Originally, there was a chapter between chapter 2 and this, but since I already had part of this one written, I'm just gonna use it now. Okay?
Okay.
Before we get into it, however, I would like to try to explain my absence. In recent weeks I have found myself with loads more free time. While this might seem like a good thing for more writing time, I had also rediscovered a favorite game of mine called Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction (Expansion Set). Something about this game is that it is a highly addictive game that thousands (millions at its peak) of people would spend hundreds of dollars a year to get the best items on and whittle away all of their spare time playing. I, being incredibly poor and stubborn to boot, long ago made a vow to play legitimately. This means that I end up spending twice as much time and only getting half as far. Basically what I'm saying here is... Get Diablo 2 if you like good games and have the time to waste, don't get it if you don't. . BLIZZARD ROCKS!! Oh, and sometime in the last week I went in and got all four of my Wisdom Teeth removed, leaving me with soreness in the back and sides of my mouth and out on a limb as far as paying attention to anything. (Oohhh, look at the pretty stars! Hehe...)
Now, let's go forward, rather than dwelling on the past.
====== SPIRIT GUIDE ======
Since the day that Ranma had died, Akane did little more than watch over his almost eerily lifeless body and wonder what was taking him so long. All that Cologne would say about it was that good energy gathered more slowly than bad.
Too bad Akane didn't know what the heck she was talking about.
Most of the time Akane kept Ranma's body from harm, she also had hot water handy for all the times when his body would revert to female form.
Meanwhile, Ranma was very annoyed to find that his spirit would also change form whenever his body did.
"So if I had died as a girl!?"
"You would have been stuck as a girl in death..."
To say that Ranma got the shivers from that would have been an understatement.
Koenma popped in from time to time to give Ranma an estimate on just how far along his egg was. As of two and one-half weeks, he was officially at eighty-three point seven percent (roughly).
So Ranma continued to wait. Although, he did feel that he was getting a bit antsy.
==
Ranma was turning the golden egg over and over in his hand. "So... what do you think it'll look like?"
"I don't know Ranma... I guess only time can tell."
Ranma smiled teasingly. "So I guess I just have to find this guy 'Time' then?"
Botan scoffed. "Ranma! No one interrupts him! He's time! No one can interrupt time!"
Ranma looked inquisitively at Botan, trying to figure out if she was serious or not. Smiling, he laughed a couple of times, and Botan joined in, which only proved what he was thinking. "Y'know Botan, when you do that I can't tell if you're being serious or not!"
"Heh-eh, yeah. Sorry, I couldn't resist!"
"Yea-hah, neither could I." Ranma tried to calm his laughter down. After he had a good hold on his laughing, he looked down, shifting the egg in his hand.
The golden glow just at the edge of the golden shell went unnoticed. As there was just too much gold there to look at anyway.
==
"Akane, you have to go back to school sometime."
"Yeah but, what if Ranma wakes up and I'm not there?"
"Akane, I'll be sure to tell you the moment that he wakes up. Calm down and go to school."
Akane nodded, Kasumi was right. She couldn't just sit there forever. Tomorrow, she was going back to school.
==
Akane sat in class as Ranma watched her try to keep up.
She was writing in her notebook but for some reason she kept on switching from legible writing to scrawling down scribbles.
"Akane, what are you thinking?" Ranma watched over her shoulder as he also just happened to be listening in on the lecture. 'I can't believe it, I'm dead but I'm still in school!'
"I wonder if she's thinking about that Kuno boy? She didn't seem too happy to see him, despite what he thought."
Ranma nodded. "Maybe... I would sure know how she feels..."
"Akane Tendo? Can we talk after class?" Miss Hinako was just dismissing class and was looking toward Akane with an inquisitive look.
"Oh. Yes Sensei." Akane fussed with the various objects in front of her before she stood to see what it was that the teacher wanted.
"Yes, sensei?"
As she looked at Akane, Miss Hinako sighed. "Miss Tendo. I know that... there's been a death. It's been hard on all of us. But being gone from class has put you way back."
"Hmm? How far back?"
