責任を取ってください
Jemnite
CVN-69 Fella
- Location
- 清源书院
Please Take Responsibility For the Child
An Old Traditional Looking House
I Honestly Have No Idea
See the Above Statement
I yawned again. Yeah, I don't think there's any point in getting up. If something needed doing it could wait for a day, right? I'm really tired, no point in rushing into things when I'm still really hurt from a fight.
I rolled over and went back to sleep.
"Ranma!" My instincts immediately pricked me, and I backflipped out of bed, just in time to avoid a bucket of cold water from pops. I sprung up to the ceiling, where I immediately snapped out both hands into the corner between it and the adjoining walls to hang spider-like and cast an immediate appraising look over my surroundings.
It was the same place that I had always woken up. The Tendo's spare bedroom, with our futons laid across the floor, mostly unpacked traveling packs stashed by the closet. There was a small window with a flower placed in front of it where the mornings light streamed in, and a small desk across the room in the opposite corner, with a tiny writing lamp. The same room I had always woken up in. With the same person I had always woken up with:
Pops.
"Wake up, you lazy boy!" Pops yelled, as he made another swipe with the water bucket, which I dodged again, dropping down to the floor and rolling between his legs. "It's time to go to school!"
He lunged at me again, and I punted the bucket upwards out of his hands while simultaneously extending a leg right in front of his toes. He tripped and fell over, gut-first into my balled up fist.
He wheezed as the air was knocked out of him. I, on the other hand, leapt up to catch the bucket in mid air before it could overturn and splash water all over us, landing conveniently on pop's sprawled out back. He wheezed again.
"School? What school?" I berated him, while dumping the bucket of water all over him. "Didn't you tell the school that we weren't going to be present while we... went off to....?"
My sentence petered off. I... I couldn't remember where I had been going with that. Had we been going somewhere? I had a vague feeling that I was forgetting something, but I couldn't really remember what it was.
The panda laying on the floor growfed confusedly, and then pulled out a sign to scribble something on it. When he held it back up again, it read "Boy, what are you going on about now?"
"I..." I honestly couldn't remember. What was it that I was forgetting? I wracked my brains yet again, but my memory was no more generous than it had been before. "I honestly can't remember."
It disturbed me a bit.
Pops looked at me concernedly. With another flip of his board and a scribble he said, "Boy, just go eat some breakfast. You seem out of it."
"Yeah," I responded, still half in thought. Yeah. Breakfast would probably help. Probably help clear my mind or something. A bit of food would help me think. "Yeah... let's go."
"...and so I told her- Ranma! Ranma, are you listening?" I blinked once at the mention of my name, then again at the recognition of Akane's voice. Oh right. Had she been saying something? Something about one of her friends... Yuriyura or something like that? One of those girls who had always sat next to Akane in highschool.
For some reason I couldn't stop staring at Akane like she was going to die. Everytime I looked at her, a huge gaping hole wrenched open in my heart, and all I could hear was someone saying "a martial artist's duty" in my ears over and over.
"Oh, right, is this about the dress?" I responded hesitantly, trying to figure out what she was asking me about. "The one you said was blue?"
"No, white, Ranma, white!" Akane corrected me, and then peered at me quizzically. "Actually, are you alright?"
"Huh?" I responded intelligently. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Great. Why're you asking?"
"You've barely touched your food," Nabiki pointed out from across the table. I looked down at my rice bowl. My chopsticks were picking at a single grain of rice laying on top of a mostly untouched bowl. I picked at it some more, and looked to my right to see pops sitting daintily like a proper neighbor and not at all stealing any of my food.
"Is something wrong with my cooking?" asked Kasumi. She looked at with me with an almost sad look. Her downturned eyes inspired fresh spears of guilt to stab into me, and I inhaled reflexively as my conscience started berating me all of a sudden."If there's anything you feel that's bad, just go ahead and tell me."
"No, no, nothing's bad!" I hastily denied. "Everything's great, just been a little out of sorts this morning."
I started vacuuming the rice up, and tried to ignore the aching feeling that was rising deep in my chest and stomach.
"...sweet maid- oofh!" Kuno grunted as I swept his legs out from under him while he was in the middle of his long flowery speech to Akane, with the posing and the flower and the sword and everything. As he went down, I punched him in the gut, like I did earlier with pops, and clutched his waist in a bearhug and suplexed him hard into the asphalt surface of the school, hard enough to crack it. As I touched the ground myself, I pushed myself back into the air with my hands, flipping and coming down in a brutal elbow drop.
Kuno went crack, and then his eyes rolled up, and he gurgled foam from his mouth. I stepped back and brushed my hands.
