What she found had her shuddering and backing away from the Gates. No, this wasn't at all what she had wanted.
Genma threw the next-to-last cat into the pit and listened as yet another cat made the same sounds as the last fifty. He had stalked and netted and lured and bagged every stray he could find, and now in this area away from interference he could begin Ranma's training in the invincible Cat-fist!
First the terrified yowl, then some hissing and the sound of the cat apparently fighting its kin, then sounds he'd really never expected a cat to make - but then he'd never paid much attention to cats previous to this.
The old abandoned shrine was perfect. He'd found it while looking for a place to stay the night during a particularly ominous thunderstorm, and he'd thought it perfect. Oh, he'd had to clear out some of those ropes with all the Shinto wards, but when he'd found a ready made pit that the rainwater had apparently uncovered - he'd known the heavens had smiled down on him.
Now, again, the pit had gone completely silent. If he hadn't thrown them in - he wouldn't know there were over fifty cats in there. It had taken him days to gather this many but now he could toss Ranma in and make his boy an unbeatable warrior. Genma watched his breath puff out, for some reason the area around the pit seemed unseasonably cold. Might be an underground river or something.
Ah well, he had to get busy.
When you'd seen empires rise and fall, and had outlived entire generations, one got a little detached from day to day living.
Setsuna Meiou grew pale, shaking, breaking out in a cold sweat as she watched events that she could not possibly influence without risking even worse events. Her eyes were wide and she didn't want to see. She didn't want to look. She couldn't look away though, swallowing nervously and feeling that fascinated nausea that some felt on seeing mangled and bloated bodies after a natural disaster.
She watched Genma tie his son up in fish sausages there in front of a temple whose engravings seemed to twist hungrily in the shadows whenever the eye flicked away from them.
She watched Genma hoist his son up, who seemed very reluctant to go on this journey. As if perhaps he had sufficient sense in him somehow to realize this was not a good place at all.
She watched as Ranma was thrown into a darkened pit, only the lead rope linking him back to the world of the living.
She heard the hungry bells chiming as a fresh offering was given them.
The Gates SLAMMED shut, a protective measure going at last into place.
Setsuna Meiou, Sailor Pluto, Guardian Of The Gates Of Time threw up and then did dry heaves for a few minutes. There was something moving out there now. Something more evil and twisted and powerful than Beryl and Metal'la and the Dark Moon and Nehelenia combined.
And when it showed up it would be wearing the body of Ranma Saotome, whom she had indirectly sacrificed.
Trembling, Setsuna Meiou tried to figure out her next move. She flinched when she realized what it would have to be.
"Okay," said Ami, checking her notes and trying not to tremble with reaction at what had just been thrown on their shoulders. "Let's see if I have this correctly. We were turned into some guy's superpowered technorganic harem by a wish that hadn't actually been intended to even be taken seriously, but because there was a temporal alteration involved you decided to alter the timeline so it had never happened. When you did that, all the accumulated paradoxes from our previous brushes with time travel unleashed a temporal instability effect called a 'timestorm' which fragmented reality. Because this guy who would have made that wish tried to save you during the storm, he is connected to us karmically. You tried to keep things pure and correct things further, but now we're at a point where any further manipulation might see our reality erased entirely?"
Sailor Pluto nodded.
"Now this 'Ranma' was sacrificed in some pit and is evil and powerful beyond anything we've ever faced?" asked Haruka, checking Michiru's notes.
Again Sailor Pluto nodded.
"Man, when you put your foot in it - you don't go with half-measures," assessed Minako.
"So," said Ami, feeling a bit sick at this point. "What exactly is the nature of this evil?"
Sailor Pluto swallowed before answering. "It's..."
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(Posted Thu, 04 Aug 2005 09:55)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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