"Well... It's a lot really. You managed to miss several really important lessons in this class alone. But Principal Kuno has decided to let you make it up somehow..."
"How's that?" Akane was curious and slightly unnerved at the same time.
Ranma was floating nearby, just as curious. "I wonder what this is all about?"
"He says that if you can get an 80% or above on a accumulative assessment, then he'll mark you down as excused for those days you missed. If not, well." She pulled out a pile of paper at least a hundred sheets thick and dumped it on her desk. "This is the homework you missed, and it would need to be done and turned in by the Monday after the test on Thursday."
"WHAT!? Look at that! I've never seen that much homework in... what? A coupla weeks? Wow, it's really been that long?"
"Well, she did say they were important subjects... And are you sure that little girl is really a teacher?"
Ranma crossed his arms. "Yes, she's a teacher. Just don't get her angry."
As Akane took the pile of papers and thanked the little teacher, Ranma followed her back to the Tendo's.
After checking on Ranma, she made her way up to her room and sat down to look at her homework. "Okay, I've got three days. I better make them count."
Through that time, Ranma watched her study, and helped her continue to do so while she slept.
== Akane's Dream ==
"Hemisphere, Ranma, not Hemoglobin!" Akane began scribbling her notes down as Ranma sat there puzzled.
"Um, okay. Then where is Hemoglobin?"
"Hemoglobin is in blood. It carries oxygen. It doesn't cut the world in half!" As she continued to scribble her notes down, she began mumbling. "Stupid boy..."
"Okay! Well then, how dense is a black hole?"
"Too dense to measure."
"Uh, and how bad is your cooking?"
"Too bad to measure."
'Hah! She's learning already! At least she's honest in her dreams!' Ranma felt proud that he had gotten a confession out of Akane, even if it was in her dreams. "Um, okay. So what year did World War II finally end for Japan?"
"Uh... 1945?"
"Yeah! And what about Germany?"
As Ranma continued to help Akane study, the golden egg in his pocket continued to glow warmly.
==
The next day Akane woke up feeling only a bit refreshed. Her face hurt too, which made sense considering she fell asleep on her pencil.
It was Wednesday so she still had one more day to make up her work, which was good. But she still had to attend all her classes, which was bad.
Fortunately, Ranma was free to roam. What's the point of being a ghost if you just sit and listen to class lectures?
Not that there was really much to look at. He discovered where Nabiki kept her pictures at the school. He uncovered where Gosunkugi was keeping his constant supply voodoo items. He helped a sleeping teacher to alert the girls in the girl's locker room to the presence of one rather tiny pervert. No biggie.
"Sigh Man, I'm bored..."
"Ranma you've been saying that almost non-stop since you died! What do you want? People to be constantly fighting you? Or fighting over you?"
Ranma chuckled. "Yeah, I guess I did have it made, didn't I?" Botan only stared at him for a moment before he noticed. "WHAT!?"
Botan's mouth quirked for a moment, and then again, until she finally let go and started laughing whole-heartedly.
Ranma would have found it funny too, if he hadn't been serious. "Was it something I said?" For some reason he had a sudden urge to yell at his foot, but squashed it as a silly notion. (A/N: Snickers at bad humor.)
That night was yet another night of helping Akane with her studying/homework.
== China, Village of the Amazons ==
Cologne looked across the village square at the young girl who had so recently joined their ranks.
Tsukiko was her name, and it fit her well. Her glowing blue hair (not really glowing... at least not all the time) seemed to perfectly frame her cream-ish eyes, which glowed brightly during the full moon, but were a bit darker during the new. In physical age she was only about five years old, but in real age she was at least forty! Being an Osahktva, she had been given a grown body upon reincarnation, though all of the power of her previous life needed to be 'reworked' before it could be usable.
Tsukiko, aside from that, was a marvelous learner, and had a body that seemed more resilient than any other at that age.
Of course, Cologne couldn't see to the child's training personally just yet, she had other things to attend to...
==
Ninety-nine percent!
Ninety-nine percent!!
Ranma couldn't believe it!!
Akane got a ninety-nine percent!!! (Readers face-fault.)
