into the strange fog with a snort. Mere seconds later Akane walks up behind him, he is so surprised that he hugs her, and she kicks him right in the balls. "PERVERT!!"
Ranma crumples under the intense pain and glares up at her. "What are doing?!"
"How dare you treat yourself like that? Do you have any idea what he had to go through just to get here?"
"Listen tomboy..."
Akane growled and punched him in the stomach. "He was supposed to show you some stuff about your past and explain a few things to you." She screamed and produced a giant mallet. "Do you have any clue in that tiny brain of yours just what has happened to you!?"
"Groan..."
"Amy Lee, remember her? She is from another dimension and has destabilized ours with her very presence. She is causing a thousand times more chaos than you ever could in a hundred years, but instead of bringing out super powered martial arts and fiancée's, her presence has created tons of the stuff that people call evil or darkness. She had been trying to contain it and would have easily done so with that spell she cast yesterday if the forces of darkness hadn't stepped in and fed off it like leaches!" Akane growled again as she raised her mallet high, thunder rumbled in the background, "and - WHAM - you -WHAM- are -WHAM-not -WHAM-HELPING HER!" WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM!!!!
Ranma twitched.
"Well?!" She snarled.
"Come on toots, he is as dense as a stone you know." A voice said from the fog. "His father raised him to be a living meal ticket. One that wouldn't question what was said to him and would always provide for him. Look how often the poor guy was sold for food." This was another version of Ranma, he looked to be about 19 or 20 and was wearing a pure black version of his regular clothing, and it was edged in silver studs.
"I don't care, I am tired of him always running away from his problems..."
"Hey!" Ranma yelled from the ground as he sat up.
"He does it unconsciously girl." Said Dark Ranma.
Akane held up her mallet and glared at the Dark Ranma, "Do you want some of this too you jerk?"
He retreated a little. "N-now see her girl, we have a job to do before they catch on to us you know."
"Just because we were forced to steal this cheesy idea..."
"Like we had much choice..."
"Freak!"
"Flat chested!"
"Hermorphadite!"
Ranma seeing how things were going between the two decided it would be best if he left the area, he recognized the signs after all, he started to crawl away, but Akane noticed and her giant mallet launched him into the stratosphere like an oversized baseball. "Come back here you BAKA!" She screamed and ran after him.
The Dark Ranma sweatdropped and shook his head.
**********
To Be Continued...
Due to the size of this there is a good chance that I will probably miss a mistake here and there. Let me know if any major one's are found. Check out my site to find out which chapters are edited and ready to be sent out.
Site - http http://shi_hanna.tripod.com
*********
Strange Days
Chapter 07
By: Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(C)2003
*********
Tired eyes flickered open and Amy winced and closed them again as the sunlight nearly blinded her, there were spots in her eyes. This is beginning to be too much of a habit, Amy thought as she slowly allowed her eyes to adjust to the bright light of the room. She'd been knocked unconscious more times in the last week than in all the times she had been in the last 20 years. She opened her eyes again and looked around the room now that she could see it, and noticed that she was in what looked like a hospital examination room. There were certain types of equipment on the walls that gave it away.
"Where the hell am I now?" Amy mumbled to herself.
"You're at Doctor Tofu's office Amy."
Amy groggily lifted her head and noticed a beat up Ranma laying a nearby bed. "Oh that was a mistake, what happened to us to put us here?"
"We were attacked by Ukyo and Shampoo, I think they were spying on us and decided that they didn't want us to have any fun together. What amazed me even more was that they were there at 2 in the morning." Ranma said as the door to the room opened.
"Good morning Ranma, Miss. Lee."
Again Amy turned her head and took in Dr. Tofu. He was wearing a dark brown smock and had on a pair of small glasses. Amy instantly remembered that this was the man that had a major crush on Kasumi and went insane in her presence. "Morning, so..." grin "what's up Doc.?"
"If Ranma hadn't insisted other wise I would have sent you to the hospital as soon as I saw you. You took a major beating from those girls."
"Exactly how bad is it?"
"Shampoo impaled you on her sword and Ukyo nearly beheaded you."
Amy shrugged and took note of her condition, her strength was way down and her power reserves were simply gone, anymore damage like that and her body would shut down for several weeks as it repaired itself. She could feel that she was absorbing small amounts of Ki right out of the air though, along with partials of light and very small amounts of Life Force energy.
