Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Chained World: The Fall of the House of Kuno ❯ Be careful what you wish for ... ( Chapter 52 )

This was originally published by me under the name Anduril at Anime Addventures, with the only changes being a few corrections in spelling, punctuation and the occasional word choice. If you like the beginning of my story but think I've gone off the rails, or have your own ideas for a great branch-off, or think I'm taking too long to update and want to continue the story yourself, come to Anime Addventures and join in the fun!

I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi, or anyone else's published work.

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As his servants joined him around the table on which lay his latest `subject', the man known only as the Mentalist stepped back and watched his employer stride from the room, a sardonic smile on his face. The Master of Servants had worked hard to hide his contempt for his hireling, but the Mentalist had experienced that same contempt from employer after employer over the years since he had abandoned his name and Family in the pursuit of wealth. Hypocrite, he thought as the door slid closed behind Pyo-sensei, as if it's better to kill someone in the service of a lunatic like Kuno instead of for money, or instead of playing with someone's memories and personality. After a moment, he shrugged and turned his attention back to the naked red-haired girl. He had a hefty payment to earn, possibly a serious challenge for a change, and it wasn't as if Pyo-sensei's opinion mattered to him, anyway.

As the Mentalist watched, one of the servants removed the mask from its placing covering Ranma's nose and mouth and closed the valve to the gas canister, while the rest started gently stroking teenage girl's limp body, her arms and legs, hands, feet, breasts and abdomen. One standing at the head of the table ran soft fingers along her cheeks and ears while another pulled her legs apart to give access to what lay between, stroking her inner thighs and the folds of her cleft. While the humiliation that was a primary purpose for a similar practice during the Adjustment procedure didn't apply — it is difficult to humiliate someone that is unconscious — the Mentalist had learned over the years that the stimulation combined with his own cocktail of drugs accomplished much the same task of distracting and confusing his victims as they recovered consciousness and so weakening their resistance.

The minutes trickled by, until the small body began to shift slightly, a faint hint of sex scenting the air. The girl stroking Ranma's folds slipped a finger up into her sheath, her thumb flicking across the now-protruding clit, and was rewarded by a twitch and a low, soft moan from the awakening girl.

The Mentalist nodded to the servant holding the mask, and motioned aside the one stroking Ranma's face. As the one handling the gas placed the mask back over Ranma's nose and mouth and opened the canister valve a quarter of the way, the Mentalist replaced the other at Ranma's head and placed his fingers on each temple.

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Ranma floated in darkness, surrounded by a lattice made up of glowing stars and the ribbons of light that connected them. He glanced around, wondering where he was — wait, `he'? He glanced down ... yup, naked as the day he was born, and definitely his male form. Ranma felt something inside him relax after weeks of tension — whatever was happening, he was himself again. But as great as that was, it didn't explain how his Jusenkyo curse had been unlocked, or how he had gotten wherever he was — this completely unknown but hauntingly familiar void.

Closing his eyes, Ranma thought back. It had been a day like any other in her gilded cage — sparring with Kodachi, trying to train Usagi in the basics, her own training regimen, ignoring Usagi's protests as she helped her erstwhile body slave with the light cleaning that was all Kuno's living quarters needed — Thinkin' it was funny ta put Usagi on yer bed after she fell asleep over her homework, that it's as close as she's gonna get ta sharin' a bed with Kuno like she wants. And then ... going ta the dojo ta do some more katas, gettin' tired and sitting down for a rest ... yeah, more drugs. But who, an' why? Not Kodachi, she doesn't have any reason to, anymore. Same fer Kuno, he thinks he's got what he wants — half at least, an' no way druggin' me will get him the other half.

Unable to come up with any other possible enemies, challengers, rivals, or fiancées that could reach her through the Kuno defenses and spirit her away, Ranma shrugged and put the problem aside for later. Opening his eyes, he again looked out across the void with its balls and strings of light — just as everything seemed to reverberate from a massive concussion behind him. “What the hell! ?” Ranma shouted, trying to whip around to look behind him only to set himself spinning in place. Managing to somehow bring himself to a stop even as a second thunderous strike resounded, he tried again with much less effort this time, and was rewarded by slowly turning in place to find himself staring at a stone wall seeming to stretch into infinity in all direction — a wall that was as eerily familiar as the latticework of light now behind him. And a wall that had a spiderweb of cracks spread across its surface.

