One-Winged Angel: A Tale of The Multiverse

Prologue

By Suekeiichi Kaiton

---Okayama, 2004---

Ranma entered the kitchen warily from the upstairs bedrooms. The day was bright outside the sliding glass doors leading out to the deck and he could smell the sweet scents of breakfast sizzling on the stove. A moderate covering of snow blanketed the Masaki Valley and he wouldn't be surprised if the holy lake was covered in a thin crust of ice. He was wearing a pair of dark slacks, a white dress shirt, a thin red tie, and a matching jacket slung over his shoulder. He was washed and ready to tackle the day and with the first frost only a few days previous he was expecting quite a few injuries at the clinic.

Katsuhito sat at the table in the livingroom with his nose in the paper, seemingly oblivious to the goings on that had started from his plot. Ranma knew the old man sipping tea was no more old than he was, at least physically speaking, and frowned as the Crown Prince of Jurai groaned a little and rotated his shoulder. The prince certainly could act old that was for sure. Still, he was hiding something. Outside he could hear Tenchi and Aeka arguing over the proper way to sweep the deck. Honestly, those two couldn't get any worse and it certainly didn't help that they'd only known each other for a few days…

"Is that you, dear?" A low feminine voice called from the kitchen. A figure clad in a pastel mauve kimono stepped through the kitchen curtains with a platter of steaming food in her hands. Katsuhito looked up from his paper with a smile, knowing the stupefied look Ranma had plastered all over his face. He chuckled lightly and turned back to his paper as the insults continued to fly outside punctuated by the occasional snowball.

Kiyone Masaki looked radiant as always with the sunlight streaming in behind her. Her long, flowing locks, nearly the same color as her kimono, were gathered at the nape of her neck by a wide strip of white cloth and her sleeves were pulled up to expose her alabaster arms. A few stray locks fell over her forehead but they only acted to further the casual beauty of the two hundred-year old woman as she smiled at her husband. Ranma for his part was shocked speechless, even after nearly twenty years of marriage the sight of her in the bright sun of morning still had enough power to throw his mind into neutral.

"Dear?" Kiyone looked at her husband, more than a little worried by the vacant eyes staring at her and the thin line of drool running down the corner of his mouth. She set the china platter down on the stout wood of the table and stepped up to him, waving her hand in front of his eyes. "Ranma? Ranma!"

"Hold yer horses and maybe I can do something to wake him up." Ryoko phased through her rafter above the TV and settled with her arms around their man. The cyan-haired temptress wrapped her arms around Ranma's chest and drew her head in close. She blew softly into his ear and ran her tongue over the lobe. The effect was instantaneous as he jumped as if goosed and snapped back to reality. Kiyone watched her husband look around quickly until his eyes met hers again, no sooner had they settled on her beauty, though, than they began to cloud over once again. The demoness smirked. "Maybe you should go and change?"

"Enough of that, dear! Breakfast will be ready in a few moments!" Kiyone reached forward and shook Ranma's shoulder to rouse him from his stupor. "Why don't you go and ask Tenchi and Aeka to come in for breakfast, hmm?"

Ranma shook his head and smiled at his darling wife. "It would be a pleasure, madam." He gave her an elaborate bow and dropped his jacket on the couch. Even stepping close to the sliding doors brought a chill to his bones as the freezing air seeped between the aluminum runners and slid along the hard wood floor. He stared at his reflection in the glass for a moment, noting the distinct lack of age marks or wrinkles on his face as well as the reflection of Kiyone's behind as she bent down to wipe off the table, before throwing the door open and calling out into the crisp air.

"Aeka! Tenchi! Breakfast!" Both antagonists were throwing snowballs left and right. "You two can finish your spat after breakfast!"

"You would think Aeka would get along better with her 'son,' son." Katsuhito folded his paper as Ranma sat down at the table, fixing him with an intense glare. "I notice that Aeka slept in the guest room again last night, if there anything I should know?"

Ranma began to sweat. It was all the explanation Katsuhito needed.

"I see. Now son, I think that Lady Seto will have something to say about that when she finds out-"

"When I find out about what, Yosho?" Seto Kamiki Jurai descended the stairs regally, her short spiky green bangs hiding the sharpness of her flinty eyes. She was dressed in her usual plum kimono and had dispensed with the outer ornamental garments for the time being. Ranma groaned and slammed his head on the table. Repeatedly. "Come now, Ranma, don't bang your head on the table like that. Jurai will need your head when Tenchi takes the throne."

