Ranma DewBlossom
Chapter 3
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Ranma looked down from the tower from whence he ruled this insignificant ball of dirt. He smiled as the gathered masses prostrated themselves as was proper before his majestic image, cast in bronze at the base of his tower. The chorus of their adulation of their lord and master was music to the benevolent conqueror's ears. He smiled and turned to retire into his tower, breaking a small lollipop off the wall and held it carefully between his tongue and cheek as he considered what next to do.
After a moment of consideration, he made his way to his throne room, to recieve a petitioner or two. They'd been hanging around for hours after all. He sat himself on his iron throne, carefully avoiding the razor sharp edges and spikes that symbolized the pain and danger of rule to those who saw it. He casually waved his lollipop at the three that had been here the longest and the guards began turning the crank to lower them to the floor, slowly, so that they did not suffer head injuries from the marble floors.
Once they had recovered from all the blood in their body no longer rushing to their heads, he pointed to one, who stepped forward with his proposal.
"Lord Ranma, the barbarians of the United states of Canada have stolen the holy handgrenade of..."
"Did they take it to their country?"
"Er, yes, and they..."
Ranma pressed a large shiny red button, and the tower was treated to the sound of a distant explosion.
"I never liked Canada anyway. Next."
"Er, my lord, er, that is, er, could I have a moment? The pain in my head is making it difficult for me to think straight..."
"Oh? A headache? Understandable I suppose. Let me fix that for you. Set your head there... on the block. Just a little to the left... Right. Now hold still."
Ranma withdrew his pink, smily-faced, flowery, spikey mallet from nowhere and slammed it down heavily on the petitioner's head, creating a large crunching noise as his skull rapidly changed shape.
"That better?"
"M-much... thank you."
Ranma waved his hand, and a guard stepped forward to drag the bleeding, broken mass away.
"Next."
"My lord Ranma, I have come to you with a question, requiring your infinite wisdom to solve."
"Oh? Do continue, peasant, you intrigue me."
"How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?"
Ranma considered for a moment, rolling the lollipop around in his mouth before answering.
"Your meager intellect is astonishing. Categorizing the wood as an inanimate object, the woodchuck as an animate object, the act of 'chucking' wood would necessarily require itself to be facilitated by a fungal growth. Mushrooms. Or to be precise, furry whiffler mushroom skeletons. It simply wouldn't be proper otherwise. The skeletal mushrooms greet the woodchuck traditionally by leaping for its throat with a switchblade, then set the wood on fire before leaving, but through random chance and probability a purple arbyfish turns back time to before the mushroom attack... or would have, except he had congealed from a freak rain of fabric softener that can easily be explained by a tornado blowing down a series of laundromats and depositing the liquid fabric softener into lower earth orbit where it chilled and condensed into a precipitative form, thus leaving the woodchuck very little time to chuck wood before it gave out and collapsed into the dirt, leaving the rest of the wood for furry whiffler spores to grow on, creating a plague that neccessitates the burning down of the forest in a gigantic, raging firestorm to keep nature in balance. The answer, seeker of wisdom, is six."
And throughout the world, children everywhere would grow up hearing the tales of Ranma the Wise and Benevolent Conqueror of the Entire World.
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Hotaru chastly kissed her snoring fiance on the cheek before slipping into bed next to him. He looked so peaceful and happy while he was asleep... she wondered what he was dreaming of.
She paused to consider the day he'd had, involving mutilating a Kendo team, smashing their captains head into a stone wall, vacantly destroying a desk and terrifying two classmates to the point they'd needed to excuse themselves to go change into their gym pants, threatening to kill a girl who'd been picking on her... and that didn't even cover what he'd gotten into after lunchtime. She also considered that the smile he'd worn while doing that was extremely similar to the one that had sprung up after he'd stopped stabbing the pillow and drifted off into REM sleep. Almost exactly similar now that she thought about it. That put an entirely different spin on things.
He was dreaming of beating up bad people that wanted to take over the world or something like that! How nice.
Hotaru completely missed the way that Ranma choked in his sleep as she finished that thought.
xxx
Setsuna blinked. She'd been trying for days to get a clear image of the groom at the wedding she'd witnessed... well, relatively anyway, there wasn't really such a thing as 'time' at the Time Gates... and now she had gotten a decently clear image of his surroundings... if not his face, which had for some reason been covered with one of those mosaic things she'd seen on some news programs when they interveiwed someone who wanted their privacy. Everything else came in perfect though.
