DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.
IMPORTANT NOTE: During the writing of this chapter, our beloved dog, a poodle called Georgie, died in my father's hands this morning, Sunday 7th July 2002. As she was running around fine last night when I last saw her, the fact she died so suddenly, in a series of fits, has kinda shocked me. I'm guessing this will impact somewhere on the writing in this and later chapters... I'm sorry if it does so, but I think it is understandable. As such, I'd like to dedicate the rest of this series to our dog, Georgie. May she be forever more able to chase birds, gorge on avocadoes, sleep in late and keep people warm in bed, as well as eat whenever and whatever she wants, where ever she may now be. She will be sorely missed by myself, my mother, my sisters, my two year old niece who adored Georgie, our cat, Tammy, and most of all, my father, who she lived with after my parents split up last year. Thank you for reading.
While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us. -- Ben Franklin
LOVE
By
Raymond Cooper
Chapter 7
** Immortal Combat **
Ranma wasn't ready.
That was all anyone knew as the self-proclaimed Mistress Saturn leapt at him from across the school's front yard. To those assembled, it seemed as if she took forever to cover that distance in the one bound she took, yet they knew at the same time, that effect was only illusion: she'd covered that distance in less than an eyeblink.
Mistress Saturn's knee kicked up into Ranma's chin. She didn't feel it, but Ranma felt the force of an annoyed senshi drill through his teeth and knock him back into the school's building. He thanked kami that he'd hardened up through his years of training, and had taken somewhat worse kicks, but it was a hard time remembering when.
It didn't help he was in his female body still, softer and weaker than his male form. Not so noticeable to normal people, perhaps, but in a fight such as this promised to be, Ranma knew it would count. The only real things it had going for it was the speed and agility he could display.
Balance could be a problem, though, if he fought to the exclusion of everything else.
It was certainly a problem now, Ranma getting to his feet, the world tilted at a weird angle to his senses. There was a flash of pseudomotion in the corner of his eyes, and he dropped, ducking down until his head touched the ground, and whipped a foot directly up behind him.
Contact. And a redirection of Saturn's path of travel to a new angle, where she made a new entrance into a room adjacent to Ranma's landing area. He righted himself, in time to note that Saturn was not getting up.
No. It couldn't be that easy. Not Saturn. Not Hotaru.
Ranma hadn't had any illusions about the sickly-looking girl once he'd found out her secret. The power she displayed was awesome, he knew she was capable of some serious power displays before he found out anything concrete. Like that whole blowing up planets thing. Likewise, he'd known that she wasn't as ill as she made herself out to be, especially as time had gone by. But it was something they did. It was... personality. Closeness that neither really felt they could otherwise display.
And now possibly never would again.
But that didn't hold with Ranma. He knew they would be back together at some point. She'd helped him grow up, leave behind his childishness. Mostly, anyway. Now it was his turn to help her.
What she'd said moments ago, that wasn't her talking - it couldn't have been. He knew that the Dark Kingdom overlord-guy... this Yoshihiro? He knew that he had the power to control minds. He affected minds with power, at least. Ranma thought it surprising none of the other senshi could feel him like both him and Hotaru had... Hotaru, yeah, that she could feel his presence wasn't a surprise. But Ranma? Unless he was sitting on some kind of huge power source not even he knew about, he wasn't even in the same league as Hotaru in terms of raw energy.
Which left him a little confused there. So, maybe it was a by-product of his martial arts training, and his skills in registering ki auras.
Regardless, she still wasn't moving.
What she'd said had hurt Ranma. Badly. And he wanted to kick out at something. But that was the immature Ranma, what he'd been trying to leave behind. The mature guy that Hotaru had remoulded him as... well, that Ranma would walk into the room, try again to bring Hotaru back to her senses.
He knew she was faking it. He knew there was no way that kick could have injured her.
Not seriously, at least. Maybe knocked her about a little, and possibly the wall had something to do with it, but hell, Hotaru... Saturn was a senshi. Stronger than human. Probably damned near immortal and invulnerable by Ranma's standards.
Yet he knew they could be hurt. Those monsters they'd been fighting for a few months now routinely hurt the senshi. Scratches, bruises, bite marks, gravel rash, burns, frostbite (in one case) among other injuries. Hotaru usually patched up anything minor, even some major, although there really hadn't been any serious injuries Ranma had known of.
Apart from his own.
Fighting that youma hadn't necessarily been the smartest thing he could have done, not expending all his ki like that, but hey, he'd come out on top, alive, and was kicking again, several weeks later.
Mistress Saturn was completely motionless.
Damn it. Ranma knew what came next. This was in every movie he'd ever seen from America. And whether it had been subtitled or dubbed, he knew what came next: the hero turned over his former best friend/partner (who turned out to be the killer or other bad guy) thinking they were dead... and lo! They weren't and got kicked.
Just if Ranma copped another kick like he'd just taken, he wouldn't just be bruised, he'd be counting the several hundred thousand yen under his pillow in the morning.
And then spending it on dental work.
She was faking it. But he had no choice. He felt like an actor now, stumbling lightly into the room, trying to clear his head and ready himself for another attack from his beloved. What would it be? The way she was lying, if she could just bend her spine backwards a little, she could give him a double-kick to the chin, flip up and carry on. Possibly make a punch as high as Ranma's stomach if she twisted a bit... or was she expecting him to turn her over? She'd have a much wider range of movement then. And could possibly fire off an attack or two at him. Damn. Too many choices.
His feet felt the urge to make a Saotome Special Move right then and there, but hell, he hadn't come this far for, he hadn't given his heart this much to, this girl to back out now. His feet reached her. He squatted down next to her shoulder. All he could do was tense up in the right places, relax in the others, and hope like heck he could move before she could connect with more than a glancing blow.
She was lying mostly facedown, but one eye looked off to the side, staring in Ranma's general direction. It wasn't glazed, and in fact, while he watched, it blinked, then the pupil swivelled to stare at his face.
"Sempai," she said, quietly, levelly. "Sempai. Why are you doing this?"
"I do this because I care," Ranma said, quietly. "I don't want to fight you, Hotaru, but if you continue, I've got to. Because it's not just me you're hurting."
