That was my own take, but it was funny. It's Ranma shenanigans, those sort of interpersonal faux pas and quirks are part of the fun.
Divine Patronage - A Ranma / Ah! My Goddess Crossover
- Thread starter STMPD
- Start date
- Crossover
That was my own take, but it was funny. It's Ranma shenanigans, those sort of interpersonal faux pas and quirks are part of the fun.
DeclanDSI
Touhou 「 」 Youkai of 「Akasha」
- Location
- the Boundaries betwixt Fact and Fiction
- Pronouns
- ???
EMIYA would like to have a word with you. You're stealing his, heh, thunder.
- Location
- Argentina
Emiya is a newer character that the Sailor Senshi so is the other way around. Why do you think there are fanfics and even a fan manga were he becomes a magical girl?
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Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Because Madoka was popular enough for a while for people to mentally go "anime + Faustian bargain = Kyubey" and EMIYA's whole thing is regretting the Faustian bargain he made while dying?
- Location
- Massachusetts
Yup. Wise words.
Mako and Ranma seem to learn by doing far more than by external feedback, though. Plus, Mako probably has team mom instincts because of her friends. Extending this into a proactive stance within relationships seems logical but will need handling - great opportunity for character development!
I was founded disturbing how people would say that, What's to say that they in need fixing, Are you going to manipulate them to your perfect idear?
- Location
- Argentina
Hey cut Makoto some slack, compared to the Ranma 1/2 cast.... she is quite tame and does take no for an answer.
- Location
- Megatokyo
I mean, you're not wrong, but even so…
And for what it's worth, y'all acting like that was anything more than dumbass references for the sake of dumbass references are gonna get your just desserts. If it sates you, I will write a scene where EMIYA has been observing this whole fight for Alaya's sake and then is all 'Oh yeah that's so cool' or something ridiculously silly like that.
Well, I'm not sure how I want to see this come out...
1) Makoto kicks all their asses, because she's Sailor fucking Jupiter, not some goth-loli dark magical girl wannabes.
2) She loses, calls in the others to rescue Ranma, and crashes the party with all nine senshi (plus Tux boy). I wonder if that's a bit too much escalation for Mara's plan? I mean, Usagi with her powerful magical artifact crystal, Sailor Pluto, and well... Sailor Saturn.
3) As with option 2, except she wins, but they managed to escape with Ranma in hand. Because isn't that how these arcs tend to start?
4) Before the fight starts, the other Inners show up to help. Because they saw her out with Ranma, figured it was a date, and followed them around to see if he was secretly evil or something. Then before they could decide what to do outside the apartment building, the dark magical girls crashed things. So it became simple - defeat the DMGs, then find out if they need to beat up Makoto's date too for being secretly evil. And not admit at any point that they were watching their friend's date.
I guess Ranma could do something in there as well, but I just find this amusing idea that the guy that's supposed to be a Hero... is left out of the fight completely, and serves as the "damsel in distress" instead. "Huh, is this what it feels like to be Akane?" Or he's like Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China. And with Ranma, it really is all in the reflexes.
1) Makoto kicks all their asses, because she's Sailor fucking Jupiter, not some goth-loli dark magical girl wannabes.
2) She loses, calls in the others to rescue Ranma, and crashes the party with all nine senshi (plus Tux boy). I wonder if that's a bit too much escalation for Mara's plan? I mean, Usagi with her powerful magical artifact crystal, Sailor Pluto, and well... Sailor Saturn.
3) As with option 2, except she wins, but they managed to escape with Ranma in hand. Because isn't that how these arcs tend to start?
4) Before the fight starts, the other Inners show up to help. Because they saw her out with Ranma, figured it was a date, and followed them around to see if he was secretly evil or something. Then before they could decide what to do outside the apartment building, the dark magical girls crashed things. So it became simple - defeat the DMGs, then find out if they need to beat up Makoto's date too for being secretly evil. And not admit at any point that they were watching their friend's date.
I guess Ranma could do something in there as well, but I just find this amusing idea that the guy that's supposed to be a Hero... is left out of the fight completely, and serves as the "damsel in distress" instead. "Huh, is this what it feels like to be Akane?" Or he's like Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China. And with Ranma, it really is all in the reflexes.
- Location
- Argentina
4) seems the most likely option, only they think girl Ranma has been crying because her face is wet and she looks sad and depressed .
Ranma denials just make them think they are right and Mara Dark Magical Girls lose badly, only avoiding getting killed because is evident they are possessed. Then Mara causes a distraction and rescues the Evil Fiance Squad while Ranma gets depressed that he had to be rescued.
After that they call Usagi and the others and at the mere mention of curse Usagi tries to cure Ranma. It doesn't work... for the Yusenko curse. But it gets rid of everything else and Ranma hilariously starts to get good luck to compensate the Demon curse he was under. Unfortunately said good luck consists on things Ranma doesn't want, like Genma getting arrested for all his crimes, his mother deciding that the pledge is invalid since Genma is no longer her husband, as she is forced to a quick divorce to save the family honor, and Ranma getting visited by rich relatives on his mother side that had keep away due to Genma.
Upon finding the mess Genma left Nodoka into, they pour money to fix things as the thing is a escandal they want to bury.
The four fiancees families and any others get compensated, Ukyo actually decides to let Ranma go cause money, and nothing Mara says convinces her otherwise because greed is a sin and Mara amplíefed Ukyo evil side.
The rest decide to keep trying despite the bribe to their families and then of course enemies of the Senshi get involved on the whole mess....
Ranma denials just make them think they are right and Mara Dark Magical Girls lose badly, only avoiding getting killed because is evident they are possessed. Then Mara causes a distraction and rescues the Evil Fiance Squad while Ranma gets depressed that he had to be rescued.
After that they call Usagi and the others and at the mere mention of curse Usagi tries to cure Ranma. It doesn't work... for the Yusenko curse. But it gets rid of everything else and Ranma hilariously starts to get good luck to compensate the Demon curse he was under. Unfortunately said good luck consists on things Ranma doesn't want, like Genma getting arrested for all his crimes, his mother deciding that the pledge is invalid since Genma is no longer her husband, as she is forced to a quick divorce to save the family honor, and Ranma getting visited by rich relatives on his mother side that had keep away due to Genma.
Upon finding the mess Genma left Nodoka into, they pour money to fix things as the thing is a escandal they want to bury.
The four fiancees families and any others get compensated, Ukyo actually decides to let Ranma go cause money, and nothing Mara says convinces her otherwise because greed is a sin and Mara amplíefed Ukyo evil side.
The rest decide to keep trying despite the bribe to their families and then of course enemies of the Senshi get involved on the whole mess....
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- Location
- Megatokyo
He's got Urd backing him up, so don't worry, he'll be relevant. Or have you all forgotten about her?Well, I'm not sure how I want to see this come out...
I guess Ranma could do something in there as well, but I just find this amusing idea that the guy that's supposed to be a Hero... is left out of the fight completely, and serves as the "damsel in distress" instead. "Huh, is this what it feels like to be Akane?" Or he's like Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China. And with Ranma, it really is all in the reflexes.
Oh, they aren't brainwashed. Mara doesn't need to do so much pushing to get people to do what she wants. (Also, when did Ranma get a demon curse?)
Seriously, though. Folks, this is an Ah My Goddess / Ranma fic first and foremost with other mid-90's anime getting involved in one-off-ish arcs. I've literally got my notes for the next arc involving All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku, for goodness sakes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm surprised by how well my more romantic writing turned out, but I'd rather not hook things up to Sailor Moon too much because a) the gals are all in high school now, Galaxia / Chaos is gone, life moves forward, b) I haven't seen enough of it to do anything really engaging with it, and c) cutting the fiancés and the rest of the old Ranma cast out of the mix entirely really limits comedic-creative options, doesn't it?
I guess I'll keep Makoto popping up, maybe have those two plus the Inner Senshi do some fun study groups, but... Oh. Right. Most of you all don't know too much about Ah My Goddess, right? Because it's got two fairly obscure anime adaptations which barely cover the first hundred chapters of like 300? So everyone's just working with what they've got.
For context, I binge-read the entirety of the manga around this time last year, which was what gave rise to this fic. It's... kind of one-note wholesome, but now it means I'm burdened with lots of rough impressions of AMG stuff I want to work with even if no one has any idea what's going on (it's not a manga with a lot of deep worldbuilding, we'll just say that much). But Urd is fun to write, so who am I to stop now?
- Location
- Argentina
Usagi is the Avatar of Cosmos the goddess of creation hence why the last enemy is the Avatar of chaos. And in the manga the Senshi are way more powerful.
- Location
- Williamsburg, OH
Presumably a manifestation of motherly instinct but applied towards a romantic partner instead of a child. It's easier to have an instinct with multiple manifestations, takes up less DNA space than having everything separate.
Chapter 10: In Which A Bunch Of Fake Magical Girls Fight A Real One
- Location
- Megatokyo
Ain't no reason! Ain't no rhyme! Buckle your buttcheeks, it's fight scene time!
She'd felt Mara before she saw her, but then again, Mara wasn't exactly hiding. Four Tethers - a cruder form of demonic contract - all off back at Peorth's penthouse. Tethers weren't much more than a bastardized empathetic link you could send mana down given certain preset triggers, and oh boy was Mara pumping dark mana down these puppies, like turds down toilet bowls really. She flew up to meet her archnemesis and former fuckbuddy-
"Hey! Urd! What is up , babe! Purgatory treating you good?"
Only for Mara to meet her, swooping down, so the two were just there , floating above the Tokyo streets.
"Oh," Urd drawled, not even bothering to keep the loathing out of her voice. " Hey . What's going on , you titless tsundere twat."
Mara was wearing… gold chains? And leather? And a poofy-ass rapper coat? It did not fit her. At all. "Damn, you just get out of fashion police prison?"
Mara cackled. "Eff-why-Information, this is what the Americans call 'swiggity swooty'. Hippest thing on the East Coast. See, after Hild kicked me up Midgard way again, I figured-"
"Goddamit, Mara," Urd barked. "I care about American pop culture bullshit as much as I care about whether or not Mimir's rotten cock will ever be stiff again. Okay? You already told me what your dumbass plan is, I can deduce the rest."
