Prologue
Visions
Succession of Witches (Final Fantasy VIII)
A silent echo answered each footstep as Saotome Ranma continued his slow journey further into the catacomb. With only the light of his torch to guide him he continued down the empty hall. The smell of the rank, moldy air made his stomach churn with every breath, and more and more dust would be kicked up as one foot passed in front of the other with each step.
“I should be getting close to it now,” Ranma thought as he glanced at the piece of paper in his hand. The paper was well worn with age and many portions of it were missing, but it had shown him enough information to get him this far. The contents included a crude map of the underground caverns he was traversing, an even more crude map of Japan, as well as several faded characters written in an ancient style of Chinese. What could be understood read as, “… undo… form… by… springs… kyo… seek… in chamber of… within… Temple… by… vors… Musk... sty. But… cost of…”
With Shampoo’s help (at the price of a date), Ranma had deduced that this was obviously a clue to undoing the Nyannichuan curse that would turn him into a young girl every time he was splashed be cold water. The word Musk obviously meant the Musk Dynasty, of which Herb, Mint, and Lime belonged to. It reminded him of the time those three had come to Japan in search of the Kaisufuu, which resulted in a near-death battle with Herb. But from the evidence on the map, he had concluded that there was a second Musk Dynasty treasure hidden in Japan, only somewhere else.
It had taken several weeks of research about Japan’s ruined temples and holy places, but soon he had found information of one ruin that archeologists had never explored. In fact, Ranma had thought that with such little information, someone must be trying to keep this ruin a secret. It wouldn’t stop him, though.
The light from Ranma’s torch fell onto a dead end.
“Dammit!” he cursed out loud and poured over his map again, “If I’m in the right place, there shouldn’t be a dead end here!” He scowled and was about to turn back when his eyes caught the glimpse of a carving on the wall at this assumed dead end. On the left side was etched the image of a dragon. The right side held the image of a woman crouched in a fetal position. A straight line divided the two pictures.
“Something’s not quite right here,” Ranma thought again, and, out of curiosity, gave the wall a small push. It groaned as it slowly fell open, revealing that it was a door. After it had opened a few centimeters, it stopped and wouldn’t budge further. Ranma pounded the door and cursed aloud repeatedly at it for not opening. After several moments of pounding in vain, Ranma set his torch aside, took several steps backwards, gave a loud battle cry and launched towards the door with a flying kick. He grinned as he expected his attack to shatter the door, but completely unexpected what happened as the door opened itself fully.
Ranma’s moment of surprise lasted long enough for him to forget he was flying through the air. He landed rather improperly on his face and continued to roll towards the center of the chamber that he found himself in. His torch continued to lay burning on the stone floor back in the hall, but he didn’t need it as a pedestal next to him lit up, completely illuminating the chamber.
Except for the pedestal, the chamber itself was as bare as the walls within the catacombs he had explored in search of the treasure he was looking for. After a quick recovery from his bad landing, Ranma examined the top of the pedestal and grinned profusely at what he saw on top it.
“This has got to be it!” He exclaimed to himself as he picked up a vial containing a crystal blue liquid. Ignoring all caution and common sense, Ranma broke the top of the vial and immediately downed the liquid. It had a sweet and soothing flavor, similar to honey, not at all what he’d expected since most of the stuff he’d tried often tasted terrible. As soon as he had finished drinking the liquid, a cold shiver ran up and down Ranma’s body. Once it had finished, he pulled a canteen out of his travel pack. “Time to test it,” he said, and poured some of the cold water onto himself.
“Did it work?” he asked himself and beamed when he noticed that his voice stayed the same. It didn’t become the high-pitched female voice that always escaped his mouth after a cold douse. “I can’t believe it!” Ranma shouted with joy and jumped around the chamber, continually splashing the cold water on himself, “I’m finally back to normal! Now I can get most of those weirdoes off my back, especially Kuno! I’ve never felt better in my entire-“ A loud “SNAP” interrupted his celebration and he turned his head back towards the door from which he’d entered. On the ground was the shadow of a person. Only this person’s feet were dangling a couple feet off the floor as Ranma looked up to see that the body was hanging from the top of the doorframe. He gulped loudly as he moved closer to examine who had just been hung inside this chamber. As Ranma neared the dead body, he gasped and shouted as tears began to well up.
“No! There’s no way! Not you! Not-“
A bucket full of cold water met Ranma’s face as Akane had once again resorted to desperate measures to wake him up. Ranma-chan bolted from her futon, having never expected to be torn from her dream like that. “Dammit, Akane!” she shouted, “Why do you always have to wake me up like that!”
“That’s because nothing else works,” Akane replied. And with a loud “HMPH” she turned back towards the dining room for breakfast muttering, “Ranma no baka.”
Ranma-chan got out of bed and immediately headed for the bath to heat up some water. “This is not what I want to be part of my morning routine,” she grumbled to herself, “That Akane is so uncute!” As she stepped into the bath to turn back into male form, the dream that Ranma had been having tickled the back of his mind. For the life of him, he could not remember whose body that was.