[Episode 212411] [Episode 212411]Everyone in the glass walled observational room ducked under their seats when Ranma hit the glass at seemingly terminal velocity. Well, everyone but the confident Professor Nova who was drug down by Elf and Lou, since they were the closest to him. They were all glad they did too when the sound of glass shattering filled the room. Flakes and shards of the stuff bounced about the room, despite the bulk of the wall remaining standing, if caved inward a little.
When they all looked up, there was a suspiciously bright red blotch near the center of the broken wall, one that trailed down and out of sight to the floor. A low, muttered discord of shocked worry filled the room as nearly everyone commented on the event simultaneously. Even Nabiki felt her throat suddenly go dry as a heavy knot formed in the pit of her stomach.
“I-is he . . . ? Did she just . . . kill, Ranma?” Akane stuttered out worriedly, visibly distraught by the possibility. The thought occurred to Nabiki too, but it was all she could do to creep up to the broken glass and peer down to find out what she could see.
“Well the monitoring devices in the room are still picking up Ranma’s vitals. So she isn’t dead just yet, Ms. Tendo,” Nova announced, somehow managing to pout and sound delighted simultaneously. “Unfortunately it would also appear that I’ve lost that bet with your sister, Nabiki, as well,” he added sullenly, explaining the pouting quality of his prior announcement.
“Who cares about that right now?! Ranma could be dying in there right now for all we know! So just how badly is he hurt?!” Akane yelled furiously at Nova, proving that cared at least a little bit for her unwanted fiancé, despite frequent denials.
Alita stared in horrified shock as the girl she hoped would become her tamer slammed into the glass wall with enough force to shatter it. She watched on in morbid fascination as the petite girl’s body rolled down the newly curved wall of glass, bleeding as she went. The redhead twitched in obvious pain a few times once she it the floor, her body was littered with cuts, some of them still containing slivers of glass.
For Ten agonizing seconds Alita watched on as the twitching stilled, and Ranma lay still. She was about to dismiss her maxed out strength and rush over to the girl, when Ranma unexpectedly moved again. She rolled over onto her side, ignoring the shards of broken glass littering the floor and coughed up some blood, which she absently smeared with her blood spattered hands.
An ice blue corona of light began to silhouette the redhead’s body as she lay there, and Alita could feel it sapping the heat from the room where she stood. Glass tinkled to the floor as Ranma stood up, then started removing a few particularly annoying shards of broken glass from her hands and arms. “You know, I did warn you that I wouldn’t play nice anymore if you threw me at them again. Didn’t I?” the girl asked Alita icily, without looking way from her hands and forearms as she removed glass from them.
Her icy calm tone sent a chill running down Alita’s spine that had absolutely nothing to do with the dropping temperature of the room. “Y-yes,” Alita answered stutteringly, dreading what was about to come next, subconsciously shifting into a defensive stance and configuration.
“Right, just checking,” Ranma replied, and then suddenly she was in front of Alita, raining down blows on her. Alita’s body reacted faster than her mind could, instinctively blocking the worst of the hits aimed at her. Even so, several dozen hard hits got through her distracted defenses, the last of which sent Alita skittering across the floor in an uneven spin.
Alita quickly scrambled to her feet again and took up a defensive pose again, only to be sent sprawling from behind this time. Ranma’s blows were chilling Alita’s muscles to near unresponsiveness wherever she hit her at, steadily making it harder for Alita to defend herself. Her instincts were telling her to give up, to hide or run away, but Alita’s stubborn pride just wouldn’t let her.
Every time Ranma knocked her down, or threw her across the room, Alita would get right back up and prepare to fight again. Only she wouldn’t actually fight back after getting on her feet; she’d just stand there instead, as if some part of her genuinely believed she deserved to die at this girl’s hands for her crimes. Not just the crime of endangering Ranma’s friends either, but all of the atrocities she’d committed over the years since Professor Ido found her wandering around with amnesia. As if years of unfelt guilt had suddenly caught up to her all at once.
