Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 is owned by people other than me. I own nothing and
claim no rights to the show.
**C&C, public or private, is begged for. Since most of the fic is already
written, we prefer grammer help. If you have a burning desire to give other
C&C though, we will take it with a smile. In fact, ANY C&C would be nice.
We havn't gotten that much so far.**
"RAGE"
by
Ashes2ashes: slayer0@Zoomnet.net
AsheRhyder: ashrhyder@yahoo.com
Chapter Three:
Fear.
He could smell it. A part of his distant mind was worried about this but
the animal snarled at it, silencing it. All that mattered was the hunt, and
fueling the rage.
He sniffed the cold damp grass, picking up on a familiar scent. His glowing
red eyes darted back and forth in the night looking for signs of prey.
Something was close, something big. Ryouga licked his lips. He was hungry.
He heard it long before it appeared, but decided to let it come to him. A
large snout poked out of the outskirts of the clearing. It looked up at him
in surprise and recognition. The large pig started forward but something
told him to stop.
This wasn't a friend.
Ryouga crouched low on all fours and circled the large pig. He smiled
evilly, exposing his fangs to the moonlight.
He wasn't sure why, but for some reason the very sight of his prey enraged
him. He wasn't just hungry. He wanted to kill, to see the sweet crimson
blood roll off this beast in buckets. It made him feel weak. He hated to
feel weak.
The pig turned and bolted back into the underbrush.
SNIKT!
Ryouga's claws snapped out of his hands leaving trails of blood behind. He
paused for a brief moment letting the pig have a head start. He felt like
playing with his prey today.
He leaped an impossible distance forward and landed silently in the wooded
thicket. It wasn't hard to pick up its scent.
Ryouga spotted it a few moments later running out of the thicket. It looked
around frantically in front of a small farm house as if searching for
something, or SOMEONE.
"Kastunishiki what are you doing?" A pretty girl with long dark haired
asked as she stepped out of the farm house. Her pig looked in relief at
seeing his master. Everything would be all right.
And that's when his entrails came spilling out.
Akari looked on in horror as her beloved pet fell to the ground, gutted like
a fish. She turned pale white as she recognized its killer.
Ryouga looked up at her with an animalistic expression, void of all
humanity. His eyes shifted to meet hers and locked there.
The seconds seem to stretch on to lifetimes as she could only stare frozen
in fear. Finally, Ryouga shifted his stance, readying to leap forward.
Akari ran into the house and bolted the door, moving faster than she had
ever in her entire life.
She stepped away from the wall just in time as claws burst through the
plaster and ripped it apart. Ryouga stepped through the hole and pushed
bits of plaster and wood back from his makeshift hole.
"Ryouga . . .what are you doing?" Akari's voiced wavered as tears streaked
down her face. He only growled in response. He advanced slowly, leaving
trails of dripping pig blood on the newly polished floors.
Akari took a step backward and tripped on the hem of her dress causing her
to tumble to the floor. Ryouga saw this as an opportunity to strike and
leaped forward claws outstretched.
And then stopped.
Why was he doing this? . . . She was prey. You kill prey. Fuel the rage.
Kill her. Her? No . . .she's prey.
Akari noticed his sudden distracted and reached up, grabbed a hot pot of
steaming water from the stove, and hurled it toward him. The scalding water
hit him square in the face.
"AHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Ryouga looked up as humanity returned to his eyes. He took in the torn
kitchen, Akari laying on the floor, her pretty face streaked with tears and
her hands turning red with blisters from the scalding water. And then he
looked down at himself and noticed the blood. There was so much of it. It
was everywhere.
"W-what?" he choked out. Akari . . . she was looking at him with . . .
hatred? Had he done this? . . .
"Akari . . . wha--"
"Get out." She looked at him coldly despite the fear gripping her heart.
"You're not welcome here anymore."
"But-"
"Now."
