A/N: Akari is rrrrrrreeeeeeeeaaaaaaallllllyyyyyyyyy OOC here. Beware. I think this is actually pretty good...for *me*...the end is okay at least...o just read it!!!
Dark red, faded in some places, faded to plainer red and even dark pink in some places. Ryoga stopped walking and looked up to stare into the folds of the umbrella shielding him from the cold rain.
How, anyway, could an umbrella fade? Only from years of constant use. Well, that fit the desctiption pretty well. He smiled to himself half-heartedly.
Rain splattered on top of his umbrella. It sounded like a heavy torrent outside of the thick-leaved forest he was in, but inside this forest of large leaves (tropical? No, too cold) there was no wind, therefore the raindrops fell straight down. Ryoga suddenly realized how familiar the sound was. He was shocked at the thought...familiarness? He looked around the forest, and all the trees looked new and undiscovered to him, the only familiar thing was the drops on the umbrella.
"Fitting, isn't it." The voice almost surprised him, until he realized it was his own. He shut his mouth fearfully. He couldn't start talking to himself now, he could not go insane.
The forest was blurred by the rain, but the greenness of the leaves stood out against all the blue-brown-gray of the forest. There were some orange and red spatterings, as it was late August, but green took over here.
It really was beautiful, wasn't it. Even with the rain. Being careful to keep the umbrella above his head, he reached down to the forest floor and carefully, so as not to get too wet, picked up a leaf. It was a vivid orange.
Lost in world and soul, he stared into the veins and wrinkles of the leaf hoping for an answer. His thoughts drifted to Akane and Akari. As he thought of Akane, the depression he was so used to began to slowly engulf his body. He sighed, and still staring into the leaf, was torn between the maddenning desire to curl up into a little ball and shield himself from everything, or the equally compelling desire to look up to the leafy canopy and sigh.
His thoughts were put on hold by a sudden scream.
"RYOGA-SAMA!!!" Damn that Akari Unryuu and her bloated pig. She was running towards him, holding a bouquet of wildflowers tied with a card. The leaf was still in his hand, and he looked down into its bright orangeness, searching for an answer.
He found none. On the spur of a moment he thought of a reply.
Before Akari could start to give him the flowers, he grabbed her wrist.
He could tell from her eyes that she was expecting him to tell her he had missed her and loved her and all that waffy stuff, but he did not hesitate before saying it.
"Akari..."
"Yes, Ryoga-sama?" Anticipation and happiness was in her eyes. She was bordering on Azusa-ish.
"I hate pigs." Well, he'd MEANT to be more nice...
Akari looked a bit shocked, but recovered quickly. "It's okay, Ryoga! I don't mind...I'll give up pigs for you..." Ryoga was speechless for a second. Akari, give up pigs? For him? Then that must mean...that she actually loved him for something besides his cursed form...kami, telling her will hurt her like hell...
"No, Akari. You don't understand. I don't love you. I never did." This was so unlike himself. Ryoga steeled himself for the storm of tears that were sure to come. He looked at Akari, anticipating some sort of girlish breakdown.
"The flowers with..." she said incredulously. Ryoga was equally puzzled.
"Why would I care about some flowers and a...." Ryoga was going to say card, but was cut off by a sharp slap from Akari. She was no martial artist, but she was very strong for her level of instruction. Akari kicked him, and he did not fly above the forest as he did when Ranma caught him off guard, but he could feel a bruise starting to form.
"Ow..."
"DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD THAT WAS, RYOGA HIBIKI!?!? YOU LITTLE INCONSIDERATE BITCH! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!"
She threw the bouquet into his face, grinding the flowers into his nose until they lost their sweet scent and grew bitter.
She then ran off into the woods.
Ryoga stood, blinking, for about half a minute.
He sat down again. He needed to comprehend this.
Apparently, Akari had offered to give up pigs for him, gotten mad when he had said he didn't like her, called him a bitch, said something about something being hard, slapped him, and run off.
He had never, ever seen Akari slap someone before. Least of all, him..."Ryoga-sama..." But still, something in the way Akari was to him reminded him of the way he wanted to be to Akane sometimes. Something about the way she was so out of character, something in the way she slapped him.
