Ranma ½ Rosario + Ranma
- Thread starter Black Dragon74
- Start date
Which is, naturally, the only form of courtship Snake would find interesting enough to engage in.
"I don't mind sex with my violence, but when I say 'with' I'm talking about a time lag of less than 30 seconds between the two. Or fully integrated, if you're cool with that sort of thing."
"So where are we at on foreplay?"
"Somewhere around the realm of 'Ha ha ha no'."
"I don't mind sex with my violence, but when I say 'with' I'm talking about a time lag of less than 30 seconds between the two. Or fully integrated, if you're cool with that sort of thing."
"So where are we at on foreplay?"
"Somewhere around the realm of 'Ha ha ha no'."
You have to remember most of today's imaginery of hell comes not from bible, but rather dates to dark ages. Its then when people with too much time and twisted psyches created much hell lore. Bible itself did not bother thinking up lurid descriptions of torture, it was just "commit adultery and you will be put to death" without any further histrionics.
If you want something classical, Dante's "Inferno" is where I'd look.
If you want something classical, Dante's "Inferno" is where I'd look.
I read this in high school.
Anyway, if you're going to go with JudeoChristian Hell, then you might as well just straight-up use Dante's Inferno--it really popularized a lot of the "ironic punishments" that we view as being part of hell.
It's some pretty great imagery, but more than anything else, Dante was a human that was essentially given a guided tour; that is to say, comparisons between Dante and Tsukune would be interesting to me.
Basically, it's a lot of great description, and it "clicks" with the (paper-thin) Masquarade setting you've already got, where monsters aren't necessarily as secret from the Muggles as they think.
Kinda depends: Is their sin Lust or Fraud? <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_%28Dante%29' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Wikipedia has a pretty good summary</a>.
Lust is Second Circle: Punishment is being eternally battered by storm-winds pushing you around without rest, because you surrendered to getting pushed around by your appetites.
Fraud (seducers) is Eighth Circle, First Bolga: for using others' passions to exploit them, seducers (and panderers) are forced to march in endless circles around the bolga while being continuously by demons. Seducers and Panderers march in opposite directions.
Trivia tidbit: since there's reference to the new "keep to the right" rule for the streets of Rome, the Eight Circle actually has the same traffic flow orientation as the US--and the opposite of the UK and Japan.
Anyway, if you're going to go with JudeoChristian Hell, then you might as well just straight-up use Dante's Inferno--it really popularized a lot of the "ironic punishments" that we view as being part of hell.
It's some pretty great imagery, but more than anything else, Dante was a human that was essentially given a guided tour; that is to say, comparisons between Dante and Tsukune would be interesting to me.
Basically, it's a lot of great description, and it "clicks" with the (paper-thin) Masquarade setting you've already got, where monsters aren't necessarily as secret from the Muggles as they think.
Kinda depends: Is their sin Lust or Fraud? <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_%28Dante%29' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Wikipedia has a pretty good summary</a>.
Lust is Second Circle: Punishment is being eternally battered by storm-winds pushing you around without rest, because you surrendered to getting pushed around by your appetites.
Fraud (seducers) is Eighth Circle, First Bolga: for using others' passions to exploit them, seducers (and panderers) are forced to march in endless circles around the bolga while being continuously by demons. Seducers and Panderers march in opposite directions.
Trivia tidbit: since there's reference to the new "keep to the right" rule for the streets of Rome, the Eight Circle actually has the same traffic flow orientation as the US--and the opposite of the UK and Japan.
It is a tricky one since the vision of hell varies widely depending on author and religious background. As an example we can use early christian sources in the Nordic countries, in which hell is viewed as a very cold place. The whole burning thing is generally considered to have a middle-eastern origin (the burning garden etc.).
I seems to remember one of the early sources stating that "adulterers are hung by their hair over open flame" or something similar. I would guess it was the Apocalypse of Peter, since he really liked hanging people over open flame.
EDIT: I think that it is female adulterers that are hung by their hair, unsure if males are punished for that crime (or if it is considered a crime) in that source.
I seems to remember one of the early sources stating that "adulterers are hung by their hair over open flame" or something similar. I would guess it was the Apocalypse of Peter, since he really liked hanging people over open flame.
EDIT: I think that it is female adulterers that are hung by their hair, unsure if males are punished for that crime (or if it is considered a crime) in that source.
So, what I'm gathering here is: no, not really, just make something up.
Coo'.
As to the first question, it's not really relevant to the story, so I'd rather not speculate. There's a lot of philosophy there that isn't really worth discussing.
As to the second question, they'd have to be subject to going to Hell in order for the plot to work out. They're not gonna find the student council guy otherwise.
Although I don't see why damnation would be adjusted for species, mentality, or culture. Relativism is a pretty alien concept in the Abrahamic religions. Also, I like the idea of God screwing most monsters right from the outset. Such arbitrary cruelty plays well to my casual Yukari-delivered swipes at Christian tenets.
Coo'.
As to the first question, it's not really relevant to the story, so I'd rather not speculate. There's a lot of philosophy there that isn't really worth discussing.
As to the second question, they'd have to be subject to going to Hell in order for the plot to work out. They're not gonna find the student council guy otherwise.
Although I don't see why damnation would be adjusted for species, mentality, or culture. Relativism is a pretty alien concept in the Abrahamic religions. Also, I like the idea of God screwing most monsters right from the outset. Such arbitrary cruelty plays well to my casual Yukari-delivered swipes at Christian tenets.
I have the perfect title for this chapter: Sacrilicious!
Seriously, I am just RUINING Christianity's shit, here.
Ranma whistled as he stared at the roiling column of smoke.
"Whoah. That was intense."
He was currently standing at the mouth of a cavern that had been drilled into the face of the cliff, having been drawn in right as the earthquake (Hellquake?) had started. Smoke leaked into the hole from the toxic column outside, but the cavern sloped upward so that it didn't fill the entire cave and make it totally uninhabitable for the pigtailed boy.
"Thanks for the hand back there, Mister magma spider!" Ranma said, glancing behind him.
Standing behind the martial artist, poised at the edge of a web made of glittering orange strands, was an eight-legged beast the size of a horse that seemed to be made of igneous rock riven with veins of flowing lava. It had half a dozen eyes - curiously human-like, with eyelids, pupils, and blazing red irises - and scythe-like fangs that looked like tempered blades.
"It is my honor to serve, my lord," the magma spider intoned, its voice echoing grandly and seeming to originate from no particular spot on its body, "it is fortuitous that I was poised to devour the small one with the cape, or I might not have recognized you in time."
"Uh... Yeah, okay. Thanks," Ranma mumbled, wondering why the hellbeast recognized him and why it seemed to revere him. Maybe it was someone killed at Youkai Academy? If that was the case, he didn't recognize the monster, which was rather embarrassing considering it referred to him as "my lord". Ranma decided to just keep quiet about it.
"I was shocked to see you in this land, my lord," the magma spider continued, its many eyes blinking against the smoke flowing over it, "have the forces of Heaven truly gone so far as to forsake their chosen descendant? Is it time that we who crawl rise up and seize this blasted land for the sake of the gods?"
Ranma was only getting more confused the longer the spider-thing spoke, so he decided to hurry and answer. "I'm not actually dead. I'm just here to pick up a guy who we didn't want killed and take him back to Earth."
The magma spider's eyes all widened simultaneously. "You march into the land of the damned and revive the dead?"
Ranma shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much. This is my first time doing it though, so I don't know if it'll work."
"As expected of our lord," the magma spider said reverently, "a moment, please. I have something for you."
Ranma was getting slightly worried about his friends atop the cliff, but didn't want to be rude to the monster that had saved his life and apparently deferred to him like some sort of human god (silly idea as that was).
The magma spider crawled up its web, disappearing briefly in the swirling black smoke that had gathered in the top portion of the hellbeast's lair.
When it descended again, Ranma was fairly stunned to see a familiar hairy brown figure clutching onto the magma spider's thorax.
"Hey, is that Ken? It is you!" Ranma said cheerfully as the large brown tarantula - though with a legspan barely equivalent to a dinner plate, he was decidedly puny compared to the elemental spider carrying him - wiggled his pedipalps excitedly. "I was wondering what happened to you, little buddy!"
"Your servant met his untimely end at the hands of the accursed false gods, may their lying facades melt away before your righteous aura," the magma spider growled.
Ranma once again had no clue what the hellbeast was talking about, so he cheerfully ignored it as he held out his hand for Ken to crawl onto. "Well, I'm really glad you took care of him! Thanks again! I'll take him back with me to Earth."
As the lesser arachnid scuttled over his shoulder and onto his back, Ranma asked, "So why was he in Hell anyway? Some kind of spider sin?"
"The creator did not exactly endow the arachnid family with great fortune upon our inception," the magma spider explained bitterly, "in terms of afterlives, we are largely confined to either this hellplane - mostly as torment props for the arachnophobic damned - or the Demonweb Pits."
Ranma didn't know what the "Demonweb Pits" were, but they didn't sound much more unpleasant than Hell itself. "And you chose Hell?"
"Whether you worship her or not, there is really no getting around the fact that Lolth is a raging, psychotic bitch. At least here they treat us like dumb animals and leave us alone most of the time. It's really not so bad after you evolve a lava-based form."
"Well, SOME people seem to like it here, I guess," Ranma mumbled, thinking of Kouma, "anyway, I should go catch up with my friends. There's a good chance they'll die without me. And then I'd have to go get them along with the first guy, which would be a hassle."
"Understood, my lord," the magma spider intoned, "may you tread safely on your travels. Death to the whiskered devils!"
"Yeah, sure, screw those guys," Ranma mumbled as he walked up to the mouth of the cavern and latched onto the upper lip, feeling that it was cool enough to hold. "Goodbye! Thanks for returning my spider!"
From there it was a rather quick climb to the top of the cliff, as the explosions from earlier had torn great gashes and holes in the rock and left a number of good handholds.
Once he reached the top, Ranma was disappointed, though not totally surprised, to see that there was no one waiting for him.
"The damn ash in the air covers up the footprints, too," Ranma mumbled, kneeling down and finding no trace of his friends' passage, "which way did they go?"
Ken suddenly hissed in irritation, and Ranma glanced upward.
His gaze hardened as he saw the little bat-winged imp from before who had precipitated Yukari's fall off the cliff. It was flittering about several meters in the air, and giggling as if the whole last ten minutes were just a big joke to it.
"You ever had mini-devil before, Ken?" Ranma asked as he kicked at a cracked stagmite, knocking a bit of stone up into his hand.
The imp stopped giggling, and then turned around in the air and pointed its ass at Ranma before slapping its own rump repeatedly.
Ranma put down the stone he was holding and instead ripped the stalagmite out of the ground.
The imp froze as it watched the human lift the torso-sized chunk of stone over his head like it was a beach ball.
"What's wrong? Not funny when it happens to you?" Ranma asked as he hurled it toward the obnoxious hellspawn.
The imp veered out of the way, but that hardly took Ranma by surprise, and he kicked the smaller stone he had dropped earlier as the little red troublemaker strained to avoid the veritable brimstone comet.
Thwack! The second stone struck it square in the forehead, sending the imp reeling.
"All right, you little bastard, you're mine!" Ranma crowed as he started down the incline leading up to the cliff, although he had to slow down so as not to disturb the hellworms no doubt resting in the many lava spigots.
The imp had just enough time to recover and bolt into the air, barely getting enough altitude so that Ranma's fingers merely grazed its legs as the martial artist leapt up to try and seize it.
Ranma landed hard, and then promptly started coughing. Regardless of how tough and resilient he was, Hell had a very poor atmosphere and his breath didn't come easily. "Get back here, punk!" he shouted between coughs, sprinting after the rapidly escaping creature as his pet spider clung to his back, hissing angrily.
Hr
"And here we have Cavern of the Damned, in which the spirits of sinners are hung upside-down and wrapped in thorny vines," Kouma said as he entered a dark tunnel, lit only by the occasional small lava pits that bubbled away on the floor of the cave.
Tsukune and Moka entered silently, the latter gripping the former's hand tightly as he sullenly led her around the lava holes and other terrain hazards. Yukari followed the pair closely, constantly glancing around nervously.
"Up above you can see the countless souls undergoing eternal penance for their transgressions against their God. Not exactly sure what transgression, specifically; wasn't really my department. Probably lying on their taxes or something," Kouma mused, gesturing up to the ceilings where hundreds of tightly-packed people swung and writhed about in pain as the thorn-covered bonds dug into their naked bodies, "every few hours a few of the devil grunts comes along and swats a few of 'em like pinatas, and that causes them to smack into each other, which increases their suffering considerably. So don't ever lie on your taxes."
Kouma looked somewhat annoyed as the others said nothing in response to his tour guide routine, and eventually continued.
"You may have noticed that there's a lot of 'places of the Damned' around here. It's not really supposed to try to make it sound scary or anything, but rather it's a simple designator, like how government buildings will be called 'federal' or 'municipal' to mark who they belong to and what they're used for. So the Cavern, Lake, Pit, Untreated Septic Tank, and Cubicle Farm of the Damned are all places specifically for the torment of sinners, while all the areas labeled 'Devil's', like the Devil's Playground, Proving Grounds, and Freestyle Skateboard Park are all for Hell's worker devils to use when not busy dishing out egregious penance."
Still Tsukune and the girls said nothing, and a vein popped up on Kouma's head.
"So, do you guys wanna see anything while you're here?" Kouma asked, turning around while crossing his arms over his chest, "maybe see a sentencing? Visit an ancestor? Oh, how about we go see the torment of Adolph Hitler? People always get a kick out of that. Or any historical villain, really. Take your pick!"
"Take us to that office, Kouma," Tsukune deadpanned, "no detours."
"Fine, I will, but will you all stop being so mopey?" Kouma said, throwing his arms up into the air. "This is my first trip home in years and you guys are being total downers!"
"My best friend just died," Tsukune said through clenched teeth.
"Oh, so what? We're going to get him right now!" Kouma countered. "Considering how often he picks fights with eldritch horrors, you should be happy that he happened to bite it in the one situation where it's really easy to bring him back!"
Tsukune just glowered wordlessly at the hellhound, so Kouma tried appealing to Moka. "Look, you can't say he didn't have it coming. I warned him about how dangerous this was, and he KNEW that Sendo would be easy to revive! This is the sort of dumb, reckless behavior that annoys you the most about him, right?"
"He didn't deserve to die for saving Yukari," the vampiress said simply.
"That's arguable, but whatever," Kouma mumbled, "Sendo, didn't you want to explore a bit more? Like, to document the secrets of the universe that I've been revealing pretty much non-stop since we got here?"
"I've had enough of this place," Yukari said, shuddering, "I just want to make sure Senpai is all right and then get back to our own world where misery is arbitrary and often inversely proportional to a person's karma."
"Man... You guys are seriously ruining this whole trip," the hellhound complained as he started leading them forward again, unaware of how hard Tsukune was working not to scream at him.
"If it's any consolation," Moka mumbled half-heartedly, "the other Moka thinks that this is all very interesting and wants to know what sort of punishment violent, cocksure martial artists can expect."
"Thanks, that does cheer me up a bit," Kouma said, hopping over another lava pit, "but like I said, that's not really my department. We'll have to ask the assignment office when we get there."
'Must stay quiet. Must stay quiet. Kouma is the key to getting this done. Cannot berate him,' Tsukune thought fervently, biting his dry lips.
The group continued through the cavern to the exit, eventually emerging into a fairly narrow pathway winding through a series of huge lava pits that provided much more light than the cavern.
Ahead of them was a fairly short man with dark skin and curly hair that extended from his head to a thick, curly beard that he frequently combed a hand through in order to clean out the collected ashes. He wore sandals and a toga, and was striding purposefully toward the cavern they had just left.
"Hey Jesus," Kouma said casually, nodding his head as he passed the son of God.
"Peace be with you," Jesus Christ said, bowing his head briefly before he headed on his way.
The group moved on, heading further on down the walkway for several more minutes until Kouma suddenly whirled around.
"Okay, seriously? NOBODY is even going to say anything?" he demanded. "We just passed Jesus FREAKING Christ, and you all are so absorbed by the temporary loss of Ranma that you aren't even curious?"
Tsukune looked annoyed by the outburst. "Well, it doesn't matter much to me. I'm not Christian."
"I'd kind of hope that after visiting Hell itself and seeing the horrors inflicted upon unrepentent sinners that you'd consider converting," Kouma deadpanned.
Tsukune sighed wearily, obviously thinking of this conversation as a chore. "Kouma, can you tell me why Jesus isn't in Heaven?"
The hellhound perked up instantly as he started moving down the path again. "Actually, he does live in Heaven. In fact it's a sore point with his dad that he keeps coming down here."
The group walked in silence for several seconds before Moka reluctantly asked, "Why would he visit this place?"
"Well, that's the funny thing about Christ," Kouma said as he turned at a fork in the path, leading the group away from a towering black fortress that loomed in the distance, "he's always been into the martyrdom and redemption thing. So instead of spending all his time in Heaven playing harps or whatever, he sneaks down into Hell and frees the tormented souls, redeeming them and sometimes engaging in epic Kung-Fu duels with the devil legions."