"Ranma...." Akane tentatively said. "Don't you think that was a little too harsh? I mean, it's only Kuno, but you went a little overboard with that, didn't you?"
"Hm?" I looked back and thought about it. It was... it was a little bit brutal when I thought about it. "I guess.... sorry, I guess I just reacted."
"Mou," Akane harrumphed. "Well, it's Kuno, so I guess I can't say anything too bad about it. I'm just worried that we won't be alright if we just leave him here."
"In that case," Nabiki piped up from behind us where she was eyeing the situation with an analytical look. "I can take him to the nurses office if you want."
"How much?" I shot back instantly in a dry tone of voice. I neither had the yen or the willingness to shell out for someone like Kuno.
"No charge," Nabiki replied with a smug, catlike grin, and I immediately narrowed my eyes suspiciously. That wasn't like her at all.
"No, really, how much?" I asked warily. There was no way I could ever trust on Nabiki to do anything for free.
"Nah," she said, already picking kuno off the ground and hauling him away. "Really no charge. Just consider it a treat for my amusement. I'm curious to see how far it goes."
I warily eyed her as she retreated with Kuno. If Nabiki was interested, it probably wouldn't end well. Nothing ever did with her involved. Of all the girls in my life she was undoubtedly the most heartless and the most cruel.
Well, whatever. I could figure out what her schemes were when it came down to it. I had more important things to worry about at the moment. Like why I had reacted so brutally to Kuno.
I looked down at my hands. I usually never overreacted with excessive force, instead just tailoring it short of where they wouldn't handle it anymore. It was both a part of my fighting style, and a way to test myself and keep my fights from ending too shortly. A brutal attack... the last time I had gone all out like that was again Herb, and I'm pretty sure I hadn't fought any superhumans recently.
Why would my instincts react like that to Kuno of all people? Who had I fought so that I was tensed up for a fight like that?
"Ranma, are you coming?" I looked up to see Akane beckoning me inside the building. "C'mon, the bell's going to ring soon."
"Oh, right." Yeah, I could dwell on things like that later. "Coming!"
I hurried inside.
We entered the classroom right before class was about to start. The students were milling about everywhere, gossiping about this and that, probably a lot of it about me. I didn't mind. It actually kind of felt good being the center of attention.
I slung my bookbag down by my desk near the back, and sat back in my seat. Next to me, Ucchan waved at me cheerfully. "Hi, Ranchan!"
"Hey Ucchan," I greeted her back, giving her a little wave and a smile. Ucchan's cool- probably my most favorite out of my fiancees. (Akane... is a weird subject, and I don't like to talk about it). "How's it going?"
"It's been going alright," she said. She brushed aside a lock of hair and asked me a question. "Hey, do you want to maybe come to my restaurant after school?"
"That'd be-" I paused mid sentence felt eyes staring at my back. Akane. I felt guilt crawling on my back all at once, "because of your selfishness- you dragged her into this- you always cause her pain- she died for your foolishness-"
"-it'd be not too good right now," I changed my answer. "Sorry, Ucchan."
"Oh." Ucchan's face fell and I felt bad, but I couldn't take it back now. She set to straightening out her book instead. "It's alright Ranchan."
As Hinako-sensei came in, I set to staring out the window, watching the clouds and daydreaming. My mind arranged the clouds into a picture of two men fighting. No, not two men- a god and a mortal man. One with the power of all the heavens, and one with only the power of a cold heart. They fought with staves, they fought with fist, they fought-
"Ranma Saotome!" A voice roared and broke my daydream. I looked out the window suddenly to see Ryouga standing there, umbrella in hand. "Because of you, I've seen hell!"
I watched him issue his challenge, and then looked around the rest of the room. Everyone else in the class was looking at me expectantly. I shrugged, and then opened the window. Stepping onto the ledge, I judged the distance.
Acceptable. I stepped off the window ledge and dropped.
Absorbing the impact first through my feet, I let the force of impact travel up up my knees and up my form, as I rolled and rose to a stand facing Ryouga. He-
Wait, wasn't he supposed to be doing something important? Why was he challenging me?
"Aren't you supposed to be doing something?" I asked him. "Like right now?"
It was with a staff or something? Ryouga gave me a puzzled look.
"No?" Ryouga sort of answered slash asked. "I don't think so...?"
That's odd. I remember. I told him to.... told him to turn something on?
"Look," Ryouga said with a suddenly concern expression on his face. "Ranma, are you alright? I can come back and challenge you at a later date if you're having some sort of trouble or anything."
Was I alright? Why was everyone so insistent on asking that question today? Was something wrong with me? I didn't think so.
"Look, I'm fine," I snapped irritated by his question. Why did everyone thing there was something wrong with me? "Are we going to fight or not?"
