The multitude of existence is an amazing thing to behold. In it, multiple universes stretch to endless bounds. Some, where life as we know it could never exist, some, where life as we imagine it would exceed our bounds of understanding.
Some universes so close to one another, it might take an eternity to find the difference, or if the difference had yet to occur.
Realities exist where what we imagine is reality, just as our own might be the imagination of another’s.
Truly, we could be both the dream and the dreamer.
But, as in all things, a difference must exist. One universe cannot and shall not be the same as another to the point of a perfect reflection.
One such universe is before us. Countless times it has been told, seen, and heard, of how one Ranma Saotome received the Curse of Jusenkyo. Many times, people have wondered why this was. What was Jusenkyo, how did it start, and was there some force behind the curses people got?
Well … this … is not that story.
“DIE, OLD MAN!” came the cry from a soaked neo-redhead.
“…” How is this my fault!? came the … sign of a panda, running away atop the poles.
Why did the panda suddenly have—pardon the phrase—the ability to use sign language? That is not the point of our visit either..
So, as within an infinite amount of universes before, and perhaps an infinite amount of universe afterwards, did Ranma-chan chase after the baka panda.
As usual, the chase went around Jusenkyo, maybe knocking Ryoga into a spring, maybe not. Once again, that isn’t this story.
No, this story is of Genma Saotome, doing what he usually does best: making a situation worse.
Calm down, Boy! *flip* Stop whining like a girl!
Maybe he didn’t mean to flip the sign that hard.
Maybe he really wanted to knock his neo-daughter away—from fear as the raging redhead might have reminded him a bit too much of his wife…
Either way…
*WHAM!
Ranma was struck by the sign, and knocked into a new spring.
“Oh no!” cried the Guide, putting away his flask—if you had visitors like this all the time, wouldn’t you drink? “Young former Sir fell into Spring of Drowned Daughter’s Backpack!”
“… Growf?” asked the panda, landing nearby.
“Oh, is terrible tale of This One’s daughter, Plum, coming to visit This One, and dropping backpack full of items to keep her occupied, last month! Oh, the horror This One had to undergo to entertain a young girl!”
Genma nodded his head sadly, pretending to have any understanding of what was going on.
“Now, whoever fall into that spring … has something happen,” the Guide spoke, taking a pole a poking in the water. “Honestly, This One isn’t sure what happens. This One had thrown in small animals, but only bones or hissing sludge comes out.”
“… Growf!” MY SON IS DEAD!?
The Guide shrugged. “No one has ever fallen into that spring before. So … This One is hopeful he will come out … maybe … hopefully!”
“… Growf.” You aren’t filling me with confidence here.
“Well … this sucks!” Ranma yelled, as she fell down a colored hole of some kind. A kaleidoscope of colors formed the tunnel, as she fell deeper towards a light.
“If my Old Man killed me, I’m haunting his panda ass!” she cried, as she entered the light, and hoped she hadn’t been as bad as some people claimed.
She didn’t want to go to Hell based on a technicality … or limbo because the only Ranma they had was a boy!
“Hey? You okay?”
Ranma just wanted to sleep, and ignore the pain. It was so much better than the odd dreams she was having.
“Well, I suppose I can wake up a pretty princess the usual way: with a kiss.”
“… I’M AWAKE!” Ranma yelled, looking about, before looking down at what was still her chest. “Damn it!” she cursed. “I’m still a girl!”
“Huh,” she heard before her, looking up, and spotting a standing guy who was wearing light denim jeans, a yellow shirt and a red Letterman jacket with white sleeves, and a giant N on the left side. “Well, guess that would explain this odd data pack that came with you,” he muttered, holding what looked like a small booklet … with a picture of him and he guessed his cursed form on it, standing side by side.
“… Whu?” was all Ranma could get out.
“Well, according to the booklet that came with you, you can change form with hot or cold water,” the guy muttered. “I think I have a setting for that on my Zapper.”
“Booklet?” was all Ranma got out, before the guy pointed a plastic gun at her and fired.
*SPLASH!*
Ranma just blinked, looking down and discovering his original gender. “YES!” he jumped up. “It is over!”
“Actually, according to the booklet, it will last until you get splashed again by cold water,” the guy mentioned, before he squinted at the book. “An asterisk?” he asked, before flipping the pages in the booklet. “But it doesn’t say what it is for… Hmm…”
Ranma, however, was twitching. “What do you mean it’ll only last till I get splashed again by cold water!? And who are you!?”
The man blinked. “Oh, my bad! The splashing thing is in here, explains all about Jusenkyo, hot water equals original form, cold water equals cursed form, yadda-yadda-yadda about the history.
“And as to whom I am, I am Kevin Keene, also known as Captain N: the Game Master!”
