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Prime Attitude
Chapter 03 - Soul Fire is Born
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2002
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Grabbing his things Ranma headed downstairs and into the living room, he was surprised to see Scott talking with Xavier. They turned to look at him as he entered the room and Scott waved him over. "Ranma, something has come up and our trip might have to be postponed."
"What would that be?"
"There seems to be something odd going on in New York and I need to go and check it out."
"I was up in my room a few minutes ago and I felt something odd, I was just coming down to find one of you and tell you about it."
Professor Xavier turned in his chair. "You did? What was it like?"
"A flash of darkness or evil Ki, I've only felt something like it a once before in my life and that was against the guy that nearly killed my fiance."
"Evil Ki?" Professor Xavier said. "I was able to pick up a burst of Psychic power somewhere in New York a few seconds ago. I'm not sure, but I think someone just died and if a mutant did it then we have to stop them."
"Agreed." Scott said. "You stay here Ranma, this could get dangerous..."
Ranma huffed. "Hah, who kicked your ass in the danger room a few days ago?"
"This is a real fight Ranma, not a preprogrammed fight in a contained environment that limits one's abilities."
"Right, I kicked your ass and you're still complaining about it. You're good at that Geom...whatits stuff..."
"Geometry."
"Yeah, that stuff, but you seem to depend on those fancy moves of your way to much. You need to learn how to work around your power, it makes you way to vulnerable when you lose the ability." Ranma snapped.
"Now see here..." Scott growled, the kid was beginning to remind him just a little to much of Wolverine.
"Calm down Scott, Ranma has made it clear that he doesn't think our methods work." Professor Xavier said.
"But sir..." Scott said.
"Now Scott, Ranma has proven on several occasions that he can fight better than several of us. Take him with you, he's been cooped up on the mansion for weeks now and you have been wanting to see what he can accomplish in a real battle."
"But sir...he's..."
"Right here!" Ranma said and thumped Scott on the arm.
"Oh fine, but I still think this is a bad idea sir."
"Understood." Professor Xavier said with a nod.
Scott turned to Ranma and sighed. "I don't like this, this situation feels funny and know that it's going to end up turning dangerous."
"Don't worry about it One Eye, I can take care of myself and have fought foes that are just as strange as some of yours."
"Hey!"
Ranma smirked. "Heh."
"You've been hanging around with Wolverine to long." Scott muttered.
"He's the only one of you guys that likes to fight as much as I do." Ranma said as they entered the garage. "So which car are we taking?"
"The Jeep." Scott said and pointed to a gray Jeep.
A few minutes later they pulled out of the garage, drove off the property, and headed for New York. Ranma, nervously clutching an armrest, wondering if he should mention that he could never remember riding in a car, ever. That and the openness of the Jeep made the road flying by at blur a little hard to deal with, but decided that he needed to prove himself to Scott so he ignored it as best he could. He still had his doubts about the X-men, but that didn't bother him half as much as being abandoned in another dimension with no hope of ever finding a way home.
"So what are we going to do when we get there?"
"I'm not sure just yet, we have to find this mutant and determine just how dangerous he is."
"We already know he's dangerous, how do you plan to fight him?" Ranma asked as he tugged at the seat belt.
"Whatever is needed to stop him." Scott said.
Ranma nodded. "I still disagree with the way you guys handle things around here."
"They work Ranma, we've been doing this for years now."
"According to what I've read an seen lately your way has made things even worse for the mutants on this world."
"Ranma we save lives." Scott snapped.
"Oh I agree with you on that, but it's the way you go about it that bugs me. Beast had me read through several of your mission files, even video footage of everyone in action. You guys run around in brightly colored costumes, pose, give speeches in the middle of battle, and make yourselves perfect targets. That isn't a team, it's a circus act that has better abilities than normal people and all of you seem to get off on it in some way. Wolverine is extremely violent and has killed on several of occasions according to the stories I've heard, Bishop is a trained soldier, and the rest of you seem to need to fight the bad guys to get the job done."
"Now listen here...I don't agree with what Wolverine does..." Scott growled.
Ranma shrugged. "I call it as I see it, my old man spent a decade teaching me to be a petty thief that could handle every situation. My martial Arts skills were learned while my father tried to dislocate my arms and legs, he didn't hold back all that much and I spent more than one night covered in bruises and popped joints for just the littlest mistakes. He never broke anything because it would have wasted time that was better spent training me. Professor Xavier said you guys fight for the betterment of Mutant kind, to live in a world where humans and mutants can live together in piece. Right?"
"Right."
"Then why do you guys hide?" Ranma asked.
"We are targets Ranma, people are out there that want to kill us and we have to keep to ourselves to have the freedom to fight those mutants that are to dangerous to the normal humans. A lot of them seem to take pride in the fact that they can kill a certain number of humans without even trying. They are dangerous and if we weren't here to stop them then no one would be."
"No, if you were really fostering some kind of peace between humans and mutants then you wouldn't go about it the way you do. You save lives, but at the same time you guys don't seem to go out of your way to help normal humans, instead you ride in, blow everything up, and leave the mess for others to clean up."
"You just don't understand, that isn't how things work on this world. It's to simple, we have enemies that would take advantage of us if we stuck around, we would be blamed for all the destruction, for everything."
Ranma didn't think that would happen, but the few times he had talked to Beast about this problem he had tried to explain just why humans seemed to turn on mutants. It didn't matter if you were a good guy or not, they just seemed to turn on them for absolutely no reason. Blaming them for everything without thought or reason. Ranma kind of understood that, he had been through old villages in China where everybody that lived there seemed to worship fire and think the world was flat. It wasn't that they were stupid, it was that they were afraid of change and since the elders of the village made the rules, their old way of thinking, the fear of anything new always seemed to cloud their thinking and passed this on to the next generation.
He blinked. Where the hell was all this crap coming from? Ranma tried to remember one village that he had visited like that and couldn't think of even one. Yet the information was there in his head, like the tactics of fighting went hand in hand with information on several other things as well. His father had never taught him this stuff, so where did it come from? Shaking his head, Ranma watched out the Jeep's windows as they passed over a large bridge. He looked out over the bay as boats moved back and forth across the water. Concentrating, he seemed to have information trickling into his head from somewhere. Little facts on things, like math equations and other little odds and ends that just confused him. Even as his conversation with Scott was going through his head he was thinking of all the damage a mutant could do to a single building given the right kind of power.
Scott's optic beams were like a beam of pure force energy that could rip a building apart with ease and all he had to do was take his glasses off and open his eyes to fire him. The Ki inside Scott's body was another mystery, Ranma knew it was there, but what he was feeling was kind of disconnected from Scott in some way, as if he was pulling from an outside source like the Old Ghoul did with her Ki filled staff. He shook his head again, where the hell was all this coming from? Was this energy he was linked to starting to alter him in other ways that he didn't understand? If it was there was no way he could really fight it or prevent it from happening and he didn't like it. He growled deep in his throat
"Are you alright Ranma?" Scott asked, still a little peeved with Ranma's accusations earlier.
"Yeah, I just have a headache." He didn't want to think about it right now, so he needed to distract Scott. "The air here is horrible."
"Oh it's not that bad."
"I grew up outside cities, out on the open road moving from one place to another. I got used to fresh air, this isn't fresh air. I can actually taste it, that isn't fresh air."
"Well it's not as bad as it used to be." Scott conceded, glad for a change of subject to keep them from fighting.
"You're kidding?"
"Nope, we've been slowly fixing the air here in New York for some time now."
Ranma just shrugged and looked out the window again.
**********
They pulled up to a stop light and Scott tapped a button on the dash, a section flipped around to reveal a screen with a grid pattern on it. "This Ranma is a kind of tracker, it's connected, via a satellite, to the mansion's computer system. According to the it the thing were looking for is within a few blocks of here."
"Does it know exactly where?"
"No, we didn't get that much of a signal from the mutant, just that it was in this area. I will have to find it on my own."
"Right, just drop me somewhere along here..."
"Look in the glove compartment there." Scott said as they turned the corner.
Opening the box, Ranma found a small medallion of some kind with a black X over a red background. "What the heck is this thing?"
"Ever see Star Trek where they use those communication badges? Just like those."
"Never heard of it."
"What?"
"Star Truck. I've never heard of it before."
"Um...yeah. Okay, well set the blank side against a spot on your shirt and hold it there for a few seconds. When it flashes a couple of times it will be stuck to your shirt."
Following instructions, Ranma placed it on his shirt and wondered how the blasted thing worked. "Okay?"
"That's a temporary communicator we use when needed, just tap it and say Cyclops and I'll hear you. I have a smaller version hard wired into my visor right here and we can talk to each other even when we are several miles away from each other."
"Cool." Ranma said. At least he wouldn't have to go into this alone. When they came to a stop at the next corner, he started to hop out of the Jeep.
"I'm going to find a place to park and I'll start searching as well, call me the instant you see anything odd." Scott said. "Meet me by that ice cream store across the street in two hours if you don't find anything."
"Alright." Ranma said as he dashed to the sidewalk and ignored the glares that were directed at him from the people walking around. As he looked down the street Ranma recalled some of the Danger Room battles he'd been in lately and wondered if any of them would apply to this situation. Beast and Wolverine had run him through dozens of scenarios to test his skills, from regular fighters to Sentinels to computer generated virtual reality programs that could make up situations that even the regular equipment of the room couldn't create realistically. Those fights had been the best he'd ever fought because the computer generated people had reacted more life like than the one's the Danger Room provided and he'd even had a chance to provide Beast with an over view of his fight with Saffron, even built a program on it to practice with later on. Ranma was looking forward to fighting the winged jerk again and testing his improved skills against him.
