A Panda's Dream pt. 3
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The morning was quiet, the moon hung pale against the deep blue gradiented sky. Clouds rested low against the horizon of satellite dishes and housing complexes. As fleeting as the moon, outlines of sleek skyscrapers threatened to fade into sharp mountains rising beyond. Ranma couldn't help but smile, every distant scene melded into the next; the skyline would any second turn a faint sky color and be invisible forever. She turned to see Akane's figure through the glass door that protected Akane's room from the small deck outside. Akane's fingers lazily groped for the handle and pulled the door open. The moving glass split her in two, one filmy and dull, the other bright and clear. The dirty half shrank as the door continued along its track, until finally the whole Akane greeted Ranma with a half awake smile. Akane joined Ranma on the wooden deck, the view of the morning spread wide in front of them.
They were alone, the two of them, surrounded by something as great and fantastical as a city. Houses with one-color roofs provided a grid of sorts that stretched out to a point where the houses could no longer be broken into neat rows and columns, instead replaced by a haphazard patchwork of color and patterns.
Akane indicated with her right index finger a distant three-story building, its color a bland tan. It was lined with windows and it alone poked out of a noticeable hole in the city where no structures grew. Ranma's attention wandered until it struck Akane's target. A brief glance questioned Akane.
"That's the school."
They stared at the geometric building and the rows of metal roofs that surrounded it in all directions. Wide-open spaces were visible, with green tops of trees and brownish patches of dirt. One large expanse was the baseball field, marked by a lattice of gray chain link fence blurred by distance into a haze of metal.
"I should have showed it to you yesterday."
"Why would that have mattered?"
"You'd have seen what it looked like."
"That wouldn't have meant anything to me then." Ranma's voice was sure and unquestioning.
"I never thought of that," Akane responded with a laugh that was little more than a quick exhalation. Ranma wasn't sure which one of the two was being funny.
"Boolean logic is the next thing to be publicly wheeled out in a coffin, as quantum superpositions hold the answer to an indefinite number of concurrent values."
Ranma barely registered the TV's chipper voice as she and Akane passed the open doorway to its room.
Soun had already sat down at the table, eagerly waiting for breakfast to begin. Akane followed Ranma and they sat down in the same places as yesterday. The television's noisy intrusion ended, and seconds later Nabiki also entered the room. In the blink of an eye Akane and Ranma were seated in their classroom, not waiting for class to begin and yet not doing anything else. It started all the same.
"I think we should begin the class with Ranma sharing about China."
The members of the class focused on Kazuo.
"I'm not sure that's appropriate for our lesson plan, Ishiguro."
"But teacher, I think that it would help us. Who should we learn from, a book or someone who just came from China?"
"Well, that is certainly true. Perhaps, Ms. Saotome, if you wanted to give a short little talk? It wouldn't be graded."
"That's okay."
"Are you sure? It might be interesting."
"I went to see dojos."
"Find any good ones?"
"Most of the ones on the map are gone or aren't dojos anymore." Ranma impatiently looked around at the class.
"Really." The teacher adjusted the glasses covering his eyes. "How old is the map?"
"Fairly old."
"Hmm. You'll have to bring it in."
Ranma hated the exultant smile on Kazuo's face without even seeing it.
Chance had crystallized into habit as the two sat under the tree from yesterday, a bento on each lap.
"How do you stand Kazuo?"
"What do you mean? He usually stares into space. You've really woken him up."
"What an idiot."
"Are you going to bring the map in?"
"I might as well."
Ranma studied the other teenagers, animatedly discussing something a few hundred meters away, sitting on concrete steps.
"You know, if it wasn't for that map, we wouldn't have went to China."
"Your panda?"
"My father. It was a map someone from our school made hundreds of years ago. Pop decided to retrace the journey he made."
There was a rare intensity in Ranma's voice, and Akane slowly took Ranma's hand in her own, keeping her body otherwise motionless.
"We went to everyplace we could think of in Japan, and finally had to move on to China, hoping the dojos there would still remain true to the art, but they were even worse, destroyed or abandoned. I thought it was something great, a new land to conquer, but my father was very serious about it. I think he somehow knew what we would find before we found it."
Akane nodded.
"You won't forget this, right?"
Akane shook her head, responding in a friendly tone. "Not as long as you remember my mother."
Ranma squeezed Akane's hand, and the tension subsided.
As the pair walked home from class that day, the quiet afternoon air was struck by a piercing shout. Akane barely had time to look at the source before Ranma grabbed her waist and tumbled out of the way. A teenager, dressed in a colorful silk garb, stood where they had, her hands tensed like claws.
"You not run again." Her accent was broken and halting, her voice determined and forceful. "End it now."