"Well.... if you say so," Ryouga shrugged, then raised his umbrella. I settled into a fighting stand as well, reading to take him on. "Ranma Saotome! Because of you I've seen hell!"
I tensed up, ready. Wait for it... wait for it....
"Prepare to die!"
I slammed Ryouga's face onto the ground, breathing heavily. One of the few rivals who could still give me a challenge. With a kick, I knocked his umbrella out of his grasp, and then twisted my weight to put him under an armbar lock.
"You done?" I gasped, watching him heavily.
"Yeah," Ryouga wheezed, himself out of energy. "I'm done, you won."
"You won."
"Cool," I let him go and leaned back, toppling spread eagle on the ground on the ground. In and out. In and out. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth to try to normalize my breath. "I don't know why, but today's been really weird."
"Yeah?" Ryouga asked. "You been zoning out or something? Weird flashbacks?"
"Yeah," I nodded. That was exactly it. Mostly about Akane, but I had the weirdest sense of deja vu throughout the whole day. "Everyone's been asking me if I'm alright."
"Maybe you aren't," Ryouga suggested. "Have you considered that? Often times, the person who can least notice their changes is themselves. What if they're the ones who see things as they truly are, and you're just deluding yourself?"
"I-" I started to respond, then paused, thought suddenly occurring to me. There was no way Ryouga was normally this eloquent. I knew the guy, he was sort of gentle, sort of gullible, but he didn't have deep philosophical discussions, and there's no way that he would even try to examine something beyond what they had told him. I snapped up to my feet in an instant, adrenaline suddenly flowing through my system. I settled into a loose stance, ready for a fight.
"Ryouga doesn't speak like that." I said softly. "Who are you?"
"Or does he?" The fake Ryouga asked. I approached him slowly, and he sat up and turned around to smirk at me. And I looked back into an all too familiar face. Cocky grin, bright blue eyes, skin slightly sun beaten by still fair and handsome, with a pigtail trailing down the back of his head like a battle trophy.
It was mine.
"What are you?" I asked, frozen. "A mirror clone?"
"No... not that complicated." He replied. "Do you remember what happened the last time you were in a fight? Do you remember who you were fighting against?"
Fighting against. There was a guy? Maybe? I seem to recall like a flash of red hair, and maybe some stupid yellow hair tails or something. Something vaguely like that. It was hot, too. I tried to remember the specifics, but the broad strokes alluded me. All I could remember was a sense of desperation and unease.
"No..." I answered. "I don't..."
"That's because you suffered a minor bit of brain damage." Brain damage? I must have let worry show on my face, because the other me immediately clarified.
"It was minor, you shouldn't have to worry about it," It assured me. "Complications won't show until you're far into old age. That is if they show at all. People get away with losing a lot more cells than that on a more or less regular basis."
"Alright," I accepted his words."Then who are you?"
"You can think of me, as your.... subconscious." I stood up, and against the backdrop of the school, suddenly the school seemed like a painted caracature of Furinkan rather than Furinkan itself. "In the words of an old discredited psychologist, you are the ego, and I, the Id."
"This place... isn't Nerima isn't it?" I got up too, hardness of breath suddenly gone.
"No." He agreed. "It isn't. It's just a visual representation for you, me, and the audience. A place where we sort of visualize things, and comprehend what your mind is doing to try to reconstruct what you went through. I'm not real. Either are you. This is just a fancy way of interpreting a dream."
What I went through. What did I go through? I fought a bird person... I think. Akane was involved, too. And... Ryouga? Mousse? They were fighting for something. We all were fighting for something.
"But... that's not quite important." My self described ID continued. "Walk with me."
And so I did.
"Your mind will reconstruct these settings on your own," He pointed at a slowly dissolving fence and a slowly dissolving building. "It's got high plasticity. You'll remember what happens probably no more than twenty minutes from now. You're here for another reason."
I walked across the bubbling sections where the road fell through into numbers and memories, hopped along fence ledges of knowledge and emotions. I walked with him until it grew dark all around us, and then there was nothing but a faint crying sound.
"You hear that?" He asked me.
"Yeah," I nodded my head firmly.
"That kid..." He said. "Is your responsibility. How about you go meet with him?"
I nodded, and walked off. I followed the sound of wailing, until my mirror copy was far gone in the distance behind me and walked until I saw a small dot of line burning. There was a boy, with red hair and yellow ahoge sticking from his long and wavy bangs. On his back he bore two feathery wings, and his clothes were fine and laced with gold thread.
He seemed to remind me of someone. For some reason I felt that I disliked them intensely. I tried to drag up their name for a second before failing and giving up.
"Hey kid," I said. I must have startled the poor kid because he almost leaped five feet into the air, and trembled at my approach. "You alright?"
