Moments: Exigesis
-----
The time zone change lost six hours. They appeared in a muddy clearing at the edge of a jungle where soil fought sand at the break of dawn. A rush of wind tinged with the musty smell of a rainforest's lifecycle shifted their clothes. Nodding at his cohorts, Ranma teleported to the capital of Bentiu, where he'd use his invisibility and memory techniques to realign the loyalties of the ruling regime.
Shampoo and Kodachi, female African commandoes thanks to ki-focii imbued with the Wavelength technique, started inside the jungle. Their target was the deathmask of Musso Koroni, a goddess of discord and disorder. Though originally worshipped by the Bambara tribe, she found ways to inflame any conflict in Africa.
Destroying the relic wasn't as hard as driving off its guardian.
--
Ranma appeared looking haggard at their rendezvous point that night. He had a bullet hole in his left pant leg and sweat had matted his hair into a mess. While scratched up and disheveled, the girls didn't look nearly as bad as he did. Their biggest injury was finding out Kodachi was allergic to one of the jungle plants.
". . . . and then, I tripped the second laser alarm. Since I'd already worked on the general and he didn't remember me, I just had to escape."
"Why didn't you turn invisible and walk out?" asked a Shampoo as she brushed ineffectively at the swarm of insects around her.
"They killed the lights and were using motion sensors and night-vision goggles, the Umi-senken isn't really designed for that."
"Teleporting?" Kodachi asked from upwind. Smeared herbal paste treated her rash, and drove away the swarms with a powerful putrid smell. She hadn't yet realized she wasn't getting any sex tonight.
"I was running for my life and dodging automatic gunfire, I didn't have time to concentrate properly. It takes seconds to teleport and I have to completely focus."
"It's ok if you didn't think of it Airen. What are we doing tomorrow?"
"You two are exorcising sites profaning Ajok, the God of the Lotuko tribe. Calling on darker side of this deity, they've drawn forth demons that feed on violence and mayhem. I'm dealing with over-zealous rebel leaders who meet genocide with genocide."
----
Like clockwork the plan unfolded, with Ranma handling the secular leaders and Kodachi and Shampoo cleansing tainted landscapes.
Only two days remained when supernatural disaster exploded like a hydrogen bomb.
Ranma's mark, the leader of second largest group of black market slavers, needed killing. Mustafa Al Wuro wasn't the first man who took a vacuum blade to the neck that week, but he was the first to survive. His skin not even scratched, the tall tyrant in jungle camouflage turned and looked right at Ranma, piercing the way of the silent thief. With a guttural yell he hurled a bloody ovoid of power at his assassin while rousing his men to strafe with their automatic weapons.
Not wanting to risk all in an unknown situation, Ranma teleported. Two seconds latter the leafy canopy he'd hidden in became shredded by over a hundred bullets, before exploding with an energy bomb.
None of the futures he viewed held an opponent with such power. Kodachi had mentioned the gravesites were milder than she expected, and he wondered if a malevolent agent drained away the agonies of the dead like a feeding leech.
Worse, Mustafa Al Wuro wasn't smart enough to act alone.
--
Appearing in the middle of a desert oasis, a small cistern with a half-dead date palm overlooking it, Ranma found Shampoo waiting alone.
"The artifacts were missing. Kodachi stayed behind to question the spirits." The Robe of Immaterialism concealed her body like a shimmering mirage, and Shampoo's posture gave nothing away. Dark stringy curls of hair escaped the robe's cowl, showing her illusion remained.
"I'm afraid our plans have changed, an evil is gathering power and we must stop it."
Shampoo nodded. Her love sounded tired, and she too wished to be done with this invasive foreign land. Sand or insects irritated the crevices of her body, and the backlash from releasing the evils concentrated by hatred gave her spectacular headaches and wasn't good for her complexion.
"Airen, what happens with Kodachi after nineteen months?" Frowning beneath her relics, Shampoo could not disguise her grudging respect for the devil hunter.
Ranma's voice became flat and reflective, like a hand mirror showing a madwoman gouging out her own eyes. "She falls in love with her soul mate, a supernatural hunter of gaki named Tanaka. Without us her happiness arrives earlier, ruined when he is eviscerated by major devils. Her partner needs this time to become competent enough to be her partner. Tanaka's death leads Kodachi to see demons everywhere. All people hold a little evil inside, and her relic supports her. I end her madness with a messy death."
Ranma found no middle ground in possible futures – sleep with Kodachi or kill her. Accepting the choice and what it meant wasn't easy. Deciding to kill real people was easier, in part because the endless moment desensitized his view of permanence and death. Ranma had conquered his moral crisis when he'd been forced to leave Kasumi's corpse behind to contain a Sanity Drinker, long ago.
Walking across the sandy uneven soil of the inadequate oasis, he hugged Shampoo. They laid on the uncomfortable ground, taking solace from each other in the dry heat.
--
"Wake up." The intense command shattered the tranquility of the oasis, and the devil hunter wearily rested on a rock under the withered date palm.
Ranma sat up. Kodachi's voice could pierce his slumber like no physical attack could. Perhaps his subconscious feared her screams.
Rubbing her face and scratching under her arms to remove errant sand, Shampoo focused on what Kodachi learned.
Two weeks ago the rich girl might have spent an hour delivering obviously vital information, a diva rubbing her importance upon her perceived rival. Now she had bonded with Shampoo like a good soldier, and delivered a concise summation: "The spirits foretell a major death ritual will shatter the continent. Stop it, and we could save Sudan, and maybe all of Africa. Fail, and we'll watch the ascendance of a dark age where barbarism and evil prevail."
Nodding, Shampoo walked away from the oasis a dozen feet and urinated. She knew being Ranma's love meant fighting his battles, and she simply made those battles her own.
Ranma sat; the shimmering heat outlined his serious expression. He made the decision to rest, knowing his group needed it.
---
As they appeared near the entrance to hotel in Sudan's third largest city, Ranma frowned internally. The road he stood on was cratered with potholes and littered with urban garbage like discarded cigarettes and crumpled newspapers. Not used to 'porting into areas where the landscape changed as wind and man resifted detritus, he had arrived five feet off, a mistake which might potentially kill him. Ranma took time to understand what went wrong.
Frowning at the crumbling white paint showing the title of hotel she couldn't read, Kodachi too examined her surroundings. Surprised her arrival went unremarked upon by the African peons in the streets, her snit broke from a joyous shout.
"First shower is mine!" Shampoo rushed inside to secure a room, having determined her airen's purpose. Fighting evil while clean was better than doing so when you weren't.
Kodachi followed. Acting like nobility wasn't worth much when no one gave a damn. "I'll wash your back if you wash mine." She offered at the registration desk.
Shampoo nodded, hoping the imperial suite had a big enough bathroom for three.
Tonight they could play.
