Finishing what you start. Chapter 7 I intend for this chapter to detail the battle between Ranma-Ran and He- Who-Remembers. Ranma is not mine. Any reference to people from Ranma one half, or Sailor moon, well those people don't belong to me either. Hell, I live in poverty. This computer isn't mine either. I broke into some poor shmuck's house, and typed it while he was at work. Really. I did. Ozone fills the air, a heavy and oppressive stench, reminiscent of the smell of an exploded aerosol can. Rocks lay scattered about, twisted into weird and disconcerting shapes. Erosion had had no part in their creation. In this plain, all landmasses are carved out of bigger rocks by bolts of lightning that come streaking out of the dirt smear of the clouds. The earth itself stretches out twisted and oozed around the rocks like some kind of demented oriental rock garden's sand. In places some noxious chemical had oozed up through the ground, leaving slimy pits and sinkholes. Home sweet home. I breath in and take a second to remember my life here. I stop when all those memories involved my family and friends. My family and friends who had been exterminated for the crime of being different. My blood runs cold in my veins, and its all I can do to pull the power that I'm radiating back into me. I must remain undetected. No one must sense me. Now is not the time, nor is here the place. In this world there are no settlements, no towns, no cities. There is only one real building. The Manor of the Lord. A twisted citadel, where lightning can never strike, but circles like a dog held at bay by a fire. My destination. Every journey begins with a single step. I always finish was I start. Step. Step. Step. It's time to end what I have begun. *** I was excited, and I was scared. The Lord, He-Who-Remembers, had summoned me. I had no idea why. I hadn't done anything to warrant his personal attention or discipline. When I had started my journey to the Manor, I had been more excited than scared. The balance was quickly shifting. I stand in front of the Gateway. There are very few who can pass these doors and come back alive. They were a monstrous set of carved wooden doors. Wood. I had heard of wood before, but I had always considered it a legend, like 'sun', or 'rain'. Amazing. I wonder what it feels like? As one claw delicately traces a carved human screaming in pain, I hear the voice. Enter. Frightened, but unwilling to admit it even to myself, I enter. *** I remember my first meeting with He-Who-Remembers. I remember how strong his aura was. It had been like an immense whirlpool. Everything around him had been sucked inexorably into him. I had to fight just to stay alive in his presence, and the only reason I had managed to do so was that the twist of my aura was anathema to his. It had stayed away from me, shrinking like a dog from a stick. I hadn't realized that until I had decided to kill Him, all these years later. The words that He had spoken to me were blurred in my mind. He had been so much stronger than me, that I can't even remember their sound. Were they loud, or soft? Smooth or gravely? All I can remember is the intent of the words driven into me. It was like communication through aura, taken to an immense scale. Around me the terrain begins to lift up in a gentle hill. The lightning strikes happen with greater and greater frequency as I climb. The stones, chipped and scorched as they are, bare the brunt of these attacks with strength. I don't know why these stones are different from the other stones that litter our world, but where other rocks shatter, these merely absorb the heat, and glow with an eldritch menace. As I clear the rim of the hill I was climbing, I see the Manor. The hill itself is hollowed out, like the center of some long dead volcano, or the crater of a meteor strike. At the bottom of the indentation lies the Manor, a twisted and brooding edifice. Within lays anywhere from a dozen to a hundred Firsts, and the Second guards. Once I would have considered it impenetrable, but now I see otherwise. Years of training have made me sharp, where as years of redundancy had made the guards dull. They would never expect an assault, and would not be able to significantly muster even if the alarm is sounded. I'm about to change back into my original form, when suddenly all I can feel is disgust for it. For what it represents. My race, for we long ago stopped considering ourselves human, had been hated and thrown aside because we were different. You would think that this would have made us more tolerant, more able to understand and care for people who aren't like ourselves, but instead we turn upon ourselves. Intolerance, hatred, and genocide. I would rather finish this as a human. The way I started this endeavor. The way my friends are. The way Setsuna is. I cloak myself in shadow, and start my descent. I begin a fast pace, bent nearly parallel to the steep earth, face down and picking up speed as I run. By the time I'm halfway down the wind is tearing at me, buffeting me like a physical assault. I ignore it, and