Welcome, dear readers, to the year two thousand twenty! Why are so many of you still reading this thing? :D Self-deprecating humor aside, a lot has happened in the last year for me, and I'm not going to go into it here. A lot of it has actually been good, but I'm hoping this year will be better. I'm also hoping that I eventually finish this fic, I've been working on the rough drafts for over three months with barely a break, and I'd like to get that done before the Remake comes out, maybe. :P The number of views and comments and people who are following this is, frankly, staggering to me, I honestly could not have foreseen this story becoming this well liked, and it means a lot to me that you all are enjoying the ride.
Comments!
weebee and doraemax: I admit I was a lot younger when I read through the fight with Saffron. I'd... honestly forgotten that it had come to that. That being said, this version of Ranma has a more mundane but also more personal reason for his current behavior and the direction of his growth. We've got about... oh, about four more hours of gameplay to get through before then.
guisniperman: I'm honestly not sure yet if we're going to Wutai, or how events will play out there should it happen. I suspect that if Corneo shows up again, the status of his nuts will end up being the least of his concerns. Canon literally drops him off a mountain, and I'm not inclined to treat him any kinder than that.
As a warning to anyone who is strongly affected by such things, this chapter and several chapters to come will contain significant depictions of death and destruction on a grand scale. Please keep this in mind, and enjoy the chapter.
Chapter Fourteen
One Creek, No Paddle
[ ν ] - εγλ 0007, December 11
The fall was not a life-threatening distance, but there were a number of sharp, disorienting turns as the tunnel slanted and shunted to its destination: The sewers, nearly forty meters below the surface of Midgar. Ranma, Tifa, and Aerith slid out of the tunnel and landed unceremoniously with a dull, thick splash at the bottom of the sewer.
"Ugh," Ranma complained, standing up quickly, "what a smell." She took a moment to wring dry the hem of her shirt.
"Seconded," Tifa called out, pushing herself to her feet. "But we have to hurry, we've got to get word to Barret and the others to evacuate Sector 7."
"Can't believe I fell for such an obvious trap," Ranma added. "Must be going senile…"
"Was it really that obvious?" Tifa asked, as Aerith slowly stood up, looking past them down the sewer tunnel.
"Girls..." Aerith squeaked softly.
"I mean..." Ranma paused. "I felt something was wrong when he started spillin' the beans that easy, but..."
Tifa nodded her understanding. "Yeah, I get it, after hearing what they were doing, everything else kind of went out the window."
"Girls?" Aerith repeated, staring ahead and shaking slightly in trepidation.
Ranma turned to face Aerith, noticing the apprehension on the older girl's face. "You okay?" she asked, waving one hand in front of her eyes.
Aerith did not respond, except to raise one hand and point in the direction she was facing.
Tifa and Ranma turned to look in the direction Aerith had gestured , and then noticed the object of her attention. The creature blocking their path, Aps, was a hulking monstrosity resembling a cross between a satyr and an ogre. Its lower body was supported by cloven hooves and covered in thick, matted fur, soaked with the grime and dirt of time unknown spent deep within the sewers. The upper body was bare, tinged with a greenish hue, its arms sporting shackles and dragging broken chains behind it. The head was squat and almost piggish, except for the enormous, half-shattered Mako-glowing horns sprouting from its forehead.
There was a moment of uncertainty as Aps sized up the three girls in front of it. Its eyes seemed to be having a moment of difficulty focusing on them. It sniffed the air curiously, then its gaze focused and the expression on its face appeared to change.
"Oh, hell," Tifa breathed.
Aps reared back briefly, then leaned down and bellowed a challenging roar that echoed throughout the sewage tunnel. Before any of them could react further, Aps swung one enormous arm across the tunnel, catching Ranma across the torso with the end of the chainlink attached to its shackle. The force of the blow sent her flying, and Ranma impacted across the far wall, leaving a body-shaped impression in the moldering brickwork. A moment later, that brick crumbled inward, and Ranma fell to the ground, the bricks falling on top of and around her on the platform.