He knew some of the most used programs in the Danger Room were based on how to fight in an area like this since most heroes and teams operated out of a city, this was their main territory and they had to be able to protect it. This situation felt different to him though and he wasn't sure why, more serious or dangerous in some way. The X-men tended to protect humanity by fighting rampaging mutants, stopping them at any cost and the Danger Room had shown him how they went about it. He wasn't sure why, but the X-men and other mutants that he had seen in action in the room tended to fight in funny ways. They didn't use proper tactics, instead they would directly confront the threat, try to talk to it, piss it off with threats, and battle it from all sides with the rest of the team. This seemed counter productive to him, how could battling every mutant you met bring about a long lasting peace?
This situation was different in some way, it had the potential to blow up into a major threat if handled in the X-men's normal way. He felt that if he could get to the thing first he might be able to stop it or get it to an unpopulated area before the real fight began, but first he had to find the thing and he wasn't having luck. It wasn't giving out that dark feeling anymore, it was muted in some way and didn't leave enough for him to follow. Ranma knew he was close though, within a block or so, but pinpointing the thing was going to be incredibly hard. This was something Ranma had never done before, he wasn't used to looking for a fight, it usually found him when he wasn't ready.
Since it was still pretty early in the day the sun was still climbing into the sky, for some reason Ranma thought hunting for a monster should be done at night. Still, doing something like this during the day would make it a little easier, or so he though as he looked down on the street again. There were people everywhere, walking around, running, playing in front of apartment buildings, in cars as they drove back and forth, even a whole plethora of taxis for as far as the eye could see. 'Yep', Ranma decided, 'doing this at night would be a lot easier than during the day. Sheesh'. Moving over to the side of the building Ranma looked over the edge to spot an old rust covered fire escape, he needed to be on the ground to find this thing so he hopped down the escape and let go of the Umisen-ken invisibility as he landed, making sure no one saw him.
"Hey look, it's our next victim."
Ranma turns around to see several kids about his own age, they were all dressed alike with similar colored clothing, jeans, t-shirts, and bandanas. Gangs, he'd dealt with his fair share of these kinds of idiots over the years, they were always good for a quick workout and to test new moves. Though he was cursing himself silently for missing them in first place, he would have to work on that, his old man would have belted him for making that kind of mistake. "Huh?"
The leader pulls this tiny switch blade out of his pocket and flicks it around a couple of times to release the blade. "Give me all your money or I'll cut those fancy clothes off your body freak boy."
Resisting the urge to laugh, Ranma turns to look at the gang and smirks. "I think it's only fair to warn you I'm a fully trained Martial Artist."
The punk snorts. "Like that will save you from all of us, now we're going to cut you up as well, and leave you for dead."
Ranma crouches down. "Bring it on, Baka."
Gangs the world over are basically the same, they don't have much skill or brains and wander around in packs of five or more. Most normal people can't fight back against them because they always attack in a group to commit one kind of crime or another, one on one they are truly pathetic. Ranma was in a hurry, but he wanted to have some fun and what better way to do that than by fighting these idiots. If he was in Japan he might have given them a bit more respect, but these guys didn't even move like fighters, they just depended on fear and their little knives to hurt others. As they closed in Ranma waited for the last possible second, when he could see the leaders eyes glinting evilly from an expected kill.
Eight blows, that was all it took to take out all seven of them. He used two blows on the leader because of the insults, as they had jumped forward he'd exploded into motion, striking with just enough power to hurt them and take them down without killing them. Two of them flew back into the wall and slid unconscious to the ground and flopped over. Three of them found out what having their faces slammed into the cement of the alley tasted like and didn't get back up. Ranma elbow smashed the sixth one an sent him flying out of the alley to land on the hood of a car parked by the curb. The leader, at almost the same time had his wrist snapped and received a head butt, Ranma tossed him after the other guy so that they both ended up on the hood of the car.
More out of habit than anything else, his father had kind of instilled it in him, Ranma stripped them of all their valuable and earned himself about four hundred dollars. He even found several packages of drugs, though he had no idea what kind they were. The old man had always told him to destroy the stuff whenever he came across it, being caught with the stuff in some parts of China was and instant death sentence, so he used his Ki to flash fry it and tossed the dust on the ground. He kept the money though, in his opinion he'd earned that and getting it back to the people they'd taken it from was impossible, considering the drugs they probably wouldn't care anyways. At least this way he wouldn't lose it all to his father's wallet and the local bars in some strange quest for the food. His father had developed some weird habits over the years and actually managed to keep the Tendo girls from finding out about half of them. Ranma was a bit surprised when the locals parted before him and gave him some congratulations about defending them from hooligans like that. He just nodded and stuffed the money in his pocket as he walked off with a wave, maybe this place wasn't as bad as he'd been led to believe.
He sent his senses out again, but it was just as hard to detect this thing as it was before, it was close, but just out of reach. He was about to give up and just look around randomly when he spotted something out of place, there were some nearly pitch black shadows buried in the back of an alley just up ahead and off to the side. Then he turned away and almost forgot about them an instant later, shaking his head at making that kind of mistake, he turned back and concentrated a little. The shadows, once he got close enough to them, opened up as if they had never existed in the first place. At the back of the alley was an old guy dressed like a homeless bum, but his eyes were glowing as he looked back out at him, Ranma felt himself shudder a bit. He'd found the guy alright and he looked pissed, now what was he supposed to do? He reached for the pin on his chest to call Scott when the guy moved.
He stood up and started walking out of the alley, he never stopped looking at Ranma even as he moved. With the shadows gone the normal citizens could now see the guy as he stepped out of the alley and into the path of the regular people walking along the sidewalk. Ranma wasn't someone that would just hurt someone on a whim, but when this bum reached out, almost casually, and grabbed a woman by the neck Ranma knew he had made a mistake. The bum's eyes lit up with evil delight as a dark aura appeared around the girl, she was a young blonde that had been on her way to work, she screamed as her life was sucked out of her and her body turned into a withered husk in a matter of seconds. Once she was drained the bum tossed it away without any remorse, it hit a wall and shattered into dust as if had been buried under the desert for several hundred years.
Ranma reacted without thought as he leapt forward and smashed his elbow into the bum's head to send him flying back into the alley where he landed hard. The bum had killed that girl like it was the easiest thing in the world and seemed to enjoy it, even the Phoenix people hadn't been that cold blooded to people. This thing was a killer, that was another area about the X-men that he didn't like, they were obsessed with taking the bad guy alive. A killer like this had to be stopped and playing with him just wasn't going to do. It had to be stopped, permanently, and he had ever intention of doing just that. Contacting Scott was the furthest thing from his mind, he would only have tried to stop him and if this thing lived more people were going to be killed. Turning back to the monster Ranma ignored the crowed he was drawing and flared up his Ki and growled in hatred, he would make sure this thing never got a chance to do that kind of thing again. He would destroy it just like he had Saffron, something this evil didn't deserve a chance to live. A martial artist had to protect the weak and he doubted there were very many people in this city that could take things down.
"You won't get a chance to do that again monster."
"I'm not a monster, just a mutant that likes to eat the living energy put off by the people of this city. That in turn fuels my powers, it's a good trade off don't you think, little hero." The bum said from where he was laying, his voice was several octaves to low to be a real human's voice though.
"I'll stop you from killing anyone else." Ranma growled.
The bum pulled himself to his feet and grinned at Ranma. "They are cattle, the only thing they are good for is feeding me, other than they serve no purpose and you will soon join the cow, mutants taste the best of all. HEHAHAHAHAHA!!"
"Come on jerk face, is that the best evil laugh you can do? I've heard better on a cartoon show." Ranma said as he tried to move forward, he didn't like this situation, there were to many people around for him to fight this thing effectively. They were at the edges of the alley, just standing there looking like they were watching a show, and that meant he couldn't use his large scale abilities like the Hiruu Shouten Ha.
Pointing his hand forward, the bum seemed to burst into black fire and filled the alley way around them with dark shadows. Ranma was shocked as he watched the bum's skin slowly eaten away by the black flames, so shocked that the didn't get a chance to dodge as the thing fired a three foot wide beam of black energy right into him. Ranma found himself flying across the street, over the heads of the people watching the fight, and slamming into a wall with enough force to crack the brick work. He hadn't been hit with a shot like that since the last time him and Taro had a little get together, only Ryoga had ever hit him harder.
"Well hero, what are you going to do now?!" The bum yelled.
Crawling to his feet, Ranma shook himself and rubbed his chest to see what kind of damage he might have acquired. As far as he could tell it was just a large bruise, he hadn't been expecting that and he cursed at himself for not seeing the obvious. He walked across the now empty road and talked to the crowd. "All you get out of here, that thing is way dangerous and can't stop him and protect all of you at the same time."
"Listen hero, we'll do what we want. You got that?" One of the meaner looking guys said.
"That's your choice then, watch if you want but don't blame me if you get hurt by something, this thing wants to kill all of you and I don't know why."
The guy smirked and pulled a small hand gun. "I can protect myself."