"Now don't start that," Katsuhito began before being silenced with a gesture by his grandmother.

"I am simply stating a fact, Yosho, one that I am sure a smart man like Ranma is well aware of, and it is this: Tenchi is simply not prepared for the High Council." Seto smoothed her dress against the back of her legs as she sat, a motion that did not go by unnoticed by Ranma. It didn't hurt the eyes to watch how the thin fabric pulled taut against her backside without the impediment of underclothes. Juraian women tended to not wear undergarments per se, preferring to wear thin chemise or Theratian silk slips. Seto was no exception.

Kiyone and Sasami began to bring in the dishes from the kitchen as Seto allowed the elder man to pour her tea. "I honestly do not understand your thinking on this, Yosho, it is not like you at all. You used to be one of the sharpest minds on Jurai."

"Now, now, Seto-sama, don't be so hard on poor father. He hasn't been off world for the past few hundred years." The longhaired mother finished setting down the plates and sat beside her husband as he fidgeted on his cushion, thankful that the conversation had moved away from his 'marriage' to Aeka.

"That isn't true, Kiyone, I was at your graduation wasn't I?" The former Crown Prince scooted up to the table and gratefully took a plate from his youngest sister as the azure-haired little girl sat beside her grandmother. Kiyone winced and forced a polite smile.

"Yes, but you didn't drop your disguise, all my friends were wondering who you were." Seto burst out laughing, whipping out her fan to cover her mouth as she did; Ranma shuddered at the remembrance of her doing that naked. The laugh itself was unnerving enough but in the middle of lovemaking? He'd almost lost his erection at the very noise…

"In any case," Seto continued, never missing a beat in the conversation, "what is the problem between you and Aeka, Ranma? I noticed that Aeka slept in the guestroom again last night."

"Oh! Washu hasn't come to the table yet! I'll just go and get her." Ranma stood up quickly and grabbed his jacket, throwing his arms into the sleeves and pulling it snug against the collar of his shirt. He dashed away before anyone could react, least of all Seto, and made it through the storage closet before the Onihime of Jurai could open her mouth to speak. Once the dimensional door was shut and his back was against the wide grain of the frame he heaved a sigh of relief. "That was a close one."

"What was?" Washu appeared beside her guest dressed in her casual clothes. Her outfit consisted of a modified Royal Science Academy uniform from well over two thousand years ago, dark brown nylons and blue shorts. "Anything I can help you with?"

"Breakfast is ready but can I just hide out here for awhile?"

"Sure, is Seto-sama on your ass again?" Washu generated two floating cushions and they sat down.

"Don't you know it, I swear you just can't win an argument with that woman."

"Well, you didn't seem to put up much of a fight with her in Airi's office. Not even when she brought out the whip and ropes." Ranma turned white and lost control of his jaw. He simply stared at the smirking scientist with a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"H-h-how d-do you know about that?"

Washu shrugged and tossed her thick mane of red hair back over her shoulder. "I simply hacked into the Galaxy Police security cameras. There wasn't a better way of discovering what I missed the last few thousand years."

"Come now, Washu-chan, you shouldn't be spying on your father-in-law." He playfully waggled a finger in admonishment.

The carmine-tressed girl smirked. "It was worth it just to see Seto-sama use the power of Jurai." Ranma's face went deathly pale.

"Th-then you saw the part where I-"

"Where you threw her just a little too roughly against the desk and she handed your ass to you? Yes. That and the spectacular finish."

Ranma blushed and began to fumble around in his pockets for a cigarette. He finally found a pack in his jacket pocket and snapped his fingers to project a tiny ball of energy at the tip of his thumb. Bringing it to the end of his filter he inhaled deeply and relaxed a bit in his seat.

"Ah, ah, ah, Ranma! You know the rules." Washu shot a golf ball-sized bolt of energy at the cigarette and it exploded into brown confetti, Ranma screaming out in surprise and falling on his shapely posterior at the attack. "No smoking! You have a degree in medicine from the Academy, you should know the dangers."