"Is that all you're worried about?" Saturn asked, voice still level apart from a light questioning lilt at the end of the sentence.
"Look around," Ranma said, not taking his eyes off Saturn below him. "These are my friends too."
"Didn't you know, Ranma? When you go out with a girl, you're expected to lose all your friends."
Ranma stayed silent through the semi-flippant remark. Saturn still failed to move.
Then he asked: "Why aren't you fighting, then, if that's what you want to do?"
"Because I'm bored already. We all know how this is going to end, Sempai. I'm going to grind your bones into paste, and eat you alive." Her voice took on a slight touch of animation. And enthusiasm, Ranma wasn't pleased to hear. "I'll spray you with hot water first, though, because I want to see you naked. And not in your girl body. I want to do things to you."
"Hotaru - you said it yourself: we're not an item anymore. And I don't do things like that with girls I'm not going out with."
"Oh, but I can do what I want, Ranma. That's what Yoshihiro did to me." Saturn smiled.
It wasn't pleasant.
"He set me free."
Ranma dodged the punch, and the follow-up punch, the triple kick series she threw at him then. He replied with a slower-than-normal speed amarguriken that still impacted seventy or so times on her face and upper torso. The sweeping kick behind her ankles the amarguriken had diverted attention for found its way behind her, then brought back suddenly, and Mistress Saturn found herself on the floor again. She growled, and fingers clenched into the flooring, tearing furrows as she pushed herself up. Ranma was impressed - her fingernails didn't so much as flake or scratch.
"You're really trying to get me angry, aren't you?" she said.
Ranma countered, "You're doing enough in that respect for me to need to help." He swept out another foot at her ankles, hoping to keep her down until he could break through whatever conditioning had been forced upon her, but there was a slight black flash, and she vanished, reappearing behind him almost instantly in another flash of black and slamming an elbow into his unprotected back.
His chin bit deep into the concrete, and the pain forced up once more through his jaw reminded him of just how much stronger his opponent was.
Ranma couldn't win this fight - hell, couldn't even survive! - if he was going to tie his hands behind his back and lower his head to the chopping block. There was no way he could bring Hotaru back to her senses by letting her beat him. He had to survive. She was strong; she could take whatever he dished out, and more.
He converted his downward movement into the floor from Saturn's blow into a forward roll, springing out energetically into a wall, then catapulting back at her, firing ki through the lower half of his body to accelerate his forward speed. Fists outstretched, the moment before he impacted in Saturn's midsection, he extended his body's ki forward from his hands, to create an accelerated shockwave with his mass and momentum before he hit.
When his body did connect, her interior defences were down already, having prepared for his body to hit her and been swept aside by an earlier blow than she was ready for. Saturn's breath gusted from her lungs, and her eyes opened wide. She dropped from the air to the floor again, on hands and knees, coughing and wheezing, trying to regain her breath once more.
Ranma dropped down on the other side of her, brought his legs around and back into her gut, forcing more air out. Tears formed at the edges of saturn's eyes, and for a moment, he saw his Hotaru-chan, the one whom he'd promised and offered parts of himself he hadn't known existed. Before him, she seemed to melt, wilt, as Saturn curled up into a foetal posture.
Shrinking within herself.
Ranma stood over her, and was aware of people behind him.
"Ah! The fair pig-tailed girl!" Kuno. Drat. "Hath the vile seductress posing as our Goddess been dispatched?" Kuno leaned forward past Ranma. "Ah. I see not. A noble gesture, to not kill one so fair and feminine, yet this is one evil creature that cannot be allowed to breathe again." He raised his bokken, touched it to his forehead in salute to his Goddess. "This dread corruption cannot be allowed to spread to others, including my fair pig-tailed girl." His bokken swept down, before Ranma could spring to stop its fall, but there was someone else there between them suddenly. No flash of movement, nothing Ranma or Kuno could note. He was just... there.
Yoshihiro smiled at Ranma. The smile did strange things in Ranma's stomach and chest, hatching butterflies and tightening intercostals to the point Ranma almost physically found it hard to breathe. "My dear, this little game is for you and my girl yourselves. No one else need intercede on your behalf." He flicked his hand, which had caught Kuno's weapon, and Kuno found himself flung through the air and a pair of walls. When he hit the third, he sighed, hit the ground, and stayed there.
It was then that Ranma really began to fear for his safety.
******
Akane pushed to the front of the crowd, which wasn't as hard as she'd have thought. Completely opposite to Ranma's usual fights in the school, people were running *away* from the sounds of combat. Akane didn't know why; usually everyone at Furinken High enjoyed watching the various grudge matches.
She caught sight of Nabiki running as if the very demons of Hell were on her tail, and angled to intercept. She grabbed her older sister's arm, and pulled her to a stop. "Nabiki! What's going on? Why's everyone running away?"
Nabiki's face was one of alarm. "They're tearing up the school!"
"When Ranma's involved, they usually do," Akane bit back.
"I mean, really! It's that Hotaru girl who started here recently! She's fighting Ranma!" Nabiki pulled herself free, and ran for the relative safety of the other side of the school's big thick exterior walls. Akane watched her go, jostled a few times by fleeing students. Then she turned, and headed for a look at this girl Nabiki had mentioned.
Cold fire stoked up in her stomach as she considered the girls Ranma was sleeping with now. There was a girl called Hotaru. Cologne had warned Akane and the other Nerimaians who regularly fought around the ward about her. She was supposed to be insanely strong, devilish, deadly. Apparently, one of her predecessors had levelled the Amazonian village in China some centuries ago, some beautiful soldier for love and justice. Akane had laughed it off, but if Nabiki wasn't standing around taking bets, then something was up.
And while Akane no longer counted Ranma as a loved one, let alone friend, he had saved her too many times for her not to rub in the fact he had brought all this pain and suffering on himself. She'd be sure to do that when he was broken and battered and looking for someone to fight for him. Kick him while he was down.
She nodded to herself as she stepped out into the front school yard; that was a good plan. Start paying him back for the pain and suffering he caused her. Then she saw two things.