Dismissing the guy from his thoughts Ranma turned back to the bum to see that he was nothing but a large pillar of human shaped black fire now. Reaching out with his senses Ranma was amazed at the amount of Ki the guy was putting out, it was several levels above what he was currently using. The only way he saw to stop this thing was to overpower it, but if he used anymore Ki he would flare up and that wouldn't be a very good idea according to what he remembered being told about earlier. Humans and Mutants don't mix that well and can lead to lots of hate and anger from normal humans.
"Don't say I didn't warn you." Ranma said as he flared his aura up and burst into bright blue energy. "This fight could get pretty dangerous."
"Are you going to attack that thing or what?" Asked some kid from the side lines.
"Yeah sure kid, just powering up." Ranma said with a smirk as he turned to charred bum. "Hey, you got a name or do you want me to call you strange names all afternoon?"
"Call me Soul Fire."
"Alright burning shoe lace, bring it on." Ranma yelled and fired out a powerful blast of Ki even as he remembered that the power of his Ki had been increased by that strange link. He'd been so intent on the fight that he forgot that a simple blast would cause some major damage if he wasn't careful. The bright white beam of energy that fired out of his outstretched hands and slammed into Soul Fire with an explosion that shattered the ground and walls around the alley and sent Soul Fire flying back down the alley, across the street and into another alley about three blocks away. Ranma channeled a bit of Ki to his legs and flashed forward faster than he'd ever moved before, launched into a really high jump that toped out at about six stories, and seconds later landed and hit Soul Fire with a haymaker that Akane had taught him. Soul Fire screamed out a curse as his head was nearly taken off his shoulders and he was slammed into a wall with enough force to shatter it around his body.
One thing Ranma didn't realize for several seconds was that he was moving at Amaguri-ken speeds as he began to punch the thing as hard as he could. Some of the crowd had followed them to see what else was going to happen and they were there to witness it, as several hundred blows later, Soul Fire finally managed to get in a blow. It may have been a single blast of compressed energy, but it was enough to send lift Ranma off his feet and send him flying through a nearby wall and stun him for a second. Soul Fire, beaten, broken, and bleeding stood up and cracked his neck before walking over to Ranma and grabbing him by the throat without showing any pain whatsoever and lifting him off the ground. Ranma had to scream as he felt his own soul burst into fire as the monstrous thing tried to drain his own life the instant it touched him. One thing Ranma has always had in abundance is a lot of life force and with his Ki, somewhat super charged as it was, there was no way that this thing could drain him as quickly as it had that girl just a few minutes before. That was about the only thing that saved his life, because at that moment Soul Fire was blasted by several carefully placed visor blasts from Cyclops.
The bum dropped Ranma and he collapsed to the ground and groaned in pain, beams of solid red plasma firing through the air above him as Cyclops continued to push Soul fire back into a wall. Through half open eyes Ranma could tell the bum wasn't really feeling Cyclops's blasts, instead they were just forcing him back a few inches at a time. Ranma forced himself to his feet and glared at the thing for a second and let a bit more of his Ki flow through his body and flared up a little more as it soothed his damaged body and tightened his muscles. He maneuvered around behind Cyclops as he continued to pound on the guy and got into position with the bum standing beside a couple of dumpsters. Ranma was a bit surprised to see that Cyclops's eye blasts were cutting neat little holes through the solid metal of the things to strike the bum about his body and keep him off balance.
Taking a deep breath, Ranma formed a soft ball sized sphere of bright blue Ki in his hands and focused his senses on the bum. Ranma's eyes started to glow the tiniest bit blue as well as the power flowed through him and timed his attack so that it would hit just a second after one of Cyclops's optic blasts. The sphere flared and fired out of his hand, not as a ball of Ki, but as a solid beam of power that lit up the alley and kicked up the dust around him. Even being constantly hit by Cyclops's blasts, the bum saw it coming and tried to dodge it, but the beam was moving to fast and hit him right in the shoulder. The instant it hit Ranma let the beam go and watched emotionlessly as it rushed toward the bum, for a second nothing happened, but Ranma could see the energy flowing around the guys body. He waved for Cyclops to stop firing and received a glare from the guy, but he stopped and at that instant Soul Fire screamed as his body exploded with a bright blue flash.
Cyclops gaped at the sight and glanced back at Ranma in shock, in all his time on the X-men, he had rarely seen someone taken out like that. He had seen bodies, but he the good guys were supposed to take the bad guy down, not kill them like that. "What the hell did you just do?!" He yelled.
"I watched this guy kill a girl right before my eyes just before you showed up, sucked all the energy out of her body and tossed the corpse away like a piece of trash that had no further use. The body turned to dust and ashes when it hit a wall, this guy was to dangerous to let live. It was worse than Saffron and that guy at least had his honor to keep him from causing to much damage."
"You killed him!" Scott yelled.
Ranma sighed and shrugged. "Yes, I did."
"You don't kill! You never kill unless it's just you or him, there were still option we could have taken!" Scott yelled in Ranma's face.
Scowling, Ranma turned his still glowing eyes on Scott. "A monster like that had his chance to live the first time we looked at each other and he made his choice."
Scott glanced back at the charred stain where the bum had been before making up his mind about something. When he turned back to Ranma, he wasn't there any more, but walking back down the alley where about a hundred gawkers had been watching the scene. They looked a little shocked too, but most of them were giving Ranma a look of respect, a little fear, and in some instances they seemed to agree with Ranma. Cyclops also noticed that none of them seemed to even see him, it was like they didn't care that he was there at all. There was no screams about mutants, no death threats, nothing. Ranma seemed to have them held in some kind of aura as he moved among them checking to see if anyone had been hurt by the fight in any way. When they got back to the mansion he would have to have a talk with the professor about this. Then he noticed some police officers at the other end of the alley sitting on the hoods of their cars waiting for something.
"Come on Ranma, it's time to leave." Scott yelled.
Patting a little girl on the head he turned and waved to the crowd as Scott started off down the street. Ranma wasn't about to admit that he was a bit sad that he had killed the bum, that blast should have been enough to seriously injure him, but the instant he had fired the thing had increased in strength by quite a bit and ended up killing the guy. He wasn't about to admit that it had been an accident though, better to let Scott think what he wanted than to admit to anything like that. A few minutes later they reached his jeep, hopped in, and drove out of the city. They didn't talk during the trip, Ranma didn't want to and it was obvious that Scott was still pissed off at him over what he had done.
**********
The garage door opened as they pulled into the garage and after coming to a stop and putting the jeep in park Scott jumped out and slammed the door as he stalked into the mansion. With a snort at the way the guy was acting Ranma got out and followed him a few seconds later, but decided to head to the kitchen and get something to drink before heading up to his room. He saw Scott heading down into the lower levels of the mansion and Ranma knew that he was looking for Xavier to tell him what had happened. After getting some water to drink he headed out into the front room and saw that Logan and Rogue were waiting for him. He walked on over and finished off the last bit of his water. "Hey guys, what's up?
"What happened over there, kid?" Logan asked, though Rogue was giving him a hard glare. So Ranma figured they already knew what had happened.
"I took the guy down." He said with a shrug, killing a murder didn't exactly fill
him with to much guilt over his death.
"You killed him? We DON'T DO THAT!" Rogue yelled.
Ranma glared at them for a second and shrugged. "I don't understand why not, it was an accident, I'll admit that, but I'm not going to feel guilty about it. The guy killed a woman right in front of me, sucked the life right out of her and tossed the body to the side like an old shoe. It disintegrated into ashes. I had to stop the guy."
"He killed someone?" Logan asked with a glare.
Ranma nodded.
"Then you did the right thing." Logan said with a shrug. "I'm going to go and finish watching my show and drink some beer."
"We don't' kill Ranma." Rogue said.
To Ranma it sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than him. "Rogue, I will never understand this whole aspect of your team. You take on horrors and monsters right of the movies and you are telling me that you think leaving something that has killed entire cities is a good thing?"
"We have to set an example." Rogue snapped. This was a question she could handle.
Ranma snorted. "Yeah right, maybe if you could have taken one of these guys down a little quicker instead of playing with them for who knows how long, you would have saved even more lives. Normal humans are not stupid and they understand the kill or be killed argument. I won't kill unless I absolutely have to, but I won't let anything hold me back once I've made the decision to do it. In this case it was an accident because I had some kind of increase in the flow of my own powers right when I fired, but this thing had already killed and proven that he was more than willing to do so again. So I stopped him while Scott fired at him with non-lethal force and played a game of push and shove with him."
"You can't believe that?" Rogue asked quietly.
"Up until I had to kill Saffron a few a while back I was a Martial Artist, it was my duty to use my abilities to protect the innocent. I followed that way of thinking religiously and nearly had one of my friends killed because of it and had to kill the guy to save her as well. When we got home I had a little talk with my dad, he is an idiot when it comes to anything outside of martial arts, but in that area he is a genius. He told me that by killing Saffron that I had taken a step onto a path that even he hadn't had to go down. I was a killer, as such I could not be a martial artist any more. My new path made me a Warrior, a killer that will do anything to protect the weak, family, anyone that deserves it. It is a path I must walk alone." Ranma snapped. He had forgotten about that conversation with his father until this very instant and it helped him make the decision he had been hesitating to make for some time. As he left the room he was that Logan was watching him out of the corner of his eye and Ranma could tell that of all the people here that he understood the most.