Without speaking, Ranma quickly turned and ran. It was all Akane could do to not let herself be ripped from Ranma's grip. The gray pavement flew beneath them in a monotone blur of motion. They exploded onto a busy street, the Amazon's cries piercing the bustle of the mid-afternoon crowd. Women browsing the latest fashions looked up, confused, fabrics and shades forgotten. Businessmen, steaming bowls of vegetables in front of them, choked and sputtered, oil and sauce escaping their lips and falling on machined suits. A mother buying ice cream and sweets for her children protectively clutched them against her skirt, leaving the cone to melt in the vendor's hands. Mortar, glass, and brick only amplified the ancient Chinese war cry; the buildings that lined the streets vibrated with confidence and rage. And beneath it the Amazon raced, gaining ground on the retreating redhead and the friend she pulled along.
Akane stumbled and fell to the pavement, and she managed to push out a few words over her gasps for air. "Leave me," she managed, "she wants you."
Ranma kept tugging at Akane's hand, unable to let go. "She's crazy, I don't dare." Leaning down, Ranma quickly gathered Akane up in her arms. "I can't leave you."
Shampoo had stopped to stand tall on the street, like a monument, her face clean and pure with focus and strength. "She only slow you down. Fight now. Where you run?"
As Ranma shifted her attention from Akane to her enemy, concern warped into hate and disgust. "I'm not gonna fight." She bolted.
Shampoo had been waiting, and sprung into action, bounding after the fleeing girl. "You not run in first fight!" Akane, secure in a tight hold, was lost in Ranma's hatred, stunned by the Amazon's power. It was all so foreign, but Ranma's dark pacifism called to her, the twisted expression on the redhead's face was right and comforting.
In mid-step Shampoo dropped, like Akane had, but the Amazon's body convulsed in odd twitches, and she quickly scanned behind her, searching for the fire that ran through her body. Her eyes widened.
Ranma stopped as well, turning to see Shampoo down and convulsing, a thread trailing behind her. Eyes traced the string back, back, to its source a few hundred meters away. It was hard to tell who the men were; their black armored van bore no identification. A thin-lipped man in a black suit stood in the background, his arms crossed, his mouth a tight smile. In front of him three similarly dressed men were arrayed, one man knelt on his knees, holding something like a small harpoon gun, while the rest watched intently.
Shampoo saw a wire sticking out of her lower back and ripped it out, removing a barb that had buried itself in her skin. The coursing heat stopped. Ranma and Akane could only watch as Shampoo slowly got up and faced the men. "You interfere with laws and you die."
She gave another cry, and launched herself through the air, and her sound was not her mouth, but instead her body; it was her muscles, her tendons, her bones. She emanated it, sound flowed off her like a fountain, and it rippled through the air. Dancing as it exploded in all directions, it was the air, and her hands were primal weapons, bare and raw. Even as three bullets whistled through her, her body continued, it soared as if it couldn't touch the earth, as if the ground was lifting it up from below. But it limply impacted less than ten meters from where the closest of the men knelt, handgun extended. The bullets also continued, and they sped by Ranma and Akane, until they embedded themselves into a concrete wall.
Akane dumbly sat in Ranma's arms, and Ranma wordlessly let Akane slide down her body. Even after Akane stood on her own feet, they were motionless, their bodies touching and their hands locked together. They were stunned by the death of a violent girl they never knew, and seeing blood seep out of three gaping wholes made it real, gave it substance, made her death more than a subtle heartache or a vague nostalgia. The small group that had gathered was quiet; not in silence for the strange girl. Instead, they stopped because these men in suits had the will to decide. This was no corrupt and dilute democracy, just the here and now of the gun and its unwavering bullets. And for that second, the men and women could feel the world hurtling away from them, each second one more step that could never be taken back. But the moment broke into scattered whispers and flashes of movement, and the group of people was a crowd again, schedules out and shopping lists ready.
An ambulance's sirens rocked the air, but the moment was drained, the team of paramedics nothing more than a quiet epilogue, white text against a black background.
Ranma slowly walked closer to the body, as the doctors hustled from their vehicle to check for vital signs, then for identification. There was neither, and so their latex wrapped hands carefully placed the body in a heavy bag, and zipped it up.
Ranma turned in surprise to see Akane standing right behind her, and Ranma nodded her assent.
"Hey!" Ranma tried to get the attention of an idle doctor. One walked over. "Who are those guys?" She pointed at the armed group of men, who were focused on the electrical harpoon gun from earlier, one of the men jotting something down on a clipboard.
"Some new taskforce, I think."
"Taskforce?"
"Yeah, a group that solves problems. I heard something about this being training." The doctor noticed that the body bag was loaded into the ambulance, and started to walk towards the vehicle. He turned once more to Ranma. "You can ask them. They'd be happy to tell you." A thought crossed his mind before he climbed in his vehicle. "Just don't seem too curious." And with that, the medics sped away the opposite direction, followed by the black armored van.
Ranma glanced over at Akane. "They're out fast."
