The Dark Menace
The dream started off simply enough: He was walking down a street in the dead of night and the only thing he could hear were crickets and the occasional barking dog, but suddenly he was confronted by a dark shadowy figure that abruptly blocked his path. He defended himself against a brutal onslaught but nothing he did seemed to stop it. It then started to strangle him with an invisible grip, choking him --
The next thing he knew he was sitting up and saturated in warm sweat. He withheld a cry, because he knew his father was sleeping in the guest room next to him, snoring away, but the dream was so vivid, he felt like yelling at the top of his lungs to give him some solace of the frustration he felt in having it.
He felt his face and wiped sweat off with a single motion, then he got up and crossed the hall to the bathroom, and washed his face.
Akane came into the bathroom and saw Ranma drying his face with a towel, and looked at him with trepidation. "Same dream again, Ranma?" she said.
Ranma first saw her in the mirror standing in the doorway and then turned around, and said, "Nah, just ate too much chocolate last night. Whatcha think? Been havin' the same dream for the past week. Won't stop."
"What's Dr. Tofu have to say? I know you talked him the a couple of days ago about it. I asked him. He's not a psychiatrist, but he's helped me when I needed some personal advise."
"You spying on me?"
"No, I'm just concerned."
"He's said to write the dream down – any information."
"Have you been doing that?"
"No, it's useless. I'll deal with it myself."
"You can't. You're exhausted. You go to school and sleep all day."
"School's boring, whadda expect? Tell the teachers to teach something exciting like martial arts and I'll stay awake. Math, Geography, History…not my thing."
"You can't keep going on like this."
"I'm stressed, that's all! Nothing more. All this fiancée stuff – Shampoo, Kodachi, Ukyo and you – all wanting to marry me…"
"I don't want to marry you!" Akane snorted angry.
"Okay, three girls wanting me… not like I'd marry a tomboy like you anyway… I'm not supposed to be stressed out like this. I'm only a teenager. I'm not ready for marriage yet. I want to experience the world and get rid of this damn curse."
"Then go back to China."
"With what money? Pop never saves any and I don't have any… where'dya think I'd get the cash, eh Akane?"
"Walk."
"Walk to China? You stupid?"
"You did it before."
"That's before I realized how futile the journey was gonna be and what would transpire when I got to Jusenkyo."
"So, okay… never mind about the trip. Let me ask you something, what do you think the dream means? You must have some idea?"
"I've already told you I don't, and the dream is so vague that it can't mean nothin'."
"Dreams are supposed to be something in the subconscious telling the person something is unfinished," she said. "You're encountering a shadowy figure in your dream, right? And it chokes you before you can defend yourself… so it must mean you're encountering something you fear powerless to beat. Next time you encounter it, ask it what it wants. Maybe a revelation will strike you."
"A revelation? Some advise." Ranma said sarcastically. "I'm sure any psychiatrist would say that's load of crap. Next thing you'll say it has something to do with my mother."
"And why would you say that? Does it?"
"You're a moron." Suddenly Ranma froze in place and his mind raced with the dark figure he kept seeing in his dream. He tried to analysis it and remembered a last minute detail he had seen. A sword; it had a sword strapped to its back.
"What's the matter?" Akane asked, seeing him wide-eyed and motionless, his face stunned.
"In my dream, the shadow figure has a sword across its back."
"You never mentioned that to me before, why would you remember it now?"
"I don't know. Something you said about my mother."
"Your mother always travels with sword," Akane said. "Could that mean something?"
"Nah, more coincidence that anything. I'm goin' back to bed." He threw the towel on the toilet and left the bathroom and crossed the hall back to his room. But Akane wasn't going to let this go and followed him inside.
"C'mon Ranma, you gotta remember something else," she said.
"I don't, let it go! I wanna go back to sleep." But truthfully he didn't. He was afraid to go back to sleep because he'd probably have the dream again, but he didn't want to tell Akane that. "Get out of the room. Don't you have school tomorrow?"
"You have school too."
"I'm calling in sick."
"Oh no you don't -- and you're not going to escape me until we talk more about your dream. What else do you remember? Think hard."
"I told you –"
"I know what you told me, but you now have me curious about this dream. I want to help you discover its meaning."
"Maybe it doesn't have one, ever think of that?"
"All dreams have meaning. Just because it's not obvious, doesn't mean there isn't one. Now tell me more about this shadowy figure with the sword."
Ranma signed. He was too tired to argue. "Okay, it's dark and I'm walking down an unmarked street, when suddenly this dark figure jumps out in front of me and starts choking the life out of me. Then I wake up. That's when the dream always ends."