"I- I- I-" He started, lower lip quavering. He tried to hold it in, I could see it in his face, but he failed at that. The dam broke, and he just started pouring all his troubles away. "I can't find her! It's so dark and scary! There no one to talk to! Someone keeps whispering in my year?!"
"Wait a minute kid, it's going to be alright, just calm down kid, calm down," I tried to calm him, and kept repeating comforting words until his babbling slowed to trickle, and then to a halt. "Now, you said something about a guardian?"
"Kiima!" He answered, quickly. "She takes care of me, and she makes sure the other don't yell at me, and she's always there and nice whenever my tutors bully me."
Tutors? I examined him again. He was probably some rich people's kids. Royal brat or something. The word king came to my mind briefly and I frowned. I'm pretty sure I had never liked kings, nor princes. Pretty sure there was a really important king I had had a fight with. What was his name again? I focused hard on that name.
"It's alright kid," I reassured him. "If you want, I can help you look for her. What's your name?"
"It's-"
With a sudden realization, and a flood of memories returning I suddenly remembered what had happened. A fight- a phoenix king- the tap!
"Saff-"
"Saffron!" I shouted, throwing off the covers of the old futon that whoever had rescued me had put me in. I leapt to my feet in an instant, and dashed out of the room in a blur of moment, knocking open sliding doors in a hurry. I was in a fight, just then! Like a second ago! Akane! Pops! My friends! The old ghoul! I had to make sure they were alright.
I smashed open the screen doors to the outside, and jumped onto the wooden porch, much to the surprise of two young women drinking tea on the porch. They leapt backwards with a shriek, but I ignored them. I had more important things to worry about. Bearing down the dirt path that led away from the house, I ran fast and hard, feet pounding hard on the ground- as hard as my heart was.
I sprinted through what seemed to be a small town at breakneck speeds, putting all of my muscle power to the test. I ran past startled farmers, people hard at work, traders in the marketplace, past all of them, until I reached a large hill, where I could scan the area for any signs of where I had held my big fight with Saffron.
Nothing.
Just fields for miles and miles on end. I sighed, and dusted off the old yukata that whoever had found me had given me to wear. Then I found a nearby stump, and just sat there, staring up at the sky, and breathing.
That's right- I remembered now. We have traveled to Jusendo, we had fought Saffron. I had fought Saffron. And in those final moments, I had made the decision, and been willing to sacrifice my life for the sake of my friends, family, and mentors. But... I hadn't died. And now, I didn't know what had happened to my friends.
Had I failed to actually stop him? Had my friends been killed, and I the only survivor because of some kind Samaritan who picked me up and took care of me? Or had I won and been so beaten up by the battle that none of my friends could find me, and only through luck was I saved.
I just didn't know.
I sighed in frustration, and kicked my feet up and down. Now they were all covered in dirt and mud and who knew what else. I should have found some shoes. Heck, I shouldn't have just out into the middle of nowhere in the first place.
I was there for a bit longer, before someone finally found me. It was one of the women from the porch that I had startled while rushing out of the house. She spotted me, and then hurriedly began jumping up and down excitedly at sighting me, calling for others to come.
She was yelling in a language that I couldn't understand- it definitely wasn't Chinese. It was at this point, it occurred to me that I might not have been in China at all. And if I wasn't in China, there in the world could I possibly be?
I sat there and waited, thinking better of running off. No point- I couldn't even understand the language. Besides, it left a bad taste in my mouth just running of on my rescuers. It wasn't like I couldn't just leave anytime I wanted, either.
I'd at least hear them out I decided.
It wasn't long until the other woman came trudging up the hill. She was supporting and old man limping along on a cane- I think I vaguely recognized him. He had yelled something at me when I had raced through the village and put out a hand to try to stop me or something. He had the look of a medicine man.
Maybe he had been the one who rescued me.
He limped up to me and said something that I couldn't understand at all. Urgh. This was rather annoying. I wish I could have understood what he was saying. I tried to mime back at him that I couldn't understand at all. The old man seemed to understand though, and motioned for me to wait for a bit.
Then he pulled out a brush and a vial of blue ink, and motioned to me to come closer to him. I think he wanted me to let him draw on me.
...eeeeh.
WHEN YOU VOTE DO NOT COPY THE WEIGHT PART OF THE VOTE
Do You Allow Him to Draw On You (He is trying to use a charm to instantly bestows you with knowledge of the language he is speaking. Accepting will let you learn the language instantly for 2 exp, but as you have 0 exp atm it will put you into exp debt)
[ ] Yes (Weight: 0.75x)
[ ] No (Weight: 1.0x)
What do you do whether or not you let him draw on you?
