A/N: Ahh, it's been some time since I've updated, yeah? I hope everyone likes this chapter. I'm a little nervous about my portrayal of Cologne. Ick! Anxiety, away! Heh, anyway, I may be trying to focus on this story for a little bit, as there is very little left on it (a couple of chapter, most likely) and I've started working on a story that is a continuation of the companion pieces, Baby Girl and Man Among Men. Anyway, R&R! Reviews are my lifeblood!
Akane opened her eyes, feeling distinctly out of sorts. Blinking rapidly, she was relieved when her vision cleared quickly but confused when she wasn't confronted with the colors and sights of her bedroom. As the white walls of Tofu's clinic and the reality of the night prior impressed itself on her mind, the young Japanese girl cringed. Standing, she realized that she and Ranma had fallen asleep at Mousse's bedside sometime after their discussion about the Amazons.
Her eyes roved over the Chinese teenager's form, trying to give some sort of superficial exam to calm her nerves. His chest was moving evenly, though the depth of his breathing still seemed just a shade too shallow. However, his breaths no longer seemed to be hitching, meaning that much of his pain was probably gone. He would probably sleep for some time yet. His ordeal had likely been an exhausting one.
Shifting her focus again, she realized that Ranma was on the floor, deeply asleep. She wasn't entirely sure when exactly it was that he had succumbed to unconsciousness but it must have been a sudden thing for the martial artist at her feet. If he couldn't have been bothered to seek out the other bed in the exam room, he had to have been far too tired to make even that small a distance.
After a moment, she remembered a conversation she had had with Mousse about Amazon culture. She had always been intensely interested in the Amazons but far too wary of their Chinese "friends" to ask the questions that often swam through her brain. However, in the past few days, it had become somewhat crucial to know the culture that had shaped her new friend.
{"It's funny. You could invoke the Right of the Matriarch to force the old ghoul into negotiations." Mousse had snickered at the idea of Cologne forced to bargain with Akane.
However, Akane had been confused. "What do you mean? Kasumi's the oldest." She shook her head. "Besides that, Daddy's in charge of our family."
He scoffed rudely at the mention of her father, knowing that she would know the significance of the sound. "Kasumi may be the oldest," he continued without missing a beat, "but you are the Tendo warrior. Cologne takes advantage of the fact that you know nothing of Joketsuzoku culture. If you knew the rules of our village, then she would be trapped by them."
"Why would I ever need to invoke this Right?" Akane had been honestly curious, wondering avidly at the need to appeal to the higher nature of her enemies when Ranma seemed to deal with them easily enough.
"One day, they'll do something unforgiveable. We have spent far too much time here already. I've seen some of the letters from China. The elders seem to be a wrong word away from sending a Blood Request."
"What's that?" Even the words seemed foreboding and Akane had to suppress a shiver.
"They'll write a letter in blood but what it is, is an ultimatum. It will mean that Shampoo has run out of time. They'll be given a deadline and if they don't meet it, they'll be forgotten by their mothers and their mothers before them."
"They'll be disowned? That can happen?"
Mousse nodded, his usually clear green eyes clouded by sorrow. "So, something will happen and you'll have to address it. But if it does and you do, you have to promise me something."
Given that Akane doubted that such an instance would come to pass, she was ready to promise whatever he could think to ask. "Anything."
"You can't let Ranma interfere. You can't even allow the merest chance that he could interfere. Not only will he ruin any negotiations, but the fact that you defer to a man will mean that you are weak."
Akane laid a hand on Mousse's arm then, doing her best to calm his suddenly frayed nerves. "I promise, Mousse. If I have to invoke the Right, Ranma will not get in the way.}
Closing her eyes as if to ward away pain, Akane stepped over the legs of her fiancé and opened the cabinet to Doctor Tofu's injectable medications. He rarely used them, knowing that he could use his own ki techniques or the application of pressure points to block the reception of pain. However, there were some instances, some emergencies in which Tofu needed his patient to be either pliant or unconscious while he focused his talents completely on the problem at hand. Now, knowing that both Ranma and Tofu would be angry at her for this, despite having two very different reasons, Akane grabbed a small bottle of clear fluid and a sterile syringe.
Filling the syringe to the correct dosage quickly, Akane leaned down next to Ranma and whispered, "Sumimasen." I hope you forgive me, she thought to herself. Clenching her eyes tightly closed once to steel herself for the action, she then focused her brown eyes on the pulsing vein on the inside of his elbow. Piercing his skin with the thin needle, she pushed down the plunger of the syringe in one practiced, controlled motion.
