Chapter Text
It was a normal morning at the Tendo Dojo. The air was fresh, and even that early, the breeze felt nice against Ranma’s skin. It felt like home.
Sunlight warmed the tatami. The smell of tea drifted in from the house and settled over everything. It was peaceful.
Too peaceful.
Which, honestly, should’ve warned him. Peace never lasted long around Ranma Saotome.
At least he was in his own body. No curse, no cold water, no sudden transformation ruining his morning. That had stopped a few weeks ago, which was suspicious all by itself.
So when he heard the squeak of a little piglet, he almost felt relieved.
Almost.
“Bwee!”
Ranma smirked. Ryoga really was kind of fun when he wasn’t being a complete pain.
“Hey, P-chan. Long time no see. What, come to try your luck with Akane again?”
Even as a pig, Ryoga somehow managed to look offended.
Snorting at the angry squeaks, Ranma went to get hot water. Kasumi was already making tea, so it didn’t take long.
The second Ryoga changed back, though, Ranma knew something was off.
“As unoriginal as ever,” Ryoga said, smiling in a way Ranma didn’t like.
Ranma blinked.
“Always Pig, always P-chan, always assuming I’m here for Akane. Don’t you ever get tired of saying the same thing?”
Ranma narrowed his eyes.
Ryoga wasn’t supposed to sound this calm.
“Oh, yeah? Then why are you here? Got lost?”
Ryoga huffed. “There it is. Same joke again. You really are predictable.”
Ranma opened his mouth, then stopped.
That was… weird.
They hadn’t seen each other in months, but Ryoga looked different. Not older, exactly. Just steadier. More settled. More sure of himself.
And for some reason, that annoyed Ranma more than it should have.
Before he could answer, the air changed.
It was small at first. Barely anything. A sound—thin, strange, wrong. Then the pressure hit, sudden and heavy, like the whole world had leaned in too close.
Both of them felt it.
It passed fast, but not fast enough. Ranma was already tense, and now every nerve in his body was screaming at him.
So he did the only thing that felt normal.
“Fine, then,” Ranma said, slipping into stance. “You wanna prove how mature you are, let’s spar.”
They moved without needing to think about it, sliding into an old rhythm like they’d never been apart at all.
And still, the house felt wrong.
Too quiet.
Their instincts wouldn’t shut up.
Then the dojo door opened.
Both of them jerked like they’d been caught doing something stupid.
Akane stood there with one eyebrow raised.
“Ryoga. You’re back.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. There was already sweat on her face.
“What are you two doing now?”
Her gaze landed on Ranma, suspicious and uneasy all at once. She didn’t know why, but something in her gut was yelling at her not to leave those two alone today.
It made no sense.
That only made it worse.
“Hi, Akane,” Ryoga said. “It’s good to see you again.”
But his knuckles had gone white, and his voice was too tight.
Then it came.
Not from the street.
Not from the house.
From everywhere.
A sound that wasn’t really a sound. A pressure that sank into bone. Like a note too low to hear and too close to ignore.
Akane went rigid.
Ranma forgot how to breathe.
Ryoga stopped moving.
“What…” Ryoga whispered. “What is that?”
And then—
Reality tore.
Not exploded. Tore.
The space around them folded in on itself with a violent wrongness Ranma couldn’t understand, only feel. It was like the world had made a mistake.
The floor warped.
Tatami buckled upward.
Wood split apart in shrieking splinters.
Ranma saw Ryoga’s eyes go wide. Saw Akane’s face go white with fear.
He heard her start to scream—
“Ran—!”
And then everything broke.
Ranma moved on instinct.
He lunged.
Not toward Akane—too far.
Toward Ryoga.
Because Ryoga was there.
Because he was the only one Ranma could reach.
Ranma slammed into him hard enough to knock the air out of both of them, and for once there was no anger in it, no challenge, no stupid pride.
Just refusal.
Just no.
Ryoga’s hand locked around Ranma’s wrist so hard it hurt. Ranma grabbed his collar and hauled him in close.
They braced together against something that didn’t feel like force so much as the complete collapse of everything that was supposed to make sense.
The roof didn’t cave in.
It disappeared.
A flash of flat, colorless light washed over everything, as if the whole world had been bleached empty.
Ranma’s ears rang with silence.
Then gravity came back all at once.
Wood. Tile. Weight.
Something slammed into him hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.
His back hit the ground.
Ryoga crashed down beside him.
There was a wet sound, and Ranma’s mind rejected it immediately.
Dust flooded the air, thick enough to turn sunlight into haze.
Nothing felt right.
Nothing felt like his body anymore.
Ranma tried to move his legs.
Nothing.
Tried to turn his head.
Pain.
Then Ryoga coughed, rough and awful, like something inside him had torn loose.
“Ranma,” he rasped.
Ranma blinked through the dust.