---
Ranma awoke in the early morning, his internal clock having adjusted to the new time. After a leisurely breakfast he outlined a simple strategy.
"We know a major evil ritual is coming, so Kodachi and I will spend most of the day extending our senses, watching. The spirits have said it won't be well-hidden. We must prevent this ritual's completion. Once detected, I'll teleport us along the evil's gradient until we reach striking distance." Part of Ranma's preparations for breaking the moment involved memorizing hundreds of teleportation safe points.
Turning to Shampoo, who hadn't bothered to dress yet, Kodachi scowled. "Our concentration must be uninterrupted. If we fail, then millions of people will suffer preternatural torture."
Shampoo sniffed. "Is fine. Ranma, if you choose between banishing darkness or," Shampoo paused; she really wanted to say 'crazy ribbon girl.' "Kodachi, then destroy dark."
"Yes, Ranma darling. If the choice should be between defeating the Abyss, or us, you must choose the path of greatest good." Absolutely serious, the devil hunter didn't acknowledge the barb at her competence.
Remembering how Izanagi held hostages, Ranma didn't know his heart if his partners were captured. Intellectually and emotionally he would be divided. He doubted such a situation would occur; his intention was to have the girls handle the lesser minions and guard his back.
"I understand." Said Ranma. "Let's get started."
--
"I feel something to the west. It's time."
Nodding at Kodachi, Ranma went to wake Shampoo, who had fallen asleep during the hours of tension.
"Let's go."
With a faint tracing on the edge of his senses, Ranma began. Nine jumps later, and they arrived in a simple cave. A stunning irregular vein of dark purple amethyst glowed in the ki-light Ranma provided, like the stonewalls were bleeding purple crystal. It was his location marker.
"Kodachi, Shampoo, follow me, our adversary is calling us for a showdown." He felt dark ki ten miles to the northwest, flaring with glee and annihilation.
The surface exit of the cavern was a short walk, and upon coming aboveground a breeze brushed their anxious faces. It smelled of decay.
Shampoo shivered, she felt a vibe of maliciousness and domination coming from the west, and wondered how her companions could focus on such a thing well enough to hunt it.
"Expect perimeter guards," whispered Kodachi.
Employing stealth techniques, the three martial artists rapidly covered seven miles of undeveloped jungle terrain in unnatural silence. No animals or insects made noise to cover their movement, having all fled or been sacrificed.
Ranma halted at the edge of a clearing, motioning for observation. A dark geyser of power kissed the sky in the north, and the spiritually sensitized members of the group realized time was running out.
"Semi-conscious zombies." Kodachi's voice oozed disdain. "Shampoo can handle them, we need to stop this at the source."
Snarling, Shampoo pulled out her bent magic sword. A solid lance of power projected from the ugly weapon's edge. It wavered and hummed in the silence before battle. She charged.
The Sword of the Daun blew brainwashed zombie commandoes away like a supernatural leaf blower. Knowing Shampoo could guard their backs; Ranma and Kodachi hurried across the open space, into the heart of evil. The telltale sonic booms of Diana's Crown activating, allowing Shampoo to dodge bullets, mixed with the erratic staccato of gunfire.
Running full out, Kodachi fell behind Ranma as they covered two miles of silent jungles. She heard her lover yelp in pain ahead, and Kodachi found Ranma entangled inside a putrefying canopy of thorn vines and reanimated animal tendons.
Freeing him with a golden beam from her relic, the devil-hunter yelled, "This one is mine, stop the nexus-point!"
Feeling Ranma's presence recede, Kodachi mystically evaluated the undead construct as a Death Fundamental. She inwardly flinched upon realizing it covered over a square mile. Purifying the heart might call for her to combine the Spokes, her highest and most demanding power.
---
Trusting in his companions, Ranma ran as quickly as he could toward the periodic eruptions of darkness defiling the sky. Weighing the trade-off between stealth and time remaining, he rushed forward recklessly through the underbrush, half-expecting to be caught in a trap.
Sometimes he hated being right.
The sports-field sized area he exploded into with a jump would never hold life for five hundred years. The unnatural site had been blasted out of the jungle by concentrated death magic, still festering in hungry, mud-like puddles at its edges. Hollowed out tree stumps with charred splinters peppered the ground, except for a smoothed twenty-foot circle at the far end. An evil man Ranma recognized knelt inside it, surrounded by unfamiliar geometries drawn in ashes.
Mustafa Al Wuro, slave trader and empowered servant, rose to greet his airborne guest, cupping his hands together as if catching a dragonfly. Ranma's corona of serene ki imitated a streaking comet, and he was plucked out of the sky by the hand of a dark god.
His momentum completely absorbed, Ranma hovered, encased in a reddish-purple energy prison that smelled of blood.
Remembering the technique that cut anything, Ranma used it, expecting to tear a huge gap into the containment field. The compressed vacuum sickle bounced off the inner wall, and he barely kept from bisecting himself, halting his own construct with only a tear in his shirt.
"If you couldn't behead me with such an edge, why would it work on a barrier made with my power?"
The vile priest sounded curious, as he carefully extracted himself from the strange pattern he sat inside, jumping and contorting like a fool to avoid the slightest smudge.
With a mental shift, Ranma recognized the words as Japanese, but he knew that to be impossible. His assassination trials runs on Al Wuro had shown the man to be a ruthless simpleton who wasn't literate in his own language.
"What power is behind this puppet?" Ranma allowed his vacuum edge to dissipate.
"Do not play stupid with me, hero." Sneered Al Wuro. "Neither you nor the Bambara witchdoctors can stop me now. The ritual is finished. The Goddess Musso-Koroni lives again."
With a grand gesture, Al Wuro spread his arms, and the intricate traceries covering the clearing evaporated, and a strange dark surge of power came from the west.
Ranma winced; the foreign kami Kodachi had communed with weren't reliable at all. The ritual they were sent to stop wasn't supposed to start until midnight. Still, it wasn't as if the resurrected goddess had a fountainhead of power to draw upon.
Al Wuro laughed. "Even now I find this avatar unnecessary as I drink miles of death my followers have prepared for my return."
'No trouble once I'm out,' thought Ranma. For a divine avatar, Al-Wuro shouldn't be too hard to destroy. Being condensed enough for vacuum immunity likely meant a revised breaking point would work on his flesh.
Shifting his perspective into the fine nodules of breaking points and ki-pressures, Ranma identified some obvious weak points in the magic imprisoning him.
"This agent is of insufficient power to battle with you and win. Instead, your unfinished business will destroy you."
Cackling madly, the possessed revolutionary began chanting an ancient guttural ritual used by forgotten African nomads to appease bloodthirsty gods. The goddess had concluded what Ranma already had; her minion was a wimp and needed backup. The sort of backup coming drove Ranma to escape. Before he was dead.
