[Episode 5603] [Episode 5603]Workers in Osaka were still cleaning up the debris. During the Millionaire Fight, the award ceremony had been interrupted by the fight between two warriors - Akuma, the superhuman master of the Ansatsuken, and Rugal Bernstein, the cybernetic juggernaut. It was a titanic struggle, but in the end, Rugal fell. But before he did, he infected Akuma with the power of the Orochi. The power drove Akuma mad, and destroyed a good portion of the city.
In the end, the young champion of the tournament, Ranma Bogard, somehow took Akuma down, avoiding his Shun Goku Satsu attack. The power was too much for Akuma's body to take, and he collapsed, and then the building the two fought on top of his body.
Ranma survived by luck. People wanted to say Akuma didn't... but this wouldn't have been the first time Akuma had survived what should have been certain death.
But that wasn't on the mind of Kan Enomoto, one of the workers clearing out what used to be Osaka castle. "Once a national treasure, now a pile of rubble, what a waste." he thought to himself. It would be a long time before Osaka was again a full city, not a half-wrecked landscape.
Kan paused a moment. Did he just hear something? Straining, her heard it again, a soft rumbling from a pile of collapsed wood.
"Hey, Hiroshi! I think something might be underneath here!" he called out to his fellow worker.
Hiroshi Abe, a bear of a man who had once demonstrated that he could pick up and lift over his head three of his fellow workers standing on a wood pallet, lumbered over to Kan. "Ya, what is it?"
"I think something's under this pile here. Might be nothing but a pit, but better to uncover it now than let someone else be surprised by it later."
Hiroshi nodded. The bent down at their knees, and began moving debris out of the way.
The the pile exploded! Kan was thrown back, just in time to see a large figure emerge from the hole. Without so much as a thought, the figure grabbed Hiroshi and lifted him in one hand! Shaking the struggling worker a bit, the figure threw the man toward Kan. It was then Kan smelled it... and realized the Hiroshi hadn't been shook... he'd been electrocuted!
Staring at the corpse that had been, until a moment ago, the strongest man he knew, Kan never noticed when the figure walked in front of him until he too was picked up, to look right into the face of Rugal Bernstein. "I...it can't be... you're d...d...dead..." he said in a small voice.
Rugal smiled cruelly. "I've been dead before. I find it... therapeutic. Now, what happened here?"
Kan wasn't a warrior, or even possessed of any extraordinary will. He folded right away. "Akuma... Akuma destroyed everything. Then he fought that kid that won the tournament... that Ranma kid..."
Rugal nodded. "So, Akuma survived..."
"N...no... the kid won... Akuma was buried by a building down the street..."
Rugal stared into the frightened workers eyes a moment, and then began to laugh. A monster like Akuma, losing to a child! How deliciously ironic. With a flick of his wrist, he snapped Kan's neck, and left the corpse by the other one, uncaring.
For now, all that mattered was finding this 'Ranma,' to prove that he was the superior fighter.
Within him, the power of the Orochi his body reclaimed merged with the Satsu no Hado from Akuma. With this kind of power, Rugal had truly become as a GOD!
What he didn't know, was what Akuma had discovered during his fight. The power of the Orochi gave the wielder access to powerful, if corrupt, chi. The Satsu no Hado wasn't a power, it was a mindset that allowed the user access to superhuman abilities, at the cost of their humanity. And the two were not compatible. The Orochi power was fueled by rage and destruction, the Satsu no Hado's power came from absolute control. Trying to force the two together was like putting Matter and Anti-Matter together.
Rugal was a ticking time bomb... and he was heading right for Ranma...
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(Posted Fri, 18 Oct 2002 00:15)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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