[ ] Write in
An Old Traditional Looking House
I Honestly Have No Idea
See the Above Statement
I yawned again. Yeah, I don't think there's any point in getting up. If something needed doing it could wait for a day, right? I'm really tired, no point in rushing into things when I'm still really hurt from a fight.
I rolled over and went back to sleep.
=][=
"Ranma!" My instincts immediately pricked me, and I backflipped out of bed, just in time to avoid a bucket of cold water from pops. I sprung up to the ceiling, where I immediately snapped out both hands into the corner between it and the adjoining walls to hang spider-like and cast an immediate appraising look over my surroundings.
It was the same place that I had always woken up. The Tendo's spare bedroom, with our futons laid across the floor, mostly unpacked traveling packs stashed by the closet. There was a small window with a flower placed in front of it where the mornings light streamed in, and a small desk across the room in the opposite corner, with a tiny writing lamp. The same room I had always woken up in. With the same person I had always woken up with:
Pops.
"Wake up, you lazy boy!" Pops yelled, as he made another swipe with the water bucket, which I dodged again, dropping down to the floor and rolling between his legs. "It's time to go to school!"
He lunged at me again, and I punted the bucket upwards out of his hands while simultaneously extending a leg right in front of his toes. He tripped and fell over, gut-first into my balled up fist.
He wheezed as the air was knocked out of him. I, on the other hand, leapt up to catch the bucket in mid air before it could overturn and splash water all over us, landing conveniently on pop's sprawled out back. He wheezed again.
"School? What school?" I berated him, while dumping the bucket of water all over him. "Didn't you tell the school that we weren't going to be present while we... went off to....?"
My sentence petered off. I... I couldn't remember where I had been going with that. Had we been going somewhere? I had a vague feeling that I was forgetting something, but I couldn't really remember what it was.
The panda laying on the floor growfed confusedly, and then pulled out a sign to scribble something on it. When he held it back up again, it read "Boy, what are you going on about now?"
"I..." I honestly couldn't remember. What was it that I was forgetting? I wracked my brains yet again, but my memory was no more generous than it had been before. "I honestly can't remember."
It disturbed me a bit.
Pops looked at me concernedly. With another flip of his board and a scribble he said, "Boy, just go eat some breakfast. You seem out of it."
"Yeah," I responded, still half in thought. Yeah. Breakfast would probably help. Probably help clear my mind or something. A bit of food would help me think. "Yeah... let's go."
=][=
"...and so I told her- Ranma! Ranma, are you listening?" I blinked once at the mention of my name, then again at the recognition of Akane's voice. Oh right. Had she been saying something? Something about one of her friends... Yuriyura or something like that? One of those girls who had always sat next to Akane in highschool.
For some reason I couldn't stop staring at Akane like she was going to die. Everytime I looked at her, a huge gaping hole wrenched open in my heart, and all I could hear was someone saying "a martial artist's duty" in my ears over and over.
"Oh, right, is this about the dress?" I responded hesitantly, trying to figure out what she was asking me about. "The one you said was blue?"
"No, white, Ranma, white!" Akane corrected me, and then peered at me quizzically. "Actually, are you alright?"
"Huh?" I responded intelligently. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Great. Why're you asking?"
"You've barely touched your food," Nabiki pointed out from across the table. I looked down at my rice bowl. My chopsticks were picking at a single grain of rice laying on top of a mostly untouched bowl. I picked at it some more, and looked to my right to see pops sitting daintily like a proper neighbor and not at all stealing any of my food.
"Is something wrong with my cooking?" asked Kasumi. She looked at with me with an almost sad look. Her downturned eyes inspired fresh spears of guilt to stab into me, and I inhaled reflexively as my conscience started berating me all of a sudden."If there's anything you feel that's bad, just go ahead and tell me."
"No, no, nothing's bad!" I hastily denied. "Everything's great, just been a little out of sorts this morning."
I started vacuuming the rice up, and tried to ignore the aching feeling that was rising deep in my chest and stomach.
=][=
"...sweet maid- oofh!" Kuno grunted as I swept his legs out from under him while he was in the middle of his long flowery speech to Akane, with the posing and the flower and the sword and everything. As he went down, I punched him in the gut, like I did earlier with pops, and clutched his waist in a bearhug and suplexed him hard into the asphalt surface of the school, hard enough to crack it. As I touched the ground myself, I pushed myself back into the air with my hands, flipping and coming down in a brutal elbow drop.
Kuno went crack, and then his eyes rolled up, and he gurgled foam from his mouth. I stepped back and brushed my hands.
"Ranma...." Akane tentatively said. "Don't you think that was a little too harsh? I mean, it's only Kuno, but you went a little overboard with that, didn't you?"
