Not exactly a sequel to 'Right here, right there'. If I can get that baby rolling, I'm pretty sure I'll get an idea on how to flesh out the main story. Once there... Maybe, maybe not a sequel (C&C, C&C dear readers...)
Ranma 1/2, Ah! My Goddess and all are the property of their respective creators and affiliates. No copyright infringement intended. No profit is made off these stories.
Just to add a precision, there was no 'Myths of Asgard' added: but the goddesses (the norns) in Ah! My Goddess are part of Norse mythology, as such the Norse pantheon is used...
Further down the path
A butterfly. Only a small butterfly was flying, in this quiet morning of March.
That, in itself, was quite singular: butterflies usually come out later in the year, to absorb the sweet nectar of flowers.
Not that one, though. As it was, it wasn't even floating in the wind like it should have been. It even looked like it had a precise destination in mind.
Garm, keeper of the gates between the Underworld, Niflheim, and the Earth, Midgard, was literally foaming at the mouth. One soul had escaped. That hadn't happened in millenniums, the last one to escape had been allowed to do so because the warrior it belong to was both protected by the gods and not really dead.
But that recent escapee had been dead, forgotten by the Earth, and his paperwork was ready! So, okay, it wasn't any other soul but one that belong to a god killer, with a lifespan of more than five hundred years, and who had been roaming the path to the Court of the Souls for almost two centuries since his death. Worse, he had already been as good as accepted in Asgard. So why did he escape?
His room in a quiet suburb of Asgard was ready, Valkyries were eager to guide him to Odin's table, Himdall had his curriculum vitae on paper to announce his arrival in the Valhalla, everything! And the ungrateful brat had left, just like that, blasting him a good one and leaving the premises of Asgard. Just. Like. That.
In short, Ranma Saotome was at large.
Back to our butterfly. As we said, it was a bit early in the year for it to be there. Also, it was red and black, with two gray-blue spots on the wings. An entomologist capturing it would be celebrated for centuries to come, having caught this unique little bug.
The one who had tried ended up with a burnt-through net and a black eye. Given by the butterfly. And now, the way it circled a small barbecue was eerily familiar.
Ever heard about the butterfly that beat its wing in Brazil creating a storm in Japan?
Captain Henri Kernadec knew the sea. Very well, in fact. His family had roamed the seven seas for generations now, and himself had been a captain for forty years. And no captain of small ships, either! Industrial fishing ships, heavy transports, tankers... You name it, he floated it. Coming from the fact that he knew the sea (intimately, some would say), he had gone through all of its moods, from the little fog/drizzle to the towering pyramidal waves able to crush a 500 000 tons tanker like a twig, and had always been able to bring his ship, if not at destination, at least to a safe harbor.
This is why, for the first time he could remember when confronted with surreal events, Captain Henri Kernadec was at a loss as to how, by St Helm's fire, a butterfly riding the smallest yet strongest jet-stream he had ever felt could have cut his cigar in two - and keep going as if nothing had happened after that!
Now, that butterfly was nearing, at a speed just shy of the speed of sound, a small secluded valley in the Bayankala mountain range.
Beings that were considered mystical by several cultures, and who could easily be assimilated to the harpies of ancient Greek folklore, as in, they had wings, two legs, two arms and a brain that worked better than most avians, looked at the butterfly riding a jet-stream right past them.
"You think we should warn the captain?"
"Why?"
"Well, didn't you see what I just saw?"
"As in, did I see a butterfly riding a jet-stream just shy from sound speed in direction of Jusenkyo?"
"Yes, that one precisely."
"Well, if such a thing was possible, then the butterfly in question already fell in a spring and became a demented super-powerful animal, and lord Safuron or King Haabu will take care of it."
"And if it hasn't?"
"Then why do you think the captain would bother looking for a butterfly?"
"Good point."
Jusenkyo, the cursed training ground, had stood hardly disturbed for centuries now. The women of Joketsuzoku had finally been able to seal it away two weeks ago, with a strong repelling ward that would prevent any and all living being from entering. They had devised it, tested it, improved it, even asked several spell-casters to have a look at it and add their own formula, going so far as to create a community of people dedicated to improving it, testing beta versions of it... As it was, the formula was written on scrolls for records, but stored on an optical disk made of carbon crystal with a reflective surface made of pressed vanadium, protected under a titanium slice and kept preciously, and spread all over the world's FTPs under the label 'GPLreflectbar2.2final.tar.bz5'.
