Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
A mystery spamfic
By Thermopyle
[email protected]
Disclaimers at the bottom.
Sign language portrayed as <dialogue>.
His heartbeat was loud and fast, each pulse of blood shooting down veins and making his whole body throb as if receiving a barrage of physical blows. His breathing labored, he sucked air in and out of his lungs as fast as he could, gasping desperately as he attempted to recover from the latest attack. The girls were both unconscious upon the road, knocked out before they could even begin to respond to this new threat. His brother stood near their prone forms, hovering protectively over them, his face showing frustration at not being able to do anything but glare hatefully at the person who'd hurt them.
She had appeared out of nowhere, having either been invisible and waiting for them, or teleporting to their location from somewhere else. He wasn't capable of doing either and he was the magic user of the group. He didn't even know what the power levels involved in such abilities were, but he was quite sure that she was strong enough to have killed him and the girls easily if she had wished to.
The first attack had been a complete surprise. One instant the road ahead of them was clear, the next they were blocked by a woman and a fireball was streaking towards him. He managed to bring an arm up to shield himself before it hit, but it still knocked him to the side, setting the sleeve of his shirt on fire as well as singing his hair. The material of his shirt had melted right into his skin and every time he moved now he could feel the wet, sticky skin of his burnt forearm peeling and tugging itself free of the muscles that lie beneath.
With him out of the way, the next blast, some kind of concussive magic, slammed into the ground right in front of the two girls. They didn't react in time and the explosion of high pressure smashed into them like a tsunami. Their limp forms were thrown backwards thirty feet, tumbling uncontrollably across the hard-packed dirt of the road. Neither of them got back up.
When he managed to get back up, he saw his brother advancing upon their attacker, his face twisted into a snarl of rage. Their attacker was wearing a brown cloak with the cowl hiding most of her features. He guessed it was a girl, anyway, from the hairless cheeks and chin, and the ruby-colored lips that couldn't be a natural shade. A twitch of the lips betrayed amusement and just before his brother reached her, she disappeared.
"So stupid," she said.
They both turned towards her voice to see that she was near the girls now, another globe of rapidly expanding magic appearing within the manicured, delicate-looking hand that peaked out from within her voluminous sleeves. A flick of the wrist sent it shooting at the girls, once again throwing them away from the blast even though their attacker wasn't affected by the spell at all.
As his brother moved to cover the girls, he began throwing all of the magic at his disposal towards the cloaked sorceress, ignoring the apparent futility of his actions as she simply teleported away from each attack with ease. His brother reached the girls but was unable to help; his skills were useless unless the woman attacked him directly and her unwillingness to do so indicated that she knew that. Instead, she ignored his brother and the girls, choosing instead to give him the benefit of her attention.
At first she simply evaded his attacks, teleporting about him to random locations to keep him from hitting her, but she soon began to resume the offensive. Each dodged spell was followed by one of her own infuriating attacks. It was obvious that she was just toying with him, everything she threw at him either missed narrowly or was low-powered enough that he could get back up after taking the blow. She was ensuring that he couldn't get close to his brother or the girls, however, by knocking him back in the other direction whenever he tried to approach them.
After several minutes of this, his strength depleted not only by each hit taken but by all the power he was expending as well, he collapsed to his knees wearily, glaring defiance at the woman even though he knew it to be a useless gesture, just like all his attacks had been.
She waited a moment, then disappeared again, rematerializing thirty feet up and hovering without any visible means of support. Something else he didn't know how to do.
"So, this is all you have?" she asked. "I expected more. What a disappointment. Very well, let's end this." So saying, she pointed one arm towards his brother tossed a spell at him, the first direct attack upon him since the battle began. The feel of the spell was completely unfamiliar, filled with chaotic malevolence. He had no idea what it was, but if she'd avoided his brother this whole time, only to cast something at him now...
"Look out!" he yelled, uselessly, trying to stand. His brother wouldn't move, he knew, because if he did then the girls would take the blow instead.
With a big grin on his face, his brother stood up straight, prepared to receive the blast. The triumphant look quickly faded when it hit and his reaction to the magic began. Instead of quickly switching to another body, a monstrous body with immense strength and physical abilities, the change was slow and tortuous. The transformation wasn't uniform, either, as his body began to warp itself into an increasingly bizarre shape. His head and chest bulged out, developing into one shape, as his arms twisted into another, and his lower body another yet, the melting and reforming of his body fluid and ongoing, speeding up as it went. From his brother's screams, it was extremely, incredibly painful.