She was currently paralyzed from the waist down and her aura was flickering weakly, his was definitely the worst she had been damaged in some time, how she had avoided worse was a bit of a mystery. From the sounds of things she had died or nearly died and only her quick healing ability had saved her.
Looking over at Ranma, Amy could see that he was watching her out of the corner of his eye as he lay there. There was more than a little fear in his eyes mixed with guilt and shame for the condition she was in. Amy figured he was thinking it was his fault or something like that, he didn't know about he dark surge of energy that had happened a few seconds before the fight happened. She looked over at him and smiled tiredly.
"Don't worry Ranma, remember when I first came here and the kind of damage I had then? It's just a little slower this time because I have so little energy left, in a day or two, if I am allowed to rest properly, I should be fine."
"Indeed, if I hadn't watched as your slit throat healed itself before my eyes I would have never believed what Ranma said." Dr. Tofu said.
"I...I...w-was w-w-w-orried about y-you Amy, I thought you were dead when I found you covered in all that blood." A look of anger registered on his face as he recalled the scene. "Shampoo was just pulling her sword out and Ukyo was wiping the blood off of her battle spatula, both of them had this satisfied look in their eyes that was almost to much to believe. I have never before hit a girl in anger, but those two, I punched both of them. I did it at Amaguriken speeds, hundreds of times before I was able to control myself." Ranma growled out and looked at his hands sadly.
"I'm sorry Ranma, I never thought they would go that far." Amy said quietly.
"I wanted to hurt them..."
"Ranma, no...this is my fault." Amy said sadly and lay back down.
"What?! After what they did to you and you say it is your fault?" Ranma yelled.
"You know what I have been fighting again and why I was trying to bring a bit of fun and pleasure into the world, I told you what my presence will do the longer that I'm here."
"What?" Ranma was now confused.
"I told you when I came here that my very presence would cause this dimension to shift into a darker path, this is the exact type of thing I was talking about. They both are blameless in this, it is my fault for bringing this darkness down on your heads. I must stop it before it is too late."
"Bullshit!" Ranma cursed.
Amy giggled and sighed, "Doctor where exactly did Ukyo and Shampoo go?"
"I have them in another room here in the clinic, why?"
"Have you read their auras?"
"Yes..."
"They have little streamers of black floating around in the aura energy don't they?"
"Those little steamers are what I have been trying to prevent since I arrived here, they are signs of the evil influence in this world growing more powerful in those poor girls. Do either of you think that under normal circumstances those girls would have done something like this? I don't, not even Shampoo would do some thing like this unless she was forced to. Even then she would have done a better job of killing me. She is an Amazon after all"
"That doesn't count Amy, she nearly killed you. She would have if you had been a normal human." Ranma said.
"True, but it is notoriously hard to kill me, I always come back from the grave be it a day or several years. Don't hold being under evil influences against them Ranma, they had no control over their actions while that surge was happening. Give them a bit of comfort and forgive them the help they are going to need when they wake up. By staying angry you are accepting those same evil influences into your aura. You have to make sure it doesn't happen at all."
Tofu nodded and adjusted his glasses. "She's right Ranma, I could see the dark aspects manifesting in their auras as I examined them a little while ago, calm down and forgive them. This is battle of the mind Ranma and they let their emotions rule them instead of their minds and if you lose your temper, you will join them. You'll probably hurt some one you care about if you do."
Ranma growled as she rolled off his bed and stomped out of the room. Dr. Tofu sighed and turned back to Amy. "You say this your fault?"
"In a round about way, I had no control over what happened, but it started because of what happened to me."
"Don't worry about it then."
Amy shrugged, "Let him calm down or work off his anger Doctor. I will heal, but I need to find a proper energy source that I can use to empower myself. It seems the type of energy I'm using now just isn't working."
"Energy source?"
"Yeah, my body runs like an engine usually and has to have a powerful source of energy to run properly. Most of the energy that I have left right now is barely enough to keep me alive. I'm healing slowly, it will just take time.