She watched his eyes open, focus slightly on her face, and then subsequently lose that distinct focus. His arms flailed for a moment, searching for purpose on anything before dropping back to the ground. With that, his eyelids fluttered closed and his breathing settled into a deep rhythm, indicating that the sedative she had chosen had worked.
"Akane," a voice stated from somewhere above her head. "What are you doing?"
The young teenager craned her neck to look into the bespectacled eyes of the clinic's physician. "Doctor Tofu!" She stood and offered him a quick but sincere bow. "Gomen nasai."
The doctor merely looked back at Akane with a concerned expression. "Do you want to tell me why you just sedated your fiancé?"
She grinned in embarrassment and shrugged with one shoulder. "It's hard to explain." She sighed and gestured to Mousse's form, grimacing when she noted yet again that his breathing was not back to normal. "He deserves something more than banishment and a brutal attack." Then, she turned her gaze to Ranma. "But it won't be solved with fists." She looked her doctor in the eyes. "It has to be solved with words."
"Do you know what words to use?"
Akane clenched her fists at her sides, allowing herself to feel the full extent of her anger against the Amazons before shoving the emotion down into the deepest and darkest hole her soul could manifest. "I have an idea."
Cologne was unused to the feeling that now surged through her veins as she went through the motions of opening the restaurant for the day. Guilt and regret and perhaps even… shame? The emotions were as unfamiliar to her as the Japanese customs that surrounded her had been little over a year prior. The patriarchal nature of Japanese culture still chafed at her pride but she had long since gained the ability to overlook the sensation.
But these new feelings… Did they have to do with Mousse's banishment?
She shook her head of such a thought. As a China-bred Amazon, the boy should not have shown such defiance. He had known there would be consequences for such an act. He had known that saying no and continuing to say no to a matriarch of the village was grounds for exile.
But… did she go too far?
The fact of the matter was that the young Tendo girl's sudden attention for the boy had caused Cologne to recognize how much she had been disregarding a man of her own village. While it was true that an Amazon man's opinion garnered less respect than even that of a Japanese woman, that didn't mean that all women were encouraged to treat them like garbage, not in the way that Cologne and Shampoo had given themselves leave to treat Mousse.
After all, Mousse was not some useless, househusband breeder; he was a trained warrior and all that that entailed.
More than that, she had gotten angry at the loss, lashing out her own irritation with herself on him, landing a more brutal blow than was strictly necessary. She should have been hiding her pride about the fact that a man had managed to strip her cane from her. Instead, she had allowed herself to pour too much strength in a blow to a weak spot in a moment of strong emotion.
What if it killed him? After all, the Chinese took care of their own. Would the boy's pride allow him to seek medical care with a Japanese doctor?
Shaking her head of her thoughts, she forced herself to set them aside, knowing that dwelling in this fashion would help no one. Not only was she delaying her own work for the day, but their larger plans for the future as well. Despite Shampoo's recent and spectacular failures, they still needed to bring the Saotome boy home to the village.
Their deadline was rapidly approaching.
"Aiya!" Cologne looked up from her vantage point in the kitchen when Shampoo caroled out her trademark greeting. "What Violent Girl doing here?"
The older Chinese woman watched in shock as Akane moved past Shampoo, her rushed movements just shy of actually pushing the purple-haired girl out of her way. The girl's big brown eyes darted around the restaurant before it settled on the crone's form in the kitchen. "Kho Lon," she began, inflecting her voice to say the older woman's name in its original Mandarin. "I invoke the Right of the Matriarch to request a palaver."
For a long moment, Cologne goggled at the girl in front of her, shock and disgust and disbelief wrapped up in a single expression. Then, she realized she had spoken the words, the words that no Joketsuzoku matriarch could deny. Refusing the Right of the Matriarch was a reprehensible action, merely insulting at best and disastrously dangerous at worst. There had even been instances where refusing the Right had resulted in a civil war between her people, hundreds of years in the past.
"Accepted," Cologne replied through clenched teeth, her fury at Mousse the night before now having gained renewed vigor.
When the crone led Akane into one of the back rooms that served as their living quarters, Shampoo followed automatically. "Palaver?" she echoed uncertainly.
"She wishes to negotiate," Cologne spat, poisonous venom clear in her words. "I have no doubt about what."
At that, the Japanese girl smirked, her brown eyes twinkling with dark humor. "You might find yourself surprised. I don't come here to discuss Ranma." She settled into a seat across from the chair that was unmistakably Cologne's. "I want to talk about Mousse's banishment."
"Banishment?" Shampoo echoed uncertainly. Her bright eyes shifted in confusion between Akane and Cologne before turning surprisingly shrewd. "Great-Grandmother, what you do?"