Ryouga took one last look at Akari's tear streaked and betrayed face and
then ran out of the house, past the bloody body of Kastunishiki and into the
dark night. Akari looked around at the carnage and then down at her burning
and blistered hand . . . hands that would be scarred for the rest of her
life.
"Ryouga . . . I'll never forgive you."
---
Akane, Ranma, and Ukyou sat in Ucchan's around the griddle. Akane sipped a
glass of iced tea, and Ukyou absently sharpened her mini-spatulas, while
Ranma checked the wide bands of white bandages around his arms and legs.
"ITAI!" he hissed, rubbing more of a salve from Dr. Tofu into the cuts.
Ukyou tightened her fist in anger. The next time she saw that stupid
jackass she was going to--
"Excuse me, do you know where I am?" They stared at the ragged figure
standing in the door way, fear and anticipation in their eyes.
"Ryouga?" Akane asked timidly, half afraid he'd go berserk where he stood.
"Akane? What're you doing in Nagano?" He dropped his staff and straightened
up, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.
"IDIOT!" Ukyou roared, flinging a handful of mini-spatulas at him. "THIS
IS MY STORE! YOU'RE IN NERIMA!"
Ryouga winced and dodged the projectiles, one of which snagged his cheek and
made a small incision.
"Oi!" He yelped. "Watch it with those things! That stings!"
"YOU JACKASS! DO YOU KNOW HOW BADLY YOU COULD HAVE HURT RAN-CHAN?! OR ANY
OF US?! YOU MORON!"
She whipped out her largest spatula and slammed him into the wall. Ryouga
slid to the floor, eyes swirling. A large peice of the ceiling caved in
from the impact and fell on his head.
"Owchies . . . Mommy, I don' wanna go to school today . . ." he whimpered
before falling unconscious.
A mere ten minutes later, the residents of Nerima had the good fortune to
see three of the resident martial artists dragging a fourth down the street,
bound in probably a mile's worth of chains, by the scruff of his neck. Said
martial artist was swirly-eyed, and obviously not going to be out and about
on his own power for quite some time.
"So . . ." Ranma paused at the cross roads, looking down both possible
directions, and then back down at their cargo. "Where should we haul him?"
"Whaddaya mean, where should we haul him?" Ukyou grumbled, rubbing her sore
hands.
"Well, we could either take him to Dr. Tofu's, or we could take him to the
Nekohaten." Ranma shrugged, even as Akane's withering glare killed the
potted plants behind him.
"We are not going to the Nekohaten," She stated firmly, expression grim.
Ranma finally took notice of this, and shrank back.
"Right. Dr. Tofu's. What could I have been thinking?" He winced as she
continued to glare at him, then quickly picked up his end of the chain and
started dragging.
"Good afternoon, Ranma, Akane, Ukyou. What's the . . . oh my." Dr. Tofu
paused in the doorway of his office as he saw the three teenagers dragging
in their bound acquaintance. Several other patrons stopped what they were
doing, and a few others vacated.
"Thank Kami that Kasumi isn't here . . ." One whispered to another. "With
the four of them here . . . and her . . ."
His companion shuddered.
"Oh dear, what happened to Ryouga?" Dr. Tofu asked, adjusting his glasses.
"And why is he all tied up like that?"
"Remember how we told you that Ranma got attacked by a wild animal?" Ukyou
crossed her arms. "This jackass is that wild animal." The doctor arched
his eyebrows incredulously.
"May I ask how Ryouga here created claw marks down Ranma's arms?" He asked,
then thought better of it. "Oh, never mind, just bring him on in. You're
blocking the doorway."
Dr. Tofu sighed and ushered the young adults in, watching the rest of his
patients quietly slip out. This was beginning to get tedious . . . For a
moment, he wondered if he was even in the right profession. Then he sighed,
and followed them back to the examination room.
"Ughn . . ." Ryouga's green eyes slipped open effortlessly, and for a
moment, he was blinded by the bright lights of the doctor's office. "What
the hell?" He blinked in shock, even as his vision rapidly adjusted to
accommodate the greater amount of light.