She channeled up a ball of Aesir-fire. "You and Hild better leave this one well alone, or I will pulp you so hard you'll drip all the way down to Nidhogg. Got that?"
Mara just cackled harder. "Alright, alright! That's what I'm talking about! I've been itching for a good fight ever since Hagall kicked both our asses with that hypnotic stuff. A good ol' magical slugfest, level a continent or two."
"Only," Mara said, flipping around so she faced forward, leering, "You aren't really allowed to do that anymore, are you? Goddesses don't play that kind of hardball. Even if Belldandy's gone, you've still got regs to follow - they take the collateral damage out of your broke ass - they didn't give you a whole lot of magical energy to work with, did they? Meanwhile - well, Hild was really interested in your shenanigans."
"Shenanigans?"
"Come on , Urd. Taking some helpless little boy, dragging him away from his family, and pretending you're a responsible guardian? Acting like you're a real grown-up when all you can do by definition is live in the past, milking the ever-full teats of nostalgia?"
"Did Hild give you that line? Because you've never been smart enough to work metaphors like that."
"Not the point, girlfriend! The real point is, if you try to take me head on, you're gonna run out of good-guy magic faster than you can say 'Looks like Team Rocket's blasting off again'. So just give up the contract - I can even say to your mom that-"
Urd let the Aesirfire rip.
It smashed into Mara and detonated in less than a millisecond with enough explosive force to shatter the windows of the neighboring buildings for a block. Urd pulled up, channeled more Aesirfire, and threw it squarely into where she assumed Mara was-
THRRRRRWWWWWOOOOOMMMMM.
The beam of Helfire, a violent strobing purple mixed with black-hole black, grazed Urd, then hit her square in the chest. It would have pulped any grade of kami, and left a nasty wound on a lesser-licensed god, but Urd was a fucking Norn, and you didn't hurt one of those so easily.
She flew back, through shattered windows, zipped past an entire floor of some office building still populated with half-dead salarymen, flew out the other side, and then finally stopped.
For what felt like a million years (she knew what that felt like, being an archetypal Jungian past-mistress), time stood still.
Then Mara bitchslapped her hard enough to send her flying off in another direction.
No one moved. No one could .
It was as though the world outside had dropped away, the skyline and the outer borders of the apartment engulfed in rainbow-silver fire that dropped away to an endless starfield, the night sky behind it glowing an oceanic blue. Ranma willed his body to move, to get just a single skeletal muscle to contract, but it was useless. The energy inside his body was no longer his own - it was a tributary stream feeding into a river of pure will.
Her will.
It was hard to look at Makoto, or the thing that had her shape, and that had taken her place. Her silhouette filled with pulsing rainbow light, streaks of silver-white and hypersaturated color swirling around each other, intertwined like jet streams. Shaping hard lines of neon green and silver light into - something -
Oh. Holy Shit .
Green short skirt which billowed dramatically. Long green high-heeled boots that climbed up to the thigh. A white seifuku blouse hugging her voluptuous figure, as if daring the viewer to look but don't touch. Sleek white opera gloves with green trim. Her chestnut hair hitched up into a high, flowing ponytail.
By the time her form had solidified back into a human it was all clear. By the time Ranma could open his mouth, the first thing he said was "Oh, so you're Sailor Jupiter. Man, that explains so much, but-"
"DIE, YOU FUCKING SLUT!"
Kodachi's ribbon-whip lashed out at hypersonic speeds, faster than Ranma could move to stop her. He'd seen what that thing could do when she really put force into it, slice through solid concrete and rebar like it was nothing, and the last thing he wanted was for Makoto to-
Sailor Jupiter caught the ribbon. Let it wrap around her forearm, thwip-thwip-thwip . Grabbed the ribbon with one hand-
And Jupiter yanked Kodachi toward her, then smashed her down into that one glass table hard enough to smash it.
Ranma would have snickered, because it was kind of funny seeing the Black Rose, agile as she was, impact a hard surface face-first.
He did not, however, have that kind of luxury, because he was too busy dodging Ukyo's spatula-blade whistling towards his torso hard enough to nonconsensually harakiri him. And after that, things weren't any better, because the next thing coming towards him was the other end of it as Ukyo flipped her weapon around to conk him in the skull.
He caught that. Forced it down, feinted to try to take it for himself. He didn't, though, because after that it was Shampoo's maces swinging in fast to cave in his ribcage. He blocked one with a kick, let go of Ukyo's weapon, then spun around to press the attack on Shampoo-
Only for Akane's right arm to close around his neck and pull .
He couldn't breathe! Shit! Shit! Shit! Fuck! "Agaknegghhh-"
"Don't move, Ranma!" She shouted into his ear. "If you just pass out we can get this done with a minimum of fuss!"
That wasn't how choking worked! At this rate his voicebox would give in, cartilage all smooshed inward, and he'd be dead for sure! Urd! Urd, come on! Urd!
Nothing-
At least, until Jupiter picked up the prone Kodachi and chucked her, missilelike, straight at Akane.
The Black Rose beaned the Tendo girl good, her head bonking into Akane's head, and suddenly Ranma was free, free to donkey-kick Akane away, then duck under Shampoo's one-two swings, then over Ukyo's cutting sweep. He landed on her spatula, used it to push off, boop himself up to the ceiling, then sprung down to divekick Ukyo good. He hit - Ukyo tried to turn him away with her spatula, but he'd aimed higher than she thought.
Bam! Right in the head! Fast and hard enough to bowl Ukyo over, quick enough that he could recover, break into a roll, and leg-sweep Shampoo before she brought her maces down on Jupiter.
Only, Shampoo was faster than that, or rather her first attack had been a feint, because she dodged out of the way, planted her feet, and brought her maces together, with Ranma's head right in the middle.
KTHWAAAAAAANG!
Urd flew for a few blocks before stabilizing herself, managing to dodge Mara's next beam of Helfire, managed to throw a few lesser bursts of Aesirfire her way. Not that they did anything - Urd had the sinking sense Hild had coked up the demoness on mana before sending her into the field, and the reinforcing feedback loop of the Tethers would only keep her net energy pretty high.
On the other hand, if she could channel a purification spell Ranma's way, that would do something . Cut the tethers, take on Mara naked (heh). Exhaust her, then exorcise her.
She just had to keep the demoness occupied.
"Come on !" Mara shouted from a block away, Hellfire flickering around her puffy coat. "You and me, Urd! East Coast versus West Coast! The way it was supposed to be!"
Urd rolled her eyes so hard you could see it from space. "So in this metaphor, am I east or west?"
"Bitch please! I'm the one with the Biggie coat!"
"How many times do I have to tell you I don't follow American pop culture . What," Urd smirked, as best as she could underneath a rapidly bruising face, "you gonna whip out some kind of hip-hop-meets-enka hybrid to whoop my ass?"
"Like hell !" Mara growled. "A, I didn't bring a walkman, and B, I'm gonna drag you back down to Niflheim without any gimmicks this time! Pride's on the line, see!"
"You? Pride? You lost your pride when Siddartha went all get-thee-behind-me on you wayyyy back when." Urd's smirk became a grin. She was in her element. "Or are we trying to bury the past just so I can dig it up? Because baby, you know I'm good for that-"
" DIE, YOU FUCKING SLUT! "
Mara let loose another blast of Helfire. One that, this time, Urd saw coming, and shot out of the way.
Yeah. She could work with this. She just needed time.
Oh, shit .
Makoto whirled around just in time to see Ranma's skull get two spheres of solid steel squish it but good. He didn't look dead, mind you, there was only a minute amount of blood spurting from his ears after the attack.
But like hell she was going to let these fiance-ass skanks ruin her date and take him.
Yeah. Her Ranma. That felt right. Felt warm.
Shampoo drove her knee into Ranma's gut, turned a knee into a foot, kicked him hard enough to blow him back a few meters into the opposing wall. For his to-be bride, she was pissed, wasn't she? Even the spatula-scythe girl let out a little gasp and ran over to Ranma.
Well, Makoto thought, as she called upon the infinite fury of the Jovian Storms, she was about to be even more pissed.
Because all the Sailor Senshi had been training in their respective magic arts since Galaxia, learning how to cycle the near-infinite mana pools of the planets they had once been the princess-gaurdians of.
Because Makoto knew what Jupiter was - it was an eternal storm, an eternal mass of thunderfire.
Shampoo barely had time to pivot and do the same to Makoto when the Senshi's battle aura lit up again, an incandescent pulse of electromagnetic energy that blew out every power system in the building. This only stunned her, gave her a bit of a headache - the chosen heir of the Chinese Amazon arts was made of tougher stuff than that.
She was not, however, made of tough enough stuff to resist Makoto making a sort of horn-sign with her left hand and shoving her outstretched fingers squarely at her.
They didn't hit. But they didn't need to.
The name of the attack was "Thunder! Plasma! PULSE!", after all.
Skra-ZAK! Shampoo took only a megawatt of direct electrical energy to her body, but the remaining terawatt or so wasn't meant for her, it was meant to create a meter-wide electrothermobaric pulse in midair, a blast of plasmarized air strong enough to crumple steel which smacked into the girl just below her neck, giving her a case of whiplash strong enough to send her tumbling head over heels to smash into the TV, destroying it utterly.
That barely kept Shampoo, down, though, and now Makoto sensed Kodachi's shadow-whip whistling up behind her to cut her carotid open - had she really untangled herself from that Akane girl so quickly? - and had to dodge, fast, right into the purplette pushing herself off the TV for another double head strike.
She took the attack, felt even her magically reinforced forearms groan and bruise against the two orbs, then pushed back, backflipping to bring her foot up into Shampoo's chin - then down onto Kodachi's head, only for the Black Rose's whip to grab her ankle and throw her off balance in midair.
"Ha!" Kodachi shouted as Makoto came crashing down to the floor, too fast to manifest a plasma-pulse thruster to rebalance herself. "Turnabout is fair play, says I! And now-"
"CHESTNUT-GRABBING RAPID FIST!"
She never got to finish that line, because the next thing that came her way was Ranmas fists going at like 650 PPM (Punches Per Minute), quick strikes slamming into Kodachi before she could so much as dodge away.