*********
The Time Gate swirled with power as Sailor Pluto watched the events of the last 24 hours play out. She watched Amy conning Rei out of her scroll, the spell, the monsters, the new enemy, and her nearly fatal fight at the Tendo dojo. She was an anomaly. Pluto knew that for certain now and she needed to make sure things weren't destroyed before the world was destroyed. Surprisingly there were a few minutes the night before that Pluto wasn't able to observe and that was something that had never happened before.
She had a Time Line to protect and that meant that she be forced to make some changes to protect the future that she had been trying to achieve for thousands of years. Stepping back fro the gate she concentrated and brought her staff to bare, energy formed around the Time Staff as it began to hum loudly and she smirked as she fired off a shot of deadly temporal energy directly into the scene the Time Gate was showing. She smiled as she saw the effects, exactly what she had wanted and giggled at the irony of the situation.
Though she briefly wondered why something in the back of her mind was raging at her for breaking some rule. She shrugged it off, as an Outer Planet soldier she sometimes had to take actions that went against her own personal beliefs. The ends justify the means always brought about what she wanted.
*********
The feeling came upon her like a wave and Amy's head whipped around in its direction and she gasped in shock. She was feeling the most horrid and evil presence she had ever felt in her long existence, even worse, it was familiar in some way she couldn't place. It was still to far away to confirm, but she knew it was coming straight for her. This is what she had prayed would never happen and quietly wanted since she came here.
Stopping the random bits of darkness from entering the world was relatively simple, all she had to do was just generate more passion and happiness to counter balance it. Now it seemed that the very forces she wanted to keep from entering this dimension had threatened her work, those evils that the Scouts were always dealing with were a good example.
There was a problem though and Amy was just beginning to understand it, the Scouts usually had Sailor Pluto at the Time Gate calling the shots or moving them around with the precision of a chess master playing 5 games at once and always winning. Her crossing over had caused major havoc with the time stream and Pluto was missing.
Amy had tried to look for her by following the arrogant Outer Scouts and listened in on their conversations and trying to be sneaky. After awhile she had overheard them talking about the ancient Pluto, she had been missing for some time now and no one knew how to contact her.
Amy's highly honed senses were able to pick up the subtle shift in the flow of time if she looked for it, she just had to concentrate. Her presence was doing even more damage to this world than it normally would have. She was responsible for the shift in events and situations and had to find some way to make amends before she was erased from existence to correct things.
Never had she expected things to be this bad, but Bellandy had hinted about the night before and she had missed it completely. Now she had to deal with this problem, she reached her senses out and touched Shampoo and Ukyo, Amy was not surprised that she could feel the darkness that had affected them slowly vanishing even as she lay there recovering from her recent injuries.
The thing, leaching it from all the living things around them, was absorbing the darkness. This had the side effect of making things a little more normal among the people around her, but would make this thing monstrously powerful. The danger would be grave, the upcoming fight would be glorious win or lose, and she wondered again what was to come.
Groaning in pain as the feeling in her legs finally returned, Amy sat up and rolled off the table in Dr. Tofu's clinic. She was naked except for the bandages which seemed to cover her up good enough for modesty's sake. She searched around for a few minutes until she found her pants and a t-shirt.
Staggering to the door, Amy opened it up and lurched down the hall and out into the back yard of the clinic, she needed some time to herself and several hours of meditation would be just what she needed.. The yard was a little small and stood between two larger buildings and was connected to a small park beside the canal, only a tall fence and a door separated them.
The ground was covered in a finely trimmed grass and looked healthy enough to be able to help her. Moving to the center of the yard Amy sat down and groaned in pain, getting into a lotus position she took a deep, painful, breath and went into a trance. Her body was in to much danger and with a danger like the one she sensed coming she needed to be in top form.
So she had no choice, this needed to be done and it was only 20 years, barely a drop in the bucket for her. She quickly found her center and sent her mind deep into her soul, even further than Cologne had ever reached in three hundred years.
An aura of pure red power enveloped her as she delved deep into her being calling on her two friends Midory and Aho for help. They agreed and complained at her for taking so long about it in the first place. Amy just sighed and delved deeper into her immortal soul and gathered in the Solar energies around her and added them into the aura increasing it's size by several times. Then it was done and she sighed in relief as her powers began to increase exponentially, what wounds she had left began to heal at a visible rate and her strength swiftly returned to the levels she hadn't felt since she was kidnapped a few weeks ago.