Kouma gestured to several bare iron pillars stuck in the lava. "See those? Normally there are damned souls chained to them and being constantly seared from the heat. Jesus just heads in and messes up all the torture, all the while preaching about righteousness and light and whatever. He's like Hell's Osama Bin Laden."
Kouma suddenly stopped and snapped his fingers. "Hey, that's right! The Americans got that guy, didn't they? We should track him down and see what-"
"KOUMA," Tsukune said through clenched teeth, "hurry up and take us to where Ranma is."
"Gladly," Kouma muttered bitterly, "since apparently you guys are a total drag if he isn't around. Hmph."
Hr
"Get - huff! - back here - huff! - you little - huff! - pudgy brat!"
Ranma was breathing hard as he jogged around a large, flat-topped stalagmite, the little imp hovering ahead of him just out of reach.
Although initially it had been worried about the impressive abilities of the mortal, once it had taken the measure of Ranma's abilities - particularly his difficulty breathing in the dry, ash-filled air - it had turned the vegeful pursuit into a merry game, and cackled delightfully at Ranma's frustration.
"Keep giggling, pipsqueak," Ranma growled as he wiped a sheen of sweat off his brow, "one misstep and you're headed straight to... wherever people go when they die in Hell."
The imp, either because of the threat or because it just wanted to make Ranma angrier, suddenly shot up into the air and then landed atop the stalagmite grinning wickedly as it stuck its tongue out at its pursuer.
"Oh, think you're safe up there, do you?" Ranma asked.
The imp cackled.
"Get him, Ken," Ranma said with a smirk.
The imp's laughter died a horrible painful death right before it did the same, courtesy of Ranma's deceased pet spider which had been dropped off there earlier to wait in ambush. Ken leapt onto the miniature devil from behind, clinging to its leathery red skin while its fangs sunk deep into the imp's neck and filled the flailing creature with venom.
Ranma sighed as he sat down at the base of the stalagmite, ignoring the agonized squeals and hateful hissing as he stared at the gloomy horizon.
In the distance he could see a large black fortress, which was really the only structure large enough to be seen over the choking gray clouds that wafted through the underworld like floating, slow-motion rivers.
"Well, they'd probably do all the admin stuff inside, right? Might as well do it all in a castle," Ranma mused.
He hopped up to his feet, feeling somewhat refreshed by the brief rest, though he was terribly thirsty. "Ken, finish up and let's get a move on!"
The giant spider stabbed his fangs deep into the twitching, rubbery imp body, and took nearly a minute slurping up his victim's blood and bile before lightly pushing the withered husk off to the side, letting it roll down the side of the stalagmite before he crawled back down to his master.
Collecting his spider from the rocks, Ranma started jogging in the direction of the castle.
Hr
The Torment Assignment Office was built into a series of hollowed-out caverns in the side of what was probably a volcano (if for no other reason than Tsukune couldn't see the top and it seemed like EVERY mountain in Hell was a volcano). It was fairly easy to spot on approach, as there were a number of large red humanoids leading struggling naked people away in a constant stream, which one would have expected from the "original" entrance to Hell.
"All right, now you all should wait here," Kouma said, halting them, "I'll go and get the info on where Ranma and Jikan are, assuming Ranma isn't still waiting to be processed."
"I want to go too," Tsukune insisted, "maybe I can-"
"AONO," Kouma said loudly, startling the others with his suddenly serious tone, "look, I know you're worried about Ranma, and you have that whole 'human diplomacy' bonus going for you, and I respect that. Really. But this is the infernal underworld, and they play rough here," the hellhound explained, "if things go wrong somehow, it's much better for you to be here, where you can escape, than in the office, where you'll be surrounded. Like we discussed, I won't be able to get to your afterlife."
Tsukune grimaced. "I never imagined that eternal reward for being a decent person would be such a problem."
"Twisted irony is our specialty," Kouma agreed, "now wait here."
Hr
"Man, doesn't the devil ever get thirsty? I haven't seen any sign of water since we got here," Ranma complained as he trudged across the cracked wasteland, his pet spider still clinging to his back, "why didn't I think to bring any water down here? This is awful."
In front of Ranma loomed the giant black fortress, although it still seemed a great distance away. With the physical limitations brought on by the horrid environment and increasingly severe thirst he couldn't sprint there, and he found an ordinary pace of travel annoyingly slow.
He was fairly engrossed in his grumbling, to the extent that he wasn't really paying attention to his surroundings until some of his surroundings started shouting at him.
"Hey! Hey you! You're not a devil, right? Help me!"
Ranma was startled out of his thoughts, and promptly noted there was a pit of black sand that was set just off the path ahead, hardly distinguishable from the cracked black wasteland surrounding it but for the fact that it didn't have thick, glowing veins of lava seeping through it.
There was also a head poking out of the sand. A man's head, of vaguely Asian descent, with flesh that was dried and scorched to the extent that there were actually thin plumes of smoke rising from his skin.
Ranma promptly jogged over to pit, looking alarmed. "Whoa, are you okay?"
"I've been baking in sand for years, do you think I'm okay?" the man snapped as Ranma crouched down next to him, "look, just hel-GYAAAH! On your back! What the here is that?"
Ranma blinked. "What, Ken? He's my spider. Relax, he won't hurt you." He dug his hands down into the black obsidian grains, grimacing as he felt the heat for himself. The sand felt hot as coals, and as he moved his hands through it, he could also feel larger, sharp grains that would prick his skin like thorns.
"It's n-not like I'm scared of spiders at this point, exactly, but why is it on you?" the man asked.
"He's just a pet. Now hold on." Ranma finally dug deep enough to take hold of the damned soul's shoulder, and grunted as he pulled the tortured spirit free of his prison, glittering black sand spilling over the ground all around them.
As soon as the man was free, he promptly fell to his knees with an expression of intense relief, apparently forgetting all about Ranma's spider for the moment.
Ranma watched him closely (at least, Ranma watched his upper torso closely; the man was naked), and noticed that the spirit's skin, which was burnt and shriveled for obvious reasons, seemed to recover before his eyes, expanding and turning a healthier shade.
"Wow, you heal fast," the martial artist remarked, somewhat envious.
The man panted heavily as he sluggishly moved himself off of the pit, Ranma right behind him. "It's so that we can feel our torment more keenly. It would not do if we were to ever get numb to the pain, I guess."
Ranma suddenly felt much less envious. "Oh, wow... Not good," he mumbled awkwardly, "so why'd you end up here? What'd you do wrong?"
"I cheated on my wife," the damned soul grumbled, "and I lied about it. Not too much besides that."
Ranma clicked his tongue. "You can't do that, man. It aint right."
"Yeah, thanks, I realized that after the first few days of baking like a damn pie," the adulterer grumbled, "anyway, thanks for granting me a few moments' rest from my torment. I'm sure a devil will be along soon to put me back in that pit."
As the man bowed glumly, Ranma shrugged. "Why don't you leave, then?"
"Huh? How? You can't just leave Hell," he insisted.
"Well, I just walked into it, and I don't see what you have to lose, here," Ranma said, scratching his head as he pointed behind him, "it's a bit of a walk, but if you go straight back, hang a right at the big plateau - there should be a dead imp there at the bottom - and then go down the steep incline with all the lava spouts and follow the lava streams, you should get to the gate. I took out the guard and there isn't a family of big scary Hell monsters guarding it anymore, so you should be home free until you reach the portal."
The man looked completely awestruck. "Are... Are you serious? I can escape? I can be FREE? How can I ever thank you?"
"Just don't cheat on your wife anymore, okay?" Ranma asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Pff, how can I do that?" scoffed the damned soul, "the marriage thing clearly stipulates 'till death do you part'. I bought it, so now I'm free of any religious obligation to hold this guy back!"
Ranma grimaced as the rescued spirit pointed at his own crotch. 'Well, he'll be back,' the martial artist thought grimly. "Okay, well, if you won't do that, can you take my spider back with you and drop him off in the world of the living? I'm heading toward the big spooky castle and I don't want him to get killed. Again."
The man looked distinctly uncomfortable with this plan, but nodded reluctantly. "All right, fine. Give 'im here."
Ranma gestured sharply with his left arm out, and the tarantula scuttled over his shoulder and then out onto his arm, eventually climbing hesitantly onto the spirit's chest.
"Whoa... He, uh... kinda tickles," the man said, clearly nervous as he tried to work out where to hold the eight-legged beast.
"Now no biting, Ken," Ranma lectured into the tiny beady eyes atop the spider's head, "you just stick with the lowlife until you're back at the school, okay? And if anything happens, just make a break for it."
The tortured spirit probably would have complained (unironically) of his being described as a lowlife, but the man instead gasped and pointed behind Ranma.
"They're here! The devils! It's over!"
"What?" Ranma turned around, and frowned as he saw a dark shape approaching in the distance, barely visible thanks to the obscuring ash. "All right, I'll handle this, you go and-"
Ranma glanced back behind him, and sighed as he saw that the damned soul was already a good distance away, fleeing in the direction Ranma had indicated earlier.
"Well, at least he's taking Ken with him. Now let's see what this jerk wants."
Said "jerk" approached quickly, managing a loping jog that covered the cracked, flinty ground quite quickly. Once it was close enough for Ranma to make out, he could see that it was a large, red, male humanoid creature, boasting a thick musculature and a pair of twisting horns protruding from its brow. He had a whiplike tail about a meter long that thrashed back and forth like and unruly snake, and the creature was holding a bronze trident over his shoulder.
The hellbeast slowed quickly as he approached, looking quite confused at the sight of Ranma standing in the open and clearly waiting for him.
"Well, we don't have Miss Nekonome around to explain what you are, but I'm gonna guess 'devil'," Ranma said blandly.
The devil gave Ranma a curious look, and then snorted, a small cloud of flickering embers spurting from his nostrils. "Insolent mortal! Back to your penance!" Shouldering his weapon, the devil reached forward to sieze Ranma with a large, clawed hand.
Ranma slapped the hand away. "Naw, I'm not doing time here. I'm just looking for... wait, what did Kouma call it?"
The devil snarled and swiped at Ranma's face, but the martial artist ducked before stepping back.
"It was some kind of office, does that ring a bell?"
"Your future torment increases with your every move, worm!" the devil hissed as he suddenly brought his trident down and stabbed it forward.
Ranma moved to the side, allowing the weapon to stab past him, and then seized the haft with one hand while one leg snapped up and struck the devil's arm, jarring the trident loose. Then in one smooth rotation Ranma brought the polearm back around before stabbing it into the shocked devil's abdomen.
"Now I remember!" Ranma said suddenly, brightening as steaming black fliuds oozed from the new wounds in the hellbeast's stomach, "it was called the Torment Assignment-"
Thud! Ranma trailed off as the devil fell over, the bronze trident wobbling unsteadily as its owner seemed to slowly boil away on the spot, leaving only a puddle of dark oil-like fluids and a bleached skeleton.
"Well, I'll just remember it for the next guy I find, then," Ranma murmured as he started on his trek again, "there's gotta be someone who knows where... wait, is that another sand pit?"
He frowned as he spotted another one of the torturous prisons on the side of the path, complete with a human head in the middle.
"Looks like I've got a lot of work to do," Ranma grumbled as he jogged ahead, leaving the crumbling bones of the devil behind him.
Hr
"Okay, look, I know I'm not supposed to be here, but I've got a reason," Kouma said, looking frustrated but surprisingly calm about it, "it's not like I'm hurting anyone, here. I just need to look up some info."
The creature he was speaking to was a very large devil with massive, elephantine legs and arms like industrial lifters.
"I don't know, Gamaroshi. I don't want this on my performance review," the devil grumbled, glancing next to them at the line of naked humans being dragged away by other devils, "you know how touchy Beelzebub can get during the end of the fiscal year, and my bonus-"
"Okay, look, I'll cut you a deal. You know I live in the human world now, right? I have access to all kinds of stuff," Kouma said with a smirk, "you do me a solid, and then you can contact me back in the land of the mortals and get me to send you something nice."
The guard devil looked startled by the proposition. "You mean like a Playstation 2?"
Kouma snorted. "Playstation 2, Playstation 3, two Playstation 1's, your call. Whaddya say?"
"I say nothing, because I saw nothing," said the devil, his gaze rising so that he was staring straight forward.
Kouma shook his head in contempt as he walked into the office, barely managing to keep clear of the long line of struggling mortals and growling devils.
'What a loser. Willingly breaching security for the sake of one of the humans' useless toys!' the hellhound thought. 'If it were me I would've disemboweled anyone who dared to bribe me! This place has gone straight to... well... someplace worse than Hell, I guess. Ah, there's the desk!'
Aside from the barely directed chaos of mortal souls being rapidly judged and dragged away screaming to their fates, there was a single window off to the side that was only used by the denizens of Hell to request information, rather than having a direct role in the judging and tormenting process.
Kouma walked up to the desk, which was manned by a single female devil who was delicately filing her horns, which curled down under her ears like a ram.
"Hello, I'd like to make an information request," Kouma said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm looking for a pair of souls."
The devil woman glanced at him, and then put down the rusted iron file she had been using. "Name?"
"The first is some schmuck named Jikan. Came in a little less than two months ago. Method of death was being flayed alive by a demon."
The devil woman nodded and snapped her fingers, causing a manila folder to appear on her desk in a puff of flame. "And what information in particular are you looking for?"
"What kind of punishment he's enduring, and where that sector is," Kouma answered.
"Sector H-17, being forever cut by jagged pendulum blades," she replied. "And the second soul?"
"A troublemaker named Saotome Ranma. Died about an hour or so ago. He might not actually be assigned yet."
The devil woman nodded. Then she stared straight forward for several seconds before frowning.
"Hmm. I'm not getting anything for that name," she mumbled.
Kouma suddenly staggered backward, and he felt his blood chill almost to room temperature. "But... No, that's impossible! The record must have gotten lost, or... or maybe it hasn't been processed yet!"
"The records are generated at the time of death, so that isn't an issue... unless, of course, he went to a different afterlife," the receptionist pointed out.
Kouma's jaw worked soundlessly, unable to form words as the full implications of what he was hearing dawned on him.
Ranma was gone. Dead. Permanently removed from the mortal coil. Neither he nor Tsukune or the two annoying, horny teenage girls back at Youkai Academy would ever see him again.
There was a part of him that wanted to be happy at the prospect, but he just couldn't be. For all Ranma's talent in annoying people, he was still someone who stood by Kouma and the Protection Committee when they needed him. He was benign, maybe even heroic.
This led the hellhound to yet another harrowing thought: why had he assumed Ranma would suffer for eternity? Ranma had perished saving Yukari with barely any thought to his own safety and regardless of all the trouble Yukari had caused him in the past. In fact, Ranma had ALWAYS been ready to put himself at risk to help others. In disregarding that, Kouma had spit on Ranma's kindness and sense of justice, and reduced the man's memory to that of an obnoxious clown.
"Ah, I see now," said the she-devil, "I checked Death's files. Mister Saotome isn't actually dead yet."
In an instant Kouma's guilt was washed away, and the hellhound slammed a fist down onto the countertop in front of him, causing a small burst of flames to shoot up. "That IDIOT! And he didn't even say anything before we left? What's wrong with him?"
The devil woman shrugged, looking completely uninterested in Kouma's outburst. "I can't say... Is there anyone else you need to find? Maybe Saotome Genma, his father?"
Kouma blinked, his anger vanishing. "His dad's dead?"
"Just a moment," the receptionist asked as she tilted her head to one side, "huh. Actually, no. Death has had a work order in place for more than a year now, but the soul is still in arrears."
Kouma quirked an eyebrow. "Seriously? That can happen?"
Hr
Genma Saotome strolled casually through the neighborhood on his way back to the Tendo household, ignoring the occasional pointing and staring from the few people around who weren't used to seeing a panda ambling along the sidewalk like it belonged there.
As he rounded a corner, the cursed martial artist halted, spotting something odd in the middle of the street.
It was a plate of rice balls and bamboo sticks, planted next to a sign that read "Free panda food" next to a rather large tree.
Genma glanced up at the tree's branches, noticing that there was a net poised over the plate of food, stretched between the branches and suspended by a rope.
That rope extended down to a peg that secured it tightly to the ground, while next to it a black-cloaked figure crouched in some bushes, a massive scythe held at the ready to cut the rope.
Genma's eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
Ambling up to the plate of food, Genma stopped just outside the net's radius, staring at the meal left out on the sidewalk.
Then he raised his arms up to either side, as if he was about to hug-tackle someone.
And then he swept his arms together, causing a sign with the words "Insert Technique Name" on it to go flying off to the side.
More importantly, it also sent a wave of shimmering, razor-sharp air up into the tree, slicing through one of the branches that supported the rope. The net and the line holding it up dropped down, and then the line caught on another branch and swung the net right on top of the rather surprised cloaked figure.
A litany of curses in a tongue no human could hope comprehend boomed from the foliage as Genma leapt upon the food, scarfing down the rice balls in seconds and taking only marginally longer on the bamboo.