Another colossal blow shivered echoing through the void, and the cracks leaped across the vast stone wall. And at the sight, a veil he hadn't even been aware of fell away, and Ranma suddenly remembered: It's beautiful — like a three-dimensional spider web in the morning dew. But what is it? Where am I?... The Adjustment, this must be it! The ... the web, it must be my mind! And the wall ... It must be my mind's defense against intrusion, and whoever's trying to get through ... This is the Adjustment ... if they can't set it up, if they fail, they won't offer you for sale, the deal's off, and everything falls back on the Tendos.

A third blow, and Ranma shook off the flood of memory as he watched flecks of stone explode away from the center of the impact. Obviously, whoever was trying to break in this time was considerably stronger than the first Adjustor. Only one way ta find out what's goin' on, and whoever's knockin' is gonna get in, anyway, he thought. As he had the first time, he sought out his last memories of Akane and her sisters, good times and bad, their love and pain, and felt something inside him relax — and this time the wall shivered and went translucent to show a naked, totally nondescript man floating on the other side.

The two stared at each other for a long moment, the stranger's eyes wide with shock, and then Ranma grinned. “Well, are ya comin' in, or are ya gonna just float there all day?”

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The Mentalist gazed at the wall that barred his way into Ranma's mind, grinning — an actual stone wall, perfect! The fact that there was any wall at all was promising, since it meant an untrained mind. That it wasn't wood was even more promising, since it meant the mind was powerful as well. And that it wasn't steel — or worse, crystalline — well, by the time people were trained to that level they stopped visualizing their defenses. This was going to be fun....

Bracing himself where he floated, he smashed his fist against the wall, surged forward — and slammed into the still-solid barrier and bounced back, tumbling. What the ... ! Shaking his head, the Mentalist stared at the cracked but still-solid wall (as the ringing in his ears could attest). Okay, this is going to be more of a challenge than I thought. Floating up to the wall, he again slammed his fist into the center of the web of cracks from his first blow, and felt the first hints of worry as more cracks raced outward ... but the wall held. This was easily the strongest untrained mind he'd ever encountered, and he shivered when he wondered what this mind would have been like with some experience in the Mental Arts. I don't care how strong he is, he doesn't have that experience — what's he going to do to me once I get through?

So, time to get really serious. He floated back from the wall, brought himself vertical, stretched out straight like a targeted missile, his fists pointed at the center of the web of cracks, and launched himself forward. An instant later he was tumbling away, his head again ringing and the most intense pain he'd ever felt running the length of his arms from his hands to his shoulders and down his back. This was not fun at all. But the pain was slowly ebbing, and he forced himself to ignore it as he floated back, and ... yes! He ran a hand along the wall where a massive crater was centered in the middle of the radiating cracks. It was closing, of course, but only slowly. One more solid blow should do it.

The Mentalist started to back up — he wasn't looking forward to the pain, but it would only be one more run — when suddenly the wall seemed to shiver and go translucent, and he found himself staring at a naked teenage boy, floating in front of a black sea of stars connected to ribbons of light, like nothing he'd ever seen. He stared in shock at the boy ... Ranma, he realized, remembering pictures from the file he'd read ... and then the boy grinned and asked, “Well, are ya comin' in, or are ya gonna just float there all day?”

The Mentalist shook off the shock and accepted the invitation, diving through the translucent wall — he didn't think Ranma would be able to trap him halfway through, but at this point he wasn't taking chances. Spinning into an upright position a few yards from the martial artist, he carefully looked him over. While he had never before encountered someone that created an avatar inside his own mind, the boy before him could be nothing else — which meant that he would be representative of Ranma's self image and mental state, rather than simply a copy of his physical body. But while the Mentalist thought he could see a hint of ... fuzziness? ... around the “edges,” so to speak, the only clear evidence of Ranma's trauma of the last few weeks was the red tingeing and streaks in his hair. Well, I wanted a challenge, he thought wryly, glancing around at the bizarre view as he tried to estimate the power of a mind capable of forming what had to be a visual manifestation of a mindscape, much less an avatar to guard it. Visualizing the defenses around one's inner self was one thing, this was ... something else.

“So ya gonna just look around all day, or are ya gonna try Adjustin' me again?” At Ranma's question, the Mentalist turned back to find the boy eying him curiously. “That's what you're here for, right? Ta fix the broken Adjustments?”

“Right, the Adjustments,” the Mentalist responded. “I'll get right —” And in mid-sentence, without a hint of warning, he struck.