"Hm?" I looked back and thought about it. It was... it was a little bit brutal when I thought about it. "I guess.... sorry, I guess I just reacted."
"Mou," Akane harrumphed. "Well, it's Kuno, so I guess I can't say anything too bad about it. I'm just worried that we won't be alright if we just leave him here."
"In that case," Nabiki piped up from behind us where she was eyeing the situation with an analytical look. "I can take him to the nurses office if you want."
"How much?" I shot back instantly in a dry tone of voice. I neither had the yen or the willingness to shell out for someone like Kuno.
"No charge," Nabiki replied with a smug, catlike grin, and I immediately narrowed my eyes suspiciously. That wasn't like her at all.
"No, really, how much?" I asked warily. There was no way I could ever trust on Nabiki to do anything for free.
"Nah," she said, already picking kuno off the ground and hauling him away. "Really no charge. Just consider it a treat for my amusement. I'm curious to see how far it goes."
I warily eyed her as she retreated with Kuno. If Nabiki was interested, it probably wouldn't end well. Nothing ever did with her involved. Of all the girls in my life she was undoubtedly the most heartless and the most cruel.
Well, whatever. I could figure out what her schemes were when it came down to it. I had more important things to worry about at the moment. Like why I had reacted so brutally to Kuno.
I looked down at my hands. I usually never overreacted with excessive force, instead just tailoring it short of where they wouldn't handle it anymore. It was both a part of my fighting style, and a way to test myself and keep my fights from ending too shortly. A brutal attack... the last time I had gone all out like that was again Herb, and I'm pretty sure I hadn't fought any superhumans recently.
Why would my instincts react like that to Kuno of all people? Who had I fought so that I was tensed up for a fight like that?
"Ranma, are you coming?" I looked up to see Akane beckoning me inside the building. "C'mon, the bell's going to ring soon."
"Oh, right." Yeah, I could dwell on things like that later. "Coming!"
I hurried inside.
=][=
We entered the classroom right before class was about to start. The students were milling about everywhere, gossiping about this and that, probably a lot of it about me. I didn't mind. It actually kind of felt good being the center of attention.
I slung my bookbag down by my desk near the back, and sat back in my seat. Next to me, Ucchan waved at me cheerfully. "Hi, Ranchan!"
"Hey Ucchan," I greeted her back, giving her a little wave and a smile. Ucchan's cool- probably my most favorite out of my fiancees. (Akane... is a weird subject, and I don't like to talk about it). "How's it going?"
"It's been going alright," she said. She brushed aside a lock of hair and asked me a question. "Hey, do you want to maybe come to my restaurant after school?"
"That'd be-" I paused mid sentence felt eyes staring at my back. Akane. I felt guilt crawling on my back all at once, "because of your selfishness- you dragged her into this- you always cause her pain- she died for your foolishness-"
"-it'd be not too good right now," I changed my answer. "Sorry, Ucchan."
"Oh." Ucchan's face fell and I felt bad, but I couldn't take it back now. She set to straightening out her book instead. "It's alright Ranchan."
As Hinako-sensei came in, I set to staring out the window, watching the clouds and daydreaming. My mind arranged the clouds into a picture of two men fighting. No, not two men- a god and a mortal man. One with the power of all the heavens, and one with only the power of a cold heart. They fought with staves, they fought with fist, they fought-
"Ranma Saotome!" A voice roared and broke my daydream. I looked out the window suddenly to see Ryouga standing there, umbrella in hand. "Because of you, I've seen hell!"
I watched him issue his challenge, and then looked around the rest of the room. Everyone else in the class was looking at me expectantly. I shrugged, and then opened the window. Stepping onto the ledge, I judged the distance.
Acceptable. I stepped off the window ledge and dropped.
Absorbing the impact first through my feet, I let the force of impact travel up up my knees and up my form, as I rolled and rose to a stand facing Ryouga. He-
Wait, wasn't he supposed to be doing something important? Why was he challenging me?
"Aren't you supposed to be doing something?" I asked him. "Like right now?"
It was with a staff or something? Ryouga gave me a puzzled look.
"No?" Ryouga sort of answered slash asked. "I don't think so...?"
That's odd. I remember. I told him to.... told him to turn something on?
"Look," Ryouga said with a suddenly concern expression on his face. "Ranma, are you alright? I can come back and challenge you at a later date if you're having some sort of trouble or anything."
Was I alright? Why was everyone so insistent on asking that question today? Was something wrong with me? I didn't think so.
"Look, I'm fine," I snapped irritated by his question. Why did everyone thing there was something wrong with me? "Are we going to fight or not?"