Raising hands high above his head, the avatar sneered at Ranma's attempts to destroy his energy cage. Insects sizzled and popped against the barrier. 'Great, imprisoned in a giant bug zapper,' thought Ranma, touching the glowing walls at weak nodes, trying to collapse the structure.
"I summon forth your nemesis, the one being whose evil even now works to destroy all you hold dear."
Energy crackled and a lightning bolt struck the ground to the front of Ranma, close enough to draw answering purple sparks off the barrier that contained him. The twilight sky remained clear; heightening the unnatural quality of the intense power storm. Slowly, electricity flowed into a strange geometric pattern, a cross between an oval and a triangle. In the middle a patch of darkness materialized, and solidified with a belch of thick, black smoke.
A huge hulking figure, reminiscent of a great sumo, stared out, and let out a type of hooting growl as the smoke cleared away. Ranma flinched, recognizing his adversary as he continued working the edges of his energy cage.
The giant panda took in the battlefield with a quick glance, and pulled out a sign reading: "This is your own problem boy! I did not sell your soul cheap – the nato and octopus rolls were made by a master."
Genma vanished into invisibility, running from the evil chanting god-avatar.
The ceremonial chanting continued with the beating of a small hand drum made from cured lion skin. The tones of the ritual harmonized with the cadence of the drumbeats.
"I call forth the one you once called master, and let his mind be filled with the darkest thoughts of your innumerable betrayals."
Behind Ranma's prison the Earth itself trembled, and cracks sprang forth in the form of a jagged circle.
Jumbo sized panties, like those worn by a five hundred pound woman, slowly floated down and settled on the ground inside. A message was inscribed on them in the language of demons with a white, viscous fluid, "Happosai and I are busy right now, please summon again in a few centuries. Leave an offering of sweet young virgins in the magic circle and we may reconsider. Thanks! --The March Hare."
Absorbed in the ritual, the avatar's incomprehensible chant deteriorated into an imitation of terrified screams. Its eyes closed, a voice like breaking glass crackled "I call forth the undefeated terror, the unmastered monster whose name contracts your heart."
Dark intricate fires burned out a circle of power that caused Ranma to flinch inside his prison. He struggled to the left side of the barrier, as far away from the death on the east as he could get. An inky stain occupied the center of the conjuring, darker than the soil around it. It had no shape, but seemed to settle into the ground with the attention of a concealed predator.
Paying no more attention to the psycho, Ranma's frantic searching found a crack in the energy web. He began trying to widen it by forcing his aura inside and expanding it.
Briefly he became distracted by the three dimensional ectoplasmic cage to his west, as vine-leaves from a willow tree materialized, looped into elegant kanji. "His undefeated foe is more powerful than you," taunted the arrangement.
Trust Seruni to leave him alone with the Formless Duke and Mr. African psycho godboy.
The ritual finished, the possessed slave-trader inspected his handiwork. His howl of frustration echoed in the falling night. The barriers and cages were empty, including Ranma's former spectral prison.
Enraged, he blasted away the willow leaves and panties, and undid the oval-triangle with a gesture, disbelieving Ranma's nemesis had not shown at all. Sensing an invisible being's escape, his rage damped. One of the entities wasn't stupid and had hidden.
Awuro decided to play along, not realizing Genma had fled from cowardice, not because 'the nemesis' wanted an uninterrupted moment to strike from the shadows. Hoping for a similar subterfuge from the 'undefeated terror,' Awuro broke the eastern runic circle. He was ill-prepared for the Formless Duke to materialize in a swarm of unnatural insects and swallow him, as it transformed into a black triceratops with an extra layer of spiked bony plates.
The demon-dinosaur let out a small belch, as if to say 'Avatars aren't as tasty as real gods, but good for a snack.'
Knowing such a mighty foe couldn't be left at his back, but aware the evil goddess's plan neared fruition, Ranma acted. Dropping the Way of the Silent Thief, he knew the spiritual containments he might weave would be too weak. Rushing forth at maximum speed, ki bleeding off in white ghostifres around his blurred form, Ranma sought the madness of annihilation, and his power envelope became as dark as the Formless Duke.
He drew the quickest, dirtiest containment circle possible, using the crackling energy of insanity. Pleasantly surprised the Duke sat still for the three seconds the ritual took to complete, Ranma wondered why he had not been swallowed or impaled by the demon-thing.
Melting back into the ground to enjoy digestion, the Formless Duke contemplated its temporary cage. Estimating about eight hours before the barrier failed under its attentions, the preternatural beast set to work. It had not destroyed its jailor, simply because in feeling the devouring madness of the Shimmervoid, it felt echoes of its own insatiable hunger. These long eons had been lonely as the last of its kind.
Not wasting time celebrating, Ranma rushed to confront the darkness in the west.
----
Genma fled in the opposite direction, more south than east, neatly avoiding the perimeter defenses that Kodachi and Shampoo were embattled with. This nightmare was nothing compared to one with Happosai.
The invisible giant panda made no attempt at stealth. A mile out, he dropped into sight, deciding not to waste valuable energy. Then he was distracted.
Instinctively Genma adjusted his path into a short detour; his stomach growled, and he smelled good food.
The improbability of a delicious seven course meal located in a dead tropical jungle never entered Genma's mind. He thought he was having a dream. His last memory before appearing in a strange circle with the creepy evil guy was relaxing in the furo after servicing his wife. These past weeks Nodoka had been deliciously exhausting.
Listening to his stomach, Genma stopped. His stomach growled in affirmation. He growphed louder, announcing his hunger. Suddenly the food smell that was right in front of his nose came from another direction.
Familiar with dream meals that ran, Genma knew from experience that if sat in the area the meal originated, it would crawl back to its lair. It worked with the jelly-tapioca octopus three nights ago, so it should work again.
Grunting in hungry satisfaction, Genma brushed an area on the ground free of rocks and sticks. He sat. The scraggly bark of a tree felt comfortable. 'I'm so creative,' thought Genma 'I've never seen this type of tree before.' He attributed the lack of insects and background noise to this being a simple dream.
His stomach growled again.
Looking around as he rested, he saw tropical trees, sharp weeds, rocks, a muddy area a few hundred feet away, and a girl. A girl?
Face covered in red tattoo-whorls and wearing muddy combat fatigues, the dark African woman flinched at his gaze and reached for a knife in a pocket down her right leg. Her left leg was obviously broken, and her hands looked bloody. Staring past her, Genma saw she had crawled out from a bog area and apparently collapsed after leaving an obvious trail.
His stomach burbled, and the good food smell became replaced with fear and festering sickness. This girl; no, woman must be responsible. She was in her late twenties, though her injury made her weak and youthfully frail.
Pulling out a sign reading 'I won't eat you' in Japanese, Genma approached with exaggerated caution.
"Are you a good spirit, or a hungry one that taunts its prey?" Said the woman, feverish.
