Genma Saotome chuckled to himself in good-humored glee as he stuffed the large burlap sack in his hand with cats. Images of Ranma winning martial arts tournaments one after the other, his unbeatable techniques leaving his opponents bowing at his feet, Genma in the background getting waited on hand and foot…
Caught in the middle of his flight of fancy, Genma failed to notice the exceedingly large red and white striped cat he had just stuffed into the bag. A cat that bled from numerous wounds to the sides, a spade-shaped spear tip still lodged into one of them, broken off just beneath the head.
But that is quite often how these things happen.
Whistling an innocent tune, Genma slung the now full sack over his left shoulder, and walked back to camp. As confident as he was that everything was going to turn out right, he didn’t even notice the anthropomorphized playing card run by in the background, looking for a lost cat that had fled, not quite dead…
* * *
Whimpering, a six-year-old Ranma stood just a little distance away from an actively yowling and hissing pit of cats.
His bare feet made a squelching noise in the mud of the abandoned lot as he shifted his weight back and forth, his toes already numb from the cold. What little there was to his threadbare Gi did little to protect him from the misty drizzle coming from the somewhat ominous, but otherwise dreary clouds.
This would be the eighth time he’d been tossed in by his father. Already his mind was close to snapping, his actions already starting to resemble that of a feral animal. One more time and he would snap, and his life would forever be marked by the madness of the Neko-Ken.
Little did he or his father know, Fate had something much more… interesting in store for them.
* * *
Deep within the crowded pit, the large red and white cat stirred, his large bulk shuddering for a moment in pain. Bright yellow eyes slowly opened, glowing with their own luminescence in the darkness, slitted pupils darting back and forth.
The other cats in the pit moved about at some unmarked distance away from him, their instincts confused by mixed messages. On one hand, they were starving, and this cat smelled of blood spilt from it’s own body, tempting them to feast. On the other hand, their sixth sense told them that this cat, of any cats in the whole world, was not the kind one would want to go against.
Best they wait the hour or so until he died, and feast on his dead body.
* * *
“B-b-but pops,” Ranma whimpered, “do I h-have ta go in there again?”
“Foolish boy!” Genma shouted down at the fallen child. “This is for the sake of the Art! If you don’t go in there and learn that technique, then you are no son of mine!”
Ranma coughed, a little blood leaking from his split lip, as he lay sprawled on the muddy ground. Head ringing, he slowly stood up, a determined look growing on his face as he did so.
Genma nodded, knowing that his son would do what he needed him to do. Grabbing the ropes he began tying his son up for the ninth, and hopefully last, time. Fish paste was smeared all over the boy’s body, making sure to avoid where the ropes crossed, and other important places like the face and crotch.
After all, his son couldn’t well grow to be a ‘man amongst men’ if he lost THAT, now could he.
Finally, preparations complete, he hauled the boy over to the edge of the pit and, looking down at the milling mass of fur and eyes below. Nodding to himself, he swung the boy back, then forward, releasing him into the pit.
* * *
Looking upwards as one, the cats watched the paste-smeared boy fall towards them. The large red-and-white momentarily forgotten, they leapt at the boy, fangs and claws tearing at the boy’s clothes and flesh.
Screams.
Forgotten, but not dead yet, the large tom slowly pulled himself towards the boy. Years of knowledge and experience, not to mention a closer connection with the astral realm than many would like to think of him possessing, he could feel the boy’s fragile grip on sanity quickly slipping towards the precipice.
The cat was dying, and he no so. His body was beyond repair, and he was too weak by this point to even be able to create another, let alone take over an existing body. But in this young boy was the possibility for continued existence.
Both of their souls were too weak by this point to sustain a body, but together as one, they could heal and, indeed, become greater than the sum of their parts. But he would have to act, and act quickly…
* * *
Ranma tried valiantly not to scream out in pain as the cats tore at his body.
Pain raced through his whole body as claws and teeth found purchase. Blood was spilt almost as an afterthought, then lapped up from the wounds with rough barbed tongues. Pain evolved into numbness, then detached realization of what was happening, like watching a movie.
And then, in the darkness, a pair of glowing yellow eyes.
Do you want to live? a voice asked from the dark recesses of his own mind. Do you want to live, and never have to fear cats ever again? Show your… father, that you are more than even he expected? Do you want to be the best?
Confused, Ranma wondered if he was finally going mad, or if this was the Neko-Ken that his father had been training him in… or perhaps it was both…
“Yes,” Ranma whispered, and closed his eyes.
* * *
If one could look at the Astral Plane, one would see something both disturbing and horrifically interesting at the same time. Two souls, both pale and weak, nearing death, slowly drifted towards each other.
One was a soft blue, shaped like a young child. The other was a chaotic swirl of colors, obviously much more complex and old, in the shape of a large tom cat.
Paws, then hands, reached out to each other in an unseen recreation of the Sistine Chapel’s Adam and God. When they finally connected, the cat-spirit seemed to pour into the child’s, changing the child’s aura in numerous irrevocable ways.
Tail, ears, digigrade legs, and glowing yellow eyes.
And a bright, sun-like glow of thousands of colors.
* * *
The cats in the pit leaps back as one in fear as they felt something change about their meal. Something which frightened them on a very deep level, as if the very nature of reality had just been altered before their eyes, with no explanation to the cause or effect.
The young boy, who had before been curled up into as tight of a ball as he could, now slowly uncurled in a manner almost oozing. Hands held more like paws pressed against the ground, legs pulled up beneath and to the sides.
And then his eyes opened.
Twin orbs of brightest yellow, slit pupils like twin bands of pure darkness, glowing with an inner light, an inner life, of their own. Eyes that showed both the innocence of a child, and the madness of an ages-old cynic.
A smirk revealed sharp canines, and a row of pearly white, perfect teeth besides. Teeth that almost seemed to glow as well, giving an image of teeth and eyes in the encroaching darkness.
And thus, the Cheshire Ranma was born…
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(Posted Thu, 28 Oct 2004 05:41)
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