Notes - Due to a complete lack of writing inititive lately I'm cleaning up some smaller chapters and posting them in place of the larger ones. I will be doing this for several fics over the next couple of weeks.
This is the second part to the Prime Attituded series. I figured since no one seemed to be interested in taking up the story where I left off that I would come up witth a new story line. Let me know what you think. I'm going to try and show off a someone from the Marvel Universe with each chapter of this second part. First up is are a pair of kids named Katie Power and Franklin 'Tattle Tale' Richards with a brief mention of Spiderman.
^_^
Send Reviews, I need the motivation and I'm also quite interested in what people have to say. Think of each chapter of this as a stand alone comic as well as part of the whole, just like a comic series.
**********
Prime Attitude II
Chapter 00 - The Blue Fire Man
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2003
**********
Life can be weird sometimes, take a dimensionally displaced boy by the name of Ranma Saotome for instance. From the time he was born he seems to have been singled out for one of the worst lives a person can ever have. He stayed blissfully ignorant until he was five or so, playing around the house and generally having the normal life of a little kid. Then during the course of one night he was tricked into signing, with a bit of finger paint, a contract that would ruin his life for the next decade or so. A promise, to become a man among men, or willingly commit suicide if his mother didn't think he was manly enough. Such a thing can, if left unchecked mess up a person's mind quite easily. After all what kind of mother would ask for such at thing of a child they loved?
The next day he had been taken on the road to begin his training in the family Martial Arts with his father. Genma Saotome had proven time and again that he was a horrible father and role model, with almost every action he had ever committed or forced upon his son. Forcing a five year old to walk twelve to fifteen hours a day without complaint, to survive beatings in the name of training that would have crippled anyone else. Ranma endured this and much more over the years and he came out of it one of the world's best martial artists, it was one of the few things he was proud of. Physically he was a prime example of a man, everything that a man among men had to look like and he had no end of females interested in him.
On the down side, because of his father, Ranma was deficient mentally and had problems understanding the simplest things. He spent all his time with his father and not around other kids his own age and this had made him one of those people that didn't know how to react correctly in certain situations. When confronted with something he didn't understand he would grow defensive and try to pick a fight to prove himself. This was a trait that his father had forced upon him so that he could be easier to control and keep him from rebelling against him. After enduring the hell that his father had heaped upon him for over a decade they had returned to Japan where more plans were being set in motion. Genma Saotome had planned his son's entire life for him, first by taking his childhood and ruining that with nothing but martial arts and stunting him mentally. Then by taking him to Jusenkyo and giving him a curse that transformed him into a girl and took away the one thing he took pride in, being a man.
This had made him even worse than ever, instead of thinking about the best way to deal with the curse he had been forced to act even more like a man than ever before with unreasonable pride and willing to get into a fight with anyone to make himself feel better. Then the Amazons had come and his fight with Shampoo. Normally he would have just sat there and let her beat him up over the food that him and his old man had stolen, but this time he needed to prove himself, even as a girl, that he was indeed a man. One victory later he was being chased across China by a psychopath trying to kill him because she couldn't accept losing to him. From there things had just gotten worse.
They arrived in Japan and for the next two years it was a war zone pushing him to higher and higher levels of training to survive and protect, not one but three, fiancée's from causing problems. He learned how to tap into his Ch'i and eventually fire off balls of destructive energy that could blow up walls and create craters in the ground. Then the ultimate test of his skills had come as super powerful fighters from around the world converged on him to prove themselves, Pantyhose Taro, Herb of the Musk, and finally Saffron the Phoenix King. Their reasons for picking the fights were all different and filled with pride and arrogance, believing that they were better than everyone else and would go to any lengths to prove it. Ranma had defeated them all and proven himself to be the better person, physically.
Still he hadn't really come to terms with the way his life had turned out, even after two years of war over things he didn't care about. Then after being forced to actually kill Saffron, things had changed, for the worse in some ways. He had gotten fed up and was finally able to move beyond his unwavering arrogance and started to use his head for something other than someone's convenient punching bag. He was improving himself finally, mentally, and growing more and more every day. At the same time he had been forced to pretend to be what he had been and it had gotten harder and harder to keep from hurting his enemies. By the time his time to leave his world came he had placed himself firmly on the path to self improvement and learned a few things that he didn't want to think about.
The one girl, of all his fiancées that he had been willing to kill Saffron over hated his guts and didn't hesitate to tell him at every opportunity. She didn't care that he had saved her life, that she was the one he actually cared for above the others. No, she hated him for something that had happened on the day he first met her and had festered for over two years. He had at first just thought that her temper was a way of showing affection, like his old man showed his by insulting him and beating on him on a daily basis. Once her true feelings became clear he hadn't been able to stay around her as much as he had up until then. His very presence would send her into a rage that would have her attacking him for looking at her the wrong way. His other fiancées had thought it was finally their chance to win him over, but they had already lost in his mind. They were just as controlling and possessive as the first girl.
After that things had just went down hill, then he had come across the entity or it had come across him. Even weeks later, Ranma still didn't fully understand what had happened to him, when he had been 'chosen' to receive the powers he did. Only that it had hurt, a lot, and that he had ended up on some other world that was full of pain and suffering that was in some ways even worse than in his world. The people here seemed to prefer living in dirt, using each other as pawns to get what they wanted and would do nearly anything to survive while the normal people suffered for it. He really didn't like this world at all; even his time with the X-men had shown him that those that seemed to be happy were not as happy as the normal people from his home dimension. They smiled and played, but they never seemed to enjoy it like the people he had seen back home in Nerima. There was always this dull glint in their eyes that proved that they had to be careful of something and never let their guard down.
He knew that when life got that bad it was time to play harder and have even more fun just to balance out things so to speak. Training with the X-men had been the most fun he'd ever had and that had been dulled just a bit when he thought about why they trained in the first place. Those people had been in more fights and deadly situations that he could conceive of. They were battle hardened veterans that could fight on the edge for hours and not lose or even falter; even he hadn't gotten that good. He had bad mouthed them a bit, but at the same time learned that he didn't want to stay around them and become just like them. That wasn't the kind of life he wanted, instead he just wanted to go home. No matter how hard life was, back home, it was what he understood and he knew where he stood with people. Here he was just another loser trying to make his way in a world that had very little hope left in it. (1)
**********
Ranma sighed as he relaxed on the bench and looked around the area, the sun had set a couple hours ago and he was beginning to wonder where he should go from here. This area of New York was dangerous and he didn't want to think about what might happen to him if he lay down under a tree and started to sleep so deeply that people could attack him without him even waking up. He'd had enough of that at the Tendo's place with Akane and her thrice cursed bucket of cold water. Heck now that he really thought about it he usually woke up only when he hit the water of the Koi pond or with the bucket, he'd gotten used to it. The X-men had just let him sleep in until he woke up and that was usually around seven or so unless something made him get up earlier.
