Full circle 2
Ch1: Coming full circle
Ranma held his stance and steadied his breathing before once again breaking out into a highly complex weapon Kata. In his hands he held two long blades that whistled as they cut through the air and shimmered in the midday sun. Ranma back flipped, continuing his Kata underneath the great oak that lay in the center of grounds inside the peaceful monastery. Now in the shadows Ranma's blades no longer shimmered but pulsed with an internal light as they struck out at shadows. Impossibly, as the blades passed through the trunk and vast branches they failed to stir even a leaf. The blades blinked in and out of existence almost two fast to see leaving the oak untouched.
But then as the monks had learned nothing was impossible for this young man. The young man who had been staying at their monastery longer than most of them had been alive. Ranma continued his Kata uninterrupted, his blades becoming a double-sided axe with an accompanying shield. The change was a part of the Kata and the Grandmaster of Anything Goes thrived on change.
The pulsing blue weapons wielded by the Grandmaster changed again. This time to a set of knives as his Kata took him to the Air in what would have reminded all of his old friends, dead friends now of the airborne grace that was and still is the specialty of his style.
"Your control is improving Ranma as is your speed," an elderly spectator called out. "Though I must ask to what end."
Ranma landed lightly before the old man having finished his kata, "the perfection of the art is an end in itself. But I doubt that it can be perfected, even after so long I'm still changing and improving it."
A quick glance at the men surrounding the two quickly had them running off to what ever had them occupied before Ranma's spectacle, drawing some measure of privacy. "Even after so long you still draw the crowds, it's a wonder that we ever get anything done with you around," the old man sounded amused. "If only they had your focus, but then they are only human."
Ranma bit back a retort, it was still a sore point with him. He was still human, or considered himself to be, but to others he seemed immortal, ageless even god or demon like. In any other time he would no doubt have been worshiped and in some of the more remote area's he had visited he could have stirred up a following. Had he had the desire he could have, the price of this so-called gift he had been granted with had been too dear for him to even consider something so selfish.
Even thinking about doing something like that left the taste of ash in his mouth, besides he had seen the results of similar attempts to know that it was far from a good idea, he had put a stop to many of them himself. His immortality had cost him his life, sure he was still living but could he still call it life. He had no one to love, no family only his obsession with perfecting his art, an art that only he seemed to have the full knowledge of.
"You know full well that I am as human as you are, I just haven't passed on yet. Does the child think the old man isn't human simply because he has lived longer?"
"Yes but the child knows that he can look forward to the same lifespan as his grandfather, short of suffering a premature accident."
"So call death a premature accident that everyone has, this is the reason I should have moved a long time ago." Ranma just shook his head, it was a sad fact that he couldn't stay anywhere for long without being recognized as someone other than just another young face or raising questions that he would rather avoid. It was one of the reasons he only visited the more remotely populated areas.
The many monasteries he had visited were also very useful in that the monks rarely asked questions and time spent in their libraries often were more valuable than the time he could have spent traveling the world and a lot less painful.
"I know that this isn't the first monastery you've visited over the years Ranma, and I have heard rumors." The old mans eyes clouded over as he considered some of the rumors he had heard over the years, he knew that anyone watching would have found it strange seeing such a wizened man showing such difference to clearly a boy not far from his teens but the rumors he had heard of Ranma painted a very interesting picture. "How old exactly are you? Your appearance isn't the best indicator I've seen."
Ranma grunted and smiled, "I remember you as a novice whose curiosity could hardly be contained. It was why you joined the brotherhood as I recall. Your curiosity could always be satisfied in this place, the library is one of the best I've seen and one of the least used. Your curiosity was one of the reasons you climbed the ranks so quickly and it has stood you in good stead."
The aged man bowed his head in acknowledgement but refused to let the subject be turned to idle reminiscing about the past. At least his past, he never could get Ranma to tell him much about himself.
"Even as young as I was then and as old as I am now you have not changed, how old are you Ranma? How many lifetimes have you seen, satisfy a dying mans curiosity."
Ranma lurched, stumbling from his usual graceful gait and looked hard into the older mans face. "You and everyone else loves the thought of immortality, I haven't spoken to a single person throughout the years who hasn't considered it at least once. Yet who would willingly pay the price, who could comprehend the price until far too late."