The first was the front of the school. Kuno's legs could be seen through one of the gaping holes that now adorned the building. Classrooms were laid open. People streamed from the wreckage when they could. The fight going on inside was moving from floor to floor and room to room almost faster than Akane could make out. Ranma's opponent certainly moved a lot faster than he did on average - his amarguriken could still tip that average to his favour from time to time, but superfast punches and kicks couldn't be used to block or dodge the lazily-thrown punches and kicks that shattered the reinforced concrete of the building into dust. As such, Ranma looked to be on the losing side. She watched as he made a couple of powered-up ki attacks, which would slam his attacker (a girl in a miniskirt and thigh-high boots?) through a wall or two. But she'd get back up, and the blurring would begin again.
The second was the blond-haired man, standing just in front of her. His black suit was untouched by the white concrete dust blowing on the wind - in fact, he didn' seem touched by the wind at all. It was almost as if he was a television image, projected into the real world, a person who obviously wasn't there. But when he turned, Akane found why nothing touched him: it was his sheer force of raw power.
Her knees grew weak, and her heart started to beat faster and faster. Her stomach grew butterflies, which tried to launch themselves from her ears, and she could feel the pulse of a vein somewhere up one of her nostrils, threatening to blow copious amounts of blood everywhere in a gory spray.
Then he smiled, and her body stopped reacting. This guy was an even worse pervert than Ranma! And not only that, but he had a shark's smile. A method of measuring someone up visually, determining how tasty one would be, and then making best use of them. He saw a person as a tool to be used, not as people to be treated with respect, dignity, loyalty. Something in Akane clicked. He was much, much worse than Ranma, simply because as perverted as that idiot was, Ranma did have respect for others, he didn't like making people feel unwanted, or stupid (unless, like Kuno, they really asked nicely for it), and Akane had to admit, Ranma was loyal. All the times she had thought he hadn't been loyal to her, had usually been a misunderstanding. Usually.
He was only human, after all, and not some kind of god.
"We each have our champions, do we not?" the blond man asked Akane.
She got the feeling he wasn't expecting an answer, or rather, was expecting a demand for clarification on his meaning. But she got the idea. This man was the master of the girl fighting Ranma, Hotaru... Hotaru... they'd been introduced. Hotaru Tomoe? But she didn't look like the sickly, pale child she'd met when she'd visited the Ai Sou. No, she looked sexier, more dynamic, stronger. Had this person altered her to fit his needs? Maybe. Anger seethed inside her. Ranma deserved what he got.
******
Another punch smashed a wall to slivers, most of which bounced off Ranma's hardened skin.
But not all. Several small slivers found their way into his eyes, which watered uncontrollably. As a consequence, he missed the incoming punch that smashed into his stomach and lower ribs - he felt one of those snap in three places and he cried out in pain as the jackhammer thrust him back through a pair of walls, and into a staff room.
Teachers who had been in hiding, relatively safe until now, screamed in shock as a young girl flew back-first into the tea urn on the wall. Hot water exploded everywhere, and the girl screamed, piercingly. There was a smell of lightly scalded flesh, a raw smell that one or two of the teachers had been accustomed to with their tea-drinking habits, albeit on a much smaller scale. The girl stood up painfully, shirt torn and in tatters hanging off her shoulders. As she stood, those who watched were amazed to see a transformation take place in the girl's body as generous breasts sucked inwards, arms and thighs muscled up, the bone structure of the face shifted with an almost painful grinding sound, her soaking wet pants, already clinging to her skin, swelled around a growing bulge in her pants. And then her, rather, his hair colour darkened from red to a deep midnight black.
Fingers curled up painfully in red tones, as Ranma forced his fingers into a fist. He felt like an overripe fruit, thanks to the boiling water. Not merely hot, but boiling hot. He was burnt, he was hurt from the fight - physically injured, actually, something he could proudly say didn't happen often - winded, and seeing double. Wait, triple, he decided as he realised there were three images of the Home Ec teacher peering over a couch at him.
Through the hole in the wall he'd made, Hotaru approached. Mistress Saturn, Ranma forced himself to think of her. He had to think that. He was fighting for his life here - but not just his own. Also that of Hotaru's. And the other senshi. And the students of this school, and its teachers. The people in the streets beyond, beyond Tokyo, beyond Japan. He was fighting for people globally.
He didn't want to find out if all the senshi assembled in one place could take down Mistress Saturn - heck, that ditzy Sailor Moon would likely wanna ask her to be friends, and that hadn't gotten Ranma anywhere - and he was quite sure that even if all the assembled senshi *could* bring Mistress Saturn down, Mistress Saturn and this... Yoshihiro, neither would allow the senshi to fight as one force. So it fell to Ranma. Here, now.
At least he had his male body back now, soaked as he was. The transformation after so long had been painful, made even more painful by the injuries he'd suffered in the meantime. But his male body was much more resiliant. Much stronger. But that tradeoff came at the cost of a few milliseconds of speed. Something that would count dearly today.
"Ah," MIstress Saturn said, stepping through the hole. "I see you're ready for me to ravish you now?" she asked, brightly.
Ranma shook his head.
"Oh, so sad, so sorry... but I'm going to anyway." Saturn took another step forward, bringing a hand up. It crackled with power.
******
Usagi poked her head back into the lounge. "Where did you say you saw my lunch, Rei?" she asked again, louder this time.
But Rei was standing motionless, in a trance, in the middle of the lounge. Her mouth moved, and her voice was quiet, raspy, as if coming from somewhere else. Her eyes had glazed over. Usagi waved her hand in front of them, to no avail.
And then she heard Rei's words.
"savemeranmahelpmeranmaineedyouineedyoutohelpme" she said, in the low monotone that gushed forth.
"What?" Usagi asked.
"bestrongdontcrysavemehelpmehearmeineedhelpranma" Rei continued.
Usagi waved her hands back and forth some more. "Earth to Rei! Earth to Rei! Are you tripping out on me?"
"ranmagrabmestopmehelpmememeineedyouranmaonlyyou"
"Will you get off him already? Hotaru's his girlfriend," Usagi snorted. "And he's so not cuter than Mamo-chan."