"Silence!" Cologne commanded instantly, suddenly feeling trapped by the infantile girls before her. She sighed, pressing her fingers against the bridge of her nose. Her altercation with Mousse had occurred so late last night and her fury with him had been so everpresent that she had yet to inform her granddaughter as to what had occurred. Despite whatever hostility Shampoo tended to bestow upon their bespectacled housemate, it has always been painstakingly clear that he was hers, whatever that may have meant to the girl herself. "He knew the consequences," she told Shampoo in a gentler tone.
While those words were enough to quiet an Amazon, it seemed have quite the opposite on Akane, who was currently struggling to dampen her own battle aura. Despite lacking the usual visual manifestation of the girl's anger, Cologne got the distinct impression that her words had struck some raw nerve, watching in interest as her hand curled into tight fists. "You will remove the banishment," Akane declared quietly, cold fury thrumming through every syllable.
Cologne frowned deeply, the severe expression pulling her wrinkles into ugly lines. "I don't see that you have any leverage here, Akane Tendo. You never have."
"I will offer that I know enough of your culture to know that you have overstepped your own rules and I will give you my solemn promise of whatever terms you deem necessary."
The old woman scoffed, jutting her chin very slightly in obstinate pride. "What knowledge could you possibly have of a culture you have never known?"
"Mousse is a warrior," Akane stated, the curve of her lips already saying how much she had gleaned from her conversations with the boy in question. At that statement, Cologne deflated very slightly, though it seemed even that was enough to broaden the girl's smile. "He might be a man but warriors – especially skilled ones like Mousse obviously is, even blind – have a different social standing. He even mentioned that men had served among matriarchs on your Elder Council."
Blast him! Cologne snarled internally, her brow creasing unintentionally into a thunderous expression. And blast her for understanding things beyond her ken.
When Akane continued, her voice was softer, layered deeply with sorrow. "I never meant for him to understand that. I just wanted him to have a choice." Her brown eyes bored into Cologne's, willing the elderly matriarch to align her will. "Let him have that choice."
Cologne growled softly, low in her throat, but continued the conversation. "And what promise are you willing to offer?"
"What do you need from me?" Akane asked, her confidence seeming to escape her as they broached the subject in which Cologne would extract something from her.
It took her a brief moment but the old woman finally realized that this was the golden opportunity. This was perhaps the only time that she would be able to extract such a vow of honor from the girl in front of her. It was easy to pull promises from the dark-haired boy that was inextricably bound up with their activities, for he was constantly prying into their business. But Akane was a different creature altogether. She seemed to be far more circumspect about the level of her involvement.
It had always made Cologne despise her, the way she stood behind Ranma, watching and helping but never truly interfering on her own initiative, allowing him to make the decisions no matter how faulty they may have been. Now, staring into the girl's hard brown eyes, she had to force herself to remember that not only was Akane Tendo an intelligent female but a warrior as well. Even if she was not as seasoned as her foreign counterparts, she had always been able to anticipate their styles as long as she wasn't part of the fight.
Perhaps the complacent fiancée that Cologne had seen from afar had never actually existed. The fact that she was here on her own, when the crone knew that Ranma likely would have asserted his presence in his protectiveness of her, proved that she was far braver than Cologne had been giving her credit for. Perhaps she knew exactly what she was doing, though the old woman was loathe to admit it.
Still, she reminded herself, this was a rare opportunity to exact what she needed from the girl. Her lips curling into a shrewd smirk, she began to count down her conditions. "In return for nullifying Mousse's exile, you will not interfere with us when the time comes."
The corner of Akane's mouth twitched slightly at that statement. "You're running out of time, I take it?" Almost as if she felt the rebuke before the Amazon matriarch could even fully articulate it in her mind, the girl's lips dropped automatically into a deep frown. "I agree," she told Cologne somberly.
"You will also not invoke your right as Matriarch when that time comes," Cologne added then, knowing that this girl could invoke it whenever she wished, even if she should promise not to. When she inclined her head in acquiescence, the old woman narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "Nor will you offer assistance in the form of Amazon knowledge to the boy at that time."
Akane offered the elderly woman a limp smile, the weakened expression somehow enough to soothe Cologne's nerves. "I agree to your terms. Is there anything else?"
Cologne turned away from Akane, far more tired than she would like to admit. "Take Shampoo with you. She will inform Mousse of his situation."
With her back turned, the old Amazon woman never saw Akane's flash of a grin or the way her face gave over to triumphant lines for a brief moment. She would never know that the girl's words had won where the boy's fists never could. She would likely never realize that Akane had not made any concessions in that negotiation, at least none that she had not already been fully prepared to make.