Genma growphed. If he were human, he would have asked 'what?'
"A you a good spirit, or a hungry one that plays with its food?" The woman repeated, as the fear-smell intensified.
Surprised the strange woman could understand panda grunts, Genma reminded himself he dreamt her up. Of course she understood him! He let loose a panda laugh that terrified her, and listened to a musical clicking of incompressible babble. It pleased him, until he remembered a similar expression on his master's face as Genma and Soun begged for their lives.
In her native language, she spoke soothingly, confident the beast wouldn't understand. "Ndokanda, you crawled out of the bai where they left you for dead, and summoned a strange feral spirit beast with a food offering. If it hasn't eaten you yet, it probably won't. Now do your dead Bambara witchdoctors proud, and convince the stupid spirit to use the Phial to banish the devil goddess before it eats your soul and craps you out."
Reaching down in obvious pain, the woman pulled out a packet of a white doughish substance from her breast pocket. Using her spirit gift to commune with animals, she told the beast "This is foofoo, it's a type of food, if I give this to you, please help me."
Never one to refuse strange new dream delicacies, Genma took the packet and scarfed it down. It tasted like cardboard paste with delicate spices. Perhaps it was an acquired taste?
Ndokanda looked strangely at her savior, when the animal spirit mentioned in animal talk that it had a son of marriage age. She replied if himself or his son could defeat the coming devil, they she'd marry his child and give whatever he wanted.
"I'm still hungry." Growphed Genma.
"Ancestors give me strength." Said the shaman, knowing she would soon pass into wound-fever dreams.
--
As his father negotiated, Ranma arrived. This time, he cautiously concealed himself at the edge of the dark locus point. He wasn't charging into another trap, and reminded himself to think.
His reconnaissance showed another jungle clearing, completely barren and fifty feet across. No evidence of plants, stones, or animals remained over the unnaturally smoothed dirt ground. Strange whorls and patterns of dirt perpetuated up to a ten-foot tall black stone pinnacle. A spiral stair was carved into the rock, capped by an obsidian altar stone. These patterns in the soil made Ranma feel dissension, as if an evil hand corrupted a Zen sand garden. The mystical equivalent of playing a holy sacrament backwards, if holy sacraments were records.
A tall black woman with her back turned raised her hands above the dark altar, and periodically a pulse of unholy power collected, causing a dark radiating aura around her body for two or three seconds. The woman wore little, just a skirt woven of grass. From behind, he could tell had at least one pendant or necklace, and her face was at least partially covered by a golden ceremonial mask that rested on her earlobes. Her back rippled with muscles and held no scars.
"Mortal, you've come here to die." Said a voice in his mind, accompanying a picture of a thorny vine with yellow flowers withering into dust. Another surge of darkness became absorbed into the woman's hands, and he understood she expected him.
"Your ritual will fail." Confidently, Ranma Saotome stepped out. He knew his adversary was absorbing the pulses of darkness, growing stronger. Funny how it no longer mattered what sex his enemy happened to be.
Acknowledging his arrival, the woman turned. She had no eyes, just pools of darkness sucking in light from the eyeholes of a shining golden mask. A floating octagon of darkness hung from a silvery chain around her neck, between her bare black breasts. Tendrils of evil energy caressed her aroused nipples.
"I am the daughter of the Voice of the Void. I am the Bringer of Discord. I am the first woman of Mali, Musso-Koroni. I will give to you the final sadness."
Another surge of power flew into the incarnate Goddess, Musso-Koroni. A gilded devil's sneer of contempt gave the goddess's immobile death-masked face a profane beauty. The death mask Kodachi had destroyed earlier must have been an impressive fake. He gave no thought to whether a woman wore the mask, or the Goddess wore her.
Ranma called forth serenity, the life-insight that positively patterned the world. Accessing ki-focii from hidden weapons space, he allowed his white aura to briefly fountain thirty feet in the sky. This was the showdown he demanded, the test to give meaning to his struggle. For this, he had lived lifetimes in a single day. For this, Nerima exploded a dozen times. For this, he mastered the mystic teachings of Fushimiinari. For this, the willow tree child held her ordeals. For this, he had mastered the mirror. For this, he braved the madness of annihilation. If he failed, his friends and family could survive without him now. No turning back the clock, no Nanban-hand of fate escape, and no extra lives.
For a moment, he felt as if his own arrogance and ego were about to destroy him.
"Let's dance bitch!" Shouted Ranma Saotome to the African Goddess of Hassle and Discord. Pulling out twin AK-47's set to full auto, he pulled the triggers. Fiery imbued ki-bullets homed in on their target, like Wildfire Burning in the Rain.
---
Halfway across the world, Cologne abruptly sat up, sloughing off sleep. She sensed a far danger, one that indirectly affected her bloodline. Her staff called this to her. Though Ranma had grown much in power through his otherworldly journey, his insight had not yet expanded in kind. He now accepted responsibility for emotional and intellectual conflicts, but Ranma had not mastered life. He had mistakes to make and lessons to endure, and deadly were mistakes made with power. They had killed her first daughter when Cologne was a young goddess herself.
"Ranma, what have you and my great-great grand daughter gotten into now?" She whispered, afraid. The powers Ranma hid were not much greater than those she held during her prime, and even then Cologne faced undefeatable foes beyond mortal ken. Thinking yourself a god brought the attention of real gods, and real gods weren't nice.
A muffled grunt told her Mousse was with the Iwato-girl again.
Laboriously collecting herself in the dark, the elder rose to scry-check Shampoo. She raised the wooden staff that once destroyed the gates of Shangri-La and punctured the heart of the Kali, and pulled herself up.
---
Avoiding a series of dark rolling counter-strikes by running diagonally toward the evil goddess, Ranma reached into his weapon areas and smiled.
You never knew when you'd need a grenade. This was something he'd wanted to try for a while.
He focused enough holy power into the grenade to warp the metal, and pulled the pin with a small difficultly. Throwing above the Goddess, he forced the explosion as it cleared her head. His ki formed the fragments into a pattern, a greater banishing ward that typically took hours to prepare. Intricate symbols were drawn in milliseconds by debris traveling hundreds of miles an hour.
As his masterwork came under Musso-Koroni's attentions, the inside turned into impenetrable darkness. More pulses of vile power struck down towards the dark altar, fracturing apart on the barrier. Even a warding of this magnitude would be insufficient, he saw. Remember Saffron, and reviewing his own timeless experiences, Ranma saw himself outclassed. In a straight confrontation, he'd never defeated a Godlike opponent. The phoenix-king had been a mere demi-god in comparison. Like the kinkijan and gekkija, he needed to separate this goddess from the artifacts boosting her power.
Before his barrier shattered, Ranma sent a focused, first-rate vacuum blade directly into the obsidian altar, hoping to shatter it. Like both times against Al-Wuro, the ki compressed air bounced off and flowed around the goddess's dark seal of consecration.