He had left the X mansion two days ago and was just as confused now as he had been when he left. Xavier had taken his departure in stride, so had Logan. It was about what he had expected from the two men, but the two that confused him were Rogue and Scott. Rogue had begged him to stay so they could get him better prepared for their world and when they hadn't worked she had gotten mad at him. He still didn't understand why she started calling him names as he packed his bag to get on the road. Xavier had gotten amused by it though and just kept his mouth shut as she ranted.
Then there had been Scott Summers and his oddities. Ranma didn't know what to think of the guy, at one moment you could be buddies and the next he was cursing at you for something weird. Ranma understood that ever since he had killed Soul Fire a couple weeks ago that he had gotten on Scott's bad side. He kept ranting about how the X-men don't kill and got mad when Ranma pointed out that he wasn't in fact an X-man. After two days of this Ranma had quietly asked Logan to have a talk with the guy. Scott hadn't said anything since, but every time they were in the same room Ranma had the oddest feeling that he needed to keep an eye out for a stray eye beam blast from the guy.
After that came Beast, or Hank McCoy and all his experiments that had to be finished before he would allow him to leave. Ranma swore if he heard the term 'samples' again there was going to be a doctor with a couple of broken arms in the near future. He was also glad that he hadn't heard from Bishop either, that guy was all temper and no funny bone. After that Xavier had given him what he called a small book with a pen attached to it. The guy had written down the names and addresses of several people that might be able to help him get home and placed calls to each of them to let them know that he might be stopping by sometime in the near future. Most of the addresses were here in New York, but according to Xavier they were rarely ever at home for very long as they went about doing their jobs. His best bet though, according to Beast was Dr. Reed Richards who specialized in creating super scientific devices for various reasons.
Beast even said that he knew for a fact that Richards had created a dimensional door that could readily take him home. Unfortunately he was one of the guys that were the hardest to get a hold of under even the best of circumstances, so Ranma was going to have to go directly to him at Four Freedoms Plaza. An area of New York City, where Reed Richards had bought all the buildings around his head quarters and converted to his personal use. Ranma had been thinking of the guy for two days now as he walked across the city at a slow walk and hoped he wasn't anything like Kuno. For some reason all the rich people he met were conceited and arrogant beyond belief with some eccentric habit about them. Kuno had been a pompous ass with a boken and poetry fetish, Chardain had that weird food things of his, and even Herb had been a half human half dragon descendent with an attitude that drove him up the wall.
Sighing again, Ranma stretched as he sat on the bench and looked around the small park where he was resting a bit before he would head out for the next leg of his walk. He lay his head back and spent the time reading the energy levels of the area around him with his Ki, almost instantly he sensed some growing power levels heading his way. This didn't surprise him in the least; this whole city seemed to be filled with mutants of one form or another. He could feel them all around him as they moved about doing whatever they did on nights like this, though there were even more normal people around than mutants. Over the last two days he had gotten better at sensing them and spent a few hours trailing this mutant or that one as he moved about the city. As far as he could tell most of them tended to live rather normal lives and did what they could to make sure they didn't stand out to the general public. Then he had found out that when they started using whatever their mutant ability was they stood out even more.
He had used it to spot Spiderman crawling up the side of a skyscraper, what had surprised him was when the guy stopped what he was doing and turned to look right at him for a brief second. Ranma wasn't sure how the guy had known he'd been spotted though and put it down to a well developed danger sense before moving on, it wasn't like he ever planned to meet the guy anyway. After that he hadn't spotted any of the known superheroes of the city, but plenty of mutants. One in every fifty people he passed had the slightly different aura that he considered to be a mutant, most of them looked basically normal as far as he could tell. Though, the girls tended to have oddly colored hair styles that reminded him of the Amazons. If they had red hair it was bright, bright red that could be spotted in the middle of a crowd.
Jean Grey had bright red hair, Storm had that white hair, and Rogue had reddish brown with those white stripes in it. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, but as he took notice of all these mutants it seemed like they went out of their way to make themselves stand out in one fashion or another without standing out as a mutant. Shaking his head, he was thinking too much it seemed and he turned his head and focused on the mutant he could feel heading in this direction. This aura was different though, not as blatantly obvious or something, he wasn't sure just how though and he figured it would be better to head over there than to sit here and wait for some moron to attack him. Standing up he grabbed his pack and shouldered it so that it didn't get in the way of his coat.
Jogging into the trees behind the bench, he broke into a run the instant he was out of sight and took to the trees. It had been a while since he had taken the time to tree jump, several months at least, but he could still bounce from tree to tree in a blur of motion. He ignored the small branches that tended to get in his way as he landed and bounced on, they couldn't hurt him even if he was unconscious. His skin had become very tough over the years and his recent power up had made him even stronger and faster. One thing he was grateful for was that the changes to his body were going to happen slowly, giving him time to adjust them. A power up under the right circumstances was fine, but when it wasn't earned he felt it would become more of a crutch than something useful. It was like a weapon, if he depended on it to much his regular skills would suffer for it.
Just like what happened to Akane when she ate those Super Soba noodles or when she had gotten her hands on that enchanted dogi of hers that brought out her full potential. Akane had been nearly unstoppable with both of those power ups and she had wasted her time lording it over everyone else and proving that she was the strongest because of it. Not that he had been any better, but at the time he hadn't been thinking straight, so he had an excuse for his actions. He landed on a branch and stopped his run through the trees when he noticed that there was a large parking lot out beyond the tree. There was no way he would be able to keep from being seen if he went out there and from the looks of things, it might have to.
This late at night there were still a few cars in the lot, but at the far end of it, near the kid's jungle gym and swings was what looked like a six foot tall walking lizard with its legs jointed backwards with a long tail. The thing was wearing red and white armor, holding what looked like an advanced gun of some kind, and hissing at a couple of kids who couldn't have been more than seven years old. One was a little boy who looked like he was trying to be brave and cower at the same time. He had sandy blonde hair and was wearing a pair of jeans, a blue shirt, and a blue jacket. The girl on the other hand was blonde and had her hair tied up in a couple of pig tails that hung down her back. She was wearing a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and had a large stick in her hands that she was trying to hit the thing with.