Then, with a few scraps of bamboo still falling from his jaws, Genma thrust a sign into the air.
"Meep meep, bitches."
Genma then dashed down the road, leaving only the obligatory cloud of dust and an empty plate behind him as Death snarled in fury and hatred.
Hr
"Well, that's just great. So he's still alive, just lost in Hell," Kouma groused, "if the jerk would just lay down and kick the bucket, this would have been so much easier."
The she-devil at the counter quirked a well-trimmed eyebrow. "Why would a mortal who isn't dead be in Hell?"
"Because your security SUCKS now, that's why," Kouma answered matter-of-factly, "anyway, thanks for your help. That's all I need."
"Before you go, would you fill out a customer satisfaction survey?" the devil woman asked, taking out a form and laying it down on the counter, "in order for us to serve you better in the future."
Kouma shook his head as he turned away. "Nah, I'm in a hurry."
"I am required to advise you that while it is your choice, failure to fill out a survey WILL result in you being attacked by wasps made of knives," the receptionist warned.
Kouma halted. "Wait. Wasps made of..."
Bzzzzzzzzz... The hellhound trailed off as a wasp at least the size of his hand emerged from somewhere above, dropping in front of him to hover in place menacingly. It wasn't exactly made of knives, but rather had an unreasonably large, scalpel-like blade attached to each of is legs, mandibles, antennae, and a particularly nasty-looking spike emerging from its abdomen.
"Right. I forgot we had these, actually," Kouma grumbled as he turned back to the she-devil, "fine, can I borrow a pen?"
"No," the devil woman said simply, smirking as the wasp started circling Kouma's head.
The hellhound frowned, staring down at the survey sheet, and then up at the buzzing hellwasp, and finally back at the receptionist. "You take ironic customer service much more seriously than I remember."
She nodded. "The economy has been tough on everyone," she explained grimly as the wasp reared its stinger back and attacked.
Hr
"So what do we do if Kouma can't find them?" Yukari asked. She was currently leaning against Moka's chest as the girls sat next to a lava flow, the vampiress keeping close to Yukari as to benefit from the witch's air bubble.
Tsukune dearly wished to join them, as he already felt thirstier than he had ever been in his life and his hair probably contained half his body weight in soot by now, but he restrained himself. Mostly because it would involve him feeling up a twelve year-old and sandwiching her between him and Moka.
He wasn't entirely sure Yukari would disapprove, honestly, but he was intent on keeping the question moot.
"Then we move on to the next office. Or boss, or whatever," Tsukune said, his voice slightly hoarse, "if we can't find Jikan, then that's unfortunate, but we WILL find out what happened to Ranma."
"Hey! Kouma's coming back!" Moka said, brightening as she spotted the hellhound's human form through the dust with her superior vision.
Tsukune was wringing his hands as Kouma approached, though he was soon forced to put aside some of his concern for Ranma to make room for concern for Kouma; the hellhound had several gashes over his face and arms, as if he had been cut by several small knives. Oddly enough, it was his right hand that was most scarred and bloodstained.
"Kouma? What happened to you?" Tsukune asked as the native hellbeast walked past him.
"I just had to fill out a questionnaire with my own blood while using a 'pen' that was trying to stab me to death," Kouma said with an uncharacteristically calm shrug, "no biggie. More importantly, I found out where Jikan is."
Tsukune felt his heart sink into his stomach at the way Kouma said it, having obviously excluded Ranma on purpose. "And Ranma?"
A vein popped up on Kouma's head. "Turns out our buddy Saotome never bit that bullet after all. Somehow the bastard's still alive and kicking."
Tsukune felt relieved at first, but his dread grew as he considered that information. "Wait, so that explosion-"
"Either he dodged it, or he's a lot more resistant to fire than we thought. Even I couldn't have just shrugged off that eruption," Kouma groused, "really, this wouldn't happen if he'd just tell us his damn species already."
Moka fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Well, is he injured?"
"Is he still back at that cliff?" Yukari followed.
Kouma sighed wearily. "I don't know. So long as he's alive, Hell doesn't really have much to do with him."
"So how will we find him?" Tsukune asked, "should we double back where we came?"
"Are you sure you could handle that, Tsukune?" Moka asked in concern as she squeezed Yukari to her (much to the witch's delight), "you don't look like you're handling this atmosphere well."
"Besides that, if the guy survived being swallowed by fire, then there's no point in us worrying about his life NOW," Kouma groused, "he can find his own way. We should get Jikan and get out of here."
Tsukune grimaced, hating the idea of abandoning a possibly injured Ranma to the stingy mercies of the underworld, but eventually had to concede the point to Kouma.
"All right, since we know where our original target is, we'll get him and hopefully meet up with Ranma on the way or at the portal home," Tsukune decided, "if we don't find him, then we can leave Kouma at the portal to wait while the rest of us go back and think of a new strategy."
"Sure, whatever," Kouma said as he started to trudge down the path, "pretty sure it's unnecessary. I'd be more worried about setting Ranma loose in Hell than unleashing Hell on Ranma."
"You're being ridiculous," Tsukune insisted as he and the girls followed the hellhound, "even Ranma isn't invincible. What's he going to do in Hell that would be so terrible?"
Hr
"At the ready!" snarled a large devil in shining obsidian armor, holding a wicked-looking halberd over his shoulder.
A dozen more devils in identical wargear aimed their shadowy weapons at a pair of massive, bronze-lined double-doors.
Bang! The doors shuddered as something hit them, but the guards di not flinch, their gazes smoldering with hate and determination.
Behind the ornately equipped hellbeasts was a particularly large devil, this one with skin the color of fresh charcoal and thick, long, of night black hair that covered his head like a lion's mane around the two twisted horns that sat atop his head. His lower body, rather than being humanoid like that of most of the other devils, looked like the hind legs of a goat, complete with large cloven hooves. He was dressed from head to hoof in glittering golden chainmail, with a variety of opulent accesories hanging from multiple piercings.
There was also a massive bronze throne in the room, which would have been totally eclipsed by the devil were he not crouching behind it in fear.
"When that fool breaks through, I'm going to give my obligatory Final Boss speech, then you all jump him!" demanded the bigger devil.
"Yes, my Lord Satan," growled the leader of the Infernal Guard, levering his own halberd at the doors as the shook once more from a heavy impact.
Bang!
"How did he get past the main gates? Did he sneak in or just kill anything in his way?" mumbled one guard devil as the hinges to the door strained painfully.
"Silence! Keep your weapons and your thoughts aimed at the enemy!" the lead devil snapped.
CRACK!
As the heavy doors finally collapsed inward, Satan stood up and to the side of his throne so that it was slightly less obvious he was using it for cover. "So you've made it this far, have you? Impressive, but your journey ends here, Ghost of Spar-" then he halted and quirked an eyebrow, "wait, you're not Kratos. What's going on?"
Ranma panted as he dropped the enormous bronze maul he had used to hammer open the doors. He had a large gash on one flank and a few cuts on his arm, but most of the dried fluid spattering his closthes was obviously devil ichor. He had also put away the handkerchief, as the air inside the fortress was clean enough for him to breathe easily, if not still ten degrees warmer than he liked.
"Where is the torment assignment office?" Ranma demanded, balling hands into fists as he glanced around at the weapons surrounding him.
All the devils in the room were silent, until Satan finally asked, "You're... looking for the assignment office?"
"That's right!" Ranma said, clenching his jaw as he held an agressive combat stance, "also, if there's a water fountain or something around here, that would be awesome. I'm REALLY thirsty."
The captain of the Infernal Guard glanced back at Satan. "My lord?"
The ruler of Hell stepped up in front of his throne, stroking his beard. "So, who are you, exactly?"
"My name is Saotome Ranma!" the martial artist shouted.
"Oh-ho! And Saotome Genma would be your father, right?" Satan asked, grinning.
"That's right! I'm the son of Gen-" Ranma suddenly deflated, "wait, how do you know that name?" he asked fearfully.
Satan kept grinning as he suddenly jumped back to land seated in his throne. "Welcome, mortal, to my abode! I am Satan, lord of Hell and paragon of evil!"
Suddenly he clapped his hands sharply. "Captain! This man asked for refreshments, did he not? Stop pointing weaopns at him and see to it!"
The other devils quickly shouldered their halberds and stepped back, and the captain offered a quick bow before rushing out the broken doors.
"Now then, Saotome, let's chat!" Satan said, clearly rather happy about this unexpected intrusion.
Ranma, on the other hand, was increasingly uncomfortable with this situation now that it didn't involve fighting and apparently DID involve his father. "So, uh, how about that office?"
"Oh, that? It's in the other direction, way across the main lava river," Satan explained, "you're pretty far off."
"Aw, are you serious?" Ranma groaned, "why didn't any of your guys just TELL me that rather than trying to stab me?"
"Well, it IS their job to make sure that mortal souls are kept in unspeakable agony for the rest of time," the ruler of Hell explained with a shrug, "but I can understand your frustration. I'll have a talk with them."
Ranma winced. "Ah... I doubt that."
Hr
"Wow, it's gotten busy all of a sudden, hasn't it?" asked one of the Satan twins as he passed out armor to a line of rather confused-looking devils. "Is there a skirmish going on in the first underworld, or what?"
The second twin shrugged as he leaned on a pike. "There's some mortal jerk running through Hell freeing trapped souls and killing the devils who try to stop him."
The other twin shook his head as he walked down the line. "A mortal killed you guys off? Double lame."
"Yeah, well we got the last laugh," grumbled one of the devils bitterly, "he asked me where the Torment Assignment Office was as I lay dying, impaled on my weapon, and I never told him he was going in the completely wrong direction!"
"Yeah, we sure showed him," deadpanned the devil next to him who then raised his hand, "excuse me, Lord? Or, Lords, I guess?"
The two masters of Double Hell turned toward him, and the lowly soldier continued, "So if we're in Double Hell because we died in Hell, what happens if we die here?"
"Then you go to Scary Town," the Satan twin handing out armor said, stepping next to the devil and holding out a breastplate.
"Wow. That place must REALLY suck," muttered the next one down the line.
"Eh, it's not bad in the fall. Now armor up, boys! You're all working double shifts from now on!" the other Satan proclaimed, eliciting groans from the assembled devils.
Seriously, I am just RUINING Christianity's shit, here.
Ranma whistled as he stared at the roiling column of smoke.
"Whoah. That was intense."
He was currently standing at the mouth of a cavern that had been drilled into the face of the cliff, having been drawn in right as the earthquake (Hellquake?) had started. Smoke leaked into the hole from the toxic column outside, but the cavern sloped upward so that it didn't fill the entire cave and make it totally uninhabitable for the pigtailed boy.
"Thanks for the hand back there, Mister magma spider!" Ranma said, glancing behind him.
Standing behind the martial artist, poised at the edge of a web made of glittering orange strands, was an eight-legged beast the size of a horse that seemed to be made of igneous rock riven with veins of flowing lava. It had half a dozen eyes - curiously human-like, with eyelids, pupils, and blazing red irises - and scythe-like fangs that looked like tempered blades.
"It is my honor to serve, my lord," the magma spider intoned, its voice echoing grandly and seeming to originate from no particular spot on its body, "it is fortuitous that I was poised to devour the small one with the cape, or I might not have recognized you in time."
"Uh... Yeah, okay. Thanks," Ranma mumbled, wondering why the hellbeast recognized him and why it seemed to revere him. Maybe it was someone killed at Youkai Academy? If that was the case, he didn't recognize the monster, which was rather embarrassing considering it referred to him as "my lord". Ranma decided to just keep quiet about it.
"I was shocked to see you in this land, my lord," the magma spider continued, its many eyes blinking against the smoke flowing over it, "have the forces of Heaven truly gone so far as to forsake their chosen descendant? Is it time that we who crawl rise up and seize this blasted land for the sake of the gods?"
Ranma was only getting more confused the longer the spider-thing spoke, so he decided to hurry and answer. "I'm not actually dead. I'm just here to pick up a guy who we didn't want killed and take him back to Earth."
The magma spider's eyes all widened simultaneously. "You march into the land of the damned and revive the dead?"
Ranma shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much. This is my first time doing it though, so I don't know if it'll work."
"As expected of our lord," the magma spider said reverently, "a moment, please. I have something for you."
Ranma was getting slightly worried about his friends atop the cliff, but didn't want to be rude to the monster that had saved his life and apparently deferred to him like some sort of human god (silly idea as that was).
The magma spider crawled up its web, disappearing briefly in the swirling black smoke that had gathered in the top portion of the hellbeast's lair.
When it descended again, Ranma was fairly stunned to see a familiar hairy brown figure clutching onto the magma spider's thorax.
"Hey, is that Ken? It is you!" Ranma said cheerfully as the large brown tarantula - though with a legspan barely equivalent to a dinner plate, he was decidedly puny compared to the elemental spider carrying him - wiggled his pedipalps excitedly. "I was wondering what happened to you, little buddy!"
"Your servant met his untimely end at the hands of the accursed false gods, may their lying facades melt away before your righteous aura," the magma spider growled.
Ranma once again had no clue what the hellbeast was talking about, so he cheerfully ignored it as he held out his hand for Ken to crawl onto. "Well, I'm really glad you took care of him! Thanks again! I'll take him back with me to Earth."
As the lesser arachnid scuttled over his shoulder and onto his back, Ranma asked, "So why was he in Hell anyway? Some kind of spider sin?"
"The creator did not exactly endow the arachnid family with great fortune upon our inception," the magma spider explained bitterly, "in terms of afterlives, we are largely confined to either this hellplane - mostly as torment props for the arachnophobic damned - or the Demonweb Pits."
Ranma didn't know what the "Demonweb Pits" were, but they didn't sound much more unpleasant than Hell itself. "And you chose Hell?"
"Whether you worship her or not, there is really no getting around the fact that Lolth is a raging, psychotic bitch. At least here they treat us like dumb animals and leave us alone most of the time. It's really not so bad after you evolve a lava-based form."
"Well, SOME people seem to like it here, I guess," Ranma mumbled, thinking of Kouma, "anyway, I should go catch up with my friends. There's a good chance they'll die without me. And then I'd have to go get them along with the first guy, which would be a hassle."
"Understood, my lord," the magma spider intoned, "may you tread safely on your travels. Death to the whiskered devils!"
"Yeah, sure, screw those guys," Ranma mumbled as he walked up to the mouth of the cavern and latched onto the upper lip, feeling that it was cool enough to hold. "Goodbye! Thanks for returning my spider!"
From there it was a rather quick climb to the top of the cliff, as the explosions from earlier had torn great gashes and holes in the rock and left a number of good handholds.
Once he reached the top, Ranma was disappointed, though not totally surprised, to see that there was no one waiting for him.
"The damn ash in the air covers up the footprints, too," Ranma mumbled, kneeling down and finding no trace of his friends' passage, "which way did they go?"
Ken suddenly hissed in irritation, and Ranma glanced upward.
His gaze hardened as he saw the little bat-winged imp from before who had precipitated Yukari's fall off the cliff. It was flittering about several meters in the air, and giggling as if the whole last ten minutes were just a big joke to it.
"You ever had mini-devil before, Ken?" Ranma asked as he kicked at a cracked stagmite, knocking a bit of stone up into his hand.
The imp stopped giggling, and then turned around in the air and pointed its ass at Ranma before slapping its own rump repeatedly.
Ranma put down the stone he was holding and instead ripped the stalagmite out of the ground.
The imp froze as it watched the human lift the torso-sized chunk of stone over his head like it was a beach ball.
"What's wrong? Not funny when it happens to you?" Ranma asked as he hurled it toward the obnoxious hellspawn.
The imp veered out of the way, but that hardly took Ranma by surprise, and he kicked the smaller stone he had dropped earlier as the little red troublemaker strained to avoid the veritable brimstone comet.
Thwack! The second stone struck it square in the forehead, sending the imp reeling.
"All right, you little bastard, you're mine!" Ranma crowed as he started down the incline leading up to the cliff, although he had to slow down so as not to disturb the hellworms no doubt resting in the many lava spigots.
The imp had just enough time to recover and bolt into the air, barely getting enough altitude so that Ranma's fingers merely grazed its legs as the martial artist leapt up to try and seize it.
Ranma landed hard, and then promptly started coughing. Regardless of how tough and resilient he was, Hell had a very poor atmosphere and his breath didn't come easily. "Get back here, punk!" he shouted between coughs, sprinting after the rapidly escaping creature as his pet spider clung to his back, hissing angrily.
Hr
"And here we have Cavern of the Damned, in which the spirits of sinners are hung upside-down and wrapped in thorny vines," Kouma said as he entered a dark tunnel, lit only by the occasional small lava pits that bubbled away on the floor of the cave.
Tsukune and Moka entered silently, the latter gripping the former's hand tightly as he sullenly led her around the lava holes and other terrain hazards. Yukari followed the pair closely, constantly glancing around nervously.
"Up above you can see the countless souls undergoing eternal penance for their transgressions against their God. Not exactly sure what transgression, specifically; wasn't really my department. Probably lying on their taxes or something," Kouma mused, gesturing up to the ceilings where hundreds of tightly-packed people swung and writhed about in pain as the thorn-covered bonds dug into their naked bodies, "every few hours a few of the devil grunts comes along and swats a few of 'em like pinatas, and that causes them to smack into each other, which increases their suffering considerably. So don't ever lie on your taxes."