**********
A couple of days later Ranma was standing out by the lake and actually thinking for a change, even he had to admit it was pretty rare for him to think about things, but that guys death had shook him a little, it wasn't guilt, but regret. Ever since coming to this strange place he'd been doing a lot more thinking and figured it was because he didn't understand what was going on around him. Now he didn't know anymore, his head was clearer than it ever had been and he couldn't really think of a reason for it except for regret. He didn't want to end up hurting someone because his new abilities were so hard to control, the last couple of days had been spent going over the fight and he had found dozens of mistakes that he could have avoided if he had remembered that he was a warrior and some super powered moron, he had to learn from his mistakes and move on. Surprisingly most of the X-men had stayed friendly with him after what he had done and gotten a lot of grudging respect from Wolverine and Bishop for it. Though Scott treated him like criminal that needed to be thrown in jail, but Xavier had toned that down a little and got the guy to back off.
He picked up a hand full of rocks and started skipping them out over the water, lightly charging them with Ki to turn this into a bit of practice and fun at the same time. By the third throw he was skipping them a couple dozen times before they sank in the middle of the lake. There was one the other thing that was getting to him, his Ki had never been this responsive before. Now it came to him with incredible ease, if he wanted to he could charge one of these rocks up, toss it out, and make it explode with enough force to make the lake churn with waves. It was kind of like a delayed blast Breaking Point, Ryoga had no idea just how easy that trick was to copy if a person saw it enough times and if he stayed in this world for as long as he thought he might, every skill and move he had ever seen was starting to have it's uses. Ranma figured he would have taught himself the technique by now anyway if he hadn't given his promise to the old ghoul about those Amazon Techniques, he figured in this world it didn't matter so long as he kept them to himself. If he needed it he would be able to pull it off with ease, but until then he couldn't even practice it, his body wasn't blast resistant yet, he would have to work on that first. There were others though that didn't bind him as effectively as the Amazon's techniques and in six months or so he would have them all down.
All of his techniques were easier to do now, his fight with Soul Fire had proven that in ways he hadn't understood before. Physically he was about twenty times stronger than he was before coming here, could reach speeds that even amazed him, and fire off a blast of energy strong enough to cut a hole in the moon if used at full power and exhausted his energy. He was a power house of energy and destruction, Ranma didn't like it in the least. He hadn't earned his new power and yet he had to learn to live with it. According to Beast he was going to get even stronger as well, these were just the first changes, next he had to deal with his bones and muscle getting much stronger than a normal human could achieve and instead of slowing him down it would actually make his reflexes even faster. Even his quick healing, something he'd always been proud of, was working at increased levels. Though he didn't think there was anyone that could match Wolverine for the speed of his healing factor, that was just something that he didn't fully understand yet.
What in the world was he going to do with all that power? Was there even anyone around that could give him a challenge in a fight anymore? At his full strength Ranma knew he could wipe the floor with these X-men, but they would take him down if they worked as a team and they were very good at doing just that, one on one he had advantages over them in several areas. He'd always wanted to be the best fighter of his generation, perhaps even the best ever, but this was taking that title away from him. Gaining it because he had somehow obtained a link to a powerful form of energy meant he hadn't earned his power and it ticked him off. It ruined his dream, the one thing that had allowed him to survive ten years on the road with his old man. He was a super powerful fighter now and he hadn't earned it, but he would have to learn to live with it and control it.
Coming to grips with this was going to be very hard, people with powers like his were either criminals or heroes on this planet and used them for that profession. Ranma wasn't a criminal or super villain, he couldn't go out and start committing crimes and hurting people on a whim. Ranma knew he would never go that rout, but he also knew something else, he wasn't a hero either. He would protect people when he could and take up the challenge, but to run around day and night fighting crime and taking on super villains just wasn't his way either. He didn't want to settle down into a cozy life as a hero fighting crime, he wanted to get home to the world he had grown up, to his mother, to his few friends and things he understood. To what he considered normal, this place, though nice was just to different from what he was used to.
This world was just so dark and violent, everything seemed to turn into a fight over the littlest things. A good number of these mutants had gained their power and let it corrupt them completely and now they went out of their way to kill people, actually kill them in any number of gross and depraved ways. He recalled that pretty blonde that had been killed and wondered what her life had been like, had she been happy, sad, out for little walk, or on her way to work? Soul Fire had killed her in an instant, draining away her life as if it was meaningless to him what kind of person she had been. He could still hear her as she screamed and died, see the look of shock on her face and the light as it faded from her eyes and died out. That alone made the regret that he was feeling lighten up a little and leaving him just enough to feel guilty over the decision he had made this morning.
This was the kind of evil this team was formed to combat and Ranma was all for it, but a part of him still thought they were going about it in the wrong way. His increased ability to think seemed to point out all the holes in the X-men's thinking, things they themselves didn't seem to see in the right light. Flaws that his father had taught him to look for when fighting any enemy in a life and death struggle, that was one area that his old man excelled at, tactics and even out thinking the enemy, well sometimes. It depended on how serious the situation really was and if Genma actually had to fight the person attacking. Ranma recalled that it had usually been left up to him to do the dirty work while the old man shouted insults at him to make him fight better and pass on a bit of warped wisdom at the same time.
That brought up the next thing, how was he to use this new found power of his? It wasn't like he could go to the mountains and train for several months to get a feel for his limits since they were slowly increasing with each passing day by just the littlest amount, he wouldn't even have to train to make them do that. So where did that leave him? The X-Men had offered him a place on the team, but he was still getting the feeling that he didn't belong here, he needed to do something else to find his way home to his mother. He couldn't care less if he never saw Akane again, her hate was pretty obvious for all to see, well except for the old man and Tendo. They were oblivious to everything around them when it came to the non-existent relationship him and Akane pretended to have.
"Ranma?"
"Professor, what can I do for you?" Ranma said without looking around.
"How are you feeling, are your wounds healed enough to be out here?"
"Yeah, I've always been a fast healer."
"What are you thinking about?"
"Home mostly, I want to go back."
"We might eventually be able to help out with that, or if not us there are others out there that might be able to get you home."
"Oh? Like who?"
"Reed Richards comes to mind first, he's one of the worlds leading brains on technology and aliens. Then there is Tony Stark, his company is one of the top five in the world for producing strange and hard to find gadgets, they might be able to help you. Perhaps the Avengers as well, though I don't know if their current team has anybody that might be of help."
"It's a place to start I guess."
"You're not staying here are you?"
"I can't, I have to find my way home and if it means walking every inch of this world to get back, I have to do it."
"I do understand, when will you be leaving?"
Ranma turned around to look at the Xavier. "In a few days or so, I still need to make some arrangements and finish some things with Beast. I also need the use of your Danger Room to put in some harsh practice time, my Ki is still too fluid and needs to be harnessed and under my full control before I wander out into the world to find a way home."
"I'll help out in anyway I can, most of the team will be leaving in the morning to go on a mission. Perhaps we could set the Danger Room up for you and let you go from there, are there any areas you would like to concentrate on?"
"Yeah, I have a few ideas. I also need to find out something and I guess you would be the guy to talk to."
"What would that be?"
"Back home I tended to react without thought when I was doing certain things and wasn't really known to think about things much. Now suddenly I'm thinking about everything, my every action, reaction, my situation, home, the X-Men, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Why would things change so drastically almost over night?"
Xavier chuckled a little. "Ranma, you're growing up into the man you have been struggling to become for a long time now. As you get older your mind changes and starts to work in a more efficient way than it does as a teenager, I think you've had this change because of all the stress you've had to endure both here with us and the team and back in your own dimension. You are seeing things in a new light, finally able to think for yourself and wondering what the hell you were thinking of in the first place. It's a natural progression from youth to adulthood."
"But this seems to have happened over night..." Ranma protested.
"I've noticed the signs since that first day we met Ranma, in the last two and half weeks you've changed and matured quite a bit. That fight you had with Soul Fire was a tragedy, but it helped out put certain things in perspective in your subconscious. No matter what Scott thinks, I believe you did the right thing as well. It's just that here in this time and place the whole country looks down on killing the bad guy, no matter how evil or depraved and very rarely accepts when one is killed."
"I think I understand, but I need to work them out in my head if that's true. I think best while I'm fighting professor, is there anyway I can use the Danger Room right now to start my new training?"
"Sure, I've got several programs I can send you through that just might challenge you both physically and mentally."
"Sounds cool, let's have some fun." Ranma said with a smirk.
**********
The End
Ending Notes - Ah, I finally got off my lazy ass and finished this short chapter. It only took way longer than I expected, but that's alright, I got it done and I don't have to think about it anymore. This will be the end of this particular story for a while, it will take some time to construct a decent sequel of some kind so I will do what I promised so long ago. I'm opening this universe up to anyone that wants to continue this idea. They can be short stories, epics, anything you want. All that I ask is that I see it first and that a few simple rules are followed for each story.
Ranma has a long road ahead of him at the moment and in the marvel universe nothing is ever simple. He may run into old retired heroes, he may make the Avengers look like rank armatures and swat The Torch down like a fly with a HSH in the middle of Times Square, the possibilities are endless. I picture Ranma walking around the world, sometimes traveling with Wolverine, Rogue, even Jubilee at times in search of a way home. How many times will he come close to achieving this and how many times will he have it taken from in the old Marvel style of give and take?
^_^
No one knows, but I would like to see people try.
