Ranma awoke in female form as a large, ominous shadow passed her by overhead. Noticing that she had arrived home underwater, she looked up expecting see a whale swimming past above her. What Ranma saw was no whale, and was only vaguely aquatic looking by anyone’s standards. Despite being big enough to pass for a whale, the owner of the shadow was more man shaped than fish shaped.
A sense of fierce determination radiated from the creature, as if it were expecting a fight, and soon. Stranger still, Ranma could feel it’s determination as plainly as she could feel the water flowing past her in the monster’s wake. It was as if Ranma was somehow in tune with the monster, if only slightly.
Ranma followed the giant monster a little ways out of curiosity. She simply couldn’t help wondering what could possibly motivate that kind of determination out of something that large. Her curiosity was nothing more than idle curiosity at first. Then it became something more as the creature saw something that motivated a spiteful sense of satisfaction out of the giant thing, replacing its determination briefly.
Ranma teleported a short distance ahead of her trailing position to find out what had inspired the monster’s change of mood. The sight that greeted her there changed Ranma’s sense of curiosity from one of idle wonder into one of wary suspicion. Whatever kind of monster the creature was, it wasn’t friendly; not if ruined and submerged city buildings got that kind of reaction out of it.
‘Well, I’m definitely starting to get the impression that this thing isn’t one of the good guys,’ Ranma thought to herself as she looked around. Five and six story buildings were completely submerged by the ocean around her. A few taller buildings peeked above the water’s surface, not that there were many of those this close to what should have been the coastline.
Her suspicions roused, Ranma continued following it inland to see what it was up to. It was moving fairly slowly for its size, although its actual speed was fairly respectable. In only fifteen minutes time it managed to swim from the old coastline to the new one without any real effort. Fin like protrusions along its side and legs seemed to propel it forward every so often until the water became too shallow for the thing to stay below the surface.
Unexpectedly, a string of bubbling streamers tore through the water’s surface ahead of Ranma, right where the creature was preparing to stand up out of the water. Some of those streamers hit the monster’s hide, angling sharply off it again with no effect. Flying straight up out of the water, Ranma looked inland to see what was happening.
Soaring up high enough to see properly, Ranma saw a long string of tanks parked along an adjacent hill spit smoke in their direction. A volley of can sized metal hail impacted the creature Ranma had been following, once again with little effect on the monster they were hitting. A string of explosions followed next, seconds after both the smoke plumes and the hail of projectiles.
Ranma felt a wave of scorn come from the giant as the tanks fired a third volley of smoke plumes in its direction. The volley that hurled itself against the monster this time exploded spectacularly into gouts of flame as the tanks fired something different this time. Scorn turned into irritation as the monster counter attacked with a purple beam that made a ‘t’ shaped explosion wherever it hit. Its attack wiped out fully a third of the tanks on the mountain in a single blow. A second attack wiped out another third, and seemed to cripple most of the rest.
With renewed scorn, the monster leapt out of the water and casually started to walk further inland. Flowing it at a distance like before, Ranma marveled in reluctant awe as multiple flying attack craft fired on the creature without damaging it. Walking along, with occasional hops over obsticals, the giant monster moved quickly inland despite the heavy human assaults on it.
During a lull between air attacks Ranma teleported in close to the thing’s head to try and sort things out. Or at least to see if it was really as undamaged as it looked. “Yo! Big guy! What’s all this about? You don’t seem to be too popular around here,” she quipped at the thing, just to see how it would respond. Ranma didn’t know if it could talk or not, but if she was lucky it could at least understand her and respond emotionally. That wouldn’t be much to go by, but it’d still be better than nothing to go on at all.
Ranma’s hunch paid off though, as the monster paused briefly to look at her in open curiosity. The monster felt confused by Ranma’s challenge, as if it hadn’t expected anyone to simply come up and talk to it in the middle of its fight. No words were forth coming though, and it didn’t stop for long either.
“Okay–, let’s try asking you something else then. Like, why does a big fellow like you need to walk through the middle of Japan like this?” Ranma tried, but only got annoyance for an answer. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into going around Japan, maybe? I can show you this great detour if you like?” she tried next. The monster got angry at Ranma’s questions this time and swatted its hand at her. Ranma dodged the attack easily enough, but an incoming helicopter took the blow in her stead. Her shock at what happened as a result of her evasion allowed a second blow to connect with Ranma’s body and propel her violently downward at an angle.
Ranma went through the back side of an electric billboard, electricity arching behind her on her way to the ground. The electricity only compounded her shock as Ranma’s near insentient form continued on to hit the ground at a speed that would have shattered her old body. As it was, Ranma still bounced painfully off the rough pavement, leaving some of her battle suit and some previously healthy skin behind her with the contact. Momentum carried the bruised and bleeding martial artist almost a full block before she touched down again, tumbling violently into the side of a building.
She still had enough momentum that the blow rattled Ranma’s teeth a bit as she finally came to a stop. It also left her feeling a little dizzy and disoriented thanks to the last half of Ranma’s trip to the ground. If things didn’t stop spinning around her soon, Ranma was certain she was going to lose her lunch all over the ground. “Dammit! I’ll get ‘em for that,” Ranma vowed through clenched teeth as she painfully got up off the ground.
“Just as soon as I can shake off this concussion that is,”Ranma had to amend herself as she wobbled on her feet and started to fall over. Someone caught her before she could fall down again. Too bad one of the places they grabbed her happened to include the large road rash Ranma had just gotten on the way over there. “Ow, ow, ow!” she yelped, attempting to dodge away from the painful grip just above her hipbone.
“I- I’m sorry. But there was nowhere to- I mean, I couldn’t risk letting you hurt yourself more by falling down again,” a boy’s voice apologized. He was obviously in a panic, probably afraid that Ranma would hit him for treating her so roughly just now. Then again, if he didn’t move his hand off her scrape soon, she just might do that anyway.
Ranma heard an explosion to what she thought was her left followed closely by a frightened yelp from her timid supporter. Ranma might be too disoriented to stand up on her own right now, but fortunately that didn’t stop her from throwing up a shield to protect them from the debris flying past.
Her entire world was reduced to a blurry, wavering double vision that Ranma would have considered serious if she thought she had time to worry about it. Even so, Ranma was fairly certain that her would-be helper was too busy cringing to see why neither of them had just been hit by the close explosion. Not that she’d have cared one way or the other if he had seen it, it just meant Ranma wouldn’t have to explain it to him just yet, that was all.
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(Posted Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:52)
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