Ranma sat down heavily on a nearby wall and sighed, "I knew that I had stayed too long. Wherever I go it is always the same, its like humanity is dropping dead around me."
"You want to know why I stayed so long, it was because I missed this." His gesture took in the entire grounds, "it is lonely wondering alone. I had a home once, a family- I probably still have a multitude of relatives running around somewhere. When my wife died, I was heartbroken but you know the worst part."
The elderly man sat quietly next to the pained youth, "tell me."
"At the funeral I was mistaken for one of my grandchildren, they all thought it heartless that her husband not attend the ceremony." Ranma took a shuddering breath at the remembered pain, "I was there, but no one could believe it."
"It's become easier overtime to lose myself in my quest for knowledge, wisdom and the control that comes from the perfection of my art than to face losing friends and family to old age. Please don't fuel these rumors father, they only limit the places that will accept me. Not everyone thinks that my age makes me godlike, more than one demon hunter has had to be shaken from my tail."
"As for my age father, lets just say that I've seem more than one century turn and leave it at that."
The old man nodded, even on his deathbed he realized that he probably would not understand the magnitude of the price as Ranma described it but at his age he had an inkling and wouldn't force the issue.
"Before you do leave I should tell you of a dream that has kept me awake lately. The gods must be taking a greater role in events than I previously thought for them to be giving the likes of me visions."
"You are the oldest and wisest in the order, you under value yourself. Tell me of this vision." In all that Ranma had seen in his life, a vision from a god wasn't so hard to believe and he had always disliked talking about himself to others so the change of subject was welcome.
"I found myself in a garden the likes I don't think I'll ever see again, I felt a colossal loss upon awaking. If that was heaven I was seeing then death is not something to be feared but embraced. A voice issued the following message, 'the immortal one must travel full circle to further his quest'. Night in, night out it has been the same and you're the only immortal one that I know no matter how much you try to deny it."
Ranma just nodded in thought, he had been considering leaving for a while now but the companionship he felt for the elderly monk had held him back. He dreaded seeing the spry old man on his deathbed, he wanted to preserve the happy memories they had had together and seeing him that way would only taint them.
"Do you know of its meaning Ranma?" the old man asked.
The meaning seemed clear to Ranma and he had solved enough riddles in his time to know the answer to this one. Besides, for someone with unlimited time any direction was as good as another.
*****
Ranma couldn't believe how much the area around the Tendo dojo had changed. Sure it had been a few hundred years since he had been here but he had expected all manner of technological advances and a larger dojo not the destruction that surrounded him.
Such devastation could only have been caused by a large, very violent earthquake. He had seen the results of such an earthquake before though not on such a large scale that gripped old Tokyo. The capital city of Japan had not been abandoned though but rebuild. It had moved north, the skyline was clear even above the mountains of rubble and wreckage.
Which made some sense he supposed, it was easier to start from scratch rather than demolish the old to build the new. Still judging from the state of the crumbling buildings he would have guessed that it had happened about ten years ago, so why hadn't it been cleared up?
Ranma shrugged as he once again turned his attentions from his surroundings to the Tendo dojo, the place that had once been his home and probably would be again. At least until people started to suspect that he wasn't like the rest of them, until people started to become afraid of his unchanging face. Then it would be time to leave.
That was what scared him the most, the thought of what was left of his family rejecting him. Sure he would always have the amazons, they had become like family after Akane had died. He truly believed that they had saved his life in the years following his wife's death. They weren't however his flesh and blood.
Despite the years that had followed his wife's death he had remained faithful to her memory. Not so much out of an all consuming love, at least after the first century had passed that had been the case but because he had seen how his unaging face and limitless energy had affected his aging wife.
As she grew older and he had stayed same their relationship had increasingly been held together by their duel love for martial arts and by their family. If it hadn't been for those two things Ranma had no doubt in his mind that the Tendo dojo would have degenerated as it had during the fiancée mess.
It was a good sign that his family had rebuilt the dojo on the same site, even if they hadn't expanded the dojo. It meant that they held the traditions or at least some of the traditions of his family alive. How much of those traditions he would find out and if necessary reinforce them. Those traditions were what defined his family and he could not, would not let them die.
