Sailor Moon Fan Fiction / Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Mist ❯ Chapter 9 ( Chapter 10 )

Started 12/02/2007 Completed 12/02/2007

Chapter 9

Ranma brought his Kata to a halt. He had been progressing nicely in the Art, and it showed. If he had to make a guess at his energy reserves now, he would be somewhere between Prince Herb and Saffron, His reserves rivaled that of a Chi Dragon's half-blood descendant, but he was able to instantly recover Ki like Saffron.

He looked over at his potted tree, a tree he had begun to grow when he felt like he'd starve to death. It was a good thing he had, too, as this realm he was currently in ran nonlinear to the normal bonds of time. He could sit in one place for ten years, but only feel like a moment has passed, or practice his Element exercise, but only a fraction of a second will have passed. With the strategically placed tree (it had been placed on a hub, the converging point of the Seven Time Flows) Ranma could monitor the amount of time he had spent doing something.

One advantage he had discovered was the endless supply of Ki drifting around. He had taken a page from the old man's book and siphoned it into himself, sustaining his life for untold centuries, or maybe they were only weeks? Ranma's head hurt any time he tried to make sense of the Seven Time Flows.

Ranma looked down at his hands; one was wrinkled, showing signs of deterioration while his other remained the same as it had ever been. “Damn, I don't know how much longer my body can handle this strain,” Ranma informed himself. It helped to speak, even if he was the only person to hear his voice, sometimes delayed by several minutes or coming to him before he spoke it. He had had several conversations with himself over the Time.

“Don't worry, Ranma, I'm still here, something like three hundred years down the line,” came a reply from his future self. There was a noticeable warble in his voice, indicating great age.

“I really don't want to be here for another three hundred years! I feel like I'm gonna go crazy!” Ranma barked, slamming his fists into the ground.

“Calm down, Ranma, my boy, you do go crazy. Eventually…” came a wispy old voice, no doubt Ranma's from even further in the timeline. “Several times, I might add. Heh, I've missed knowing who the proprietor of the voice was. I had thought I was a prophet, sent by a god named Shang Tsung, to spread the wicked of his ways. Heh, can you imagine my surprise when I couldn't find anyone?”

Ranma rubbed at his forehead. “There's got to be a way out! If any of you can hear me, let's plan our way out!” he pleaded, hoping to cheat this Time Realm.

“AHHHH! OOF!” There was a sickening thud associated with the fall. “Ow, that hurt! Hey, where am I?” There was no doubt about it that was Ranma when he had first arrived.

“Ranma, listen to me!” he cried, trying to send him advice before he did the dumbest thing he had, when arriving. “Don't use Light!”

“WAAHHH!” came younger Ranma's cry of anguish as the Light shredded his retina and baked his skin, sending the scent of burnt flesh through Time.

 

“I feel like I'm going to go crazy!” Ranma heard; it was a set of words he had spoken over a thousand years ago.

Ranma cleared his throat with a shaky hand. `I've really let myself go, haven't I?' he pondered, thinking back to the days of his youth. “Calm down, Ranma, my boy, you do go crazy,” Ranma stopped to cough away the feeling of a very dry throat. “Eventually… Several times I might add.“

Ranma's mind wasn't what it used to be, so when he thought he was thinking, he was actually speaking aloud. “I've missed knowing who the proprietor of the Voice was. I had thought I was a prophet, sent by a god named Shang Tsung, to spread the wicked of his ways.” Ranma shook his head disbelievingly. “Heh, can you imagine my surprise when I couldn't find anyone?” Ranma shared a private joke with himself, chortling at the humor only he saw.

“I am Shang Tsung, the evil god of Ruin. You have been selected to spread my laws throughout the world around you.” Ranma mimicked what he could remember of Shang Tsung's voice. He knew well enough that Shang Tsung would never declare himself as such, but it was fun acting. “My ways are wicked and you will go about corrupting all others around you. You will bring this realm's inhabitants to their knees in servitude to me!” Ranma chortled again, enjoying a good laugh.

 

Ranma drifted high in the `sky' of Time, pressing his reserves to their limits. He was hoping that by expelling his considerable reserves he be able to finally master the instant recovery Saffron had used, so he had flown up, as high as he could reach before running out of `fuel'.

Only problem was, he hadn't considered how he would get down, should he fail to instantly recover his energy. And that was the dilemma he was now facing as he suddenly nose-dived, heading the non-existent ground of Time. Like a ragdoll Ranma was tossed head over heels and in many twists and turns never meant for Human anatomy.

He lay still, watching as the blood rolled from his head and pooled in front of his eyes, before drying and disappearing…

He opened his eyes, wondering how he had gotten here. For that matter, who was he?

With all his strength, he lifted his body to a sitting position. “What's going on here?” he asked the black void that surrounded him. Even though there was no lighting, he could see his body with no trouble, the same went for the giant sycamore tree a distance away.

“Wait, what's a Sycamore Tree?”

“I am Shang Tsung, the evil god of Ruin.” A sinister voice called out into the void, seeking the one it was destined to reach.

He looked around him, trying to find the source of the voice. “Where are you and what do you want?”

“You have been selected to spread my laws throughout the world around you.”

With no better judgment, he decided to do as he was told. “What should I teach these `people'?” He asked, wondering if maybe he should have some book that gave explanation to what was expected of him.

“My ways are wicked and you will go about corrupting all others around you. You will bring this realm's inhabitants to their knees in servitude to me!”

He knelt on the ground and bowed until his forehead touched the `surface'. “As you command, Shang Tsung, I will spread your beliefs.” With that, he rose to his feet and marched off, in search of `people'…

 

Ranma's ashen skin began to reverse in color, the age melting away to youth as he focused all of his energy into the way that Time flowed. This had been a tremendous gambit, but he was going to die in a few hours (or was it minutes? Days? Years? One couldn't tell from within this realm) anyway.

He could no longer feel the frail sack that passed as his body; instead he a warmth (something he hadn't felt in a couple centuries) spread through him as he became one with the last Element he had left to conquer.

Suddenly age had no meaning any more; he could `bend' the flows of Time at will, whether reversing the age of his body or speeding up the growth of his tree. Up was now up, to the right was to the right and two minutes was two minutes.

His tree, named Jurai, as he had decided to name it a while back, had grown to massive proportions. The thickest roots were ten miles wide and narrowed the further in the surface it descended. Ranma could no longer see the top of the tree. Since his memory sucked a t the time, Ranma was unable to remember if he had actually created Humans to dwell within the high branches of Jurai. So he really wasn't too worried. After all, if anyone did live up there, they would have come down by now, right?

With his mind made up, and Time at his disposal, Ranma set to escaping the prison that once held him at its unfeeling mercy. His first attempts at opening a portal to other realms was thwarted by the Seven Time Flows, but now he figured it should be easy…

 

Ranma gritted his teeth, he had spent eons devising a means to open a portal to another realm. Every attempt had been thwarted. “Dam! What did I ever do to deserve this crap?”

In response to his question, memories came to his mind of the many people he had killed for Shao Kahn. Playing off of those memories, more rose, showing the deceptions he made, such as the ones involving Kitana, Nabiki and Shang Tsung.

Man, that was weird,” Ranma noted, speaking to himself out of a deeply ingrained habit. “I don't remember ever have a flashback quite like that one… Oh, well, back to work for me!” With that Ranma began trying to open a portal with each Element he had mastered, some in conjecture with others. He had Time. There was no worry about that he certainly did have Time…

 

 

LWH (laarcae@laarcae.com)