Let me know if you are interested
C. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
Prime Attitude
Chapter 03 - Soul Fire is Born
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2002
**********
Grabbing his things Ranma headed downstairs and into the living room, he was surprised to see Scott talking with Xavier. They turned to look at him as he entered the room and Scott waved him over. "Ranma, something has come up and our trip might have to be postponed."
"What would that be?"
"There seems to be something odd going on in New York and I need to go and check it out."
"I was up in my room a few minutes ago and I felt something odd, I was just coming down to find one of you and tell you about it."
Professor Xavier turned in his chair. "You did? What was it like?"
"A flash of darkness or evil Ki, I've only felt something like it a once before in my life and that was against the guy that nearly killed my fiance."
"Evil Ki?" Professor Xavier said. "I was able to pick up a burst of Psychic power somewhere in New York a few seconds ago. I'm not sure, but I think someone just died and if a mutant did it then we have to stop them."
"Agreed." Scott said. "You stay here Ranma, this could get dangerous..."
Ranma huffed. "Hah, who kicked your ass in the danger room a few days ago?"
"This is a real fight Ranma, not a preprogrammed fight in a contained environment that limits one's abilities."
"Right, I kicked your ass and you're still complaining about it. You're good at that Geom...whatits stuff..."
"Geometry."
"Yeah, that stuff, but you seem to depend on those fancy moves of your way to much. You need to learn how to work around your power, it makes you way to vulnerable when you lose the ability." Ranma snapped.
"Now see here..." Scott growled, the kid was beginning to remind him just a little to much of Wolverine.
"Calm down Scott, Ranma has made it clear that he doesn't think our methods work." Professor Xavier said.
"But sir..." Scott said.
"Now Scott, Ranma has proven on several occasions that he can fight better than several of us. Take him with you, he's been cooped up on the mansion for weeks now and you have been wanting to see what he can accomplish in a real battle."
"But sir...he's..."
"Right here!" Ranma said and thumped Scott on the arm.
"Oh fine, but I still think this is a bad idea sir."
"Understood." Professor Xavier said with a nod.
Scott turned to Ranma and sighed. "I don't like this, this situation feels funny and know that it's going to end up turning dangerous."
"Don't worry about it One Eye, I can take care of myself and have fought foes that are just as strange as some of yours."
"Hey!"
Ranma smirked. "Heh."
"You've been hanging around with Wolverine to long." Scott muttered.
"He's the only one of you guys that likes to fight as much as I do." Ranma said as they entered the garage. "So which car are we taking?"
"The Jeep." Scott said and pointed to a gray Jeep.
A few minutes later they pulled out of the garage, drove off the property, and headed for New York. Ranma, nervously clutching an armrest, wondering if he should mention that he could never remember riding in a car, ever. That and the openness of the Jeep made the road flying by at blur a little hard to deal with, but decided that he needed to prove himself to Scott so he ignored it as best he could. He still had his doubts about the X-men, but that didn't bother him half as much as being abandoned in another dimension with no hope of ever finding a way home.
"So what are we going to do when we get there?"
"I'm not sure just yet, we have to find this mutant and determine just how dangerous he is."
"We already know he's dangerous, how do you plan to fight him?" Ranma asked as he tugged at the seat belt.
"Whatever is needed to stop him." Scott said.
Ranma nodded. "I still disagree with the way you guys handle things around here."
"They work Ranma, we've been doing this for years now."
"According to what I've read an seen lately your way has made things even worse for the mutants on this world."
"Ranma we save lives." Scott snapped.
"Oh I agree with you on that, but it's the way you go about it that bugs me. Beast had me read through several of your mission files, even video footage of everyone in action. You guys run around in brightly colored costumes, pose, give speeches in the middle of battle, and make yourselves perfect targets. That isn't a team, it's a circus act that has better abilities than normal people and all of you seem to get off on it in some way. Wolverine is extremely violent and has killed on several of occasions according to the stories I've heard, Bishop is a trained soldier, and the rest of you seem to need to fight the bad guys to get the job done."
"Now listen here...I don't agree with what Wolverine does..." Scott growled.
Ranma shrugged. "I call it as I see it, my old man spent a decade teaching me to be a petty thief that could handle every situation. My martial Arts skills were learned while my father tried to dislocate my arms and legs, he didn't hold back all that much and I spent more than one night covered in bruises and popped joints for just the littlest mistakes. He never broke anything because it would have wasted time that was better spent training me. Professor Xavier said you guys fight for the betterment of Mutant kind, to live in a world where humans and mutants can live together in piece. Right?"
"Right."
"Then why do you guys hide?" Ranma asked.
"We are targets Ranma, people are out there that want to kill us and we have to keep to ourselves to have the freedom to fight those mutants that are to dangerous to the normal humans. A lot of them seem to take pride in the fact that they can kill a certain number of humans without even trying. They are dangerous and if we weren't here to stop them then no one would be."
"No, if you were really fostering some kind of peace between humans and mutants then you wouldn't go about it the way you do. You save lives, but at the same time you guys don't seem to go out of your way to help normal humans, instead you ride in, blow everything up, and leave the mess for others to clean up."
"You just don't understand, that isn't how things work on this world. It's to simple, we have enemies that would take advantage of us if we stuck around, we would be blamed for all the destruction, for everything."
Ranma didn't think that would happen, but the few times he had talked to Beast about this problem he had tried to explain just why humans seemed to turn on mutants. It didn't matter if you were a good guy or not, they just seemed to turn on them for absolutely no reason. Blaming them for everything without thought or reason. Ranma kind of understood that, he had been through old villages in China where everybody that lived there seemed to worship fire and think the world was flat. It wasn't that they were stupid, it was that they were afraid of change and since the elders of the village made the rules, their old way of thinking, the fear of anything new always seemed to cloud their thinking and passed this on to the next generation.
He blinked. Where the hell was all this crap coming from? Ranma tried to remember one village that he had visited like that and couldn't think of even one. Yet the information was there in his head, like the tactics of fighting went hand in hand with information on several other things as well. His father had never taught him this stuff, so where did it come from? Shaking his head, Ranma watched out the Jeep's windows as they passed over a large bridge. He looked out over the bay as boats moved back and forth across the water. Concentrating, he seemed to have information trickling into his head from somewhere. Little facts on things, like math equations and other little odds and ends that just confused him. Even as his conversation with Scott was going through his head he was thinking of all the damage a mutant could do to a single building given the right kind of power.
Scott's optic beams were like a beam of pure force energy that could rip a building apart with ease and all he had to do was take his glasses off and open his eyes to fire him. The Ki inside Scott's body was another mystery, Ranma knew it was there, but what he was feeling was kind of disconnected from Scott in some way, as if he was pulling from an outside source like the Old Ghoul did with her Ki filled staff. He shook his head again, where the hell was all this coming from? Was this energy he was linked to starting to alter him in other ways that he didn't understand? If it was there was no way he could really fight it or prevent it from happening and he didn't like it. He growled deep in his throat
"Are you alright Ranma?" Scott asked, still a little peeved with Ranma's accusations earlier.
"Yeah, I just have a headache." He didn't want to think about it right now, so he needed to distract Scott. "The air here is horrible."
"Oh it's not that bad."
"I grew up outside cities, out on the open road moving from one place to another. I got used to fresh air, this isn't fresh air. I can actually taste it, that isn't fresh air."
"Well it's not as bad as it used to be." Scott conceded, glad for a change of subject to keep them from fighting.
"You're kidding?"
"Nope, we've been slowly fixing the air here in New York for some time now."
Ranma just shrugged and looked out the window again.
**********
They pulled up to a stop light and Scott tapped a button on the dash, a section flipped around to reveal a screen with a grid pattern on it. "This Ranma is a kind of tracker, it's connected, via a satellite, to the mansion's computer system. According to the it the thing were looking for is within a few blocks of here."
"Does it know exactly where?"
"No, we didn't get that much of a signal from the mutant, just that it was in this area. I will have to find it on my own."
"Right, just drop me somewhere along here..."
"Look in the glove compartment there." Scott said as they turned the corner.
Opening the box, Ranma found a small medallion of some kind with a black X over a red background. "What the heck is this thing?"
"Ever see Star Trek where they use those communication badges? Just like those."
"Never heard of it."
"What?"
"Star Truck. I've never heard of it before."
"Um...yeah. Okay, well set the blank side against a spot on your shirt and hold it there for a few seconds. When it flashes a couple of times it will be stuck to your shirt."
Following instructions, Ranma placed it on his shirt and wondered how the blasted thing worked. "Okay?"
"That's a temporary communicator we use when needed, just tap it and say Cyclops and I'll hear you. I have a smaller version hard wired into my visor right here and we can talk to each other even when we are several miles away from each other."
"Cool." Ranma said. At least he wouldn't have to go into this alone. When they came to a stop at the next corner, he started to hop out of the Jeep.
"I'm going to find a place to park and I'll start searching as well, call me the instant you see anything odd." Scott said. "Meet me by that ice cream store across the street in two hours if you don't find anything."
"Alright." Ranma said as he dashed to the sidewalk and ignored the glares that were directed at him from the people walking around. As he looked down the street Ranma recalled some of the Danger Room battles he'd been in lately and wondered if any of them would apply to this situation. Beast and Wolverine had run him through dozens of scenarios to test his skills, from regular fighters to Sentinels to computer generated virtual reality programs that could make up situations that even the regular equipment of the room couldn't create realistically. Those fights had been the best he'd ever fought because the computer generated people had reacted more life like than the one's the Danger Room provided and he'd even had a chance to provide Beast with an over view of his fight with Saffron, even built a program on it to practice with later on. Ranma was looking forward to fighting the winged jerk again and testing his improved skills against him.