"-And now, the conclusion!"
And then a palm strike that seemed to blaze with white fire, right into Kodachi's face. It impacted harder than a three-inch strike like that had any right to, as something shadowy and barely tangible gushed out of the side of Kodachi's face. Makoto reached out her magical senses to the stuff as it ran out of the girl like smoke from a fire, felt something nasty and demonic, recoiled, and spun around to take the next attack-
Urd saw Mara cringe as one of her Tethers was cut - it never was a nice feeling, mana rebound. For her part, she felt a little better, being able to get rid of one little nuisance.
But that joy was short-lived, because the next thing Mara did was attack her again, swooping in with royal-purple light pouring from her fists. Urd barely had time to dodge - and then didn't have any time at all.
She slammed into the roof hard , felt something shift in her ethereal pseudobiology that wasn't supposed to shift like that. Got up just in time to throw up a white-hot stellar plasma shield - Mara was many things, resistant to most magic, but there were some things in the physical world even she had to avoid or get fried by. The demoness pulled back, dropped down to the rooftop.
"Oh-ho," Mara drawled. "That actually kinda hurt a bit."
"Yeah," Urd spat back. "You know me - I always hurt. 'Specially the one time I bit your clit in Asphodel and we basically invented the period right there. Remember that?"
And the poor demoness's confidence dropped away - her hands shot to her crotch as if remembering it. "That's how this is gonna be, huh? Me trying to knock some sense into you - to bring you back where you belong - and you just remembering all the bad times? Never the good." Her eyes narrowed. "That's why everyone hates you, you know that? Everyone wants the past dead , because you just can't stop reminding them of everything that went wrong."
Urd shrugged. "Skuld's not much better, if that's any consolation. Got really into cyberpunk dystopias a few years back. Besides, how can you complain about the world sucking when you're the one who causes all the suckage? The ones who pervert desires and warp want until it's all tangled up in misery?"
Mara took a step forward. "You have no right to-"
"I do , Mara, and you know why? Because I could have been the worst kind of demon. I could have never set up the Nostalgia micropantheon, I could have just made everyone remember only the things they hated about themselves. And maybe I lean towards that? But I chose to go up there with the other Norns. I chose to stop screwing you regularly, and just screw you over, because you're boring , Mara, even more boring than Belldandy."
Mara took another step forward. Urd was past the point of giving a shit. If she just kept the Enemy Of Enlightenment angry, incoherent, she could win. "Absolute evil? Hild wouldn't tolerate it. She loves the trickster methodology, giving people just enough rope to hang themselves. Not just pave with good intentions, but bury alive. But you want everyone to suffer like cartoon characters, push the evil shtick hard, just so you can get a kick out of it, like pulling the wings off a butterfly. And honestly, both types of evil have been done to death! Human history's been nothing but a cascading chain of petty little boys just like you ordering the slaughter of hundreds, thousands, millions, because Hild whispers in their ear and gives them a boner and tells them 'this is good'!"
"That's not how it works. That's never been how it works."
"Really? Fine, then, prove me wrong. Talk me back into Hild's good graces, even if you're nothing more than her whelpy little puppet. Or are you going to go for the coward's way out?"
"Coward?" Helfire blazed up again. "I'll show you coward!"
From Akane, a ramming elbow into her ribcage followed by a reverse wheel kick. Makoto let the first elbow slam into her, surged mana, braced herself, then dodged the next strike and drove her fist into the ground just in time for Ukyo and Akane to double-team her.
"TESLA - SWARM!"
Lightning arced out around her, shaped itself into multi-megawatt blasts of ball lightning — one after another whistling around, then through her assiliants, pumping kilovolts of electricity through them before dissipating. Ukyo hit the ground and didn't get up - Akane, on the other hand, staggered, dropped to her knees, and managed to rise.
Holy shit . That girl was tough. Most of her outfit had been burnt away by the swarm, revealing - ofuda?
Son of a bitch , that was Rei's handwriting! No wonder magic wasn't doing much. Rei's wards could block the magical equivalent of a tank shell. If she could just get them off of her - or better yet, turn them on the girl to exorcise her demonic energies-
She didn't get time to think further than that, of course, as Akane lunged at her, lit aflame with dark matter. Punch, punch, kick, kick, elbow, headbutt. She wasn't fast, didn't even have a whole lot of technique, but there was no denying she hit hard enough to vaporize a normal human being. All Makoto could do was block, her forearms lighting up in pain every time a blow connected.
She needed a bit of extra firepower. But where was she going to get it from? Ranma? Yeah. Probably. Hopefully.
For his part, Ranma spent way too long looking at Kodachi's prone form, as her dumb black outfit dissolved into an even dumber black outfit that looked like normal materials, wasn't as dark as the space between galaxies or some dumbass metaphor. Did he do that?
I did that! Now you do the same palm strike on the others and you should be able to cut their Tethers! Do it now before-
Shit. Urd cut out again. Fine, then. Ranma swung around, ducked under Shampoo throwing one of her maces at his face, and swung around again to axe-kick Shampoo in the back of her knee - she stumbled, stood firm, then whirled around-
And blasted him with more dark energy, a mace head dissolving into a vantablack fireball.
Ranma didn't even have room to dodge, just took it as it passed through him, exploded inside him. It felt - for someone who had the words, it felt like someone had shoved a molotov cocktail lined with fissile plutonium into his guts. For Ranma, it just hurt . Hurt enough that he couldn't do much but drop to the floor and writhe, struggle against his body's own panicked responses as Shampoo sweep-kicked him in the ribs, then drove the stick end of one of her maces up into his jaw-
No no no. Fuck no-
And suddenly it didn't hurt, suddenly he had his ki flows working the way he wanted, and he was able to bat Shampoo's strikes aside with a micro-scale Moko Takishiba (he felt awesome ) - she fell off balance - and he rammed his open palm into Shampoo's chest, just below her neck but above her, e-hem, chest (he wasn't that stupid).
Again, Shampoo screamed, staggered back as something big and purplish-black streamed out of her body, first slow and thick then fast and steamy, gushed out of her body, as her goth-loli outfit with too much cleavage dissolved and as her regular dress was restored. She collapsed - tried to get up - failed.
Again, Mara cringed. Again, Urd shot up, manifested a whirling dervish of Aesirfire, let it coalesce around her fists, then shot down to sock the demoness right in her face. It worked - Mara screamed bloody murder, then shoved the half-goddess back with a knee to the gut, right in that bad spot she'd already been hit in.
But she wasn't doing so hot, herself, wiping her bloody face off with her sleeve (Urd, for her part, was content to just bleed a bit - it was a metaphorical bleed, anyway).
"I'm onto you," Mara hissed. "Keep me busy, cut my Tethers, suck me dry. Well, lemme tell you something, sister. I know you're spending more mana having your boytoy beat his little harem out of commission than I'm spending keeping them powered. You're going to run out of mana first. Just how the numbers game works."
"Oh?" Well, it was true, unfortunately. Whoever was on the other end of those tethers (harem? Must have been Ranma's fiances - she really should have seen that one coming) was giving almost as much as they were getting - of their own free will.
Mara's contracts were big investments most of the time - not here. They wanted to beat Ranma's ass and nullify the contract. If he or Urd fell, the other would be dragged down with them. Shit .
"Yeah. Unless - and I'm willing to get the shit kicked out of me for this - you gave in ."
"Oh?"
"Don't 'Oh' me, Urd," Mara said, hands spread wide. "You know what I'm talking about. Embrace the demon - the true daughter of Hild, spawn of Loki Lieson himself, the dark strangling monster that only fools call 'No Longer'. Let the hate flow through you and all that, and then you can whoop me as hard as you like." She grinned.
"Nahhhhh," Urd said, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her abdomen. "I can still tap into some demonic stuff, but go all the way, just to satisfy your sado-maso fetishes? Spare me."
Mara looked - hurt by that. Had she gone too far? Well, she'd thought that at first, but the fact that Mara had recovered and tried to go all Palpatine on her suggested not.
And then…
"Okay. Fine. I tried to be nice to you, you know that, Urd? There's still a girl deep down inside who really loves to play with humans, not debase herself before them. But I guess I'm not gonna get that now, am I? Wot a pity."
Without warning, Mara put her finger to the floor of the rooftop - and, in seconds, it ripped apart.
Ranma felt agitation over his telepathic link, maybe even fear, but he didn't have time to think about that, because Ukyo was starting to rise, slowly, painfully, and Akane had all but beaten down Makoto. He could see something else, too, flapping loosely from under Akane's outfit - ofuda?
Damn. The uncute tomboy had come prepared. He probably couldn't do that one trick with the palm.
He crossed what was left of the penthouse living room in three quick hops, careful to move silently - not that Akane was going to notice. Then, Ranma did something he was certain he was going to regret later - hands snaking up the back of Akane's dress, he grabbed as many ofuda as he could and yanked them out. Akane had probably stuffed some in her bra, but Ranma knew his limits.
Or, well, he didn't, because the moment he pulled them away Akane's battle aura - incandescent compared to the strength she usually operated at - blazed brighter still, and she turned on Ranma, screaming "PERVERT! PERV PERV PERVY PERV!"
"Well ex-cuse me !" Ranma said as he backflipped over Akane's blows, trying to snake around her so he could do the job again. Jupiter nodded - fine, he'd just be bait, then. "If I'm a perv, you're worse, wearin' stuff like that, aincha? You uncute unsexy sadomaso berserker!"
That set her off, and before Ranma could follow an opening in her guard with a microscale Moko Takishiba, her hammer - the one she'd only really managed to summon in moments of comic relief - materialized, blue hot fire screaming off its surface, the kanji for ' RANMA NO BAKA ' seeming to float in front of its business end.
WHAM-WHAM-WHAM! The craters that followed every wild swing Akane made with the mallet, barely seeming to feel its undoubtedly awesome weight, hissed with material hit so hard it sublimated. Not that they hit Ranma, but they got close, to the point that the shockwaves buffeted him, jerked him back, kept him off balance - another strike and he'd be a meat mochi.