'Huh, I guess those sleep-time study sessions paid off...'
Ranma was on his own for the moment, Botan having gone off to Spirit World to drop off a new arrival. Apparently, some guy choked on a chicken bone in Juuban... So for the moment, he was alone.
He hadn't expected that. The amazons were apparently holed up in their restaurant and no one else could even see him, so he was really on his own.
Bored, he started idly floating through the streets of Nerima while idly staring at the sky and idly tap-tapping his foot to an idle tune he didn't really remember hearing.
'Man, I'm bored... I can't even train because I don't have a body... or I'm not in it...' "At least I'm not talking to myself..." Ranma was so bored that he totally missed the fact that he was doing just that.
Tong!!
"... DAMMIT RANMA!!!"
The sound of a lamp-post being rammed into and someone yelling Ranma's name caused him to do a double-take and look around him toward the source.
Sure enough, there was Ryoga standing beside a badly bent lamp-post. He was grumping rather distastefully, but that wasn't what had caught Ranma's attention.
"HEY! YOU GET AWAY FROM HIM!!!" Ranma shot off and slammed what served as his fist into what served as the main body for some kind of half-there demon that was floating around near Ryoga. In that moment when Ranma's Psudo-fist rammed into the demon's side, it was immediately blown to gooey bits, which quickly evaporated into nothing. Ranma didn't know what that... THING was doing there, but he was fairly certain that he didn't have Ryoga's permission. And for that matter, neither did any of the other demons that were hanging around him.
As the many demons of assorted colors looked at this ghost that dared to trifle with them, Ryoga simply looked around, confused.
Ranma went on the attack! He downed two of them before he realized that his spirit didn't have quite the endurance that his body did. Having only exercised his chi, his ki was WAY lower. 'Crud...'
The many demons, as they did outnumber him by about thirty-four to one, ganged up on him when he slowed down a bit.
'DODGE!! Duck, kick, punch, did I get him? ACK!! AUGH!!!' "Aaaaughhh!!!" Ranma was sent careening through a wall when one of them managed to get a head butt on him. It seemed that the more confused Ryoga got, the stronger the demons became! 'They're feeding off of him!' "RYOGA!!" Ranma jumped back into the brawl...
"SAOTOME!!!" Ryoga, having sworn he felt Ranma's energy signature off somewhere to his left, immediately mistakenly took a gargantuan leap to his right; ready for a fight at any time.
The demons, having found that their meal had left, followed after him.
Ranma, in a way, was glad that they had gone. 'Ryoga's tough, he'll last a while...'
"Ranma? You look like you just ran a mile! What happened!?"
Ranma turned around to face Botan and wiped some of the spirit-sweat from his spirit-forehead. "Haha, like a mile could make me feel like this! I could keep running for weeks without tiring! ...If it weren't for that sleeping and eating stuff..." Ranma tapped his index fingers together, admitting to the over-reach he had just committed.
Botan frowned. "Well none the less, look at you! You're a wreck! What the heck happened!? I wasn't gone that long!"
Ranma would have made a comment about that, but instead "You sure about that?" ... made a question about it. (A/N: Big sigh) "Anyway, that's not really important right now! Botan, you gotta tell me something!"
Botan shifted her face into that 'interested' look she uses to show that she's listening.
Ranma then went into extra-fast 'explain mode'. "Okay. I just saw one of those rivals of mine running through here and he was surrounded by these weird flying bug-things! They were huge, for bugs anyway, but Ryoga couldn't see them! And then, while I was fighting them Ryoga was getting confused, well, more confused. And as always when pig-boy gets confused he gets mad, usually at me. Anyway, the madder he got, the stronger they got! And then he yelled at me and jumped off and they followed him! WHAT THE HECK WERE THOSE THINGS!?!? Each one felt as hard as a rock!"