He knew some of the most used programs in the Danger Room were based on how to fight in an area like this since most heroes and teams operated out of a city, this was their main territory and they had to be able to protect it. This situation felt different to him though and he wasn't sure why, more serious or dangerous in some way. The X-men tended to protect humanity by fighting rampaging mutants, stopping them at any cost and the Danger Room had shown him how they went about it. He wasn't sure why, but the X-men and other mutants that he had seen in action in the room tended to fight in funny ways. They didn't use proper tactics, instead they would directly confront the threat, try to talk to it, piss it off with threats, and battle it from all sides with the rest of the team. This seemed counter productive to him, how could battling every mutant you met bring about a long lasting peace?
This situation was different in some way, it had the potential to blow up into a major threat if handled in the X-men's normal way. He felt that if he could get to the thing first he might be able to stop it or get it to an unpopulated area before the real fight began, but first he had to find the thing and he wasn't having luck. It wasn't giving out that dark feeling anymore, it was muted in some way and didn't leave enough for him to follow. Ranma knew he was close though, within a block or so, but pinpointing the thing was going to be incredibly hard. This was something Ranma had never done before, he wasn't used to looking for a fight, it usually found him when he wasn't ready.
Since it was still pretty early in the day the sun was still climbing into the sky, for some reason Ranma thought hunting for a monster should be done at night. Still, doing something like this during the day would make it a little easier, or so he though as he looked down on the street again. There were people everywhere, walking around, running, playing in front of apartment buildings, in cars as they drove back and forth, even a whole plethora of taxis for as far as the eye could see. 'Yep', Ranma decided, 'doing this at night would be a lot easier than during the day. Sheesh'. Moving over to the side of the building Ranma looked over the edge to spot an old rust covered fire escape, he needed to be on the ground to find this thing so he hopped down the escape and let go of the Umisen-ken invisibility as he landed, making sure no one saw him.
"Hey look, it's our next victim."
Ranma turns around to see several kids about his own age, they were all dressed alike with similar colored clothing, jeans, t-shirts, and bandanas. Gangs, he'd dealt with his fair share of these kinds of idiots over the years, they were always good for a quick workout and to test new moves. Though he was cursing himself silently for missing them in first place, he would have to work on that, his old man would have belted him for making that kind of mistake. "Huh?"
The leader pulls this tiny switch blade out of his pocket and flicks it around a couple of times to release the blade. "Give me all your money or I'll cut those fancy clothes off your body freak boy."
Resisting the urge to laugh, Ranma turns to look at the gang and smirks. "I think it's only fair to warn you I'm a fully trained Martial Artist."
The punk snorts. "Like that will save you from all of us, now we're going to cut you up as well, and leave you for dead."
Ranma crouches down. "Bring it on, Baka."
Gangs the world over are basically the same, they don't have much skill or brains and wander around in packs of five or more. Most normal people can't fight back against them because they always attack in a group to commit one kind of crime or another, one on one they are truly pathetic. Ranma was in a hurry, but he wanted to have some fun and what better way to do that than by fighting these idiots. If he was in Japan he might have given them a bit more respect, but these guys didn't even move like fighters, they just depended on fear and their little knives to hurt others. As they closed in Ranma waited for the last possible second, when he could see the leaders eyes glinting evilly from an expected kill.
Eight blows, that was all it took to take out all seven of them. He used two blows on the leader because of the insults, as they had jumped forward he'd exploded into motion, striking with just enough power to hurt them and take them down without killing them. Two of them flew back into the wall and slid unconscious to the ground and flopped over. Three of them found out what having their faces slammed into the cement of the alley tasted like and didn't get back up. Ranma elbow smashed the sixth one an sent him flying out of the alley to land on the hood of a car parked by the curb. The leader, at almost the same time had his wrist snapped and received a head butt, Ranma tossed him after the other guy so that they both ended up on the hood of the car.
More out of habit than anything else, his father had kind of instilled it in him, Ranma stripped them of all their valuable and earned himself about four hundred dollars. He even found several packages of drugs, though he had no idea what kind they were. The old man had always told him to destroy the stuff whenever he came across it, being caught with the stuff in some parts of China was and instant death sentence, so he used his Ki to flash fry it and tossed the dust on the ground. He kept the money though, in his opinion he'd earned that and getting it back to the people they'd taken it from was impossible, considering the drugs they probably wouldn't care anyways. At least this way he wouldn't lose it all to his father's wallet and the local bars in some strange quest for the food. His father had developed some weird habits over the years and actually managed to keep the Tendo girls from finding out about half of them. Ranma was a bit surprised when the locals parted before him and gave him some congratulations about defending them from hooligans like that. He just nodded and stuffed the money in his pocket as he walked off with a wave, maybe this place wasn't as bad as he'd been led to believe.
He sent his senses out again, but it was just as hard to detect this thing as it was before, it was close, but just out of reach. He was about to give up and just look around randomly when he spotted something out of place, there were some nearly pitch black shadows buried in the back of an alley just up ahead and off to the side. Then he turned away and almost forgot about them an instant later, shaking his head at making that kind of mistake, he turned back and concentrated a little. The shadows, once he got close enough to them, opened up as if they had never existed in the first place. At the back of the alley was an old guy dressed like a homeless bum, but his eyes were glowing as he looked back out at him, Ranma felt himself shudder a bit. He'd found the guy alright and he looked pissed, now what was he supposed to do? He reached for the pin on his chest to call Scott when the guy moved.
He stood up and started walking out of the alley, he never stopped looking at Ranma even as he moved. With the shadows gone the normal citizens could now see the guy as he stepped out of the alley and into the path of the regular people walking along the sidewalk. Ranma wasn't someone that would just hurt someone on a whim, but when this bum reached out, almost casually, and grabbed a woman by the neck Ranma knew he had made a mistake. The bum's eyes lit up with evil delight as a dark aura appeared around the girl, she was a young blonde that had been on her way to work, she screamed as her life was sucked out of her and her body turned into a withered husk in a matter of seconds. Once she was drained the bum tossed it away without any remorse, it hit a wall and shattered into dust as if had been buried under the desert for several hundred years.
Ranma reacted without thought as he leapt forward and smashed his elbow into the bum's head to send him flying back into the alley where he landed hard. The bum had killed that girl like it was the easiest thing in the world and seemed to enjoy it, even the Phoenix people hadn't been that cold blooded to people. This thing was a killer, that was another area about the X-men that he didn't like, they were obsessed with taking the bad guy alive. A killer like this had to be stopped and playing with him just wasn't going to do. It had to be stopped, permanently, and he had ever intention of doing just that. Contacting Scott was the furthest thing from his mind, he would only have tried to stop him and if this thing lived more people were going to be killed. Turning back to the monster Ranma ignored the crowed he was drawing and flared up his Ki and growled in hatred, he would make sure this thing never got a chance to do that kind of thing again. He would destroy it just like he had Saffron, something this evil didn't deserve a chance to live. A martial artist had to protect the weak and he doubted there were very many people in this city that could take things down.
"You won't get a chance to do that again monster."
"I'm not a monster, just a mutant that likes to eat the living energy put off by the people of this city. That in turn fuels my powers, it's a good trade off don't you think, little hero." The bum said from where he was laying, his voice was several octaves to low to be a real human's voice though.
"I'll stop you from killing anyone else." Ranma growled.
The bum pulled himself to his feet and grinned at Ranma. "They are cattle, the only thing they are good for is feeding me, other than they serve no purpose and you will soon join the cow, mutants taste the best of all. HEHAHAHAHAHA!!"
"Come on jerk face, is that the best evil laugh you can do? I've heard better on a cartoon show." Ranma said as he tried to move forward, he didn't like this situation, there were to many people around for him to fight this thing effectively. They were at the edges of the alley, just standing there looking like they were watching a show, and that meant he couldn't use his large scale abilities like the Hiruu Shouten Ha.
Pointing his hand forward, the bum seemed to burst into black fire and filled the alley way around them with dark shadows. Ranma was shocked as he watched the bum's skin slowly eaten away by the black flames, so shocked that the didn't get a chance to dodge as the thing fired a three foot wide beam of black energy right into him. Ranma found himself flying across the street, over the heads of the people watching the fight, and slamming into a wall with enough force to crack the brick work. He hadn't been hit with a shot like that since the last time him and Taro had a little get together, only Ryoga had ever hit him harder.
"Well hero, what are you going to do now?!" The bum yelled.
Crawling to his feet, Ranma shook himself and rubbed his chest to see what kind of damage he might have acquired. As far as he could tell it was just a large bruise, he hadn't been expecting that and he cursed at himself for not seeing the obvious. He walked across the now empty road and talked to the crowd. "All you get out of here, that thing is way dangerous and can't stop him and protect all of you at the same time."
"Listen hero, we'll do what we want. You got that?" One of the meaner looking guys said.
"That's your choice then, watch if you want but don't blame me if you get hurt by something, this thing wants to kill all of you and I don't know why."
The guy smirked and pulled a small hand gun. "I can protect myself."