my descent continues in silence. The ground levels up and I am almost upon the Manor. A hundred yards away. Seventy five. I can make out the shapes of the guards circling the wall. Fifty yards away. Twenty five. My aura is masked, my outline undetectable in the perpetual dusk of our world. Twenty yards away. Fifteen. I leap at ten yards, and sail through the air. Lightning cracks through the air, masking the whistle and snap the wind rings from my clothes. I clear the walls around the Manor, and the guards circling it. I alight in one of the empty window frames, my outline momentarily outlined to all who look out. A First sees me, and draws itself up imperviously to denounce me. Just like Kuno. Unlike Kuno, I tear its throat out before it has a chance to speak, and leave its body to dissolve on its own as I speed through the hallways. Now is not the time to stand still. I've only been in the Manor once before, but I have no worry about being lost. The Manor was designed in the shape of a wheel. The spokes radiate outward from the inner hallway, and the inner hallway moves in a circle around the inner sanctum. There is only one entrance to the chamber that holds He-Who-Remembers. The gateway. Various other hallways snake around the Manor, but like a spider's web they lay connected to the spokes that lead towards the inner hallway. I lay in one of the outer circling hallways, but either direction will take me to a spokes, so I dart to the right upon entering, and continue at a rapid pace around towards a spokes. Occasionally a First would lay in front of me as I ran, and I would hop over it move quickly on. Too many dead this early on would result in an alarm. A minute into my run, I come across one of the spokes. Now the spokes all lead in, but they are central avenues through the Manor, so they are well traveled. I avoid the traffic by clinging to the ceiling and crawling inwards. Sometimes I would have to dodge a flying First, or another wall-crawler, but most prefer to walk, and wouldn't have seen me even if they had looked up. Noting impedes my progress, and after a brief interlude, I reach the inner hallway of the Manor. The inner hallway is deserted, as most First prefer not to come to close to the Lord. His aura can be felt even through the walls that surround his sanctum, like a ephemeral whirlpool. I can feel it, but it shies away from my mark of Cain. The mark that left me and the race of my race as outcasts. The mark that brought about our extermination. My aura. I abandon stealth dropping to the floor, and un-wrap myself from the dark. It might be petty, and overly dramatic, but I'm in a foul mood, and would just end up destroying anything that got in my way at this point. Step. Step. Step. And there it is. The gateway. The last time I stood before this, I had been so very afraid. Now I feel nothing but coldness. Before a supplicant. Now an executioner. I shatter the gateway with my fist, and enter to confront the Lord, He- Who-Remembers. Time to finish this. *** Let me take a moment to tell you about He-Who-Remembers. He is old. Old beyond measure. Old beyond belief. And he never forgets. He was there when our kind was first distinguishing themselves from normal humans. He was there when humans turned on us. He lived through the ages of upheaval and strife in our world, and came out on top. He is immensely powerful, wise, and experienced. He is the landmark of our civilization. He has a lot of tricks, like my shadow trick only difference. His prominent trick is this: to absorb the auras of creatures around him, and make their energies his own. Not like I absorb life energy. He actually sucks the auras out of anything, and makes it apart of him. When this happens, he gains there strengths, their possibilities, their memories. And he remembers them all. "Ran," His voice whispers. The inner sanctum is a large coliseum like structure. Open to the air, and with the floors slowly descending towards the center. In the center He sits. "I'm honored you remember me," I tell him dryly. His aura pulls at me, like I remember, but now I am much stronger than I was the first time I was here. I resist its pull easily. "I remember the way you stood before me. How you were eager to serve me. How you were awed by my power. Things have changed," he whispers. His voice comes from the center of the sanctum. A deep pit lays there. None of the lights from the edges of the room manage to penetrate the gloom there. "I remember..." He trails off. Here I am. I stand before the one who was responsible for the destruction of my kind. The Seconds and the Firsts would never had attempted it without His orders. I should feel something. All I can feel is nothing. "Why did you have them killed?" My voice is empty, and weak. "Because I can remember." The voice stirs, and a shape in the shadows slowly edges towards the light. "Because you can remember?! What could you possibly remember to redeem this unconciousable act? What could possibly excuse the cleansing?" My voice cracks, and I rediscover the rage that had brought me