(updated 11/12/04)
| Ranma sat alone in his empty apartment. He sat in
pain, his back was arched and every movement sent waves of agony through
his body. At the age of fifty five he should have been nearing his prime
in strength and vitality if not in skill. Over fifty years of martial arts
training should increased his ki flows such that they naturally buffered
his body from the effects of a lifetime of overtraining and vicious rivalries.
And indeed they had for over fifty years, for fifty four and a half years
he had often taken for granted the skill and strength he had gained. It
was easy to forget a lifetime of toil and all the missed opportunities when
you challenged the world and bent the laws of physics to your will.
Reaching for a glass of water he gasped as chips of bone dug into nerve centres and bone grated bone, sometimes pinching muscle within ball and socket joints that had long been ground to almost nothing. This was not how he had planned living his old age, Ranma chuckled bitterly at the thought of fifty five as old age. The old ghoul, matriarch of the Amazon tribe was still meddling and Happosai was still stealing panties somewhere, both were still active and quite lively despite their many years of life. No, at fifty five he was still a child. He was not meant to be living as an invalid, barely able to feed himself from the pain. His once mighty reserves of Ki reduced to barely enough to keep him alive leaving the slow ebb of time to eat at his body, and eat it did. Over the last six months his body had decayed and broken as it should have after a lifetime of training if he had not had the skill and strength, which only six months ago he had had in abundance. At sixteen he had killed a god and so after so long training and stretchings his limits he had thought himself invulnerable, he continued to push himself in an attempt to further what was thought possible even by the standards of his friends. His fifty five year old body had not so long ago looked barely thirty, he had not even considered what the future held – after all he had plenty of time. Now it looked truly ancient, his hair stark white and his bones deformed. “Mmmpphh,” Ranma grunted in pain as the glass slid out of his weakened grip, his hands spasming. The glass smashed, glass shards digging into atrophied legs penetrating and drawing blood where once not even hardened steel would. How the mighty had fallen, now he had to rely on a keeper to even go to the toilet. Once again he thought of the wizened martial artist that had once been his teachers with fury. Happosai he had an understanding with, the picture of old man was etched into his memories. He could never forget his teachings, habits or his students. Cologne, when he thought of the meddling old woman all he could see was Ryoga. His gleaming eyes and smirking face, not even his respect for the skills that his rival had gained could vanquish the cold fire which burned in Ranma’s heart. This challenge has only two constraints. |