"ranmaineedyouranmagrabmeholdmemakemeyoursagain" More from Rei.
Usagi sighed, gave up, rolled her eyes heavenward. "And you so need to stop masterbating over him late at night."
Rei snapped back to herself as Usagi spoke. She glared daggers at the blond, then turned and hurried from the room, yelling, "Ranma needs help!"
Usagi followed Rei outside, where the other senshi were assembled, waiting for Usagi to rgab her lunch and return. They were looking at Rei's retreating form as she sprinted for the stairs, yelling back, "Hotaru's gone evil! She's attacking Ranma!"
The others didn't hesitate. They dropped their bags, and ran for the stairs, henshin wands being pulled from pockets as they went. All apart from Usagi.
"I just wish we could all go back to chasing after Tuxedo Kamen again, like we did in the old days," she grumbled, before transforming and following the others.
******
Mistress Saturn leapt forward, believing Ranma's injuries to be too great. But she should have remembered, Ranma didn't give up that easily, at least, not since he'd been fighting with the senshi. Not since there was a woman in his life who enjoyed fighting alongside him, someone better than him whom he had to strive to match on her lowest level of power. Someone who gave him the will to not run, to try and hold out, even if it was only until someone had a free hand to help save him.
It was nice being saved sometimes.
But this time, there was no last second save, no reserves of energy he could call on for the one final blow to put Mistress Saturn down long enough to change her mind again, no way out except fighting as he had been. And then running. Try to get Mistress Saturn to a place where there were fewer people around, where she could brawl it out with him all she wanted, until he could bring her around. Surely, her feelings for him wouldn't allow her to kill him, now, would they?
She leapt, faster than most people's eyes could see. But Ranma was faster, even in his male body. He dodged to one side, injured rib howling in protest and agony, and brought a ki-enhanced roundhouse through from behind and snapped it into the base of Mistress Saturn's skull. She flopped to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
And perhaps, for the moment, they were.
Ranma didn't stick around to see how long it'd take for her to recover from that hit. Not long, if the way her eyelashes were quivering was any indication. His hardest blow, capable of perhaps levelling a small building - the concussion wave from the connection had momentarily deafened Ranma, as well as blown out the few remaining windows in the main school building - had at best knocked her unconscious for a few moments. Moments which he used to the best of his advantage.
Ranma grabbed the remaining teachers, and leaped from one of the holes in the walls, landing in the courtyard of the school before making sure the teachers didn't hit the ground too hard. His rib howled again, he gritted his teeth against the pain as he stood.
Facing Yoshihiro.
The taller man applauded slowly, a smile creasing his face. "Very good, Mister Saotome. Very well done, indeed."
"I'm not going to fight you."
"I know you're not. You're a smart fighter. You know when you're outclassed."
"I don't know what you did to her, but it won't last."
"Perhaps not," Yoshihiro conceeded. "But it'll last long enough to suit my purposes."
"Did you...?" Ranma couldn't bring himself to say it.
"Did I? Or did I not?" Yoshihiro's tone was slightly mocking. "She's a young girl, Mister Saotome. She has needs. Wants. And you're so totally unaware of them. Can you fulfill her? Can you make her dreams come true? Can you do what she's aching for? Be the man she's lusting for?" The blond man shook his head. "No. At the moment, you can't."
At this point, Ranma noticed Akane - well, noticed Akane in the sense that he finally let himself relax around Yoshihiro, convinced the Dark General would not yet attack him out of hand. He stared. "Did he -"
Akane shook her head. "Why would you care if he did, though?" she asked, bitterly, rhetorically.
"Akane, you'll always be my friend," he returned, feeling that the sentence described his emotions towards Akane so lamely, he was surprised she didn't immediately try to hit him. But the tears were worse than that. Akane wasn't good at holding them back, not the angry-sad tears she gave when upset. "Whether you can still believe that after I left you, I don't know. But I can tell you -"
From the school building behind them, there was a scream like fingernails on a chalkboard. Mistress Saturn had awoken, very much on the not-happy side of things. Ranma turned to look at the school, then back to Akane, pain in his eyes. "- that I don't have time to tell you now. I will, though, I promise."
Then, with a final glare at Yoshihiro, he leapt from the courtyard, and fled the scene.
A few moments later, Mistress Saturn dropped heavily from the air to the ground beside Yoshihiro. "Do you want me to go after him right now?" she asked, panting a little. She leaned her head to the right until her spine cracked, then glared at Ranma's fast-retreating form.
"No," Yoshihiro sighed. "For the moment, he's a fun diversion. Let him go. You'll get to play with him again, soon." He turned to Akane, and tipped an imaginery hat. "It was nice talking to you, Miss Tendo. I hope we meet again one day. But alas, you won't remember me if we do." With that, he passed a hand over Akane's face, and she toppled to the ground like a log. He looked towards the direction Ranma had disappeared in, and sighed. "Yes, fun indeed..."
SAILOR MOON SAYS:
Waaai! Another fic went by without a title. Chapter 6 shold have been titled "RUDE ENDINGS" but hey, I got a title for this one!
A few problems during the writing of this fic. Two loved pets dying within a week seemed to put a crimp into my writing ability, sapping everything. Not writer's block, I had the ideas, I just couldn't write when I sat down to do it. Which sucked dramatically, since I've got an original anime-styled series to start getting notes down for. Waah. But my art has been going fine, no problems there much, so I'd been continuing on with that. (also for the first two weeks of term, I was working 3 days a week, and on average, gone from the house another two days during each week and online nowhere near as much, so that prolly had something to do with my lack of writing ability, too)
So, what's coming next chapter? Well, hard to say. This part of the arc is gonna be a two-three chapter thing. So this is more a what to expect in the next few parts rather than necessarily just the next chapter. There's a new senshi made (oh, someone will DIE, says Ranma in his micro-mini). The cats return! They've been gone too long, being housetrained. And to all the people who think Hotaru betrayed Ranma... look closely at this chapter. It answers it all for you as to why they're still together at the end of this arc :) (Man, this is *so* like a Mr Squiggle episode... upside down, everyone!)
Bye 'til next time!
