Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Choices ❯ Visions ( Chapter 1 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

{} = Thoughts.


Choices
By: Dyne <paradised@yahoo.com>
Prologue:
Visions

A silent echo answered each footstep as Saotome Ranma
continued his slow journey further into the catacomb. With only the
light of his torch to guide him he continued down the empty hall. The
smell of the rank, moldy air made his stomach churn with every breath,
and more and more dust would be kicked up as one foot passed in front
of the other with each step.
{"I should be getting close to it now,"} Ranma thought as he
glanced at the piece of paper in his hand. The paper was well worn
with age and many portions of it were missing, but it had shown him
enough information to get him this far. The contents included a crude
map of the underground caverns he was traversing, an even more crude
map of Japan, as well as several faded characters written in an ancient
style of Chinese. What could be understood read as, "... undo...
form... by... springs... kyo... seek... in chamber of... within...
Temple... by... vors... Musk... sty. But... cost of..."
With Shampoo's help (at the price of a date), Ranma had
deduced that this was obviously a clue to undoing the Nyannichuan
curse that would turn him into a young girl every time he was splashed
be cold water. The word Musk obviously meant the Musk Dynasty, of
which Herb, Mint, and Lime belonged to. It reminded him of the time
those three had come to Japan in search of the Kaisufuu, which resulted
in a near-death battle with Herb. But from the evidence on the map, he
had concluded that there was a second Musk Dynasty treasure hidden
in Japan, only somewhere else.
It had taken several weeks of research about Japan's ruined
temples and holy places, but soon he had found information of one ruin
that archeologists had never explored. In fact, Ranma had thought that
with such little information, someone must be trying to keep this ruin a
secret. It wouldn't stop him, though.
The light from Ranma's torch fell onto a dead end.
"Dammit!" he cursed out loud and poured over his map again,
"If I'm in the right place, there shouldn't be a dead end here!" He
scowled and was about to turn back when his eyes caught the glimpse
of a carving on the wall at this assumed dead end. On the left side was
etched the image of a dragon. The right side held the image of a
woman crouched in a fetal position. A straight line divided the two
pictures.
{"Something's not quite right here,"} Ranma thought again,
and, out of curiosity, gave the wall a small push. It groaned as it slowly
fell open, revealing that it was a door. After it had opened a few
centimeters, it stopped and wouldn't budge further. Ranma pounded
the door and cursed aloud repeatedly at it for not opening. After
several moments of pounding in vain, Ranma set his torch aside, took
several steps backwards, gave a loud battle cry and launched towards
the door with a flying kick. He grinned as he expected his attack to
shatter the door, but completely unexpected what happened as the door
opened itself fully.
Ranma's moment of surprise lasted long enough for him to
forget he was flying through the air. He landed rather improperly on
his face and continued to roll towards the center of the chamber that he
found himself in. His torch continued to lay burning on the stone floor
back in the hall, but he didn't need it as a pedestal next to him lit up,
completely illuminating the chamber.
Except for the pedestal, the chamber itself was as bare as the
walls within the catacombs he had explored in search of the treasure he
was looking for. After a quick recovery from his bad landing, Ranma
examined the top of the pedestal and grinned profusely at what he saw
on top it.
"This has got to be it!" He exclaimed to himself as he picked
up a vial containing a crystal blue liquid. Ignoring all caution and
common sense, Ranma broke the top of the vial and immediately
downed the liquid. It had a sweet and soothing flavor, similar to honey,
not at all what he'd expected since most of the stuff he'd tried often
tasted terrible. As soon as he had finished drinking the liquid, a cold
shiver ran up and down Ranma's body. Once it had finished, he pulled
a canteen out of his travel pack. "Time to test it," he said, and poured
some of the cold water onto himself.
"Did it work?" he asked himself and beamed when he noticed
that his voice stayed the same. It didn't become the high-pitched
female voice that always escaped his mouth after a cold douse. "I can't
believe it!" Ranma shouted with joy and jumped around the chamber,
continually splashing the cold water on himself, "I'm finally back to
normal! Now I can get most of those weirdoes off my back, especially
Kuno! I've never felt better in my entire-" A loud "SNAP" interrupted
his celebration and he turned his head back towards the door from
which he'd entered. On the ground was the shadow of a person. Only
this person's feet were dangling a couple feet off the floor as Ranma
looked up to see that the body was hanging from the top of the
doorframe. He gulped loudly as he moved closer to examine who had
just been hung inside this chamber. As Ranma neared the dead body,
he gasped and shouted as tears began to well up.
"No! There's no way! Not you! Not-"

A bucket full of cold water met Ranma's face as Akane had
once again resorted to desperate measures to wake him up. Ranma-
chan bolted from her futon, having never expected to be torn from her
dream like that. "Dammit, Akane!" she shouted, "Why do you always
have to wake me up like that!"
"That's because nothing else works," Akane replied. And
with a loud "HMPH" she turned back towards the dining room for
breakfast muttering, "Ranma no baka."
Ranma-chan got out of bed and immediately headed for the
bath to heat up some water. "This is not what I want to be part of my
morning routine," she grumbled to herself, "That Akane is so uncute!"
As she stepped into the bath to turn back into male form, the dream that
Ranma had been having tickled the back of his mind. For the life of
him, he could not remember whose body that was.