Like an ant in hydrochloric acid, he felt the protective carapace of his warding dissolve and knew pain. The dark shockwave of Musso-Koroni's freedom tossed Ranma thirty feet across the clearing in an uncontrolled roll before he found his balance, kipping back up to his feet.
The goddess was serious now. With a mental shake, Ranma rushed toward her, dodging, hoping to rip the ugly golden mask right off her evil face.
She sent another shockwave of rolling darkness, more condensed and seven feet high. No normal human could possibly avoid it. Ranma jumped over it and left behind a surprise.
As the wave passed underneath him, a localized earthquake shook the clearing, disrupting the mystical patterns in the dirt into gibberish. In mid-air, he bounced off platforms of semi-solid ki as Musso-Koroni threw compressed ovoids of darkness. Realizing this to be ineffective, she switched to more large dark tidal waves, forcing Ranma to dodge higher in three dimensions. With satisfaction, he watched another pulse feed into the Goddess from the dark altar. The magnitude was weaker now.
Twisting and weaving through the air, Ranma was able to get close enough to the malevolent nexus where his enemy bombarded him. He felt drawn downwards, like the obsidian altar hungered for his blood. Channeling a contradiction in powers was trickier in three dimensions; Musso-Koroni was obviously unfamiliar with the Hi-Ryu-Shoten Ha technique. Still, getting close was too easy.
Dodging death beams and soul-eater spheres in an inward spiral, he had almost set-up the holy tornado, when a dark power became yoked around his neck. Ranma dropped out of the air, sprawling next to the unholy altar, ruining any chance he had of generating the move. His carefully structured balance of holy and profane – destroyed.
But the Goddess didn't take the opportunity to finish him.
"No!" Musso-Koroni lost control over her own power, and her black vortex exploded, spraying Ranma's body with supernatural corruption. His shirt and pants disintegrated into ragged scraps of cloth, though his underclothing was inside his hasty ki-shield.
The dark octagon amulet no longer rested between the naked breasts of the goddess.
Though her power was lessened, the divine speed of the now physically attacking Goddess forced Ranma to frantically roll away. He focused intensely into speed, and rejected changing sex. In desperation, he rolled off the dark stone pinnacle, dropping ten feet to the ground below and landing on his feet.
"Give it back, I paid a million neutral souls for the Othershard!" Demanded Musso-Koroni jumping after, trying to eviscerate him with strange shadowy claws flowing from her fingertips and toenails. Her entire body glowing with a killing aura, black within black, she relentlessly attacked. The claws elongated and contracted rapidly, forcing dodges with extra space.
Ranma smiled, in the brief instant it took the Goddess to close the distance between them, he yelled "Aku Soku Zan!" releasing holy banishment. A kanji pattern flash-burned into the flesh of Goddess's stomach, exposing intestine and leaking darkness. The wound healed so fast it appeared to evaporate into clean skin. Then battle was joined.
With every missed slashing kick, a patch of florescent fungi appeared on the ground, leeching the dark soils into eroding sand. At the apex of each missed gouging punch, a cloud of mosquitoes formed, assaulting Ranma in a more insidious way.
His senses warning him a partial block meant he was good as dead, Ranma retreated while firing a steady stream of light and holy based ki-drills at the goddess. Though the attacks pierced the festering aura around her, she regenerated or ignored their damage.
Ranma knew he was being herded; he couldn't help it. The mad plan of Musso-Koroni's concluded when Ranma found himself standing on her sacrificial altar after a series of lifesaving back handsprings up the pinnacle's stairs. "Now my spirits!" Proclaimed the goddess while raising her hands over her head. "His soul is yours!"
Feeling a great fountaining of evil power below and above, Ranma barely had time to note the swarm of mosquitoes tightly patterned into an elaborate magic circle hovering overhead.
His entire world became black as a vise of evil energies assaulted him.
--
Having dispatched the zombified commandoes, Shampoo ran into the jungle. Even she could sense the power of their adversary now, though she refused despair. Unhappy at the pervasive silence, Shampoo's danger sense told her she was running toward a swift death. Dark rainforest containing no life but plants rushed by her feet. Oddly, the thorny vines that had so irritated her in earlier excursions were absent. Soon all the plants turned into drained brown husks. Her heartbeat and disciplined breaths were the only noises.
A holy golden strobe came from the north, and Shampoo turned in that direction. The disgusting sight of the Death Fundamental brought the bitter tang of vomit to the back of her throat, but stoically Shampoo unsheathed the Sword of the Daun. The wall of corpses in front of her did not acknowledge her presence; the creature was occupied with the Devil Hunter inside it. Shampoo hummed at her weapon, turning it into a lancet of light. She began to cut a swathe in the direction of the last golden beacon. Viscera tumbled like rain, and fat coated the ground like water.
--
Gasping untainted air, Ranma breathed. He stood on the altar, unaffected by the giga-level working meant to annihilate him. A burning sensation came from his chest area, and he reached down through the tattered remains of his shirt, ignoring the minimal pain.
His hand came up with a strange necklace, an octagon with a bonsai tree on it. The Amulet of Presence had returned to him.
"Why does the Othershard protect you?" Screamed Musso-Koroni, attacking.
"Scatterstrike." Answered Ranma, and twenty-one white-gold lances of holy crushing will hit the goddess from behind.
The technique failed, and as Ranma dodged another punch of corruption by back flipping to the ground, a rotted skeleton burst from the soil and grabbed his ankles.
Breaking free was nothing, but it gave the goddess enough time to grapple with hands that could effortlessly drain his lifeforce and leave a withered husk behind.
--
The Death Fundamental's core had been destroyed, but the evil power was sucked away before it dissipated into the void. Cutting their way back out, Shampoo and Kodachi now followed the stream of evil back to its source.
Kodachi felt the dark malevolence grow in strength, she nodded to Shampoo indicating they were close now. Preparing herself for another supernatural battle, Kodachi reflected upon the last weeks before emptying her mind of them.
She no longer hated the Amazon for encroaching upon her Ranma; she felt kinship with the other woman. No longer caring about potential scandal, Kodachi knew if they survived this, she would relax into the relationship and not try the selfish sabotage the rhythmic gymnastics world evoked in her. From when she was a little girl, she wanted a torrid affair before marriage. She never dreamed it would include another woman or a man who changed into one.
Shampoo frowned at her partner for making too much noise as Kodachi broke another stick in the underbrush. She could tell the devil hunter was now communing with her patrons, and no longer concentrating hard on her physical body.
A chain of explosions, like the earth was spitting up lava balls or rejecting the ancient dead, made Shampoo more cautious. Even her rudimentary ki-senses screamed evil way out of her league was gonna devour her soul.