IMPORTANT NOTE: During the writing of this chapter, our beloved dog, a poodle called Georgie, died in my father's hands this morning, Sunday 7th July 2002. As she was running around fine last night when I last saw her, the fact she died so suddenly, in a series of fits, has kinda shocked me. I'm guessing this will impact somewhere on the writing in this and later chapters... I'm sorry if it does so, but I think it is understandable. As such, I'd like to dedicate the rest of this series to our dog, Georgie. May she be forever more able to chase birds, gorge on avocadoes, sleep in late and keep people warm in bed, as well as eat whenever and whatever she wants, where ever she may now be. She will be sorely missed by myself, my mother, my sisters, my two year old niece who adored Georgie, our cat, Tammy, and most of all, my father, who she lived with after my parents split up last year. Thank you for reading.
While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us. -- Ben Franklin
LOVE
By
Raymond Cooper
Chapter 7
** Immortal Combat **
Ranma wasn't ready.
That was all anyone knew as the self-proclaimed Mistress Saturn leapt at him from across the school's front yard. To those assembled, it seemed as if she took forever to cover that distance in the one bound she took, yet they knew at the same time, that effect was only illusion: she'd covered that distance in less than an eyeblink.
Mistress Saturn's knee kicked up into Ranma's chin. She didn't feel it, but Ranma felt the force of an annoyed senshi drill through his teeth and knock him back into the school's building. He thanked kami that he'd hardened up through his years of training, and had taken somewhat worse kicks, but it was a hard time remembering when.
It didn't help he was in his female body still, softer and weaker than his male form. Not so noticeable to normal people, perhaps, but in a fight such as this promised to be, Ranma knew it would count. The only real things it had going for it was the speed and agility he could display.
Balance could be a problem, though, if he fought to the exclusion of everything else.
It was certainly a problem now, Ranma getting to his feet, the world tilted at a weird angle to his senses. There was a flash of pseudomotion in the corner of his eyes, and he dropped, ducking down until his head touched the ground, and whipped a foot directly up behind him.
Contact. And a redirection of Saturn's path of travel to a new angle, where she made a new entrance into a room adjacent to Ranma's landing area. He righted himself, in time to note that Saturn was not getting up.
No. It couldn't be that easy. Not Saturn. Not Hotaru.
Ranma hadn't had any illusions about the sickly-looking girl once he'd found out her secret. The power she displayed was awesome, he knew she was capable of some serious power displays before he found out anything concrete. Like that whole blowing up planets thing. Likewise, he'd known that she wasn't as ill as she made herself out to be, especially as time had gone by. But it was something they did. It was... personality. Closeness that neither really felt they could otherwise display.
And now possibly never would again.
But that didn't hold with Ranma. He knew they would be back together at some point. She'd helped him grow up, leave behind his childishness. Mostly, anyway. Now it was his turn to help her.
What she'd said moments ago, that wasn't her talking - it couldn't have been. He knew that the Dark Kingdom overlord-guy... this Yoshihiro? He knew that he had the power to control minds. He affected minds with power, at least. Ranma thought it surprising none of the other senshi could feel him like both him and Hotaru had... Hotaru, yeah, that she could feel his presence wasn't a surprise. But Ranma? Unless he was sitting on some kind of huge power source not even he knew about, he wasn't even in the same league as Hotaru in terms of raw energy.
Which left him a little confused there. So, maybe it was a by-product of his martial arts training, and his skills in registering ki auras.
Regardless, she still wasn't moving.
What she'd said had hurt Ranma. Badly. And he wanted to kick out at something. But that was the immature Ranma, what he'd been trying to leave behind. The mature guy that Hotaru had remoulded him as... well, that Ranma would walk into the room, try again to bring Hotaru back to her senses.
He knew she was faking it. He knew there was no way that kick could have injured her.
Not seriously, at least. Maybe knocked her about a little, and possibly the wall had something to do with it, but hell, Hotaru... Saturn was a senshi. Stronger than human. Probably damned near immortal and invulnerable by Ranma's standards.
Yet he knew they could be hurt. Those monsters they'd been fighting for a few months now routinely hurt the senshi. Scratches, bruises, bite marks, gravel rash, burns, frostbite (in one case) among other injuries. Hotaru usually patched up anything minor, even some major, although there really hadn't been any serious injuries Ranma had known of.
Apart from his own.
Fighting that youma hadn't necessarily been the smartest thing he could have done, not expending all his ki like that, but hey, he'd come out on top, alive, and was kicking again, several weeks later.
Mistress Saturn was completely motionless.
Damn it. Ranma knew what came next. This was in every movie he'd ever seen from America. And whether it had been subtitled or dubbed, he knew what came next: the hero turned over his former best friend/partner (who turned out to be the killer or other bad guy) thinking they were dead... and lo! They weren't and got kicked.
Just if Ranma copped another kick like he'd just taken, he wouldn't just be bruised, he'd be counting the several hundred thousand yen under his pillow in the morning.
And then spending it on dental work.
She was faking it. But he had no choice. He felt like an actor now, stumbling lightly into the room, trying to clear his head and ready himself for another attack from his beloved. What would it be? The way she was lying, if she could just bend her spine backwards a little, she could give him a double-kick to the chin, flip up and carry on. Possibly make a punch as high as Ranma's stomach if she twisted a bit... or was she expecting him to turn her over? She'd have a much wider range of movement then. And could possibly fire off an attack or two at him. Damn. Too many choices.
His feet felt the urge to make a Saotome Special Move right then and there, but hell, he hadn't come this far for, he hadn't given his heart this much to, this girl to back out now. His feet reached her. He squatted down next to her shoulder. All he could do was tense up in the right places, relax in the others, and hope like heck he could move before she could connect with more than a glancing blow.
She was lying mostly facedown, but one eye looked off to the side, staring in Ranma's general direction. It wasn't glazed, and in fact, while he watched, it blinked, then the pupil swivelled to stare at his face.
"Sempai," she said, quietly, levelly. "Sempai. Why are you doing this?"
"I do this because I care," Ranma said, quietly. "I don't want to fight you, Hotaru, but if you continue, I've got to. Because it's not just me you're hurting."
