RYOGA GOES TO NEW JERSEY

A Ranma 1/2 Spamfic
by Gary Kleppe

Standard disclaimer applies.


WARNING: This one's rather dark. Thanks goes to Trom for inspiration.

Ryoga trudged along the cold concrete. Factories, painted in dull grays and browns, stood on either side of the road, their smokestacks spewing out grimy soot. Enormous trucks drove by, none of them taking any notice of the bandanna-clad boy. He must have been walking in circles for the past few days, he decided; everything he had seen looked the same.

The boat captain had said that this was New Jersey. It was as good a place as any for Ryoga to get himself lost in. With two continents and over forty-two million square kilometers to wander through, it was pretty certain that no one would find him. Not that he expected anyone to try.

He certainly couldn't stay in Japan. Akane finding out his secret and threatening to kill him the next time she saw him had been bad enough. Then when he had finally found Akari's place, she had introduced him to her new husband. You really should have expected it, Ryoga told himself. She fell in love with me so easily, is it any surprise to see her switch to someone else just as quickly? Why would anyone want a husband who could hardly ever find his way home anyway?

He stopped walking and stood on the sidewalk. There was no point in going onward. This was the perfect place to stop. It was perhaps the most drab, lifeless, depressing places that he'd ever been to. A place to end the pointless wandering existence that fate had given him as an excuse for a life.

He reached into the void, the black hole that was his spirit. Sensations and emotions flowed, coalesced into a physical thing. It would be his final depression blast. Instead of directing the energy outward, he'd simply let it fall back into himself. He would be consumed utterly, like a rock falling into the sun.

The power built. He could feel already that this blast would dwarf any that he had ever before attempted. It would be the largest depression blast that anyone had ever unleashed. The lifetime achievement of Ryoga Hibiki, here in New Jersey. Of course, no one would probably know who had done it; but that wasn't important. Ryoga knew. That's what mattered. He could feel the energy within him, pulsating, demanding to be released. Not yet. He continued to let it build, build, until his body was at its absolute limit. As he was about to explode, he shouted a death yell:

"Shishi Hoboken!!!"