Akane responded. "I hope you didn't want to talk with them."
"I guess not really. They couldn't say anything that I'd want to hear."
They looked at where the body had been, and saw that the crimson blood was removed. Ranma walked over. "Looks like they dumped baking soda over the stains."
"Or something like it," Akane added helpfully. Ranma nodded.
"Come on, Akane. Let's go home." It was Akane's turn to nod her head, and they walked in step, a little closer than usual. Just as they were about to leave the street, Ranma looked back on the distant scene, trying to memorize it.
When they got home, Akane shouted a greeting to Kasumi, always in the kitchen, and they settled on the couch in front of the television- Akane in Ranma's lap, Ranma's arms around Akane's waist. Akane turned on the TV, and saw the evening newscaster. After listening to him for a few seconds, Akane turned it off. Before its light died, the flickering glow lit every corner of the room.
When Kasumi called out dinner, the two were jolted out of a half sleep. Akane edged forward on Ranma's lap until she rested on the knees, and then stood up languidly. She looked at the door to the kitchen, backlit by a warm yellow glow that invaded the deep blue of the empty room. Unmoving, Ranma lay reclined against the back of the couch. The distance between them vanished as Akane grasped Ranma's arm and gently tugged. Ranma pulled and was pulled up, her hand gripping tight and steady. The din of clanking dishes and plates was clear through the paper door.
It wasn't until after dinner that Akane mentioned the map.
"It should be right in my pack."
The two ascended the stairs and went into the Ranma's room. The backpack was neatly leaned against the far wall. As Ranma opened the drawstrings, she heard padded feet against hardwood floor. She quickly turned to see Akane standing near. She returned her attention to the bag.
"Anyway, it was more or less chance that led me to China."
"Really?"
"Yeah, Pop decided to go after I managed to beat some famous dojo."
"So you must have really been good."
"Yeah. I really did a number on him, so Pop thought it would be good to move onto the China. You know, more of a challenge."
"You didn't go to any tournaments?"
"Tournaments? The man I beat at that dojo won a bunch of tournaments. He had a trophy case on display, to impress people who didn't know any better. Trophies don't mean anything."
"Are you sure? On TV they make a big deal about them. Just last week I saw in the news some coverage of a recent tournament."
"No one good cares about them. I remember I was pretty angry at the guy that I fought, I kinda hit a bit after he gave up. But you know, he was just such a faker. He didn't even teach any classes, he had his students do that. He was a mascot more than anything."
Akane found it odd that Ranma's words, spoken like they should have been angry, were weighted and ponderous.
"Anyway, after I crushed the guy, Pop decided it was time to move onto China, that's where the real challenge would be."
Akane nodded.
"I didn't notice it, but I think I broke the guy's bones. Pop was real proud of me."
Akane flinched.
"No, its not like he wanted me to hurt people when fighting, he had really been trying to get me to stop it at that point. But beating this guy meant so much to both of us. I had spent my entire life training to win, and now I was on top, I was the example that every martial artist would rise to. I would be the one to overflow the dojos with students, I would take that honor back from movie stars and comic book heroes."
After a moment of thought, Ranma continued. "Anyway, later that week, Pop had been quiet and deep in thought because he didn't know who to challenge next. So he looked through his stuff and found this old family map, and knew we had to go to China."
Ranma looked through the bag, and slowly pulled out a roll of parchment. "You know, I haven't looked through my father's stuff after his accident." Ranma undid a clasp that kept the map folded; out fell a well creased piece of paper.
Akane picked it up and unfolded it, looking with surprise at the crisp paper and typeset printing. It was a map, a collection of tens of small circles surrounded by a squiggled line that represented a boundary. Chinese lettering filled up the left third of the paper.
Ranma stared at it without speaking. When she eventually spoke, her voice was brittle and dry. "That's the training grounds where I lost him. I remember him looking at that sheet around the same time we decided to leave for China. I thought it was odd that my father would doodle."
At first Akane didn't respond, but after looking at it noticed something odd; in a cartoonish scrawl, two circles had been marked with red ink. Inside one was a simple, yet precise drawing of a panda, done only with clean red lines and white space. The other circle was completely filled in with thin crimson stripes.
"Ranma, what does this mean?"
Ranma shook her head and looked away from the paper, her voice a whisper. "It's nothing, Akane. It doesn't mean anything anymore."
After homework and a bath, Akane and Ranma stood outside the door to Akane's room, Akane in her pajamas and Ranma in a loose tank top and cotton boxer shorts.
"So you remembered to pack your map in my backpack, for next week?"
"Yeah, hopefully that'll make Kazuo happy."
"That's good. Goodnight, Ranma."
"Goodnight, Akane." Ranma made no move towards her own room.
Akane waited, a calm smile on her face, until she started, and softly laughed with self-reproach. "Right. Ready to go to bed?"
Ranma nodded.