"Is that all you're worried about?" Saturn asked, voice still level apart from a light questioning lilt at the end of the sentence.
"Look around," Ranma said, not taking his eyes off Saturn below him. "These are my friends too."
"Didn't you know, Ranma? When you go out with a girl, you're expected to lose all your friends."
Ranma stayed silent through the semi-flippant remark. Saturn still failed to move.
Then he asked: "Why aren't you fighting, then, if that's what you want to do?"
"Because I'm bored already. We all know how this is going to end, Sempai. I'm going to grind your bones into paste, and eat you alive." Her voice took on a slight touch of animation. And enthusiasm, Ranma wasn't pleased to hear. "I'll spray you with hot water first, though, because I want to see you naked. And not in your girl body. I want to do things to you."
"Hotaru - you said it yourself: we're not an item anymore. And I don't do things like that with girls I'm not going out with."
"Oh, but I can do what I want, Ranma. That's what Yoshihiro did to me." Saturn smiled.
It wasn't pleasant.
"He set me free."
Ranma dodged the punch, and the follow-up punch, the triple kick series she threw at him then. He replied with a slower-than-normal speed amarguriken that still impacted seventy or so times on her face and upper torso. The sweeping kick behind her ankles the amarguriken had diverted attention for found its way behind her, then brought back suddenly, and Mistress Saturn found herself on the floor again. She growled, and fingers clenched into the flooring, tearing furrows as she pushed herself up. Ranma was impressed - her fingernails didn't so much as flake or scratch.
"You're really trying to get me angry, aren't you?" she said.
Ranma countered, "You're doing enough in that respect for me to need to help." He swept out another foot at her ankles, hoping to keep her down until he could break through whatever conditioning had been forced upon her, but there was a slight black flash, and she vanished, reappearing behind him almost instantly in another flash of black and slamming an elbow into his unprotected back.
His chin bit deep into the concrete, and the pain forced up once more through his jaw reminded him of just how much stronger his opponent was.
Ranma couldn't win this fight - hell, couldn't even survive! - if he was going to tie his hands behind his back and lower his head to the chopping block. There was no way he could bring Hotaru back to her senses by letting her beat him. He had to survive. She was strong; she could take whatever he dished out, and more.
He converted his downward movement into the floor from Saturn's blow into a forward roll, springing out energetically into a wall, then catapulting back at her, firing ki through the lower half of his body to accelerate his forward speed. Fists outstretched, the moment before he impacted in Saturn's midsection, he extended his body's ki forward from his hands, to create an accelerated shockwave with his mass and momentum before he hit.
When his body did connect, her interior defences were down already, having prepared for his body to hit her and been swept aside by an earlier blow than she was ready for. Saturn's breath gusted from her lungs, and her eyes opened wide. She dropped from the air to the floor again, on hands and knees, coughing and wheezing, trying to regain her breath once more.
Ranma dropped down on the other side of her, brought his legs around and back into her gut, forcing more air out. Tears formed at the edges of saturn's eyes, and for a moment, he saw his Hotaru-chan, the one whom he'd promised and offered parts of himself he hadn't known existed. Before him, she seemed to melt, wilt, as Saturn curled up into a foetal posture.
Shrinking within herself.
Ranma stood over her, and was aware of people behind him.
"Ah! The fair pig-tailed girl!" Kuno. Drat. "Hath the vile seductress posing as our Goddess been dispatched?" Kuno leaned forward past Ranma. "Ah. I see not. A noble gesture, to not kill one so fair and feminine, yet this is one evil creature that cannot be allowed to breathe again." He raised his bokken, touched it to his forehead in salute to his Goddess. "This dread corruption cannot be allowed to spread to others, including my fair pig-tailed girl." His bokken swept down, before Ranma could spring to stop its fall, but there was someone else there between them suddenly. No flash of movement, nothing Ranma or Kuno could note. He was just... there.
Yoshihiro smiled at Ranma. The smile did strange things in Ranma's stomach and chest, hatching butterflies and tightening intercostals to the point Ranma almost physically found it hard to breathe. "My dear, this little game is for you and my girl yourselves. No one else need intercede on your behalf." He flicked his hand, which had caught Kuno's weapon, and Kuno found himself flung through the air and a pair of walls. When he hit the third, he sighed, hit the ground, and stayed there.
It was then that Ranma really began to fear for his safety.
******
Akane pushed to the front of the crowd, which wasn't as hard as she'd have thought. Completely opposite to Ranma's usual fights in the school, people were running *away* from the sounds of combat. Akane didn't know why; usually everyone at Furinken High enjoyed watching the various grudge matches.
She caught sight of Nabiki running as if the very demons of Hell were on her tail, and angled to intercept. She grabbed her older sister's arm, and pulled her to a stop. "Nabiki! What's going on? Why's everyone running away?"
Nabiki's face was one of alarm. "They're tearing up the school!"
"When Ranma's involved, they usually do," Akane bit back.
"I mean, really! It's that Hotaru girl who started here recently! She's fighting Ranma!" Nabiki pulled herself free, and ran for the relative safety of the other side of the school's big thick exterior walls. Akane watched her go, jostled a few times by fleeing students. Then she turned, and headed for a look at this girl Nabiki had mentioned.
Cold fire stoked up in her stomach as she considered the girls Ranma was sleeping with now. There was a girl called Hotaru. Cologne had warned Akane and the other Nerimaians who regularly fought around the ward about her. She was supposed to be insanely strong, devilish, deadly. Apparently, one of her predecessors had levelled the Amazonian village in China some centuries ago, some beautiful soldier for love and justice. Akane had laughed it off, but if Nabiki wasn't standing around taking bets, then something was up.
And while Akane no longer counted Ranma as a loved one, let alone friend, he had saved her too many times for her not to rub in the fact he had brought all this pain and suffering on himself. She'd be sure to do that when he was broken and battered and looking for someone to fight for him. Kick him while he was down.
She nodded to herself as she stepped out into the front school yard; that was a good plan. Start paying him back for the pain and suffering he caused her. Then she saw two things.
