I've been a little disappointed in fanfiction lately, not in the actual fics itself but with how some readers have minds that are completely closed, or pay very little attention to key details of a story. Sigh. But that's life. Somethings you just have to accept and keep on rolling.
"I-It can't be you! It-It simply can't be!" stuttered Ranma. "You died in my arms! You talked me out of suicide! There's no way how you can be real!"
He took small little baby steps towards her, as if he was afraid walking towards her too fast might make her disappear.
"What're you talking about, of course I'm real."
She caressed his cheek with her hand, "See? Real. I'm real and I'm alive." Ranma grasped her hand and pressed it closer to his face. "I can feel it...you're real!"
Akane gave a small jump of surprise as Ranma tightly wrapped his arms around her.
"I lost you, and I don't know how, but I got you back somehow!"
"Ranma...are you crying?"
"My life has gone straight down the toilet without you and the others! There were some days when I didn't even know how I could get by without seeing everyones face, but most importantly yours! But now...seeing you before me...alive and well...makes me happier than I ever thought I could be again! I love you Akane! You do know that right?"
When he felt her arms wrap around himself he knew it had to be real. "I love you too Ranma. But we need to get you downstairs, Kasumi and the others are waiting for us."
"Kasumi? Others? There are others? Who else survived?"
"Well come down and take a look, silly."
Ranma quickly headed towards the stairs with boundless hope in his heart.
For a moment Ranma felt as if his hair was floating in water, he stopped on the steps and grabbed his pigtail. He took a long hard look at it but no matter what way he looked at it, it was the same as always was.
"Ranma, is everything alright?" asked Akane.
"I guess..."
Ranma quickly put it out of his mind and ran to the living room. Inside sat Soun, Genma, and Nabiki; sitting in their usual places as if nothing had ever happened.
He dropped to his knees as tears formed in Ranma's eyes once again, this had to be a dream of some kind. To prove it he gave himself a pinch...and felt nothing. He felt the skin on skin contact but there was no pain.
"That's weird, why can't I...?"
"Good morning, Ranma!" Soun suddenly cheered.
Ranma quickly wiped the tears from his eyes and sat down in his usual spot next to his father. "Good morning, Mr. Tendo."
"Mr. Macho over here was actually crying." Akane announced.
"You were crying boy? I thought I raised you better than that!" scolded Genma.
Normally Ranma would have gotten angry and upset at his father's beratement of him, but Ranma was just so happy to hear his father's voice again he didn't care.
"We all have to grow up sometime Pops! Well except for you, you seem to stay twelve forever! God I've missed these little banters between us!"
"By the way Ranma, Mousse really needs an answer soon."
"An answer to what Nabiki?"
"On whether or not you'll be his best man of course! Remember? Him and Shampoo are getting married." chided Nabiki.
"No kidding? She's really given up?"
"And now you can at last focus on uniting the schools with Akane." cheered Genma.
Ranma actually took a moment to stare at his father, he was acting just like he used to, just as nothing had ever happened.
"Pops, listen...I know we don't really say this that often. But seeing as how I already lost you...and everyone once already..."
Ranma stopped in mid sentence as his father had pointed his chopsticks right in face.
"Boy I know what you're going to say! And you're right!"
Ranma blinked. "I am?"
"Yes. And I love you too."
"And you're ADMITTING IT? In front of everyone?"
"Damn straight I am! I got the toughest kid on the planet! That's something to brag about when me and Soun go out drinking!"
Happosai came walking into the room snuggling a lingere brassiere but dropped it when he saw Kasumi's breakfast on the table. "Oh good, food's on!"
Ranma stood up and pointed his chopsticks defensively at the founder of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts.
"Listen you freak, I'm glad you're not smushed by a giant Kaiju but there's still no way how I'm putting on lingere for you!"
"I know."
"...What do you mean?"
"I know you too well now, everytime I look at your girl half I see you. Best to just try and move on to other women in my life."
"A-Are you serious?" Ranma asked honestly.
His Jusenkyo curse! Not once had he thought about it all today! If the others were back maybe his curse would be too! But before he could think more on the matter the room started to spin in a dizzy whirl and he forced himself to sit back down.
"You okay?" asked Nabiki.
"Just got up too fast I suppose."
"Perhaps a trip to Doctor Tofu would help?" suggested Soun.
"Maybe..." mused Ranma.