"Well.... if you say so," Ryouga shrugged, then raised his umbrella. I settled into a fighting stand as well, reading to take him on. "Ranma Saotome! Because of you I've seen hell!"
I tensed up, ready. Wait for it... wait for it....
"Prepare to die!"
=][=
I slammed Ryouga's face onto the ground, breathing heavily. One of the few rivals who could still give me a challenge. With a kick, I knocked his umbrella out of his grasp, and then twisted my weight to put him under an armbar lock.
"You done?" I gasped, watching him heavily.
"Yeah," Ryouga wheezed, himself out of energy. "I'm done, you won."
"You won."
"Cool," I let him go and leaned back, toppling spread eagle on the ground on the ground. In and out. In and out. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth to try to normalize my breath. "I don't know why, but today's been really weird."
"Yeah?" Ryouga asked. "You been zoning out or something? Weird flashbacks?"
"Yeah," I nodded. That was exactly it. Mostly about Akane, but I had the weirdest sense of deja vu throughout the whole day. "Everyone's been asking me if I'm alright."
"Maybe you aren't," Ryouga suggested. "Have you considered that? Often times, the person who can least notice their changes is themselves. What if they're the ones who see things as they truly are, and you're just deluding yourself?"
"I-" I started to respond, then paused, thought suddenly occurring to me. There was no way Ryouga was normally this eloquent. I knew the guy, he was sort of gentle, sort of gullible, but he didn't have deep philosophical discussions, and there's no way that he would even try to examine something beyond what they had told him. I snapped up to my feet in an instant, adrenaline suddenly flowing through my system. I settled into a loose stance, ready for a fight.
"Ryouga doesn't speak like that." I said softly. "Who are you?"
"Or does he?" The fake Ryouga asked. I approached him slowly, and he sat up and turned around to smirk at me. And I looked back into an all too familiar face. Cocky grin, bright blue eyes, skin slightly sun beaten by still fair and handsome, with a pigtail trailing down the back of his head like a battle trophy.
It was mine.
"What are you?" I asked, frozen. "A mirror clone?"
"No... not that complicated." He replied. "Do you remember what happened the last time you were in a fight? Do you remember who you were fighting against?"
Fighting against. There was a guy? Maybe? I seem to recall like a flash of red hair, and maybe some stupid yellow hair tails or something. Something vaguely like that. It was hot, too. I tried to remember the specifics, but the broad strokes alluded me. All I could remember was a sense of desperation and unease.
"No..." I answered. "I don't..."
"That's because you suffered a minor bit of brain damage." Brain damage? I must have let worry show on my face, because the other me immediately clarified.
"It was minor, you shouldn't have to worry about it," It assured me. "Complications won't show until you're far into old age. That is if they show at all. People get away with losing a lot more cells than that on a more or less regular basis."
"Alright," I accepted his words."Then who are you?"
"You can think of me, as your.... subconscious." I stood up, and against the backdrop of the school, suddenly the school seemed like a painted caracature of Furinkan rather than Furinkan itself. "In the words of an old discredited psychologist, you are the ego, and I, the Id."
"This place... isn't Nerima isn't it?" I got up too, hardness of breath suddenly gone.
"No." He agreed. "It isn't. It's just a visual representation for you, me, and the audience. A place where we sort of visualize things, and comprehend what your mind is doing to try to reconstruct what you went through. I'm not real. Either are you. This is just a fancy way of interpreting a dream."
What I went through. What did I go through? I fought a bird person... I think. Akane was involved, too. And... Ryouga? Mousse? They were fighting for something. We all were fighting for something.
"But... that's not quite important." My self described ID continued. "Walk with me."
And so I did.
"Your mind will reconstruct these settings on your own," He pointed at a slowly dissolving fence and a slowly dissolving building. "It's got high plasticity. You'll remember what happens probably no more than twenty minutes from now. You're here for another reason."
I walked across the bubbling sections where the road fell through into numbers and memories, hopped along fence ledges of knowledge and emotions. I walked with him until it grew dark all around us, and then there was nothing but a faint crying sound.
"You hear that?" He asked me.
"Yeah," I nodded my head firmly.
"That kid..." He said. "Is your responsibility. How about you go meet with him?"
I nodded, and walked off. I followed the sound of wailing, until my mirror copy was far gone in the distance behind me and walked until I saw a small dot of line burning. There was a boy, with red hair and yellow ahoge sticking from his long and wavy bangs. On his back he bore two feathery wings, and his clothes were fine and laced with gold thread.
He seemed to remind me of someone. For some reason I felt that I disliked them intensely. I tried to drag up their name for a second before failing and giving up.
"Hey kid," I said. I must have startled the poor kid because he almost leaped five feet into the air, and trembled at my approach. "You alright?"