She just wished she could forget she'd seen it.
"What did fungus have to do with anything? That sounds like something Arby would have said... and the one before it was something Tim would have done, god rest his soul... and much as I hate to say it, that first thing reminded me of Tim too. This is awful. Saturn is eneamored with Tim's reincarnation, there's no other explanation. He must die before any of this comes to pass."
Setsuna began making preperations to bring the senshi out on a manhunt, wishing she could convince herself it was all just a dream. Naturally, she was already gone when the scene in the gates switched to her target's snoring figure.
Now for something completely pointless.
xxx
After a decade, Mistress Nine had finally found a way to pass the time.
"Ten trillion four hundred ninety seven billion six hundred eighty two million five hundred nineteen thousand and three pure heart crystals on the wall, Ten trillion four hundred ninety seven billion six hundred eighty two million five hundred nineteen thousand and three pure heart crystals! Take one down, use it to summon a being of unimaginable power, Ten trillion four hundred ninety seven billion six hundred eighty two million five hundred nineteen thousand and two pure heart crystals on the waaaaall!"
She just wished there was someone else here that she could drive insane with her song. It would make things much more tolerable. For her, anyway.
xxx
Morning had come, bringing with it several attempted seductions by Hotaru's elder sisters, all going unnoticed or ignored by their target, much smiling from Hotaru and much scowling from everyone else, a panda being beaten absurdly, an attack by a ninja zombie, who joined them for breakfast after joining the panda in absurd beatings, and several plots made and discarded to make way for better plots. It also involved this.
Ranma blinked and snatched Hotaru up into his arms, leaping to the other side of the road, barely avoiding a blast of crackling lightning that left the pavement scorched black.
"Wow, I'm impressed. For a youma in disguise, you're pretty good."
"Thank you! But what's a youma?"
Naturally, this happened while the pink portion of Ranma's psyche was in control.
"Don't play dumb, youma! Pluto told us what to look for... but for just one youma, I'll be more than enough! Take this!"
Another bolt of lightning was thrown and summarily dodged.
"So... You have a picture of me? Or do you just have a vague description and you're blasting anyone who looks vaguely like it?"
Jupiter coughed, flushing lightly.
"Er... the second one. But you dodged, so that makes you the youma!"
"Really! So how many random, innocent people did you hit with electricity to come to that conclusion?"
"Only a few... that is, wait, that's none of you're business youma, you're just trying to confuse me!"
"... Maybe so... but I doubt it would take much."
Wow... so even Pink type Ranma can be sarcastic. Ranma calmly set Hotaru down on the sidewalk before leaping up to a fence to smile vapidly at Jupiter.
"After all, you're doing quite a good job of confusing yourself."
This time, the high voltage attack hit head on, causing Ranma's eyes to glaze from pain as he slowly toppled forward to land in a smoking heap on the pavement. Hotaru's eyes were wide open in shock.
"HAH! Take THAT youma! This simply proves that the Sailor Senshi... wait, it's not disintegrating... I wonder what that..."
Ranma's muscles tensed as he threw himself off the ground and into the air, feet first, directly towards the short-skirted menace. Somehow, she was fast enough to dodge and zap him again at close range, causing him to slump to the ground again, even more charred, writhing in pain, the vapid smile on his face immediately dissappearing to be replaced with a scowl. He coughed, releasing a cloud of dark smoke from his lungs.
"That... Really hurt."
"It was meant to, youma. Now just DIE already!"
Ranma rapidly began dodging, wincing from the pain it put on his charred flesh. Revising analysis... subject 'Jupiter' now classified as extreme threat. Begin evasive procedures.
Ranma withdrew a, miraculously unharmed, smokebomb from his shirt and detonated it at his feet, covering himself in a billowing cloud of white smoke. When it settled, he'd dissappeared, and Jupiter glanced around momentarily before growling to herself and bounding off to find her friends and inform them about the general location of the youma Setsuna had seemed so worried about.
For a moment, the street was quiet. Then...
"Is the crazy lady gone?"
"... I think so."
"Thank GOD!"
A nearby trash can fell over, releasing both Ranma and a terrible smell, one that made Hotaru go slightly green before Ranma slammed the lid back on and collapsed back to the ground, desperately trying to keep his guts down.