The next strike never came, though, because Makoto zapped Akane with a big ol' lightning bolt (Vajra Eternal! She shouted, and Ranma thought that was a pretty good name for an attack), leaving Ranma just enough space to wheel-kick Akane's legs out from under her. Momentum brought her forward, and then a snap-kick sent her careening back-
Straight into Ukyo, who had just begun to rise. He almost felt bad for his childhood friend; then he remembered that she'd willingly shacked up with a demon and felt less bad.
Well, three for three. Makoto projected some kind of thundercloud around the two, Ranma stepped forward-
And then Akane grabbed his wrist and broke it.
Urd knew gravitic magic when she saw it - a divinity or infernality of any sort could hear YggCode straining to process one of the Four Great Branches being bent into a shape it didn't like, the roaring of the Great Tree's reality straining to keep up the wishes of the command line.
She was less certain how to counter it.
Concrete was rendered so much dust beneath her feet as Mara engineered a naked singularity just four floors below them, the entire top ten floors ripped into dust, then plasma, then nothing but a bunch of coalescent quarks attoseconds away from winking out of existence. Urd pulled up, trying to ignore the screams of obliterated souls who had been sleeping peacefully just moments before - wait.
It was a cheap trick, but fine. She spoke in code as Mara cackled with manic glee, trying to channel the newly dead to her - felt their pain - lived with it:
"I WILL GRANT YOU PEACE ETERNAL IN NIRVANA. I WILL PASS YOU BEYOND ALL AMIT-DEVOURERS AND HEL-CHAINERS. NO UNDERWORLD OR RECORD WILL RESTRAIN YOU BEFORE YOUR INFINITE PASSING. I WILL GRANT YOU REINCARNATION AS A VIRTUOUS THING, AS YOU HAVE ALWAYS HOPED. STRIKE THE ENEMY OF ENLIGHTENMENT FOR ME, AND ALL THESE THINGS I WILL DO FOR YOU."
The newly formed ghosts, unsure of themselves, already clustered around Urd's form, obliged.
Glassy projectiles, they were, points of phantasmal light, fear and hate around a stormy core of pain - they smashed into Mara instantly. The mini-black hole that had taken them before they avoided, looping around, bypassing Mara's magical shields, digging into her like bullets before dissipating, Death, sister of Dream, having already claimed them and raised them beyond the Ygg.
Mara, for her part, just gasped for breath as she tried to reclaim the parts of her divine soul the ghosts had taken with them - and then it was Urd's turn to wince as she felt something in her patron break.
Ranma couldn't do much at that point except scream, as Akane twisted his bones into fracturing, then fragmenting, ki flows in his left arm dissipating as muscle was pulped and bruises swelled up. Akane sucker-punched him, and he had no protection - his nose caved in, blood poured from his forehead. She cocked her fist back for another one, but never finished, because then Ukyo whanged her over the head with the flat of her spatula, and she did the little Rumiko Takahashi finger thing and dropped.
Yeah. Ukyo. Who just looked at him, not at Jupiter, not even Akane, with the saddest look he'd ever seen on her.
"Buddha on a bicycle," she said. "This ain't worth it."
"What isn't worth it?" Jupiter said. Ranma, for his part, was trying to reset his mangled forearm, breathing heavily, trying to sync his ki flows again
"Kickin' Ranma's ass," Ukyo said, struggling to stay upright. "All I wanted for you was to not leave me, Ranchan. I don't think that's hard, is it?"
"I-"
"An'-" She recovered a bit, her Osaka-ben leaching out of her speech with every breath "And you keep doin' it, Ranchan. I'm not sure if you just cain't tell I love you, and that Shampoo loves you, and that Kodachi loves you in her batshit insane way-"
"Oh come on, she can't even tell that my girl form is-"
" Let me finish you raggedy-ass sunnuvabitch ."
Ranma stepped back. Akane rose again, only to be met with a casual thunder blast from Jupiter. If he could just get some healing magic or whatever from Urd - he'd done his best to short out his pain centers but that was a temporary fix at best.
I'm a little busy fighting a demoness right now! Finish your end of the bargain and do the palm thing again!
He tried to set it, running his free hand over various pressure points - and that just made the pain spike back up as bones shifted. He yelped.
"Damn," Ukyo said. "I was about to say Akane loves you too, but if she really did just break your entire forearm."
"It's fine. I'm fine."
"You're not fine," Jupiter cut in. "I'll call in backup, get someone who knows healing magic-"
"Like hell !" Ukyo spat back. "This whole affair has already gone tits-up, last thing I need is for another one of you Senshi types to barge in and misunderstand everything! This is between me and him ! You've known him for a few hours at most, I've known him since I was six !"
She sighed, but Jupiter did back off a bit. "Look, Ranchan, we - none of us were brainwashed or nothin' into doin' this. Even Akane, sweet little Akane-"
"Signed up because she wanted to beat me for once?"
"Nope! Wrong-o, Ranchan! Because she loves you too ."
"What?" What? Seriously, what? "Aw, c'mon, there's no way! That-"
"Yep. For a guy who spends half his time in girl mode, you sure are blind to a woman's feelings, aintcha?"
"But - for fuck's sake this doesn't make any sense! Why come in and beat me up just 'cause I left? Actually, why sell your soul or whatever to some-"
"Actually, Akane was supposed to carry all those ofuda so we could beat Mara - yeah, I know, the demoness, right? - later. Guess she forgot the plan. We all got a little carried away, I guess. Especially after seeing you elope with not just a goddess, but some other woman. I think that's a perfectly sensible reaction, Ranchan."
"E-e-e-elope?" Wow, he'd never seen Jupiter - Makoto - go that red that fast. "Now you just wait a minute, you - you - you Kansai crazed weasel! We - we weren't going to go that f-f-far! Not yet!"
"Fine, fine, whatever. But you get the point?"
"Yeah," Ranma hissed, "I get it. Akane's like that all the time, y'know, seeing' me and gettin' the wrong idea-"
" I DO NOT!"
WHANG . "A-ny way. This has gone too far, and it ain't teachin' ye nothin'." She sighed. "If you'd known - would you have still run?"
"I, uh-"
"I'm not givin' up here, Ranchan. Shampoo ain't givin' up. Akane ain't givin' up. Honestly, I think we can all agree that you need an' attitude adjustment 'fore you start breakin' a Sailor Senshi's heart an' end up as a pink mist. You buyin' what I'm sellin'?"
"How about you use some of that demon magic to fix what's left of my arm? Then we can-"
"Fuck off, dude." She spread her arms wide.
"You've still got a good arm, doncha? To do what you need to do?"
It was one stupid mistake. She'd been so busy trying to keep Mara on her ass she'd forgotten about her own link. Not that Ranma having his arm broken wasn't some sort of equivalent pain, but the knowledge of what it meant - that one of Mara's Tethers was way stronger than she appeared - that was enough to throw her off balance-
And take a wheel kick in the ribs from Mara.
She barely had time to register the demoness's enraged form accelerating towards her before she was launched back another block; then Mara caught up to her, belted her in the upper chest with force only Hild could be giving her (don't think about the implications of that just focus on the fight just stay in it-), and it was two blocks; then a double-fist blow to the gut, and it was five.
She barely had enough conscious power to notice that Mara had severed both her Tethers, cold comfort that was.
Ranma hesitated. Ukyo holding herself out, waiting to have magic stripped from her - he'd never expected that.
Wasn't there supposed to be a fight? Why not a fight? Why the hell was Ukyo holding back? There was no way he - she - did she really? But they were best friends, how could-
She collapsed then, purple fire pouring off her like a rising shroud. Akane shuddered, her own outfit morphing back into something more casual (plus the ofuda still poking out from under her collarbone).
"What the hell was that?" Makoto said. "Did they just give up? There's no way that demoness would-"
The last window broke inward as a prone figure, clad in royal purple, hair neutron-white, something like blood but a richer red, shot through, carving a rivulet in the floor where she ground to a halt.
"Urd!" Then he looked up, saw the other figure - the one whose aura blazed with singularity-black like a monolith. He knew who she was. "You!"
"Yeah," the demoness husked. " Me ."
She advanced. "You know, despite the fact that my ass just got whooped by your so-called patron, I'm having a pretty good day."
"How's that?"
"Well, I finally beat some sense into my dearest, oldest friend, here. You know. Urd. Sad little girl." She grinned wider, predatory. "All past. No future."
"Wait." That didn't make sense. "Friend?"
The demoness cackled. "O-ho! She never told you? Manifestation of the Root of the Yggdrasil. Good and Evil at once. Oh, but she didn't use to be that way, see? When your mother is Hild, First of All Fiends, that's inevitable."
"Wait, what?"
"Stop gaping, you dumb shit. Your patron's half-demoness. And no matter how hard she tries to hide it, patch it over with those saintly sisters she's got, she's always gonna be one of us."
She raised out a hand - tendrils of something reached out to Urd -
"I'm just accelerating that process."
Ranma stepped forward - he didn't know what he was doing - but goddammit, even if he didn't have enough ego left for a Moko Takishiba he had to do something -
And then he stopped.
It was that same feeling as before. He looked to Jupiter - no, Makoto. Felt something big building inside of her.
"Like hell you will."
Mara cackled again. "Hell? Hell? Kid, whoever you are, hell and back's my prime modus operandi, hell's my main location, my source of depravation, my-"
"Stop fucking rapping."
Mara stopped.
Makoto made a motion with her hands, both sets of fingers in what we might term 'the horns', swirls of electric fire swirling around her gloves, building around her waist, lifting her up - who was singing? Something building.
"Learn this, Demoness:"
"By the Warpfire of Io! By the Fathomless Tethys of Europa! By the Asphodels of Ganymede! By the Broken Swords of Callisto! Jove - mightiest of all the worlds - I call upon your power! Fill me with the force of your storms eternal! GREAT - RED - SPOT!"
And then, dear reader, everything went boom real good.
She'd felt Mara before she saw her, but then again, Mara wasn't exactly hiding. Four Tethers - a cruder form of demonic contract - all off back at Peorth's penthouse. Tethers weren't much more than a bastardized empathetic link you could send mana down given certain preset triggers, and oh boy was Mara pumping dark mana down these puppies, like turds down toilet bowls really. She flew up to meet her archnemesis and former fuckbuddy-
"Hey! Urd! What is up , babe! Purgatory treating you good?"