In a instant the room and everyone in it seemed to be completely green, as if his eyes were seeing everything through a green lense. However, it was gone in a flash with everyone acting as if nothing at all had happened.
"What was that?" asked Ranma.
"What was what, boy?" asked Genma.
"I thought I just saw...nevermind. It must've just been my imagination, that's the only explanation for it."
"Oh Ranma..." Kasumi poked her head out from the kitchen and he gave her a genuine smile. "I need some more groceries, do you think you could quickly run down to the market for me?"
"Anytime Kasumi!"
Ranma stood up and practically leapt over to Kasumi, luckily he didn't startle her. "Here's a list for the ingredients I need you to get."
"I'll be back before you know it."
Ranma actually had a pretty uneventful day of shopping, no Kunos charging out of nowhere declaring their love/his doom, no rivals randomly appearing...well Ranma took that back because now Ryoga was leaning up against a pole waiting for him. But oddly enough he didn't seem upset or furious at like he usually did, as a matter of fact he actually seemed pretty happy.
"Hey Ranma." waved Ryoga.
"Ryoga? Aren't you going to shout at me to apologize to Akane, or that I should prepare to die or something like that?"
"Nah. I got better things to do." smiled Ryoga.
It was then that he realized that they were talking in front of Ukyo's reasturant because Ukyo came out in a way as they would say 'Dressed To Kill'.
"Hey Sugar, ready to go?"
"You bet Hon. Ranma, I'll see you around okay buddy?"
Ryoga put his arm around Ukyo in a loving manner and walked off. Ranma stared at them with a raised eyebrow but soon enough started to smile. "I'm his 'buddy'...go figure." Ranma scoffed a little when he saw Ryoga swat Ukyo's behind.
Ranma sat on the roof of the Tendo Dojo staring up at the starry night sky, he remembered how he always used to come up here to think as a teenager.
It all seemed perfect to Ranma but that was the whole problem. It all seemed too good to be true, it was just a little bit too much like paradise. It lacked a certain chaos factor that seemed to follow him for his entire life.
"Ranma? What're you doing up here?"
"Oh Akane..."
Ranma was already trying to figure things out but Akane's presence certainly wasn't going to help.
"Is everything alright?" she asked as she sat down next to him.
Ranma said nothing as he started to hug his knees.
"Ranma, it's me, Akane. You can tell me if something's wrong."
Ranma let out a sigh, Akane always did know how to get past his defenses.
"Akane, seeing everyone getting along and actually caring about what I want, respecting my wishes, everyone being alive, officially becoming Grand Master, not to mention you've been acting a lot nicer to me...this is everything I ever longed for, the life I always wanted and it's perfect but..."
Akane took a step closer to him. "But what?"
"Sigh. I don't think any of this is actually real."
"This again?" Akane rolled her eyes.
"Yes!"
"Ranma why won't you just accept that everything is real?"
"Because it doesn't make sense!" Ranma stood up and started to pace. "How could all of you be alive without a single scratch? How could the Tendo Dojo be standing tall and proud when it was flattened like pancake? My Pops, actually admitting in front of me that he loves me? Ryoga not wanting to kill me AND is dating Ukyo? Happosai NOT lusting over me? Good God Akane, Mousse wants me to be his best man!"
"But I couldn't feel pain, I tried to pinch myself and it didn't even hurt a little bit! If you honestly think that all of this is real then tell me how everything can just as it was without any sign of destruction, tell me how you came back!"
"Even if you are convinced this world isn't real what do you intend to do about it?"
Ranma walked over to the edge of the roof and stared down at the rocks surrounding the koi pond.
"The one thing I haven't been able to feel in this world is pain, if I try to give myself a form of pain that I KNOW is going to hurt..."
Akane figured out what Ranma was implying and grabbed his arm. "Ranma are you nuts? That kind of thing could give you brain damage or worse it could kill you!"
"Exactly, if this world is as fake as I think it is then I should be able to wake up before any damage is done to me."
Akane quickly spun him by his arm to face her, she cupped his chin making him look at her. "Is this world really so terrible that you would want to risk this?"
Ranma always hated to see Akane cry "I'm sorry Akane...but if I loved you, and I mean the real you; then I would respect your memory and try to get out of this world."
Ranma gave her a kiss on the forehead before leaping off of the roof heading for the koi pond's stones face first.
"Goodbye Akane."
The rocks came closer and closer until his entire world went black.