Dismissing the guy from his thoughts Ranma turned back to the bum to see that he was nothing but a large pillar of human shaped black fire now. Reaching out with his senses Ranma was amazed at the amount of Ki the guy was putting out, it was several levels above what he was currently using. The only way he saw to stop this thing was to overpower it, but if he used anymore Ki he would flare up and that wouldn't be a very good idea according to what he remembered being told about earlier. Humans and Mutants don't mix that well and can lead to lots of hate and anger from normal humans.
"Don't say I didn't warn you." Ranma said as he flared his aura up and burst into bright blue energy. "This fight could get pretty dangerous."
"Are you going to attack that thing or what?" Asked some kid from the side lines.
"Yeah sure kid, just powering up." Ranma said with a smirk as he turned to charred bum. "Hey, you got a name or do you want me to call you strange names all afternoon?"
"Call me Soul Fire."
"Alright burning shoe lace, bring it on." Ranma yelled and fired out a powerful blast of Ki even as he remembered that the power of his Ki had been increased by that strange link. He'd been so intent on the fight that he forgot that a simple blast would cause some major damage if he wasn't careful. The bright white beam of energy that fired out of his outstretched hands and slammed into Soul Fire with an explosion that shattered the ground and walls around the alley and sent Soul Fire flying back down the alley, across the street and into another alley about three blocks away. Ranma channeled a bit of Ki to his legs and flashed forward faster than he'd ever moved before, launched into a really high jump that toped out at about six stories, and seconds later landed and hit Soul Fire with a haymaker that Akane had taught him. Soul Fire screamed out a curse as his head was nearly taken off his shoulders and he was slammed into a wall with enough force to shatter it around his body.
One thing Ranma didn't realize for several seconds was that he was moving at Amaguri-ken speeds as he began to punch the thing as hard as he could. Some of the crowd had followed them to see what else was going to happen and they were there to witness it, as several hundred blows later, Soul Fire finally managed to get in a blow. It may have been a single blast of compressed energy, but it was enough to send lift Ranma off his feet and send him flying through a nearby wall and stun him for a second. Soul Fire, beaten, broken, and bleeding stood up and cracked his neck before walking over to Ranma and grabbing him by the throat without showing any pain whatsoever and lifting him off the ground. Ranma had to scream as he felt his own soul burst into fire as the monstrous thing tried to drain his own life the instant it touched him. One thing Ranma has always had in abundance is a lot of life force and with his Ki, somewhat super charged as it was, there was no way that this thing could drain him as quickly as it had that girl just a few minutes before. That was about the only thing that saved his life, because at that moment Soul Fire was blasted by several carefully placed visor blasts from Cyclops.
The bum dropped Ranma and he collapsed to the ground and groaned in pain, beams of solid red plasma firing through the air above him as Cyclops continued to push Soul fire back into a wall. Through half open eyes Ranma could tell the bum wasn't really feeling Cyclops's blasts, instead they were just forcing him back a few inches at a time. Ranma forced himself to his feet and glared at the thing for a second and let a bit more of his Ki flow through his body and flared up a little more as it soothed his damaged body and tightened his muscles. He maneuvered around behind Cyclops as he continued to pound on the guy and got into position with the bum standing beside a couple of dumpsters. Ranma was a bit surprised to see that Cyclops's eye blasts were cutting neat little holes through the solid metal of the things to strike the bum about his body and keep him off balance.
Taking a deep breath, Ranma formed a soft ball sized sphere of bright blue Ki in his hands and focused his senses on the bum. Ranma's eyes started to glow the tiniest bit blue as well as the power flowed through him and timed his attack so that it would hit just a second after one of Cyclops's optic blasts. The sphere flared and fired out of his hand, not as a ball of Ki, but as a solid beam of power that lit up the alley and kicked up the dust around him. Even being constantly hit by Cyclops's blasts, the bum saw it coming and tried to dodge it, but the beam was moving to fast and hit him right in the shoulder. The instant it hit Ranma let the beam go and watched emotionlessly as it rushed toward the bum, for a second nothing happened, but Ranma could see the energy flowing around the guys body. He waved for Cyclops to stop firing and received a glare from the guy, but he stopped and at that instant Soul Fire screamed as his body exploded with a bright blue flash.
Cyclops gaped at the sight and glanced back at Ranma in shock, in all his time on the X-men, he had rarely seen someone taken out like that. He had seen bodies, but he the good guys were supposed to take the bad guy down, not kill them like that. "What the hell did you just do?!" He yelled.
"I watched this guy kill a girl right before my eyes just before you showed up, sucked all the energy out of her body and tossed the corpse away like a piece of trash that had no further use. The body turned to dust and ashes when it hit a wall, this guy was to dangerous to let live. It was worse than Saffron and that guy at least had his honor to keep him from causing to much damage."
"You killed him!" Scott yelled.
Ranma sighed and shrugged. "Yes, I did."
"You don't kill! You never kill unless it's just you or him, there were still option we could have taken!" Scott yelled in Ranma's face.
Scowling, Ranma turned his still glowing eyes on Scott. "A monster like that had his chance to live the first time we looked at each other and he made his choice."
Scott glanced back at the charred stain where the bum had been before making up his mind about something. When he turned back to Ranma, he wasn't there any more, but walking back down the alley where about a hundred gawkers had been watching the scene. They looked a little shocked too, but most of them were giving Ranma a look of respect, a little fear, and in some instances they seemed to agree with Ranma. Cyclops also noticed that none of them seemed to even see him, it was like they didn't care that he was there at all. There was no screams about mutants, no death threats, nothing. Ranma seemed to have them held in some kind of aura as he moved among them checking to see if anyone had been hurt by the fight in any way. When they got back to the mansion he would have to have a talk with the professor about this. Then he noticed some police officers at the other end of the alley sitting on the hoods of their cars waiting for something.
"Come on Ranma, it's time to leave." Scott yelled.
Patting a little girl on the head he turned and waved to the crowd as Scott started off down the street. Ranma wasn't about to admit that he was a bit sad that he had killed the bum, that blast should have been enough to seriously injure him, but the instant he had fired the thing had increased in strength by quite a bit and ended up killing the guy. He wasn't about to admit that it had been an accident though, better to let Scott think what he wanted than to admit to anything like that. A few minutes later they reached his jeep, hopped in, and drove out of the city. They didn't talk during the trip, Ranma didn't want to and it was obvious that Scott was still pissed off at him over what he had done.
**********
The garage door opened as they pulled into the garage and after coming to a stop and putting the jeep in park Scott jumped out and slammed the door as he stalked into the mansion. With a snort at the way the guy was acting Ranma got out and followed him a few seconds later, but decided to head to the kitchen and get something to drink before heading up to his room. He saw Scott heading down into the lower levels of the mansion and Ranma knew that he was looking for Xavier to tell him what had happened. After getting some water to drink he headed out into the front room and saw that Logan and Rogue were waiting for him. He walked on over and finished off the last bit of his water. "Hey guys, what's up?
"What happened over there, kid?" Logan asked, though Rogue was giving him a hard glare. So Ranma figured they already knew what had happened.
"I took the guy down." He said with a shrug, killing a murder didn't exactly fill
him with to much guilt over his death.
"You killed him? We DON'T DO THAT!" Rogue yelled.
Ranma glared at them for a second and shrugged. "I don't understand why not, it was an accident, I'll admit that, but I'm not going to feel guilty about it. The guy killed a woman right in front of me, sucked the life right out of her and tossed the body to the side like an old shoe. It disintegrated into ashes. I had to stop the guy."
"He killed someone?" Logan asked with a glare.
Ranma nodded.
"Then you did the right thing." Logan said with a shrug. "I'm going to go and finish watching my show and drink some beer."
"We don't' kill Ranma." Rogue said.
To Ranma it sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than him. "Rogue, I will never understand this whole aspect of your team. You take on horrors and monsters right of the movies and you are telling me that you think leaving something that has killed entire cities is a good thing?"
"We have to set an example." Rogue snapped. This was a question she could handle.
Ranma snorted. "Yeah right, maybe if you could have taken one of these guys down a little quicker instead of playing with them for who knows how long, you would have saved even more lives. Normal humans are not stupid and they understand the kill or be killed argument. I won't kill unless I absolutely have to, but I won't let anything hold me back once I've made the decision to do it. In this case it was an accident because I had some kind of increase in the flow of my own powers right when I fired, but this thing had already killed and proven that he was more than willing to do so again. So I stopped him while Scott fired at him with non-lethal force and played a game of push and shove with him."
"You can't believe that?" Rogue asked quietly.
"Up until I had to kill Saffron a few a while back I was a Martial Artist, it was my duty to use my abilities to protect the innocent. I followed that way of thinking religiously and nearly had one of my friends killed because of it and had to kill the guy to save her as well. When we got home I had a little talk with my dad, he is an idiot when it comes to anything outside of martial arts, but in that area he is a genius. He told me that by killing Saffron that I had taken a step onto a path that even he hadn't had to go down. I was a killer, as such I could not be a martial artist any more. My new path made me a Warrior, a killer that will do anything to protect the weak, family, anyone that deserves it. It is a path I must walk alone." Ranma snapped. He had forgotten about that conversation with his father until this very instant and it helped him make the decision he had been hesitating to make for some time. As he left the room he was that Logan was watching him out of the corner of his eye and Ranma could tell that of all the people here that he understood the most.