“Ryoga…?”
He could barely see him. Could barely see anything. Just shape, haze, broken light.
But he could feel him.
The warmth of his body. The hand still gripping his. Familiar in a way Ranma didn’t want to think about too hard.
His mind was screaming.
Akane. Ryoga. Akane. Ryoga.
He tried to move again.
Still nothing.
Just that hand.
“You…” Ranma swallowed. “You alive?”
He tried to sound normal. He didn’t.
Ryoga made a choked sound, like he wanted to answer and couldn’t.
Ranma’s throat hurt. His chest hurt.
But neither of those was the worst part.
“A-Akane—”
The dojo wasn’t a dojo anymore. Just broken beams, torn flooring, drifting dust, and gaps where walls were supposed to be. Somewhere outside, he could hear wood snapping, people shouting, a siren starting up in the distance.
He couldn’t see her.
He couldn’t see anyone.
Ryoga’s breathing hitched. “Is she—?”
Ranma said nothing.
Because he didn’t know.
Because he couldn’t know.
Because for the first time in his life, punching harder wasn’t going to fix a damn thing.
He coughed, and blood came with it.
His vision wavered.
He tried to hold on tighter with the one hand he could still feel, tried to force every last bit of strength he had into that grip, into Ryoga, into something real.
It didn’t help.
Somewhere close—too close—he heard a wet gurgle and realized dimly that it had come from him.
Akane.
That was his last thought before the dark took him.
“Ranma!”
Akane’s voice cracked on his name.
She stumbled forward over shattered wood, slipping, catching herself, reaching for him through the dust like she could drag him back by force.
Ryoga turned his head just enough to see her.
Their eyes met.
Akane looked from him to Ranma and back again, panic sharpening into something harsher, more desperate. She glanced behind her like she expected someone to appear and make sense of this—Nabiki with some stupid comment, Kasumi with impossible calm, her father yelling loud enough to hold the world together.
No one came.
There was only wreckage.
“Where—?” Akane choked. “Where are they? Dad? Nabiki? Kasumi?!”
No answer.
Ryoga wanted to say something. Anything.
Wanted to tell her they were fine, even if it was a lie.
Wanted to tell her he was fine, even if that one was a worse lie.
But his body wouldn’t listen.
He could only stare.
Her face was bloodied.
And—
His mind snagged on it.
Had she lost an arm?
Ryoga’s grip tightened around Ranma’s hand.
Ranma didn’t squeeze back.
A sharp, sick panic cut through him.
Ranma’s hand had never felt this small before.
The edges of Ryoga’s vision darkened. Black spread inward like ink in water.
He was cold.
Not outside cold.
Inside cold.
The kind that told you your body had started giving up before you were ready.
He forced himself to look at Ranma.
Eyes closed.
Face pale.
Too pale.
Blood underneath him.
And there, finally visible through the dust and broken wood, a jagged piece of timber driven through his torso.
Ryoga broke.
Tears spilled before he even understood they were there.
“Ranma…” he coughed.
Everything tasted like blood.
And the way he said the name wasn’t rivalry anymore.
Wasn’t friendship, either.
It was worse than that.
Or maybe better.
Something stripped bare by disaster, dragged out into the open with no room left to hide it.
Then the thought hit him, clean and final.
We’re going to die.
He didn’t want to.
But the worst part was that some piece of him wasn’t surprised.
As if fate had been circling him for years, just waiting to stop pretending.
Akane reached them at last. She was crying, though she looked like she hadn’t noticed yet. Her hand hovered over them for one awful second, afraid to touch them, afraid that touching them would make this real.
“Ranma—please—”
Her voice was so thin it barely sounded like her.
Ryoga tried to focus on her face.
Tried to memorize it.
All those fights. All those arguments. All those stupid, noisy days.
And now, with everything ending around them, all he could think was:
I’m sorry.
But he couldn’t force the words out.
“Akane,” he rasped.
She jerked and looked at him instantly.
He held her gaze for one second.
Help him.
Help Ranma.
He didn’t know if she understood the words he couldn’t say.
Maybe she did.
Because Akane’s face hardened.
And she moved.
She grabbed both their hands and squeezed as hard as she could, like she could force warmth back into them through pure refusal.
Ryoga felt the heat of her skin. The pressure. The desperate, shaking strength in her grip.
His vision flickered.
The dust thinned for a second, and sunlight stabbed into his eyes.
One thought rose up through the pain.
Is this really it? No fight, no curse, no warning? Just this?
He didn’t even know what this was.
He only knew he hated it.
Hated whatever had done this.
Hated the world for allowing it.
Sirens. Screaming. Panic.
All of it was getting farther away.
And somewhere over it—maybe real, maybe not—he heard Ranma’s voice.
“Don’t… get lost.”
Ryoga’s tears fell.
Then everything else did too.