Ranma awoke in some kind of green cylinder tank completely filled with a blue gel like liquid. He looked down to see the same odd bald man he had seen before working on a computer console in front of his tank. He was giving Ranma this even odder annoyed look.
"What the fuck is up with you man? I mean I know you're supposed to be like Mr. Super-Undefeatable-Martial-Artist-Man, but this is just plain ridiculous! I know if we used some kind of gas on you, you probably might have snapped out of it but the technology we just used on, that you just BROKE by the way, was supposed to be the advance on the planet! I mean you felt things in there right? No matter what I do to you or give you, you won't stay under! There was was supposed to be no way how could have come out of that, it's literally and physically impossible! You're so frustrating!"
The man took a deep breath and seemed to calm down.
"But I suppose we should be thankful, you were after all a very rare specimen. Normally when we find someone we can use, we use a scale to determine how much of their genetic make up we can use. Usually we find people who are two or threes...maybe a four, but that's usually just enough for us to collect samples and hopefully toss something together we can create out of scrap." The doctor's genuine smile started to turn sinister. "But then we found you..."
Fear entered Ranma's heart as he stared down at the doctor.
"You Mr. Saotome had a scale of ten, ten plus no less. You know what that means? That my dear lab rat, means that you are quite possibly the only human the planet we can pour all of research into. It's almost as if your body was already used to transformations!"
"Oh the wonders of Jusenkyo." thought Ranma.
"You will not only be our only human transformed soldier, but you will also lead our other experiments as our general. The first step to world domination, and of course our general would need a new look which would speak about our organization."
He didn't like the sound of that one bit.
"Now say 'Hello'..." the doctor walked out of Ranma's sight and into the darkness for a moment only to come back with a mirror. It looked like the kind of mirror someone might hang in a locker to give themselves a once over. "To the new you!"
Ranma stared into the mirror but what he saw staring back wasn't his reflection. It couldn't be, it looked like him yet at the same time not at all; his reflection showed a version of himself covered completely in green scales, his teeth were not exactly fangs but they did seem a little sharp, he did in fact have a tail which had small spikes along the bone of it which got bigger as it went up the spine of his back, his hair black but it had odd small red stripes running through it, his eyes were thankfully still blue though.
He had become his own worse nightmare.
"What do you think of the mirror? I keep it around because I'm also trying to find a cure for my baldness that won't end up having any lingering side effects."
Ranma couldn't believe this was happening. He felt like he was going to be sick.
"Now, we are only one step away from turning you into our first perfect kaiju soldier, we simply need to take away that ridiculous fighting spirit of yours. Nothing against you personally but from what I understand your morality would be a pretty big handicap to us so where going to have to lock that away from you. And because it appears your will power won't let us do it the easy way..."
He pressed a button and a small little microchip dropped into his tank. Several metalic spider like legs sprouted form the chip and reached over to the back of his head as it slowly started to come closer.
"I suppose in the end an emotion surpressing chip is the best we can do. Admittingly it is a pretty unelegant solution but with the upgrades I've installed it should keep you loyal to our cause." The good doctor spun around on his chair and leaned back while supporting his head with his feet on a nearby desk.
CRACK!
"Huh?
CRACK! CRACK!
He quickly spun around to see Ranma pushing against the glass of his cylinder tube making it crack. The chip, broken into tiny pieces, was slowly floating down to the bottom of the tank.
"NO!" he quickly wheeled himself over to the console and started typing away to try and stop Ranma. "Nononononononono!"
SHATTER!
The doctor was knocked to the floor by a tidal wave of the blue liquid that was inside the tube. He stared up at Ranma to see him wearing the same look he had on when he fought and killed Saffron.
"N-N-N-N-Now just calm down."
Ranma let out a monster-like growl as slowly walked towards the doctor menacingly who tried to scamper and crawl away.
"I've sunk to very bottom and you people STILL decide to try and kick me when I'm down!"
Ranma knocked over beakers and testubes on a nearby table out of rage as the doctor continued to try and scamper away from the genetically mutated martial artist.
"I-I-I'm sorry! Forgive me! Please!"
Ranma threw a desk in his way clear across the room, he hit another one with the backhand of his fist completely shattering it.
"Change me BACK! Make me human again!"
"I-I-I can't! Your DNA has been altered too much for you to ever be completely human ever again! Regardless of anything I could do, at best you would only be...well...half human!"
Ranma froze in his tracks and stared into a glass shard, a whirlwind of emotions going through him as his reflection stared back at him.