"Back off Snark!" The girl yelled as she swung the stick back and forth.
"Katie be careful..." The boy gasped a second later and looked even more frightened.
The lizard dodged the stick with ease and brought its gun forward and pointed it right at the little girl. Ranma growled as he saw this, dropped his pack to the ground, and launched from his perch in the tree and sailed clear across the parking lot. He barely noticed as the girl's body started to glow a bright yellow color before he landed in front of the gun, grabbed it, and twisted it into a ball of broken and shattered pieces that he dropped on the ground. The lizard thing hopped back about five yards and looked pissed off at him as it hissed something at him. Ranma had to concentrate a little, but in-between the hissing were words that were barely understandable.
"I've seen enough, go home or else you will get the beating of your life." Ranma snarled.
"Pathetic human." The lizard hissed at him. "These two stole something from me and I want it back."
"NO WE DIDN'T!" The two kids yelled.
"I don't care what they did, you are the one that was pointing a gun at defenseless children and I won't let you get away with that." Ranma said. He didn't see the girl glare at him for a second.
Hissing, the lizard like thing reached to its belt and pulled out a handful of small square objects. "Final warning human, get out of my way or you will die along with them."
Ranma glared as he narrowed his eyes and let his battle aura form around him in a wave of blue fire. "I don't think so."
Behind Ranma the boy gasped and backed up a couple of steps and muttered to himself. "The blue fire man..."
"Not now Franklin!" Katie hissed.
"But it's him, the guy I told you about..."
"I know, now lets get through this then we can worry about that dream you had."
"Alright." Franklin said.
Ranma looked over his shoulder for a second while using his other eye to watch the lizard thing. "You two run and get out of here, I'm pretty sure I can take him so you should be safe and it's getting late."
The girl looked like she was about to complain when the boy nodded and grabbed her arm. "Right, let's go Katie."
"But?!"
Ranma flared his aura a little brighter as he turned back to the lizard and started slowly walking forward. For a brief moment he wondered where the parents were while their kids were out so late, and then shrugged it off. They must have snuck out and stumbled across this thing by accident. Sneaking away from one's parent wasn't exactly something he was unfamiliar with. He glared at the thing as it started to side step a little and it held up a couple of those small boxes. "Get out of here! This is your final warning." Ranma growled.
"You think you can take on the Great Snark Empire?" It hissed.
"I don't care what you are, only that you were trying to hurt a couple of kids."
The Snark gave a hissing laugh. "You think those two are just little kids? They both possess powers you can not even imagine with your feeble brain, human."
Recalling that he had been feeling a build up of power before he showed up, Ranma wondered if one of those two kids had been the cause. He had been thinking that it was this thing that he sensed, but now that he took a closer look he could tell that it didn't have the right kind of aura. It was an alien, there was no denying that, but other than that it didn't have that extra flare that he had come to recognize from someone using a power. "Yeah right."
"You mock me?!" The Lizard yelled.
"Listen bean stalk, just go away and don't come back."
"How dare you!"
Ranma just smirked and wondered why it was always easy to rile someone up using and insult or three. "I doubt you are very dangerous anyway, I mean those kids were causing you problems before I got here and they didn't look all that dangerous to me."
"AGHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! SNAAAAAAARRRLLL!" The lizard bellowed and threw the first hand full of squares. It grinned and showed off a lot of very sharp pointy teeth. "DIE!"
Yawning a little, Ranma ignored the squares and dodged around them with ease. He wasn't at all surprised when they stared exploding once he was past them. His hands shot forward and he fired off a controlled burst of Ki that flashed between the two and slammed into the lizard and blew it off its feet. Surprisingly the thing didn't drop the other handful of explosives it had in its other hand like Ranma had expected. He jumped at the thing just as it rolled over backwards and used its oddly hinged legs go vault over a car and threw the explosives while it was moving. They rained down all around Ranma as he moved to stop his forward movement and started to go off.
Laughing, the Snark landed and pulled out a hand held blaster and fired several shots into the cloud of smoke that its explosives had created. "Pathetic human, you will have to do better than that to defeat...ARGHAAAAAAAAA!"
Dressed in a yellow body suit with a starburst on the chest and wearing silver boots, Katie stepped out from behind the car. Her stomach is giving off a bit of smoke from where she had just fired off a large ball of energy to take down the Snark. She had a major dislike for the things and rarely hesitated to make sure they left in a lot of pain when she was around. She glanced over at the smoke and wondered if she would have to call an ambulance. Franklin, who was under the car, crawled out just as Ranma walked out of the cloud of smoke limping a little. There is a large hole in his pants on his upper left thigh that is smoking and very red, though this doesn't stop him from noticing that the two kids are back.
"I thought I told you two to go away, not change your clothes." Ranma muttered, he was in pain so he didn't give a damn about being polite at the moment.
Katie resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. "I've fought these things several times and not gotten hurt at all, yet you..." She let the statement trail off and grinned, then suddenly frowned as Ranma laughed a little.
"Heh, I got a bit careless and made a mistake. Won't happen again."
"Well I already took care of him." Stated the girl with a flourish as she presented the smoking body of the lizard thing.
"Aw man, it was just getting interesting too." Ranma muttered as he relaxed a little. He could tell that the thing was still alive by its aura, but in a lot of pain from whatever the girl had done to it.
"Katie that was mean!" The boy yelled.
"Was not!"
"Was too!"
"Was not!"
"Was too!"
Sweat dropping, Ranma limped over to the thing to make sure it wouldn't be anymore of a threat. Its armor had been completely melted by what the girl did and a good two thirds of its skin was burned.
"What the heck is this thing anyway?"
"That's a Snark!" The boy said suddenly.
"I've never heard of them." Ranma said.
"They kidnapped me and my family a few years ago." Katie said and lost a bit of her enthusiasm as she recalled that first adventure and what had later happened.
"And you beat them up!" Franklin crowed with a big grin.
"Well yeah!" Katie said happily.
"Heh, well what do you usually do with these things when you defeat them?" Asked Ranma as he absently massaged his burned leg to try and get it to stop hurting.
Katie turned to look at the smoldering Snark and glared at it. "They usually come in groups and take the ones we defeat with them when they leave."