here. He-Who-Remembers moves out of the shadows. It is all I can do to refrain from drawing back in revulsion. He is large and gelatinous. The vaguely humanoid shape only makes his actual composition all the more revolting. If He had ever had a different shape, it had been lost with time. I would like to say that he oozed petroleum oil, but it is more like He was created out of oil. Had he been born this way, or was this the end result of eons of draining other creatures to enhance his power, only he could possibly know. "I can remember, and what can be remembered can be learned from. I knew the moment that I saw you that you would end up here, in front of me, and would try to kill me. It has happened before, and it will happen again. It is only a matter of time. All the signs are there, if you only look for them." I can't even begin to describe how He talked. To form coherent speech with a body like that... As He moves forward, I move towards him as well. "I refuse to believe that. How could you possibly know what I would do, what would happen to me. There were thousands of things that could have happened-" He cuts me off. "-and I have seen them all. You know I am old, you rationalize it, but you can't truly begin to comprehend just how much I have seen. If you just care to look, there is so much that can be learned from watching others, and I have been looking for a very long time." The distance between us shrinks as I respond. "I refuse to believe that. Your experience does not make you all-knowing. If anything, it only makes you inflexible. And that which can't bend..." "That which can not bend, forces others to move." The distance between us is almost non-existent. I can't even begin to imagine what He-Who- Remembers was thinking about. Perhaps He was recalling some long distant confrontation with another. I know precisely what I'm thinking of. He-Who-Remembers reaches out to embrace me. As I slide into his body, penetrating his disgusting gelatinous mass, his aura swirling in to engulf mine, all I can picture is two serious red eyes, framed by a swirl of green hair. As He-Who-Remembers begins to absorb me completely, I reach into me, and all the energy I had left from my week of draining flairs into my aura. It explodes outwards, tearing into the center of He-Who-Remembers aura. I can feel his surprise, as eddies from the interaction of our two energies spring out, like dust devils before a storm. I can feel his surprise and shock, perhaps at the suddenness of this technique, perhaps in surprise at the strangeness of my move, even as he can feel the name of this technique whispered in the back of my mind. Imperial Dragon Ascension Blast. The world around me rips itself apart with the fury of the technique. The aura of the planet itself is momentarily breached by mine, and the planet moves to counter it, swiftly and violently. A whirlwind of catastrophic proportions erupts around the two of us. It tears into the immense aura of He-Who-Remembers, and tugs even more so at mine. I had experience with this technique, and I knew how to handle it, how to withdraw into myself, and allow it to pass. He-Who-Remembers doesn't. His form, both ethereal and corporeal begins to dissolve. But one does not live as long as He-Who-Remembers without picking up a few tricks. As he begins to dissolve, his aura begins to seek shelter in the nearest unaffected thing. Me. It is all I could do not to scream as it began to soak into me. Power and memories, both of which belonging to the Lord began to saturate my being. I could remember the grass beneath my feet, on a earth of incalculable antiquity. I could feel the natural magic lines of the earth twisting against me. I could feel my... NO! I am not He-Who-Remembers. I want neither his memories nor his powers. I want to be myself, live as I live, to fight as I fight, to be as I am. I fight back against His invasion into my psyche. I counter his memories with my own. Genma's training, Akane's mallet, Kasumi's cooking, and more But it isn't enough. For every memory I pull up in defense, a thousand more pull up on the offense. He-Who-Remembered had been right. I hadn't been prepared for the sheer length of time He had really lived, how much he had felt. They come crushing down on me, like an ocean I was drowning in. Desperately I cling to the final memories. Michiru's laugh, Haruka's gruff humor, Hotaru's fragile innocents. My time with Michiru, Haruka, and Hotaru. The happiest days of my life. They had been so brief, yet I treasured them above all things. I treasured those memories more than He-Who-Remembers ever treasured any of his. The internal battle for dominance begins to waiver. I'm no longer being routed aside like a tree before a jokulhaups. The battle grind to a shrieking stop, neither side gaining dominance of advantage. Around me the hurricane that was my technique shrieks on. Though the battle is internal, I begin to feel an immense strain on my entire body. Usually by now I would have perform the final pulse in my aura that would signal to the planet that the invasion