Only for Mara to meet her, swooping down, so the two were just there , floating above the Tokyo streets.
"Oh," Urd drawled, not even bothering to keep the loathing out of her voice. " Hey . What's going on , you titless tsundere twat."
Mara was wearing… gold chains? And leather? And a poofy-ass rapper coat? It did not fit her. At all. "Damn, you just get out of fashion police prison?"
Mara cackled. "Eff-why-Information, this is what the Americans call 'swiggity swooty'. Hippest thing on the East Coast. See, after Hild kicked me up Midgard way again, I figured-"
"Goddamit, Mara," Urd barked. "I care about American pop culture bullshit as much as I care about whether or not Mimir's rotten cock will ever be stiff again. Okay? You already told me what your dumbass plan is, I can deduce the rest."
She channeled up a ball of Aesir-fire. "You and Hild better leave this one well alone, or I will pulp you so hard you'll drip all the way down to Nidhogg. Got that?"
Mara just cackled harder. "Alright, alright! That's what I'm talking about! I've been itching for a good fight ever since Hagall kicked both our asses with that hypnotic stuff. A good ol' magical slugfest, level a continent or two."
"Only," Mara said, flipping around so she faced forward, leering, "You aren't really allowed to do that anymore, are you? Goddesses don't play that kind of hardball. Even if Belldandy's gone, you've still got regs to follow - they take the collateral damage out of your broke ass - they didn't give you a whole lot of magical energy to work with, did they? Meanwhile - well, Hild was really interested in your shenanigans."
"Shenanigans?"
"Come on , Urd. Taking some helpless little boy, dragging him away from his family, and pretending you're a responsible guardian? Acting like you're a real grown-up when all you can do by definition is live in the past, milking the ever-full teats of nostalgia?"
"Did Hild give you that line? Because you've never been smart enough to work metaphors like that."
"Not the point, girlfriend! The real point is, if you try to take me head on, you're gonna run out of good-guy magic faster than you can say 'Looks like Team Rocket's blasting off again'. So just give up the contract - I can even say to your mom that-"
Urd let the Aesirfire rip.
It smashed into Mara and detonated in less than a millisecond with enough explosive force to shatter the windows of the neighboring buildings for a block. Urd pulled up, channeled more Aesirfire, and threw it squarely into where she assumed Mara was-
THRRRRRWWWWWOOOOOMMMMM.
The beam of Helfire, a violent strobing purple mixed with black-hole black, grazed Urd, then hit her square in the chest. It would have pulped any grade of kami, and left a nasty wound on a lesser-licensed god, but Urd was a fucking Norn, and you didn't hurt one of those so easily.
She flew back, through shattered windows, zipped past an entire floor of some office building still populated with half-dead salarymen, flew out the other side, and then finally stopped.
For what felt like a million years (she knew what that felt like, being an archetypal Jungian past-mistress), time stood still.
Then Mara bitchslapped her hard enough to send her flying off in another direction.
No one moved. No one could .
It was as though the world outside had dropped away, the skyline and the outer borders of the apartment engulfed in rainbow-silver fire that dropped away to an endless starfield, the night sky behind it glowing an oceanic blue. Ranma willed his body to move, to get just a single skeletal muscle to contract, but it was useless. The energy inside his body was no longer his own - it was a tributary stream feeding into a river of pure will.
Her will.
It was hard to look at Makoto, or the thing that had her shape, and that had taken her place. Her silhouette filled with pulsing rainbow light, streaks of silver-white and hypersaturated color swirling around each other, intertwined like jet streams. Shaping hard lines of neon green and silver light into - something -
Oh. Holy Shit .
Green short skirt which billowed dramatically. Long green high-heeled boots that climbed up to the thigh. A white seifuku blouse hugging her voluptuous figure, as if daring the viewer to look but don't touch. Sleek white opera gloves with green trim. Her chestnut hair hitched up into a high, flowing ponytail.
By the time her form had solidified back into a human it was all clear. By the time Ranma could open his mouth, the first thing he said was "Oh, so you're Sailor Jupiter. Man, that explains so much, but-"
"DIE, YOU FUCKING SLUT!"
Kodachi's ribbon-whip lashed out at hypersonic speeds, faster than Ranma could move to stop her. He'd seen what that thing could do when she really put force into it, slice through solid concrete and rebar like it was nothing, and the last thing he wanted was for Makoto to-
Sailor Jupiter caught the ribbon. Let it wrap around her forearm, thwip-thwip-thwip . Grabbed the ribbon with one hand-
And Jupiter yanked Kodachi toward her, then smashed her down into that one glass table hard enough to smash it.
Ranma would have snickered, because it was kind of funny seeing the Black Rose, agile as she was, impact a hard surface face-first.
He did not, however, have that kind of luxury, because he was too busy dodging Ukyo's spatula-blade whistling towards his torso hard enough to nonconsensually harakiri him. And after that, things weren't any better, because the next thing coming towards him was the other end of it as Ukyo flipped her weapon around to conk him in the skull.
He caught that. Forced it down, feinted to try to take it for himself. He didn't, though, because after that it was Shampoo's maces swinging in fast to cave in his ribcage. He blocked one with a kick, let go of Ukyo's weapon, then spun around to press the attack on Shampoo-
Only for Akane's right arm to close around his neck and pull .
He couldn't breathe! Shit! Shit! Shit! Fuck! "Agaknegghhh-"
"Don't move, Ranma!" She shouted into his ear. "If you just pass out we can get this done with a minimum of fuss!"
That wasn't how choking worked! At this rate his voicebox would give in, cartilage all smooshed inward, and he'd be dead for sure! Urd! Urd, come on! Urd!
Nothing-
At least, until Jupiter picked up the prone Kodachi and chucked her, missilelike, straight at Akane.
The Black Rose beaned the Tendo girl good, her head bonking into Akane's head, and suddenly Ranma was free, free to donkey-kick Akane away, then duck under Shampoo's one-two swings, then over Ukyo's cutting sweep. He landed on her spatula, used it to push off, boop himself up to the ceiling, then sprung down to divekick Ukyo good. He hit - Ukyo tried to turn him away with her spatula, but he'd aimed higher than she thought.
Bam! Right in the head! Fast and hard enough to bowl Ukyo over, quick enough that he could recover, break into a roll, and leg-sweep Shampoo before she brought her maces down on Jupiter.
Only, Shampoo was faster than that, or rather her first attack had been a feint, because she dodged out of the way, planted her feet, and brought her maces together, with Ranma's head right in the middle.
KTHWAAAAAAANG!
Urd flew for a few blocks before stabilizing herself, managing to dodge Mara's next beam of Helfire, managed to throw a few lesser bursts of Aesirfire her way. Not that they did anything - Urd had the sinking sense Hild had coked up the demoness on mana before sending her into the field, and the reinforcing feedback loop of the Tethers would only keep her net energy pretty high.
On the other hand, if she could channel a purification spell Ranma's way, that would do something . Cut the tethers, take on Mara naked (heh). Exhaust her, then exorcise her.
She just had to keep the demoness occupied.
"Come on !" Mara shouted from a block away, Hellfire flickering around her puffy coat. "You and me, Urd! East Coast versus West Coast! The way it was supposed to be!"
Urd rolled her eyes so hard you could see it from space. "So in this metaphor, am I east or west?"
"Bitch please! I'm the one with the Biggie coat!"
"How many times do I have to tell you I don't follow American pop culture . What," Urd smirked, as best as she could underneath a rapidly bruising face, "you gonna whip out some kind of hip-hop-meets-enka hybrid to whoop my ass?"
"Like hell !" Mara growled. "A, I didn't bring a walkman, and B, I'm gonna drag you back down to Niflheim without any gimmicks this time! Pride's on the line, see!"
"You? Pride? You lost your pride when Siddartha went all get-thee-behind-me on you wayyyy back when." Urd's smirk became a grin. She was in her element. "Or are we trying to bury the past just so I can dig it up? Because baby, you know I'm good for that-"
" DIE, YOU FUCKING SLUT! "
Mara let loose another blast of Helfire. One that, this time, Urd saw coming, and shot out of the way.
Yeah. She could work with this. She just needed time.
Oh, shit .
Makoto whirled around just in time to see Ranma's skull get two spheres of solid steel squish it but good. He didn't look dead, mind you, there was only a minute amount of blood spurting from his ears after the attack.
But like hell she was going to let these fiance-ass skanks ruin her date and take him.
Yeah. Her Ranma. That felt right. Felt warm.
Shampoo drove her knee into Ranma's gut, turned a knee into a foot, kicked him hard enough to blow him back a few meters into the opposing wall. For his to-be bride, she was pissed, wasn't she? Even the spatula-scythe girl let out a little gasp and ran over to Ranma.
Well, Makoto thought, as she called upon the infinite fury of the Jovian Storms, she was about to be even more pissed.
Because all the Sailor Senshi had been training in their respective magic arts since Galaxia, learning how to cycle the near-infinite mana pools of the planets they had once been the princess-gaurdians of.
Because Makoto knew what Jupiter was - it was an eternal storm, an eternal mass of thunderfire.
Shampoo barely had time to pivot and do the same to Makoto when the Senshi's battle aura lit up again, an incandescent pulse of electromagnetic energy that blew out every power system in the building. This only stunned her, gave her a bit of a headache - the chosen heir of the Chinese Amazon arts was made of tougher stuff than that.
She was not, however, made of tough enough stuff to resist Makoto making a sort of horn-sign with her left hand and shoving her outstretched fingers squarely at her.
They didn't hit. But they didn't need to.
The name of the attack was "Thunder! Plasma! PULSE!", after all.
Skra-ZAK! Shampoo took only a megawatt of direct electrical energy to her body, but the remaining terawatt or so wasn't meant for her, it was meant to create a meter-wide electrothermobaric pulse in midair, a blast of plasmarized air strong enough to crumple steel which smacked into the girl just below her neck, giving her a case of whiplash strong enough to send her tumbling head over heels to smash into the TV, destroying it utterly.