"Oh?" Ranma said and looked around with his senses to see if anymore of these things were hiding in the bushes. "I don't sense anymore of them and I could feel this guy from over a mile away."
"He's by himself?!" Katie gasped.
Suddenly the body started twitching several seconds and gave the kids quite a scare as it burst into flames and was cremated in a matter of a few seconds. They watched as the flames died down and the ashes seemed to blow away on a non-existent wind. Ranma blinked and went over to tap the left over dust with his toe and watched as even this vanished from sight a few seconds later. "Whoa!"
"They've never done THAT before!" Katie yelled.
"Weird." Franklin muttered half to himself.
"Well that takes care of that problem." Ranma said. "Now let's get you kids home before your parents begin to worry."
"But...but...it's only eight at night..." Katie nervously stuttered as she looked around frantically.
"Now, now, it is getting kind of late and this park isn't safe for adults to be in at night let alone kids. Let's get you home before anything else happens."
"I can't do that!" Katie yelled.
"Why not?" Ranma asked in confusion.
"I can't just take you to my house! I have a secret identity to protect you know, I'm The Destroyer!" Katie yelled and posed.
"Right, right, your name isn't Katie. It's Destroyer, whatever, now get moving so we can get you home before anything else happens."
"But...but...but..." Katie sputtered as Ranma waved her towards the sidewalk and glanced at Franklin, who was just nodding happily.
"See, your boyfriend agrees." Ranma said with a smirk.
"WHAT?!!" Katie screamed. "He's not my Boyfriend! Yuck! That's gross!"
Franklin glanced at Katie and blushed a little, but nodded quickly when she glared at him with that look that only girls seem to be able to pull off. Then she turned it on Ranma and he sweat dropped and backed up a couple of steps. "YOU!"
"Hehehe, it was just a little teasing, no need to get mad." He made some warding gestures.
"HUMPH!"
"Well lets get you home kid, I was serous about that."
Katie sighed and started walking; she was trying to think of a way to get rid of the guy that had helped her out. She didn't want her siblings to know about this, he already knew her name because of Franklin's mouth. Blasted Tattle Tale, now she would have to keep him from finding out who the rest of them were. Walking slowly, she wished that she still had the flight power and could just fly away. Blasting the guy flitted across her mind for a brief second but that thought was quickly blasted out of existence. Every few seconds she would glare at him out of the corner of her eye just to make sure he wasn't pulling any funny stuff.
Walking along beside the girl, Ranma tried not to laugh as the girl's face went through a bunch of expressions as she thought about something. He grinned though and got a glare out of her that reminded him of Akane for some reason. The boy just followed along as if he was having a grand adventure, it reminded him of the first couple of months he'd been on the road with his old man. Everyday had brought about new sights that he had just loved to see, met new people, and learned new techniques from his school. He tried not to think of the beatings that had started after about six months of travel, to toughen him up supposedly, though Ranma still had his doubts about that.
"You changed your clothes somehow kid; you might as well change back if you can that way I can just leave you at the door with your parents. Then I can take Franklin here home as well."
"He's spending the weekend at my place." Katie mumbled as she sighed. "Costume: Off"
Ranma didn't' even blink as the girl's odd clothing flared with light and she was suddenly wearing her shorts and t-shirt again. "So are we close to your house?"
The boy leaned over to whisper something in the girl's ear that made her glare at him some more.
"See that large apartment building over there?" Katie pointed.
"Yep."
"I'm not taking you any farther."
Glancing down at the stubborn little girl, Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Oh really?"
She nodded and stuck her chin out, prepared to fight at this point. "Yep."
"Katie! Franklin!"
They all turned to see a woman with long dirty blond hair walking up to them looking really relieved. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a baggy red short sleeved shirt. Ranma glanced at the girl and saw something like embarrassment on her face, though he was really bad at reading emotions, this kid seemed to pretty bad about hiding things. The boy just ran forward and hugged the woman's leg and laughed. The woman stopped a few feet away and gave Ranma an odd look as she glanced over him with his damaged clothes and a back pack slung over one shoulder.
"Who are you?" She asked.
"Ranma Saotome."
"Momma." Katie said with a sniffle.
"I'm Mrs. Powers."
"I found the kids running around the park after dark and decided to get them back home before something happened to them." Ranma said.
"Something happened at the park?"
"Just a fight." Ranma said with a shrug.
"A Fight!?!" Mrs. Powers gasped.
Ranma could tell that she didn't quite believe him, so he gestured to his injured leg with a sigh. "One of them got in a lucky shot when I let my guard down a little."
Mrs. Powers glanced down at his leg and she gasps, she had been paying so much attention to her daughter that she hadn't even really noticed that this guy was injured. "How in the world did you get a wound like that? It looks like a burn..."
Sweat dropping, Ranma tried to think of a plausible excuse to cover the wound and not reveal that the kids had helped him.
"It was a guy tossing around these fire crackers, one of them hit Ranma on the leg." Katie lied.
Ranma nodded and wondered where this kid had learned to lie so effectively, maybe she wasn't so bad at it after all. "Right, firecracker."
"But I thought there was a fight?"
Ranma nodded and cracked his knuckles. "There was, I beat the guy up for endangering a couple of kids."
"Oh! Well thank you for helping out my daughter." Mrs. Powers said with a grin.
"No problem." Ranma muttered as the girls' mother dragged the two kids off while giving him glances over her shoulder ever few feet to make sure he wasn't following them. "Heh, probably think I'm some weirdo or something like that."
'Now I have to figure out how to get to Four Freedom's Plaza from here' He thought as he looked around and realized that once again, he had pulled a Ryoga. Where the hell was he now?
**********
To Be Continued...
Ending Notes - If you didn't know who the crossover is, it's a couple of the kids from Power Pack, it ran from 84-89, then Marvel decided that it wasn't selling enough so they used the last 8 issues to completely slaughter the comic and make sure that it would never be heard from again. Then they tossed the rotting corpse out in the in some unused portion of the marvel studios and refused to sell the rights to the name for the next two decades as Rabid fans tried to bring back a book that was loved by so many. I'm not bitter about it, nope, not me.
I still go through and occationally reread the series every now and then to remind myself that Marvel used to have a lot of good titles around. Stress used to.