He noticed the mangled flowers were still tied with the card, and he reached to untie them, until he realized that the card was not a card. It was a packet. The part facing toward him said "For you, Ryoga-sama. I can see you're not happy the way you are, and the way I want you to be. Maybe we can both be happy, with this. From your best friend, Akari Unryuu. P.S. I love you." Curious, he turned over the packet.
OH. Oops.
He figured he should be happy now, now that he had it. He looked at the unfamiliar Chinese characters that Akari had translated into Japanese for him. When he got back to Nerima...When, he assured himself, not if...he wondered whether Akari would act like herself, or this scary new Akari. He liked the old Akari better, he thought. The old Akari had no depth, all she was was herself, the pig-lover and Ryoga-lover. There had been nothing else.
The rain had stopped, when had that happened? He absent-mindedly folded up his umbrella and fixed it onto his backpack.
He could not, no matter how hard he tried, shake the feeling that somewhere he could relate to the words of Akari Unryuu. But...she was a bimbo, and he didn't like her at all, and he was totally confused.
As usual, his thoughts drifted to Akane. But this time was different.
Now, he saw something else when he thought of her. She was not an angel anymore.
He saw pictures of her playing with his emotions. Pictures of her and Ranma, her sneaking glances at Ranma when she thought nobody was looking, unknowingly causing many many big green balls of houkodan. And he could easily imagine her not caring one bit.
Terrible pictures from the Tunnel of Lost Love of her using him to get at Ranma Saotome. Sadness when he realized that she did not love him like she loved Ranma, and would only love him as her pet pig, and that didn't really count.
Suddenly he felt no more guilt about Akari. Everyone had demons. Akari had to learn to face her own.
Where had this all come from? Maybe it was something in the rain. Perhaps it was acid rain, and it had caused mind delusions? Maybe the next day he would wake up with Akane in his head, and maybe next day it would rain, just like it did before, before when he was still Ryoga Hibiki, 24-hour Akane freak.
He needed to sit down, he was dizzy. He attempted to, and almost fell off the rock he had been sitting on before.
He looked at the packet. Might as well get out of this hole of a forest so I can use it properly, he thought.
The realization of Akane weighed down on him like a sackful of sand in his pack. Weren't they all bitches, though? Girls? I hate girls, he thought. Then he realized he was talking like Akane did about boys, and just as he started to think about Ranma he realized who he was thinking about really...Akane...and pushed it all away.
There was more sun on the floor of the forest now. He was probably nearing the end. He hurried despite his impossible weight, and just before he stepped into the light he wondered, why when he thought of Akane being so mean in the Tunnel of Lost Love, why did his thoughts turn to the okonomiyaki chef, Ukyo Kounji, holding his hands near the bathhouse as they were plotting Ranma and Akane's demise, and why was he thinking of how they managed to survive all the ghosts of broken-up couples together? And how on that horrible island, she asked his help to save her...well, _sort_ of...
Those thoughts were all erased, however, when he stepped past the last tree.
He was on a mountain. A very tall mountain engulfed in forest except for about a half mile near the flattish top of the mountain, which was easily the flattest thing within about 20 miles. He noticed the packet in his hand. It would only work once, he knew. He put it in his pack to keep it safe, and decided to look around the mountain. The sun was setting, and this looked like a nice, if unsheltered, place to sleep.
As he walked, he noticed a...pond!?!? On a mountain? It was actually a fairly large pond, as it was a large mountain, it stretched about 1/4 mile. He touched the water ith his fingertip, and it was cold, but not very cold. He quickly stuck his finger in his mouth to turn the cold water hot. He looked out over the water. It had been so long since he'd swum outdoors. He sighed.
"I must be crazy, using it like this." His steps were less weighted by the demons now, but he could feel the mental dirtiness of years of rejecting and being rejected, and as he sprinkled the Instant Spring of Drowned Man Jusenkyo powder into the pond, he tried to smile despite all the tears that he knew wouldn't come.