was withdrawing, but I couldn't. If I had spared even a moment of my attention, I would be over run. I had to win this battle, to defeat Him, to avenge my people, to save myself. I had to stay alive. I had to see Setsuna again. Setsuna. All my memories of her rush forward. I can remember a flutter of her eyelashes, the fall of her hair down her shoulder, her wet cinnamon skin twinkling in the light. Suddenly He-Who-Remembers' memories are gone, and I am myself again. I finish off the technique, and collapse, the strain tearing my senses from me in a swift and merciful moment of oblivion. *** After an indiscernible about of time, I awaken. It is all I can do. My body aches with an abandon it rarely gives into. Abused muscles and lacerated skin fills my brain for a moment before I shunt them aside. Sometime during my unconsciousness, I had lost control of my form, and now I lay in my original shape. There is nothing I can do about it. I remain where I lay, and wait for enough energy to come to me before I can stand. It happens quickly. Too quickly. Within a minute of waking up I have enough strength to shift back to human form. My body does so willingly, but my clothes are in less than ideal condition. Minutes after that I have enough energy to heal myself and raise. That should have been the outer limits of my power, and left me exhausted for days. Instead energy just keeps coming to me. My aura begins to swirl stronger with the extra force. What's happening to me? Alright, think. What could have happened to change me in such a fashion. Duh, my fight with He-Who-Remembers (Maybe I should change his name to He-Who-Remembered now?). What happened in that fight? It strikes me then. He-Who-Remembered had tried to invade my body and aura. I had fought off his memories, but I hadn't really paid attention to what happened to his excess power. I must have absorbed it. That meant that I had now reached a much higher power level. Let me take a second to clarify something. I might have mentioned earlier that absorbing human energy only brought a temporary burst of power. It is completely different when you avoid the actual aura of someone else. While energy is a minor thing, someone's aura is much more serious. As in permanent. That's why He-Who-Remembered had such a strong aura. From millennia of draining the auras out of others. And I had just drained his. But how much power had I acquired? The recovery rate is directly proportional to the amount of maximum energy. If I was gaining energy this fast... Dear lords above and below. If I was absorbing energy this fast I must be at least as strong as the Lord used to be. I break from my thoughts suddenly. Now was not the time to be thinking about this. I look around to take stock of my situation, and gawk like a country yokel. Where there had once been the Manor, there was only blasted rubble. Where there had once been a crater like cliff, there was now nothing but a broken plane of dirt and rock. I don't think I have moved since I collapsed, but that could only mean that it was my attack that caused this. I extend my senses, and they travel far beyond there one time limit of a half a mile. For three miles in any direction, all I can feel is my own energy, steadily swelling. Well. At least I don't have to fight my way out. Now, to get back to the plain I had spent the last decade of my life at. I reach for my energy and try to cut a hole to my destination. I come across another unpleasant surprise. With my power level so rapidly increasing, it was becoming harder to fit through the barrier. Gaps that were once more than wide enough for me are rapidly becoming too small for me to fit through. Another half hour and I would be stuck here, in all probability permanently. I don't want to be stuck here with the people responsible for the elimination of my race. I don't know how they would react to the source of their prejudice suddenly being powerful enough to be their god, but I can't imagine it would be good. I slip through the barrier, feeling a nasty psychic back lash from the cords of power designed to keep me from doing what I had just done. *** Let me take another moment to explain something to you. Distance is not relative. What I mean by this is that our two plains are not overlapping each other at any specific geographic point. Rather, the two are constantly shifting around each other. Like to globes occupying the same space, but spinning in different directions. The location in one plain is not in the same place over the second plain at any given time. It is a very random event. The only way to stabilize this phenomenon is through the creation of portals. This required a lot more energy then I was able to expend at the moment, and a lot more time than I could spare. And so it was that I braced myself for anything when I stepped back onto the green earth. I was prepared for some harsh climate, somewhere a thousand meters under water, in the center of a bathhouse filled with man hating Amazonians. Anything except for what I got. I stepped out into the middle of an empty