That barely kept Shampoo, down, though, and now Makoto sensed Kodachi's shadow-whip whistling up behind her to cut her carotid open - had she really untangled herself from that Akane girl so quickly? - and had to dodge, fast, right into the purplette pushing herself off the TV for another double head strike.
She took the attack, felt even her magically reinforced forearms groan and bruise against the two orbs, then pushed back, backflipping to bring her foot up into Shampoo's chin - then down onto Kodachi's head, only for the Black Rose's whip to grab her ankle and throw her off balance in midair.
"Ha!" Kodachi shouted as Makoto came crashing down to the floor, too fast to manifest a plasma-pulse thruster to rebalance herself. "Turnabout is fair play, says I! And now-"
"CHESTNUT-GRABBING RAPID FIST!"
She never got to finish that line, because the next thing that came her way was Ranmas fists going at like 650 PPM (Punches Per Minute), quick strikes slamming into Kodachi before she could so much as dodge away.
"-And now, the conclusion!"
And then a palm strike that seemed to blaze with white fire, right into Kodachi's face. It impacted harder than a three-inch strike like that had any right to, as something shadowy and barely tangible gushed out of the side of Kodachi's face. Makoto reached out her magical senses to the stuff as it ran out of the girl like smoke from a fire, felt something nasty and demonic, recoiled, and spun around to take the next attack-
Urd saw Mara cringe as one of her Tethers was cut - it never was a nice feeling, mana rebound. For her part, she felt a little better, being able to get rid of one little nuisance.
But that joy was short-lived, because the next thing Mara did was attack her again, swooping in with royal-purple light pouring from her fists. Urd barely had time to dodge - and then didn't have any time at all.
She slammed into the roof hard , felt something shift in her ethereal pseudobiology that wasn't supposed to shift like that. Got up just in time to throw up a white-hot stellar plasma shield - Mara was many things, resistant to most magic, but there were some things in the physical world even she had to avoid or get fried by. The demoness pulled back, dropped down to the rooftop.
"Oh-ho," Mara drawled. "That actually kinda hurt a bit."
"Yeah," Urd spat back. "You know me - I always hurt. 'Specially the one time I bit your clit in Asphodel and we basically invented the period right there. Remember that?"
And the poor demoness's confidence dropped away - her hands shot to her crotch as if remembering it. "That's how this is gonna be, huh? Me trying to knock some sense into you - to bring you back where you belong - and you just remembering all the bad times? Never the good." Her eyes narrowed. "That's why everyone hates you, you know that? Everyone wants the past dead , because you just can't stop reminding them of everything that went wrong."
Urd shrugged. "Skuld's not much better, if that's any consolation. Got really into cyberpunk dystopias a few years back. Besides, how can you complain about the world sucking when you're the one who causes all the suckage? The ones who pervert desires and warp want until it's all tangled up in misery?"
Mara took a step forward. "You have no right to-"
"I do , Mara, and you know why? Because I could have been the worst kind of demon. I could have never set up the Nostalgia micropantheon, I could have just made everyone remember only the things they hated about themselves. And maybe I lean towards that? But I chose to go up there with the other Norns. I chose to stop screwing you regularly, and just screw you over, because you're boring , Mara, even more boring than Belldandy."
Mara took another step forward. Urd was past the point of giving a shit. If she just kept the Enemy Of Enlightenment angry, incoherent, she could win. "Absolute evil? Hild wouldn't tolerate it. She loves the trickster methodology, giving people just enough rope to hang themselves. Not just pave with good intentions, but bury alive. But you want everyone to suffer like cartoon characters, push the evil shtick hard, just so you can get a kick out of it, like pulling the wings off a butterfly. And honestly, both types of evil have been done to death! Human history's been nothing but a cascading chain of petty little boys just like you ordering the slaughter of hundreds, thousands, millions, because Hild whispers in their ear and gives them a boner and tells them 'this is good'!"
"That's not how it works. That's never been how it works."
"Really? Fine, then, prove me wrong. Talk me back into Hild's good graces, even if you're nothing more than her whelpy little puppet. Or are you going to go for the coward's way out?"
"Coward?" Helfire blazed up again. "I'll show you coward!"
From Akane, a ramming elbow into her ribcage followed by a reverse wheel kick. Makoto let the first elbow slam into her, surged mana, braced herself, then dodged the next strike and drove her fist into the ground just in time for Ukyo and Akane to double-team her.
"TESLA - SWARM!"
Lightning arced out around her, shaped itself into multi-megawatt blasts of ball lightning — one after another whistling around, then through her assiliants, pumping kilovolts of electricity through them before dissipating. Ukyo hit the ground and didn't get up - Akane, on the other hand, staggered, dropped to her knees, and managed to rise.
Holy shit . That girl was tough. Most of her outfit had been burnt away by the swarm, revealing - ofuda?
Son of a bitch , that was Rei's handwriting! No wonder magic wasn't doing much. Rei's wards could block the magical equivalent of a tank shell. If she could just get them off of her - or better yet, turn them on the girl to exorcise her demonic energies-
She didn't get time to think further than that, of course, as Akane lunged at her, lit aflame with dark matter. Punch, punch, kick, kick, elbow, headbutt. She wasn't fast, didn't even have a whole lot of technique, but there was no denying she hit hard enough to vaporize a normal human being. All Makoto could do was block, her forearms lighting up in pain every time a blow connected.
She needed a bit of extra firepower. But where was she going to get it from? Ranma? Yeah. Probably. Hopefully.
For his part, Ranma spent way too long looking at Kodachi's prone form, as her dumb black outfit dissolved into an even dumber black outfit that looked like normal materials, wasn't as dark as the space between galaxies or some dumbass metaphor. Did he do that?
I did that! Now you do the same palm strike on the others and you should be able to cut their Tethers! Do it now before-
Shit. Urd cut out again. Fine, then. Ranma swung around, ducked under Shampoo throwing one of her maces at his face, and swung around again to axe-kick Shampoo in the back of her knee - she stumbled, stood firm, then whirled around-
And blasted him with more dark energy, a mace head dissolving into a vantablack fireball.
Ranma didn't even have room to dodge, just took it as it passed through him, exploded inside him. It felt - for someone who had the words, it felt like someone had shoved a molotov cocktail lined with fissile plutonium into his guts. For Ranma, it just hurt . Hurt enough that he couldn't do much but drop to the floor and writhe, struggle against his body's own panicked responses as Shampoo sweep-kicked him in the ribs, then drove the stick end of one of her maces up into his jaw-
No no no. Fuck no-
And suddenly it didn't hurt, suddenly he had his ki flows working the way he wanted, and he was able to bat Shampoo's strikes aside with a micro-scale Moko Takishiba (he felt awesome ) - she fell off balance - and he rammed his open palm into Shampoo's chest, just below her neck but above her, e-hem, chest (he wasn't that stupid).
Again, Shampoo screamed, staggered back as something big and purplish-black streamed out of her body, first slow and thick then fast and steamy, gushed out of her body, as her goth-loli outfit with too much cleavage dissolved and as her regular dress was restored. She collapsed - tried to get up - failed.
Again, Mara cringed. Again, Urd shot up, manifested a whirling dervish of Aesirfire, let it coalesce around her fists, then shot down to sock the demoness right in her face. It worked - Mara screamed bloody murder, then shoved the half-goddess back with a knee to the gut, right in that bad spot she'd already been hit in.
But she wasn't doing so hot, herself, wiping her bloody face off with her sleeve (Urd, for her part, was content to just bleed a bit - it was a metaphorical bleed, anyway).
"I'm onto you," Mara hissed. "Keep me busy, cut my Tethers, suck me dry. Well, lemme tell you something, sister. I know you're spending more mana having your boytoy beat his little harem out of commission than I'm spending keeping them powered. You're going to run out of mana first. Just how the numbers game works."
"Oh?" Well, it was true, unfortunately. Whoever was on the other end of those tethers (harem? Must have been Ranma's fiances - she really should have seen that one coming) was giving almost as much as they were getting - of their own free will.
Mara's contracts were big investments most of the time - not here. They wanted to beat Ranma's ass and nullify the contract. If he or Urd fell, the other would be dragged down with them. Shit .
"Yeah. Unless - and I'm willing to get the shit kicked out of me for this - you gave in ."
"Oh?"
"Don't 'Oh' me, Urd," Mara said, hands spread wide. "You know what I'm talking about. Embrace the demon - the true daughter of Hild, spawn of Loki Lieson himself, the dark strangling monster that only fools call 'No Longer'. Let the hate flow through you and all that, and then you can whoop me as hard as you like." She grinned.
"Nahhhhh," Urd said, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her abdomen. "I can still tap into some demonic stuff, but go all the way, just to satisfy your sado-maso fetishes? Spare me."
Mara looked - hurt by that. Had she gone too far? Well, she'd thought that at first, but the fact that Mara had recovered and tried to go all Palpatine on her suggested not.
And then…
"Okay. Fine. I tried to be nice to you, you know that, Urd? There's still a girl deep down inside who really loves to play with humans, not debase herself before them. But I guess I'm not gonna get that now, am I? Wot a pity."
Without warning, Mara put her finger to the floor of the rooftop - and, in seconds, it ripped apart.
Ranma felt agitation over his telepathic link, maybe even fear, but he didn't have time to think about that, because Ukyo was starting to rise, slowly, painfully, and Akane had all but beaten down Makoto. He could see something else, too, flapping loosely from under Akane's outfit - ofuda?
Damn. The uncute tomboy had come prepared. He probably couldn't do that one trick with the palm.
He crossed what was left of the penthouse living room in three quick hops, careful to move silently - not that Akane was going to notice. Then, Ranma did something he was certain he was going to regret later - hands snaking up the back of Akane's dress, he grabbed as many ofuda as he could and yanked them out. Akane had probably stuffed some in her bra, but Ranma knew his limits.
Or, well, he didn't, because the moment he pulled them away Akane's battle aura - incandescent compared to the strength she usually operated at - blazed brighter still, and she turned on Ranma, screaming "PERVERT! PERV PERV PERVY PERV!"
"Well ex-cuse me !" Ranma said as he backflipped over Akane's blows, trying to snake around her so he could do the job again. Jupiter nodded - fine, he'd just be bait, then. "If I'm a perv, you're worse, wearin' stuff like that, aincha? You uncute unsexy sadomaso berserker!"
