*BUBBLE BUBBLE*
Ranma's eyes opened slowly, harshly, painfully. His head felt pained, fuzzy, different somehow. The last thing that he remembered was trying to save some strange woman from a vacuum tunnel, and now......
Where was he anyway?
Everything around him seemed fuzzy, hazy, and indistinct. Shifting shadows mixed with harsh light, tilting and whirling together in a form of sickening melee. Overshadowing everything was a distinct greenish pallor, a murky tint which blurred edges and highlighted motion.
'It's my eyes,' Ranma realized, blinking rapidly in a vain attempt to restore his depth perception. After a few moments he stopped, overcome by a sudden wave of nausea. The room was still spinning around just as wildly as before.
'God, how does Mousse life with this...?' Ranma wondered, quickly stilling his movements. 'Just gonna have ta wait for it to come back naturally, I guess.'
Slowly, ever so slowly, Ranma's senses began to key in to his surroundings. After a little while he was able to make out a myriad of sounds, including a low droning hum that seemed to be overlayed by a louder bubbling sound. It didn't take him long to realize that he was immersed in fluid of some kind, though the...whatever it was...seemed to extend up past his head. Which meant....he was breathing it?
'What the heck?' Ranma mentally muttered.
Oh well. At least the fluid was warm and he was still male. Ranma quickly added this incident to his list of admittedly-few times in which hot water had actually found him.
Shifting around slightly, Ranma groped experimentally, trying to get a better feel of his surroundings. Fingertips extended out only a short distance before tracing over a smooth glassy surface. Whatever he was in, it was small, a cylinder of some kind.
Tight, closed in....
Ranma shuddered, visions of long-remembered horrors flitting briefly through his mind. Long-tailed monsters that bit and rended with brutal claws and vicious teeth.
"Stupid oyaji," Ranma muttered, his voice sounding unusually low and harsh to his ears. Genma was probably somehow related to his current situation anyway.
As Ranma sat there and continued to stew, both figuratively and literally, he slowly became aware of voices in the background. Pressing himself up against the glass, he squinted sharply, managing to make out two semi-distinct forms standing some ways away from his current prison, apparently unaware of his presence. Pressing his ear up against the glass, Ranma strained to make out their conversation.
"I don't......severe stress......temporal strain...."
Ranma grimaced and shifted around, trying to press his ear more tightly to the glass.
"But.... ..... ...it can't........."
'Damn, so much for that,' Ranma muttered. Squinting harder, he managed to get the two speakers to resolve from one big blur into two lesser blurs, colored red and blue, respectively. Both seemed to be girls of roughly the same size as his female-form, but it was hard to make out a definite shape with the colors shifting as much as they were.
For all he knew, he could be looking at Cologne right now.
Still, their voices sounded young...
"You forget... ........IVERSE!!!"
'And loony," Ranma quickly amended.
"So what's........oh........is that.............essary?" the blue blur asked.
"Just a........three more days..........resuscitation......" replied the red one.
Resuscitation? Was he in some kind of a hospital, then? It would certainly make sense. Being pumped full of pain-killers would certainly explain why he was taking this situation so calmly.
"Well, I......................not..."
*ClICK*
Ranma suddenly winced and shied back as a large bright light suddenly blinded him. Quickly blinking to dispel the effect, he cautiously glanced back towards the source of the offending light, frowning as it resolved into a third blur....this one blonde.
"HIII!!!"
Ranma winced again, but this time not from the light. He knew that voice. Approaching the wall of the tank again, Ranma once again strained to overhear the snippets of their conversation.
Eavesdropping may not have been very polite, but it was a tenant of the Saotome School, after all.
"Hey! What's this?!"
"MIHOSHI, NO!!!"
Ranma gulped. That didn't sound too good.
*BEEP!*
"...press that..."
*WHIIIRRRRRRR!!!!!*
Nope, definately not good.
*WHAM!!!!*
Yep, not good at all.
"Ite..." Ranma groaned as he passed out, a large exaggerated lump rising from his head.
****************************************************************************************
Ranma blinked and groaned as he awoke for the second time, quickly shutting his eyes again. Wherever he was this time, it was a lot brighter than the tank.
'Lot dryer, too,' Ranma realized, noticing the absence of surrounding liquid.
Slowly, cautiously, Ranma opened his eyes. Bright lights and indistinct colors resolved into a wooden paneled ceiling. Forcing himself to sit up, Ranma realized that he was lying on a cot in what appeared to be a recovery ward of some sort.
He should know. He'd certainly been in Dr. Tofu's enough.
Bright natural light shone down through the two open windows placed high up on the wall, illuminating the room and giving it a bright cheery aire, dissuading the cold impersonal feeling that such facilities usually carried. Lining the walls were a series of wooden cabinets and rudimentary medical tools, though they amount of equipment present seemed rather small even for a facility of this size. Two rows of four beds each ran down the length of the room, taking up the majority of the floor space, although none of the others were occupied at the moment.
Stretching experimentally and hauling himself to his feet, Ranma walked over to the window, looked up into the big blue sky....and stared.
Since when were there two moons?
And why was that one moon flickering?!
Something was seriously not right here.
"Oh!"
*CRASH!*
"What the...?" Ranma started, whirling around to take in the small blue-haired girl who had somehow snuck up behind him. She seemed to have dropped the first-aid kit she had been carrying in her sudden surprise.
"Who are you? Where am I?" asked Ranma, calmly sizing the little girl up.
Hey, when you've lived a life like Ranma's, you tend to pick up a few bad habits. Just look at the other practitioners of Anything Goes.