"Of all the... all the choices of hiding places and naturally I pick the trash can with a live skunk, moldy underwear, gym socks, month old cabbage, and worse in it... I really don't feel like going to school now. Hotaru, I'm cutting class. I need to pick some stuff up if she's going to be back."
Hotaru just shrugged and followed him, not caring to try to convince him otherwise, or considering going to school on her own. Though she did insist that the first stop be to a public bath... Ranma'd had her carry a set of clothes for some reason, 'in case he got wet', but that revolting smell clung to his skin. She felt like vomiting just from the proximity.
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Genma blinked as he glanced out to the kitchen window, where his son was sitting in Tendo's backyard, lots and lots of wires strapped to him. He wondered for a moment why the boy wasn't at school, but shrugged and headed out for him. Now was as good a time as any to tell him he'd changed his mind about staying at Tendo's... and the boy could probably think up a far better reason for leaving than he could.
"Boy."
Ranma cracked an eye open out of his meditation.
"Old man. Don't touch me."
Casually ignoring him, Genma slapped his hand down on a patch of skin that wasn't covered with wires.
BZZZZZZZZZZZRRRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKKTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!
Genma exhaled a cloud of black smoke before slowly toppling backwards to the ground, still vibrating slightly from the voltage running through him.
"...Ow."
"I warned you... Hotaru, my body has begun to acclimate itself to this voltage. Increase the juice some more, this is nowhere near what that chick managed."
"Right."
Genma struggled up to a sitting position, arching an eyebrow as Ranma spasmed in agony before masking his pain and forcing himself to be still. He glanced at the voltage readout on the machine Hotaru was sitting next to and grimaced. Technically, he was pretty sure that Ranma should be somewhere around 'well done' at this point... the average guy off the street would have been fried long ago. Even he hadn't ever tried to put him through something this stupid.
"Boy... You're insane."
"Indubitably. Your point?"
Genma just sighed and made a note to wait for the boy to finish his latest lapse into madness and idiocy before bringing up the possibility of a 'training trip'. The boy would probably be more approachable after he'd electrocuted himself into insensibility too. Of course by that time Genma'd probably be very drunk, but what the hell.
"This is going too slow. Just set it to max."
"Okay."
"AAAARGH!!! O-okay... you can start setting up the next one now. This is starting to close in on the voltage she was putting out, but I want to be able to take at least double that."
xxx
The senshi had gathered at the shrine, one by one, to report to Setsuna that many innocent people had been lightly torched, splashed, purified and other things but they hadn't found anyone who'd managed to dodge. Jupiter wasn't back yet though... No wait, here she is.
"I found the youma, but it got away. I zapped it a few times though!"
Setsuna blinked. "Youma?"
A breeze blew through the silent courtyard.
"Yeah... the youma you sent us after. He's in Nerima."
"I didn't send you after a youma. He's a danger to the timestream, but he's undeniably human... I think."
Everyone took a long moment to process that.
"Soooo..." Jupiter, who still hadn't detransformed, said slowly. "I just electrocuted the crap out of one of the cutest guys I've ever seen... AND HE PROBABLY HADN'T DONE ANYTHING TO DESERVE IT?"
"... Something like that. Nerima, you said? I'll go deal with him now then."
Makoto twitched as Setsuna faded from view, then turned around and started running back to Nerima, cursing about how long a run it was.
"So wait... If Mako-chan's as set as she seems to be to keep the guy from being killed... is that a testament to how much he's worth the effort, or how desperate she is?"
xxx
By this time, Hotaru had set up a third machine, with the other two still on full. There were sparks flying from the wires and every so often an arc of electricity would leap across Ranma's skin. Soun and Genma had stopped their board game, completely ignoring the opportunity to cheat in favor of staring, mouths gaping wide at the spectacle of the teenager, who's body was covered with minor electrical burns and had enough juice going through him to keep all of Tokyo running for at least a few hours.
"S-saotome... do you know what this reminds me of?"
"The 'Rage of Thor' technique that the master found? Yes, but he's doing it to himself, and this is far beyond where even the master decided the training was inhuman torture and let us out... I don't know what the boy's doing... I never talked about that technique even once."
"Genma... I must know... did you raise your son as a masochist?"
"WHAT! No! One deviation leads to another, and could lead to him becoming like... the master... but..."
"But what, Saotome?"
"There was a period of time... about a year and a half... where he slipped off by himself. I've no idea what he got himself involved in... he never brings it up, and talking about it puts him in a really bad mood, really fast."