"I- I- I-" He started, lower lip quavering. He tried to hold it in, I could see it in his face, but he failed at that. The dam broke, and he just started pouring all his troubles away. "I can't find her! It's so dark and scary! There no one to talk to! Someone keeps whispering in my year?!"
"Wait a minute kid, it's going to be alright, just calm down kid, calm down," I tried to calm him, and kept repeating comforting words until his babbling slowed to trickle, and then to a halt. "Now, you said something about a guardian?"
"Kiima!" He answered, quickly. "She takes care of me, and she makes sure the other don't yell at me, and she's always there and nice whenever my tutors bully me."
Tutors? I examined him again. He was probably some rich people's kids. Royal brat or something. The word king came to my mind briefly and I frowned. I'm pretty sure I had never liked kings, nor princes. Pretty sure there was a really important king I had had a fight with. What was his name again? I focused hard on that name.
"It's alright kid," I reassured him. "If you want, I can help you look for her. What's your name?"
"It's-"
With a sudden realization, and a flood of memories returning I suddenly remembered what had happened. A fight- a phoenix king- the tap!
"Saff-"
=][=
"Saffron!" I shouted, throwing off the covers of the old futon that whoever had rescued me had put me in. I leapt to my feet in an instant, and dashed out of the room in a blur of moment, knocking open sliding doors in a hurry. I was in a fight, just then! Like a second ago! Akane! Pops! My friends! The old ghoul! I had to make sure they were alright.
I smashed open the screen doors to the outside, and jumped onto the wooden porch, much to the surprise of two young women drinking tea on the porch. They leapt backwards with a shriek, but I ignored them. I had more important things to worry about. Bearing down the dirt path that led away from the house, I ran fast and hard, feet pounding hard on the ground- as hard as my heart was.
I sprinted through what seemed to be a small town at breakneck speeds, putting all of my muscle power to the test. I ran past startled farmers, people hard at work, traders in the marketplace, past all of them, until I reached a large hill, where I could scan the area for any signs of where I had held my big fight with Saffron.
Nothing.
Just fields for miles and miles on end. I sighed, and dusted off the old yukata that whoever had found me had given me to wear. Then I found a nearby stump, and just sat there, staring up at the sky, and breathing.
That's right- I remembered now. We have traveled to Jusendo, we had fought Saffron. I had fought Saffron. And in those final moments, I had made the decision, and been willing to sacrifice my life for the sake of my friends, family, and mentors. But... I hadn't died. And now, I didn't know what had happened to my friends.
Had I failed to actually stop him? Had my friends been killed, and I the only survivor because of some kind Samaritan who picked me up and took care of me? Or had I won and been so beaten up by the battle that none of my friends could find me, and only through luck was I saved.
I just didn't know.
I sighed in frustration, and kicked my feet up and down. Now they were all covered in dirt and mud and who knew what else. I should have found some shoes. Heck, I shouldn't have just out into the middle of nowhere in the first place.
I was there for a bit longer, before someone finally found me. It was one of the women from the porch that I had startled while rushing out of the house. She spotted me, and then hurriedly began jumping up and down excitedly at sighting me, calling for others to come.
She was yelling in a language that I couldn't understand- it definitely wasn't Chinese. It was at this point, it occurred to me that I might not have been in China at all. And if I wasn't in China, there in the world could I possibly be?
I sat there and waited, thinking better of running off. No point- I couldn't even understand the language. Besides, it left a bad taste in my mouth just running of on my rescuers. It wasn't like I couldn't just leave anytime I wanted, either.
I'd at least hear them out I decided.
It wasn't long until the other woman came trudging up the hill. She was supporting and old man limping along on a cane- I think I vaguely recognized him. He had yelled something at me when I had raced through the village and put out a hand to try to stop me or something. He had the look of a medicine man.
Maybe he had been the one who rescued me.
He limped up to me and said something that I couldn't understand at all. Urgh. This was rather annoying. I wish I could have understood what he was saying. I tried to mime back at him that I couldn't understand at all. The old man seemed to understand though, and motioned for me to wait for a bit.
Then he pulled out a brush and a vial of blue ink, and motioned to me to come closer to him. I think he wanted me to let him draw on me.
...eeeeh.
WHEN YOU VOTE DO NOT COPY THE WEIGHT PART OF THE VOTE
Do You Allow Him to Draw On You (He is trying to use a charm to instantly bestows you with knowledge of the language he is speaking. Accepting will let you learn the language instantly for 2 exp, but as you have 0 exp atm it will put you into exp debt)
[ ] Yes (Weight: 0.75x)
[ ] No (Weight: 1.0x)
What do you do whether or not you let him draw on you?
[ ] Write in
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