Enough procrastinating, he would find out what happened to his home city eventually and sitting here on top of one of the ruined remains of a skyscraper wouldn't yield any answers. Challenging at the dojo for room and board would. He would see how much of his art had been corrupted by time and what standard the current generation of his school held to.
Ranma effortlessly bounded from the top of the mountainous rubble to the challenger entrance. He had never expected to approach the entrance from this side any more than he had ever contemplated challenging his own school. He youth apparent smirked, it was something the old pervert would have done and had done on occasion.
The old Grandmaster had often challenged his heirs and students. Time had proven impossible to beat in the end for the old pervert though, just as it had eventually caught up to the old matriarch. It was a sad day when they had died, even if he had surpassed them both in martial arts he had never been sure that he had plumbed the depths of their knowledge. Now he would never know.
Mentally preparing himself for the challenge ahead, he knocked. As Grandmaster he knew better than to underestimate even a beginner in his school. No matter how old he was, he could never be prepared for every eventuality though his school excelled in reacting quickly and making the best of even the most dire situation.
The door opened reveling someone who compounded that point. Out of every possible person to have opened that door he would never have expected her.
"A-Akane?" he asked in a shaken voice. It wasn't possible and on an intellectual level he denied it, he had seen her die, he had been to her funeral. Still his heart remembered the pain and heartache of years ago. It was a long time ago and Ranma was able to recover quickly.
"I've come to issue a challenge!"
*****
Three people stood hunched over a computer screen watching a deceptively young man with crystal blue eyes and a black pig tail. The youngest of about fourteen was dressed in large white lacy dress with what looked to be an inflatable hammer strapped to her back. The serious expression that adorned her face and the knowledgeable twinkle in her eyes shouted louder than words that she was far from fourteen years old.
Next to her stood a young lady of about 20 years of age wearing what could be considered a traditional house wife's garment. She seemed to exude a peaceful aura which combined with her serene expression could no doubt calm even the hottest fires of hell.
On the other side of the youngest among the group stood the eldest of the group with an apparent age of mid to late twenties. Unlike the other two she wore less modest clothing accenting her more than generous curves giving her the air of a seductress.
She was currently drooling all over the keyboard that was placed in front of the monitor.
"Urd, I know you're a self proclaimed god of love but this is ridiculous. Its been centuries and your still obsessed. Get over it you old bag, besides he's far to young for you."
"What do you know, your just a little kid! That is one fine specimen of man."
"Yeah one that turns into a girl, and I'm not a little kid!"
"Not now you two," Belldandy interrupted effectively defusing the situation. "The situation is reaching a critical stage."
"Yeah," Urd mumbled as she continued to drool over the keyboard not once taking her eyes of the screen. "Mara really pulled though this time."
"What are you taking about you old woman it was Bell who found him and his potential and it was Bell who kept an eye on him all those years, what did Mara do?"
"Well, little kid," Urd replied responding to the old woman crack. "If she hadn't been messing round with that Habiki kid then we would never had cause to look. She almost led us straight to him and she still has no idea what she's handed us."
"I'm not a little kid!" Skuld protested, her eyes twitching. "Belldandy, can we meet him. I'm sick of just watching him, even if the old lady isn't," Skuld added a little kick to Urd's shin. To he disappointment the only reaction was a little drool globed onto the screen as she blinked.
"Both of you try to control yourselves," Belldandy once again intervened. "The time when we will meet him will be soon enough. In the meantime do you think you could drag yourself from that monitor to cook something up for our Grandmaster Urd?"
"Urd, Urd, URD! HEY OLD WOMAN! Bells taking to you," Skuld shouted for her older sister. Belldandy would never need to shout but then Skuld doubted that she would ever need to.
"Huh, what. Oh right sure sis," Urd grunted before going back to staring at the screen.
"Skuld, I'll need you to build something that will push him to the limit. That mortal technology will be fine to start with but then you know as well as I how quickly Ranma adapts to things."
Skuld nodded smiling, "you can count an me sis."
A/N - I've decided to leak small pieces of Ranma's past slowly throughout the story. If you've read Full circle and think you already know it, think again I'm changing it. I found myself unwilling to continue it as it was and so decided a major rewrite was in order. Please tell me what you think C+C appreciated, even flames if they contain a grain if constructive criticism in them.