**********
A couple of days later Ranma was standing out by the lake and actually thinking for a change, even he had to admit it was pretty rare for him to think about things, but that guys death had shook him a little, it wasn't guilt, but regret. Ever since coming to this strange place he'd been doing a lot more thinking and figured it was because he didn't understand what was going on around him. Now he didn't know anymore, his head was clearer than it ever had been and he couldn't really think of a reason for it except for regret. He didn't want to end up hurting someone because his new abilities were so hard to control, the last couple of days had been spent going over the fight and he had found dozens of mistakes that he could have avoided if he had remembered that he was a warrior and some super powered moron, he had to learn from his mistakes and move on. Surprisingly most of the X-men had stayed friendly with him after what he had done and gotten a lot of grudging respect from Wolverine and Bishop for it. Though Scott treated him like criminal that needed to be thrown in jail, but Xavier had toned that down a little and got the guy to back off.
He picked up a hand full of rocks and started skipping them out over the water, lightly charging them with Ki to turn this into a bit of practice and fun at the same time. By the third throw he was skipping them a couple dozen times before they sank in the middle of the lake. There was one the other thing that was getting to him, his Ki had never been this responsive before. Now it came to him with incredible ease, if he wanted to he could charge one of these rocks up, toss it out, and make it explode with enough force to make the lake churn with waves. It was kind of like a delayed blast Breaking Point, Ryoga had no idea just how easy that trick was to copy if a person saw it enough times and if he stayed in this world for as long as he thought he might, every skill and move he had ever seen was starting to have it's uses. Ranma figured he would have taught himself the technique by now anyway if he hadn't given his promise to the old ghoul about those Amazon Techniques, he figured in this world it didn't matter so long as he kept them to himself. If he needed it he would be able to pull it off with ease, but until then he couldn't even practice it, his body wasn't blast resistant yet, he would have to work on that first. There were others though that didn't bind him as effectively as the Amazon's techniques and in six months or so he would have them all down.
All of his techniques were easier to do now, his fight with Soul Fire had proven that in ways he hadn't understood before. Physically he was about twenty times stronger than he was before coming here, could reach speeds that even amazed him, and fire off a blast of energy strong enough to cut a hole in the moon if used at full power and exhausted his energy. He was a power house of energy and destruction, Ranma didn't like it in the least. He hadn't earned his new power and yet he had to learn to live with it. According to Beast he was going to get even stronger as well, these were just the first changes, next he had to deal with his bones and muscle getting much stronger than a normal human could achieve and instead of slowing him down it would actually make his reflexes even faster. Even his quick healing, something he'd always been proud of, was working at increased levels. Though he didn't think there was anyone that could match Wolverine for the speed of his healing factor, that was just something that he didn't fully understand yet.
What in the world was he going to do with all that power? Was there even anyone around that could give him a challenge in a fight anymore? At his full strength Ranma knew he could wipe the floor with these X-men, but they would take him down if they worked as a team and they were very good at doing just that, one on one he had advantages over them in several areas. He'd always wanted to be the best fighter of his generation, perhaps even the best ever, but this was taking that title away from him. Gaining it because he had somehow obtained a link to a powerful form of energy meant he hadn't earned his power and it ticked him off. It ruined his dream, the one thing that had allowed him to survive ten years on the road with his old man. He was a super powerful fighter now and he hadn't earned it, but he would have to learn to live with it and control it.
Coming to grips with this was going to be very hard, people with powers like his were either criminals or heroes on this planet and used them for that profession. Ranma wasn't a criminal or super villain, he couldn't go out and start committing crimes and hurting people on a whim. Ranma knew he would never go that rout, but he also knew something else, he wasn't a hero either. He would protect people when he could and take up the challenge, but to run around day and night fighting crime and taking on super villains just wasn't his way either. He didn't want to settle down into a cozy life as a hero fighting crime, he wanted to get home to the world he had grown up, to his mother, to his few friends and things he understood. To what he considered normal, this place, though nice was just to different from what he was used to.
This world was just so dark and violent, everything seemed to turn into a fight over the littlest things. A good number of these mutants had gained their power and let it corrupt them completely and now they went out of their way to kill people, actually kill them in any number of gross and depraved ways. He recalled that pretty blonde that had been killed and wondered what her life had been like, had she been happy, sad, out for little walk, or on her way to work? Soul Fire had killed her in an instant, draining away her life as if it was meaningless to him what kind of person she had been. He could still hear her as she screamed and died, see the look of shock on her face and the light as it faded from her eyes and died out. That alone made the regret that he was feeling lighten up a little and leaving him just enough to feel guilty over the decision he had made this morning.
This was the kind of evil this team was formed to combat and Ranma was all for it, but a part of him still thought they were going about it in the wrong way. His increased ability to think seemed to point out all the holes in the X-men's thinking, things they themselves didn't seem to see in the right light. Flaws that his father had taught him to look for when fighting any enemy in a life and death struggle, that was one area that his old man excelled at, tactics and even out thinking the enemy, well sometimes. It depended on how serious the situation really was and if Genma actually had to fight the person attacking. Ranma recalled that it had usually been left up to him to do the dirty work while the old man shouted insults at him to make him fight better and pass on a bit of warped wisdom at the same time.
That brought up the next thing, how was he to use this new found power of his? It wasn't like he could go to the mountains and train for several months to get a feel for his limits since they were slowly increasing with each passing day by just the littlest amount, he wouldn't even have to train to make them do that. So where did that leave him? The X-Men had offered him a place on the team, but he was still getting the feeling that he didn't belong here, he needed to do something else to find his way home to his mother. He couldn't care less if he never saw Akane again, her hate was pretty obvious for all to see, well except for the old man and Tendo. They were oblivious to everything around them when it came to the non-existent relationship him and Akane pretended to have.
"Ranma?"
"Professor, what can I do for you?" Ranma said without looking around.
"How are you feeling, are your wounds healed enough to be out here?"
"Yeah, I've always been a fast healer."
"What are you thinking about?"
"Home mostly, I want to go back."
"We might eventually be able to help out with that, or if not us there are others out there that might be able to get you home."
"Oh? Like who?"
"Reed Richards comes to mind first, he's one of the worlds leading brains on technology and aliens. Then there is Tony Stark, his company is one of the top five in the world for producing strange and hard to find gadgets, they might be able to help you. Perhaps the Avengers as well, though I don't know if their current team has anybody that might be of help."
"It's a place to start I guess."
"You're not staying here are you?"
"I can't, I have to find my way home and if it means walking every inch of this world to get back, I have to do it."
"I do understand, when will you be leaving?"
Ranma turned around to look at the Xavier. "In a few days or so, I still need to make some arrangements and finish some things with Beast. I also need the use of your Danger Room to put in some harsh practice time, my Ki is still too fluid and needs to be harnessed and under my full control before I wander out into the world to find a way home."
"I'll help out in anyway I can, most of the team will be leaving in the morning to go on a mission. Perhaps we could set the Danger Room up for you and let you go from there, are there any areas you would like to concentrate on?"
"Yeah, I have a few ideas. I also need to find out something and I guess you would be the guy to talk to."
"What would that be?"
"Back home I tended to react without thought when I was doing certain things and wasn't really known to think about things much. Now suddenly I'm thinking about everything, my every action, reaction, my situation, home, the X-Men, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Why would things change so drastically almost over night?"
Xavier chuckled a little. "Ranma, you're growing up into the man you have been struggling to become for a long time now. As you get older your mind changes and starts to work in a more efficient way than it does as a teenager, I think you've had this change because of all the stress you've had to endure both here with us and the team and back in your own dimension. You are seeing things in a new light, finally able to think for yourself and wondering what the hell you were thinking of in the first place. It's a natural progression from youth to adulthood."
"But this seems to have happened over night..." Ranma protested.
"I've noticed the signs since that first day we met Ranma, in the last two and half weeks you've changed and matured quite a bit. That fight you had with Soul Fire was a tragedy, but it helped out put certain things in perspective in your subconscious. No matter what Scott thinks, I believe you did the right thing as well. It's just that here in this time and place the whole country looks down on killing the bad guy, no matter how evil or depraved and very rarely accepts when one is killed."
"I think I understand, but I need to work them out in my head if that's true. I think best while I'm fighting professor, is there anyway I can use the Danger Room right now to start my new training?"
"Sure, I've got several programs I can send you through that just might challenge you both physically and mentally."
"Sounds cool, let's have some fun." Ranma said with a smirk.
**********
The End
Ending Notes - Ah, I finally got off my lazy ass and finished this short chapter. It only took way longer than I expected, but that's alright, I got it done and I don't have to think about it anymore. This will be the end of this particular story for a while, it will take some time to construct a decent sequel of some kind so I will do what I promised so long ago. I'm opening this universe up to anyone that wants to continue this idea. They can be short stories, epics, anything you want. All that I ask is that I see it first and that a few simple rules are followed for each story.
Ranma has a long road ahead of him at the moment and in the marvel universe nothing is ever simple. He may run into old retired heroes, he may make the Avengers look like rank armatures and swat The Torch down like a fly with a HSH in the middle of Times Square, the possibilities are endless. I picture Ranma walking around the world, sometimes traveling with Wolverine, Rogue, even Jubilee at times in search of a way home. How many times will he come close to achieving this and how many times will he have it taken from in the old Marvel style of give and take?
^_^
No one knows, but I would like to see people try.
Let me know if you are interested
C. Rose
ertle2@msn.com