sidewalk in Juuban. Nothing tried to kill me, no one saw me and ran away screaming of the apocalypse or angels of death. The only thing that greeted me was peace and quiet. It was almost scary. I sigh out in relief. Well. I was back on the planet I wanted to be on and human looking, albeit dressed shaggily. I took a moment to regard my aura. It was rapidly expanding in both size and strength. It still rotated in the opposite direction of the rest of the universe, but I could live with that. I tried to control it, but I just wasn't used to dealing with that kind of energy, especially not in respect to my own aura. After a minute of trying, I shrugged it off. Truth be told, I was too elated to really concentrate on my task. I had done it. I had stopped the invasion, killed He-Who-Remembered, and came out alive. After living through odds like that, and finishing it to boot, what could possibly go wrong now? I stroll down the sidewalk, whistling a merry tune. It was over. Now what? I could take a few months off. Go and visit some Shinto shrines maybe, expand my life experience. Tour Europe or something. I could... I could go see how Setsuna and the others are doing. I smile, albeit a little grimly. I could go see them, and explain some things. I could explain what I am, and why I ran. I could tell them what I had been doing. I could come clean with them. That's what I could do. My course decided, I turn north and begin my course of action. Until I pass a fast food ramen booth. Maybe I could celebrate a bit first. "Hey, hey," I toss out as I duck under the little sign in front of the booth. "Give me the best ramen you got here." The vender gets to work on my order, while eyeing me curiously. "You look like you've seen hell, man," he tells me, taking in my tattered clothes, and the dirt smeared all over my body. I grin at him exuberantly. I had earned it. "I just lived through hell, and now I'm going to the fires." "Ahh," he tells me, and matches my grin. "Women problems." I like this guy. When he gives me my ramen-to-go, I pay him and leave him a ten dollar tip. Some of the bills are a bit scorched, but he takes them good naturedly. As I walk along, sipping soup and slurping noodles, I reflect on my life for a moment. It was great to be alive. "It's over here," a voice shouts, and upon hearing it, an icy chill rolls through my spine. A premonition. A very strong premonition. A very bad one, as well. That voice belongs to Sailor Mercury. I look over my shoulder as the body to match the voice jumps over a building, noodles hanging forgotten from my mouth, followed closely by the other four Scouts that usually shows up when she's around. Sailor Jupiter is the first to notice me. "Ranma," she cries out. "Good thing we ran into you. We're picking up like this huge evil power. We'll need all the help we can get..." My blood turns to ice in my veins. My aura. It had expanded to cover most of this block, and the one beyond it. They would pick it up and know that its similar to the auras of the others of my species they had fought. I have a sudden sinking feeling as to what my premonition means. Jupiter's entreaty is cut off when Mercury looks up from her computer, and right at me. Her jaw drops open. "I-its him!" She points right at me. I toss my ramen to the side, and finish slurping the noodles in my mouth. "He's the source!" Mars' eyes narrow. "That must be why he's so strong," she declares. Without wasting another word, she launches an attack at me. It speeds towards me, but with my new enhanced power and plenty of warning it's a matter of child's play to sidestep it. "But he's always helped us," Venus declares. Her and Jupiter look shocked, while Moon was confused, and Mercury remained buried in her computer, desperately sorting through her information and giving me an occasional look over the top of her screen. "He's like Tuxedo Mask!" Mars' shouts an answer as she leaps into attack me. "Well he's got enough dark power to destroy Tokyo now. Who knows what happened! We have to stop him." I match her pathetic assault easily. She was an experienced fighter, but her technique was untrained and easily handled by my own. Its all I can do not to cry. I had saved the world, and now I was going to be killed by high-schoolers in short skirts. They must have sensed my aura the moment I returned to this plain. They gathered together, and panicked due to its size. Hell, its size was panicking even me. My aura just kept growing. It was too late to try to stop it now, but I curse myself for not trying harder earlier. "I know," Moon suddenly declares, her ridiculous blonde hair flapping. "Maybe he's possessed! Like Tuxedo Mask and Saturn were those times!" A ridiculous look of understanding crosses Jupiter's and Venus' face. Oh no. They both assume statuesque poses and launch energy and lightning at me. I dodge by gaining the roof, leaving Mars to duck to the ground with an undignified squawk. "Wait," I shout. I got to stop this before I get killed. "You're making a big mistake!" My only response is the attacks of Jupiter and