“NOW, YOU DIE!”

Leaping down from the roof of the carousel, Ryoga made straight for his adversary, his right index finger extended. After months of wandering, he’d finally found Ranma. Just as he’d promised Akane. Now, the dishonorable pervert would finally pay for abandoning her like that.

“Ryoga, stop,” Ranko pleaded. “There’s all these people!”

“No way! I’m not letting you get away this time, coward!” Ryoga’s finger touched the ground a meter in front of her, and the gravel erupted at her feet.

Panicked screams rained from every corner of the carnival as parents scooped up their children and fled. A teenage attendant mashed the red emergency stop button and the swinging pirate ship ground to a halt.

Ranko’s form emerged from the beige cloud that filled the crater in which she now stood, blood trickling from some part of nearly every patch of exposed skin. Small chunks of rock and gravel clung to the folds of her dress. “I don’t want to fight you, Ryoga! Please!”

“You don’t have to fight, then! You can just stand there while I kill you!”

Ranko ducked under his roundhouse, juking her head back out of range of the punch that followed. “Ryoga, please, listen to me! We don’t have to do this!”

Streams of people streamed past the fight, giving the combatants a wide berth as they made for safety, punctuated by the occasional terrified scream. Parents were carrying their toddlers over their shoulders as they ran. More than plush toy, won moments before from the skill games, had been abandoned in the grass.

Ryoga tightened his stance. “Oh, yes we do!” Ranma was always so crafty, especially when he was a girl. When he knew he wasn’t strong enough to win any other way. This time, Ranma had even lowered himself to wearing a dress, to try and make him feel bad for beating the snot out of the lecher. It didn’t matter. He would not be deterred. This time, there would be no slipping away. Ranma had chosen to step out of the door to Akane’s heart, and all that was needed was to lock the door behind him and bury it under a mountain of rock. Ryoga would see it done. He was too close now to miss the chance.

Ranko leapt backward, avoiding the bulk of another barrage of gravel as the ground in front of her erupted, propelled by the power of Ryoga’s deadly Breaking Point technique. Through the cloud of dust leapt her assailant, swinging wildly high with a punch that Ranko was certain would have taken her head off had it connected. A slap from that milquetoast Takao had knocked her off her feet; there was no way she could withstand a blow from the human freight train she now faced.

“Ryoga, I don’t know why you’re so mad at me, but please! Stop!”

Ryoga rushed forward, hurling a kick toward her chest. “You know full well!” His jab sailed harmlessly over her head. “You abandoned Akane! You ran out on your obligations!” Ranko somersaulted backward to avoid his sweep kick. “You have no honor!” He snatched up a nearby wooden park bench, hurling it in his opponent’s direction, but Ranko sidestepped it with ease. She heard it smash into something metallic behind her with a resonant twang. “I promised Akane I would find you, and now that I have, you’re gonna pay!”

Ranko continued backing off, now standing between the Ferris wheel and the swinging gondola ride. “Look! It’s not like you think, man! I’m not even that person anymore!”

Ryoga jumped high into the air as he closed the distance. “When I’m done with you, you aren’t going to be any person anymore!” With a determined growl, he thrust his finger into the ground at Ranko’s feet, sending a spray of pebbles and pulverized rock ejecting from the cavitation his technique had opened. The Ferris wheel swayed with the impact on the ground at its base, the gondola ride’s frame creaking under the strain of the shifting earth.

Ranko coughed, doubling over. She hadn’t dodged quite early enough, and the dust from the latest eruption was choking her lungs. She found herself in the center of an elongated chasm almost a meter deep and almost ten meters long, running from where she had been standing to the base of the gondola ride. Her eyes burned and watered. She did her best to survey her surroundings, but the cloud had enveloped her and she had lost her bearings. She didn’t even know what direction to expect the next attack from, and so she was caught off-guard when it came from behind her.

She turned and raised her arms to block, but could not react quickly enough. His fist caught her square in the chest, sending her rocketing backward until her body slammed into the steel frame of the gondola ride. It creaked in protest, the hollow steel column comprising the left side of the attraction caving in somewhat where her back had struck it. She gasped for air, coughing in a desperate attempt to clear her lungs of the dust that surrounded her. She tried to get up, even if only to get to her hands and knees, but her body would do nothing but search fruitlessly for oxygen. Her right leg spasmed, her sciatic nerve trying to come to terms with the impact of the carnival ride it had just encountered at high velocity.

Ryoga grinned toothily. He had won. Now, to finish it. Forever. For Akane.

He charged forward through the cloud of dust. This was it. This time, he would end Ranma once and for all. He could barely make out the outline of the woman in front of him through the fog of silt, but that was all he needed. He cocked his right fist back and fired it through the mist with a loud kiai, and he felt his hand strike flesh.

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Unlike the first strike, the flesh did not yield.

As the dust began to settle, the form before him started to take shape again. Ryoga gasped. Standing in his path was the shapely form of Akane Tendo, cradling her left forearm in her right hand.

“A… Akane! What are you doing here? Are you okay?!”