(1) Ah, Angst...I don't know what it is with X-men, but the Angst just seems to roll off them in waves. Ranma is a bit depressed after leaving the X-men and these were some of his thoughts of what happened to him. Notice he doesn't even want to mention Akane's name. Ryoga would love to see Ranma like this wouldn't he? Heh ^_^
This is the second part to the Prime Attituded series. I figured since no one seemed to be interested in taking up the story where I left off that I would come up witth a new story line. Let me know what you think. I'm going to try and show off a someone from the Marvel Universe with each chapter of this second part. First up is are a pair of kids named Katie Power and Franklin 'Tattle Tale' Richards with a brief mention of Spiderman.
^_^
Send Reviews, I need the motivation and I'm also quite interested in what people have to say. Think of each chapter of this as a stand alone comic as well as part of the whole, just like a comic series.
**********
Prime Attitude II
Chapter 00 - The Blue Fire Man
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2003
**********
Life can be weird sometimes, take a dimensionally displaced boy by the name of Ranma Saotome for instance. From the time he was born he seems to have been singled out for one of the worst lives a person can ever have. He stayed blissfully ignorant until he was five or so, playing around the house and generally having the normal life of a little kid. Then during the course of one night he was tricked into signing, with a bit of finger paint, a contract that would ruin his life for the next decade or so. A promise, to become a man among men, or willingly commit suicide if his mother didn't think he was manly enough. Such a thing can, if left unchecked mess up a person's mind quite easily. After all what kind of mother would ask for such at thing of a child they loved?
The next day he had been taken on the road to begin his training in the family Martial Arts with his father. Genma Saotome had proven time and again that he was a horrible father and role model, with almost every action he had ever committed or forced upon his son. Forcing a five year old to walk twelve to fifteen hours a day without complaint, to survive beatings in the name of training that would have crippled anyone else. Ranma endured this and much more over the years and he came out of it one of the world's best martial artists, it was one of the few things he was proud of. Physically he was a prime example of a man, everything that a man among men had to look like and he had no end of females interested in him.
On the down side, because of his father, Ranma was deficient mentally and had problems understanding the simplest things. He spent all his time with his father and not around other kids his own age and this had made him one of those people that didn't know how to react correctly in certain situations. When confronted with something he didn't understand he would grow defensive and try to pick a fight to prove himself. This was a trait that his father had forced upon him so that he could be easier to control and keep him from rebelling against him. After enduring the hell that his father had heaped upon him for over a decade they had returned to Japan where more plans were being set in motion. Genma Saotome had planned his son's entire life for him, first by taking his childhood and ruining that with nothing but martial arts and stunting him mentally. Then by taking him to Jusenkyo and giving him a curse that transformed him into a girl and took away the one thing he took pride in, being a man.
This had made him even worse than ever, instead of thinking about the best way to deal with the curse he had been forced to act even more like a man than ever before with unreasonable pride and willing to get into a fight with anyone to make himself feel better. Then the Amazons had come and his fight with Shampoo. Normally he would have just sat there and let her beat him up over the food that him and his old man had stolen, but this time he needed to prove himself, even as a girl, that he was indeed a man. One victory later he was being chased across China by a psychopath trying to kill him because she couldn't accept losing to him. From there things had just gotten worse.
They arrived in Japan and for the next two years it was a war zone pushing him to higher and higher levels of training to survive and protect, not one but three, fiancée's from causing problems. He learned how to tap into his Ch'i and eventually fire off balls of destructive energy that could blow up walls and create craters in the ground. Then the ultimate test of his skills had come as super powerful fighters from around the world converged on him to prove themselves, Pantyhose Taro, Herb of the Musk, and finally Saffron the Phoenix King. Their reasons for picking the fights were all different and filled with pride and arrogance, believing that they were better than everyone else and would go to any lengths to prove it. Ranma had defeated them all and proven himself to be the better person, physically.
Still he hadn't really come to terms with the way his life had turned out, even after two years of war over things he didn't care about. Then after being forced to actually kill Saffron, things had changed, for the worse in some ways. He had gotten fed up and was finally able to move beyond his unwavering arrogance and started to use his head for something other than someone's convenient punching bag. He was improving himself finally, mentally, and growing more and more every day. At the same time he had been forced to pretend to be what he had been and it had gotten harder and harder to keep from hurting his enemies. By the time his time to leave his world came he had placed himself firmly on the path to self improvement and learned a few things that he didn't want to think about.
The one girl, of all his fiancées that he had been willing to kill Saffron over hated his guts and didn't hesitate to tell him at every opportunity. She didn't care that he had saved her life, that she was the one he actually cared for above the others. No, she hated him for something that had happened on the day he first met her and had festered for over two years. He had at first just thought that her temper was a way of showing affection, like his old man showed his by insulting him and beating on him on a daily basis. Once her true feelings became clear he hadn't been able to stay around her as much as he had up until then. His very presence would send her into a rage that would have her attacking him for looking at her the wrong way. His other fiancées had thought it was finally their chance to win him over, but they had already lost in his mind. They were just as controlling and possessive as the first girl.
After that things had just went down hill, then he had come across the entity or it had come across him. Even weeks later, Ranma still didn't fully understand what had happened to him, when he had been 'chosen' to receive the powers he did. Only that it had hurt, a lot, and that he had ended up on some other world that was full of pain and suffering that was in some ways even worse than in his world. The people here seemed to prefer living in dirt, using each other as pawns to get what they wanted and would do nearly anything to survive while the normal people suffered for it. He really didn't like this world at all; even his time with the X-men had shown him that those that seemed to be happy were not as happy as the normal people from his home dimension. They smiled and played, but they never seemed to enjoy it like the people he had seen back home in Nerima. There was always this dull glint in their eyes that proved that they had to be careful of something and never let their guard down.
He knew that when life got that bad it was time to play harder and have even more fun just to balance out things so to speak. Training with the X-men had been the most fun he'd ever had and that had been dulled just a bit when he thought about why they trained in the first place. Those people had been in more fights and deadly situations that he could conceive of. They were battle hardened veterans that could fight on the edge for hours and not lose or even falter; even he hadn't gotten that good. He had bad mouthed them a bit, but at the same time learned that he didn't want to stay around them and become just like them. That wasn't the kind of life he wanted, instead he just wanted to go home. No matter how hard life was, back home, it was what he understood and he knew where he stood with people. Here he was just another loser trying to make his way in a world that had very little hope left in it. (1)
**********
Ranma sighed as he relaxed on the bench and looked around the area, the sun had set a couple hours ago and he was beginning to wonder where he should go from here. This area of New York was dangerous and he didn't want to think about what might happen to him if he lay down under a tree and started to sleep so deeply that people could attack him without him even waking up. He'd had enough of that at the Tendo's place with Akane and her thrice cursed bucket of cold water. Heck now that he really thought about it he usually woke up only when he hit the water of the Koi pond or with the bucket, he'd gotten used to it. The X-men had just let him sleep in until he woke up and that was usually around seven or so unless something made him get up earlier.