Ranma just blinked.
Kevin coughed. “You have heard of me, right?”
Ranma shook his head. “I thought the Game Master was a cartoon about a guy named Yugioh,” he replied. “Always wanted to watch that.”
Now Kevin was the one twitching. “Seriously? Never heard of me? I saved Videoland hundreds of times!”
Ranma shook his head. “Is that one of those movie rental places?”
“No! It’s a place where all video games reside!”
“You can rent games there too!” Ranma countered.
The guy just gaped at him, before motioning for Ranma to wait a moment. He then turned around and disappeared into a door Ranma hadn’t even known was there, leaving Ranma in the dark void.
“… Man, wonder what his problem is?”
It was soon answered as a loud wail was heard from the door.
“How can they not remember me! I was famous! I stopped Mother Brain all the time! I fought with Link and Megaman! Sure, I haven’t been on TV for a while, but they could have redone me! He-man got a remake! Those turtles keep getting remade all the time! Even damned Kid Icarus got remade!
“Why can’t the reinvent me! Wasn’t I more popular than a Thundercat!?”
Ranma blinked his eyes once, twice. He didn’t mean to make the guy cry … crying wasn’t manly and to know he was depriving someone of their manhood really hit home right now, what with that damned curse.
Besides, the guy ran off with the booklet, and he certainly wasn’t about to go chasing after a crying guy for some booklet.
Deciding to find out what was going on, he turned and to look about, only to see a huge—and that is to say, HUGE,bigger than his old man even—Grey Brick Nintendo Gameboy. “Oh WOW! I remember that thing!” he cried out with delight. “Damn thing is just as big as I remember it being too; sucker must need four Double-A’s!”
Turning about, Ranma wondered what else he might find, while Kevin was … taking a moment.
“…”
Nothing else, just the oversized Gameboy that was somehow standing on its own, and the door.
As such, Ranma began to ponder some important questions. “Where does the guy go to the bathroom around here?”
“Mega-hi!” came a greeting from around his ankles.
“GAH!!” Ranma shouted as he quickly took a jump back. “Dude! Don’t do that! Not that you scared me or anything,” he added quickly, trying to save face. “It’s just that is rude to do to someone, you know? Coming out of nowhere at knee-height and just shouting…”
“Ahhh…” the short fellow with green and blue armor with a blue visor spoke, as he reached a hand behind his helmeted head as if he were scratching his hair. “Ah! Mega-sorry about that! Megaman didn’t mean to mega-startle you!”
Ranma, for his part, just stood staring for a moment. “… Megaman … as in Rockman?” he whispered in awe, not wanting to believe this.
“The mega-same!” the little robotic squirt replied.
His jaw dropping in horror, the pigtailed martial artist demanded to know, “Oh good kami-sama! What happened to you? You look like shit and sound like you’ve been smoking a pack of Marlboros a day!”
The diminutive robot frowned. “Capcom and three straight years of abuse is what happened,” he grumbled as he reached a hand down to pull a small carton of cigarettes out of his boot. “And it’s up to four packs a day.”
“… Uh-huh,” Ranma muttered, scratching the back of his head. No bumps…
“Are you mega-okay?” Megaman asked.
“Maybe,” Ranma muttered, checking his eyes. “Think I got a head injury or something, not seeing colors right.” He was pretty sure that Rockman was supposed to be in more blue, not green.
“Want me to mega-check you?”
“Uh … no, thanks,” Ranma waved off. He’d heard some old men complaining about robots and checking things in them.
He figured it had something to do with the finger and the postman they were always grumbling about.
“No problem! Just stay the mega-hell away from Simon’s room! Fruit is completely out of the closet, and I don’t mean the Eggplant Wizard,” Megaman told Ranma warningly before his arm shifted to red, using one of the various Fire-themed Robot Masters’ power of flame to light himself another cigarette.
Ranma watched for a moment as the little guy took a deep drag. “Ah, that’s the mega-stuff….” the little bot then coughed out. “Mega-goddamn, I miss being in fighting games … fucking Zero… I’ll have my revenge!” he grumbled.
Nodding his head slowly, the heir to the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts replied “I’ll take that under advisement. Any idea where I should go?”
The little robot exhaled. “Anywhere, really,” Megaman replied. “This is Videoland!”
“The video store?” Ranma inquired once more.
The little robot frowned. “Don’t be mega-stupid. Netflix and Hulu killed them off years ago. No, this is Videoland, the world of videogame worlds... but for the love of mega-god, besides Simon Belmot stay the mega-fuck away from Saints Row Land!”
As the robot walked off into the darkness, the light of his lit smoke fading quickly, Ranma turned back to the door. He knew that Kevin guy was still behind it, probably crying, and didn’t want to see that.