"...ow," Ranma commented, dazed as she took a moment to recover from the blow. She shook herself free of the pile of bricks, and stood up, fire in her eyes. "Okay, little piggy, let's dance…"
Ranma took a running start, and leaped from the edge of the channel wall, just as one of Aps' arms swung through the air sideways, clawing at the space she had just occupied. She twisted her body in midair and landed a spinning kick to the creature's snout, causing it to recoil in shock. Aps roared in anger and turned to claw at Ranma as she descended, swatting at the girl in midair, but the blow was pulled off target as Tifa grabbed the tip of the chain around its wrist and yanked hard, causing it to stumble. Ranma hopped up again, delivering a solid blow to the creature's knee, trying to further unsteady it.
Aps stomped its hooved feet at the three women, turning to swing its beefy arms wildly at any target, but the trio coordinated their attacks and their movements, keeping the beast off-balance and preventing it from drawing a bead on any one of them. Below, Tifa grunted with the effort of deflecting a hammer-blow from Aps' enormous arm, taking advantage of the moment of its unbalancing by grabbing the shackle and yanking as hard as possible, pulling the creature further out of balance. She then darted forward and punched hard into the monster's opposite kneecap, before leaping back and sending a jolt of Thunder into its body. Aerith charged forward, her staff whirling and striking any part of Aps within reach. As she passed to one side, Tifa tossed out a Fire spell, catching the creature on its matted fur, which began smoldering.
Aps roared in confusion, smacking at the singed fur, then turned its gaze on Aerith. Rearing up for an attack, it raised both arms and stretched to its full height, nearly grazing the vaulted roof twenty five feet overhead. Before it could commit to the strike, Ranma leaped in front of its face and cupped both hands together, seeming to hang in mid-air for a brief moment as her palms glowed brightly. "Mōko Takabisha!" she shouted, pushing both arms forward. A bright orb of pale yellow energy, about half as tall as Ranma herself, flew out of her hands and smacked Aps square in the face, causing it to fall backwards, landing on its side.
Ranma landed lightly in the lower channel of the sewer, and Aerith practically leaped to hug her. "That was amazing!" she shouted.
"Heh, that was nothin'," Ranma grinned. The earth shook, and Ranma's smile disappeared. Aps rolled forward, sat up, and growled.
"No, it was something," Tifa pointed out, "just wasn't enough."
Aps continued lumbering to its feet, staring at the three girls, a menacing sound rumbling from its mouth. After several seconds, Aps let out a deafening roar, pounded its chest with both hands, and began thrashing about, both arms flailing wildly and stomping repeatedly. The tremors from its heavy impacts unsteadied the trio, causing them to stumble as the chainlink flails scored dozens of thick grooves into the brickwork. The horns atop its head began to glow with an increasing intensity, and suddenly there was a distant sound.
"Uh…" Aerith glanced around. "Do either of you hear that?"
Tifa nodded. "Sounds like water… Oh no… Move!" she shouted suddenly.
All three scampered up the stepwell at the edge of the canal. The warning came not a moment too soon, as behind them a torrent of dark, slimy liquid began pouring forth from the sewage grate at the end of the tunnel. The deluge of oozing waste filled the whole of the canal and the chamber began to stink of acid eating away at stone and metal alike. Aps leaped up onto the platform, a cruel look on its face, and lumbered forward.
"Shitshitshitshitshit…" Tifa muttered, heaving another Blizzard spell at the creature as she backed away. Aerith followed it up with repeated castings of Fire, which no longer appeared to singe at Aps' damp fur, but still appeared to cause it significant distress.
Ranma's mind raced for a solution, but wasn't liking what she had come up with. "Tifa!" Ranma called out. "I need you to set me on fire!"
"WHAT?"
