Warrior of the River

By Kalaong

***

Eyes... C'mon Akane, open your eyes! I can't DO this, I just can't....

"I NEVER GOT TO TELL YOU I LOVE YOU!"

Silence. My tears stain her perfect face. She's GONE. I can't... I... Can... Not... Live... without... her. She made me angry, and happy... and laugh... and cry... and FEEL...

I'm moving. She's in my arms, cold and still. I hear voices, but I don't hear them. They don't matter. I am nothing without my Akane. My bright lady of the sky.

I'm just a beast. A rabid beast. No nobility, no honor. Unworthy of her affections. That's why she didn't wake up. Why I lost her.

The pig-boy who lied to her and betrayed her runs at me. He will take her away, and tell me to die, and put her in the ground, and let the damn worms eat her.

I spin, and kick out sharply, and his leg folds underneath him and he screams from the pain of his hopelessly shattered knee.

I look forward. The pools. Change they wrought. But Jusenkyo means 'The Pools of Sorrow'. They brought Change, first, to me, twisting and molding my finely-trained, manly body.... into that of a millennia-dead woman with a body that perverts went to sleep for, just so they could dream about it.

I thought that I had conquered the Sorrow, making this damnable curse work FOR me, as a disguise, it was unmatched. As an advantage in battle, my speed became phenomenal. Letting the strange twinges and urges of that woman's body teach me what little I could learn to make my life better for me and my love.

But then they brought Change to my love, first twisting and molding her perfect form, with it's undercarriage of hard-worked muscle that brought beauty and form to her body, those short, sexy locks of blue-black hair that fit her like a glove, those soft brown eyes that conveyed her kindness and her strength... into a small wooden doll, it's eyes slowly drifting shut as I raced and battled for her cure.

Then the Change came to her again, this time twisting and molding the fiery spark of her life... into the cold eternity of death.

At least she is spared the Sorrow. I take it gladly for her. She does not know it... that hollow, empty space inside that has caused my soul to collapse inwards on itself as the Change comes for me a second time, transforming the manling I was... into the lost soul I am now as I trudge towards the source of my pain.

Jusenkyo! You bring Change... and Sorrow... Give Me Change one final time! And let those fools that almost made me one of them have the Sorrow!

I leap into the centermost pool, the deepest... and use every fibre of discipline I have gained in my eighteen years of life to draw an entire breath from the cursed waters...

Change Me! Take my worthless life and let me join her! Change the useless breath of my Life into cold, cold Death! Give the damnable fools that only wished to possess Me as a meaningless pseudopolitical gesture, a toy to be used and broken and cast away, a brood animal, a path to her despicable Honor, the Sorrow you have cursed me with!

YOU OWE ME, JUSENKYO! YOU STOLE MY LOVE, MY LIFE! FINISH THE JOB! GRANT MY WISH!

Kami... sama...

I feel the breath of my life leave me...

You did as I asked...

***

Darkness. Nothingness.

A voice, somehow both male and female... Both loud as an orchestra and soft as her whisper...

"We are not now that strength which in old days moved Earth and Heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Tennyson, Ulysses.

"You did not run from Life, Warrior. You chased your love. She will be with you, always. And forever. I have a strange feeling you will not tire of her. Nor her of you"

Akane... I will have Akane!

"Yes. But not without cost. You must remember this; your mission. Become the greatest fighter of all time. Teach her to be as great as you; you know, in your heart, that she is able. Seek the man who walks the paths of Death towards the place where Heaven touches the World. Protect him from his enemies."

I will! I will! With Akane at My side, nothing will stop me!

But the Voice is fading away... it knows I will do as It has commanded. It speaks one last time.

"And seek... the Dark... Tower..."

I shall walk at my beloved's side! I shall become the greatest warrior of all time! I shall teach her every movement! I shall protect the Deathwalker! And I shall seek the Dark Tower!

***

My eyes open. I stare upwards, into a blue sky. My hairless head and back and legs and the palms of my hands press against soft grass.

I turn to the left and see a plain covered in short, green, thick, grass. It slopes upward for about a mile, where it then turned into progressively higher and rougher hills covered in a sea of scarlet and azure and bright greens, flaming yellows, deep inks as they move toward the base of sheer black-bluish-green mountains.

To my right is a sea... no.. a river, at least as wide as the American Mississippi, which me and Oyaji had swam as we searched for the teachers of ferocious boxers to test and learn from.

All around me are naked bodies.

Above my position where I lay, I see a roughly twenty-five year old gaijin with long monkey- like toes.

Below me, the yellow-blonde head of an English woman.

But directly to my right...

Gently sloping cheeks. a gentle smile. The hairless dome of her head does not lessen her beauty.

Akane.

The Voice kept its promise.

I roll over onto my belly and crawl towards her swiftly and take her in my arms.

Those wonderful brown eyes which I had thought closed forevermore opened!

"Akane..."

"R-ranma?"

Time. It ran out once. I will not let it do so again. I dive towards her lips and I kiss her, and she goes stock-still for just an instant but quickly leans into me and we are kissing and she is there and I am there and we are alive and we are together.

I pull away and hold her in my arms.

I have a mission. I will tell her this. I'll tell it all to her. It will be hard. But the gift which I have been given more than makes up for it.

"Ranma?"

"Kimi ga aishiteru, Akane."

Her eyes are soft. She smiles that smile that could light up this valley in the dead of night.

"Kimi ga aishiteru, Ranma."

We are together.

The Beginning