Ch1: Coming full circle
Ranma held his stance and steadied his breathing before once again breaking out into a highly complex weapon Kata. In his hands he held two long blades that whistled as they cut through the air and shimmered in the midday sun. Ranma back flipped, continuing his Kata underneath the great oak that lay in the center of grounds inside the peaceful monastery. Now in the shadows Ranma's blades no longer shimmered but pulsed with an internal light as they struck out at shadows. Impossibly, as the blades passed through the trunk and vast branches they failed to stir even a leaf. The blades blinked in and out of existence almost two fast to see leaving the oak untouched.
But then as the monks had learned nothing was impossible for this young man. The young man who had been staying at their monastery longer than most of them had been alive. Ranma continued his Kata uninterrupted, his blades becoming a double-sided axe with an accompanying shield. The change was a part of the Kata and the Grandmaster of Anything Goes thrived on change.
The pulsing blue weapons wielded by the Grandmaster changed again. This time to a set of knives as his Kata took him to the Air in what would have reminded all of his old friends, dead friends now of the airborne grace that was and still is the specialty of his style.
"Your control is improving Ranma as is your speed," an elderly spectator called out. "Though I must ask to what end."
Ranma landed lightly before the old man having finished his kata, "the perfection of the art is an end in itself. But I doubt that it can be perfected, even after so long I'm still changing and improving it."
A quick glance at the men surrounding the two quickly had them running off to what ever had them occupied before Ranma's spectacle, drawing some measure of privacy. "Even after so long you still draw the crowds, it's a wonder that we ever get anything done with you around," the old man sounded amused. "If only they had your focus, but then they are only human."
Ranma bit back a retort, it was still a sore point with him. He was still human, or considered himself to be, but to others he seemed immortal, ageless even god or demon like. In any other time he would no doubt have been worshiped and in some of the more remote area's he had visited he could have stirred up a following. Had he had the desire he could have, the price of this so-called gift he had been granted with had been too dear for him to even consider something so selfish.
Even thinking about doing something like that left the taste of ash in his mouth, besides he had seen the results of similar attempts to know that it was far from a good idea, he had put a stop to many of them himself. His immortality had cost him his life, sure he was still living but could he still call it life. He had no one to love, no family only his obsession with perfecting his art, an art that only he seemed to have the full knowledge of.
"You know full well that I am as human as you are, I just haven't passed on yet. Does the child think the old man isn't human simply because he has lived longer?"
"Yes but the child knows that he can look forward to the same lifespan as his grandfather, short of suffering a premature accident."
"So call death a premature accident that everyone has, this is the reason I should have moved a long time ago." Ranma just shook his head, it was a sad fact that he couldn't stay anywhere for long without being recognized as someone other than just another young face or raising questions that he would rather avoid. It was one of the reasons he only visited the more remotely populated areas.
The many monasteries he had visited were also very useful in that the monks rarely asked questions and time spent in their libraries often were more valuable than the time he could have spent traveling the world and a lot less painful.
"I know that this isn't the first monastery you've visited over the years Ranma, and I have heard rumors." The old mans eyes clouded over as he considered some of the rumors he had heard over the years, he knew that anyone watching would have found it strange seeing such a wizened man showing such difference to clearly a boy not far from his teens but the rumors he had heard of Ranma painted a very interesting picture. "How old exactly are you? Your appearance isn't the best indicator I've seen."
Ranma grunted and smiled, "I remember you as a novice whose curiosity could hardly be contained. It was why you joined the brotherhood as I recall. Your curiosity could always be satisfied in this place, the library is one of the best I've seen and one of the least used. Your curiosity was one of the reasons you climbed the ranks so quickly and it has stood you in good stead."
The aged man bowed his head in acknowledgement but refused to let the subject be turned to idle reminiscing about the past. At least his past, he never could get Ranma to tell him much about himself.
"Even as young as I was then and as old as I am now you have not changed, how old are you Ranma? How many lifetimes have you seen, satisfy a dying mans curiosity."
Ranma lurched, stumbling from his usual graceful gait and looked hard into the older mans face. "You and everyone else loves the thought of immortality, I haven't spoken to a single person throughout the years who hasn't considered it at least once. Yet who would willingly pay the price, who could comprehend the price until far too late."