That was it, she was now synqued to this reality for the next 20 years. She stood up and stretched out the kinks in her overly punished body. In the clinic behind her several people watched her quietly, some in fear and others in awe at the amount of power the girl was displaying. Ranma, who was watching her from the roof, was shocked that anyone could hold that much power and not die, he had to find out how she was doing it and add it into his own skills. He had that technique his father had just taught him, but it was very dangerous to use and even harder to practice within city limits.
Cologne and Shampoo watched Amy from the clinic and grew even more worried. Cologne could feel the power flowing off the girl and knew that Shampoo would never be able to take her now. How could she when her opponent could hold enough power to level an entire mountain chain or fire off a blast that could carve letters in the lunar surface? Shampoo was speechless and in shock, the obstacle between her and Ranma was a monster of incredible strength and power. She knew that there was no way of beating her in a fair match now, but she was an Amazon and that meant she could do it by other routs. She sighed and turned to her Elder and silently asked for permission to unlock certain techniques she had been taught.
Ukyo was oblivious to all this, she was crying, her eyes were red and she felt as if she had lost the center of her life. Ranma had told her what she did and simply asked why she had tried to kill his friend. His eyes had shown more anger and hatred toward her than she had ever seen in her life, even when she had pushed him to the brink when she tried to kill him 2 years ago. He hadn't yelled at her, he had just looked at her with that hurt and pain in his eyes and she knew she had gone too far and done something she would regret for the rest of her life. Ranma had left her there, begging for forgiveness. She had lost him.
**********
Ranma's life had been getting crazy lately and he knew it, he was up on top of the clinic looking up at the sky. He had just gotten done talking to Ukyo and felt bad about how he had treated her, but she had tried to kill one of his friends and enjoyed doing it. He had seen her face as she wiped the blood of her giant spatula. He had never seen something so horrifying in his life, his friend had killed and liked it.
Just the image of her smile made him shudder as he lay there, but Amy had said that they were not in complete control of their minds. Amy was a lost a bit of a problem for him, he was liking her better and better as the days passed. She treated him with respect and let him make his own decisions and yet let him know when he made a mistake and what he had done wrong.
If she wanted to be friends he could live with that, but because of his family honor they could never be married if such a thing ever even came up. Over the last few weeks she had been trying to get Kanatsu to pursue Ukyo and they were working out fine, though Ukyo had refused to give up on Ranma. Ranma had never get over the cross dressing nature of either one of them.
It was just too weird. Now things were getting even stranger, there was a new girl in his life and she admitted that the curse didn't bother her in the slightest. Everyone else had stated that they would prefer him without the curse and pretty much ignored it, not Amy though. She took him out to have fun, they played together and actually laughed.
Why couldn't Akane ever do that, Ranma wondered, it would have helped things between them over the last 3 years. Instead it had turned into a ritual of some kind, wake up and get malleted, go to school and get splashed by the old lady and her perfect aim, then get ambushed by Shampoo, glomped and slammed head first into the concrete by Akane's mallet, etc...
How in the world was he supposed to react to that, at first Akane had been the first human being to ever show him even the slightest amount of kindness, then because of the dammed curse all her friendliness had turned to hate and no mater how many times he saved her, protected her or even attempted to be nice to her, it all ended in a ride on Mr. Mallet!
Ranma's aura sparkled into existence as he considered the way things have been going. Then there was this other problem that Amy was trying to stop, this darkness. Until she mentioned it he hadn't mentioned it, but now that he knew about it he could feel it in the air.
He could tell that something was out of place, not with his body, but with the fundamental way things always felt. It hadn't been like this a few minutes ago, there was something in the air, almost like it was electrified. What in the world was going on, he thought to himself? Ranma headed outside, his injuries forgotten as he unconsciously moved along with a cat like grace granted to him from his Neko-ken training.
There was crackling of dark energy in the sky above the clinic, he watched silently as it flared and fired at him from the clouds. It kind of reminded him of the day he had met Amy for the first time, but on a much lower power scale. He tried to dodge, but it adjusted itself in mid-air and hit him in the chest to explode. He was hurled back through the clinic, shattered several walls with his body, and landed in the back yard near where Amy was just getting up to see what was going on.