"I... see... no actually I don't, why did you let your son run off for a year and a half? What age was he?"
"Seven... and I didn't let him persay... He drugged my food and when I came to I was tied up and gagged. Once I escaped, I followed his trail, but it turned out to be a fake one and it started raining so... He gave me the slip, all right."
Soun nodded, impressed with the boy despite himself, and opened his mouth to speak again when Ranma's eyes snapped open and he was struck repeatedly by lightning bolts, making the generator machine things explode from conducting too much energy. Once the bolts ceased striking him, Ranma stood up, brow furrowing in concentration... and repressed pain. He glared at a tree, blinking when lightning struck it from the clear sky, converting it to charred splinters. After a moment of contemplation, he grinned widely, having realized exactly how he'd managed it and focused...
Bringing yet another bolt of lightning down on his head and making him collapse as the sheer, overwhelming pain of billions of volts blasting through his body for the past hour or two suddenly overwhelmed the sensory blocks in place and DEMANDED to be heard.
"Impressive Saotome..."
"Indeed. Within the span of a single afternoon, he has learned a terrifying secret technique, without even meaning to! I give him... about an hour from whenever he wakes up until he's mastered it."
Soun nodded, turning back to the game board, sparing only a moment to condescendingly sneer at the girl who'd begun dragging her charred fiance inside to rest in a relaxing hot furo.
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Pluto paused as she finished teleporting into Nerima district, noting that while she'd narrowed it down somewhat, the area to search was still very large and she actually had no idea where the person she was looking for would be. Hmmm...
The answer hit her. He had to be Hotaru's age, or therabouts, and it was still an hour or so until school let out. Naturally, he'd be at school! She turned and began heading for the only school in the district, completely ignoring the multiple flashes of lightning in the sky as one of those random things that just happened in areas saturated in enough chaos energy to distrupt scanning from the Gates of Time.
Could be worse... could be that place where it rained badgers and porcupines once a month.
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Kuno grimaced. He'd gone to the trouble of coming right back to Furinkan immediately after recieving multiple hairline fractures and one hell of a concussion the day before, just to inform his new Lord and Master of his magically bound subservience to him, only to discover that Ranma had apparently decided to play hookie.
Well that was just great... he could have stayed home and slept off the POUNDING, UNFORGIVING PAIN... but nooo... he got to be in school and listening to migraine causing lectures.
The wall was suddenly blasted away, stopping the monotonous droning of the teacher with a large chunk of brick to the side of his head.
And there was much rejoicing.
Sailor Pluto blinked. She wasn't sure what she'd done to deserve a standing ovation, but... oh, the teacher had gone down. That explained it. She withdrew a piece of paper from... somewhere... the students were too polite to ask where. It had a, frankly, terrible drawing of a smiley face with a pigtail.
"I'm looking for this person... could anyone tell me where to find him?"
The class was instantly mumbling, rumor mill beginning to churn.
"You don't suppose its that new kid?"
"The psycho? With the switchblades?"
"Well... he does have a pigtail..."
"He didn't show up either."
"Wonder what she's after him for?"
"Maybe she's an old girlfriend."
"Really? Maybe she'll try to take out the freak to get him back then!"
"That would be cool."
"Or maybe she'll go after the people who arranged it... he did say their dads were behind the engagement."
"I dunno... remember what he did to that poor girl that just roughed the freak up a little bit?"
"Yeah, she's gonna have a scar. Poor girl was mortified."
Kuno momentarily contemplated smashing his head into a wall again, if only for the few, short hours of sweet oblivion it would result in. And those doctors said that he was extremely unstable? Bah! He'd like them to try a day or two of living his life... see just how many of those quacks walk away sane from THAT! He sighed and banished the thought.
"Might I ask what business you have with Ranma-san?"
Kuno was actually surprised at the suffix. He'd expected the magic bindings to force him to tack a -sama on at best.
"I wish to know where he lives so that I can kill him before his plans of world domination bear their fruit. I have seen a vision of the future within his rule... it MUST NOT come to pass!"
Instantly, wild rumors began flying between the excited students and Kuno arched an eyebrow. Wow. Apparently the new boss had MAJOR plans... and if the lady in the needlessly short skirt was correct, he might pull them off.
