Ranma jumped slightly at the words as they brought him out of his trance, and noticed the bowl of food in front of him before taking the stew and thanking the person who handed it to him absently. Once again, some of the stuff in it didn’t look like any kind of vegetable he knew, and he didn’t even want to guess what the purple meat was from. That was one of the annoying things about being on this alien world, although the place certainly looked like Earth, a good number of people were obviously from another dimension.
Trying not let his mind wander, Ranma started to slowly eat his food, intent on not drifting off again. It was actually creepy how that happened, sometimes he would just be thinking about his mom, or something from Japan, and then it was like he was right there. All the smells, sounds, feelings, he could remember everything as if he was experiencing that very moment. The rest of the guys called it total recall, and most theorized Ranma always had it, only it was either very limited in its use or the exposure to the strange energies of this world brought it out (and a few others) in full.
Then of course there were the other alterations done to him since arriving, the eye in the middle of his forehead was the obvious one; or it would have been if he hadn’t taken to wearing a headband. Originally Ranma had freaked out and actually pulled the blasted thing from his forehead with extreme pain coming afterwards, only to find out the thing re-grew in two and a half days. After that, he had discovered the other ‘enchantments’ the one eyed tentacle porn monster had given him. Namely the retractable claws and that weird acid that his hands could shoot out as well as the enhanced senses and the fact that his eye had some freaky sight that allowed him to see auras as well as mystical energy. But all in all, he didn’t consider it an even tradeoff for everything he’d been though.
At least he thought it was, Ranma didn’t actually know all of what he’d been through. He remembered waking up a few nights for the past week and screaming in terror thanks to some memories, but now he couldn’t remember what they were about at all. It had something to do with the Coalition States, and… an interrogation room, but after that it all faded to nothing until he woke up in a tube and got his upgrades.
Although from what Ranma heard about the CS, he really didn’t want to know what happened. The Coalition States seemed to be some kind of fascist super-Nazi government that had crawled up from the remains of the old American Empire. From what Ranma understood, their government had one simple rule concerning anything that came to this world through a rift like he did: shoot to kill. At least that’s what he had gotten from his new friends.
Counting Ranma, the group numbered six in all. Mostly they were together for protection, and the fact that most of their goals were the same.
First there was Kuwabara, the Japanese looking guy who rescued him from the raiders. He was a bit older than Ranma by about two, maybe three years, and belonged to an organization called the Cyber-Knights. They were a loosely knit organization of fighters that patrolled North America and parts of Canada and basically fought off monsters as well as whatever else knights were expected to do.
Then there was Orphen, a magic user dressed in jeans and a black shirt with a vest and a red headband. Orphen wasn’t his real name but something he took after ending up here. Like Ranma, he was from another world, but it wasn’t anything like Ranma had known. In his home world, some kind of interdimensional invaders called the Nightlords had secretly taken over the world with shape shifting demons and magic. Then, one day when he was testing out a spell he had designed himself to try and go to their realm, he ended up here. Orphen was the group’s magic expert.
Vash ‘the Stampede’ was the last member to join before Ranma, and came from somewhere out west. Although he acted insanely goofy most of the time, the man had insane reflexes, maybe even better than Ranma’s own. But other than that he was pretty much a mystery to the pigtailed bio-borg.
Then there was Seto Kaiba, a long time adventuring partner of Kuwabara’s since they came from the same town, and practically tied with him for second in command. He was a psychic, something called a mind melter, and the one who had given Ranma his selective amnesia. The man was arrogant, rude, and looked down on practically everyone, but the one time they had run across trouble Ranma had seen the guy had very good reasons to back those feelings up.
Last but not least was James Links, a former Coalition officer that quit the military for reasons Ranma didn’t know. He was the groups unofficial leader, although few people showed him respect, and just did as told. He was also a pilot of the black colored, creepy-looking man-sized suit of robot power armor with a face shaped like a man’s skull that stood right behind him as he ate his dinner. The armor was something called a SAMAS, had wings positioned on the shoulders and used some type of large laser rifle as a weapon.
“Hey kind, hurry up and eat your dinner and get to sleep, we gotta be ready for tomorrow. We should be there by then,” James told him before drinking the last of the mystery food from his bowl and then letting out a small belch.
“Actually, that’s something I’ve been wondering,” Ranma said as he took the chance to look away from his food and over to James. “Where exactly are we going?”
“You mean you can’t tell by the direction?” Kuwabara spoke up. “It’s-”
“He’s some a different dimension idiot,” Kaiba interrupted. “He doesn’t know the lay of the land. And we’re headed to…”
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(Posted Mon, 28 Jun 2004 02:15)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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