[Episode 457] [Episode 457]Ranma's eyes open into near-pitch darkness. The sensation of being flat on his back quickly registers with his mind, then he tries to focus on what now surrounds him. A chamber, twenty-five square metres in size, the wall in the direction of Ranma's feet composed of floor-to-ceiling, thick glass windows divided every metre or so by a metal frame bar. Beyond that, a sea of stars, the only source of light in this place.
Where am I...? he squints, then slides up onto his hands as he looks down at himself. Quickly noting the lack of clothes covering his body, he shudders, then glances around. Damn, so hard to see in this...
Wait.
His eyes narrow as his well-honed chi senses pick up the bright spot of another person lying two metres away on a raised, rectangular slab. Sliding himself around to stand up, he slowly approaches the other person. He doesn't have to take more than three steps to realize something.
A woman. Also nude.
Oh, shit...! he shudders as he backs away, stumbling over the slab he woke up on, then he falls flat on his head. "OWWW!!!!"
He grunts as the rest of him collapses on the floor, then pales on hearing a voice echo from the other side of the room. "Who's there...?"
Ranma quiets himself as he hears the faint sliding sound of a body passing over metal, then relaxes as silence falls again before jolting as a dark shadow seems to cover him. "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"
The stranger also screams out as she backs away towards the window, Ranma quickly lunging for the opposite wall. Once framed by the distant stars, Ranma quickly sees that the girl possesses the same size and generous proportions of his cursed self. The hair is different, though: there is no sign of a tightly-wound pigtail. And the voice wasn't the tone of his other self. Who was this girl? Why did she seem to literally explode with chi, practically at the same levels Ryouga possessed...?
Ryouga...
No...!
"...you betray me like this, Ran-cha-...?!"
Ukyou's shouted question disappeared as a curtain of sparkles flooded the Tendou dojo, they melting like the transporter from Star Trek into a floating, black spheroid of metal, approximately a metre wide. Silence fell over the potential scene of confrontation as the ball simply hovered there for a moment, then it twirled around to reveal a red dot the size of the average hand at its widest point. Seeing that, Ranma automatically moved closer to Akane. "What the hairy heck's that...?!" he demanded...
...then gasped as a beam of energy lanced at him as a metal-tinged voice announced, "Target Ranma Saotome located. Commencing retrieval."
Seeing this, people screamed out as Ranma was coccooned from head-to-toe in that crimson energy. "What are you doing to Ran-chan?!!" Ukyou, quicky forgetting the real purpose of her presence at the dojo, wound up with one of her special explosive okonomiyaki, then pitched it...
...just as a ball of bright white energy burst forth from the "back" of the sphere. Hitting Ukyou, it encompassed her, then vanished, leaving nothing behind. "Target Ukyou Kuonji: terminated," it announced.
Hearing that, Konatsu screamed out as he lunged out of nowhere, his gaikatana zinging for the sphere. In another blast of energy, the cross-dressing kunoichi vanished. "Target Konatsu Kenzan: terminated."
"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!?!" a Demon Head lashed out.
ZAP!!
"DAD!!!!"
"Target Souun Tendou: terminated."
Watching as the others, both the official wedding party and the would-be gatecrashers, started to panic, Ranma trembled as the damned thing holding him fast cut them down again -- and again -- and again...! No matter what sort of tricks the Nerimians try to bring to bear on this demonic machine, they were simply too slow. Genma, Mousse, Shampoo, Ryouga, Happousai, Hinako, Nabiki, Nodoka, Kasumi, Kodachi, Kunou...
"Target Akane Tendou: terminated."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...!!!!"
"Target Ranma Saotome: retrieval complete."
"No...!"
Ranma shudders, unashamed tears flowing down his cheeks as he hugs himself, sitting on his haunches as the image of Akane vanishing before his eyes flashes through his mind anew. The ache deep in his heart seems to overwhelm all his senses until a tender hand touches his head. "Are you alright?" a concerned woman's voice echoes from in front of him.
He snaps up, then gasps on seeing the very dark shadow nearly block out all the weak starlight from the windows. Well-conditioned reflexes start to kick in as panic surges through him, then he stops on feeling another hand rest on his head. "It's alright," the girl declares, her own voice tinged with -- well, something! "I won't hurt you. We seem to be stuck in this mess together. You're Ranma Saotome, aren't you?"
He stops, blinks several times, then looks up. He couldn't see the girl's face, but the words she said do wonders to calm him down. "Y-yeah..." he sputters, then sighs, looking at the floor. "Look, I got no clothes on. Don't think of me as a pervert an' all, but..."
"It's okay," she assures him. "It's not that I haven't seen a nude man before. Believe me, Ranma-kun, I've seen plenty of that!"
Ranma blinks, then his eyes widen as he realizes something: the girl was talking with a girl's voice, but with a BOY'S words. Did that mean...?
"Are you a guy?"
Dramatic pause.
"I was."
"Huh?!"
A sigh. "My mind was that of a boy before I was brought here, wherever 'here' happens to be. But when I woke up and discovered I was a girl, it..." her voice stutters to a halt, then she breathes out. "Well, it felt right to be this way! So I guess that whoever did this to me must've fixed up my mind so that I'd be pretty comfortable as a girl."
Ranma takes that in, then mentally chews on that information for a moment before closing his eyes. "You didn't deserve that."
"Too late, I guess," the girl chuckles as her hands pull away from him, then he hears faint footsteps trail away from him. Looking up, he blinks on seeing her standing by the windows again. "Ranma-kun?"
"Yeah?"
"C'mon over here. I want to see you. Please?"
"You sure...?"
A chuckle. "Relax. Like I said, I was a guy before this, so I know what a nude boy looks like. And you've probably seen your girl's body nude loads of times, right? It's okay. I won't hurt you."
Hearing that, Ranma shudders as he stands up, then walks towards her. As soon as he is by the windows, he focuses on her. Thanks to the weak starlight, he is able to see that, save for the hair, she is his girl's body to the proverbial "T." Her eyes seem to widen for a moment as they trace down his front, pausing for a time at a point below his navel before dropping to the floor, then she focuses back on his face.
"Kirei," she whispers, her cheeks heating.
"Kawaii," he returns, then his own cheeks heat.
She laughs at his reaction, then sighs before her eyes soften. "Something really bad happened to you before you came here, right?"
He looks at her, then nods. "Yeah. Some black ball came outta nowhere and took you away to bring you here, right?"
"Hai. Same with you?"
"Yeah."
"Were there others around you when it happened?"
A shudder races through him as fresh tears stream down his cheeks. "Yeah. It was..." he sniffs. "I was at my wedding..."
Her eyes widen, then she closes her eyes. "I'm so sorry..."
He gasps as she slides up, grabbing him in a very firm embrace. He tries to pull away, then shudders as the warmth of her show of sympathy chases away his fear. His hands come up to return her hug, then begin to knead her hair. She turns her head to lean against his chest, then blinks on feeling something hard and throbbing press against her belly. He tries not to shudder too much as her nipples press into him, then relaxes as she pulls away, glancing down at the most visible sign of his sudden arousal at being so close to a woman as beautiful as she. "S-s-sorry..."
She looks up at him, then chuckles. "It's okay." With that, she glances around the darkened space. "Are there lights he-...?!"
The lights click on. "...re?!" the girl gasps, squinting suddenly as the brightness blinds her for a moment, then she focuses again on Ranma.
As he looks on her, he quickly notices she has...
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(Posted Sat, 11 Jan 2003 14:01)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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