"It changed me. I didn't really need to eat anymore, I just needed raw energy. Of course, I soon started loosing weight, but I found out it wasn't all that important afterwards."
"Oh? How's that?"
"Because of THAT!"
A cloud of electricity had gathered over Ranma's head, and suddenly the old man inverted his body's polarity. In a line so straight you could have mistaken it for a pillar of light in Heavens, Ranma was struck with a column of raw energy so pure you could almost feel it emanating directly from Kami-Sama.
"Now behold the might of Ranma Saotome, the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High!"
Akane moaned in disgust.
"And I thought my humour was bad."
oOo-
Akane was numb. Twin tracks of tears were flowing on her cheeks.
"You're holding a ghost, Akane. Now, I'd like to stay and chat, but the keeper of Midgard's door is looking for me. I wasn't supposed ta come back, y'know..."
Akane looked at him gravely.
"If that's the case, where's your halo? If you really were dead, you'd have something marking you. I can't see anything, thus you're not dead. So you'd better explain why you didn't come back to me as soon as you found a way to get younger again."
Ranma sweat-dropped.
"Errr... I forgot?"
oOo-
Garm, keeper of the gates between the Underworld, Niflheim, and the Earth, Midgard, was literally foaming at the mouth. One soul had escaped. That hadn't happened in millenniums, the last one to escape had been allowed to do so because the warrior it belong to was both protected by the gods and not really dead.
But that recent escapee had been dead, forgotten by the Earth, and his paperwork was ready! So, okay, it wasn't any other soul but one that belong to a god killer, with a lifespan of more than five hundred years, and who had been roaming the path to the Court of the Souls for almost two centuries since his death. Worse, he had already been as good as accepted in Asgard. So why did he escape?
A swarm of Valkyries and assorted norns ran past him again for the twelfth time today, crying "Ranma daaaarling/Husband/My dear Ranmaaaa/Hey my goodledipoo/My hero/etc./Take your pick".
Shrugging as much as a dog can shrug, Garm resumed gnawing on the bone Ranma had thrown him to distract him.
oOo-
Jusenkyo, the cursed training ground, had stood hardly disturbed for centuries now. The women of Joketsuzoku had finally been able to seal it away two weeks ago, with a strong repelling ward that would prevent any and all living being from entering. They had devised it, tested it, improved it, even asked several spell-casters to have a look at it and add their own formula, going so far as to create a community of people dedicated to improving it, testing beta versions of it... As it was, the formula was written on scrolls for records, but stored on an optical disk made of carbon crystal with a reflective surface made of pressed vanadium, protected under a titanium slice and kept preciously, and spread all over the world's FTPs under the label 'GPLreflectbar2.2final.tar.bz5'.
So why did an incredibly strong butterfly manage to enter it, raising no more than a small spark when it went past the invisible barrier?
Well, no code's 100 bug-proof...
(I'm sure I'll be flamed for that pun)
oOo-
Saying so, Shan Pu raised her voice, and claimed for all to ear. "I hereby name them allies of the Tribe, and no Outsider law may apply to them." Now back to So Pu, "here, happy?"
"Honored Matriarch, how could you do so!"
Reverting to her former position, Shan Pu raised her voice, and claimed for all to ear. "I hereby name them allies of the Tribe, and no Outsider law may apply to them." Now back to So Pu, "here, happy?"
So Pu sweat-dropped, and said "this is not exactly what I was asking..."
oOo-
"Hi Ranma, why, you don't recognize me? And I almost was your wife..."
"AAAARGH! MY EYES! MY EYES!"
oOo-
At that moment a huge snoring sound interrupted the reading.
"... fell asleep in court. Please wake him up."
The norn continued.
"On behalf of what, he will be accepted at Odin's table, provided he behaves himself and doesn't try to steal too much food off other people's plates, we've got enough feuds running as it is in this rowdy-"
"SNORE!"
The norn, exasperated, interrupted her reading again.
And pulled out a BFG10K-Mark 5.
"I'M AWAKE! I'M AWAKE!"
oOo-
Ranma, having woken up with a map and an address, decided to head for his room, lunch could wait. Finding strange that steam was wafting from under his room's door, he pushed it open...
"HIYAAAAAAA!"
"PERVERT!"
He hightailed instantly, chased by furious – and very underclad – norns and Valkyries.
Then he stopped, faced them, and started talking.
"Now that I've been admitted in Heaven, I can fulfill the ideal of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts. Wait and behold."
Focusing all his energy, his whole being at the same time everything and nothing, Ranma shouted loud and clear his status as heir to the Musabetsu Kakuton Ryu.
"SWEETO!"
oOo-
Author's notes:
There. I'm not sure if this is exactly the way I was intending to finish the story at first, though...
A long time wokring on this stuff, one little word after another. Damn busy, then writer's block... It always infuriated me to find a nice story, only to see it left unfinished. So since I'm not sure my inspiration will ever come back for this story, I decided to take it seriously for a few hours, tackled the burden and finished it in a semi-satisfactory way.
Only to notice that when you update an existing chapter in the update date doesn't change. Damn.
Now, since chapters dedicated to Author's notes are forbidden, I had the choice: either hope my fans (yeah, right) still check up on my stories sometimes, tempt banishment and make a AN chapter, or (gasp) indulge in a few omake.
I'll do it to this one alone, since TTWABr2 isn't finished yet. But as incredible as it may seem, I'm still working seriously on it, so you might expect a few chapters now and then.
And I think I'm pretty bad at omake anyway.
Mitch 74