"I see... Actually he's cut class today, but you might be able to find him training in the park. He may not be there, but hey! You never know. Or... some people might think that's a ruse to throw off people who are trying to kill him, when he's really in a heavily warded and guarded safehouse sixty miles south of here. But it's more likely that he's just training in the park... he is a martial artist after all."
Pluto nodded and left to begin a systematic search of the dozens of parks in the Nerima district. Kuno watched her leave, then grabbed his things and walked out through the rather large hole in the wall, heading directly for the Tendo dojo. Noone questioned him, as they believed him to still be in the 'employ' of Nabiki, and as such delivering information she might find useful... that psycho was living in her house, after all. The rumor mill began to churn... within an hour, no two students would remember the events the same, and everything would be blown heavily out of proportion, focusing on Ranma instead of the Pluto lady who'd stopped by.
Just the way she preferred it.
xxx
"I'm impressed... the boy has determination, if nothing else."
"We raised our snotling properly."
"Our? No, not ours. Not really."
"No matter how much we might prefer it otherwise?"
"..."
"You know I'm right..."
"If you don't hurry, he'll manage to conquer the world before you do, Bruce."
"... What do you think about that girl?"
"Changing the subject, are we? I don't know... we haven't seen much of her. I like her a lot more than her sisters though."
"Should we reveal ourselves to her, though... That's a question."
"... I'd let the snotling decide. After all... once she's seen us, there's no coming back."
xxx
Hotaru snuggled closer into the crook of her fiances arm, amusing herself by peeling blackened strips of skin off his chest and flicking them into a small wastbasket. It was fascinating. She couldn't actually watch the skin grow back for some reason, but if she turned away and looked back it would have healed almost all the way. It defied logic, so she simply repeated the process over and over until all the blackened lines of char had been replaced with lines of new, pinkish skin.
At first, she'd intended to just set him in the bath and leave him to soak in peace, but then she had to seriously consider the possibility of her One True Love(TM) drowning in his sleep. She'd changed her mind very quickly, and after all they were engaged... this sort of thing was perfectly acceptable.
Besides... both of her sisters had calmly walked in, one simply nude and the other bearing a variety of 'toys', and hadn't been even surprised at Ranma being there. They had, however, been extremely surprised at seeing Hotaru in the bath as well, and had taken a moment to consider the image of the body-shy, extremely insecure younger girl coldly staring her ever-so-slightly lecherous elder sisters down, silently daring them to try anything with her beloved. They both quietly sneered at her, but left, mentally trying to convince themselves that NO they had NOT just been severely intimidated into submission. They would also deny the nightmares they would soon be having, based on that sudden weird gleam in her eye that seemed to scream 'Sooner or later I will have both the power and skill to blast you into your component quarks... I suggest you not give me a valid reason to.'
Naturally this didn't mean that they would cease attempting to seduce the runt's man away from her... it just meant they would be very careful not to let the (suddenly terrifying for no apparent reason) brat find out about it. Not that they were scared or anything... no certainly not.
Not one bit.
Hotaru blinked and smiled as her love began to slowly stir from his slumber.
"Damn it, where the HELL am I now!?"
Instantly, Ranma was awake and dressing himself. He'd left the room just as Hotaru registered that the voice was unfamiliar to her, and had come from her yard.
xxx
Ryoga growled. Minutes ago, he'd left a bathroom in France, walking straight out into a raging blizzard. He'd covered his eyes as he walked into the wind, not noticing when he entered the Sahara, only caring that it had been cold and was now hot. When sand stopped blowing around, he'd been in the middle of some jungle, and losing his temper, he paused to close his eyes and scream, not noticing the scene change once more.
"Damn it, where the HELL am I now!?"
"The Tendo dojo, in the Nerima ward of Tokyo."
Ryoga paused. He knew that voice!
"It's been a long time... Hibiki."
"Indeed it has... Saotome."
The Universe seemed to pause, breathless with anticipation, as the two volatile boys turned to face each other...
And grinned widely.
"Good to see you!"
"Come in, come in... I'll ask Kasumi about making tea. So tell me, where'd you end up this time? You just walked behind a tree and dissappeared!"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you..."
To those attuned to such things, the sound of the Universe falling flat on its face could be clearly heard over the chatter of the old friends, and one could almost make out mutterings about demanding a refund.
What a gyp.
xxx
A.N.
Mweheheh... I just couldn't resist. Can't wait for him to meet Jupiter again... BWAHAHAHA! And who actually foresaw that last bit?
The true madness... will soon begin.