So why did an incredibly strong butterfly manage to enter it, raising no more than a small spark when it went past the invisible barrier?
A few minutes later, an incredibly old man made his way out of the training ground. As he went past the barrier, the energy current that ran through the mystical shield short-circuited with the man's strange energy signature, like it did with the butterfly. But when a butterfly is nothing but a few grams of organic matter, an old man is still a few thousand times bigger.
And thus, the short-circuit didn't merely result in a spark.
A young woman, dressed in combat clothes and holding a spear at rest on her shoulder, raised her hand and looked at the sky.
"Thunderclap? But they hadn't planned rain neither in the knuckles of Shinna-Mon nor on TV..."
Shrugging her Kevlar-covered shoulders and changing her carbon-fiber, titanium and ceramic tipped spear of hand, she resumed her guard round. When a sooth-covered old man (but not as old as before) groggily came her way, she hesitated: he was old, OK; but he had apparently withstood a thunder blast, and may just be able to resist her. Unmarried, she really, really didn't want to end up having to give a kiss of marriage.
Too bad: with fifty less years, he would have been quite a catch.
Since he was headed towards the village, she decided to accompany him. When finally he started recovering, he looked at her, and in perfect Mandarin:
"This way to Joketsuzoku?"
"Hum, yes, but where are you from?"
"Right now, I just came out of a spring in Jusenkyo. Before that, you're better off not knowing."
The proud warrior-woman started to take offense, but a glimpse at his aura told her otherwise, and she kept silent.
Matriarch So Pu, great-granddaughter of Matriarch Shan Pu, was worried: a strange aura was closing in. While she was confident the Village had nothing to fear from conventional (and non-conventional) attacks, there was an eerie feeling in that aura. Not malicious, but not godly either; male, and female; very strong, and on the brink of death. It wasn't even flickering from one extreme to the other, it was all of that at the same time.
Detectors gave her some more informations: a guard was coming back to the village while it wasn't shift change, and there was an old man with her.
The guard would get a reprimand for neither preventing entry nor capturing the trespasser, but So Pu would privately command her for very good thinking and affect her to a training class in mystical and arcane arts: untrained, she had been able to assess an opponent who was deceptively weak looking while being both powerful enough to level the village and a former ally of late Matriarch Shan Pu.
Frankly, the demoted guard felt quite happy with this 'demotion': she was always given guard duty, and well, while gifted at fighting, she largely felt better attending stone gardens and scrolls.
Back to the obviously resurrected warrior. A few years ago (make that a few centuries, when So Pu was still a braggart warrior unwashed behind the ears), she had taken offense at a Japanese guy, trailing his wife behind him and who brought forth quite a reaction from Matriarch Shan Pu. She had challenged him, and he had disabled her without even moving-well, it's what she thought for a long time, until she got old and trained enough to realize he had merely moved faster and more precisely than anybody she had ever seen moving.
So she had done what came next, as in Full Amazon Glomp (tm) with a cry of 'Wo da Airen!'
But the meek woman following the man just didn't allow it, and stopped her in mid-air. Then addressing a diminutive figure standing perched on a staff, "Shampoo, if you would...?"
Matriarch Shan Pu grinned ferally. "So Pu, do you fancy living?"
"Hum, yes, Honored Matriarch."
"Then don't fight her. She's as good, if not better than I am."
So Pu blanched.
"As a matter of fact, they are both as old as I am, and even better trained."
"But my honor, Honored Matriarch?"
"Oh, all right."
Saying so, Shan Pu raised her voice, and claimed for all to ear. "I hereby name them allies of the Tribe, and no Outsider law may apply to them." Now back to So Pu, "here, happy?"
"Honored Matriarch, how could you do so!"
"I have ten thousand years of Amazon tradition backing me up in this, child."
"I though Amazon culture was three thousands years old, and even though it has been a few years, not a millenium has gone by, much less seven." The male was standing, a smart-alec smirk gracing his features.
"Oh, you know, after you've lived as long as I have, you don't really care much."
"We're as old as you are, you Amazon bimbo!" That was said by the girl, with a humorous tone underlying her angry voice.
"Yeah, well, at least I got cured of that... While I'm pretty sure you're still a kitchen destroyer, Akane."
"C'm here, you!" An irate (but visibly refraining from laughing out loud) Akane jumped after what looked like a madly cackling troll on a pogo stick.