"One half..." said Ranma sadly. "All over again, only this time it's much more worse...heh...a girl half seems like paradise in comparison." Ranma tightened his fist, a monster-like growl escaping his throat. "Because now everytime I stare into a mirror, I see the monster that ruined my life staring back!"
A small blue light was visible at the back of Ranma's mouth from deep down inside throat. "AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!"
Ranma fired a blue ray of atomic death breath from his mouth missing the doctor's head by centimeters but hitting the wall behind him making a huge explosion.
BOOM!
Ranma leapt through the smoking hole in that wall he himself had made, pausing only once to look at the doctor's umoving body lying under a debree of rubble.
A guard burst into a room where a man in a business suit was sitting in a chair smoking a cigar. He wasn't necessarily what one would call fat but none the less he was to be considered very large.
"Sir, that martial artist we've been experimenting on just escaped!"
"What? Recapture him! Immediately!"
"Sir, we've tried but he plows through all our guard robots like they were made of tin foil."
"And the steel doors?"
"He's tearing through them like paper, sir."
"Has he he found...'the others' yet?"
"No, sir. He ran past them without even seeing them."
"Good, have we tried to tranquilize him yet?"
"Yes sir, the darts only bounce off of him. We thought perhaps we could gas him but he must be on some kind of adreniline rush because his body seems to burn through the toxins."
"Then there's only one thing we can do..." The man got up and started to walk out the door.
"Sir? Where are you going?"
"The roof!"
"But sir, there's a hurricane on the way!"
"I know..."
Ranma ran up the stairs where only an emergency exit door awaited him.
Ranma broke through the door easily only to find himself on a helicopter deck surrounded by ocean waves washing over the deck because of the hurricane. It was insane, even with the body of a kaiju there was only a slim chance of him surviving.
The sounds of footsteps caught his attention which were soon followed by a slow clapping. Out from the same exit Ranma had just escaped from came a rather large man dressed in a business suit. His head was completely bald yet his mustache was ridiculously hairy. "Bravo Mr. Saotome, bravo. I assure you escaping from this facility is no small feet."
Ranma said nothing but looked back at the waves, they surely would've killed his human self in a matter of minutes but now that he was much more durable...
"Where will you go Mr. Saotome? Back to civilization? You would be viewed as a monster, the destruction of Japan waiting to happen. And that's only IF you survive the journey back...so I'm going to tell you what's going to happen! You are going to come back inside this base, we're going to hook you up to whatever little experiments we feel like, and then you're going to be our obedient little soldier who will never have a rebelious thought in your head ever again! Because we both now that your only chance of survival is to stay with us, us who made you, us you who perfected you...or you could try to do the stupid thing and die trying to get back to Japan!"
Ranma gave an almost dark chuckle. "You just don't get it do you? Not only I have a lost everyone important to me, but now I resemble the monster I hate more than anything in the world. The thing that took them from me. I aint got a lot left to live for...yes there is the memory my loved ones, but how well can I respect their memory looking like the monster that ended them? Whether I make it back to Japan alive or not is irrevelant, just so long as YOU don't have me...well that's all that matters then."
Another wave watched over the deck, but this time when it passed Ranma was gone.
Ranma opened his eyes, judging by the rocks jabbing his body and the tide that seemed to lap at him; he seemed to be on the shore of some kind of island. If Ranma was human and caught in that storm he probably would have died in an instant, his new Kaiju-like body was most likely the only reason he was alive right now. He tried to move but his body seemed too heavy to actually accomplish anything that could be qualified as movement.
His mind must have also been going because from behind two small rocks close to his head he saw a small pair of twins slowly approaching him.
"Tiny...women...?"
His vision started to blur and then his world went black.
I'm not sure if I explained everything right or the way I wanted to. It's a complicated thing that I tried to explain in the simplest manner...not sure I did a good job of that. But yes, Ranma is now on Infant Island. If you know your Godzilla then you should know what monster is on that island. I actually feel as though I need to apologize for how fucking long this chapter is, but the sooner I get past all of this stuff the sooner I can get to the Kaiju girls. And I can tell you, there will be good girls, bad girls, girls that SHOULD be bad but Ranma somehow convinces to be good. I just hope the chapter is okay. Oh and by the way, I'm sorry to say that you readers have forced my hand into giving away a spoiler for future chapters, the REAL reason I cured Ranma is because I plan on bringing Ranko back...as a villain.