So, he took off into the darkness, following Rockman.
*WHAM! THUD!
And still, he found himself at the same spot, except he had somehow ran into the back of the giant Gameboy… despite having gone off in the direction in front of it!.
“That … *sniff* … won’t work,” Kevin said, returning to the room. “No side-scrolling yet for you.”
“Um…” Ranma muttered, looking between the guy and the face-down game console … which was missing a back panel and had a post-it note promising to replace the batteries in the future, showing.
“Since you’re like me and not from any specific videogame, this makes Videoland a two-player game of sorts,” Kevin explained. “So unless we find a way to induce split screen mode by some way other than a door, we have to be in close proximity to one another.”
Ranma raised an eyebrow.
“Trust me, I went through this once before when another girl dropped down here; some little girl with a mallet claiming about bugs in the system or something.” Kevin snorted. “Damn Gamecube Teeny-Boppers…”
“… So … will you be explaining things now?” Ranma drawled.
Kevin blinked, before chuckling weakly. “Ah, got me there.
“Well, short of it is, you fell into a spring of Jusenkyo.”
“Yeah, turned into a girl.”
“… You fell into a second spring,” Kevin corrected. “And in the spring, the Guide’s daughter dropped her backpack, full of things she needed to stay entertained in this place.”
“Like what?”
Kevin snorted. “Like the best pirated copies of games the Chinese could make, some books stored on some flimsy flattened Gameboy, and I think music stored on some pod. With me so far?”
“… Let’s just say I am and keep going.”
“Okay,” Kevin nodded. “Well, all that turned this spring into what I like to call, the Super Ultimate Warp Zone!”
Ranma just blinked. “… Did I land in a sentai series?” he asked, looking about. That name sort of fit some of the stuff he had seen in them.
“Several games from some, some even in the original Japanese!” Kevin proclaimed. “And to leave, you have to beat a certain amount of the games … I think.
“To be honest, you’re the first sentient being to fall into here; so really, I’m just making this up as I go.
“And that’s also why I’m tagging along with you.”
“… And because this empty space is creepy?”
“Exactly!”
“Geeze,” Ranma snorted. “What are you even doing here if this place creeps you out?”
“Hey, back in 1991, this place was AWESOME!” Kevin shouted. “Megaman was more chipper, Kid Ikarus wasn’t a douche that could steal chicks from me, Simon was still in the closet and could somewhat pass as being straight, as I was dating Princess Lana!”
“Who?” Ranma asked curiously.
“You know, Princess Lana! From the Hit NES game ‘80’s Fashion Vomit’! Currently, it is the the biggest land-filler since the E.T. videogame!” At Ranma’s continued blank stare, he insisted, “Trust me! She may have been dressed horribly, but she put out … eventually!”
Ranma just blinked. “Put out what?” Maybe this was why his father kept insisting video games rotted his brain.
Wow, maybe he wasn’t just being cheap after all…
Wow, that alone is a thought scarier than the Nekoken… “So what now?” he asked, noticing that Kevin was staring at him oddly.
Shaking away the internal question about whether or not someone could really be that dim, he decided to finish up the explanation. “First, I have to give you your gear,” he said, handing Ranma a bag he got from … somewhere Ranma couldn’t see.
He swore though that he say a bar of white flip over first though…
“With this, you’ll be geared up like me!” Of course, Kevin wanted to cry when what Ranma pulled out was nowhere near what he had.
“How come mine is smaller than yours?” Ranma asked, feeling somewhat slighted. “And why does it have more buttons?
“Hey! It even comes with a Bameboy!” Ranma called out.
He also wondered why Kevin was muttering about not crying again and asking for upgrades, as well as wondering why he only got one controller, but felt it would be unmanly to ask such things.
Taking a deep calming breath—damned yoga game, and how did yoga become a game!?!?—he turned back towards Ranma. “Now, we enter the Warp Zone, and begin our journey!”
“… Wasn’t that the door you went through before?” Ranma asked.
Kevin just smiled as he opened the doorway. “Ranma, first rule about Warp Zones: it really does depend on how you go through them!”
“Really?” Ranma asked curiously.
“Oh yeah!” Kevin snorted. “Why, back in the early 90’s, King Hippo and Eggplant Wizard used to invade all the time … with just themselves. Why, shoot! They could get into the palace whenever they wanted at any time that it was just a friggin’ joke … like Simon Belmont—no wonder he was head of security!”
Ranma blinked, not getting the reference, and peeked his head into the doorway. “I don’t see—WAH!” he cried, as Kevin kicked him in the rear and sent him through the doorway, the Super Mario warp sound effect following.
“I love when I do that to them,” Kevin smiled fondly, as he jumped in after Ranma.
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(Posted Mon, 03 Dec 2012 04:43)
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