"Oh! I'm so sorry!" the girl chirped, kowtowing and sending her long blue ponytails to bobbing. "I didn't realize you were awake! You've been asleep for so long!"
"I...I have...?" Ranma asked cautiously, slowly relaxing his guard.
"Yes! You've been out for nearly a week! I was so worried you wouldn't wake up!" she enthused, softening her tone and setting her large red eyes to shimmering.
Ranma immediately relaxed his guard, stooping to help her collect the fallen medical supplies. Anyone who could be that kawaii without even trying couldn't be a bad person. Figureskaters and uncute tomboys not withstanding. Besides, in a way he couldn't quite identify, she kind of reminded him of Kasumi.
"A...a week...?" Ranma asked, scratching his head and grinning sheepishly, "I've been out for that long...?"
"Well..." she hesitated, "um...Washuu-chan had you for 11 weeks before that..."
"WHAT?!" Ranma yelled, drawing a startled shriek from the young girl.
"Er, sorry..." Ranma mumbled, realizing that he had just probably scared the living daylights out of the poor girl. "I just didn't expect to hear that....jeeze, three months...."
"Mmmhmm," the girl nodded, bobbing her head cutely.
"Have...have you been taking care of me the entire time?"
"Only the last week," she replied modestly.
"Oh...well, um, thanks anyway...er...heh," Ranma chuckled, "Domo. I guess I didn't catch your name, did I?"
"It's okay," the girl shrugged off, "I'm Sasami! Want to be friends?"
"Er...sure," Ranma muttered, shaking his head. He had the strangest sense of deja vu.
"Oh...um...I'm Ranma, by the way."
"I know," Sasami replied nonchalantly, "your family told me. Do you really have three fiancees? Are you a prince, like Tenchi?"
Ranma bigsweated. "Er...I don't think so."
Ranma stared for a few minutes before the rest of her statement finally caught up with his brain. Of course, if asked, Ranma would blame it on his recent recovery. "Wait a minute! Did you say that my family's here?!"
"Oh!" Sasami squeaked, suddenly blushing embarassedly, "I better go tell them you're awake!"
"Er, hold on a minute," Ranma interrupted, preventing her from scurrying off, "I'll go with you, just let me find something else to wear."
It was at that point that Sasami realized that Ranma was clad only in a short open-backed hospital gown.
Her blush physically lit up the room.
*****************************************************************************
"That's better," Ranma approved, shrugging on his red silk shirt and tying on the leather bracers. It had been fortunate that whatever had taken him out of commission for three months had at least left his clothing relatively intact.
"Sasami," Ranma called, knocking gently on a nearby closet door, "you can come out now." A few seconds later the closet door opened and the cerulean-tressed princess reemerged, looking none the worse for wear.
"Ya know, you could've just waited outside," Ranma told her, raising one eyebrow. "Uhn," Sasami replied, shaking her head emphatically, "Washuu-chan told me to make sure not to leave you alone so you wouldn't sneak out."
Ranma twitched.
"Let's just go meet my folks..." Ranma muttered, making a mental note to have a chat with this 'Washuu' person sometime in the near future.
Sasami nodded and shyly took Ranma's hand, leading him outside the room, which, it turned out, was more or less the entirity of the clinic. Walking outside, what Ranma saw took him aback.
A nice street, he would have expected. A crowded sidewalk, he would have expected. An active war zone with an adjacent forty-car pileup, he would have expected.
But what he got, was a beach.
Stretching out before him like a glittering paradise was a beautiful white-sand beach, its sandy stretches reaching as far as the eye could see. Cool surf lapped gently at its shore, the tranquil rhythmic sound seeming to wash away his worries and cares. Rising upwards, beach adjacent, were a series of small wooden houses, which, rather than distracting fromt the atmosphere, only emphasized it. The scene even came complete with warm water, cool breezes, and the obligatory palm trees.
Ranma briefly wondered if he had died and gone to heaven, and, if so, who had decided to turn the reigns of command over to Principle Kuno.
The only thing spoiling the scene was the massive decidedly traditional-looking Japanese house that rose up out of the forest behind the beach. It even sported a small mailbox out front bearing the name 'Masaki", though Ranma doubted how much mail they actually got out here.
What was by far the most jarring factor of the whole tableau though, were the residents. Everywhere he looked, there were men and women walking, talking, and generally just interacting with each other. This wasn't really so unusual. However, what was unusual was just how they were interacting with each other.
Off to one side a rather panicked young man ran by at full sprint, a flying silver-haired girl and an irate girl with purple hair chasing after him, seemingly intent on destroying each other mid-chase. They didn't get very far before colliding with another young man who was being chased by his own personal irate flying green-haired girl.
Off to another side, Cologne was apparently watching as Shampoo sparred with a young perky red-headed girl. That said girl also had cat ears and a tail was a fact that was carefully overlooked by Ranma.
Further down the beach, a blue-haired girl with frighteningly pale skin was watching disinterestedly as yet another redhead commenced a severe beatdown on an unfortunate young man, which she accomplished while swearing in German. A little ways away, a purple-haired woman was holding Mousse up by his legs and shaking him, grinning gleefully as beer cans poured from his rainments.
Down by the water, Nabiki was busy trying to construct what appeared to be a coconut camera, while Nodoka and Kasumi watched as a small cat/rabbit-looking thing used a penguin as a surfboard. Slightly further down, Soun was wandering down the beach, picking up small white and black rocks and eyeing them critically as a nearby Genma-Panda used his claws to carve a piece of driftwood into something that looked suspiciously like a Shogi board.
Taking in the spectacle with equal parts dread and resignation, Ranma decided to:
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(Posted Sat, 08 Feb 2003 14:59)
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