"C'mon, you must remember something else. Go back to what you remember and start picking out images, no matter how vague."
"What are you, some sorta dream analyst now?"
"No, I just want to help you. We're engaged, and this is what engaged couples do. They help each other."
"Are sure there's no alternative motive for your sudden interest?"
"And what does that suppose to mean?"
"I don't know, like if you find out some deep dark secret of mine, you'll blabber it to your friends at school, and they'll laugh at me, or something."
"I'm not going to tell anyone, besides whatever's bothering you obviously has a deeper meaning for your subconscious to give you're a reoccurring nightmare, or you wouldn't be suffering like this. Now, go through your dream again, and focus on an image, any image, and start from there."
"Fine, whatever," he said, and Ranma closed his eyes and ran through his dream. "Alone on street, shadowy figure, choking me… Nope, nothing significant – anything else?"
"You always do this."
He opened his eyes. "What? What do I always do?"
"Push me away. I'm trying to help you."
"I don't want your help."
Normally this was when Akane got really angry and hit him for being a jerk, but she didn't feel that way at the moment. She desperately wanted to help him and fighting wouldn't make him tell her what was bothering him. She had to be diplomatic, treat him like a child who didn't know what he wanted. Ranma was being defiant, but she knew he wanted to tell her about his dream. She just had to coax him into telling her.
"Do you really hate me that much that you refuse to tell me any details of your dream?"
Ranma was taken aback by what Akane had said and was temporarily speechless. No, he didn't hate her, not really. No, that wasn't fair. He didn't hate her, just the situation his father put him in with the engagement. "No, I just can't remember anything else," he finally said.
"Okay, you remembered the sword, maybe if you think hard enough you can remember other aspects of the dream. Okay, instead of imaginary, how about feelings? When you were encountering the shadowy figure, how were you feeling? Anxious… scared… ?"
Come to think of it, he was. "Yeah, I was feeling both those things," he said.
"Close your eyes again," she said.
He did. He saw the vivid image of the figure again."Wait, I can remember something else. Something about the figure: it's transparent, like a ghost."
"Is it glowing?"
"No, it's very dark -- but not completely. There is some light..."
"Is the moon out?"
"No, it's cloudy. I remember now, a street light's on and I can see through the shadowy figure -- but it still has form, an outline."
"You mentioned the sword, what else about the shadowy figure can you distinguish?"
"Slits. Slits for eyes. Two in its head."
"It has a head, does it have a body?"
"Yes, and wings, or what look like wings – like a bird."
"Are they spread out, or do the wings hang at its side?"
"They're spread out, like appendages – and it uses them to choke me."
"Does it have any hands – any fingers on the hands?"
"No, I can't see them."
"Okay, what else can you remember about the shadowy figure? The sword for instance, what do you think it means. It chokes you, but it has a sword. Why not use the sword instead?"
"I don't know."
"Maybe it's not a sword then, maybe it's something else."
"No, it's a sword. It's just not using it."
"Then you try to use it."
Ranma said nothing for a few moments, and as he looked at the shadowy figure, he attempted to grab the sword from behind its back -- but couldn't. His arms weren't long enough. "I can't! The shadowy figure's too tall and my arms are too short."
"Okay, now we know the figure is tall. What's its size, its bulk. Is it big?"
"It's large around the waste, I can see now. Sorta roundish."
Akane suddenly looked over at Ranma's father, who was sleeping soundly beside them as a panda. Tall and roundish, she observed. "Ranma, is it your father?" she asked.
Ranma focused on the shadowy figure and suddenly it's transparency solidified, meaning he couldn't see through it anymore. But it still had no detail. "I don't think so," he said. "If it was my father, I'd kill'em!"
"And why would you do that?"
"Cause of what he did to me," he said.
"What did he do to you?"
"He took me to Jusenkyo, you know that."
"But that was over a year ago. You've come to grips with your curse?"
"Never! I'll never come to grips with changing into a girl. I'm a guy!"
"Okay, you're still mad, but that doesn't constitute feelings of murder towards your father."
"You know what I mean -- it's figure of speech. I wouldn't really kill'em, maybe beat the crap outta him."
"Why do you feel so powerless against this shadowy figure?"
"How the hell should I know," he said, his voice elevated a little higher than he wanted it to be. "If I could beat this thing, I wouldn't be plagued by it!"
"True." She nodded. "Now that we've established some particulars about dream, maybe it will make defending yourself against it the next time you go to sleep easier."