The powder was a sort of gray-white. Not gray at all, but just a darker white. It swirled in the water as he poured it in, making a sort of whitish cloud. The surface of the water stayed serene.
He changed into the swimming trunks that were (conveniently) in his pack, and then Ryoga Hibiki jumped into the water.
The cold water took over his skin, sending a sharp yet plesant tingling all over him, and he half expected to feel that disgusting shifting feeling of turning pig-like. In normal circumstances, he would have whooped and danced around for pure joy, but now he felt so tired and dirty, even though he had slept long, and had had a hot bath the day before.
There were no waves from his jump, just large ripples mildly disturbing the still calm surface.
The sun reached a point where it reflected directly onto the water, making it no longer look blue, but pink and yellow and purple and red, but still mostly orange, the same orange as the leaf from the forest. He recognized the pink as the same pink of the dress Akane had worn on that "date" with Ranma Nabiki had arranged to keep Ranma out of her hair. He shuddered, but not for cold, and closed his eyes to block out it all, but opened them in a second in spite of himself.
The sun was a vivid orange ball, sinking, making all the trees look a deep, almost evil black in comparison. Akane had been his sun, before. Akane, vivid. Akane, a bright light keeping him from losing himself to darkness. The sun was a wonderful thing.
But trees are not black. Thoughts of Ukyo danced around the edges of his mind, and he fought to keep them away. He lost. As usual.
He took in a breath and dived under, letting the water surround himself. Wash it all off, he told himself. Wash everything off.
You can start over, Ryoga. You can wait a few months, and then go back to Nerima. People will be different then. You can start over. He told himself all these truths that seemed to come from nowhere, but seemed amazingly true despite that.
Bring a lamp. You need no sun, said the deep part of himself that often was kept from shining by the light of Akane.
He realized that this was pointless, like trying to wash off a suntan.
But suntans are only burned skin, suntans are only scars. Suntans come off.
His foot touched a rock causing a horrible-sounding shifting feeling, and the water began to flow out of the pool, his pool.
He looked at the water, the water that had stayed serene and reflected the sunset, the sacred Jusenkyo-powder water. He wanted to catch some in his hands for a second, but then thought better of it. He was sick of anything having to do with Jusenkyo.
He sat in the flowing out water, letting it slide around him on its way down the steep drop below. Magic water, magic not only because of the powder. How long had the pool, *his* pool, been there, he wondered.
Eventually the water was gone, and the sun had turned red, about to set.
He sat in the leftover puddle of water, and noticed that the basin had no sand near the bottom, no erosion, and also that it had not rained a lot recently. He was suddenly frightened by the water, and climbed out of the pool's basin.
Drying himself with a blanket, he quickly dressed and saw a high ledge, at the very peak of the mountain. He quickly set up a tent where he was, as that was shielded from the wind, and rain if there was rain to come, and climbed the mountain to the ledge above.
He was on the top of everything, all of a sudden. There was no sun, but near the west horizon there was a bright red glow that turned from a lilac-pink to orange-yellow to pink-red to an almost-green to many spectres of blue, to a deep, starry black.
Ryoga absent-mindedly undid his bandana and twisted it around in his hand as the color left the sky, leaving nothing but a deep blank, starry sky. He unfolded his bandana carefully, and felt the sticky texture of photos. He could always try to sell them back to Nabiki, except for two drawbacks...they weren't hentai or large size, therefore killing their value in selling to Kuno, and she probably had the negatives anyway. He tore them carefully into squares, and folded them into cranes. They were not very good cranes, as the light was bad, but they would pass.
Like him.
He threw the Akane cranes off the cliff edge, like they were birds, like they were really flying, like their wings would open up and they would disappear into the dark shadows of the trees.. He waited to hear them fall, but it was a windy night and besides, the drop down the cliff was almost fifty feet. He waited a while, staring up into the sky, hoping for some kind of shooting star or something waffy like that. That was too much to hope for, though, he knew...that sort of thing was reserved for Ranma and Akane. He tied his bandana back on.
If he hadn't been in this mood, he would have noticed the absence of sadness pangs at the mention of Ranma and Akane.
The climb down the ledge was slippery from the rain, and steep, but he managed. