Saotome Ranma, age 18, swore harshly as the "ground" beneath him shook. The last year had been so peaceful, too, ever since he accepted the "special scholarship" Morgenroete had offered him due to some of his martial arts abilities. He'd been about to turn it down due to the risk of turning into some guinea pig, but the combination of it including the very expensive trip to the Heliopolis space colony for him alone, and the absolute disaster of a domestic situation in Nerima prefecture, had caused him to reverse his decision pretty much at the last possible minute. But now?
Ahead of him, a pair of honest to goodness giant robots were fighting. One of them he recognized from the news, it was called a Ginn or something, which would make the pilot one of those ZAFT characters from over in the PLANTs, though what it was doing over here, he had no clue about. It didn't belong here, at any rate. The other wasn't as recognizable - much more boxy-looking, but sleeker, if such a combination was possible - and apparently being piloted by an absolute klutz by the look of it, as it was getting tossed around pretty badly, even if it oddly wasn't taking as much damage as you'd expect.
All around the fighting, people were fleeing - Ranma could see some of his friends being nearly squished by a particularly bad fall which had the boxy-looking suit end up on its back on top of a building, nearly leveling the structure. Mirialia, Tolle, Sai, Kuzue... no Kira, though, which was strange, since the five of them usually stuck together pretty well. Then again, Ranma himself had been separated from that group earlier in the afternoon, so maybe Kira was already in one of the shelters.
The boxy-looking thing got up, and backed away from its sword-wielding attacker, barely avoiding Ranma's friends, and Ranma nearly lost it, and started running towards the fight. He wasn't sure even his abilities were good enough to make a difference between the two metallic monsters, but he could at least see to it that his friends wouldn't be squished.
Again, the Ginn-thing attacked with its sword, and rather than back away further, the other suit ducked causing the attack to go over its shoulder. Considering the previous level of skill exhibited, the move was pretty slick, as was the subsequent tossing of the Ginn on its own behind. Ranma didn't have much time to think about it, he'd just caught up to Tolle and the others.
"Hey, guys, you OK? Anyone of you hurt?" he asked as he caught Mirialia by the arms. The redhead looked like a frightened deer, and shook her head by way of answering, obviously too scared to say anything. As the others gathered for a breather, taking advantage of the apparent lull in the fighting, Ranma told them to run over towards the military trailers out in the open. "There aren't any collapsing buildings over that way, and that's the most dangerous thing going on right now. You can avoid the big guys if you have somewhere to run. Now go - I'll see what I can do about this."
As the gang took off running, Ranma walked up towards the Ginn, whose pilot was radiating enough anger that Ranma could sense it from the ground. Apparently he didn't like being bested, even temporarily, by an amateur. Considering the rage he was putting out, in Ranma's estimation he was no better than an amateur himself. Time to take the big guy's opinion of himself down a couple of pegs.
"Hey you, in the Ginn!" Ranma yelled in challenge. The suit's head sensors swiveled around a couple of times, before settling on Ranma. "Yeah, that's right you piece of scrap, I'm over here. Now why don't you pick on someone that can actually put up a fight?"
Rage turned to shock, and then back to rage again. Ranma sighed, it figured. The immature jerk at the controls couldn't take a challenge to his ego, or his penis extender. The multi-ton mobile suit lumbered over his way, and swiped at him with the huge sword it had used earlier, and when it missed, it started trying to stomp him. Considering Ranma's ease in avoiding the attacks, he couldn't resist poking more fun at he enraged pilot. "Don't tell me you're not skilled enough to hit little old me? Come on, you can do better than that!"
With each taunt - and there were many - the swings and stomps were growing wilder, until at last one swing caught on the ground long enough. Ranma jumped up on the back edge of the sword and ran up one arm - and punched the suit hard enough to make a sizeable dent in the side of its head, before grabbing on and ripping it clean off. "Not so fun playing around now, is it? Let's see, if I was a pilot's compartment, where would I be..." Ranma commented as he began tearing stuff out of the hole where the head had been, while the suit flailed around with both arms waving around in the air.
Finally, unable to stop the mobile suit's flailing with muscle power alone, Ranma decided to bring out the big guns - though he was pre-empted.
"Ranma, get out of there, I'll handle it!" The voice was Kira's, and it was coming from the other mobile suit, which had been standing around doing precisely nothing for the past few minutes. As Ranma looked on, the other suit brandished a pair of knives with considerably more fluidness than it had been capable of previously, and charged towards him. Ranma took the hint, and jumped off his unstable perch, as the two knives slammed into the headless mobile suit and finally shut it down - except for one thing...
"Oh shit," Ranma thought as the Ginn blew up, tossing him a couple of dozen meters into the air and scratching him up pretty badly. His final thought before the lights went out were, "thank goodness for the breaking point training..."
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(Posted Fri, 29 Sep 2006 20:56)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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