Authors forward:
	Here is a short story that I have wanted to pen. Its based on a
story by Alan Moore for Wildstorm Spotlight, issue 1 by Image comics. I
read this story, and struck by the grandeur of it, I decided to try to
translate it to an anime story. I chose Ryoga as my man and the rest is…
well, tell me what you think.

C&C Tryoga@juno.com

Sweet water and light laughter
Ray "The Texas Ryoga"
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Garden/5220



Ranma ½

Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and all other anime characters are copyright their
respective companies. This story concept copyright WildStorm comics and
Alan Moore.



Unbeatable.


	I was sitting here reflecting, just thinking about how it all
began. It's amazing that I can still remember the names and events of my
beginnings when so much has been forgotten.
	I remember being 16 years old, so young. I can recall stumbling
into an ancient temple somewhere and finding an ancient scroll. To my
surprise I was able to read it and learned that it supposedly held
secrets to becoming 'unbeatable'. I liked the thought of it and rushed
headlong into deciphering its techniques. Imagine, Ryoga Hibiki,
unbeatable. I eagerly consumed its teachings, ignoring all the warnings
and the implications that the power was one I would not want. That it was
a power that would work for only one individual and that individual would
regret accepting it. I scoffed at the prospect after all, who wouldn't
want to be unbeatable?
	I accepted the scrolls' teachings and tapped into the 'universal
source' and became… unbeatable. Even now, I can remember the look on
Ranma's face when I beat him the first time. And the second… and the
third. By the tenth defeat, I revealed to him how I defeated him and can
still recall his reaction.
	He spoke with the old witch…. Cologne, I think her name was.
After that, he was… different. He accepted his defeats and used them to
sharpen his skills. And he always looked at me with a strange gleam in
the back of his eyes. Much later, I recognized it as a combination of awe
and pity. Cologne must have heard scattered legend and rumor about the
ancient scroll and told Ranma what it meant. I should have asked her
myself, but I didn't care.
	Defeating Ranma exorcised a lot of demons for me and I saw things
in life with much more clarity. It didn't hurt that the techniques I had
learned were capable of withstanding the force of my old curse. P-Chan
existed no more. I settled down, gave up my childish love for Akane and
tried to be a good friend to both of them. I traveled the world, trained,
accepted challenges and defeated every one. When I was about thirty,
though, it all changed.
	I was coming home on an airplane that landed short on the runway.
367 of it's 368 passengers and crews did not survive. I did. I didn't
really think about it, simply attributing it to luck and to my own
martial arts training. But then I saw the headline of a newspaper.
	'367 dead in tragic crash. One man beats death!'
	Beats death.
	I felt a chill inside me as I realized that perhaps this
'universal source' that made me 'unbeatable' would allow me to beat…
everything.
	It did. 
	I stopped aging about when I turned fifty. I stood by in
helplessness as my friends began to die. First Akane. Then Ranma. Then
all the rest of the people I had ever known. I realized that the
'universal source' I had tapped into was a magical energy that coursed
through my body and kept me from being defeated by hunger, by age, by
death. I also realized why no sane person in existence would want such a
thing. For a while, I simply wandered, and saw the world. After I'd seen
it all, I went into seclusion and became a hermit for a few hundred years
for I had seen far too much. After a time I came down from the
mountainous region I had settled in and discovered that during my
self-imposed exile, man had reached the stars. With the invention of the
personal transport, I started to explore the galaxy. I found that the
universal part of the scroll was not a lie. For the longest time, I
simply traveled space, looking for a challenge. And finding none.
	I tried not to make new friends, but sometimes it can't be
helped. I grew to lonely and would accept people into my lives, each time
with heartrending results. Humans peaked and died, even with technology
at their aid after a scant hundred and fifty years. As mankind spread and
contact was made with other races there were a few who lived longer, but
not really by that much. And even the longest lived of them died
eventually. 
So I made friends, experienced loves, and knew heartache as they died. I
witnessed grandeur, beauty, legends, and far more. I tried to keep
company with individuals who had strong grips on existence, who were
survivors. A-Ko. Abraxis. Lord Killiam. The Red God, Jimjimotu. Washuu.
The Wandering Jew. I journeyed the universe in the company of these and
others. I became a crusader, a wanderer, an adventurer, a soldier. I was
a part of thousands of campaigns, millions of battles. I tried to lead a