He had left the X mansion two days ago and was just as confused now as he had been when he left. Xavier had taken his departure in stride, so had Logan. It was about what he had expected from the two men, but the two that confused him were Rogue and Scott. Rogue had begged him to stay so they could get him better prepared for their world and when they hadn't worked she had gotten mad at him. He still didn't understand why she started calling him names as he packed his bag to get on the road. Xavier had gotten amused by it though and just kept his mouth shut as she ranted.
Then there had been Scott Summers and his oddities. Ranma didn't know what to think of the guy, at one moment you could be buddies and the next he was cursing at you for something weird. Ranma understood that ever since he had killed Soul Fire a couple weeks ago that he had gotten on Scott's bad side. He kept ranting about how the X-men don't kill and got mad when Ranma pointed out that he wasn't in fact an X-man. After two days of this Ranma had quietly asked Logan to have a talk with the guy. Scott hadn't said anything since, but every time they were in the same room Ranma had the oddest feeling that he needed to keep an eye out for a stray eye beam blast from the guy.
After that came Beast, or Hank McCoy and all his experiments that had to be finished before he would allow him to leave. Ranma swore if he heard the term 'samples' again there was going to be a doctor with a couple of broken arms in the near future. He was also glad that he hadn't heard from Bishop either, that guy was all temper and no funny bone. After that Xavier had given him what he called a small book with a pen attached to it. The guy had written down the names and addresses of several people that might be able to help him get home and placed calls to each of them to let them know that he might be stopping by sometime in the near future. Most of the addresses were here in New York, but according to Xavier they were rarely ever at home for very long as they went about doing their jobs. His best bet though, according to Beast was Dr. Reed Richards who specialized in creating super scientific devices for various reasons.
Beast even said that he knew for a fact that Richards had created a dimensional door that could readily take him home. Unfortunately he was one of the guys that were the hardest to get a hold of under even the best of circumstances, so Ranma was going to have to go directly to him at Four Freedoms Plaza. An area of New York City, where Reed Richards had bought all the buildings around his head quarters and converted to his personal use. Ranma had been thinking of the guy for two days now as he walked across the city at a slow walk and hoped he wasn't anything like Kuno. For some reason all the rich people he met were conceited and arrogant beyond belief with some eccentric habit about them. Kuno had been a pompous ass with a boken and poetry fetish, Chardain had that weird food things of his, and even Herb had been a half human half dragon descendent with an attitude that drove him up the wall.
Sighing again, Ranma stretched as he sat on the bench and looked around the small park where he was resting a bit before he would head out for the next leg of his walk. He lay his head back and spent the time reading the energy levels of the area around him with his Ki, almost instantly he sensed some growing power levels heading his way. This didn't surprise him in the least; this whole city seemed to be filled with mutants of one form or another. He could feel them all around him as they moved about doing whatever they did on nights like this, though there were even more normal people around than mutants. Over the last two days he had gotten better at sensing them and spent a few hours trailing this mutant or that one as he moved about the city. As far as he could tell most of them tended to live rather normal lives and did what they could to make sure they didn't stand out to the general public. Then he had found out that when they started using whatever their mutant ability was they stood out even more.
He had used it to spot Spiderman crawling up the side of a skyscraper, what had surprised him was when the guy stopped what he was doing and turned to look right at him for a brief second. Ranma wasn't sure how the guy had known he'd been spotted though and put it down to a well developed danger sense before moving on, it wasn't like he ever planned to meet the guy anyway. After that he hadn't spotted any of the known superheroes of the city, but plenty of mutants. One in every fifty people he passed had the slightly different aura that he considered to be a mutant, most of them looked basically normal as far as he could tell. Though, the girls tended to have oddly colored hair styles that reminded him of the Amazons. If they had red hair it was bright, bright red that could be spotted in the middle of a crowd.
Jean Grey had bright red hair, Storm had that white hair, and Rogue had reddish brown with those white stripes in it. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, but as he took notice of all these mutants it seemed like they went out of their way to make themselves stand out in one fashion or another without standing out as a mutant. Shaking his head, he was thinking too much it seemed and he turned his head and focused on the mutant he could feel heading in this direction. This aura was different though, not as blatantly obvious or something, he wasn't sure just how though and he figured it would be better to head over there than to sit here and wait for some moron to attack him. Standing up he grabbed his pack and shouldered it so that it didn't get in the way of his coat.
Jogging into the trees behind the bench, he broke into a run the instant he was out of sight and took to the trees. It had been a while since he had taken the time to tree jump, several months at least, but he could still bounce from tree to tree in a blur of motion. He ignored the small branches that tended to get in his way as he landed and bounced on, they couldn't hurt him even if he was unconscious. His skin had become very tough over the years and his recent power up had made him even stronger and faster. One thing he was grateful for was that the changes to his body were going to happen slowly, giving him time to adjust them. A power up under the right circumstances was fine, but when it wasn't earned he felt it would become more of a crutch than something useful. It was like a weapon, if he depended on it to much his regular skills would suffer for it.
Just like what happened to Akane when she ate those Super Soba noodles or when she had gotten her hands on that enchanted dogi of hers that brought out her full potential. Akane had been nearly unstoppable with both of those power ups and she had wasted her time lording it over everyone else and proving that she was the strongest because of it. Not that he had been any better, but at the time he hadn't been thinking straight, so he had an excuse for his actions. He landed on a branch and stopped his run through the trees when he noticed that there was a large parking lot out beyond the tree. There was no way he would be able to keep from being seen if he went out there and from the looks of things, it might have to.
This late at night there were still a few cars in the lot, but at the far end of it, near the kid's jungle gym and swings was what looked like a six foot tall walking lizard with its legs jointed backwards with a long tail. The thing was wearing red and white armor, holding what looked like an advanced gun of some kind, and hissing at a couple of kids who couldn't have been more than seven years old. One was a little boy who looked like he was trying to be brave and cower at the same time. He had sandy blonde hair and was wearing a pair of jeans, a blue shirt, and a blue jacket. The girl on the other hand was blonde and had her hair tied up in a couple of pig tails that hung down her back. She was wearing a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and had a large stick in her hands that she was trying to hit the thing with.