Making sure Kodachi remained beside her, Shampoo smiled at her comrade in arms. Ranma knew how much she hated sharing, and while what they did was necessary, she wondered how much he had calculated these weeks to bring them together. Nineteen months with Kodachi might be too short a time. She needed to become clever enough to pierce her love's future plans.
A deafening explosion created the perfect opportunity to run the rest of the way toward Ranma's defense. Kodachi trailed along mechanically, keeping pace. Shampoo arrived just in time to see Ranma down with the dark goddess laughing in triumph. This was not to be; she charged.
--
Musso-Koroni chose to grab the Amulet of Presence, trying to wrench it from around Ranma's neck. With an explosion that turned his entire vision into one large purple spot, the artifact rejected the intrusion and blew the goddess backward. Her physical avatar crashed into the profane obsidian altar, shattering it.
Uninjured, the Goddess regained herself, laughing at the defense that incapacitated her foe. Kodachi and Shampoo entered the clearing. Ranma's vision remained mono-color as his photoreceptors struggled to deal with overload from the earlier point-blank explosion. He didn't see them. He channeled his own ki into the Amulet and disappeared from the perception of all kami.
He heard a sound that might be the Sword of the Daun frantically parrying.
"My love, help us!" Shrieked Shampoo in Chinese.
"The ninth spoke: Sacred Marriage!" Kodachi sounded calm, "Justice and Vengeance" a musical twinkle, like powers of good were being activated, filled the air. "Defiance and Love." The volume raised, as more Spokes became traced into empty air. "Redempt—urk!" Then Kodachi screamed, higher and more frenzied than her insane laughter, it continued until her voice broke, trailing off into an awful silence.
Ranma flinched, but didn't break his concealment.
"You have ten minutes to return and surrender the Othershard before they die!" Boomed Musso-Koroni in a voice so impossibly loud Ranma covered his ears before realizing it was only in his mind. She didn't actually say 'ten minutes,' instead she projection a vision of a skeleton being cleaned of flesh by maggots, and a timestamp with the gory process.
Ranma squatted, less than a hundred yards away from his companions, waiting for his vision to clear. In the back of his mind, he felt the Formless Duke breaking down the wall of his hasty entrapment weaving. Ignoring this next pending disaster, he thought frantically for a way out of this one. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks. As his shock-blinded eyes cleaned themselves, Ranma rejected other meanings for his tears. His heartbeat increased. The Nanban Mirror wouldn't give him a do-over now.
-
Nine minutes and thirty seconds later, Ranma appeared kneeling in front of Musso-Koroni, his vision restored. The goddess had raised a throne of bones from the earth, and sat patiently, inclining her death masked head at the homage. The Robe of Immaterialism glistened like ebony through her destructive aura.
"Why do you call the Amulet of Presence the Othershard, oh great goddess?" Buying extra time was his only plan.
"Two truths may both be true. I traded another aspect of myself its astral weight in souls for the Othershard, and Izanagi warned it must be given freely." Arising from her throne, which crumbled into bone splinters as her will ceased maintaining it, Musso-Koroni stalked over to Ranma and ran her finger along his chin, raising a gangrene filled wound. A warning flare came from the Amulet, and the goddess backed off.
"Izanagi acquired it by duress using the lives of my companions as bargaining chips, much like you are attempting now." Ranma resisted the impulse to rub his chin, letting pus ooze from the festering sore. If he was alive later, he could worry about infection and ki-healing.
"Then we are at an impasse. I do not like this. If I kill or torture them, I don't get what I want." The onyx jewels on her ancient helmet flared, and Ranma physically felt the goddess think. His danger sense told him an assassin was pondering ten thousands ways to violently murder him, and he remained helpless to each.
Ranma broke into a sweat from the hypertension of the experience.
-
"Yes!" Exulted the goddess, like a sadist enjoys widening a bloody gash. With a negligent gesture, she knocked Kodachi and Shampoo unconscious and entrapped their bodies in an uncomfortable looking prison of bone. Small beads of blood oozed from where sharp protrusions pierced the girls's skin.
Ranma flinched, and readied himself for losing battle, gathering ki from his kneeling position.
"They are free when you return, provided they don't move, no harm will come to them. We will travel some distance, and you will take a sacred oath to leave this continent and never return in exchange for your lives. After I have the Othershard, the deal will complete when you return to your native soil. I will vow to leave your country alone; there will be no repercussion from either side. Whatever your purpose here, you failed. An amicable parting with no duress involved."
Ranma saw no recourse but to take the deal. In this, he lost.
"Can you follow a teleport?" He asked, resigned, standing with a low aura, feeling diminished.
Musso-Koroni looked through him, weakening his bowels with the intensity of her gaze. Ranma realized the goddess thought he had asked a stupid question.
"Follow me then." He vanished.
-
They appeared in the clearing where the four circles of his fate failed to kill him.
He walked to where the Formless Duke lay imprisoned under his decaying seal. Ranma willed the Amulet of Presence to flare with power, hoping to disguise whatever magic residue the subdued hell being emitted.
As the artifact began glowing, he could literally feel the goddess' desire, like a skeletal hand caressing his groin.
Slowly, he took off the amulet and tossed it into the middle of the area imprisoning the Formless Duke. Then Ranma backed away.
With a nefarious burst of power, they both swore the oaths Musso-Koroni demanded.
Surreptitiously, Ranma drained the power out of his spiritual seals, inwardly wincing at the effort it took not to glow with dark madness.
The goddess raised a hand, attempting to levitate the Othershard into her grasp, but the artifact didn't respond. Realizing their deal wasn't complete yet, and wouldn't be until Ranma's group left Africa, she hesitated.
"I won't be trapped so easily," sneered the Goddess. "Your companions now suffer for this treachery."
Raising her arms, Musso-Koroni blasted forth an expanding circle of dark power. Ranma flinched as it phased around him without striking, raising goose bumps on his skin. He hoped his girls were still alive, and schooled his face, pushing back inner turmoil of unknown tortures.
'Perhaps hoping the Goddess would not detect the Formless Duke was too much, it did kill her avatar earlier, and doubtless some connection between them communicated the danger.'
A female shriek of agony startled Ranma out of his defeatist thoughts. As the dark circle expanded into the fifty-foot radius a fountain of gore erupted from thin air. It was as if an invisible person had suddenly exploded. Ranma thought it couldn't be his father. Genma could have easily jumped over the circle, 'unless he thought to use the Shooting-Star Cloth Body Defense and failed,' and his body contained much more blood than that 'unless some blood became consumed by the strike.' His dad was cowardly enough to leave this evil site way behind, wasn't he?
"The last of your allies falls," said Musso-Koroni, delighting in his nervous grief-fear-smell. "The Bambara tribe has no more witch doctors left to send me back into the death-worlds."