The first was the front of the school. Kuno's legs could be seen through one of the gaping holes that now adorned the building. Classrooms were laid open. People streamed from the wreckage when they could. The fight going on inside was moving from floor to floor and room to room almost faster than Akane could make out. Ranma's opponent certainly moved a lot faster than he did on average - his amarguriken could still tip that average to his favour from time to time, but superfast punches and kicks couldn't be used to block or dodge the lazily-thrown punches and kicks that shattered the reinforced concrete of the building into dust. As such, Ranma looked to be on the losing side. She watched as he made a couple of powered-up ki attacks, which would slam his attacker (a girl in a miniskirt and thigh-high boots?) through a wall or two. But she'd get back up, and the blurring would begin again.
The second was the blond-haired man, standing just in front of her. His black suit was untouched by the white concrete dust blowing on the wind - in fact, he didn' seem touched by the wind at all. It was almost as if he was a television image, projected into the real world, a person who obviously wasn't there. But when he turned, Akane found why nothing touched him: it was his sheer force of raw power.
Her knees grew weak, and her heart started to beat faster and faster. Her stomach grew butterflies, which tried to launch themselves from her ears, and she could feel the pulse of a vein somewhere up one of her nostrils, threatening to blow copious amounts of blood everywhere in a gory spray.
Then he smiled, and her body stopped reacting. This guy was an even worse pervert than Ranma! And not only that, but he had a shark's smile. A method of measuring someone up visually, determining how tasty one would be, and then making best use of them. He saw a person as a tool to be used, not as people to be treated with respect, dignity, loyalty. Something in Akane clicked. He was much, much worse than Ranma, simply because as perverted as that idiot was, Ranma did have respect for others, he didn't like making people feel unwanted, or stupid (unless, like Kuno, they really asked nicely for it), and Akane had to admit, Ranma was loyal. All the times she had thought he hadn't been loyal to her, had usually been a misunderstanding. Usually.
He was only human, after all, and not some kind of god.
"We each have our champions, do we not?" the blond man asked Akane.
She got the feeling he wasn't expecting an answer, or rather, was expecting a demand for clarification on his meaning. But she got the idea. This man was the master of the girl fighting Ranma, Hotaru... Hotaru... they'd been introduced. Hotaru Tomoe? But she didn't look like the sickly, pale child she'd met when she'd visited the Ai Sou. No, she looked sexier, more dynamic, stronger. Had this person altered her to fit his needs? Maybe. Anger seethed inside her. Ranma deserved what he got.
******
Another punch smashed a wall to slivers, most of which bounced off Ranma's hardened skin.
But not all. Several small slivers found their way into his eyes, which watered uncontrollably. As a consequence, he missed the incoming punch that smashed into his stomach and lower ribs - he felt one of those snap in three places and he cried out in pain as the jackhammer thrust him back through a pair of walls, and into a staff room.
Teachers who had been in hiding, relatively safe until now, screamed in shock as a young girl flew back-first into the tea urn on the wall. Hot water exploded everywhere, and the girl screamed, piercingly. There was a smell of lightly scalded flesh, a raw smell that one or two of the teachers had been accustomed to with their tea-drinking habits, albeit on a much smaller scale. The girl stood up painfully, shirt torn and in tatters hanging off her shoulders. As she stood, those who watched were amazed to see a transformation take place in the girl's body as generous breasts sucked inwards, arms and thighs muscled up, the bone structure of the face shifted with an almost painful grinding sound, her soaking wet pants, already clinging to her skin, swelled around a growing bulge in her pants. And then her, rather, his hair colour darkened from red to a deep midnight black.
Fingers curled up painfully in red tones, as Ranma forced his fingers into a fist. He felt like an overripe fruit, thanks to the boiling water. Not merely hot, but boiling hot. He was burnt, he was hurt from the fight - physically injured, actually, something he could proudly say didn't happen often - winded, and seeing double. Wait, triple, he decided as he realised there were three images of the Home Ec teacher peering over a couch at him.
Through the hole in the wall he'd made, Hotaru approached. Mistress Saturn, Ranma forced himself to think of her. He had to think that. He was fighting for his life here - but not just his own. Also that of Hotaru's. And the other senshi. And the students of this school, and its teachers. The people in the streets beyond, beyond Tokyo, beyond Japan. He was fighting for people globally.
He didn't want to find out if all the senshi assembled in one place could take down Mistress Saturn - heck, that ditzy Sailor Moon would likely wanna ask her to be friends, and that hadn't gotten Ranma anywhere - and he was quite sure that even if all the assembled senshi *could* bring Mistress Saturn down, Mistress Saturn and this... Yoshihiro, neither would allow the senshi to fight as one force. So it fell to Ranma. Here, now.
At least he had his male body back now, soaked as he was. The transformation after so long had been painful, made even more painful by the injuries he'd suffered in the meantime. But his male body was much more resiliant. Much stronger. But that tradeoff came at the cost of a few milliseconds of speed. Something that would count dearly today.
"Ah," MIstress Saturn said, stepping through the hole. "I see you're ready for me to ravish you now?" she asked, brightly.
Ranma shook his head.
"Oh, so sad, so sorry... but I'm going to anyway." Saturn took another step forward, bringing a hand up. It crackled with power.
******
Usagi poked her head back into the lounge. "Where did you say you saw my lunch, Rei?" she asked again, louder this time.
But Rei was standing motionless, in a trance, in the middle of the lounge. Her mouth moved, and her voice was quiet, raspy, as if coming from somewhere else. Her eyes had glazed over. Usagi waved her hand in front of them, to no avail.
And then she heard Rei's words.
"savemeranmahelpmeranmaineedyouineedyoutohelpme" she said, in the low monotone that gushed forth.
"What?" Usagi asked.
"bestrongdontcrysavemehelpmehearmeineedhelpranma" Rei continued.
Usagi waved her hands back and forth some more. "Earth to Rei! Earth to Rei! Are you tripping out on me?"
"ranmagrabmestopmehelpmememeineedyouranmaonlyyou"
"Will you get off him already? Hotaru's his girlfriend," Usagi snorted. "And he's so not cuter than Mamo-chan."