She came running over to him and dug him out of the crater he had created. Smoke was wafting off him as she cleared the dirt away, but there was no visible signs of damage to his body. It seemed that only his clothing had been damaged. She couldn't help but blush at the sight of a very defined man in her arms. She picked him up and formed a shield of power around them as she carried him back into the clinic. Dr. Tofu dragged a stretcher out so that she could lay Ranma out on it. Dr. Tofu had said something, but she was so worried about Ranma that she didn't even listen to him.
Dr. Tofu waited patiently for Amy to drop her shield, the look of pain on her face was a bit of a shock to him, but when it came to Ranma he had learned to expect it. The boy had a talent for attracting girls unlike anyone he had ever met. His patients paid off as Amy powered down and looked around the room, his hand lashed out and hit Amy's sleep point.
She collapsed into his arms and he carried her back into the clinic and over to a nearby bed. He felt a little guilty for the look of betrayal on her face but Ranma didn't need anyone hovering over him while he rested. Turning back to Ranma he ignored the damage to his clinic. I wasn't the first time it had happened and wouldn't be the last, though Nabiki was going to get a call about this.
*********
Ranma's eyes fluttered open and he noticed that there was fog all over the place, it seemed to gloom all around him glow in an eerie way. He didn't know what was going on, but this was beginning to make him a little ticked off. Just how many times was his strange form of bad luck going to make his life miserable? There was a sudden noise from the gloom and he turned his head to see an older version of himself stagger out of the fog and fall drunkenly at this feet. He scrambled back at the smell of alcohol wafting off the thing that looked just like he did.
"What the hell are you supposed to be?" Ranma snapped in disgust at the sight.
His doppelganger started to laugh hysterically and pointed at him, "I-I'm you in about 3 weeks."
"Bull shit! I never drink..."
"You will! Bottoms up!" He yelled loudly and chugged down an entire pint of malt liquor.
Ranma growled, grabbed his copy and beat the crap out of it while it laughed at him the whole time. Eventually he got bored and tossed him out into the strange fog with a snort. Mere seconds later Akane walks up behind him, he is so surprised that he hugs her, and she kicks him right in the balls. "PERVERT!!"
Ranma crumples under the intense pain and glares up at her. "What are doing?!"
"How dare you treat yourself like that? Do you have any idea what he had to go through just to get here?"
"Listen tomboy..."
Akane growled and punched him in the stomach. "He was supposed to show you some stuff about your past and explain a few things to you." She screamed and produced a giant mallet. "Do you have any clue in that tiny brain of yours just what has happened to you!?"
"Groan..."
"Amy Lee, remember her? She is from another dimension and has destabilized ours with her very presence. She is causing a thousand times more chaos than you ever could in a hundred years, but instead of bringing out super powered martial arts and fiancée's, her presence has created tons of the stuff that people call evil or darkness. She had been trying to contain it and would have easily done so with that spell she cast yesterday if the forces of darkness hadn't stepped in and fed off it like leaches!" Akane growled again as she raised her mallet high, thunder rumbled in the background, "and - WHAM - you -WHAM- are -WHAM-not -WHAM-HELPING HER!" WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM!!!!
Ranma twitched.
"Well?!" She snarled.
"Come on toots, he is as dense as a stone you know." A voice said from the fog. "His father raised him to be a living meal ticket. One that wouldn't question what was said to him and would always provide for him. Look how often the poor guy was sold for food." This was another version of Ranma, he looked to be about 19 or 20 and was wearing a pure black version of his regular clothing, and it was edged in silver studs.
"I don't care, I am tired of him always running away from his problems..."
"Hey!" Ranma yelled from the ground as he sat up.
"He does it unconsciously girl." Said Dark Ranma.
Akane held up her mallet and glared at the Dark Ranma, "Do you want some of this too you jerk?"
He retreated a little. "N-now see her girl, we have a job to do before they catch on to us you know."
"Just because we were forced to steal this cheesy idea..."
"Like we had much choice..."
"Freak!"
"Flat chested!"
"Hermorphadite!"
Ranma seeing how things were going between the two decided it would be best if he left the area, he recognized the signs after all, he started to crawl away, but Akane noticed and her giant mallet launched him into the stratosphere like an oversized baseball. "Come back here you BAKA!" She screamed and ran after him.
The Dark Ranma sweatdropped and shook his head.
**********
To Be Continued...