Kouma looked somewhat annoyed as the others said nothing in response to his tour guide routine, and eventually continued.
"You may have noticed that there's a lot of 'places of the Damned' around here. It's not really supposed to try to make it sound scary or anything, but rather it's a simple designator, like how government buildings will be called 'federal' or 'municipal' to mark who they belong to and what they're used for. So the Cavern, Lake, Pit, Untreated Septic Tank, and Cubicle Farm of the Damned are all places specifically for the torment of sinners, while all the areas labeled 'Devil's', like the Devil's Playground, Proving Grounds, and Freestyle Skateboard Park are all for Hell's worker devils to use when not busy dishing out egregious penance."
Still Tsukune and the girls said nothing, and a vein popped up on Kouma's head.
"So, do you guys wanna see anything while you're here?" Kouma asked, turning around while crossing his arms over his chest, "maybe see a sentencing? Visit an ancestor? Oh, how about we go see the torment of Adolph Hitler? People always get a kick out of that. Or any historical villain, really. Take your pick!"
"Take us to that office, Kouma," Tsukune deadpanned, "no detours."
"Fine, I will, but will you all stop being so mopey?" Kouma said, throwing his arms up into the air. "This is my first trip home in years and you guys are being total downers!"
"My best friend just died," Tsukune said through clenched teeth.
"Oh, so what? We're going to get him right now!" Kouma countered. "Considering how often he picks fights with eldritch horrors, you should be happy that he happened to bite it in the one situation where it's really easy to bring him back!"
Tsukune just glowered wordlessly at the hellhound, so Kouma tried appealing to Moka. "Look, you can't say he didn't have it coming. I warned him about how dangerous this was, and he KNEW that Sendo would be easy to revive! This is the sort of dumb, reckless behavior that annoys you the most about him, right?"
"He didn't deserve to die for saving Yukari," the vampiress said simply.
"That's arguable, but whatever," Kouma mumbled, "Sendo, didn't you want to explore a bit more? Like, to document the secrets of the universe that I've been revealing pretty much non-stop since we got here?"
"I've had enough of this place," Yukari said, shuddering, "I just want to make sure Senpai is all right and then get back to our own world where misery is arbitrary and often inversely proportional to a person's karma."
"Man... You guys are seriously ruining this whole trip," the hellhound complained as he started leading them forward again, unaware of how hard Tsukune was working not to scream at him.
"If it's any consolation," Moka mumbled half-heartedly, "the other Moka thinks that this is all very interesting and wants to know what sort of punishment violent, cocksure martial artists can expect."
"Thanks, that does cheer me up a bit," Kouma said, hopping over another lava pit, "but like I said, that's not really my department. We'll have to ask the assignment office when we get there."
'Must stay quiet. Must stay quiet. Kouma is the key to getting this done. Cannot berate him,' Tsukune thought fervently, biting his dry lips.
The group continued through the cavern to the exit, eventually emerging into a fairly narrow pathway winding through a series of huge lava pits that provided much more light than the cavern.
Ahead of them was a fairly short man with dark skin and curly hair that extended from his head to a thick, curly beard that he frequently combed a hand through in order to clean out the collected ashes. He wore sandals and a toga, and was striding purposefully toward the cavern they had just left.
"Hey Jesus," Kouma said casually, nodding his head as he passed the son of God.
"Peace be with you," Jesus Christ said, bowing his head briefly before he headed on his way.
The group moved on, heading further on down the walkway for several more minutes until Kouma suddenly whirled around.
"Okay, seriously? NOBODY is even going to say anything?" he demanded. "We just passed Jesus FREAKING Christ, and you all are so absorbed by the temporary loss of Ranma that you aren't even curious?"
Tsukune looked annoyed by the outburst. "Well, it doesn't matter much to me. I'm not Christian."
"I'd kind of hope that after visiting Hell itself and seeing the horrors inflicted upon unrepentent sinners that you'd consider converting," Kouma deadpanned.
Tsukune sighed wearily, obviously thinking of this conversation as a chore. "Kouma, can you tell me why Jesus isn't in Heaven?"
The hellhound perked up instantly as he started moving down the path again. "Actually, he does live in Heaven. In fact it's a sore point with his dad that he keeps coming down here."
The group walked in silence for several seconds before Moka reluctantly asked, "Why would he visit this place?"
"Well, that's the funny thing about Christ," Kouma said as he turned at a fork in the path, leading the group away from a towering black fortress that loomed in the distance, "he's always been into the martyrdom and redemption thing. So instead of spending all his time in Heaven playing harps or whatever, he sneaks down into Hell and frees the tormented souls, redeeming them and sometimes engaging in epic Kung-Fu duels with the devil legions."
Kouma gestured to several bare iron pillars stuck in the lava. "See those? Normally there are damned souls chained to them and being constantly seared from the heat. Jesus just heads in and messes up all the torture, all the while preaching about righteousness and light and whatever. He's like Hell's Osama Bin Laden."
Kouma suddenly stopped and snapped his fingers. "Hey, that's right! The Americans got that guy, didn't they? We should track him down and see what-"
"KOUMA," Tsukune said through clenched teeth, "hurry up and take us to where Ranma is."
"Gladly," Kouma muttered bitterly, "since apparently you guys are a total drag if he isn't around. Hmph."
Hr
"Get - huff! - back here - huff! - you little - huff! - pudgy brat!"
Ranma was breathing hard as he jogged around a large, flat-topped stalagmite, the little imp hovering ahead of him just out of reach.
Although initially it had been worried about the impressive abilities of the mortal, once it had taken the measure of Ranma's abilities - particularly his difficulty breathing in the dry, ash-filled air - it had turned the vegeful pursuit into a merry game, and cackled delightfully at Ranma's frustration.
"Keep giggling, pipsqueak," Ranma growled as he wiped a sheen of sweat off his brow, "one misstep and you're headed straight to... wherever people go when they die in Hell."
The imp, either because of the threat or because it just wanted to make Ranma angrier, suddenly shot up into the air and then landed atop the stalagmite grinning wickedly as it stuck its tongue out at its pursuer.
"Oh, think you're safe up there, do you?" Ranma asked.
The imp cackled.
"Get him, Ken," Ranma said with a smirk.
The imp's laughter died a horrible painful death right before it did the same, courtesy of Ranma's deceased pet spider which had been dropped off there earlier to wait in ambush. Ken leapt onto the miniature devil from behind, clinging to its leathery red skin while its fangs sunk deep into the imp's neck and filled the flailing creature with venom.
Ranma sighed as he sat down at the base of the stalagmite, ignoring the agonized squeals and hateful hissing as he stared at the gloomy horizon.
In the distance he could see a large black fortress, which was really the only structure large enough to be seen over the choking gray clouds that wafted through the underworld like floating, slow-motion rivers.
"Well, they'd probably do all the admin stuff inside, right? Might as well do it all in a castle," Ranma mused.
He hopped up to his feet, feeling somewhat refreshed by the brief rest, though he was terribly thirsty. "Ken, finish up and let's get a move on!"
The giant spider stabbed his fangs deep into the twitching, rubbery imp body, and took nearly a minute slurping up his victim's blood and bile before lightly pushing the withered husk off to the side, letting it roll down the side of the stalagmite before he crawled back down to his master.
Collecting his spider from the rocks, Ranma started jogging in the direction of the castle.
Hr
The Torment Assignment Office was built into a series of hollowed-out caverns in the side of what was probably a volcano (if for no other reason than Tsukune couldn't see the top and it seemed like EVERY mountain in Hell was a volcano). It was fairly easy to spot on approach, as there were a number of large red humanoids leading struggling naked people away in a constant stream, which one would have expected from the "original" entrance to Hell.
"All right, now you all should wait here," Kouma said, halting them, "I'll go and get the info on where Ranma and Jikan are, assuming Ranma isn't still waiting to be processed."
"I want to go too," Tsukune insisted, "maybe I can-"
"AONO," Kouma said loudly, startling the others with his suddenly serious tone, "look, I know you're worried about Ranma, and you have that whole 'human diplomacy' bonus going for you, and I respect that. Really. But this is the infernal underworld, and they play rough here," the hellhound explained, "if things go wrong somehow, it's much better for you to be here, where you can escape, than in the office, where you'll be surrounded. Like we discussed, I won't be able to get to your afterlife."
Tsukune grimaced. "I never imagined that eternal reward for being a decent person would be such a problem."
"Twisted irony is our specialty," Kouma agreed, "now wait here."
Hr
"Man, doesn't the devil ever get thirsty? I haven't seen any sign of water since we got here," Ranma complained as he trudged across the cracked wasteland, his pet spider still clinging to his back, "why didn't I think to bring any water down here? This is awful."
In front of Ranma loomed the giant black fortress, although it still seemed a great distance away. With the physical limitations brought on by the horrid environment and increasingly severe thirst he couldn't sprint there, and he found an ordinary pace of travel annoyingly slow.
He was fairly engrossed in his grumbling, to the extent that he wasn't really paying attention to his surroundings until some of his surroundings started shouting at him.
"Hey! Hey you! You're not a devil, right? Help me!"
Ranma was startled out of his thoughts, and promptly noted there was a pit of black sand that was set just off the path ahead, hardly distinguishable from the cracked black wasteland surrounding it but for the fact that it didn't have thick, glowing veins of lava seeping through it.
There was also a head poking out of the sand. A man's head, of vaguely Asian descent, with flesh that was dried and scorched to the extent that there were actually thin plumes of smoke rising from his skin.
Ranma promptly jogged over to pit, looking alarmed. "Whoa, are you okay?"
"I've been baking in sand for years, do you think I'm okay?" the man snapped as Ranma crouched down next to him, "look, just hel-GYAAAH! On your back! What the here is that?"
Ranma blinked. "What, Ken? He's my spider. Relax, he won't hurt you." He dug his hands down into the black obsidian grains, grimacing as he felt the heat for himself. The sand felt hot as coals, and as he moved his hands through it, he could also feel larger, sharp grains that would prick his skin like thorns.
"It's n-not like I'm scared of spiders at this point, exactly, but why is it on you?" the man asked.
"He's just a pet. Now hold on." Ranma finally dug deep enough to take hold of the damned soul's shoulder, and grunted as he pulled the tortured spirit free of his prison, glittering black sand spilling over the ground all around them.
As soon as the man was free, he promptly fell to his knees with an expression of intense relief, apparently forgetting all about Ranma's spider for the moment.
Ranma watched him closely (at least, Ranma watched his upper torso closely; the man was naked), and noticed that the spirit's skin, which was burnt and shriveled for obvious reasons, seemed to recover before his eyes, expanding and turning a healthier shade.
"Wow, you heal fast," the martial artist remarked, somewhat envious.
The man panted heavily as he sluggishly moved himself off of the pit, Ranma right behind him. "It's so that we can feel our torment more keenly. It would not do if we were to ever get numb to the pain, I guess."
Ranma suddenly felt much less envious. "Oh, wow... Not good," he mumbled awkwardly, "so why'd you end up here? What'd you do wrong?"
"I cheated on my wife," the damned soul grumbled, "and I lied about it. Not too much besides that."
Ranma clicked his tongue. "You can't do that, man. It aint right."
"Yeah, thanks, I realized that after the first few days of baking like a damn pie," the adulterer grumbled, "anyway, thanks for granting me a few moments' rest from my torment. I'm sure a devil will be along soon to put me back in that pit."
As the man bowed glumly, Ranma shrugged. "Why don't you leave, then?"
"Huh? How? You can't just leave Hell," he insisted.
"Well, I just walked into it, and I don't see what you have to lose, here," Ranma said, scratching his head as he pointed behind him, "it's a bit of a walk, but if you go straight back, hang a right at the big plateau - there should be a dead imp there at the bottom - and then go down the steep incline with all the lava spouts and follow the lava streams, you should get to the gate. I took out the guard and there isn't a family of big scary Hell monsters guarding it anymore, so you should be home free until you reach the portal."
The man looked completely awestruck. "Are... Are you serious? I can escape? I can be FREE? How can I ever thank you?"
"Just don't cheat on your wife anymore, okay?" Ranma asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Pff, how can I do that?" scoffed the damned soul, "the marriage thing clearly stipulates 'till death do you part'. I bought it, so now I'm free of any religious obligation to hold this guy back!"
Ranma grimaced as the rescued spirit pointed at his own crotch. 'Well, he'll be back,' the martial artist thought grimly. "Okay, well, if you won't do that, can you take my spider back with you and drop him off in the world of the living? I'm heading toward the big spooky castle and I don't want him to get killed. Again."
The man looked distinctly uncomfortable with this plan, but nodded reluctantly. "All right, fine. Give 'im here."
Ranma gestured sharply with his left arm out, and the tarantula scuttled over his shoulder and then out onto his arm, eventually climbing hesitantly onto the spirit's chest.
"Whoa... He, uh... kinda tickles," the man said, clearly nervous as he tried to work out where to hold the eight-legged beast.
"Now no biting, Ken," Ranma lectured into the tiny beady eyes atop the spider's head, "you just stick with the lowlife until you're back at the school, okay? And if anything happens, just make a break for it."
The tortured spirit probably would have complained (unironically) of his being described as a lowlife, but the man instead gasped and pointed behind Ranma.
"They're here! The devils! It's over!"
"What?" Ranma turned around, and frowned as he saw a dark shape approaching in the distance, barely visible thanks to the obscuring ash. "All right, I'll handle this, you go and-"
Ranma glanced back behind him, and sighed as he saw that the damned soul was already a good distance away, fleeing in the direction Ranma had indicated earlier.
"Well, at least he's taking Ken with him. Now let's see what this jerk wants."
Said "jerk" approached quickly, managing a loping jog that covered the cracked, flinty ground quite quickly. Once it was close enough for Ranma to make out, he could see that it was a large, red, male humanoid creature, boasting a thick musculature and a pair of twisting horns protruding from its brow. He had a whiplike tail about a meter long that thrashed back and forth like and unruly snake, and the creature was holding a bronze trident over his shoulder.
The hellbeast slowed quickly as he approached, looking quite confused at the sight of Ranma standing in the open and clearly waiting for him.
"Well, we don't have Miss Nekonome around to explain what you are, but I'm gonna guess 'devil'," Ranma said blandly.
The devil gave Ranma a curious look, and then snorted, a small cloud of flickering embers spurting from his nostrils. "Insolent mortal! Back to your penance!" Shouldering his weapon, the devil reached forward to sieze Ranma with a large, clawed hand.
Ranma slapped the hand away. "Naw, I'm not doing time here. I'm just looking for... wait, what did Kouma call it?"
The devil snarled and swiped at Ranma's face, but the martial artist ducked before stepping back.
"It was some kind of office, does that ring a bell?"
"Your future torment increases with your every move, worm!" the devil hissed as he suddenly brought his trident down and stabbed it forward.
Ranma moved to the side, allowing the weapon to stab past him, and then seized the haft with one hand while one leg snapped up and struck the devil's arm, jarring the trident loose. Then in one smooth rotation Ranma brought the polearm back around before stabbing it into the shocked devil's abdomen.
"Now I remember!" Ranma said suddenly, brightening as steaming black fliuds oozed from the new wounds in the hellbeast's stomach, "it was called the Torment Assignment-"
Thud! Ranma trailed off as the devil fell over, the bronze trident wobbling unsteadily as its owner seemed to slowly boil away on the spot, leaving only a puddle of dark oil-like fluids and a bleached skeleton.
"Well, I'll just remember it for the next guy I find, then," Ranma murmured as he started on his trek again, "there's gotta be someone who knows where... wait, is that another sand pit?"
He frowned as he spotted another one of the torturous prisons on the side of the path, complete with a human head in the middle.
"Looks like I've got a lot of work to do," Ranma grumbled as he jogged ahead, leaving the crumbling bones of the devil behind him.
Hr
"Okay, look, I know I'm not supposed to be here, but I've got a reason," Kouma said, looking frustrated but surprisingly calm about it, "it's not like I'm hurting anyone, here. I just need to look up some info."
The creature he was speaking to was a very large devil with massive, elephantine legs and arms like industrial lifters.
"I don't know, Gamaroshi. I don't want this on my performance review," the devil grumbled, glancing next to them at the line of naked humans being dragged away by other devils, "you know how touchy Beelzebub can get during the end of the fiscal year, and my bonus-"
"Okay, look, I'll cut you a deal. You know I live in the human world now, right? I have access to all kinds of stuff," Kouma said with a smirk, "you do me a solid, and then you can contact me back in the land of the mortals and get me to send you something nice."
The guard devil looked startled by the proposition. "You mean like a Playstation 2?"
Kouma snorted. "Playstation 2, Playstation 3, two Playstation 1's, your call. Whaddya say?"
"I say nothing, because I saw nothing," said the devil, his gaze rising so that he was staring straight forward.
Kouma shook his head in contempt as he walked into the office, barely managing to keep clear of the long line of struggling mortals and growling devils.
'What a loser. Willingly breaching security for the sake of one of the humans' useless toys!' the hellhound thought. 'If it were me I would've disemboweled anyone who dared to bribe me! This place has gone straight to... well... someplace worse than Hell, I guess. Ah, there's the desk!'
Aside from the barely directed chaos of mortal souls being rapidly judged and dragged away screaming to their fates, there was a single window off to the side that was only used by the denizens of Hell to request information, rather than having a direct role in the judging and tormenting process.
Kouma walked up to the desk, which was manned by a single female devil who was delicately filing her horns, which curled down under her ears like a ram.
"Hello, I'd like to make an information request," Kouma said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm looking for a pair of souls."
The devil woman glanced at him, and then put down the rusted iron file she had been using. "Name?"
"The first is some schmuck named Jikan. Came in a little less than two months ago. Method of death was being flayed alive by a demon."
The devil woman nodded and snapped her fingers, causing a manila folder to appear on her desk in a puff of flame. "And what information in particular are you looking for?"
"What kind of punishment he's enduring, and where that sector is," Kouma answered.
"Sector H-17, being forever cut by jagged pendulum blades," she replied. "And the second soul?"
"A troublemaker named Saotome Ranma. Died about an hour or so ago. He might not actually be assigned yet."
The devil woman nodded. Then she stared straight forward for several seconds before frowning.
"Hmm. I'm not getting anything for that name," she mumbled.
Kouma suddenly staggered backward, and he felt his blood chill almost to room temperature. "But... No, that's impossible! The record must have gotten lost, or... or maybe it hasn't been processed yet!"
"The records are generated at the time of death, so that isn't an issue... unless, of course, he went to a different afterlife," the receptionist pointed out.
Kouma's jaw worked soundlessly, unable to form words as the full implications of what he was hearing dawned on him.
Ranma was gone. Dead. Permanently removed from the mortal coil. Neither he nor Tsukune or the two annoying, horny teenage girls back at Youkai Academy would ever see him again.
There was a part of him that wanted to be happy at the prospect, but he just couldn't be. For all Ranma's talent in annoying people, he was still someone who stood by Kouma and the Protection Committee when they needed him. He was benign, maybe even heroic.
This led the hellhound to yet another harrowing thought: why had he assumed Ranma would suffer for eternity? Ranma had perished saving Yukari with barely any thought to his own safety and regardless of all the trouble Yukari had caused him in the past. In fact, Ranma had ALWAYS been ready to put himself at risk to help others. In disregarding that, Kouma had spit on Ranma's kindness and sense of justice, and reduced the man's memory to that of an obnoxious clown.
"Ah, I see now," said the she-devil, "I checked Death's files. Mister Saotome isn't actually dead yet."
In an instant Kouma's guilt was washed away, and the hellhound slammed a fist down onto the countertop in front of him, causing a small burst of flames to shoot up. "That IDIOT! And he didn't even say anything before we left? What's wrong with him?"
The devil woman shrugged, looking completely uninterested in Kouma's outburst. "I can't say... Is there anyone else you need to find? Maybe Saotome Genma, his father?"
Kouma blinked, his anger vanishing. "His dad's dead?"
"Just a moment," the receptionist asked as she tilted her head to one side, "huh. Actually, no. Death has had a work order in place for more than a year now, but the soul is still in arrears."
Kouma quirked an eyebrow. "Seriously? That can happen?"
Hr
Genma Saotome strolled casually through the neighborhood on his way back to the Tendo household, ignoring the occasional pointing and staring from the few people around who weren't used to seeing a panda ambling along the sidewalk like it belonged there.
As he rounded a corner, the cursed martial artist halted, spotting something odd in the middle of the street.
It was a plate of rice balls and bamboo sticks, planted next to a sign that read "Free panda food" next to a rather large tree.
Genma glanced up at the tree's branches, noticing that there was a net poised over the plate of food, stretched between the branches and suspended by a rope.
That rope extended down to a peg that secured it tightly to the ground, while next to it a black-cloaked figure crouched in some bushes, a massive scythe held at the ready to cut the rope.
Genma's eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
Ambling up to the plate of food, Genma stopped just outside the net's radius, staring at the meal left out on the sidewalk.
Then he raised his arms up to either side, as if he was about to hug-tackle someone.
And then he swept his arms together, causing a sign with the words "Insert Technique Name" on it to go flying off to the side.
More importantly, it also sent a wave of shimmering, razor-sharp air up into the tree, slicing through one of the branches that supported the rope. The net and the line holding it up dropped down, and then the line caught on another branch and swung the net right on top of the rather surprised cloaked figure.
A litany of curses in a tongue no human could hope comprehend boomed from the foliage as Genma leapt upon the food, scarfing down the rice balls in seconds and taking only marginally longer on the bamboo.
Then, with a few scraps of bamboo still falling from his jaws, Genma thrust a sign into the air.
"Meep meep, bitches."
Genma then dashed down the road, leaving only the obligatory cloud of dust and an empty plate behind him as Death snarled in fury and hatred.
Hr
"Well, that's just great. So he's still alive, just lost in Hell," Kouma groused, "if the jerk would just lay down and kick the bucket, this would have been so much easier."
The she-devil at the counter quirked a well-trimmed eyebrow. "Why would a mortal who isn't dead be in Hell?"
"Because your security SUCKS now, that's why," Kouma answered matter-of-factly, "anyway, thanks for your help. That's all I need."
"Before you go, would you fill out a customer satisfaction survey?" the devil woman asked, taking out a form and laying it down on the counter, "in order for us to serve you better in the future."
Kouma shook his head as he turned away. "Nah, I'm in a hurry."
"I am required to advise you that while it is your choice, failure to fill out a survey WILL result in you being attacked by wasps made of knives," the receptionist warned.
Kouma halted. "Wait. Wasps made of..."
Bzzzzzzzzz... The hellhound trailed off as a wasp at least the size of his hand emerged from somewhere above, dropping in front of him to hover in place menacingly. It wasn't exactly made of knives, but rather had an unreasonably large, scalpel-like blade attached to each of is legs, mandibles, antennae, and a particularly nasty-looking spike emerging from its abdomen.
"Right. I forgot we had these, actually," Kouma grumbled as he turned back to the she-devil, "fine, can I borrow a pen?"
"No," the devil woman said simply, smirking as the wasp started circling Kouma's head.
The hellhound frowned, staring down at the survey sheet, and then up at the buzzing hellwasp, and finally back at the receptionist. "You take ironic customer service much more seriously than I remember."
She nodded. "The economy has been tough on everyone," she explained grimly as the wasp reared its stinger back and attacked.
Hr
"So what do we do if Kouma can't find them?" Yukari asked. She was currently leaning against Moka's chest as the girls sat next to a lava flow, the vampiress keeping close to Yukari as to benefit from the witch's air bubble.
Tsukune dearly wished to join them, as he already felt thirstier than he had ever been in his life and his hair probably contained half his body weight in soot by now, but he restrained himself. Mostly because it would involve him feeling up a twelve year-old and sandwiching her between him and Moka.
He wasn't entirely sure Yukari would disapprove, honestly, but he was intent on keeping the question moot.
"Then we move on to the next office. Or boss, or whatever," Tsukune said, his voice slightly hoarse, "if we can't find Jikan, then that's unfortunate, but we WILL find out what happened to Ranma."
"Hey! Kouma's coming back!" Moka said, brightening as she spotted the hellhound's human form through the dust with her superior vision.
Tsukune was wringing his hands as Kouma approached, though he was soon forced to put aside some of his concern for Ranma to make room for concern for Kouma; the hellhound had several gashes over his face and arms, as if he had been cut by several small knives. Oddly enough, it was his right hand that was most scarred and bloodstained.
"Kouma? What happened to you?" Tsukune asked as the native hellbeast walked past him.
"I just had to fill out a questionnaire with my own blood while using a 'pen' that was trying to stab me to death," Kouma said with an uncharacteristically calm shrug, "no biggie. More importantly, I found out where Jikan is."
Tsukune felt his heart sink into his stomach at the way Kouma said it, having obviously excluded Ranma on purpose. "And Ranma?"
A vein popped up on Kouma's head. "Turns out our buddy Saotome never bit that bullet after all. Somehow the bastard's still alive and kicking."
Tsukune felt relieved at first, but his dread grew as he considered that information. "Wait, so that explosion-"
"Either he dodged it, or he's a lot more resistant to fire than we thought. Even I couldn't have just shrugged off that eruption," Kouma groused, "really, this wouldn't happen if he'd just tell us his damn species already."
Moka fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Well, is he injured?"
"Is he still back at that cliff?" Yukari followed.
Kouma sighed wearily. "I don't know. So long as he's alive, Hell doesn't really have much to do with him."
"So how will we find him?" Tsukune asked, "should we double back where we came?"
"Are you sure you could handle that, Tsukune?" Moka asked in concern as she squeezed Yukari to her (much to the witch's delight), "you don't look like you're handling this atmosphere well."
"Besides that, if the guy survived being swallowed by fire, then there's no point in us worrying about his life NOW," Kouma groused, "he can find his own way. We should get Jikan and get out of here."
Tsukune grimaced, hating the idea of abandoning a possibly injured Ranma to the stingy mercies of the underworld, but eventually had to concede the point to Kouma.
"All right, since we know where our original target is, we'll get him and hopefully meet up with Ranma on the way or at the portal home," Tsukune decided, "if we don't find him, then we can leave Kouma at the portal to wait while the rest of us go back and think of a new strategy."
"Sure, whatever," Kouma said as he started to trudge down the path, "pretty sure it's unnecessary. I'd be more worried about setting Ranma loose in Hell than unleashing Hell on Ranma."
"You're being ridiculous," Tsukune insisted as he and the girls followed the hellhound, "even Ranma isn't invincible. What's he going to do in Hell that would be so terrible?"
Hr
"At the ready!" snarled a large devil in shining obsidian armor, holding a wicked-looking halberd over his shoulder.
A dozen more devils in identical wargear aimed their shadowy weapons at a pair of massive, bronze-lined double-doors.
Bang! The doors shuddered as something hit them, but the guards di not flinch, their gazes smoldering with hate and determination.
Behind the ornately equipped hellbeasts was a particularly large devil, this one with skin the color of fresh charcoal and thick, long, of night black hair that covered his head like a lion's mane around the two twisted horns that sat atop his head. His lower body, rather than being humanoid like that of most of the other devils, looked like the hind legs of a goat, complete with large cloven hooves. He was dressed from head to hoof in glittering golden chainmail, with a variety of opulent accesories hanging from multiple piercings.
There was also a massive bronze throne in the room, which would have been totally eclipsed by the devil were he not crouching behind it in fear.
"When that fool breaks through, I'm going to give my obligatory Final Boss speech, then you all jump him!" demanded the bigger devil.
"Yes, my Lord Satan," growled the leader of the Infernal Guard, levering his own halberd at the doors as the shook once more from a heavy impact.
Bang!
"How did he get past the main gates? Did he sneak in or just kill anything in his way?" mumbled one guard devil as the hinges to the door strained painfully.
"Silence! Keep your weapons and your thoughts aimed at the enemy!" the lead devil snapped.
CRACK!
As the heavy doors finally collapsed inward, Satan stood up and to the side of his throne so that it was slightly less obvious he was using it for cover. "So you've made it this far, have you? Impressive, but your journey ends here, Ghost of Spar-" then he halted and quirked an eyebrow, "wait, you're not Kratos. What's going on?"
Ranma panted as he dropped the enormous bronze maul he had used to hammer open the doors. He had a large gash on one flank and a few cuts on his arm, but most of the dried fluid spattering his closthes was obviously devil ichor. He had also put away the handkerchief, as the air inside the fortress was clean enough for him to breathe easily, if not still ten degrees warmer than he liked.
"Where is the torment assignment office?" Ranma demanded, balling hands into fists as he glanced around at the weapons surrounding him.
All the devils in the room were silent, until Satan finally asked, "You're... looking for the assignment office?"
"That's right!" Ranma said, clenching his jaw as he held an agressive combat stance, "also, if there's a water fountain or something around here, that would be awesome. I'm REALLY thirsty."
The captain of the Infernal Guard glanced back at Satan. "My lord?"
The ruler of Hell stepped up in front of his throne, stroking his beard. "So, who are you, exactly?"
"My name is Saotome Ranma!" the martial artist shouted.
"Oh-ho! And Saotome Genma would be your father, right?" Satan asked, grinning.
"That's right! I'm the son of Gen-" Ranma suddenly deflated, "wait, how do you know that name?" he asked fearfully.
Satan kept grinning as he suddenly jumped back to land seated in his throne. "Welcome, mortal, to my abode! I am Satan, lord of Hell and paragon of evil!"
Suddenly he clapped his hands sharply. "Captain! This man asked for refreshments, did he not? Stop pointing weaopns at him and see to it!"
The other devils quickly shouldered their halberds and stepped back, and the captain offered a quick bow before rushing out the broken doors.
"Now then, Saotome, let's chat!" Satan said, clearly rather happy about this unexpected intrusion.
Ranma, on the other hand, was increasingly uncomfortable with this situation now that it didn't involve fighting and apparently DID involve his father. "So, uh, how about that office?"
"Oh, that? It's in the other direction, way across the main lava river," Satan explained, "you're pretty far off."
"Aw, are you serious?" Ranma groaned, "why didn't any of your guys just TELL me that rather than trying to stab me?"
"Well, it IS their job to make sure that mortal souls are kept in unspeakable agony for the rest of time," the ruler of Hell explained with a shrug, "but I can understand your frustration. I'll have a talk with them."
Ranma winced. "Ah... I doubt that."
Hr
"Wow, it's gotten busy all of a sudden, hasn't it?" asked one of the Satan twins as he passed out armor to a line of rather confused-looking devils. "Is there a skirmish going on in the first underworld, or what?"
The second twin shrugged as he leaned on a pike. "There's some mortal jerk running through Hell freeing trapped souls and killing the devils who try to stop him."
The other twin shook his head as he walked down the line. "A mortal killed you guys off? Double lame."
"Yeah, well we got the last laugh," grumbled one of the devils bitterly, "he asked me where the Torment Assignment Office was as I lay dying, impaled on my weapon, and I never told him he was going in the completely wrong direction!"
"Yeah, we sure showed him," deadpanned the devil next to him who then raised his hand, "excuse me, Lord? Or, Lords, I guess?"
The two masters of Double Hell turned toward him, and the lowly soldier continued, "So if we're in Double Hell because we died in Hell, what happens if we die here?"
"Then you go to Scary Town," the Satan twin handing out armor said, stepping next to the devil and holding out a breastplate.
"Wow. That place must REALLY suck," muttered the next one down the line.
"Eh, it's not bad in the fall. Now armor up, boys! You're all working double shifts from now on!" the other Satan proclaimed, eliciting groans from the assembled devils.
Grrr! Character post limit make Dragon angry!
The captain of Satan's bodyguards soon returned with an iron goblet, and handed to Ranma with his head bowed.
As nervous as Ranma was, he took the goblet without hesitation, and barely halted before he drank it, noticing that it was a rich red color.
"Wait, what is this? Wine?" Ranma asked.
"Blood wine. Only the finest for guests of our lord," hissed the captain, his forked tongue briefly poking out from between his lips.
"That's... just a name, right?" Ranma asked awkwardly.
"What do you think?" Satan deadpanned, planting his cheek against his fist as he leaned his elbow against his throne's armrest.
"I can't drink blood!" Ranma said, grimacing, "I'd be no different than the vampires!" He handed the goblet back to the captain of the Guard, who looked confused.
"Well, as beverages go we've only got the blood wine and Pepsi Blue," Satan explained, "so just how parched are you?"
Ranma wordlessly snatched back the goblet and took a deep gulp, trying to keep from tasting it.
"Anyway Saotome, let me cut to the chase: your father Genma made a deal with me, and that deal means that your soul belongs to me," Satan said happily as Ranma finished draining the goblet.
"Yeah, I figured," Ranma grumbled as he handed the empty cup back to the guard devil, "so what was the deal about?"
"Well, once upon a time, an up-and-coming martial artist was seriously regretting his choice of instructors, and as men often abused and humiliated are won't to do, he hatched a plan to get his revenge upon the one responsible for his suffering."
"Happousai?" Ranma asked.
"Yes, precisely," Satan said, his grin revealing rows of dagger-like teeth, "Genma had a plan, but he was afraid. There were too many things that could go wrong. He needed insurance, and I just happened to be in a position to provide when I heard a random prayer for help in securing vengeance," the massive devil steepled his fingers, "that's the sort of thing I can get behind, you see."
Ranma grunted. "Well, at least it was for a better cause than usual this time."
Satan chuckled. "Oh, yes. And such a two-for-one deal was impossible for me to pass up!"
Ranma looked surprised at this. "He offered up his own soul too?"
"No, but you can't really sell your son to the DEVIL without ending up here anyway," Satan explained blithely.
Ranma looked away uncomfortably. He'd seen what was done to the people here, and it was certainly bad enough that he had freed every one of them he'd met, despite the fact that it was almost guaranteed that they had earned their fate. And he was going to have to undergo that as part of a business deal?
"Look, I'm not gonna let you torture me 'cause of my Pop," Ranma declared, glaring up at the blazing red eyes of the lord of Hell.
"Oh, no, I wasn't going to!" laughed the devil, clearly amused. Then he pointed to a random member of his bodyguard. "Minion! Fetch Lucy at once!"
Ranma blanched. What was this about? Was he going to have to do some sort of pit fight? Or end up as food? "Hey, wait! Just what is 'Lucy'?" Ranma demanded.
Satan's smile stretched even wider. "Why, Lucy's my daughter!"
Ranma was silent for several seconds as the guard devil stepped out of the throne room.
"Sooooo... on second thought, just what ARE the different kinds of torture around here?" Ranma asked as sweat started beading on his forehead that had nothing to do with the heat. "That sand pit thing seems like a bit too much, but do you have something that's like, half that painful? I mean, what are my options, here?"
"Pft!" Satan snorted as he leaned forward. "You don't have any options! I didn't take possession of your soul just to laugh at seeing acid dissolving your face over and over!" He briefly gestured to his antechamber. "As you might have guessed, decent men are hard to come by around here. The devils are nasty by design, and the damned souls have quite an assortment of 'issues', never mind that banging the boss's daughter for all time isn't much of a punishment."
Then Satan pointed at Ranma. "That's why I needed a soul that wasn't on track to end up here. Someone relatively upstanding and noble, but still underhanded and twisted enough to get by down here. YOU are that man, Mister Saotome."
Before Ranma could protest, the door to the back of the throne room opened, admitting two devils.
The first was the guard that had left, but the second was a very female devil in a slinky black dress that Ranma could only assume was the aforementioned "Lucy". Her skin was like red satin, and her hair was a long, ash-white waterfall that stretched down to her knees behind her. She possessed a thin spade-tipped tail and a pair of small, curved horns that curled forward from the sides of her head, but other than that her body was quite human in form, if not human in a comically oversexed way that immediately got Ranma wondering how Kurumu was faring back at the academy.
"Ah, there she is," Satan said fondly, gesturing to the top-heavy devil who began inspecting Ranma silently, "Saotome, this is your new wife, Lucy. What do you think?"
Ranma stared at the she-devil, then glanced at Satan. Then he stared at Lucy some more, and then took an even longer look at the lord of Hell.
"I think... she doesn't look anything like you," Ranma pointed out, perplexed. Size and lower torso shape aside, she should have at least been the same color, right?
Satan's smile became somewhat strained. "She takes after my ex-wife. Primarily in that Lucy is a whore, just like she was."
Ranma winced at that, although Lucy seemed to ignore the comment completely as she circled the pigtailed boy.
"Not bad," Lucy finally said, her voice rich and husky as she planted her hands on her hips, "now show me the goods."
Ranma blanched as the red woman pointed at his groin, and Satan clicked his tongue.
"Lucy, that's rude! The man is here to get to know you, too!" the ruler of Hell chided, "at least show him your stuff as well!"
"As you wish, Daddy," Lucy said, pinching the shoulder strap of her dress.
"Wait, wait, WAIT!" Ranma suddenly shouted, surprising the two royal devils and causing them to stop.
"There's something weird about this whole arrangement," Ranma said, turning back to Satan, "when are you supposed to get my soul, anyway?"
Satan quirked an eyebrow. "As soon as you die, I take full possession. So I'm sorry, but-"
"No, I'm sorry, but I'm not dead," Ranma declared.
This was apparently a stunning revelation for everyone in the room, as Satan, Lucy, and even the nameless guards looked utterly perplexed.
"Actually, my lord," the guard captain said uncertainly, "I did notice that he was... well, breathing a little bit more than a typical disembodied soul. Or a lot more, rather. He also hasn't healed that flank wound yet, which is odd for a spirit."
"Then... what are you doing in Hell?" Satan asked, cocking his head to one side.
"I just broke in with a buddy to steal back the soul of this guy we didn't want killed," Ranma explained, his nerves calming considerably, "I'm totally heading back to the mortal realm after this."
Lucy's eyes widened, while Satan scratched at his beard.
"Huh. I, uh, I gotta be honest with you," said the ruler of Hell, "this entire conversation kind of hinged on you being dead and your soul legally bound to your father's contract."
"So now we're just wasting each other's time," Ranma guessed.
"Yeah, pretty much," Satan admitted, "so anyway, now that you know where-"
"Wait!" Lucy suddenly shouted, drawing her father's attention. "Hold on! Couldn't we get married anyway?"
As Satan looked up at the ceiling, Ranma flinched.
"When you think about it, there's nothing in the contract that stipulates that the marriage and soul seizure are necessarily related, just that they both occur. Thus since we've happened to meet before Saotome's death, there's no specific reason why we can't marry anyway."
"She sleeps with a lot of lawyers," mumbled one of the guards to Ranma as way of explanation.
The martial artist ignored him. "I have a reason. Or really, three reasons, but they're all the same: I'm engaged already," Ranma said, crossing his arms over his chest, "so if that first guy I freed was right, then I'll be single again when I die, but for now I really can't marry you."
Lucy grit her teeth as Satan shrugged.
"Well, that's no biggie. A human lifetime is hardly..." he trailed off as his daughter suddenly walked up to Ranma and seized his arm.
"Can I speak to you? Privately?" Lucy whispered, her voice utterly serious and possessing none of the sensual allure from before.
"Lucy, where are you going?" Satan asked before Ranma could respond, leaning forward in his throne.
The she-devil flinched. "I'm just... Uh... taking him to the cellar for some illicit, premarital sex. Yes, that's right."
"But I-" Ranma's protest was cut off as the she-devil slapped a hand over his mouth.
Satan frowned. "Okay, but make it quick. And go easy on him; he needs to retain his fluids, still being alive and all."
"Sure thing, Daddy," Lucy mumbled, not really listening as she shoved Ranma out through the shattered doorway into the hall.
Hr
Lucy frowned as she walked among the broken skeletons of dead devils and their scattered weapons, clearly lost in thought.
Ranma was also thinking intently as he followed her, but opted to speak his mind. "You know, if it weren't for the fact that he runs a horrible torture dimension, Satan would be a pretty cool guy," he admitted, "I mean, I've met plenty of people way less reasonable and more dangerous."
"Daddy has a... challenging job," Lucy said reluctantly, "and a bit of a PR problem as well."
"Which probably isn't going to get any better with all the people I set free back into the world of the living," Ranma admitted, "I hope that turns out okay."
Lucy turned around, looking very serious. "All right, enough about Daddy; let's talk about us. What's it going to take to get you to marry me?"
"Hopefully a martial arts duel even bigger than the fight against Saffron, preferably in SPACE," Ranma said with a grin, "but otherwise I'll probably kick the bucket in-"
"No, I mean NOW," Lucy said, planting her hands on her hips, "I'm open to deals. Anything you want. Material wealth, magic power, whatever. If you want to keep the other girls, we can do a harem end. I can make it happen."
Ranma gave the buxom hellspawn an incredulous look. "Wait, why are you in such a hurry, anyway? Why do you even want to marry me?" While she had certainly seemed interested from the beginning, her attitude certainly didn't suggest she was hopelessly infatuated with him. And despite all the accusations of how loose she was, the daughter of Satan seemed to be deliberately trying to marry him rather than just seducing him as she had told her father she was going to do.
Lucy clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Fine, I'll level with you: I want to get out of Hell and into the mortal realm."
Ranma blinked. "You do? Why?"
"WHY? Have you taken a look around?" Lucy snapped, waving her hand in the general direction of the exit and kicking a dropped glaive, "you know, when humans end up here it's because they turned away from God and gave in to a host of dark lower impulses, surrendering to temptation! Do you know what me and the other devils did to end up here? We were BORN on the wrong side of a divine barrier!"
"The more I learn about cosmic justice, the less just it seems," Ranma deadpanned.
"Exactly! Do you know what it's like to grow up in this... this..." Lucy bit her lip angrily as she even failed to finish the sentence, "you can't even call it a hellhole because that isn't an analogy! This place is literally the low point of comparison for every other lousy place in the universe! Except Scary Town during the Spring. All the time while I grew up I was constantly taunted by the complaints of the humans about all the incredible things they had to leave behind and the decadent comforts of their mortal lives! And I might never get another chance to experience it at all!"
Lucy hesitated for a moment. "Well, that's what I get from some of the damned, anyway. You are from one of the REAL countries, right? Like the United States, or the Korea that isn't constantly starving to death?"
"Japan, actually."
"Even better!" Lucy said, brightening as she smiled for the first time since Ranma met her, "being a sexual deviant is practically required for citizenship! I'll barely even stand out!"
"Okay, hold on," Ranma said, rubbing his forehead, "I'll give you that this place is awful, but aren't you, like, a Hell princess? Your dad is Satan, the ruler of this entire plane or whatever. That doesn't seem so bad to me."
Lucy once again crossed her arms under her breasts, nodding solemnly. "It's true. I am the second most esteemed creature in the Inferno. I have a castle, with all the primitive comforts that medieval-level technology in a resource-strapped realm can manage. I have a legion of slaves and warrior devils to cater to my every whim. The legacy of the second most powerful creature in all the universe belongs to me. And I can have any man I want, from the lowliest hellspawn to ancient spirits of human men so adept at satisfying their lovers that it poisoned their souls and damned them eternally. My immortal life is better than that of any other in Hell."
She spoke softly but reverently as she listed her privileges, and then glanced at Ranma briefly before her expression fell and her eyes narrowed.
"But believe me when I say that I would trade ALL OF IT for a modern flush toilet and an iPhone."
"Huh," Ranma mumbled, scratching the back of his head, "okay. Fair enough. But still, what does that have to do with marrying me?"
"You might not have caught on, since you seem to prefer 'handiwork' to 'paperwork'," Lucy mumbled, gesturing to the devil remains that littered the floor, "but aside from all the torment, Hell is one giant web of bureaucracy. Which is actually just a different flavor of torment, now that I think about it."
She shook her head. "Anyway, for those of us who aren't just popping into other dimensions to steal souls from their penance, it's not easy to just go to the mortal realm. Or ANY other realm."
"Still waiting for the marriage thing to make sense," Ranma muttered, looking bored.
Satan's daughter sighed as she rolled her eyes. "In a nutshell, in order to gain passage to the mortal realm, I need to be a citizen of a mortal country. The easiest way to do that is to marry a current citizen. As in, a living, breathing human. As in you."
"That's stupid," Ranma deadpanned.
"Don't complain to me about it! I've tried all the other ways!" Lucy shouted, her tail going ramrod straight as she clenched her hands into fists and glared at him. "No immigration department will process an application from the 'daughter of Satan'! Damn my hereditary Lawful Evil alignment!" She huffed angrily, and then seemed to calm down as she met Ranma's eyes again. "It was a stroke of insane luck that the man I happen to be promised to ALSO happened to barge his way into Hell without fulfilling the usual prerequisite of dying first. I CAN'T let this chance go to waste!"
Ranma broke eye contact uncomfortably, scratching the back of his head. "Look, it's not that I don't want to help, but marrying you is sort of..." he pursed his lips, uncharacteristically thinking of what to say before his mouth ran off without his brain, "well, I've seen that philanderers end up in the baking sand pits, and if my fiancees find out that I married someone else behind their backs, then I'll be ending up in one way too early."
"A major part of adultery is the betrayal! It wouldn't count in this case because it's a marriage of convenience!" Lucy protested.
"Yeah, I'm way past trusting that the universe will see reason when judging me. Not happening," Ranma said, shaking his head.
Lucy bit her thumb anxiously as she tried to think of a new strategy. "Okay, wait. How about this: we get married just long enough for me to get my green card, then we divorce immediately. The whole thing can be a secret and we won't have to see each other again until we're both back in Hell. Actually, we won't even need to see each other during the fake marriage! One signature on a marriage license, and you're done with your part! I'll take care of EVERYTHING! All I need is a signature!"
The she-devil was gleefully hopping up and down at this point, and Ranma couldn't help but feel guilty at his reluctance (he also felt other emotions at the sight of Lucy's breasts bouncing like volleyballs, but stamped them out quickly as usual).
"Are you SURE that your Hell laws recognize divorce? So there won't be any technical adultery?" Ranma asked.
"Yes!" Lucy said.
"And you'll keep this a secret from everyone I know?" Ranma asked.
"YES!" Lucy said even louder.
"And you'll take care of the divorce as soon as you're straight with the government?" Ranma asked.
"YES! FIRES BELOW, YES!" Lucy screamed in joy and anticipation.
Knock! Knock! "Hey, would you two hurry up and finish? We have to start cleaning out those bodies. And whatever fluids you're leaving behind," asked a rather bitter-sounding voice from the opposite side of the door leading to the hallways.
Ranma and Lucy both glanced at the door in annoyance, and the former sighed heavily.
"All right, I'll do it."
Before he knew it Lucy had seized him into a crushing hug, black tears crawling down her cheeks as she squeezed her formidible chest against his.
"Thank you, Ranma! You've made me the happiest girl in the underworld! Which is a really lousy standard, I know, but still!"
"Okay, okay, great," Ranma mumbled nervously as he worked to pry his newest fiancee off of him, "but you said I could ask you for a favor, right? A major one?"
Lucy nodded vigorously. "Horrific and disgusting forms of sex are not off the table!"
"That's... neat," the martial artist said weakly, wondering just what he could expect in his future eternity of unholy matrimony, "but no. Can you get me something to write on and a pen? I need to take care of that marriage license, but I also have to write a letter..."
<hr>
"I can't begin to express my thanks for the depth of your mercy, Lord Aono!"
Kouma groaned. "Well, can you FINISH expressing your thanks? I'm sick of having to hear about it."
Currently the hellhound was leading Tsukune, Moka, Yukari, and one other person through the unmanned Gates of Hell, idly kicking the useless metal detector as he passed by.
The person at the rear of the party was a rather large, hairy beast with long, huge claws who was wearing Tsukune's jacket around his waist like a loincloth, and was otherwise naked. He seemed intent only on searching out the exit, though he was also careful not to step ahead of Tsukune, who he was trailing reverently as the leader of the Protection Committee hobbled along while leaning on Moka, having nearly exhausted himself.
"Don't mock me, hellhound!" the hairy monster, Jikan, snapped, "you have no idea what torments-"
"YES, I DO," Kouma promptly snapped back, "I used to work here. It wasn't my first time to the pendulum blade works. Don't think that I don't understand; I just don't care."
"Oh. Right," Jikan mumbled, "well at the very least I wish you wouldn't disparage Lord Aono's efforts like that!"
"Yeah, yeah, hats off to the fearless leader," Kouma grumbled, "now let's get our tails out of here before said leader dies of heat stroke."
"Wait," Tsukune rasped, clutching Moka's shoulder as he looked around feverishly, "is Ranma-"
"We can wait for him on our own, Tsukune. You need to get out of here!" Moka protested as she pulled the weakened human along.
"H-How long will you wait?" Tsukune gasped out as he limped along behind the vampiress.
"We can't wait forever," Moka said grimly, catching sight of the swirling blue portal as they pushed their way through the fog of ash, "but you can't put yourself at risk for Ranma's sake! What he did was heroic-"
"Moderately heroic. At BEST," Kouma interrupted.
"... Thank you, Kouma," Moka said disingenuously, "anyway, Ranma knows the risks he takes better than we do. He wouldn't want you to suffer on his account, even if you could help him by staying behind. For now, it's better for you to get to saf-"
"Oh, there he is," Yukari said, suddenly waving behind the group, "Senpai! Over here! We're ready to go!"
A sweatdrop rolled down Moka's head as Tsukune whirled around in suprise.
"Ranma! You're back! You're alive! You're..." Tsukune trailed off as he and everyone else noted the big red ball of sex following the martial artist around the bend, wearing only 6-inch stilleto heels and barely enough black fabric for half a window curtain.
Kouma in particular seemed stunned to see the woman, and pointed a trembling figure at the she-devil while the others looked on in confusion. "That... That's... She... Lu-"
Ranma stopped in front of the group of his classmates plus the guy he assumed they were there to rescue, and suddenly held up his hands to silence his friends.
"All right, look. I know what with the explosion and me being gone this whole time you all have a lot of questions for me right now, and her being here isn't helping," the martial artist pointed behind him at the scantily-clad devil, who offered a silent smirk and a small wave to the assembled students.
Then he sighed. "But it's a long story, and it involves like three or four OTHER long stories, so can you all just believe me that you're all better off not knowing so we can go home?"
"But she's-" Kouma started to say, only for Ranma to interrupt him.
"Seriously man, it's best if you just leave it alone."
Tsukune hesitated for a moment, but eventually shrugged. "Yeah, okay. We can do that. Let's get the here out of Hell," he mumbled as he staggered into the shimmering blue portal.
"Wait, was that a joke, or has the dehydration started causing brain damage?" Yukari asked as she followed Tsukune through the portal. Moka followed a moment later, looking rather uncertain but definitely being more concerned with Tsukune's well-being than with any newcomers.
"Well, let me tell you, after I get back to school I'm going full-tilt Christian," Jikan explained as he approached the portal, "I've learned my lesson! I'm definitely not coming back here again!"
Lucy raised an eyebrow as she followed the clawed monstrosity. "Bugbear, right?"
"Yes. What about it?" Jikan asked, turning his head right before he stepped into the gateway.
"Yeah, it's not really gonna help. You're definitely coming back," deadpanned the she-devil.
Jikan made no move to go through the portal, his fanged face darkening. "Wh-What?"
"What can I say; afterlife isn't fair. Now move it woolly, I want to try a McFlurry!"
Kouma kept staring at Ranma as Lucy shoved the horrified bugbear through the portal.
"You... You KNOW that's Satan's daughter, right?" the hellhound asked, pointing through the magical gateway.
"It was heavily implied that she probably isn't," Ranma answered as he approached the portal, "you know, technically. I guess he did still raise her." He hopped through the gate before Kouma could ask any other questions, eager to leave the twisted and hateful environment of the Inferno.
Kouma was about to follow him, but hesitated as he stepped into the portal, glancing back at the dark clouds strewn with toxic ash and the jagged rocks seething with molten lava.
"Some day... I'll be back for good," he mumbled fondly, squatting down and fondly running a finger through a crack of magma that split the plate of brimstone he was standing on, "wait for me, okay baby? It'll be all-"
He was suddenly interrupted by Yukari's voice emanating from the portal. "We can HEAR you on the other side, you know."
His face reddening terribly, Kouma practically leapt into the gateway, and with a shimmering wink, the portal closed.\
<hr>
Tsukune drank greedily from a large water bottle as he stepped through the halls of Youkai Academy with Moka alongside him, glancing about at the interior.
He gasped as he finished off the bottle, feeling as if he had been brought back from the brink of death. "Well, I have to say, first impressions look good," Tsukune said, looking about the empty halls of the school, "no fires, no riots, and there's slightly less blood on the floor than usual. It looks like Kurumu can handle things without me after all."
Behind the pair were Kouma and Ranma, who appeared to be exchanging heated whispers such that Tsukune and Moka couldn't hear them. The others had already left, having thei own affairs to tend to.
Tsukune led the way up to the Protection Committee's offices and then pushed the door open.
"Kurumu, we're... back..."
As soon as he opened the door, dozens of heads rose and turned to look at him. The entire lobby had been converted into an empty space with a great pile of pillows in one corner. The empty space was taken by students, most of them in their casual clothes and holding some sort of present, and all of them on their knees. Most had turned to stare at the newcomers, but those that didn't had their heads bowed in supplication.
Kurumu lounged upon the pillow pile, wearing a silk bath robe that was deliberately tied way too loosely to conceal much of her breasts and legs. Standing over her, Kana - dressed in slave toga - had her wings out and was steadily using them to fan the succubus, while a similarly dressed Mizore waited on the other side, holding a bottle tightly against her body.
Kurumu lazily started to turn to see who had entered the room. "Who comes before the Head Magistrate Kurono? If it is more of those naked people ranting about devils and hellfire, then-" she did a double-take when she finally realized who was at the door, and she sat upright with such haste that her robe almost came completely undone (causing all the male students looking at Tsukune to rapidly turn around again).
"Tsu-Tsukune! You're back!" Kurumu said, her face flushing as sweat started rolling down her forehead. "Uh... hi! Want some chilled cider?" she asked, gesturing to Mizore and her bottle.
Tsukune wordlessly approached the pillow throne, picking his way around the scattered supplicants.
"Now wait, I know it looks bad, but there's actually a perfectly good reason for this!" Kurumu said desperately.
Mizore quirked an eyebrow. "No, there isn't."
"Silence, slave!" Kurumu shouted instinctively before she shook her head, "I mean, shut UP, Mizore!"
"Kurumu..." Tsukune started, staring up the succubus and trying not to get distracted by the view he had directly up her robes.
The succubus winced.
"Good job," Tsukune finally said, "this is a better outcome than I had any right to expect. I'm proud of you." Then the human boy turned away and started heading toward the back, "I just have to take down a few notes for the student council, and then I need a shower. You're relieved. Please fix the lobby."
As Kurumu let out a gasp of relief, Kana deadpanned, "......"
"Do NOT tell him about that part," Kurumu hissed, being the only one close enough to overhear her.
"So this is what happens when me and Tsukune aren't around to keep her in check," Ranma mumbled as he looked around at the students silently praying on the floor.
"Well, you, Aono, and Akashiya. Kurono IS the second most popular girl in school," Kouma said with a shrug, "by the way, where's your... ah... tag-along?"
"Lucy wrote down my contact info and directions to the nearest Apple store and took off," Ranma said, leaning against the wall, "and good luck to her. Hopefully we won't have to see each other again for a LONG time."
"Uh huh. You didn't, uh, happen to sell your soul while we were down in Hell, did you?" Kouma asked, raising one of his bushy eyebrows.
"I didn't get the chance," Ranma grumbled, "so I sold something else. But it was worth it, I think."
<hr>
"We're making a WHAT?" asked the captain of the Infernal Guard, his tone incredulous.
Satan shrugged as he held up a scroll. "We're making a new afterlife. For spiders. Evidently Saotome felt that it was pretty messed up that spiders don't have a 'good' afterlife, so he wanted me to built a paradise for the spiders that lead good, honest lives."
The lesser devil looked perplexed. "What constitutes a 'good, honest life' for a spider?"
Satan frowned as he scratched at his beard, "Well, he is a human, so it probably means choosing the right religion. We'll need to consult some of the greater spiders to figure out the specifics. Send someone to dig around among the Soviets and find a soul to build some of those big, oppressive-looking statues of whoever their god is. And we'll need to design a micro-ecosystem for hunting and stuff, since it's pretty much all spiders do."
Satan smirked. "This could be fun, actually! It will be nice to design something without the express intention of creating or assisting abject misery!"
The captain bowed. "It is as you will it, my lord."
"And while we're at it, why stop at spiders?" Satan asked, standing up from his throne thoughtfully, "they're hardly the only creature tha ends up in Hell by default. Maybe it's time we treated the Inferno as a punishment rather than just a camp for everything they don't want up in Heaven! We've been using the same twisted 'justice' for millennia, but maybe it's time for a change! We'll tighten our standards! Update our moral paradigm! Maybe start a parole system!"
He grinned as he nodded to himself, obviously pleased. "Yes. It's about time that cosmic justice got an overhaul."
The lesser devil looked dubious. "What about vampires, my lord?"
"No, screw those guys. Everyone else will get a fair shake, though," Satan explained.
"Of course, my lord. We will begin at once."
The captain of Satan's bodyguards soon returned with an iron goblet, and handed to Ranma with his head bowed.
As nervous as Ranma was, he took the goblet without hesitation, and barely halted before he drank it, noticing that it was a rich red color.
"Wait, what is this? Wine?" Ranma asked.
"Blood wine. Only the finest for guests of our lord," hissed the captain, his forked tongue briefly poking out from between his lips.
"That's... just a name, right?" Ranma asked awkwardly.
"What do you think?" Satan deadpanned, planting his cheek against his fist as he leaned his elbow against his throne's armrest.
"I can't drink blood!" Ranma said, grimacing, "I'd be no different than the vampires!" He handed the goblet back to the captain of the Guard, who looked confused.
"Well, as beverages go we've only got the blood wine and Pepsi Blue," Satan explained, "so just how parched are you?"
Ranma wordlessly snatched back the goblet and took a deep gulp, trying to keep from tasting it.
"Anyway Saotome, let me cut to the chase: your father Genma made a deal with me, and that deal means that your soul belongs to me," Satan said happily as Ranma finished draining the goblet.
"Yeah, I figured," Ranma grumbled as he handed the empty cup back to the guard devil, "so what was the deal about?"
"Well, once upon a time, an up-and-coming martial artist was seriously regretting his choice of instructors, and as men often abused and humiliated are won't to do, he hatched a plan to get his revenge upon the one responsible for his suffering."
"Happousai?" Ranma asked.
"Yes, precisely," Satan said, his grin revealing rows of dagger-like teeth, "Genma had a plan, but he was afraid. There were too many things that could go wrong. He needed insurance, and I just happened to be in a position to provide when I heard a random prayer for help in securing vengeance," the massive devil steepled his fingers, "that's the sort of thing I can get behind, you see."
Ranma grunted. "Well, at least it was for a better cause than usual this time."
Satan chuckled. "Oh, yes. And such a two-for-one deal was impossible for me to pass up!"
Ranma looked surprised at this. "He offered up his own soul too?"
"No, but you can't really sell your son to the DEVIL without ending up here anyway," Satan explained blithely.
Ranma looked away uncomfortably. He'd seen what was done to the people here, and it was certainly bad enough that he had freed every one of them he'd met, despite the fact that it was almost guaranteed that they had earned their fate. And he was going to have to undergo that as part of a business deal?
"Look, I'm not gonna let you torture me 'cause of my Pop," Ranma declared, glaring up at the blazing red eyes of the lord of Hell.
"Oh, no, I wasn't going to!" laughed the devil, clearly amused. Then he pointed to a random member of his bodyguard. "Minion! Fetch Lucy at once!"
Ranma blanched. What was this about? Was he going to have to do some sort of pit fight? Or end up as food? "Hey, wait! Just what is 'Lucy'?" Ranma demanded.
Satan's smile stretched even wider. "Why, Lucy's my daughter!"
Ranma was silent for several seconds as the guard devil stepped out of the throne room.
"Sooooo... on second thought, just what ARE the different kinds of torture around here?" Ranma asked as sweat started beading on his forehead that had nothing to do with the heat. "That sand pit thing seems like a bit too much, but do you have something that's like, half that painful? I mean, what are my options, here?"
"Pft!" Satan snorted as he leaned forward. "You don't have any options! I didn't take possession of your soul just to laugh at seeing acid dissolving your face over and over!" He briefly gestured to his antechamber. "As you might have guessed, decent men are hard to come by around here. The devils are nasty by design, and the damned souls have quite an assortment of 'issues', never mind that banging the boss's daughter for all time isn't much of a punishment."
Then Satan pointed at Ranma. "That's why I needed a soul that wasn't on track to end up here. Someone relatively upstanding and noble, but still underhanded and twisted enough to get by down here. YOU are that man, Mister Saotome."
Before Ranma could protest, the door to the back of the throne room opened, admitting two devils.
The first was the guard that had left, but the second was a very female devil in a slinky black dress that Ranma could only assume was the aforementioned "Lucy". Her skin was like red satin, and her hair was a long, ash-white waterfall that stretched down to her knees behind her. She possessed a thin spade-tipped tail and a pair of small, curved horns that curled forward from the sides of her head, but other than that her body was quite human in form, if not human in a comically oversexed way that immediately got Ranma wondering how Kurumu was faring back at the academy.
"Ah, there she is," Satan said fondly, gesturing to the top-heavy devil who began inspecting Ranma silently, "Saotome, this is your new wife, Lucy. What do you think?"
Ranma stared at the she-devil, then glanced at Satan. Then he stared at Lucy some more, and then took an even longer look at the lord of Hell.
"I think... she doesn't look anything like you," Ranma pointed out, perplexed. Size and lower torso shape aside, she should have at least been the same color, right?
Satan's smile became somewhat strained. "She takes after my ex-wife. Primarily in that Lucy is a whore, just like she was."
Ranma winced at that, although Lucy seemed to ignore the comment completely as she circled the pigtailed boy.
"Not bad," Lucy finally said, her voice rich and husky as she planted her hands on her hips, "now show me the goods."
Ranma blanched as the red woman pointed at his groin, and Satan clicked his tongue.
"Lucy, that's rude! The man is here to get to know you, too!" the ruler of Hell chided, "at least show him your stuff as well!"
"As you wish, Daddy," Lucy said, pinching the shoulder strap of her dress.
"Wait, wait, WAIT!" Ranma suddenly shouted, surprising the two royal devils and causing them to stop.
"There's something weird about this whole arrangement," Ranma said, turning back to Satan, "when are you supposed to get my soul, anyway?"
Satan quirked an eyebrow. "As soon as you die, I take full possession. So I'm sorry, but-"
"No, I'm sorry, but I'm not dead," Ranma declared.
This was apparently a stunning revelation for everyone in the room, as Satan, Lucy, and even the nameless guards looked utterly perplexed.
"Actually, my lord," the guard captain said uncertainly, "I did notice that he was... well, breathing a little bit more than a typical disembodied soul. Or a lot more, rather. He also hasn't healed that flank wound yet, which is odd for a spirit."
"Then... what are you doing in Hell?" Satan asked, cocking his head to one side.
"I just broke in with a buddy to steal back the soul of this guy we didn't want killed," Ranma explained, his nerves calming considerably, "I'm totally heading back to the mortal realm after this."
Lucy's eyes widened, while Satan scratched at his beard.
"Huh. I, uh, I gotta be honest with you," said the ruler of Hell, "this entire conversation kind of hinged on you being dead and your soul legally bound to your father's contract."
"So now we're just wasting each other's time," Ranma guessed.
"Yeah, pretty much," Satan admitted, "so anyway, now that you know where-"
"Wait!" Lucy suddenly shouted, drawing her father's attention. "Hold on! Couldn't we get married anyway?"
As Satan looked up at the ceiling, Ranma flinched.
"When you think about it, there's nothing in the contract that stipulates that the marriage and soul seizure are necessarily related, just that they both occur. Thus since we've happened to meet before Saotome's death, there's no specific reason why we can't marry anyway."
"She sleeps with a lot of lawyers," mumbled one of the guards to Ranma as way of explanation.
The martial artist ignored him. "I have a reason. Or really, three reasons, but they're all the same: I'm engaged already," Ranma said, crossing his arms over his chest, "so if that first guy I freed was right, then I'll be single again when I die, but for now I really can't marry you."
Lucy grit her teeth as Satan shrugged.
"Well, that's no biggie. A human lifetime is hardly..." he trailed off as his daughter suddenly walked up to Ranma and seized his arm.
"Can I speak to you? Privately?" Lucy whispered, her voice utterly serious and possessing none of the sensual allure from before.
"Lucy, where are you going?" Satan asked before Ranma could respond, leaning forward in his throne.
The she-devil flinched. "I'm just... Uh... taking him to the cellar for some illicit, premarital sex. Yes, that's right."
"But I-" Ranma's protest was cut off as the she-devil slapped a hand over his mouth.
Satan frowned. "Okay, but make it quick. And go easy on him; he needs to retain his fluids, still being alive and all."
"Sure thing, Daddy," Lucy mumbled, not really listening as she shoved Ranma out through the shattered doorway into the hall.
Hr
Lucy frowned as she walked among the broken skeletons of dead devils and their scattered weapons, clearly lost in thought.
Ranma was also thinking intently as he followed her, but opted to speak his mind. "You know, if it weren't for the fact that he runs a horrible torture dimension, Satan would be a pretty cool guy," he admitted, "I mean, I've met plenty of people way less reasonable and more dangerous."
"Daddy has a... challenging job," Lucy said reluctantly, "and a bit of a PR problem as well."
"Which probably isn't going to get any better with all the people I set free back into the world of the living," Ranma admitted, "I hope that turns out okay."
Lucy turned around, looking very serious. "All right, enough about Daddy; let's talk about us. What's it going to take to get you to marry me?"
"Hopefully a martial arts duel even bigger than the fight against Saffron, preferably in SPACE," Ranma said with a grin, "but otherwise I'll probably kick the bucket in-"
"No, I mean NOW," Lucy said, planting her hands on her hips, "I'm open to deals. Anything you want. Material wealth, magic power, whatever. If you want to keep the other girls, we can do a harem end. I can make it happen."
Ranma gave the buxom hellspawn an incredulous look. "Wait, why are you in such a hurry, anyway? Why do you even want to marry me?" While she had certainly seemed interested from the beginning, her attitude certainly didn't suggest she was hopelessly infatuated with him. And despite all the accusations of how loose she was, the daughter of Satan seemed to be deliberately trying to marry him rather than just seducing him as she had told her father she was going to do.
Lucy clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Fine, I'll level with you: I want to get out of Hell and into the mortal realm."
Ranma blinked. "You do? Why?"
"WHY? Have you taken a look around?" Lucy snapped, waving her hand in the general direction of the exit and kicking a dropped glaive, "you know, when humans end up here it's because they turned away from God and gave in to a host of dark lower impulses, surrendering to temptation! Do you know what me and the other devils did to end up here? We were BORN on the wrong side of a divine barrier!"
"The more I learn about cosmic justice, the less just it seems," Ranma deadpanned.
"Exactly! Do you know what it's like to grow up in this... this..." Lucy bit her lip angrily as she even failed to finish the sentence, "you can't even call it a hellhole because that isn't an analogy! This place is literally the low point of comparison for every other lousy place in the universe! Except Scary Town during the Spring. All the time while I grew up I was constantly taunted by the complaints of the humans about all the incredible things they had to leave behind and the decadent comforts of their mortal lives! And I might never get another chance to experience it at all!"
Lucy hesitated for a moment. "Well, that's what I get from some of the damned, anyway. You are from one of the REAL countries, right? Like the United States, or the Korea that isn't constantly starving to death?"
"Japan, actually."
"Even better!" Lucy said, brightening as she smiled for the first time since Ranma met her, "being a sexual deviant is practically required for citizenship! I'll barely even stand out!"
"Okay, hold on," Ranma said, rubbing his forehead, "I'll give you that this place is awful, but aren't you, like, a Hell princess? Your dad is Satan, the ruler of this entire plane or whatever. That doesn't seem so bad to me."
Lucy once again crossed her arms under her breasts, nodding solemnly. "It's true. I am the second most esteemed creature in the Inferno. I have a castle, with all the primitive comforts that medieval-level technology in a resource-strapped realm can manage. I have a legion of slaves and warrior devils to cater to my every whim. The legacy of the second most powerful creature in all the universe belongs to me. And I can have any man I want, from the lowliest hellspawn to ancient spirits of human men so adept at satisfying their lovers that it poisoned their souls and damned them eternally. My immortal life is better than that of any other in Hell."
She spoke softly but reverently as she listed her privileges, and then glanced at Ranma briefly before her expression fell and her eyes narrowed.
"But believe me when I say that I would trade ALL OF IT for a modern flush toilet and an iPhone."
"Huh," Ranma mumbled, scratching the back of his head, "okay. Fair enough. But still, what does that have to do with marrying me?"
"You might not have caught on, since you seem to prefer 'handiwork' to 'paperwork'," Lucy mumbled, gesturing to the devil remains that littered the floor, "but aside from all the torment, Hell is one giant web of bureaucracy. Which is actually just a different flavor of torment, now that I think about it."
She shook her head. "Anyway, for those of us who aren't just popping into other dimensions to steal souls from their penance, it's not easy to just go to the mortal realm. Or ANY other realm."
"Still waiting for the marriage thing to make sense," Ranma muttered, looking bored.
Satan's daughter sighed as she rolled her eyes. "In a nutshell, in order to gain passage to the mortal realm, I need to be a citizen of a mortal country. The easiest way to do that is to marry a current citizen. As in, a living, breathing human. As in you."
"That's stupid," Ranma deadpanned.
"Don't complain to me about it! I've tried all the other ways!" Lucy shouted, her tail going ramrod straight as she clenched her hands into fists and glared at him. "No immigration department will process an application from the 'daughter of Satan'! Damn my hereditary Lawful Evil alignment!" She huffed angrily, and then seemed to calm down as she met Ranma's eyes again. "It was a stroke of insane luck that the man I happen to be promised to ALSO happened to barge his way into Hell without fulfilling the usual prerequisite of dying first. I CAN'T let this chance go to waste!"
Ranma broke eye contact uncomfortably, scratching the back of his head. "Look, it's not that I don't want to help, but marrying you is sort of..." he pursed his lips, uncharacteristically thinking of what to say before his mouth ran off without his brain, "well, I've seen that philanderers end up in the baking sand pits, and if my fiancees find out that I married someone else behind their backs, then I'll be ending up in one way too early."
"A major part of adultery is the betrayal! It wouldn't count in this case because it's a marriage of convenience!" Lucy protested.
"Yeah, I'm way past trusting that the universe will see reason when judging me. Not happening," Ranma said, shaking his head.
Lucy bit her thumb anxiously as she tried to think of a new strategy. "Okay, wait. How about this: we get married just long enough for me to get my green card, then we divorce immediately. The whole thing can be a secret and we won't have to see each other again until we're both back in Hell. Actually, we won't even need to see each other during the fake marriage! One signature on a marriage license, and you're done with your part! I'll take care of EVERYTHING! All I need is a signature!"
The she-devil was gleefully hopping up and down at this point, and Ranma couldn't help but feel guilty at his reluctance (he also felt other emotions at the sight of Lucy's breasts bouncing like volleyballs, but stamped them out quickly as usual).
"Are you SURE that your Hell laws recognize divorce? So there won't be any technical adultery?" Ranma asked.
"Yes!" Lucy said.
"And you'll keep this a secret from everyone I know?" Ranma asked.
"YES!" Lucy said even louder.
"And you'll take care of the divorce as soon as you're straight with the government?" Ranma asked.
"YES! FIRES BELOW, YES!" Lucy screamed in joy and anticipation.
Knock! Knock! "Hey, would you two hurry up and finish? We have to start cleaning out those bodies. And whatever fluids you're leaving behind," asked a rather bitter-sounding voice from the opposite side of the door leading to the hallways.
Ranma and Lucy both glanced at the door in annoyance, and the former sighed heavily.
"All right, I'll do it."
Before he knew it Lucy had seized him into a crushing hug, black tears crawling down her cheeks as she squeezed her formidible chest against his.
"Thank you, Ranma! You've made me the happiest girl in the underworld! Which is a really lousy standard, I know, but still!"
"Okay, okay, great," Ranma mumbled nervously as he worked to pry his newest fiancee off of him, "but you said I could ask you for a favor, right? A major one?"
Lucy nodded vigorously. "Horrific and disgusting forms of sex are not off the table!"
"That's... neat," the martial artist said weakly, wondering just what he could expect in his future eternity of unholy matrimony, "but no. Can you get me something to write on and a pen? I need to take care of that marriage license, but I also have to write a letter..."
<hr>
"I can't begin to express my thanks for the depth of your mercy, Lord Aono!"
Kouma groaned. "Well, can you FINISH expressing your thanks? I'm sick of having to hear about it."
Currently the hellhound was leading Tsukune, Moka, Yukari, and one other person through the unmanned Gates of Hell, idly kicking the useless metal detector as he passed by.
The person at the rear of the party was a rather large, hairy beast with long, huge claws who was wearing Tsukune's jacket around his waist like a loincloth, and was otherwise naked. He seemed intent only on searching out the exit, though he was also careful not to step ahead of Tsukune, who he was trailing reverently as the leader of the Protection Committee hobbled along while leaning on Moka, having nearly exhausted himself.
"Don't mock me, hellhound!" the hairy monster, Jikan, snapped, "you have no idea what torments-"
"YES, I DO," Kouma promptly snapped back, "I used to work here. It wasn't my first time to the pendulum blade works. Don't think that I don't understand; I just don't care."
"Oh. Right," Jikan mumbled, "well at the very least I wish you wouldn't disparage Lord Aono's efforts like that!"
"Yeah, yeah, hats off to the fearless leader," Kouma grumbled, "now let's get our tails out of here before said leader dies of heat stroke."
"Wait," Tsukune rasped, clutching Moka's shoulder as he looked around feverishly, "is Ranma-"
"We can wait for him on our own, Tsukune. You need to get out of here!" Moka protested as she pulled the weakened human along.
"H-How long will you wait?" Tsukune gasped out as he limped along behind the vampiress.
"We can't wait forever," Moka said grimly, catching sight of the swirling blue portal as they pushed their way through the fog of ash, "but you can't put yourself at risk for Ranma's sake! What he did was heroic-"
"Moderately heroic. At BEST," Kouma interrupted.
"... Thank you, Kouma," Moka said disingenuously, "anyway, Ranma knows the risks he takes better than we do. He wouldn't want you to suffer on his account, even if you could help him by staying behind. For now, it's better for you to get to saf-"
"Oh, there he is," Yukari said, suddenly waving behind the group, "Senpai! Over here! We're ready to go!"
A sweatdrop rolled down Moka's head as Tsukune whirled around in suprise.
"Ranma! You're back! You're alive! You're..." Tsukune trailed off as he and everyone else noted the big red ball of sex following the martial artist around the bend, wearing only 6-inch stilleto heels and barely enough black fabric for half a window curtain.
Kouma in particular seemed stunned to see the woman, and pointed a trembling figure at the she-devil while the others looked on in confusion. "That... That's... She... Lu-"
Ranma stopped in front of the group of his classmates plus the guy he assumed they were there to rescue, and suddenly held up his hands to silence his friends.
"All right, look. I know what with the explosion and me being gone this whole time you all have a lot of questions for me right now, and her being here isn't helping," the martial artist pointed behind him at the scantily-clad devil, who offered a silent smirk and a small wave to the assembled students.
Then he sighed. "But it's a long story, and it involves like three or four OTHER long stories, so can you all just believe me that you're all better off not knowing so we can go home?"
"But she's-" Kouma started to say, only for Ranma to interrupt him.
"Seriously man, it's best if you just leave it alone."
Tsukune hesitated for a moment, but eventually shrugged. "Yeah, okay. We can do that. Let's get the here out of Hell," he mumbled as he staggered into the shimmering blue portal.
"Wait, was that a joke, or has the dehydration started causing brain damage?" Yukari asked as she followed Tsukune through the portal. Moka followed a moment later, looking rather uncertain but definitely being more concerned with Tsukune's well-being than with any newcomers.
"Well, let me tell you, after I get back to school I'm going full-tilt Christian," Jikan explained as he approached the portal, "I've learned my lesson! I'm definitely not coming back here again!"
Lucy raised an eyebrow as she followed the clawed monstrosity. "Bugbear, right?"
"Yes. What about it?" Jikan asked, turning his head right before he stepped into the gateway.
"Yeah, it's not really gonna help. You're definitely coming back," deadpanned the she-devil.
Jikan made no move to go through the portal, his fanged face darkening. "Wh-What?"
"What can I say; afterlife isn't fair. Now move it woolly, I want to try a McFlurry!"
Kouma kept staring at Ranma as Lucy shoved the horrified bugbear through the portal.
"You... You KNOW that's Satan's daughter, right?" the hellhound asked, pointing through the magical gateway.
"It was heavily implied that she probably isn't," Ranma answered as he approached the portal, "you know, technically. I guess he did still raise her." He hopped through the gate before Kouma could ask any other questions, eager to leave the twisted and hateful environment of the Inferno.
Kouma was about to follow him, but hesitated as he stepped into the portal, glancing back at the dark clouds strewn with toxic ash and the jagged rocks seething with molten lava.
"Some day... I'll be back for good," he mumbled fondly, squatting down and fondly running a finger through a crack of magma that split the plate of brimstone he was standing on, "wait for me, okay baby? It'll be all-"
He was suddenly interrupted by Yukari's voice emanating from the portal. "We can HEAR you on the other side, you know."
His face reddening terribly, Kouma practically leapt into the gateway, and with a shimmering wink, the portal closed.\
<hr>
Tsukune drank greedily from a large water bottle as he stepped through the halls of Youkai Academy with Moka alongside him, glancing about at the interior.
He gasped as he finished off the bottle, feeling as if he had been brought back from the brink of death. "Well, I have to say, first impressions look good," Tsukune said, looking about the empty halls of the school, "no fires, no riots, and there's slightly less blood on the floor than usual. It looks like Kurumu can handle things without me after all."
Behind the pair were Kouma and Ranma, who appeared to be exchanging heated whispers such that Tsukune and Moka couldn't hear them. The others had already left, having thei own affairs to tend to.
Tsukune led the way up to the Protection Committee's offices and then pushed the door open.
"Kurumu, we're... back..."
As soon as he opened the door, dozens of heads rose and turned to look at him. The entire lobby had been converted into an empty space with a great pile of pillows in one corner. The empty space was taken by students, most of them in their casual clothes and holding some sort of present, and all of them on their knees. Most had turned to stare at the newcomers, but those that didn't had their heads bowed in supplication.
Kurumu lounged upon the pillow pile, wearing a silk bath robe that was deliberately tied way too loosely to conceal much of her breasts and legs. Standing over her, Kana - dressed in slave toga - had her wings out and was steadily using them to fan the succubus, while a similarly dressed Mizore waited on the other side, holding a bottle tightly against her body.
Kurumu lazily started to turn to see who had entered the room. "Who comes before the Head Magistrate Kurono? If it is more of those naked people ranting about devils and hellfire, then-" she did a double-take when she finally realized who was at the door, and she sat upright with such haste that her robe almost came completely undone (causing all the male students looking at Tsukune to rapidly turn around again).
"Tsu-Tsukune! You're back!" Kurumu said, her face flushing as sweat started rolling down her forehead. "Uh... hi! Want some chilled cider?" she asked, gesturing to Mizore and her bottle.
Tsukune wordlessly approached the pillow throne, picking his way around the scattered supplicants.
"Now wait, I know it looks bad, but there's actually a perfectly good reason for this!" Kurumu said desperately.
Mizore quirked an eyebrow. "No, there isn't."
"Silence, slave!" Kurumu shouted instinctively before she shook her head, "I mean, shut UP, Mizore!"
"Kurumu..." Tsukune started, staring up the succubus and trying not to get distracted by the view he had directly up her robes.
The succubus winced.
"Good job," Tsukune finally said, "this is a better outcome than I had any right to expect. I'm proud of you." Then the human boy turned away and started heading toward the back, "I just have to take down a few notes for the student council, and then I need a shower. You're relieved. Please fix the lobby."
As Kurumu let out a gasp of relief, Kana deadpanned, "......"
"Do NOT tell him about that part," Kurumu hissed, being the only one close enough to overhear her.
"So this is what happens when me and Tsukune aren't around to keep her in check," Ranma mumbled as he looked around at the students silently praying on the floor.
"Well, you, Aono, and Akashiya. Kurono IS the second most popular girl in school," Kouma said with a shrug, "by the way, where's your... ah... tag-along?"
"Lucy wrote down my contact info and directions to the nearest Apple store and took off," Ranma said, leaning against the wall, "and good luck to her. Hopefully we won't have to see each other again for a LONG time."
"Uh huh. You didn't, uh, happen to sell your soul while we were down in Hell, did you?" Kouma asked, raising one of his bushy eyebrows.
"I didn't get the chance," Ranma grumbled, "so I sold something else. But it was worth it, I think."
<hr>
"We're making a WHAT?" asked the captain of the Infernal Guard, his tone incredulous.
Satan shrugged as he held up a scroll. "We're making a new afterlife. For spiders. Evidently Saotome felt that it was pretty messed up that spiders don't have a 'good' afterlife, so he wanted me to built a paradise for the spiders that lead good, honest lives."
The lesser devil looked perplexed. "What constitutes a 'good, honest life' for a spider?"
Satan frowned as he scratched at his beard, "Well, he is a human, so it probably means choosing the right religion. We'll need to consult some of the greater spiders to figure out the specifics. Send someone to dig around among the Soviets and find a soul to build some of those big, oppressive-looking statues of whoever their god is. And we'll need to design a micro-ecosystem for hunting and stuff, since it's pretty much all spiders do."
Satan smirked. "This could be fun, actually! It will be nice to design something without the express intention of creating or assisting abject misery!"
The captain bowed. "It is as you will it, my lord."
"And while we're at it, why stop at spiders?" Satan asked, standing up from his throne thoughtfully, "they're hardly the only creature tha ends up in Hell by default. Maybe it's time we treated the Inferno as a punishment rather than just a camp for everything they don't want up in Heaven! We've been using the same twisted 'justice' for millennia, but maybe it's time for a change! We'll tighten our standards! Update our moral paradigm! Maybe start a parole system!"
He grinned as he nodded to himself, obviously pleased. "Yes. It's about time that cosmic justice got an overhaul."
The lesser devil looked dubious. "What about vampires, my lord?"
"No, screw those guys. Everyone else will get a fair shake, though," Satan explained.
"Of course, my lord. We will begin at once."
In all fairness to our Lord and Savior, he totally would have thought of that if he were able to get a favor out of Satan.
Sadly, inter-family rivalry always prevented Lucy and Christ from realizing their love for each other.
It's like Romeo and Juliet, if Juliet was a character ripped from a cheap hentai doujin.
Also, Jesus has that whole "dying for our sins" thing going for him. So there's that. Ranma may be the spider messiah, but he's not dying for them.
Sadly, inter-family rivalry always prevented Lucy and Christ from realizing their love for each other.
It's like Romeo and Juliet, if Juliet was a character ripped from a cheap hentai doujin.
Also, Jesus has that whole "dying for our sins" thing going for him. So there's that. Ranma may be the spider messiah, but he's not dying for them.
Wow...
This has to be in the main story. It's just so amazing. Though I hope that Lucy becomes a main character. She could be such an interesting character. I don't really think that him being engaged to other women would in any way prevent him marrying her even, since she is the princess of hell they could simply have a marriage there, she already said she'd allow him a harem, and she can just change the laws to allow it. So that excuse really doesn't work.
Also Ranma establishing a new afterlife for spiders really contributes to him being a deity. It seems highly possible that he could become immortal as a result of worship and thus not be affected by contracts contingent on his death for a very long time.
This has to be in the main story. It's just so amazing. Though I hope that Lucy becomes a main character. She could be such an interesting character. I don't really think that him being engaged to other women would in any way prevent him marrying her even, since she is the princess of hell they could simply have a marriage there, she already said she'd allow him a harem, and she can just change the laws to allow it. So that excuse really doesn't work.
Also Ranma establishing a new afterlife for spiders really contributes to him being a deity. It seems highly possible that he could become immortal as a result of worship and thus not be affected by contracts contingent on his death for a very long time.