"ranmaineedyouranmagrabmeholdmemakemeyoursagain" More from Rei.
Usagi sighed, gave up, rolled her eyes heavenward. "And you so need to stop masterbating over him late at night."
Rei snapped back to herself as Usagi spoke. She glared daggers at the blond, then turned and hurried from the room, yelling, "Ranma needs help!"
Usagi followed Rei outside, where the other senshi were assembled, waiting for Usagi to rgab her lunch and return. They were looking at Rei's retreating form as she sprinted for the stairs, yelling back, "Hotaru's gone evil! She's attacking Ranma!"
The others didn't hesitate. They dropped their bags, and ran for the stairs, henshin wands being pulled from pockets as they went. All apart from Usagi.
"I just wish we could all go back to chasing after Tuxedo Kamen again, like we did in the old days," she grumbled, before transforming and following the others.
******
Mistress Saturn leapt forward, believing Ranma's injuries to be too great. But she should have remembered, Ranma didn't give up that easily, at least, not since he'd been fighting with the senshi. Not since there was a woman in his life who enjoyed fighting alongside him, someone better than him whom he had to strive to match on her lowest level of power. Someone who gave him the will to not run, to try and hold out, even if it was only until someone had a free hand to help save him.
It was nice being saved sometimes.
But this time, there was no last second save, no reserves of energy he could call on for the one final blow to put Mistress Saturn down long enough to change her mind again, no way out except fighting as he had been. And then running. Try to get Mistress Saturn to a place where there were fewer people around, where she could brawl it out with him all she wanted, until he could bring her around. Surely, her feelings for him wouldn't allow her to kill him, now, would they?
She leapt, faster than most people's eyes could see. But Ranma was faster, even in his male body. He dodged to one side, injured rib howling in protest and agony, and brought a ki-enhanced roundhouse through from behind and snapped it into the base of Mistress Saturn's skull. She flopped to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
And perhaps, for the moment, they were.
Ranma didn't stick around to see how long it'd take for her to recover from that hit. Not long, if the way her eyelashes were quivering was any indication. His hardest blow, capable of perhaps levelling a small building - the concussion wave from the connection had momentarily deafened Ranma, as well as blown out the few remaining windows in the main school building - had at best knocked her unconscious for a few moments. Moments which he used to the best of his advantage.
Ranma grabbed the remaining teachers, and leaped from one of the holes in the walls, landing in the courtyard of the school before making sure the teachers didn't hit the ground too hard. His rib howled again, he gritted his teeth against the pain as he stood.
Facing Yoshihiro.
The taller man applauded slowly, a smile creasing his face. "Very good, Mister Saotome. Very well done, indeed."
"I'm not going to fight you."
"I know you're not. You're a smart fighter. You know when you're outclassed."
"I don't know what you did to her, but it won't last."
"Perhaps not," Yoshihiro conceeded. "But it'll last long enough to suit my purposes."
"Did you...?" Ranma couldn't bring himself to say it.
"Did I? Or did I not?" Yoshihiro's tone was slightly mocking. "She's a young girl, Mister Saotome. She has needs. Wants. And you're so totally unaware of them. Can you fulfill her? Can you make her dreams come true? Can you do what she's aching for? Be the man she's lusting for?" The blond man shook his head. "No. At the moment, you can't."
At this point, Ranma noticed Akane - well, noticed Akane in the sense that he finally let himself relax around Yoshihiro, convinced the Dark General would not yet attack him out of hand. He stared. "Did he -"
Akane shook her head. "Why would you care if he did, though?" she asked, bitterly, rhetorically.
"Akane, you'll always be my friend," he returned, feeling that the sentence described his emotions towards Akane so lamely, he was surprised she didn't immediately try to hit him. But the tears were worse than that. Akane wasn't good at holding them back, not the angry-sad tears she gave when upset. "Whether you can still believe that after I left you, I don't know. But I can tell you -"
From the school building behind them, there was a scream like fingernails on a chalkboard. Mistress Saturn had awoken, very much on the not-happy side of things. Ranma turned to look at the school, then back to Akane, pain in his eyes. "- that I don't have time to tell you now. I will, though, I promise."
Then, with a final glare at Yoshihiro, he leapt from the courtyard, and fled the scene.
A few moments later, Mistress Saturn dropped heavily from the air to the ground beside Yoshihiro. "Do you want me to go after him right now?" she asked, panting a little. She leaned her head to the right until her spine cracked, then glared at Ranma's fast-retreating form.
"No," Yoshihiro sighed. "For the moment, he's a fun diversion. Let him go. You'll get to play with him again, soon." He turned to Akane, and tipped an imaginery hat. "It was nice talking to you, Miss Tendo. I hope we meet again one day. But alas, you won't remember me if we do." With that, he passed a hand over Akane's face, and she toppled to the ground like a log. He looked towards the direction Ranma had disappeared in, and sighed. "Yes, fun indeed..."
SAILOR MOON SAYS:
Waaai! Another fic went by without a title. Chapter 6 shold have been titled "RUDE ENDINGS" but hey, I got a title for this one!
A few problems during the writing of this fic. Two loved pets dying within a week seemed to put a crimp into my writing ability, sapping everything. Not writer's block, I had the ideas, I just couldn't write when I sat down to do it. Which sucked dramatically, since I've got an original anime-styled series to start getting notes down for. Waah. But my art has been going fine, no problems there much, so I'd been continuing on with that. (also for the first two weeks of term, I was working 3 days a week, and on average, gone from the house another two days during each week and online nowhere near as much, so that prolly had something to do with my lack of writing ability, too)
So, what's coming next chapter? Well, hard to say. This part of the arc is gonna be a two-three chapter thing. So this is more a what to expect in the next few parts rather than necessarily just the next chapter. There's a new senshi made (oh, someone will DIE, says Ranma in his micro-mini). The cats return! They've been gone too long, being housetrained. And to all the people who think Hotaru betrayed Ranma... look closely at this chapter. It answers it all for you as to why they're still together at the end of this arc :) (Man, this is *so* like a Mr Squiggle episode... upside down, everyone!)
Bye 'til next time!