What followed was a very humbling lesson for So Pu, as the newcomers didn't agree with most younger warriors and were constantly harassed – so as to re-establish the tribe's warriors' pecking order – and invariably came out on top. The man was fast as lightning, knew so many techniques no one could stand up to him for very long...
The woman may not have been quite as good, but she was more direct in her approach: the not-so-hourglass-looking, not very tall woman packed a strength few could match (make that none), was a plain storm wind to her husband's thunder speed... and got so pissed when she was double-teamed (in fact, jumped by half the female population) that many warriors saw stars early in the day, then the healers.
So it wasn't a surprise when the old man, having somehow dodged all attempts at restraining him, addressed her directly.
"Hello Elder, I think I've seen you before..."
"Hi Ranma, why, you don't recognize me? And I almost was your wife..."
"Shan Pu! Naaah... You don't look enough like a prune to be her."
WHACK!
"Okay, I deserved that. How are you, So Pu?"
Under the befuddled stares of the villagers, the two elders started joking around and ended up playing a game of tag that lasted only five minutes, only because they had run out of village roofs to run over.
"Now tell me, Ranma, surely you didn't come here just for a game of tag?"
"As a matter of fact, no; you remember that my wife doesn't age, right? Well, me, I do; in fact, I died two centuries ago."
"You look damn real for a ghost"
"I used a little trick for that, but it's temporary. However the problem is, Akane's in danger, and she's bitten off more than she could chew. She got fired off the... agency she worked with, she's in a sad mood, and a damn super powerful villain – of course, it's never a nice talking ferret, it has to be a badass tough guy – has seized her and is bent on world domination."
"Nothing unusual here."
"Yes, the thing is, I could feel his strength, he's GOOD. He's taken Akane by surprise, and even without that she would have been lucky to win."
So Pu had a grave look on her face. "If Akane can't beat him, I don't see who could – except you, and you're not at the best of forms, are you?"
"Don't worry about it, I'm the best!"
As if to punctuate this declaration, a flash very high in the sky almost blinded them. Ranma smirked.
"The tomboy just managed to give us an edge, do you perhaps have a teleporter nearby now?"
"How outrageous! To think that the proud Amazons, with a tradition of more than a million year, would allow such a superfluous device!" So Pu said, scandalized.
"Matriarch Ko Lon watched Star Trek reruns on TV."
So Pu giggled. "You got me. This way."
And this is how Ranma Saotome, God Killer, Martial Artist extraordinaire, Escapee of the Underworld, World Jumper, Barrier Breaker, and Bottomless Pit ("Hey!") managed to come back from the dead and kick Tikkop's ass.
Back to Niflheim, Court of Judgment...
"Examinee's name: Saotome, Ranma. Place of birth, Tokyo, Japan. Born in July 1980. Deceased in... errr... November 2857. Profession: martial artist, god killer. Deeds: saved the world many times. Curbed Akane Tendo/Saotome's temper down to manageable levels. Saved the world from space invasion in June 3012."
The norn in charge flipped a page.
"Escaped Court's waiting room, roasted most of the fur off Garm's head (giggle), and..."
At that moment a huge snoring sound interrupted the reading.
"... fell asleep in court. Please wake him up."
The norn continued.
"On behalf of what, he will be accepted at Odin's table, provided he behaves himself and doesn't try to steal too much food off other people's plates, we've got enough feuds running as it is in this rowdy-"
"SNORE!"
The norn, exasperated, interrupted her reading again.
"Will someone PLEASE wake... him..."
Several guards and Valkyries were panting or just plainly unconscious around the slumbering Ranma, who managed to block, avoid, dodge or redirect all attempts (especially violent ones) at waking him up.
"... up. Oh what the...! That's it, I quit. When he wakes up just tell him his room is on the 3455th level, section 47ZB25, number 28567889."
Ranma, having woken up with a map and an address, decided to head for his room, lunch could wait. Finding strange that steam was wafting from under his room's door, he pushed it open...
"HIYAAAAAAA!"
"PERVERTS!"
He hightailed instantly, chased by furious – and very underclad – norns and Valkyries.
"Oh no, not AGAIN!"
Somewhere in Asgard, norns' staff room...
"Frankly, that was the weirdest one I've seen in years. He fell asleep right in the middle of his judgment reading! 'sigh' I should have just told him that he was located on 3455th level, section 47ZB25, number 28567889."
A Valkyrie perked up at that.
"Errr..."
"What?"
"Isn't that... The location of the women's bath?"
The norn counter checked. And started weeping.
"I quit... I quit..."
C&C welcome.
