Pluto sighed, rubbing her forehead. It was bad enough that she would be forced to ... allow ... Ranma to continue to exist. But she’d be damned if she was going to end up in a harem with the boy.
And the less said about the S&M Sailor Senshi, the better. “I do not want to ever see Usagi in a dominatrix outfit ever again,” she muttered.
But she still could at least shape how Ranma came into contact with the Senshi.
The problem with that was the same as her first problems with trying to kill him: whatever changes she made seemed to spawn unknown results. Though she seriously doubted it, it seemed to be that the boy himself was almost an avatar of Chaos, perhaps even more so than Sailor Chaos herself.
As the Gates began to cool down from her recent attempts, she decided to see what the new timeline was like. She wanted to at least be certain she wasn’t about to deal with sex crazed Senshi ... well, no more than before she had started this.
But as she looked on the images produced, she simply paled. “Oh ... shit.”
Kisuke Urahara sighed as he looked around for his lost friend. It wasn’t that he was too worried, as Yoruichi Shihouin could easily just assume her human form and escape any kennel that would find her.
No, it was something in the air that was bothering him. It wasn’t as if it felt like the world was about to be the site of a massive invasion of Hollows. It was more like ... like the universe itself was about to introduce something new into life, something even it wasn’t certain was for the better or for the worse.
“AIEEEEE!” screamed a somewhat obese man, wearing a torn and bloody gi, his face pale. “Demons have stolen my son!” he screamed as he ran by.
“Well,” said Kisuke, tipping his bucket hat slightly, “this should prove interesting.”
Hurrying in the direction the fat man had come running from, he soon found an opening in the woods, a small field present, and his missing friend in human form, feeding several dozen cats some food from a stockpile.
“My now,” said Kisuke, “what’s going on here, I wonder.”
“A fat fool did something that changed a poor soul,” sighed Yoruichi.
“How so?”
“Neko-ken.”
“Now that sounds familiar,” said Kisuke as he scratched his head.
“A demon art technique that somehow found its way into human hands,” she continued, tending to the wounds of some of the cats.
He noticed his friend also seemed to be a bit scratched up as well, easily apparent to see the flecks and slow lines of blood on her tan skin. “How bad?”
“Dig a pit,” she said, motioning to the pit in question, “fill it with cats starved for three to five days, and dump in a small child between five and ten, bound, and wrapped in fish products.”
“I see,” he said.
“No,” said Yoruichi, “but you will. It seems that the boy must have had a high spiritual presence. It attracted a rather weak Hollow.”
“I fail to see the problem,” he said. “After all, you can easily deal with a simple low level Hollow.”
“I didn’t have time,” she said sadly, as a weird roar came from the pit.
Kisuke could only stare in surprise as a small Hollow-like creature bounded out of the pit, carrying a small cat on its head, and stopped before Yoruichi, lowering the cat gently to the ground, and looking at her with expectant eyes.
“His soul absorbed it when it tried to possess him,” she said, as she examined the cat.
Kisuke could only stare in warped astonishment. If not for the lack of a hole in its chest where its heart once was, as well as the fact the light within the eyes of the mask was blue instead of yellow, he would assume that before him was merely a new type of Hollow. “He ... he’s a Hollow now?”
She nodded at him, before sighing once again. “At least partially as far as I can tell at the moment.”
Looking over the cat, she silently cursed to herself, before looking into the expectant eyes of the neo-Hollow child. “I’m sorry, but he’s gone,” she said to the Hollow-halfling.
The creature bellowed sadly, before nudging the dead cat once again. Soon, even it seemed to understand that the life was gone from the feline, as it raised its head, and released a loud cry, startling many of the remaining felines.
“Is he ... safe?” asked Kisuke, still in awe at the sight. Usually, a Hollow would attack any high spiritual presence for food, higher level Hollows might toy with it, but they generally followed a set pattern.
In other words, the little Hollow should have been ignoring the dead cat and focusing on the two former shinigami.
“Quite safe,” she replied, embracing the little Hollow, as it seemed to be consumed with sadness. “I’m just not certain what can be done for him now, or even if he can be returned to human form.”
Kisuke sighed. “And I suppose you’ll be wanting my help with this.”
“If we leave him as he is, a shinigami will eventually find him and slay him.”
“It may be for the best.”
He was surprised at the look of anger his friend turned on him. “You weren’t in that pit, Kisuke. That damned ritual, flawed as it was, sealed me in my feline form in it. I couldn’t even help him out as the starved cats attacked him for food. Hell, after a while, he couldn’t even hear my words of comfort to keep him from going insane.
“You didn’t have to hear him beg for his mother to save him, for anyone to keep the ‘bad furry things’ from scratching at him.”
She wiped a tear from her eyes. “You didn’t have to be shocked to feel some small joy when that Hollow showed up, hoping it would at least put the boy out of his misery.”
She looked back at what had once been a small child. “I will not let him continue to suffer for my failure.”
Kisuke stared at his friend. It wasn’t often that Yoruichi displayed such emotions. But then again, even he had to wonder what he would have been like if he had gone through what she did. It wasn’t exactly a situation one trained for, or could ever expect.
“Fine,” he smiled. “But you clean up after him. I don’t want to end up stepping on any Hollow shit.”
Pluto could only blink. “So instead of being in his harem, I just turned Ranma Saotome into a soul-eating monster.”
She could almost feel her karma nose-diving.
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(Posted Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:54)
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