"Listen, Washu, I'm been telling everyone this for the longest time: the tobacco on this planet does shit to extraterrestrial biology, especially those enhanced by nanotechnology." Ranma glared at the diminutive genius from the floor and spit out the remains of his Wild Seven. It was Kraid Tobacco from Teascaria Minor and other farming planets of the same ilk that corroded flesh and fostered polyp growth. Compared to that plant, Terran tobacco did little more than give one a pleasurable buzz. He picked himself up off the polished metal floor of her foyer laboratory and repositioned himself on the floating seat.

"Oh. Can I try one then?" Ever the scientist, Washu just had to try everything at least once. Ranma fished the soft pack from his coat and handed her one, snapping his fingers again to lit it. "Not bad. Doesn't give you as much of a kick as the Kraid does, though."

"You've tried Kraid 'Bako?"

Washu plucked the paper from her lips and blew a cloud of blue/grey smoke out her nostrils. "Sure. It was all the rage when I was a professor, probably what killed most of my colleagues and peers."

Ranma shoved a smoke into the corner of his mouth and lit it quickly with a burst of ki. "Well, that explains why none of them are still around. Funny, in the history books they still don't have an explanation for the Kraid epidemic a thousand years ago. I guess that's just another lie."

"History is written by biased people. You want cold hard facts read a computer printout of variables. They probably didn't want anyone to know that it was the Royal Academy that started the fad, after all, Kraid was engineered in the Biology labs."

"Really?"

"Definitely. A good friend of mine was helping to splice the cells." Washu finished her cigarette with her second drag and flicked the filter through a conveniently placed subspace hole. "She took a few seeds, started growing them on Teascaria Minor, the rest is history."

"Jesus." Ranma flicked the remainder of his smoke through the hole as well and stood up. "I think the coast is clear, ready for breakfast?"

"Ranma?" The pony tailed man turned around from the door onto to be assaulted by Washu's gooey-eyed stare of doom. "I was wondering if you just help me with a teensy-weensy little experiment? Please?"

"But…breakfast!" Ranma backed up against the exit door only to have it tilt back and magically grow steel cables that wrapped around his wrists and ankles. "Uh…okay, okay, I'll help you…"

Washu grinned from ear to ear and snapped her fingers theatrically. "I knew you'd see things my way!" The restraints loosened and the door swiveled back to deposit Ranma back on his feet. "Come with me."

They passed through Washu's lab, myriad tubes and tanks holding thousands of life forms and experiments in all subjects, from biology to quantum theory, all under the watchful eye of the greatest scientific genius in the universe. Ranma paused for a moment to look at a curious eel in a thick tank; the creature was easily two hundred feet long with a wide flare of puckered flesh running along his back. As they approached the long scar split open in a plume of neon orange blood and a tubular organism composed of thousands of spines like a sea urchin rushed the glass. Luckily the material held and the monster did nothing more than bash its forehead against the glass, breaking off several of the quills, which drifted slowly to the bottom.

"I'll have to harvest those later, the organic shell generated by that Gnardic Furl makes for supremely strong armor if forged correctly." Washu made a slight gesture with her finger and the aquarium was plunged into blackness. "But it's probably best not to agitate him."

"Where exactly are we going, Washu?"

"To my dimensional laboratory. I need your help isolating Jurai power." They reached a tall steel door in the darkness of her lab and she punched a long code into the keypad on the nearest wall. "I've been working on harnessing the Jurai power for a very long time, you see, and with you and Tenchi both able to emit such generous amounts my research has gone farther in the past month than in the several thousand years before that-"

"Not counting the years you were imprisoned by Kagato, right?" They passed through the thick metal door and into an even darker room illuminated only by the pulsing light of an omni-dimensional doorway.

"Yes," Washu bit off, more than a little annoyed at his constant reminders of her captivity at the hands of Kagato. She swore it was just a ploy to make her acknowledge the fact that it was Mihoshi of all people that freed her, even if it was just an accident with her spatial cube.

"So what do you plan on doing"

"I'm glad you asked that question, Ranma. You see, I theorize that the Jurai power is in fact a dimensional pathway to an energy source off this plane of existence. Hence the fact that no one has ever been able to accurately determine whether the Jurai power comes from within an individual or from outside." Washu flipped the lights on with a push of her holopad and walked up to the monstrous machine huddled in the corner of the room.

It looked like an old Terran wood stove, at least in basic shape, only grown several times larger. It was easily three hundred feet tall, a bumpy machine with conduits and pipes and wires stretching from the (presumed) ceiling of the chamber down to their feet. A hatch of roughly door size stood at the top of a short flight of stairs, the thin bars stretched across vertically glowing with a strange light. Ranma took a step back.

