Ah My Goddess Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ The Raven ❯ The End? ( Chapter 1 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
Warning: this story is about as dark as I get! Though it
will have a happy ending of a sort, getting there involves a lot of
death and pain. This first episode is inspired by the opening of
Tuisto's Daimakaicho Ranma (an unfinished and apparently
dead story available on fanfiction.net) and much of the middle of
the story by J. O. Barr's The Crow (simultaneously one of
the most powerful, most painful, and most violently brutal graphic
novel I've ever read). So if you enjoy good eventually triumphing
but paying a very high price for that victory, enjoy. If not, you
might want to give this story a pass. Also note that Ranma will be
female throughout the story.
I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi
or Kosuke Fujishima.
/oOo\
“Bakah!”
A dark-haired, pigtailed boy sighed as he sailed out of the house
and splashed down into the koi pond, instantly losing several
inches and a number of pounds. Well, at least her aim has gotten
pretty good even if her temper hasn't, the now redheaded girl
thought to herself as she pulled herself up onto the rocks around
the pond. Pulling off her shirt Ranma wrung it out as her
dark-haired fiancée stormed out of the house behind her.
“And when are you going to learn some feminine
modesty?” Akane shouted, and Ranma shrugged as she pulled her
still-damp shirt back on over her generous chest.
From the doorway, brown-haired Nabiki chuckled. “About the
time she starts wearing bras,” she jibed, and Ranma
scowled.
“Yeah, right, like that's ever going to happen,”
she retorted, and the middle Tendo nodded.
“Exactly,” she said, stepping out of the doorway so
that Ranma's parents could join them in the yard.
“Boy, apologize to your fiancée immediately,”
Genma stated firmly.
“For what, not letting her poison me this time?” Ranma
shouted. “If you think her cooking's so good, you eat
it!”
“Son, it is not seemly for a man to show such disrespect for
his fiancée,” Nodoka said with a frown, and Ranma rolled
her eyes.
“Mom, cockroaches can't stomach Akane's cooking, what
make ya think I can?” she asked rhetorically, and
Akane seemed to glow red as her hammer rematerialized in her hand
and she started toward her fiancé.
Ranma sighed and braced herself, ready for another trip on Air
Akane, when suddenly a purple-haired, voluptuous figure appeared on
the dojo compound wall, dropped inside, and without a word charged
straight for the hammer-wielding girl. A chúi whirled
unerringly toward the side of Akane's head, but Ranma got there
first, diving into her fiancée and the two falling and rolling
to the side as she kicked out and knocked the chúi to the
side.
“Shampoo, what the hell are ya playin' at?” Ranma
shouted. “That would a' killed her!”
“That point,” Shampoo growled, circling around as Ranma
bounced to her feet. “Shampoo through playing
games.”
Ranma paled. She's dead serious, she thought, then winced
slightly at her choice of words. “Akane,” she hissed as
the dark-haired girl rose to her feet, “get over by my pop,
now!”
Akane glared at the smaller redhead. “Ranma, how many times
have I told you, stay out of my fights! I can take care of
myself.”
“Yeah, right!” Ranma retorted. “Listen, Akane.
she's serious this time, get over there, pop will protect you if
...”
“Ranma, you destroyer of women!” came a shout from
another wall of the compound as a long-haired Chinese boy wearing
coke-bottle glasses dropped down inside the compound, a sword in
each hand. “Today you die!”
Oh, great, Ranma complained to herself. The only thing
needed to make this the perfect day is ... A section of yet
another compound wall exploded, revealing a large muscular boy
dressed in disheveled, travel-stained clothing and wearing a yellow
and black bandanna. I just had to push my luck, Ranma
grumbled to herself as Ryoga stalked into the compound.
“Ranma, because of you I've seen hell. Prepare to die!”
Ryoga sneered, snatching off a bandanna and shaking it out straight
as Mousse moved to the side and one of his swords disappeared.
“Yeah, I've heard it all be — whoops!” Ranma
started, then grabbed Akane again and rolled the two of them out of
the way as both of Shampoo's chúi smashed down where her
fiancée had been, kicking Shampoo's legs out from underneath
her in the process. Ranma bounced up to a crouch, glancing back and
forth between Ryoga and Mousse, then leaned back as a chúi
flashed across in front of her.
Behind Ranma, Akane rose to her knees, her anger tunneling her
vision to to the red pigtail a few feet away. “Ranma,”
she screamed, “I told you to stay out of my FIGHTS!”
And her hammer swung up toward her fiancé's back.
Ranma heard the shout behind her, sensed the swing, and rose to
avoid it as she watched Shampoo angle to the side for another shot
at Akane, then all her air gushed out of her lungs as two
hammerblows to her breasts knocked her back a step. Looking down,
she saw a pair of Mousse's largest throwing knives buried to the
hilt in her chest. Where's the pain? she thought as she
turned slightly to look into the rage-filled eyes of her
fiancée — and a bandanna whirled across her throat and
washed the vision away in a spray of red and Mousse was there
swords flashing and the ground was rising up toward her
face....
/\
Akane wiped at her eyes furiously. What ... what was this
... what was happening? Her eyes finally clear she looked
around at everyone on all sides, frozen as stiff as so many
statues. Then, seeing the direction of their gaze, looked down at
the ground in front of her. Was that Ranma lying face down
in front of her? But ... but there was so much red ... the same
red, she realized, that literally soaked her front.
Jerkily, Genma moved away from the door to the house toward his
child. “Ranma, stop playing around!” he shouted.
“This is no way to act in a serious fight!” He reached
down and grasped Ranma's shoulder and flipped her over, then fell
back as the last strands of flesh holding her head to her body tore
and it rolled away to Akane's feet, while her intestines gushed out
of the massive slit across her stomach.
Akane dropped to her knees and grabbed the head as she heard Nabiki
emptying her stomach of its contents behind her, then looked up as
an apparition faded into sight in front of her. He was an obese
humanoid figure, slightly taller than she was, with reddened,
diseased looking skin and a huge, engorged phallus. Looking at her,
he smiled, showing jagged teeth as a long tongue snaked out and she
jerked back to avoid its touch, then gasped as she realized that
bound up in one of the two bunches of long tentacles that he had
instead of arms was Ranma! Girl-Ranma, naked, and oddly
see-through, but definitely Ranma, staring at her as she struggle
uselessly to break free, one tentacle across her mouth, eyes
begging for help.
The demonic visitor turned his gaze from her toward a white-faced,
shaking Genma. “Really, Genma, I was beginning to think you'd
actually won our little contest! It didn't seem like anything could
kill Ranma, and the way that he did all the fighting he could in
his male form, I was afraid if he was killed I'd get a male
soul I'd have to trade away. But it all worked out in the end, and
my little friend” — with a nod to his groin —
“gets a new playmate after all.” With a malicious
smile, he added, “I hope the yamasenken worked out as well
for you as your first-born child's soul will for me.”
Then, the fat demon faded out of sight with his prize even as Akane
shot to her feet and charged forward, swinging uselessly at empty
air. She whirled around swinging aimlessly, shouting for the demon
to show himself, then finally stopped, panting. Looking around she
found herself almost alone in the yard, Ryoga just vanishing
through another fresh hole in the wall and Genma standing over his
child's corpse cursing Ranma for a weakling and a failure, and from
the doorway to the house she could hear Nodoka's shaky voice:
“Hello, police? I need ... I need to report a training
accident.”
Akane's scream of agony stripped her throat raw.