"Back off Snark!" The girl yelled as she swung the stick back and forth.
"Katie be careful..." The boy gasped a second later and looked even more frightened.
The lizard dodged the stick with ease and brought its gun forward and pointed it right at the little girl. Ranma growled as he saw this, dropped his pack to the ground, and launched from his perch in the tree and sailed clear across the parking lot. He barely noticed as the girl's body started to glow a bright yellow color before he landed in front of the gun, grabbed it, and twisted it into a ball of broken and shattered pieces that he dropped on the ground. The lizard thing hopped back about five yards and looked pissed off at him as it hissed something at him. Ranma had to concentrate a little, but in-between the hissing were words that were barely understandable.
"I've seen enough, go home or else you will get the beating of your life." Ranma snarled.
"Pathetic human." The lizard hissed at him. "These two stole something from me and I want it back."
"NO WE DIDN'T!" The two kids yelled.
"I don't care what they did, you are the one that was pointing a gun at defenseless children and I won't let you get away with that." Ranma said. He didn't see the girl glare at him for a second.
Hissing, the lizard like thing reached to its belt and pulled out a handful of small square objects. "Final warning human, get out of my way or you will die along with them."
Ranma glared as he narrowed his eyes and let his battle aura form around him in a wave of blue fire. "I don't think so."
Behind Ranma the boy gasped and backed up a couple of steps and muttered to himself. "The blue fire man..."
"Not now Franklin!" Katie hissed.
"But it's him, the guy I told you about..."
"I know, now lets get through this then we can worry about that dream you had."
"Alright." Franklin said.
Ranma looked over his shoulder for a second while using his other eye to watch the lizard thing. "You two run and get out of here, I'm pretty sure I can take him so you should be safe and it's getting late."
The girl looked like she was about to complain when the boy nodded and grabbed her arm. "Right, let's go Katie."
"But?!"
Ranma flared his aura a little brighter as he turned back to the lizard and started slowly walking forward. For a brief moment he wondered where the parents were while their kids were out so late, and then shrugged it off. They must have snuck out and stumbled across this thing by accident. Sneaking away from one's parent wasn't exactly something he was unfamiliar with. He glared at the thing as it started to side step a little and it held up a couple of those small boxes. "Get out of here! This is your final warning." Ranma growled.
"You think you can take on the Great Snark Empire?" It hissed.
"I don't care what you are, only that you were trying to hurt a couple of kids."
The Snark gave a hissing laugh. "You think those two are just little kids? They both possess powers you can not even imagine with your feeble brain, human."
Recalling that he had been feeling a build up of power before he showed up, Ranma wondered if one of those two kids had been the cause. He had been thinking that it was this thing that he sensed, but now that he took a closer look he could tell that it didn't have the right kind of aura. It was an alien, there was no denying that, but other than that it didn't have that extra flare that he had come to recognize from someone using a power. "Yeah right."
"You mock me?!" The Lizard yelled.
"Listen bean stalk, just go away and don't come back."
"How dare you!"
Ranma just smirked and wondered why it was always easy to rile someone up using and insult or three. "I doubt you are very dangerous anyway, I mean those kids were causing you problems before I got here and they didn't look all that dangerous to me."
"AGHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! SNAAAAAAARRRLLL!" The lizard bellowed and threw the first hand full of squares. It grinned and showed off a lot of very sharp pointy teeth. "DIE!"
Yawning a little, Ranma ignored the squares and dodged around them with ease. He wasn't at all surprised when they stared exploding once he was past them. His hands shot forward and he fired off a controlled burst of Ki that flashed between the two and slammed into the lizard and blew it off its feet. Surprisingly the thing didn't drop the other handful of explosives it had in its other hand like Ranma had expected. He jumped at the thing just as it rolled over backwards and used its oddly hinged legs go vault over a car and threw the explosives while it was moving. They rained down all around Ranma as he moved to stop his forward movement and started to go off.
Laughing, the Snark landed and pulled out a hand held blaster and fired several shots into the cloud of smoke that its explosives had created. "Pathetic human, you will have to do better than that to defeat...ARGHAAAAAAAAA!"
Dressed in a yellow body suit with a starburst on the chest and wearing silver boots, Katie stepped out from behind the car. Her stomach is giving off a bit of smoke from where she had just fired off a large ball of energy to take down the Snark. She had a major dislike for the things and rarely hesitated to make sure they left in a lot of pain when she was around. She glanced over at the smoke and wondered if she would have to call an ambulance. Franklin, who was under the car, crawled out just as Ranma walked out of the cloud of smoke limping a little. There is a large hole in his pants on his upper left thigh that is smoking and very red, though this doesn't stop him from noticing that the two kids are back.
"I thought I told you two to go away, not change your clothes." Ranma muttered, he was in pain so he didn't give a damn about being polite at the moment.
Katie resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. "I've fought these things several times and not gotten hurt at all, yet you..." She let the statement trail off and grinned, then suddenly frowned as Ranma laughed a little.
"Heh, I got a bit careless and made a mistake. Won't happen again."
"Well I already took care of him." Stated the girl with a flourish as she presented the smoking body of the lizard thing.
"Aw man, it was just getting interesting too." Ranma muttered as he relaxed a little. He could tell that the thing was still alive by its aura, but in a lot of pain from whatever the girl had done to it.
"Katie that was mean!" The boy yelled.
"Was not!"
"Was too!"
"Was not!"
"Was too!"
Sweat dropping, Ranma limped over to the thing to make sure it wouldn't be anymore of a threat. Its armor had been completely melted by what the girl did and a good two thirds of its skin was burned.
"What the heck is this thing anyway?"
"That's a Snark!" The boy said suddenly.
"I've never heard of them." Ranma said.
"They kidnapped me and my family a few years ago." Katie said and lost a bit of her enthusiasm as she recalled that first adventure and what had later happened.
"And you beat them up!" Franklin crowed with a big grin.
"Well yeah!" Katie said happily.
"Heh, well what do you usually do with these things when you defeat them?" Asked Ranma as he absently massaged his burned leg to try and get it to stop hurting.
Katie turned to look at the smoldering Snark and glared at it. "They usually come in groups and take the ones we defeat with them when they leave."
"Oh?" Ranma said and looked around with his senses to see if anymore of these things were hiding in the bushes. "I don't sense anymore of them and I could feel this guy from over a mile away."