good life and helped many a time to hold back evil, or destroy it
outright. I was known on a thousand worlds, respected on some, cursed by
tyrants on others, considered a legendary myth on most. "Ryoga the Lost
Wanderer." "Ryoga the timeless."  Eventually though, time passed. And
passed. And passed. 
	Until the end.
	Millennia have come and gone, and most of the life in the
universe has been extinguished. Not by war, or disease, or some great
evil, but by entropy. The end of time advanced, with annihilation in its
glacial jaws.
	My last companion was a great platinum dragon, by the name of
Vorholas. By interesting coincidence, he had spent some time on my home
world, billions of years prior, calling himself 'Bahamut'. Even though we
could both recall some places, neither of us could recall the name of the
planet.
	It began with an 'E'.
	We traveled together through cold space, exchanging tales as
entropy began to surround us. We passed cinders that were once suns. In
dulling gobs of gas and ore, they spat their lives out like consumptives.
We swapped stories of heroes and villains long gone as we journeyed
onward, surrounded by grim and marvelous sights.
	At one point, Vorholas mentioned hope in a legend he had heard
long ago. He spoke of a young lady, a guardian at the end of time, who,
when the time came, would turn the clock back, thus holding entropy at
bay forever. She and her companions formed the core of a band of
defenders of good. As I listened to his description my chest tightened at
the awakened memories of past long gone. Sadly, I informed him of Sailor
Pluto's fall, along with the rest of her fellow scouts. I felt the old
pain and rage as I related how I had been too late to save her and her
teammates and had only been able to avenge their deaths. 
	We journeyed on, he beating his great wings, myself, propelled by
the gift of flight that I had wrested from a demon in a battle in my
relative youth. The sights we were witness too, there at the end of time
were both ghastly and marvelous. We saw where black holes had healed into
colossal scabs of lightness baryonic matter. We passed monstrous gaseous
nebulae contracted by the cold to snowballs barely larger then a solar
system. Even after all we had been witness too in our long lives, as we
passed through a planetary graveyard, we were struck with awe. We
discovered a solar system of dead worlds, each one entombed within its
own elaborate, stupendous mausoleum. Sculpted alien angels, thousands of
miles high, weep endlessly against the endless black. All the
inscriptions were long eroded wiped clean by relentless photon-winds.
Vorholas finally began to tire, and begged to be left alone in his final
moments. I bid him a sad farewell, and left him on a funeral barge of
ice, sailing through the blackness where once stars shone.
	So I find myself here, sitting atop a stone that once was a
planet. It is the final day of all creation. There is nowhere left to
run, nowhere left to go. All life has been extinguished, save I. I can
finally rest, knowing that even the power within me cannot stop the
annihilation of final entropy.
	I lay back as darkness reigns. It is so very cold, yet I can feel
a stirring in my body. The energy that is within me courses yet, trying
to find a way to defeat the undefeatable. I rage against it, yearning to
be free when I suddenly realized what it is doing. I have been
transformed into a being of pure energy, a pure intelligence. For a
moment I am horrified. Will I drift here alone, as nothing but sparks of
energy in a dead universe forever? I have never been a genius, but one
picks a few things up here and there after millions of years. I
remembered lessons that Washuu had explained to me once upon a time. Of
how things reach superconductivity as absolute cold is approached. And it
will never be colder then now.
	The entire universe is now a vast superconductor where the
weakest impulse will be amplified across eternity. Even the impulse of a
single thought. A single thought, reamplified and echoed, could set all
the universe ablaze.
	All of this flashes through the intelligence that I know am, in
an instant. Zero approaches and I must hush my thoughts until I am sure
that I have the right thought. 
	Heat dies. Absolute cold everywhere, my silent mind spreads out
through every particle of the dead universe. 
	Everywhere is so empty and so dark, involuntarily a thought
occurs to me. Before I can even curse at myself, I realize that it is the
right thought:

	"You know, there really should be light."


	And lo, there is.
	And the evening and the morning, are the first day.








Post-

I first released this on the FFML last month, after a bit more fleshing
out and rewrites, here it is. I read Wildstorm Spotlight one and I had a
thought, wouldn't it be cool if Ryoga, the Eternal Lost Boy really was
Eternal? What would it be like for him facing the end of all that is… and
then becoming the creator of all that will be? What do you think?


C&C Tryoga@juno.com