"I don't wanna go to sleep. I hate the dream. I wanna know what it means."
"You just said a minute ago you didn't think it meant anything."
"Well, now I do after we've run through it. It hasta mean somethin'. And until I figure out what I'll continue having it. I wanna have a descent night sleep."
"Then let's run through it again from the beginning. Now that you can identify more, maybe even more detail will come to you."
An hour passed and they were still without any further results. Ranma couldn't remember anything else from the dream and he could see Akane was getting tired. Her eyes were droopy and she was fighting to stay awake. "Maybe we should continue this some other time, you're tried," he observed.
"No!" Akane said sharply, opening her eyes wide, fighting exhaustion. "I wanna get to the bottom or your dream," she said, yawning.
"Forget it, you're tired, and I can't remember anything else. My mind is foggy. Go back to bed, it's nearly dawn."
"No, I…" she started to say, but fell back exhausted. Ranma caught her before she hit the floor. He cradled her in his arms and then carried her to her room, and laid her in bed. But he didn't leave. Instead, he sat on the edge and watched her sleep. She was peaceful, and he enjoyed her in this peaceful state. No fighting, no arguments, no violence.
"No, I could never hate you, Akane. I just wish things were different. Perhaps if we meant some other way, we wouldn't have this emotional wall between us."
Akane smiled, but it probably had something more to do with her subconscious mind responding than anything. She could probably hear him, but what he said probably didn't register on a conscious level. That's good, he thought. It was best not to tell her just how he felt – not yet. He was a teenager, and he wasn't ready for serious relationship.
But he did want to do something, something that he had wanted to do for a while. But if done at any other time would have constituted something other than what he wanted keep from her --
He gave her a soft kiss on her lips.
He kept the kiss for three seconds and then pulled away.
They'd pretended to kiss in school plays and when he was under the influence of Cat-Fu, but despite those times, he never felt more connected to her than at this moment. And yes, he did have feelings for her.
When he arose from the kiss he arose from the bed and returned to his own room. He then laid back down and closed his eyes and drifted off to asleep.
When he awoke the next morning he felt refreshed. Akane most likely had told the family that Ranma was calling in sick so they wouldn't disturb him while he was sleeping -- a welcome change from all the restless nights.
He went down the hall and washed his face, then he went down to the main floor and wandered out to the back courtyard terrace. He didn't step beyond the terrace or the rain that was falling would change him into his female after ego. But at the moment he didn't care -- he felt good, he felt refreshed, and for the first time, he didn't feel angry.
He sat down on the terrace and listened to the rain fall, and was suddenly startled out of the peaceful moment by his father, who stood over him. His father obviously had just come home from the store because he was carrying a bag of groceries with him, along with an umbrella. Ranma looked up at him and smiled. "I think I understand now," he said.
"What do you understand, boy?" Genma said.
"What my dream represents: the shadow, the sword and... the fear."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," his father said, and just walked away.
That's right. He hadn't told his father about the dream. Only Akane knew.
He shook his head, not caring if his father cared about his dream or not. Akane cared, and that's all that mattered to him. Akane was the key to everything. He knew now that dream was about her. It had to be. And when he kissed her last night, he must have revealed something that his dream was trying to tell him on a subconscious level. That perhaps he really did want to kiss her. He had apparently been thinking about it for quite some time watching all the couples at school engage in idol gossip and chit-chat, seeing how much fun they were having been together. But he was a teenager and he wasn't ready for a really deep relationship. Actually, he didn't know what he wanted. Perhaps that was the true dilemmia of being a teenger: believing you think you know what you want but not really knowing what you want through a common belief. Either way, it was confusing no matter how he looked at it.
He wasn't sure he had it right -- he wasn't a dream anayst -- but he tried to put the pieces of his dream together in the only way he thought possible they fit, like a jigsaw puzzle. The shadowy figure must have been the invisible wall between them blocking his path to excel his relationship with Akane further. The sword was a weapon that was there but never used like all the times he felt like hitting Akane for making him angry but didn't. And the act of being choked had to be a symbol of some sort of awakening, a revelation that maybe, just maybe, he was ready to take their relationship to the next level.
He never knew how much talking things out would make things look more clear. But perhaps, it was best not to escalate things. Takes things slow. There was so many things in his life that had to be sorted out before he could engage in a true relationship with Akane.
"I think I'll just let things proceed as they are for now and see how things go," he said, and closed his eyes. He felt tired, and the serenity of the falling rain helped him drift off to sleep.
But maybe, just maybe… someday… I'll know what to do.