PAINFUL REVENGE

a RevengeFic by

GARY KLEPPE

All characters are property of those who they are property of, etc. etc.

This fanfic is brought to you by United States Anime Military Contractors, Inc. (No, those initials don't spell anything.) We can pull hammers out of nowhere, but they still cost $3000.00 each.

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In a house somewhere in Milwaukee, a man sat at his computer keyboard. "Parts 6 and 7... post, dammit! Connection lost, no carrier? Again?? Must be about the twenty-seventh time..." He proceeded to reboot the computer as he sipped his glass of water. It was just after eight in the evening. His parents were out on their nightly scheduled dog walking, and his sister was working late today. The cat was outside doing whatever the cat did. So he was alone in the house.

Except that he wasn't.

"You sure this is the right address?" came a voice from elsewhere in the house. Another voice answered, "Uh huh. Gary Kleppe, former scientist and college teacher, currently unemployed, 34 years old. Writer of `There Goes The Neighborhood', working on a few other Ranmaverse fics."

Gary poked his head out of his bedroom. "That's me. Who..." In answer to his unfinished question he recognized the two visitors as Ryoga Hibiki and Yusaku Godai. Yusaku was bundled up for the Milwaukee November weather.Ryoga was dressed in his usual manner, seemingly insensitive to the cold.

"Oh gawd..." Gary said, in a tone he had gotten from watching the Black Adder too many times. "... why me?" he asked rhetorically. "You mean all those stories on the net were true? No wonder Stan didn't show up for Champions this week. Hey, don't step on all those papers on my floor! Some of them have important stuff on them. I'll sort 'em all out someday."

"Guess you know why we're here" said Yusaku. "We're here to pay back fanfic writers like you for what they've done to us. We started with the people on the mailing list, but now we're getting around to the ones who just post on r.a.a.c ."

"OK, but why you two?"

"Hey, this is the first one of these I've been on. People just aren't doing Ikkoku fanfics. Hundreds of Ranmaverse ones, plenty of Urusei Yatsuras, but I can count the Ikkoku fics on one hand. There was one where I get killed. Then I got to do a lemon. But was it with Kyoko? Even Kozue for God's sake?
No! I was doing it in a lemon with Akemi! And people wonder why we get pissed? Now I just did your crossover. I had my big chance with Kyoko at the end, and you had me blow it!"

"Don't give away the ending. At least I gave you your big chance in the first place. Hey, you guys must be thirsty after coming this far. How about a glass of water, Ryoga?" Gary threw his glass of water in Ryoga's face. It did not transform him into P-Chan, or change him in any other way except for making him somewhat annoyed.

"Nice try," said Ryoga. "But we're way ahead of you. I was expecting somebody to try that long before now. I came prepared. I used the single-use instant nannichuan powder on myself before I left. As for why I'm here, I was just comic relief in your first story, as if it needed it, and I don't do very well in `She Knows?', the one you're writing next. So I've come with a little present for you." He held up a bucket filled with liquid.

"Spring of drowned girl water?" asked Gary.

"No, we used up most of that on the mailing list authors. This is a little something different. You like using P-Chan in your stories?" he said, baring his fang-like teeth with his face lit from the sides for dramatic effect.

"Aw, no, not that stuff! I've never wanted to be a little piggy!"

"At least we're offering you a choice. That's more than I ever got."

"What choice?"

"How's your love life?" Yusaku asked, changing the subject.

"It's more like a `death' right now" replied Gary. "I don't know any women I'm interested in at the moment. I was involved with one for several years, but that relationship pretty much died out."

"Maybe I could help get things going again."

"Well, lotsa luck, pal. She lives in Virginia around the DC area. Let me know how it goes, willya? She hasn't even called me to say hi for almost a year now."

"As I said," continued Ryoga, "we're offering you a choice. You get to choose one of us. Either you let Yusaku try to help with your love life, or you let me pour the water of drowned pig on you. Then we can do some Takahashi-esque slapstick." Gary cringed at the thought of this. His body wouldn't be anything close to as resilient as Ryoga's, to make the understatement of the year.

"Don't forget the third choice" added Yusaku.

"That's right. Somebody else from the Ranmaverse is coming, should be here any second. Your third choice is to accept this character as your personal assistant."

"That sounds better than the other two choices." There's gotta be a catch, thought Gary. Is it Happosai? He'd be nothing but trouble. Nah, couldn't be. He wouldn't agree to do that job in the first place. Kodachi? Shampoo? Good to stare at if nothing else. Akane? Fine as long as I keep her away from the kitchen. Kuno? A windbag but not a bad guy. "Actually I think I could get along with any of the characters from Ranma..."

A new arrival was heard. "Master Hibiki! Your loyal ninja servant has arrived! Ow! Who put this chair here for me to trip over?"

"...except this one" Gary added. Sasuke the Ninja was the one regular in the Ranma anime that he just could not stand. A one-dimensional idiot who belonged in saturday morning kiddie cartoons. The one character who Gary had promised himself he would never use in a fanfic.

"Those are your choices" said Ryoga. "And if you're thinking of just not choosing, remember that we can travel to any reality. We could bring in a certain character from your Champions campaign universe. She's just dying to meet you in person!"

"Not... her?" Gary actually wasn't sure which character Ryoga meant, but considering the possibilities, it wouldn't be a good idea to find out. Anime characters were bad enough; nobody in the real world would be able to deal with a full-fledged supervillain, least of all him.

"Pick me, and you might hit the jackpot" said Yusaku. "I can get you your big chance with that girl."

Yeah, and put me in a situation where I'll blow it like I had you do, thought Gary. Been there, done that. Plenty of times. These guys are out for revenge. Help with my love life, yeah right. If I'm gonna screw up, I'd rather do it on my own. At least that way I'll have a chance.