"Do it!" Ranma braced herself, and felt the Fire spell strike her. The blow was far more physical than she had anticipated, breaking her stance and pushing her forward a few steps. She grabbed at the energy with her own, the heat and flames engulfing her, trying to focus it, redirect it. "Again!" she demanded.
"Goddess, you must be out of your mind…" Aerith muttered, firing her own spells at Aps to little effect, trying in vain to slow its advance, watching as Tifa cast again. The second blast seemed to hit Ranma harder, but she did not stagger. The pain was intense, the heat suffocating. She shifted her weight, squatting into a low horse stance, and began to move her arms into an attack position.
"Again!" The third spell did not hit her at all, but instead swerved off the intended target as if magnetized, slotting neatly into the space between her palms, and hovered there as more energy began to pour into the chi construct. Her breathing was ragged, sweat pouring from her brow, but she knew she had it now. Ranma felt something behind her eyes, a tension just at the edge of her perception, felt it snap, and in that moment, she charged.
A bright aura of force and strength seemed to radiate outwards from her body, pushing at the air and illuminating the rancid tunnel. Ranma sprinted forward, hands cupped to one side, her body pushed to the limit and beyond. She leaped up, and the aura seemed to solidify, compacting into her hands as her entire body glowed with power.
"Mōko Takabisha Nenshō!" she screamed, thrusting her hands forward.
The orb of energy that appeared was fully twice as tall as Ranma herself, and as she released the energy, the force seemed to push her backwards, causing her to fall gracelessly down to the platform with a thud. The energy itself did not dissipate, rather accelerated, and the color shifted wildly between yellow, orange, and red, a star in miniature. The orb struck Aps, and did not detonate. Instead it seemed to engulf its body, setting it ablaze, as Aps flailed its limbs, roaring in pain. After several seconds pushing against the creature's body and arms, the attack finally exploded, the force focused directly at Aps' torso.
Which disintegrated in a sudden wash of flame.
A moment later, Aps' lower body fell sideways into the river of muck that flowed past, and vanished beneath the murky tide. After several more moments, the flood of sewage itself receded, and the flow of garbage returned to its normal rate.
Aerith stared at the upper wall and roof of the sewer, the brick and mortar glowing red from the heat that had been released just moments ago, some of the stones audibly cracking as an impromptu glaze melted down over them. She herself held no small amount of power when needed, but never in her life had she seen such a destructive blast come from a single person, without even a shard of materia.
Tifa ran to Ranma, laying prone and spread eagle on the shattered stone platform. She quickly uncorked a Hi-Potion, slid one hand under Ranma's back to lift her to a reclined position and poured it into her mouth. "Drink," she commanded. "It'll heal you, and you need it."
Ranma needed no further instruction, and swallowed without hesitation. "Tifa?" she croaked a moment later.
"Hm?"
"Next time I tell you to set me on fire…" she coughed, turning her head to one side, "...don't."
"Yeah, next time I'll just kick your ass myself, you idiot," Tifa confirmed, patting Ranma across the back. "Never seen a limit break like that."
Ranma looked up at her, the question in her eyes plain.
"Dunno if you've got anything like it in Japan," Tifa began, "but here on Gaia, some people can hit the absolute limit of what a human can do in a fight, and then push past that limit and find something waiting for them on the other side. We call it a 'limit break' and it's usually pretty dangerous for the average person to experience one."
Ranma sat up slowly, still coughing gently. "Why would that be dangerous?"
"Because the other possibility," Tifa explained patiently, quietly reminding herself that the redhead was not used to what Gaians took for granted, "is to reach the absolute limit of human ability, and not surpass it... or, in other words, you die."
"Oh," she replied simply, feeling more than a little foolish for not realizing the obvious.
Tifa smiled softly, standing up again. "It's all right, I'm trying to keep in mind that a lot of stuff we know about might be new to you. But right now, we have to get moving. If Shinra is going to drop the plate, we need to do everything we can to stop them." She pulled another Hi-Potion from the pouch hanging from her belt and handed it to Ranma. "Can you stand?"
