DYNASTY - BOOK I: COURSE OF EARTH

A short foreword

I just got to say this… I didn't really make this fanfiction, so I want to say sorry to the real author, Sydney Kyle, for uploading his fanfiction here. However, since the site where this fanfiction were originally uploaded seems to have drawn its last breath, I thought it was okay to upload it here. But sometimes, I keep thinking; what if I, or anyone else, made a follow-up? Would that be alright? I sure hope so…

Sorry for the bad grammar (if it was bad, I mean)

C117

A Ranma ½ Fanfiction
By Sydney Kyle

Prologue: In a Town Called Nerima

It was a place deep below the earth.

"The pig-girl...done...the snail-boy...done...the three-toed sloth boy...done...the fly-girl...done..."

He sat at a desk in a cramped candlelit room, crouched over a long piece of yellowed parchment.

"The moose-boy...done...the cat-girl...done..." he chanted softly. His writing reed moved across the paper, not touching the names in it that were written in gleaming green ink.

"The lion-boy...done...the bear-girl...done...ahh..."

The reed paused at the entries at the very bottom of the scroll. He gave a little chuckle as he made a slight gesture with the reed-pen.

The characters in green ink shimmered and vanished, as if by magic, until all the writing that remained on the manuscript were the five names at the end of the list.

"Five more, is it?"

After years and years of slumbering deep within the bowels of Japan, the time was finally at hand. It had been an excruciatingly long time, he admitted to himself—long enough for the Dynasty to begin preparations before it could reclaim the land that it had once ruled over. It would once again become the most powerful and the most feared monarchy of all, just as it had been during its time.

But before this could be accomplished, every last individual on this list would have to be disposed of first. The roster of names had grown considerably smaller as the years passed, as each of those unfortunate enough to be singled out by fate was relentlessly hunted down and eliminated.

And now, there were only five of them left in the world.

He grinned like a shark.

The Dynasty had been waiting for this a long, long time...

Reclining, he signaled at the messenger roaming restlessly outside his doorway and handed him the rolled-up scroll.

"Inform my Lord that the these are the last of our obstacles," he said. "Should he take care of them right away, then the dynasty will be able to proceed as our oracles have foretold."

"Hai." The messenger gave a slight bow, then disappeared down the ivory hallway.

The candle was extinguished with a single pinch between his fingers.

"So it has begun," he murmured. "The cursed ones will die, and the Dynasty will live again..."

High above, the sun began to rise above the town known as Nerima.

It was in a place deep below Japan.

The room was enormous, lit by the soft eerie glow of phosphor orbs, and shimmering with reflected crystalline colors from the opalescent ceiling high above. A variety of precious stones were imbedded in the walls, which were lined with gold at the bottom. The chamber was decorated with exquisite cloths and carvings from a bygone age, and in a corner was an object that vaguely resembled a shrine. The air was sweet with the scent of incense and strange-looking saffron-and-blue flowers.

A tall, dark man dressed in black red-embroidered robes paced up and down at the front of the room, his expression obscured from the twenty or so onlookers by the hood that was attached to his cape. Clasped in his bony fingers was a golden staff with a dragon's head, the blood-red jewel that constituted its eye sparkling with dark secrets.

He paused, his russet eyebrows knitted together in deep thought.

"Shino." The word rumbled out in a deep bass voice.

A young man with long jet-black hair and a well-toned frame got up from his knees and made his way up to him. He was garbed in the samurai outfit of a long-gone era, complete with a gold-plated breastplate and a lacquered metal helmet that was tucked under his arm. The tattoo of a coiled green dragon shone eerily from the biceps of his left arm.

Behind him were twenty more individuals in genuflecting positions, each wearing the attire of the ancient samurais as well, except that their armor was plated with iron and silver.

"Shino," the older man addressed him curtly, "you are aware that the Dynasty is now on the verge of establishing itself back in its rightful place, are you not?"

"Hai, Lord Takuma," replied the youth.

"And you do know that only five remain on the list, do you not?"

"Hai, Lord Takuma."

"And you have undergone all the preparations necessary to deal with these...distractions, have you not?"

It was an absurd question, really, and insulting to Shino's intelligence. Of course he had prepared. After all, had he not led the hunt for the thousands of people whose names had reigned on this list for more years than he had cared to count, from one country to another, slowly ensuring the slow decline of potential obstacles from the destiny that his Dynasty was fated to embrace?

Perhaps Lord Takuma would never acknowledge it, but Shino was quite adept at his job as the head of the warrior's clan.

"Shino?" the older man prompted him, a trifle sharply.

"Hai, Lord Takuma," the youth confirmed. "In fact, I have already assembled some of my best warriors, ready to be dispatched at your command." He smirked. "Eliminating these last five people will be as easy as slicing off an upperworlder's head."

A murmur of amusement rippled through the onlookers.

"You had better be right," said the older man, his tone dangerously cold. "These five are the only ones standing in the way of the Dynasty, and the sooner they are gotten rid of, then the better it will be for all of us. Do you understand?"

The youth bowed, determination etched on his bronzed features. "Hai, Lord Takuma. We will not fail you."

"Very well, then." The older man gave a stiffly appreciative nod. "I trust that you will carry out your orders without difficulty."

As he turned to depart, Shino called out one last time to him. "My lord," he began, "these five chosen ones—where are they to be found?"

The older man paused, stroking his beard thoughtfully. Then he spoke.

"Nerima."

"Never heard of that place before," commented Shino, rather indifferently.

There was a hint of a smile that crept across the older man's lips. "So you have not. Nevertheless, you will find them there."

It was just another day in the place called Nerima.

To be more accurate, it was a day that was just a few weeks after the wedding fiasco of the town's most troublesome couple.

The bride had nearly been killed, had nearly died, and, as though to add insult to injury, had been unceremoniously "dumped" at the altar. Scratch that: it wasn't that she was dumped. The truth was, the groom had gotten a case of iceberg feet in the midst of the nuptials—before he had even gotten to the wedding vows. The bride had asked him if he loved her, and his response was no response at all.

The rest of the ceremony ended up in an uproar.

Ranma Saotome and Akane Tendo's lives had become a big soap opera, with the town of Nerima as their backdrop and a variety of odd and unpredictable individuals as their co-stars.

The two were a contributing factor to the entire town's perpetual State of Abnormality, and it was because of these two young people that the cycle of weirdness continued to flourish. It was because of them that the town had been visited by a huge flying fortress filled with warrior vegetarians, nearly torn apart by a fat baby Phoenix stuck on top of a certain upperclassman's head, played host to an entire horde of individuals with uncanny transformation powers, and subjected to every other sort of unparalleled weirdness. It was enough to render the townspeople almost frighteningly oblivious to anything that bordered on the bizarre to the downright absurd.

Indeed, the whole of Nerima seemed to revolve around Ranma Saotome and Akane Tendo, feeding off the details of their lives, paying for the scrapes they got into, and suffering huge amounts of property damage costs (caused either by countless martial artist duels with Ranma versus Ryouga/Kunou/Mousse/whoever or Akane's daily mallet chases after Ranma whenever he pissed her off considerably).

The wedding debacle was no different.

But now, it seemed that life in Nerima had returned to more-or-less-abnormal, and things had settled down, at least for the time being.

Early morning found a spectacle of Nerima's more notorious citizens proceeding with their daily routines: Ranma and Akane bickered about Akane's latest murder attempt on him with her toxic cooking as they made their way to Furinkan High; Shampoo prepared to intercept Ranma on her bike, a box of ramen on her hand and a frantic Mousse at her heels; Tatewaki Kunou searched the streets to Furinkan High with a Ready To Smite bokken in his hand, determined to rescue the pig-tailed girl and Akane Tendo from the clutches of the infidel Saotome; Kodachi Kunou prowled about with a bouquet of toxin-secreted black roses for her true love Ranma; Ukyou Kuonji applied the finishing touches to her heart-shaped okonomiyaki bearing the saucy message "To My Darling Ranma", which she planned to present to him upon arriving at Furinkan High; Ryouga Hibiki asked for directions to Nerima in the middle of the district, and was promptly tackled by a very excited-looking girl with a huge white sumo pig; Soun Tendo and Genma Saotome played their never-ending game of Shogi and discussed the stubbornness of their children; Kasumi cheerfully made house; Nabiki Tendo was off extorting some hapless random victim; the incredibly perverted master of the Anything-Goes School of Martial Arts bounced across a bathhouse roof carrying his latest haul of frilly women's underthings; Shampoo's great-grandmother Cologne tended to the customers at the Nekohantan and schemed on how to snare Ranma for her great-granddaughter.

It was almost too typical a day, however. When things remained relatively uneventful for too long a time, something, somewhere, was bound to burst.

The Dynasty of the Dragon was coming.

And Nerima would never be the same.

End of Prologue