Ranma sat down heavily on a nearby wall and sighed, "I knew that I had stayed too long. Wherever I go it is always the same, its like humanity is dropping dead around me."
"You want to know why I stayed so long, it was because I missed this." His gesture took in the entire grounds, "it is lonely wondering alone. I had a home once, a family- I probably still have a multitude of relatives running around somewhere. When my wife died, I was heartbroken but you know the worst part."
The elderly man sat quietly next to the pained youth, "tell me."
"At the funeral I was mistaken for one of my grandchildren, they all thought it heartless that her husband not attend the ceremony." Ranma took a shuddering breath at the remembered pain, "I was there, but no one could believe it."
"It's become easier overtime to lose myself in my quest for knowledge, wisdom and the control that comes from the perfection of my art than to face losing friends and family to old age. Please don't fuel these rumors father, they only limit the places that will accept me. Not everyone thinks that my age makes me godlike, more than one demon hunter has had to be shaken from my tail."
"As for my age father, lets just say that I've seem more than one century turn and leave it at that."
The old man nodded, even on his deathbed he realized that he probably would not understand the magnitude of the price as Ranma described it but at his age he had an inkling and wouldn't force the issue.
"Before you do leave I should tell you of a dream that has kept me awake lately. The gods must be taking a greater role in events than I previously thought for them to be giving the likes of me visions."
"You are the oldest and wisest in the order, you under value yourself. Tell me of this vision." In all that Ranma had seen in his life, a vision from a god wasn't so hard to believe and he had always disliked talking about himself to others so the change of subject was welcome.
"I found myself in a garden the likes I don't think I'll ever see again, I felt a colossal loss upon awaking. If that was heaven I was seeing then death is not something to be feared but embraced. A voice issued the following message, 'the immortal one must travel full circle to further his quest'. Night in, night out it has been the same and you're the only immortal one that I know no matter how much you try to deny it."
Ranma just nodded in thought, he had been considering leaving for a while now but the companionship he felt for the elderly monk had held him back. He dreaded seeing the spry old man on his deathbed, he wanted to preserve the happy memories they had had together and seeing him that way would only taint them.
"Do you know of its meaning Ranma?" the old man asked.
The meaning seemed clear to Ranma and he had solved enough riddles in his time to know the answer to this one. Besides, for someone with unlimited time any direction was as good as another.
*****
Ranma couldn't believe how much the area around the Tendo dojo had changed. Sure it had been a few hundred years since he had been here but he had expected all manner of technological advances and a larger dojo not the destruction that surrounded him.
Such devastation could only have been caused by a large, very violent earthquake. He had seen the results of such an earthquake before though not on such a large scale that gripped old Tokyo. The capital city of Japan had not been abandoned though but rebuild. It had moved north, the skyline was clear even above the mountains of rubble and wreckage.
Which made some sense he supposed, it was easier to start from scratch rather than demolish the old to build the new. Still judging from the state of the crumbling buildings he would have guessed that it had happened about ten years ago, so why hadn't it been cleared up?
Ranma shrugged as he once again turned his attentions from his surroundings to the Tendo dojo, the place that had once been his home and probably would be again. At least until people started to suspect that he wasn't like the rest of them, until people started to become afraid of his unchanging face. Then it would be time to leave.
That was what scared him the most, the thought of what was left of his family rejecting him. Sure he would always have the amazons, they had become like family after Akane had died. He truly believed that they had saved his life in the years following his wife's death. They weren't however his flesh and blood.
Despite the years that had followed his wife's death he had remained faithful to her memory. Not so much out of an all consuming love, at least after the first century had passed that had been the case but because he had seen how his unaging face and limitless energy had affected his aging wife.
As she grew older and he had stayed same their relationship had increasingly been held together by their duel love for martial arts and by their family. If it hadn't been for those two things Ranma had no doubt in his mind that the Tendo dojo would have degenerated as it had during the fiancée mess.
It was a good sign that his family had rebuilt the dojo on the same site, even if they hadn't expanded the dojo. It meant that they held the traditions or at least some of the traditions of his family alive. How much of those traditions he would find out and if necessary reinforce them. Those traditions were what defined his family and he could not, would not let them die.