That set her off, and before Ranma could follow an opening in her guard with a microscale Moko Takishiba, her hammer - the one she'd only really managed to summon in moments of comic relief - materialized, blue hot fire screaming off its surface, the kanji for ' RANMA NO BAKA ' seeming to float in front of its business end.
WHAM-WHAM-WHAM! The craters that followed every wild swing Akane made with the mallet, barely seeming to feel its undoubtedly awesome weight, hissed with material hit so hard it sublimated. Not that they hit Ranma, but they got close, to the point that the shockwaves buffeted him, jerked him back, kept him off balance - another strike and he'd be a meat mochi.
The next strike never came, though, because Makoto zapped Akane with a big ol' lightning bolt (Vajra Eternal! She shouted, and Ranma thought that was a pretty good name for an attack), leaving Ranma just enough space to wheel-kick Akane's legs out from under her. Momentum brought her forward, and then a snap-kick sent her careening back-
Straight into Ukyo, who had just begun to rise. He almost felt bad for his childhood friend; then he remembered that she'd willingly shacked up with a demon and felt less bad.
Well, three for three. Makoto projected some kind of thundercloud around the two, Ranma stepped forward-
And then Akane grabbed his wrist and broke it.
Urd knew gravitic magic when she saw it - a divinity or infernality of any sort could hear YggCode straining to process one of the Four Great Branches being bent into a shape it didn't like, the roaring of the Great Tree's reality straining to keep up the wishes of the command line.
She was less certain how to counter it.
Concrete was rendered so much dust beneath her feet as Mara engineered a naked singularity just four floors below them, the entire top ten floors ripped into dust, then plasma, then nothing but a bunch of coalescent quarks attoseconds away from winking out of existence. Urd pulled up, trying to ignore the screams of obliterated souls who had been sleeping peacefully just moments before - wait.
It was a cheap trick, but fine. She spoke in code as Mara cackled with manic glee, trying to channel the newly dead to her - felt their pain - lived with it:
"I WILL GRANT YOU PEACE ETERNAL IN NIRVANA. I WILL PASS YOU BEYOND ALL AMIT-DEVOURERS AND HEL-CHAINERS. NO UNDERWORLD OR RECORD WILL RESTRAIN YOU BEFORE YOUR INFINITE PASSING. I WILL GRANT YOU REINCARNATION AS A VIRTUOUS THING, AS YOU HAVE ALWAYS HOPED. STRIKE THE ENEMY OF ENLIGHTENMENT FOR ME, AND ALL THESE THINGS I WILL DO FOR YOU."
The newly formed ghosts, unsure of themselves, already clustered around Urd's form, obliged.
Glassy projectiles, they were, points of phantasmal light, fear and hate around a stormy core of pain - they smashed into Mara instantly. The mini-black hole that had taken them before they avoided, looping around, bypassing Mara's magical shields, digging into her like bullets before dissipating, Death, sister of Dream, having already claimed them and raised them beyond the Ygg.
Mara, for her part, just gasped for breath as she tried to reclaim the parts of her divine soul the ghosts had taken with them - and then it was Urd's turn to wince as she felt something in her patron break.
Ranma couldn't do much at that point except scream, as Akane twisted his bones into fracturing, then fragmenting, ki flows in his left arm dissipating as muscle was pulped and bruises swelled up. Akane sucker-punched him, and he had no protection - his nose caved in, blood poured from his forehead. She cocked her fist back for another one, but never finished, because then Ukyo whanged her over the head with the flat of her spatula, and she did the little Rumiko Takahashi finger thing and dropped.
Yeah. Ukyo. Who just looked at him, not at Jupiter, not even Akane, with the saddest look he'd ever seen on her.
"Buddha on a bicycle," she said. "This ain't worth it."
"What isn't worth it?" Jupiter said. Ranma, for his part, was trying to reset his mangled forearm, breathing heavily, trying to sync his ki flows again
"Kickin' Ranma's ass," Ukyo said, struggling to stay upright. "All I wanted for you was to not leave me, Ranchan. I don't think that's hard, is it?"
"I-"
"An'-" She recovered a bit, her Osaka-ben leaching out of her speech with every breath "And you keep doin' it, Ranchan. I'm not sure if you just cain't tell I love you, and that Shampoo loves you, and that Kodachi loves you in her batshit insane way-"
"Oh come on, she can't even tell that my girl form is-"
" Let me finish you raggedy-ass sunnuvabitch ."
Ranma stepped back. Akane rose again, only to be met with a casual thunder blast from Jupiter. If he could just get some healing magic or whatever from Urd - he'd done his best to short out his pain centers but that was a temporary fix at best.
I'm a little busy fighting a demoness right now! Finish your end of the bargain and do the palm thing again!
He tried to set it, running his free hand over various pressure points - and that just made the pain spike back up as bones shifted. He yelped.
"Damn," Ukyo said. "I was about to say Akane loves you too, but if she really did just break your entire forearm."
"It's fine. I'm fine."
"You're not fine," Jupiter cut in. "I'll call in backup, get someone who knows healing magic-"
"Like hell !" Ukyo spat back. "This whole affair has already gone tits-up, last thing I need is for another one of you Senshi types to barge in and misunderstand everything! This is between me and him ! You've known him for a few hours at most, I've known him since I was six !"
She sighed, but Jupiter did back off a bit. "Look, Ranchan, we - none of us were brainwashed or nothin' into doin' this. Even Akane, sweet little Akane-"
"Signed up because she wanted to beat me for once?"
"Nope! Wrong-o, Ranchan! Because she loves you too ."
"What?" What? Seriously, what? "Aw, c'mon, there's no way! That-"
"Yep. For a guy who spends half his time in girl mode, you sure are blind to a woman's feelings, aintcha?"
"But - for fuck's sake this doesn't make any sense! Why come in and beat me up just 'cause I left? Actually, why sell your soul or whatever to some-"
"Actually, Akane was supposed to carry all those ofuda so we could beat Mara - yeah, I know, the demoness, right? - later. Guess she forgot the plan. We all got a little carried away, I guess. Especially after seeing you elope with not just a goddess, but some other woman. I think that's a perfectly sensible reaction, Ranchan."
"E-e-e-elope?" Wow, he'd never seen Jupiter - Makoto - go that red that fast. "Now you just wait a minute, you - you - you Kansai crazed weasel! We - we weren't going to go that f-f-far! Not yet!"
"Fine, fine, whatever. But you get the point?"
"Yeah," Ranma hissed, "I get it. Akane's like that all the time, y'know, seeing' me and gettin' the wrong idea-"
" I DO NOT!"
WHANG . "A-ny way. This has gone too far, and it ain't teachin' ye nothin'." She sighed. "If you'd known - would you have still run?"
"I, uh-"
"I'm not givin' up here, Ranchan. Shampoo ain't givin' up. Akane ain't givin' up. Honestly, I think we can all agree that you need an' attitude adjustment 'fore you start breakin' a Sailor Senshi's heart an' end up as a pink mist. You buyin' what I'm sellin'?"
"How about you use some of that demon magic to fix what's left of my arm? Then we can-"
"Fuck off, dude." She spread her arms wide.
"You've still got a good arm, doncha? To do what you need to do?"
It was one stupid mistake. She'd been so busy trying to keep Mara on her ass she'd forgotten about her own link. Not that Ranma having his arm broken wasn't some sort of equivalent pain, but the knowledge of what it meant - that one of Mara's Tethers was way stronger than she appeared - that was enough to throw her off balance-
And take a wheel kick in the ribs from Mara.
She barely had time to register the demoness's enraged form accelerating towards her before she was launched back another block; then Mara caught up to her, belted her in the upper chest with force only Hild could be giving her (don't think about the implications of that just focus on the fight just stay in it-), and it was two blocks; then a double-fist blow to the gut, and it was five.
She barely had enough conscious power to notice that Mara had severed both her Tethers, cold comfort that was.
Ranma hesitated. Ukyo holding herself out, waiting to have magic stripped from her - he'd never expected that.
Wasn't there supposed to be a fight? Why not a fight? Why the hell was Ukyo holding back? There was no way he - she - did she really? But they were best friends, how could-
She collapsed then, purple fire pouring off her like a rising shroud. Akane shuddered, her own outfit morphing back into something more casual (plus the ofuda still poking out from under her collarbone).
"What the hell was that?" Makoto said. "Did they just give up? There's no way that demoness would-"
The last window broke inward as a prone figure, clad in royal purple, hair neutron-white, something like blood but a richer red, shot through, carving a rivulet in the floor where she ground to a halt.
"Urd!" Then he looked up, saw the other figure - the one whose aura blazed with singularity-black like a monolith. He knew who she was. "You!"
"Yeah," the demoness husked. " Me ."
She advanced. "You know, despite the fact that my ass just got whooped by your so-called patron, I'm having a pretty good day."
"How's that?"
"Well, I finally beat some sense into my dearest, oldest friend, here. You know. Urd. Sad little girl." She grinned wider, predatory. "All past. No future."
"Wait." That didn't make sense. "Friend?"
The demoness cackled. "O-ho! She never told you? Manifestation of the Root of the Yggdrasil. Good and Evil at once. Oh, but she didn't use to be that way, see? When your mother is Hild, First of All Fiends, that's inevitable."
"Wait, what?"
"Stop gaping, you dumb shit. Your patron's half-demoness. And no matter how hard she tries to hide it, patch it over with those saintly sisters she's got, she's always gonna be one of us."
She raised out a hand - tendrils of something reached out to Urd -
"I'm just accelerating that process."
Ranma stepped forward - he didn't know what he was doing - but goddammit, even if he didn't have enough ego left for a Moko Takishiba he had to do something -
And then he stopped.
It was that same feeling as before. He looked to Jupiter - no, Makoto. Felt something big building inside of her.
"Like hell you will."
Mara cackled again. "Hell? Hell? Kid, whoever you are, hell and back's my prime modus operandi, hell's my main location, my source of depravation, my-"
"Stop fucking rapping."
Mara stopped.