Oddly enough, that one-sided conversation didn't feel quite so odd to Botan, as Ranma had turned female just before the outburst and Botan was used to being around talkative girls. Heck, she worked with a few of them! "Um, okay... this friend of yours, Ryoga, he's the depressed and angry one, right?" Ranma nodded, her red locks swaying slightly. "Well then they were probably spawned around him. There are some demons that are literally created in areas of intense depression. And with how intensely depressed that friend of yours is supposed to be, I read his file, then it wouldn't surprise me if there are a few of them hanging around him."
"So, what? I still say they seemed kinda hard to beat considering I splatted the first one without really trying..."
Botan smiled nervously, "'Splatted' it? Um, Ranma, you do realize that you're still a ghost, right?" Ranma nodded again, "Without your body energy to back you up, you're going to tire out rather quickly so long as you're all spirit. Your power may be right up there with a good-level demon, but you just won't last as long as you're used to. And beside that, the most I can tell you about them is that they won't actually hurt him. In fact, some people manage to feed their demons enough to give them physical form. But the problem with them feeding off of the person's negative emotion is that they're like a rechargeable battery. They feed for a long time, but then they make it harder for the person to stop feeling that emotion. Berserkers take longer to calm down, and that friend of yours may never stop being depressed. Although..."
"Although?" Ranma really didn't like being strung along.
"Well, like I said, they're like batteries. But they're also like living balloons, if you 'splat' them, they release all that energy they stored. The problem with that is if you did that it would likely throw your friend into a more intense state of that emotion that that demon stored. Popping them all at once could just make the problem worse..."
"Soo... I hafta pop 'em one at a time? Sounds like a plan!" Ranma then sped off in the direction Ryoga had gone.
"AH! WHERE ARE YOU GOING!?"
Ranma turned around to see Botan quickly catching up to him. "I'm going to pop Ryoga's balloons!"
Botan managed to catch onto Ranma's pig-tail and pulled hard enough to stop him. "You can't do that NOW! Wait until you've got your body back!" (A/N: BTW, Ranma was reverted back to male sometime during the conversation.) Ranma stopped his pursuit of Ryoga. "And besides that, too much exposure to that kind of energy could taint your spirit egg!"
Ranma blinked. "That could happen?"
Botan sighed, "Yes. It's attuned to your own energy specifically, but if exposed to such intense energy as that it could accidentally take some of that..." Botan then took a big sigh and looked into Ranma's eyes. "And it would be a real shame for you to get so close only to have to destroy the egg."
Ranma was about to nod in agreement when the voice of Koenma came to the two of them. "That's right, Ranma. Fortunately, that boy left too soon for it to affect your egg; which, by the way, is ready to hatch sometime in the next hour. I suggest you stick close to your body, or it could be quite a ride for you when it finally does hatch."
Ranma looked at his egg. "An hour huh? Okay, thanks for the tip!" Ranma waved the giant toddler head good-bye as he grabbed onto Botan's oar. "Let's go Botan!"
"Well okay..." It wasn't that Botan was unsure, she had simply never seen this kind of re-animation before, and was kind of excited to see it.
==
Ranma was now floating just above the Tendo household, as that had been deemed 'close enough'.
Looking intently at the egg, Ranma concentrated for a while. After a few minutes of sweat, Ranma turned to Botan. "How will I know if it's hatching?"
"Um, I guess... it'll look like that."
Ranma noted the way Botan was pointing at him, and then turned to the egg. The golden glow, which seemed almost as if an extension of its shell, had suddenly expanded to fill, and even envelop Ranma's hand. "Cool!"
As he sat (floated) there, the egg lifted itself out of his hand, moving about a meter higher into the air. As it did, the golden aura about it seemed to create a kind of electrical field, with sparks of golden energy moving between the egg itself and an outer shell of golden energy.
As the sounds of the hatching grew louder, Botan yelled out to Ranma. "Ranma! Listen! The moment it hatches, you will be pulled back into your body! Your Spirit Guide can only be alive so long as you are! And since it's about to be alive, you will too! That's the way it works! But it may be too fast for you to-AH!"
With one last pulse Ranma and Botan could feel the raw power of goodness pushing them back, Ranma's goodness. And in that instant Ranma caught a small glimpse of some kind of small tailed animal in the center of the energy storm.