Enough procrastinating, he would find out what happened to his home city eventually and sitting here on top of one of the ruined remains of a skyscraper wouldn't yield any answers. Challenging at the dojo for room and board would. He would see how much of his art had been corrupted by time and what standard the current generation of his school held to.
Ranma effortlessly bounded from the top of the mountainous rubble to the challenger entrance. He had never expected to approach the entrance from this side any more than he had ever contemplated challenging his own school. He youth apparent smirked, it was something the old pervert would have done and had done on occasion.
The old Grandmaster had often challenged his heirs and students. Time had proven impossible to beat in the end for the old pervert though, just as it had eventually caught up to the old matriarch. It was a sad day when they had died, even if he had surpassed them both in martial arts he had never been sure that he had plumbed the depths of their knowledge. Now he would never know.
Mentally preparing himself for the challenge ahead, he knocked. As Grandmaster he knew better than to underestimate even a beginner in his school. No matter how old he was, he could never be prepared for every eventuality though his school excelled in reacting quickly and making the best of even the most dire situation.
The door opened reveling someone who compounded that point. Out of every possible person to have opened that door he would never have expected her.
"A-Akane?" he asked in a shaken voice. It wasn't possible and on an intellectual level he denied it, he had seen her die, he had been to her funeral. Still his heart remembered the pain and heartache of years ago. It was a long time ago and Ranma was able to recover quickly.
"I've come to issue a challenge!"
*****
Three people stood hunched over a computer screen watching a deceptively young man with crystal blue eyes and a black pig tail. The youngest of about fourteen was dressed in large white lacy dress with what looked to be an inflatable hammer strapped to her back. The serious expression that adorned her face and the knowledgeable twinkle in her eyes shouted louder than words that she was far from fourteen years old.
Next to her stood a young lady of about 20 years of age wearing what could be considered a traditional house wife's garment. She seemed to exude a peaceful aura which combined with her serene expression could no doubt calm even the hottest fires of hell.
On the other side of the youngest among the group stood the eldest of the group with an apparent age of mid to late twenties. Unlike the other two she wore less modest clothing accenting her more than generous curves giving her the air of a seductress.
She was currently drooling all over the keyboard that was placed in front of the monitor.
"Urd, I know you're a self proclaimed god of love but this is ridiculous. Its been centuries and your still obsessed. Get over it you old bag, besides he's far to young for you."
"What do you know, your just a little kid! That is one fine specimen of man."
"Yeah one that turns into a girl, and I'm not a little kid!"
"Not now you two," Belldandy interrupted effectively defusing the situation. "The situation is reaching a critical stage."
"Yeah," Urd mumbled as she continued to drool over the keyboard not once taking her eyes of the screen. "Mara really pulled though this time."
"What are you taking about you old woman it was Bell who found him and his potential and it was Bell who kept an eye on him all those years, what did Mara do?"
"Well, little kid," Urd replied responding to the old woman crack. "If she hadn't been messing round with that Habiki kid then we would never had cause to look. She almost led us straight to him and she still has no idea what she's handed us."
"I'm not a little kid!" Skuld protested, her eyes twitching. "Belldandy, can we meet him. I'm sick of just watching him, even if the old lady isn't," Skuld added a little kick to Urd's shin. To he disappointment the only reaction was a little drool globed onto the screen as she blinked.
"Both of you try to control yourselves," Belldandy once again intervened. "The time when we will meet him will be soon enough. In the meantime do you think you could drag yourself from that monitor to cook something up for our Grandmaster Urd?"
"Urd, Urd, URD! HEY OLD WOMAN! Bells taking to you," Skuld shouted for her older sister. Belldandy would never need to shout but then Skuld doubted that she would ever need to.
"Huh, what. Oh right sure sis," Urd grunted before going back to staring at the screen.
"Skuld, I'll need you to build something that will push him to the limit. That mortal technology will be fine to start with but then you know as well as I how quickly Ranma adapts to things."
Skuld nodded smiling, "you can count an me sis."
A/N - I've decided to leak small pieces of Ranma's past slowly throughout the story. If you've read Full circle and think you already know it, think again I'm changing it. I found myself unwilling to continue it as it was and so decided a major rewrite was in order. Please tell me what you think C+C appreciated, even flames if they contain a grain if constructive criticism in them.