Makoto made a motion with her hands, both sets of fingers in what we might term 'the horns', swirls of electric fire swirling around her gloves, building around her waist, lifting her up - who was singing? Something building.
"Learn this, Demoness:"
"By the Warpfire of Io! By the Fathomless Tethys of Europa! By the Asphodels of Ganymede! By the Broken Swords of Callisto! Jove - mightiest of all the worlds - I call upon your power! Fill me with the force of your storms eternal! GREAT - RED - SPOT!"
And then, dear reader, everything went boom real good.
The wait was worth it for that fight.
I can't help but feel like in that moment between her finishing her call out and everything exploding, time paused, and staring at Mara, either the "Surprise, Motherfucker!" or the "At that moment, she knew, she fucked up." audio plays. Then time resumes and everything explodes.
I can't help but feel like in that moment between her finishing her call out and everything exploding, time paused, and staring at Mara, either the "Surprise, Motherfucker!" or the "At that moment, she knew, she fucked up." audio plays. Then time resumes and everything explodes.
Doctor Blood
Immoralist
- Location
- Known Space
Your dialogue is excellent as ever. Ranma getting his arm fucking pulped was not fun to read, however. The brutality of that side of the fight feels a bit beyond the pale, given the source materials.
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- Location
- Massachusetts
Well, the girls are proving themselves ten times more toxic than Gemma himself. "Because we love you" my ass. More like "because we want to control you and everything about you".
Implied "and that means he's mine! Because having history with someone gives me ownership over him!"
When the chips are down and the worst came to pass, none of em ever stopped to think "Wait, is something wrong with me?" They just doubled down on martial power of all things by dealing with an actual demon who would only ever agree to a deal if it was a net negative for humanity.
Dump em. They deserve nothing good. Power to the deserving and all that. Possibly by pointing out to Akane that she's literally acting like every boy that tried to beat her up to date her.
Implied "and that means he's mine! Because having history with someone gives me ownership over him!"
When the chips are down and the worst came to pass, none of em ever stopped to think "Wait, is something wrong with me?" They just doubled down on martial power of all things by dealing with an actual demon who would only ever agree to a deal if it was a net negative for humanity.
Dump em. They deserve nothing good. Power to the deserving and all that. Possibly by pointing out to Akane that she's literally acting like every boy that tried to beat her up to date her.
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- Location
- Megatokyo
Do I seriously invite this sort of interpretation? Because I don't feel this way about the fiancé brigade. Like, I literally gave Ukyo that little monologue just to mitigate that impulse, just to show that the fiancés have a legitimate beef with Ranma. The girls are pretty direct, aren't they? And yet Ranma doesn't reject them, he just... strings them along. As Urd said so long ago, 'pick one and run'.
As for Ukyo knowing Ranma so long and that being ownership - that was not what I was going for. It's more her trying to fend off Makoto, who is just another woman trying to steal the love she wants so desperately but, you know, can't get.
Akane... Yeah, she got mad. Her particular Berserker way of doing things is... her thing. I couldn't figure out how to make it not sound psychotic, but in instances like these she wants to win. Not to beat Ranma forever, but just to beat him so he respects her. Did she go too far? Yeah. But that's Akane. I'm not going to say 'they deserve nothing good', because I don't believe that.
You know, I keep getting a) people really wanting me to take the RanMako ship to Moto Moto Rabu Rabu mode, and b) thrash the old girls entirely. And I can't quite bring myself to do that consciously, but I guess what I'm writing it comes across a bit more... unconsciously? That I want to try and author a clean break, even if I don't? Because I might have other story arc ideas, but none of them involve Makoto again, even if they should.
Well, I tell you what. I'm one chapter out from the end of this arc. So here's a challenge, Sufficient Velocity: think of another premillennial anime franchise (or Fate/Zero, since it takes place in 1994) where I could throw Ranma, Urd and Makoto in, and the net result would be wacky hijinx, where the three could have chemistry with each other and the franchise around them. Time travel is not necessarily off limits. If you all want more RanMako, then... give me a hand, will you?
- Location
- Argentina
Slayers.
I mean, just get Ranma a magic sword and he is ready to go.
Yes is another world but so what?
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9oo-ZPB5oI
- Location
- Montana
Its not you man, its the base material. Takahashi is a goddamn wizard at her craft and double and tripled coded that series to infinity and back.
I see Ramna as a lonely, honest, poorly socialized, teen boy. The one person on Earth that would have been better off if they were raised by wolves. He has no good role models to follow and an honestly felt fear that bodies could start hitting the floor if he does make a decision. The fact he isn't taking advantage of the situation to sleep with at least half of them puts him head and shoulders above most of his peers. Still an idiot though. Frankly asking him to resolve his romantic situation is akin to asking a primitive island tribe to build a working rocket.
Some of the girls may have had a legitimate beef...but every single one of them has poured so much of gasoline on this dumpsterfire that its hard to sympathize with any of them. Particularly when Makoto( The traumatized princess) is in the room.
As for Akane. Yea, you had to do it. Her showing her sweet side in that situation would have been insane, so you were stuck with the side Kasumi describes as a 'violent maniac'.
I say go big and old school. Maybe post-reunion El-Hazard for having a Mokoto Mizuhara/Ifureta paring to contrast against Ranma's romantic mess, or the Original Tenchi Muyo OAV series to just dump them into a different kind crazy.
BTW- I can totally see Ranma and Tenchi sneaking off to a ramen stand where they can commiserate about the chaos in their lives.
Doctor_Hayden
Plant-Katto
- Location
- Morioh, 1999
- Pronouns
- He/Him
On the topic of the fiance brigade, everyone else's made good points about how they're kind of handling this whole thing in the exact wrong way so as to lose any reader sympathy they might've garnered. Ranma's no saint- he's kind of an asshole, really- but the girls're genuinely kind of going too far at this point. And in all fairness I don't think his fear that they'd start killing each other if he picked one of them is completely unfounded, given that Shampoo comes from a warrior culture and the others all have X, Y or Z potentially-very-deadly martial arts style under their belt. EDIT: There's also the aforementioned, uh, everyone's-been-pouring-gasoline-on-the-bonfire stuff.
I'd also tacitly recommend avoiding Fate/Zero (aka the body horror and conceptual bullshit rabbit hole) and going for something with lore that's easier to parse, like Tenchi.
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Doctor Blood
Immoralist
- Location
- Known Space
I actually can't tell if you're being serious here. The girls got jacked on demon juice in order to kick his shit in; I would let this pass if the violence was a bit more looney-toons, as the manga often is, but you wrote some pretty visceral descriptions of violence and injuries there. Even if Ranma is a jackass in his interpersonal relations, this reads as a bit beyond the pale. I'm still excited for the next chapter, but things do feel a bit off here.
Had to laugh at that for a minute. I know what you mean, given the ridiculous difficulty in collecting and parsing all the relevant Nasu canon, but Tenchi Muyo is also a complete mess lore-wise with multiple reboots.
- Location
- Megatokyo
Yes. I cannot believe I didn't think of this before, doing an isekai arc. Could throw in Lodoss for a bit...
Have you ever read El-Hazard: Earth? It's really, really good, probably the best El-Hazard fanfic hands down. I have a soft spot for that series in a way I don't for Tenchi, so... yeah. We'll see.
I'm being serious but I get what you mean. I thought to myself I'd write some seriously down-and-dirty martial arts to contrast with the more loopy fighting of Urd and Mara, and then I wanted to slow Ranma down a bit, cripple him enough that he couldn't beat his foes so easily, and... yeah. I made a mistake. Not sure if I should rewrite the chapter... leaning toward no. The issue of fiancé likeability is of lower internal priority than just going full steam ahead and dialing back the violence in the future. Crud.
Here's a pretty important thing - Ranma did pick someone. After all, he went along with the wedding to Akane. You know, the wedding that Shampoo and Ukyo crashed to help stop from happening. Hey, Ranma only dodged straight up killing someone to save Akane by the fact that the guy he killed was a Phoenix and was reborn as a baby. He confessed to loving her when he thought he lost her. He accepted going through the wedding with her.
As for Ukyo? Sure, she knew him when they were six. But then he was completely out of her life for 10 years, and the next time they met, she wanted revenge. She changed her mind after losing a duel and decided to win him away from Akane by being the "cute" fiancee. After 10 years of not seeing him and hating him. "Since we were six" implies they're known each other for that entire time, not that they knew each other a few months and then nothing for a decade or so that she spent hating his existence.
Also, Ukyo was the one that said in this chapter that Ranma "eloped" with a goddess and someone else. Akane had the same general viewpoint back in chp 5. That's before we take the "ain't giving up" comments. After all, Shampoo and Ukyo blew up a wedding that they weren't the bride of because they're not giving up on Ranma. Ranma leaves to go on a training journey of sorts? All three get demonic power ups to beat up a goddess (and him) and bring him back, because they ain't giving up. It doesn't really engender sympathy.
Also, Ukyo was the one that said in this chapter that Ranma "eloped" with a goddess and someone else. Akane had the same general viewpoint back in chp 5. That's before we take the "ain't giving up" comments. After all, Shampoo and Ukyo blew up a wedding that they weren't the bride of because they're not giving up on Ranma. Ranma leaves to go on a training journey of sorts? All three get demonic power ups to beat up a goddess (and him) and bring him back, because they ain't giving up. It doesn't really engender sympathy.
To be fair, this isn't so much a problem with your writing to an extent, as the manga events combined with parts of this story don't lend themselves well to certain interpretations. Akane feels like a more fanon version of herself in the story (could be off there), but solving that would require going back to at least chp 5 and rewriting her some there (and maybe earlier, given Urd's decisions after meeting the fiancees).
So, overall, if you were aiming to engender some sympathy for the three fiancees, it doesn't feel like things were set up properly for it or executed well enough this time IMO. Something to work on in the future.
--
Do we need Makoto along or as a pairing, plot-wise? I mean, there's no ship like Friendship. It could be more interesting if she decided they should just be friends, and maybe revisit the idea of more in a few years after they've both matured more. And then she ends up being his "expert" on magical girls whenever he ends up on a quest/mission involving them, much to the amusement of her friends.
Pretty Sammy at some point? Get some magical girls and some Tenchi at the same time.