Satisfied her prisoner had lost all hope, the goddess gestured, and the ground beneath the Amulet of Presence shuddered, and broke free of the surface. Like a fine entrée on a column of earth, the artifact now floated toward her waiting hand. Ranma's feet felt faint tremors that couldn't be explained by the mere disturbance of an armful of earth.
Just as the Amulet brushed her waiting fingertips, the Formless Duke exploded from containment as a gargantuan venus flytap made of living darkness. It had burrowed underground like a giant mole before striking. God-eater.
Not caught by surprise, Musso-Koroni blasted both mouth leaves of the unnatural predator as it closed around her. Her beams of vile dark did not halt the Duke's hunger by an inch, and the goddess was engulfed inside its body.
Had he traded one crisis for another? The demon-thing transformed into a winged eel covered in the conical spikes of seashells. It released bursts of darkness from the tips of the bony protrusions, releasing killing magic inside it. The demon-eel had a human female's face that smiled like a gourmand chewing a delicious morsel.
Ranma backed away from the encounter, noting the darkness bursts caused the mud in barren clearing to sizzle as they fell. He felt a subsonic vibration as the Formless Duke shifted again, this time into giant levitating black blowfish with a distended stomach. Briefly, he saw the impression of Musso-Koroni's face against the scaled skin of its side. This was followed by rapid undulations reminding Ranma of baby kicking inside a pregnant woman.
The giant blowfish belched, and spat out the Robe of Immaterialism. The relic leaked mist and appeared seriously damaged. Then the Duke became a dark-gelatin like cube. Its acidic edges dissolved the rotting wooden remains of tree stumps as it slimed across the clearing, using peristalsis motion to aid digestion.
Spellbound by the fighting super-entities, Ranma could only watch as the Duke continued transforming and ejecting volatile spurts of dark energy as the goddess struggled to escape. Several times the impression of her desperate struggle appeared on the Duke's skin.
Seven minutes later he knew it was truly over. The faux-monkey-dragon spat out a gob dark liquid. It promptly vanished and the Amulet of Presence appeared again around Ranma's neck. The smell was a combination of rotting flesh, spoiled milk, onions, and nail polish remover. His eyes began watering.
Rapidly, he removed the artifact from his neck and ki-blasted it with holy energy, hoping to purify it or at least get rid of the odor. While successful, this exercise served to attract the attention of the Formless Duke.
The voice was the wings of bees, the hiss of cats, screams of children, the screeching of monkeys. "Hero, send me back." It demanded.
Wondering at demon-entity he thought he'd die fighting against, Ranma's posture revealed nothing.
The buzzing of gnats, the eerie songs of whales, and the clicking of mandibles sounded impatient. "Like a snake, I sleep when consuming my meals. This one will be good for a hundred years. Send me back, and I won't taste you." In offering this reassurance, the creature communicated disappointment.
Approaching the behemoth, Ranma began running around it, using his feet to trace out a ki-circle of banishment and undoing, a major spiritual working even if he wasn't half-exhausted. His Fushimiinari Shrine training served well, and shortly the Formless Duke vanished back into the kami realms with a satisfied burp.
The battle ended, Ranma ran back to rescue Shampoo and Kodachi from their bone prison, hoping they were still alive. He had neither the concentration nor energy to teleport. For such a daring and heroic battle, he sure felt like shit. The festering sore on his chin itched fiercely.
-
They would have scars to remember the experience, but both unconscious girls were ok and hadn't bled to death. His imbued ki-focii had been neutralized; Shampoo and Kodachi no longer looked like African commandoes. Ranma managed a final jump to the Mayo clinic in America before passing out. Their computerized records would show his group as high profile clients, and their care would be the finest in the world.
Recovery took less than a week.
-
With the supernatural aspects of destruction contained, and most corrupt war bringers either brainwashed or dead, peace came to Sudan. The accords in the Nuba Mountains went as Ranma anticipated.
----
"Take your stupid trinket back and don't rent it out!" Yelled Ranma into the dilapidated genealogy shop. He wasted two seconds before teleporting to trace out a spiritual warding against stupidity on the coat of dust inside the storefront's cracked plate glass window.
The Amulet of Presence bounced off Yusaku's head before vanishing and appearing around his neck.
"How rude." Said the balding kami to his secretary, who had decided to be male today.
Lin snorted and prepared afternoon tea. Ranma Saotome would require their help again someday.
"You sound like a warhorse when you do that." Said Yusaku, critiquing the Ki-Lin's disguise. "You should stick to girls."
"So what did our little toy alter this time?" Lin asked, ignoring the insult.
"Whoah! This is a good one!" Said the little kami, as he held the amulet to his forehead, replaying its history. "The home team used our pawn to finally get Izanagi a new hobby, but she set up a rival aspect before it could extract our revenge. The bitch."
"Maybe next time." Said Lin, pouring their tea.
Yusaku nodded. The fate strings the Amulet of Presence pulled to become reunited with its temporary bearer were truly an intricate marvel.
--
"Ranma, have you seen your father?" Nodoka sounded tense, stopping him right outside the Tendo gates.
"We had a little disagreement about him selling my immortal soul. He should be back from Africa soon." Said Ranma with false good cheer. If his father survived, he'd be back.
--
Eleven thousand feet in the thin air above the Indian Ocean and approaching Japan, a human Genma nervously sat on a trans-oceanic jetliner next to Ndokanda. Though her leg was in a plaster cast, the tattooed African shaman insisted on being taken to see her new fiancée. After a week of alcohol and feasting, Genma hadn't managed to convince the Bambara tribe he wasn't really a spirit taken with human form.
Ah well? What was one more? The boy would get over it.
--
Nodoka sighed, and nodded in resignation. She knew her husband. Kissing her son on the cheek, she mentioned an extended shopping spree and left to spend Genma's drinking money on a good cause – herself.
Ranma waved goodbye, and entered the Tendo-ke.
"I'm back." He announced, walking into the house and removing his shoes.
"Father is out with his fiancée, and Nabiki is at the Nekohaten supervising our strays, sensei."
Looking at Kasumi with dread, Ranma dared to ask.
"Akane should be down soon, she went to her room to get something."
The stairs rattled like a minor earthquake, and Ranma's youngest student rushed him while wearing her yellow pajamas covered in little pink flying pigs.
"I can't believe I had to screw Shinnosoke!" Slamming Ranma over the head with a barbell, Akane emphasized her disbelief. Besides ruining the exercise equipment, the attack had no visible effect.
Ignoring and dodging around blows from a shinai pulled from the Tendo umbrella stand, Ranma led his student outside.
"Did you keep some of the Water of Life around like I told you to?"
"Yes you bastard!"
Moving to the pond in calculated retreat, he took away the weapon and pushed Akane in. This revealed the girl wasn't wearing a bra as her pajamas became nearly transparent.
Looking horrified, Ranma evaluated his student. Splashing desperately in the koi pond, trying not to drown. He stepped back from the violent waters, staying dry and drawing a conclusion. "Don't tell me you didn't use protection and got pregnant!"