“Are you crazy, Ryoga?! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” She stood defiantly between the assailant and the young redhead a meter behind her, who was still trying in vain to scramble to her feet.

He relaxed his fighting stance, standing tall. “I did exactly what you asked me to, Akane. I promised you I’d find him, and I did. I’m sorry it took so long, but I did it. And now, I’ll finish him off for you!”

Akane gasped. “I never asked you to hurt her!” She winced, still clutching the arm that she had blocked his punch with.

“Why else would you make me find him?” Ryoga was confused, and worried. This was not the thanks he expected at all. But, accident or otherwise, he couldn’t believe he had struck Akane. He wasn’t sure he’d ever forgive himself.

Akane shouted over the groaning coming from the still-rocking gondola boat behind her, her glare burning with anger. “BECAUSE I LOVE HER, YOU IDIOT!”

Ryoga’s face looked like he’d just been struck by lightning. “You… what?”

“I love her! I always have! And we were finally getting to have a real date, and you… you ruined it, and you hurt her to boot, you jerk!” Akane huffed angrily. He had hurt her too; she was relatively certain her arm was broken, but that was less consequential to her at the moment.

The side of the depression in which Ranko still struggled to stand slid in a bit more under her clawing, costing her what little progress she had made. The Ferris wheel finally ground to a stop, and the gondola boat continued swaying in its frame, squeaking stridently.

Ryoga was crestfallen. “Akane, I had no idea. I’m sor…”

Akane stomped the ground and roared at him, tears running down her cheek and creating tiny rivers of mud down her face as they rinsed away the dirt. “I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN, RYOGA HIBIKI!”

Ryoga staggered back as if he’d been hit in the chest with a cannon. Not even a cannonball, either – the whole cannon. In an instant, everything he had ever dreamed of came crashing down around him. For years, he had chased her – admittedly, most of that time had been spent trying to find her. He had consigned himself to be her pet just to be close to her. He had devoted everything to her. All his training. All his suffering. All his humiliation. It had all been for Akane. And now, she had chosen the pervert. Ranma had lost the fight, but won the war. Akane was his now. “I…” He looked down at his hands. There was nothing else to do. There was nothing else to say.

“I’m truly sorry. Goodbye, Akane.”

It took every shred of courage he could muster to turn his back to her, but he forced himself to do it. He had sworn that he would do whatever Akane asked of him. Devastated though her request may have made him, he would honor his word and grant it. At least in that, he would treat her better than Ranma had. He took one step, and then another, each one feeling like another nail in his heart’s coffin.

Akane watched as Ryoga’s figure shrunk from view. She would take no chances that he could double back and hurt Ranko any worse than he already had. As she turned to help her girlfriend, she saw someone running toward the crevasse behind her where Ranko now sat on the ground, her back resting against the bent metal pillar supporting the creaking gondola ride. A small someone.

“Auntie Ranko, are you okay?!” Hoshi ran toward the hole in the earth as fast as his little legs would carry him. Akane could hear his parents call to him to stay back, but he was not deterred. Hoshi dove into Ranko, wrapping his arms around her neck. “I was so worried!”

Ranko grunted with the impact of his body-turned-projectile on her aching chest, but she threw her left arm around him and gave him a squeeze, the cuts and scrapes on her forearm dripping blood on the back of his gray Voltron T-shirt. Her voice sounded a lot like the gravel she had spent the last few minutes inhaling. “Yeah, I’m okay, buddy. Miss Akane saved me. She’s a great martial artist, just like I said.” She smiled up at her girlfriend gratefully over the little boy’s shoulder.

Akane turned, still cradling her forearm in her other hand. Her face was a mien of concern. “Ranko, are you alright?”

“I’ll live. Might need some concealer on stage tonight.” Ranko groaned loudly as she adjusted herself under Hoshi’s weight. “Okay, and maybe a stool.”

Akane managed a smile, shaking her head. Here she’d been nearly crippled by a lunatic, and she was joking about makeup. “I love you, silly girl.”

Ranko smiled weakly into her eyes. “And I love…”

From the direction of the food trucks, Izumi’s terrified shriek pierced the air. “LOOK OUT!”

Akane spun, turning away from Ranko to see what Izumi was yelling about. As she did, something struck her hard in the back, right between her shoulder blades. A sharp metallic twang echoed in the air as she was launched forward, landing a good three meters from where she had been standing. As she scrambled to her hands and knees, a deafening crash shook the earth under her palms. The rumbling rolled through the air like thunder, echoing as the cascading soundwaves spread from their source.

She turned her head to look, her head clanging like shrine bells on a holiday.

Where the gondola ride had stood moments before now stretched a jagged mound of mangled steel. Sharp beams torn off at their midsections jutted into the air, still groaning as they settled. The bits of pulverized concrete and splintered bolts created a harmony of resonant pings as they landed on the remains of the hollow columns that had once supported the attraction, backed up by a hissing chorus of gravel coming to rest around the heap of debris. But what Akane’s eyes were frantically searching for, she did not see.

“RANKO!!!”

~~~ END BOOK THREE ~~~