It was small, and black. "Huh?" Ranma could feel a pull that started at his fingertips, he didn't even have a chance to make any more sounds before he was seemingly sucked down into the house, flailing and struggling in a kind of last-moment fear.
With Ranma gone, back to the world of the Living, Botan cradled the furry little bundle in her arms. "Oh how cute!"
==
Kasumi was in the kitchen chopping some of the extra carrots(1) when she heard Ranma's voice. "GAH! WAIT WHAt does... he?" There was then the distinct sound of someone falling loosely on their face.
"Oh my! I'll bet Ranma's going to be awfully hungry, and thirsty too!" She then started preparing some tea and thin soup, perfect for someone who hadn't had a thing in their stomach for nearly three weeks.
== (I could be evil... nah.)
Over a period of about an hour Ranma slowly ate what Kasumi fed him. "Ugh... I can barely move. I feel half-dead..."
"Well Ranma, you were asleep so long we had to have Dr. Tofu hook you up to an IV just to keep you alive. If he hadn't you probably would have died of dehydration, or starvation, or both. Now save your energy, you'll need it when Akane gets back."
"Where is she?"
"Out celebrating with her friends, I think. She should be home sometime in the next hour though, and I'm sure she'll be happy to see you."
Knock knock
"Oh my! I wonder who that could be?"
Ranma laid on the floor listening to what he could hear from the front door. "Oh my! Are you here for Ranma?"
"Why... yes? He's here, right? Or is he sleeping?"
"Well, he just woke up some time ago. If you aren't going to start a fight with him, I suppose you can talk with him."
"Oh don't worry about that. He might not like some of what I have to say though..." The new person, who was apparently a girl, sighed as she walked into the house.
Ranma prepared to meet whoever it was that was coming into the house, sitting up the best he could muster.
"Oh! Good to see you're up Ranma!"
Ranma would have fallen on his face if he had had the energy. "Botan? What are you doing here? And how come Kasumi can see you?"
"Oh, well. I'm here to introduce you to someone. And as for, ah, Kasumi. Some time ago I managed to convince Koenma that I would be a much better help to the Spirit Detective if I had a human body. So, here I am!"
Ranma looked her over with half-closed eyes. "So you're just going to wear that pink kimono everywhere?"
Botan scoffed indignantly. "Ranma! I happen to like it!"
"..."
"And besides, I haven't had much time to build my wardrobe yet..."
"... um, okay. So what did you come here to tell me?"
Botan immediately began to sweat and put her arms up defensively. "Okay now, Ranma! Don't freak out, okay? Just calm down!"
Botan's attempts to calm Ranma down had the opposite effect on him, as it served to get his nerves worked up. "Botan? What's wrong?"
Botan was sweating bullets right about then, 'Man! I really don't want to do this right now!' For a moment, the old habit of 'Meowing' nearly took hold, but she figured that wouldn't have been a good thing considering the company. "Uh... please. Just try to stay calm, okay?" Botan opened the door behind her just a little bit wider, signaling to someone just outside it to come in.
Ranma immediately pushed himself into a corner as a small black cat with odd markings strolled into the room. "C-Cat!!"
"Ranma! Just calm down! This is your Spirit Guide!"
Ranma pointed one shaky finger at the furry feline. "A c-cat?"
"Hey now! It's not nice to point!"
It was then that Ranma's previous exhaustion caught up to him again, as he fainted dead away.
Kasumi, who had come in the cat, looked at it oddly. 'Did that cat just talk?'
====== Ending it Here ======
Well, that was a bit longer than the previous chapters, right?
(1) Just a private joke. Hehe, wouldn't expect anyone who hadn't read 'Kasumi's Present' on the Anime Addventure to understand that one. (Will add http on profile page.)
Anyway, I hope you like what I've done so far. (It doesn't exactly seem spectacular to me, but then I am usually my own greatest critic, ne?)
Don't know when the next chapter will be out. I just might be working on 'Great Monkey, Wild Horse' some, which I think I will end up moving to the Ranma 1/2 section...
Anyway...
Alex Ultra: Creator of Eternal Realm
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