“P-please. J-just kill me and get it over with. I-I deserve to die anyway,” Alita finally managed to stutter out between sobs. However, it wasn’t the pain of the beating she was taking that motivated her to tears; Alita had shut down her pain centers well before a while ago, before breaking the glass with Ranma’s body. No, her sobs were motivated solely by guilt, Ranma could perform any sort of torture she wanted to on Alita right now and she wouldn’t feel it. Yet the emotional torture of her own guilt was ripping her to shreds inside.
The words had barely escaped her, like a whispered prayer. Yet suddenly the beating from her attacker stopped, and Alita could feel the icy presence of death lessen around her. It was almost like a ray of hope, the hope of peace to come. Alita didn’t dare hope for forgiveness, that was simply too much to ask for.
“Kill you? Why in the world would I want to do something like that?” Ranma’s voice asked her with chilled confusion.
Alita’s head snapped around to face her redheaded tormentor, fully expecting to see an icy, mocking grin on the girl’s face. She expected to see a taunting visage looking back at her to mock Alita for daring to hope for either mercy or kindness on her way to an icy hell. After all, how many people had Alita herself sent to hell without any such considerations?
Yet the only expression on Ranma’s blooded face was sheer confusion . . . perhaps a little doubt mixed in as well. Ranma’s hands rested loosely at her hips, as if she hadn’t just been pummeling Alita with them. Yet Alita could still feel her icy aura sapping heat from the room, despite her disconnected nerves, frightening in its intensity. “Because I’m a monster and I deserve it!” Alita wailed emotionally as years of repressed emotion came to the forefront.
“Oh, man~! I hate it when girls start crying! Look- Alita, wasn’t it -I just got a little mad because you could have hurt my friends in there really badly, you know. But I was never going to kill you or nothin’; I just wanted to teach you a lesson for endangering innocent bystanders is all. And since you’re such a tough girl and all, I kind of felt like I had to go all out to do it, you know? So . . . no hard feelings?” Ranma asked her, the girl’s face turning shy and apologetic without warning.
“You . . . you mean that you forgive me?” Alita asked her incredulously, unable to believe what she was hearing. It had to be a trick. The offer was simply too good to be true. Any instant now, Ranma would laugh at her and end Alita’s life while she was at her most vulnerable.
“Well, yeah~. I mean, why wouldn’t I, you seem to have learned your lesson and all. So let’s just let bygones be bygones, shall we?” Ranma replied with a heart-warmingly impish grin on her face. She even offered Alita her hand to seal the deal with.
“Sure,” Alita accepted with relief so deep it almost hurt at first. “So, does this mean that you won our duel as well then,” she added curiously, somehow not minding anymore if the human girl won or not.
“I don’t remember hearing you say ‘I give up’ or anything like that, and I’m not really in the mood to keep going right now. So what do you say we just call this one a draw between us, huh?” the girl hovering above and beside Alita retorted with a laugh. Only the laughter caused her to cough up a little more blood due to her injuries.
“I think that I can live with that verdict,” Alita smiled back happily, wanting to clamp onto the redhead and just cuddle her for being the unexpected treasure she was. It wasn’t every day that a Gunnm like Alita found someone that could see her as something other than a tool to be used, or a rampaging killer to be avoided.
Yet, this girl had seen nearly Alita’s full, if unarmed, battle potential and just shrugged it off like she didn’t even care about it. Hell, Ranma had been on the receiving end of that particular demonstration and was still walking around and mostly intact. Alita simply couldn’t imagine a better person to be her tamer . . . if she could just talk her into it.
“Glad to hear it, because I’m going to be out of commission for a while once all these injuries start to kick in,” Ranma joked, offering Alita a hand up. “Common, let’s go check on the others, then find ourselves a first aid kit or something,” she added with a crooked grin.
“I’m sure that none of them are seriously injured in there. I mean the glass did stay standing after all,” Alita responded encouragingly, accepting the offered hand. Actually, she didn’t have much of a choice about accepting the help; somewhere between one knock down and another, Alita had lost the use of her legs for some reason.
“Oh, and sorry about your legs, they should start working again on their own in a few hours or so,” Ranma apologized to her sheepishly. Then she proceeded to half carry, half drag Alita out of the room to check on the others.
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(Posted Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:12)
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