What these guys were offering was a choice of pain. Emotional pain, physical pain, or pain in the ass. Three alternatives that all suck. The presidential election all over again. Got to find another choice.

This was nothing more than a good cop/bad cop scenario here. Yusaku Godai, the good cop; a character that Gary genuinely liked and had felt sorry for. One that could have been him ten years or so ago, except that Yusaku would eventually succeed. There but for the lack of grace of God go I. Ryoga Hibiki, trying his best to be the bad cop; someone who Gary also liked and sympathized with (until now), always trapped in an inescapable web of trouble, (mostly) not of his own making. And Sasuke, who was being... Sasuke. The idiot cop. The Barney Fife of the group.

"Quit babbling with your internal monologue and get on with it!" yelled Ryoga.

"Okay, okay! But why are you going after fanfic writers?" asked Gary.

"Do you know how much trouble you people have put all of us through? How many times we've been through hell because of you people?" said Ryoga angrily.

"A guy like me will write maybe ten or twenty fanfics in his lifetime. We're small potatoes. Why don't you go after the writer who's really put you through hell so many times. The one who's caused you so much trouble for so long in so many ways!"

"Mark Latus? We're still looking for him" replied Ryoga.

"No, not him. I'm not talking about just you. I'm talking about all of you."

"No," put in Yusaku, "you don't mean... her?"

"Who had you fall in love with Kyoko, but had somebody get in the way everytime you got close to her? Ryoga, who gave you your terrible sense of direction? Who gave you your vendetta against Ranma, but never let you beat him? Who turned you into a pig? Who gave you a crush on Akane, but put you in
a situation where you couldn't be honest with her about your pig curse?"

Other characters from Ranma and other series started arriving out of nowhere.

"Yeah! She gave me this stupid curse that turns me into a girl!"

"She hitched me up with Lum, so I can't play around with the babes!"

"She has engineered cruel twists of fate that have thwarted at every turn my attempts to rightfully win the love of Akane Tendo and the Pig-Tailed Girl!"

"She had my husband Soichiro pass away only six months after we were married!"

"She has kept me away from the side of my darling Ranma-sama. The Black Rose will make her pay! HOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!!!!"

"She sent this alien in a tiger-striped bikini to take Ataru away from me!"

"She make Shampoo engaged to Ranma, but never let Ranma say he love me!"

"She gave me the mermaid meat. I had to wander Japan for five hundred years before I found anyone else like me."

"She gave me this voodoo doll and candles, but... they never work... and I can't get Akane to even talk to me..."

"She made my mom an alcoholic, and put me in with an apartment house full of weirdos!"

"She made me in love with a woman who treats me like dirt, then turned me into a duck!"

"Darling is always unfaithful to me because of her!"

"Ran-chan and I will only ever be friends because of her!"

"She made me afraid of dogs, because Kyoko has a dog!"

"Hey! Don't step on the papers!"

Soon it seemed that the entire casts of Ranma, Ikkoku, and Urusei Yatsura were present in the house. Gary also saw the boxer and nun from One-Pound Gospel, Yuzuru and his girlfriend what's-her-name from Laughing Target, and Maris the Chojo who looked REALLY pissed. Also some kid who just kept saying something about needing to get back to his newspaper route.

"We are united!" they said in unison. "We are mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore! TREMBLE, TAKAHASHI-SAMA! WE ARE COMING FOR YOU!!!!"

Suddenly a laugh was heard out of nowhere. It was a feminine, free-spirited laugh, one that carried a wave of reality distortion that swept unstoppably over everyone. The universe itself was trembling. Ryoga vanished out of existence and was replaced by a vaguely P-Chan shaped slug. Mousse turned into a mouse, as did Ranma. Ikuko Otonashi became a rugrat, while her aunt Kyoko became an ant. Kodachi became the Black Rose, literally, while her brother was struck by blue thunder and reduced to powder.

"So, she really is a Kami," thought Gary, "at least as far as these people are concerned." The anime characters continued to transform, one by one, until none was left.

Well, one was left.

"Master Kleppe, shall I assist you in cleaning up this mess, sir? A loyal ninja always follows orders!"

"Oh gawd..."

Gary swept up the various transformed characters into a bag while Sasuke bumbled around the house. After determining that hot water would not bring them back (no surprise), he dumped them outside by the garbage. Then he took Sasuke outside.

"You survived this because you aren't an actual Takahashi character" Gary said. "You have another chance. But you're gonna have to learn to act like a Takahashi character if you want to carry on. You're gonna have to practice."

"I will try my best, Master Kleppe!"

"Good. Now practice being like Ryoga."

"I beg your pardon, sir? In what way?"

"Get lost!" Gary slammed the door on Sasuke. Pleased with himself, he headed for the bathroom. He was so pleased with himself that he didn't notice the bucket of water that was now on top of the bathroom door, until he opened the door and the water came down on him. The bucket came down squarely on his head a few seconds after the water, in apparant defiance of the laws of physics. Faintly but distinctly, he heard the laugh again as he felt himself changing. He climbed up to the bathroom mirror, which normally would have been at head level, and looked at his new body.

"Bwee! Bu-kee!" he said. Then he noticed a large crowd of figures towering over him from behind.

"Nice try, again" said Ryoga. "Did you really think we'd turn against our creator? Who do you think has been sending us out to deal with you fanfic authors anyway?"

"Okay," said Yusaku, "listen up, everybody. Time to choose up sides. Since we're in the US, we're gonna go outside and have a game of football. Or, as they used to say in this country, we're gonna kick around the old pigskin. A certain friend of this guy will be here in a few minutes. She'll be the
place-kicker."

You have to go through a lot of pain when you're a fanfic author. But it's worth it.

** THE END **