Mars combining to create one hell of an offensive strike. I move but the building around me can't escape, and where there once had been a roof is now a creative sky light. And then it happened. I had seen Moon's attack before. I knew it was powerful, but I had always thought that it took a ridiculous amount of time to fire off. I had been certain that if it had been leveled at me I could have escaped. I find out the truth now. Even as Moon begins the opening of her attack, the ambient magic around me begins to twist. Bounds of power, invisible even to my aural sight, lace out, catching me in a inescapable grip. My body is stretched straight and held up, unable to resist the force of her spell. Behind I hear Mercury shout, "No wait!" Behind her I can see four more scouts approaching rapidly. I can make out the face of Pluto, of Setsuna. Gone from her expression is the haughty coolness. She looks like she is screaming something, but I can't make it out as my ears become full of the roar of Moons attack. I see Setsuna's eyes locked on my face, and I summon my energy. "I love you," I mouth, unable to fully vocalize the words. Moons attack rushes towards me.... *** Quick note from the author. I would like to write this next part in the first person from Pluto's view, but I don't feel I could accurately portray her emotional state, so I'm going to extend into third person unlimited instead. Back to the fic. *** Mercury's computer beeps, and Mercury's eyes widen when she sees what her scans had picked up. She lifts her head up just in time to see Moon finishing her attack, the power racing towards Ranma. "No," she screams, knowing that its to late even as the words leave her mouth. "Wait!" Moon's attack strikes home, and the power that had surrounded Ranma vanishes from existence. Moon prepares a victory pose, and a speech to the now cleansed Ranma, but stops when her attack clears, and all that remains of the man in front of them is a swirl of dirt. A momentary dust devil that fades out of existence in a second. "W-what happened?" Moon asked, confused by Ranma's disappearance. "Ranma wasn't possessed. My scan reports that he had always had that power. It was the strange anomaly I had picked up when I first scanned him, only much stronger," Mercury whispers. "You mean, he wasn't possessed?" Moon asked stupidly. Jupiter and Venus look confused, with Mars close behind. "No. He wasn't." "Then what was he doing with all that power?" Mars snapped peevishly. "He was one of those creatures we had been fighting," Mercury answered. "He had just been keeping his power carefully hidden." "Wait a second. Then what happened to him?" Moon was now thoroughly puzzled by these proceedings. "He's... He's..." Mercury can't seem to get the words out. This was so much different from what they had always had to deal with before. "He's dead," a quiet voice cut through the five's growing horror. They spin, and find the Outer Scouts allayed behind them. Pluto stood in the center, an unreadable look on her face, with Neptune and Uranus standing to one side, and Uranus' fist clenched tight. Saturn stood behind, as quiet as the planet whose name she bore. "Y-you mean I killed him?" Moon stuttered. "But that can't be right. Hes been helping us. That means he was a good guy. I can't kill good guys." "He told me once," Saturn broke her silence. "He told me once that ever since he had been very young, he had been hated and scorned by others around him. Hated because of a difference in his, he called it his 'aura'. I didn't think at the moment, but in order for someone to make fun of your aura, they have to be able to see it. Normal people can't see them, but I think those creatures we had been fighting could. That means he must have grown up somewhere where everyone could see his aura. He must have been one of those creatures." Saturn's face is devoid of expression, but her eyes glimmered with repressed tears. "But why was he fighting against his own kind?" Mars demanded, hiding her own growing horror over what they just had done. Had they really just killed an ally? She looked back over the fight in her mind, and only now recalled the words he had yelled before he had been attacked. 'You're making a big mistake.' "The only way we could know that," Neptune said, her voice like ice. "Would have been by asking." No one had anything to say to that. Pluto said nothing, but began to shake. She dropped to one knee, her arms wrapped around her waist, her head bowed, her hair masking her face, and her tears were all the more terrible because of the complete silence in which they were shed. Authors note, A Jokulhaups is an actual natural disaster. It involves an ice flow high on a mountain getting pushed over a hot spring. The hot spring melts the bottom of the flow, and the end result rushes down the mountain. It involves thousands of gallons of falling water mixed in with jagged pieces of ice. It can tear up trees, smash rocks, and destroy cities. I am not making this up. I hope you like the end. Come back for the coda of "Finishing what you start."