Ranma nodded, taking the potion and placing it inside her coat pocket. "Jeez, I wonder if this is what smoked salmon feels like," she mused, standing up slowly and noticing the scent of burnt leather following her as she stepped forward.
Aerith had noticed none of this, her eyes and her mind completely fixed on the rapidly cooling glaze over top the sewer wall. "How..." she trailed off, still trying to wrap her head around it.
"Aerith!"
Aerith's head snapped around in shock, facing Tifa, who had an expression of impatience on her face. "Huh?" she muttered, shaking her head to clear her thoughts.
"Wake up, girl," Tifa called out. "Time to get out of this place."
Aerith nodded, glancing at the damaged wall one more time, before following the others.
-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-
It took nearly an hour of climbing through the tunnels and machinery of the sewer system to reach the surface. The manhole cover slid aside with a metallic grinding sound, and the three girls climbed out in a hurry. "Jeez, never gonna get rid of that smell," Ranma mused.
"Gripe later," Tifa shouted, already moving forward, "gotta get the word out!"
Ranma nodded, reaching down to pull Aerith up out of the sewer. "Where are we?"
Tifa skidded to a halt, glancing around. "Looks like the Sector 7 Train Graveyard," she noted, already looking for a path through the hulking, half-rusted shells of the train cars. "Shinra dumps a lot of old and damaged train cars and engines down here, and leaves them to rust."
Aerith shivered. "I don't come by here very often," she muttered, a worried expression over her face. "There's supposed to be monsters and ghosts here. How far are we from the pillar, Tifa?"
Tifa considered the question, looking up and around, trying to get her bearings. She pointed to a section of the plate which was somewhere behind and above them. "Look, that's the support pillar! Whatever Shinra's doing, they'd have to do it there. If we can get there and keep them off of it, we can keep everybody safe!"
Ranma peered into the distance in the direction Tifa had indicated. "Uh... Tifa... are there always flashing lights on the pillar like that?" she asked, her tone worried.
Tifa blinked, and gazed intently at the pillar, and at the lights flashing near the top, which looked like… "Gunfire," she whispered. "Goddess, no, no, no!" And turned, and ran as fast as her legs would move through the nearest open train car.
Ranma and Aerith followed swiftly behind. But somewhere inside each of them, there was a growing feeling that they were all too late.
A/N: LIMIT BREAK UNLOCKED.
There's a lot going on in this chapter, lots of action. First and foremost, I would like to apologize in advance if I have sufficiently mangled the Japanese language with my attempts to come up with a technique name that suited the action. I actually took the time to do a fair bit of research, and I'm pretty sure I've got the right words in the right order.
Aps was, to my recollection, a moderately difficult boss, but not nearly as rough as some of the battles after the Sewer. The fight with Reno atop the pillar was literally just him stalling for time, with a technique that could leave your whole party in a prison if you acted slowly, and then there's the whole boss rush going up and back down and out of Shinra Tower. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Ranma's techniques...
'Horse Stance': It's called a couple things depending on the style, this name is taken from Hung Gar style martial arts. It's a stance recognizable by the legs forming almost a rectangle with the ground, knees bent and body lowered, body weight centered evenly over the legs. It is a stance designed for relative stability and providing many options for mobility.
Mōko Takabisha: Pride of the Fierce Tiger. One of the more advanced techniques adapted into Indiscriminate Grappling, a chi-powered blast of energy, fueled by the user's pride and confidence. Detonates with significant force against whatever it comes in contact with.
Mōko Takabisha Nenshō: Burning Pride of the Fierce Tiger. Ranma's first level 1 limit break. An over-charged, Fire elemental version of the Mōko Takabisha. On impact, it spreads out across the point of contact like a viscous fluid (think magma), until it reaches some limit of the surface tension. Then it explodes like a shotgun blast in the direction of travel.
Hope you like it! Feedback and comments welcome!