"Scarlet Spike!" Screamed the floundering girl, releasing a wild red ki-blast at groin-level.
Completely open, he triggered Jusenkyo as an afterthought before the attack hit. Akane shouldn't know how to do that for another twelve weeks. Ranma ignored the minimal pain as the torrent of ki carried her across the ground like a raging river. Her heels created two narrow channels of upturned dirt marring the grass as she balanced against the blast, and Ranma hoped Kasumi wouldn't be too mad about the lawn as the red ki-energy faded.
From where she was pushed back, Ranma sent a hybrid form of the stationary grapple into the space around the koi pond, enclosing Akane in an unbreakable cage of muddy ki. The girl struggled mightily, ruining her clothing and finding her new shame based ki-flare totally ineffective.
Pausing, Ranma regained himself with a gasp of hot ki.
"That's enough Akane, now take the experience like a woman, and report!"
Sighing, Akane felt her sensei radiate a finely cultured aura of power and ceased, shivering dejectedly in the pond, and noting her clothing had become almost transparent. She crossed her cold goosebump-covered arms over her chest to avoid another free show.
"I journeyed to Ryuugenzawa and tried to seduce Shinnosoke as instructed. The moron kept running away and forgetting we were supposed to have sex, though he did remember being in love with me. I cornered him on the second day, and failed."
Akane gathered herself to tell the rest of the story, realizing she was crying.
"I crushed his testicles! His screams were horrible. If the Water of Life wasn't there, I don't think I could live with myself. The next day I tried again, and we didn't even have our clothes off before I knocked him out with a headbut and dislocated his pelvis. I kept at it the rest of the week, and guess what? Shinnosoke's now scared of me! Like a mistreated puppy his first reaction to my presence is to soil himself. Do you know how socially awkward that is?"
Nodding, Ranma spoke with a soothing voice. "Akane, you are a wonderful person and you did a good deed. Shinnosoke was so traumatized by your attempted seduction that he now has actual horrid memories to suppress. This means he remembers daily life normally and isn't an amnesiac freak anymore. I got a call from Gramps earlier, thanking me for my intervention on his behalf."
"R-r-really Ranma?"
"Yes, now what did you learn from this?"
"Aside from my failure as a woman, not to fear men?" Ventured the girl. No rapist would have a chance at her; no matter what she tried, her partner ended up hurt.
"No, you are a perfect normal woman Akane. What this lesson tried to teach is your aura is manifesting irregularly. This was an exercise in self-control, but you didn't totally fail. Developing your own ki attack shows you are starting to lean how to harness and channel the emotions inside you. I don't want you trying to take another lover until I give permission."
Feeling for the first time in week she wasn't a worthless person, Akane smiled through her tears and mud.
---
His self-appointed task complete, Ranma settled on the Tendo couch and turned on the television. Sudan should be the first among an African Hegemony much like the European Union, provided the men he'd put in power didn't quickly corrupt. He scanned the news stations, but the country was so insignificant to the rest of the world, a revolution there didn't rate a mention. The associated press had a small blurb on the last page of the morning paper, but that was it.
Randomly flipping stations, Ranma found a movie he remembered watching long ago. He had never seen the ending.
Akane settled in next to him, having bathed and grabbed a bag of already popped cheese popcorn from the kitchen.
On television, a man asked a woman, "What if there were no tomorrow, what would you do?"
"Well, what about it Ranma?" Akane whispered. "Would you create the best possible day for those you care about? Would you give comfort and make a difference? If you knew you had only one day to live?"
He thought about it. Now that she had lost her romantic stupidity, Akane might become his wife later since the Tendo honor pledge was unsatisfied. Shampoo and Kodachi could continue her training on womanhood. She'd mature by answering future challenges against Musubetsu Kakuto Ryuu, though he hadn't told her this yet.
"I made the world a better place, but let's see what they would do." Grabbing some of his companion's popcorn, Ranma leaned closer to Akane, lost in the movie. The story compelled him on many levels.
Looking at her sensei strangely, the girl turned back to the television with renewed focus, suddenly suspecting where her family's orders had come from these past weeks.
By passing his own test, and thereby earning his power, Ranma made the easy choice to disappear into obscurity. To rule might come later. For now, he intended to employ only two techniques extensively: the Moebius Technique, whereby his ki constantly pushed against itself and thereby expanded, and the Serene Focus.
He paid his dues, and solved his life without killing a fiancée, giving up his name, declaring a blood feud, or having the world end. His friends and family had life-purposes not centering on him.
The longest lesson he'd had to learn was on the limitations of power. While he could easily rule men, Ranma doubted he could rule well. Japan didn't need him now.
Now, this moment was enough. Reaching back, he snapped Akane's bra, to see what she would do, just as Genma and Ndokanda walked in.
Three seconds later a wall exploded revealing Shampoo and Kodachi, who were displeased that Ranma had a new fiancée and was stringing Akane along. The Amazon held the activated Sword of the Daun, while Kodachi held an onyx scepter from her family's armory. A sparkle of power glinted from the dark jewel at the magical weapon's apex.
"Great-grandmother wants to talk." Shampoo pointed the Sword of Daun and didn't look like a triumphant heroine; instead her body language expressed fear.
"We are escorting you to Elder Cologne." Kodachi waved her empowered scepter like a whip's handle, tracing a runic pattern.
"You should have explained I wasn't first wife." Ndokanda addressed the empty air, Genma having wisely vanished.
"Master, you pervert!" Akane, immediately grasping the situation and a blunt object, acted like her old self.
"So much for my happy ending," muttered Ranma as the television impacted his head. Oddly, he sounded pleased and not disappointed. Free of the burden of foresight, he looked forward to living in simple reality again.
A black lightning bolt and a high-energy shimmer followed the appliance, blasting him through the Tendo roof, skyward toward the Cat Cafe. Cologne waited for him.
Flying through the lazy mid-afternoon and bathed in sunlight, Ranma Saotome realized an amazing thing. He understood no matter how much power and insight you have, it can't change another's feelings. That's what made life fun; smiling into the air, he laughed with delight.
-----------------------------------------------------
THE END
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--Chapter notes--
Google search 'Sudan slavery' and you'll find the problems touched on in this work are real. Whatever action you take on them is your choice, mine has been to raise awareness. I original wrote Sudan into the story about a year ago, its just taken me this long to get to the end. Because Sudan has oil I expect it will come into the spotlight more in coming years (written early 2004).
Formatting has been fixed in all chapters. Thanks to Max Krugman and Nemesis Zero for help with revision. They both have assured me the first section of this chapter needs to be expanded for better story, and I believe them enough to eventually do this on a day that is not today. I reserve the right to rewrite the first few hundred words of this chapter. For now, enjoy the epilogue.