"He's by himself?!" Katie gasped.
Suddenly the body started twitching several seconds and gave the kids quite a scare as it burst into flames and was cremated in a matter of a few seconds. They watched as the flames died down and the ashes seemed to blow away on a non-existent wind. Ranma blinked and went over to tap the left over dust with his toe and watched as even this vanished from sight a few seconds later. "Whoa!"
"They've never done THAT before!" Katie yelled.
"Weird." Franklin muttered half to himself.
"Well that takes care of that problem." Ranma said. "Now let's get you kids home before your parents begin to worry."
"But...but...it's only eight at night..." Katie nervously stuttered as she looked around frantically.
"Now, now, it is getting kind of late and this park isn't safe for adults to be in at night let alone kids. Let's get you home before anything else happens."
"I can't do that!" Katie yelled.
"Why not?" Ranma asked in confusion.
"I can't just take you to my house! I have a secret identity to protect you know, I'm The Destroyer!" Katie yelled and posed.
"Right, right, your name isn't Katie. It's Destroyer, whatever, now get moving so we can get you home before anything else happens."
"But...but...but..." Katie sputtered as Ranma waved her towards the sidewalk and glanced at Franklin, who was just nodding happily.
"See, your boyfriend agrees." Ranma said with a smirk.
"WHAT?!!" Katie screamed. "He's not my Boyfriend! Yuck! That's gross!"
Franklin glanced at Katie and blushed a little, but nodded quickly when she glared at him with that look that only girls seem to be able to pull off. Then she turned it on Ranma and he sweat dropped and backed up a couple of steps. "YOU!"
"Hehehe, it was just a little teasing, no need to get mad." He made some warding gestures.
"HUMPH!"
"Well lets get you home kid, I was serous about that."
Katie sighed and started walking; she was trying to think of a way to get rid of the guy that had helped her out. She didn't want her siblings to know about this, he already knew her name because of Franklin's mouth. Blasted Tattle Tale, now she would have to keep him from finding out who the rest of them were. Walking slowly, she wished that she still had the flight power and could just fly away. Blasting the guy flitted across her mind for a brief second but that thought was quickly blasted out of existence. Every few seconds she would glare at him out of the corner of her eye just to make sure he wasn't pulling any funny stuff.
Walking along beside the girl, Ranma tried not to laugh as the girl's face went through a bunch of expressions as she thought about something. He grinned though and got a glare out of her that reminded him of Akane for some reason. The boy just followed along as if he was having a grand adventure, it reminded him of the first couple of months he'd been on the road with his old man. Everyday had brought about new sights that he had just loved to see, met new people, and learned new techniques from his school. He tried not to think of the beatings that had started after about six months of travel, to toughen him up supposedly, though Ranma still had his doubts about that.
"You changed your clothes somehow kid; you might as well change back if you can that way I can just leave you at the door with your parents. Then I can take Franklin here home as well."
"He's spending the weekend at my place." Katie mumbled as she sighed. "Costume: Off"
Ranma didn't' even blink as the girl's odd clothing flared with light and she was suddenly wearing her shorts and t-shirt again. "So are we close to your house?"
The boy leaned over to whisper something in the girl's ear that made her glare at him some more.
"See that large apartment building over there?" Katie pointed.
"Yep."
"I'm not taking you any farther."
Glancing down at the stubborn little girl, Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Oh really?"
She nodded and stuck her chin out, prepared to fight at this point. "Yep."
"Katie! Franklin!"
They all turned to see a woman with long dirty blond hair walking up to them looking really relieved. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a baggy red short sleeved shirt. Ranma glanced at the girl and saw something like embarrassment on her face, though he was really bad at reading emotions, this kid seemed to pretty bad about hiding things. The boy just ran forward and hugged the woman's leg and laughed. The woman stopped a few feet away and gave Ranma an odd look as she glanced over him with his damaged clothes and a back pack slung over one shoulder.
"Who are you?" She asked.
"Ranma Saotome."
"Momma." Katie said with a sniffle.
"I'm Mrs. Powers."
"I found the kids running around the park after dark and decided to get them back home before something happened to them." Ranma said.
"Something happened at the park?"
"Just a fight." Ranma said with a shrug.
"A Fight!?!" Mrs. Powers gasped.
Ranma could tell that she didn't quite believe him, so he gestured to his injured leg with a sigh. "One of them got in a lucky shot when I let my guard down a little."
Mrs. Powers glanced down at his leg and she gasps, she had been paying so much attention to her daughter that she hadn't even really noticed that this guy was injured. "How in the world did you get a wound like that? It looks like a burn..."
Sweat dropping, Ranma tried to think of a plausible excuse to cover the wound and not reveal that the kids had helped him.
"It was a guy tossing around these fire crackers, one of them hit Ranma on the leg." Katie lied.
Ranma nodded and wondered where this kid had learned to lie so effectively, maybe she wasn't so bad at it after all. "Right, firecracker."
"But I thought there was a fight?"
Ranma nodded and cracked his knuckles. "There was, I beat the guy up for endangering a couple of kids."
"Oh! Well thank you for helping out my daughter." Mrs. Powers said with a grin.
"No problem." Ranma muttered as the girls' mother dragged the two kids off while giving him glances over her shoulder ever few feet to make sure he wasn't following them. "Heh, probably think I'm some weirdo or something like that."
'Now I have to figure out how to get to Four Freedom's Plaza from here' He thought as he looked around and realized that once again, he had pulled a Ryoga. Where the hell was he now?
**********
To Be Continued...
Ending Notes - If you didn't know who the crossover is, it's a couple of the kids from Power Pack, it ran from 84-89, then Marvel decided that it wasn't selling enough so they used the last 8 issues to completely slaughter the comic and make sure that it would never be heard from again. Then they tossed the rotting corpse out in the in some unused portion of the marvel studios and refused to sell the rights to the name for the next two decades as Rabid fans tried to bring back a book that was loved by so many. I'm not bitter about it, nope, not me.
I still go through and occationally reread the series every now and then to remind myself that Marvel used to have a lot of good titles around. Stress used to.
(1) Ah, Angst...I don't know what it is with X-men, but the Angst just seems to roll off them in waves. Ranma is a bit depressed after leaving the X-men and these were some of his thoughts of what happened to him. Notice he doesn't even want to mention Akane's name. Ryoga would love to see Ranma like this wouldn't he? Heh ^_^