He staggered to his feet and began stumbling towards his brother as best he could despite the burns all over his body, the bruises and aching bones. His beloved older brother, who'd done so much for him, needed his help.
"I don't think so," said the woman's voice. He twisted about in fear, looking towards the sky to see her trace a circle in the air before her, a trail of black fire following her extended finger's motions. When the circle was complete a loud crackling noise became audible, sparks of lightning flaring about the rim of fire. He didn't know how she'd done it, but inside the circle was a sky of a different color, and a valley of strange lakes was visible through it. With a light push, the disc was sent towards his still-screaming brother, expanding as it dropped down upon him. His brother disappeared inside it, dropping down into the valley below, and the portal folded itself in half, like an eyelid blinking, and disappeared.
His brother was gone.
First he felt disbelief, his mind insisting that it wasn't possible, it couldn't have happened. His brother hadn't just been sent through some kind of weird portal to another place, possibly to his death. Impossible.
As he stared at the empty patch of land, however, his feelings changed. It was possible. It had happened. His brother was gone, and without magic he would have no way to return. He refused to accept that the elder boy was dead, however; instead, he was waiting somewhere beyond sight and sound, waiting for his younger brother to come to his rescue for once.
The woman's light, mocking laughter changed his feelings to rage, and power, far beyond anything he'd ever known, began to fill him. His brother needed him, and this bitch was in the way.
Her mistake.
Elsewhere, a fat, baldheaded man looked to the sky as a strange crackling noise was suddenly heard. A black rip appeared, like a portion of space itself, and out dropped some...thing the likes of which he had never seen, thrashing about as it fell. It landed where expected and he sighed, then moved to record the day's events, and what exactly he had just seen.
How tragic.
Later:
Another rip appeared, this one at ground level and in a safe location away from the pools, and three people stepped out. The first was a man, and the second two were both women. With a short gesture from the man, the portal disappeared. Then he closed his eyes for a brief moment, before opening them and letting a relieved smile appear on his face.
"That way!" he said, pointing eastwards. "My brother is that way."
The two girls, both with happy smiles upon their faces, were relieved at having found their lost love. Together the three set off to find him.
Ranma and Happousai both sat in the back yard of the Tendou home, mouths open wide in astonishment, although at different things, to be sure. The old man's eyes were filled with tears of pride and happiness, his joy readily apparent. Ranma's eyes were just full of stunned incomprehension.
"I... I'm so PROUD!" said Happousai. "I knew he'd come around one day, but this, this is unexpected! To think that he would not only come to love the name I'd given him, but refuse to accept another from two beautiful, lovely women!"
Ranma just watched in silence as Pantyhose Tarou ran past in his cursed form, two women and a man in close pursuit. The women were both waving whips around, their bodies moving in interesting ways, bouncing in one direction and then another as they ran with their arms swinging. The man ran beside them, absently dodging the whips that kept cracking the air nearby, his arms spread as he chased Tarou with disturbing eagerness. Pantyhose was in obvious need of help but the situation was just too ridiculous for Ranma to do anything but watch silently as the troupe ran past. What an unexpected sight.
Again they came, Pantyhose Tarou still waving his signs about frantically, the three people right on his heels, shouting their pleas as they went.
"Carrot!"
"Carrot, come back!"
"Brother! I've come to rescue you!"
<My name is PANTYHOSE! PANTYHOSE TAROU!> flip <Ranma! Old man! SOMEBODY HELP ME!>The End.
Author notes: Did anybody not see this coming? I wrote it based on the memories of the two volumes of Sorcerer Hunters I read almost a year ago now, so I pretty much made up all the magic related stuff, letting it work out exactly as I wanted it to with no regard for the magic system of the real story.
So, this is my attempt to answer how the spring that Pantyhose Taro was dunked into was created. It seems at least as likely as some group of random monsters diving into a spring while holding onto each other, anyway. Granted, Carrot's monster form didn't originally look quite like Taro's, but the idea is that the wierd transformation that occured here caused it to mutate, so that it did at the time he fell into the spring.
Sorcerer Hunters is by Satoru Akahori. Ranma is by Rumiko Takahashi. I own neither series, nor the characters contained within.