"Why am I all tied up?"
"It's for your own good, Ryouga . . ." Akane told him from the other side of
the room. "Please, don't struggle."
"Wha--?" He looked around to see her, but, since she was seated behind him,
he was unable to.
"Akane, where are you?"
"Please stop it!" She grabbed Ranma's hand, as he was next to her, and
gripped it tightly.
"Don't move!"
She had seen a lot of unusual things in her lifetime, but she had truly
believed that Ryouga and Ranma were friends . . . and what she had seen in
Ryouga's eyes when he attacked her fiance . . . the animalistic rage . . .
that was not something she was prepared to deal with. And it scared her. A
lot.
"Akane-san?" Ryouga's voice was hurt, but she didn't want to face him.
"What's going on?"
"Ryouga, stay still." Dr. Tofu answered him, walking into his line of
vision.
"Doctor? What are you doing here? Where am I? And . . . What's going
on?!"
"Ryouga, what do you remember about the last week?" The doctor asked him
while studying his eyes, trying to analyze reactions on a martial artist who
could probably take getting hit by a small car like a walk in the park.
"Last week?" The bandanna wearing martial artist focused on the floor.
"Akar i . . . she . . . ano . . . She told me she hated me and never wanted
to see me again . . . and Kastunishiki . . . was dead . . . all messy . . .
and . . . I don't know what happened . . . and there was all this blood . .
. Akari had burns on her hands, but I don't know why, and . . . I just don't
remember!" While he spoke, his bright blue aura grew, until it almost
filled the room.
"This will hurt," Ranma noted, thinking of the Shi shi Hodokan to come.
Luckily, Dr. Tofu hit a knock out spot on Ryouga's neck before the negative
Chi could be released in a potentially devastating blast. As fast as it had
accumulated, the energy dissipated back into nothingness.
"Jackass." Ukyou grumbled. "Scaring us all like that."
"So Doc, can you figure out what's wrong with him?" Ranma asked.
"Frankly, Ranma, I don't think so." The physician sighed and cleaned off
his glasses lenses. "Physically, I can't find anything too wrong with him,
except for the fact that when I tried to take an X-ray, the machine blew up.
I could have sworn that he wasn't wearing any metal when I ran him through .
. . the sedative made sure we didn't need chains at that point . . . I
hope."
"You hope?" Akane dark eyes reflected her displeasure.
"As I said, there's nothing physically wrong with him. He's in better
health than most martial artists, no apparent broken bones, no lesions, no
temperature . . . and watch this." He quickly removed a scalpel from one of
the myriad of drawers, and made a long incision across Ryouga's cheek. A
mere second after the cut was made, it healed itself, leaving only a few
drops of blood to tell that there had ever been damaged.
The three teenagers gasped.
"It seems to be that Ryouga's regenerative ability has increased . . . at
least tenfold." Tofu shook his head in exasperation. "I don't know what to
make of it. I've never seen anything like this before."
"Damn . . ." Ranma sulked. 'What I wouldn't give to have him just change
back into P-chan and stop scaring the hell out Akane an' me,' he thought
bitterly. "Wait a minute . . . Ryouga got hit by cold water, and he didn't
change. Maybe it has something to do with Junsenkyo . . . maybe . . .'
Realization dawned on the pigtailed martial artist. He jumped to his feet.
"Thanks a lot for trying, Doc, but I guess some things are beyond science,
ne?" He shook Tofu's hand, then gestured for Akane and Ukyou to help him
grab Ryouga.
"Wha--?" Tofu blinked at the sudden change of events. "Huh?"
"I think I know who might have the answer!" Ranma called as the three teens
lugged the once more unconscious nomad behind them in the direction of the
Nekohaten.
"This place just gets weirder and weirder . . ." the doctor sighed, closing
the door behind them. "Curiouser, and curiouser."