"So, you're going to help me isolate Jurai energy across the dimensional spectrum."

"Why don't you just get Tenchi to do this?" Ranma was sweating profusely and backing slowly away from the imposing device. "He can generate a hell of a lot more Jurai energy than me, why don't you ask him? I bet he's at the table right now! Yes, breakfast! Come on, Washu! We don't want to miss breakfast!" He turned to run away only to come face-to-face with her waiting detainment droid. The floating ball of super-strong metal coils was tapping one of its tendrils on the floor impatiently.

"Ah, ah, ah! You said you were going to help me and help me you will!" Washu turned to her unenthusiastic helper and motioned for the detainment robot to take hold of Ranma's arms and legs. "Tenchi may have the ability to generate the Light Hawk Wings but you have the ability to 'see' Juraian energy signatures, which is the skill I need for this experiment."

"What exactly do I have to do?"

Washu pulled a helmet out of subspace. "I'm glad you asked, Ranma. First, you put on this helmet, and then I plug you into the search program of the omni-dimensional doorway's tuner. Once you're online all you have to do is try to detect Juraian power."

"It's that simple?"

"It's that simple."

Unknown to either of the parties, a significant bug had entered the equation. The name of the bug was Galaxy Police Detective First-Class Mihoshi Kuramitsu who entered the laboratory to gather the rogue members of the household for breakfast. Making her way unerringly to the dimensional lab and slipping past Washu's security measures, she discovered the two talking in front of the massive machine.

"Hello!" The blonde popped out from behind a piece of machinery and waved her arm at the man of the household. "Ranma, Washu, Kiyone asked me to come and get you for-oh!"

True to the universal law, Mihoshi tripped on the mass of wires leading out from the dimensional tuner and was sent hobbling forward on one leg. Washu screamed and flailed her arms in an attempt to ward off the chaotic ditz, temporarily commanding her droid to release Ranma. Said man suddenly found his restraints gone, which resulted in his toppling forward towards the pulsing open maw of the dimensional doorway.

"Don't touch anything you ditz! Get out of here!" Washu grabbed Mihoshi to stop her forward momentum and breathed a sigh of relief when the blonde fell to her knees instead of blowing something up again. "How the hell did you get in here!? I made that blast door just to keep you out!"

"Ara. Gomen."

The redhead growled at her descendant and stood up angrily, smoothing out her dress. "Sorry? Sorry! Do you realize how dangerous this device is? This machine has the ability to break through dimensional walls! This is a very dangerous machine, SO MAKE SURE YOU STAY AWAY FROM IT!"

"Oh, I see." The police officer giggled and brushed her wavy blonde locks back. She pointed behind the scientist. "Is Ranma-otousan going to be okay?"

"What are you talking about?" Washu whirled around and noticed that Ranma was nowhere to be found.

She also noticed that the dimensional doorway was open.

Needless to say, Washu's face lost most of its color.

"Oh," Mihoshi's high-pitched voice grated through what remained of the diminutive scientist's nerves, "what's this?" A tanned hand moved towards the dimensional tuner console and time seemed to slow for Washu as she simultaneously cried out and dove to intercept the saboteur. Her eyes were wide as her small body flew through the air, her hair and loose uniform vest flapping madly in her trail, hoping against hope to intercept Mihoshi's destructive touch from eliminating the one thing that knew where Ranma had gone. Given her speed and trajectory, Washu knew she would make it in time - there was only a .9 % chance that air pressure in the dimensional pocket she'd created to store the omni-dimensional tuner would slow her momentum…

Given those odds it was clear she was fucked.

Mihoshi's hand came down on the console maddeningly slowly, a firm open-palmed slap to the delicate buttons and careful settings Washu had taken two weeks to figure out, and the resulting flash of light told the greatest scientific genius in the universe that she better live up to her reputation. Finding Ranma amid the infinite dimensions would take careful calculations and more time than she would care to spare, of course if she didn't then Kiyone and the Onihime were going to skin her alive.

Ranma disappeared into the dimensional doorway with nothing more than a brief 'whump' noise and a trail of lingering smoke. He didn't even get to say anything before the pull of the door sucked him in, and the worst thing was he could be anywhere at anytime.

"Ara, ara, where did Ranma-otousan go? Washu-san did you see him disappear?"

---To Be Continued---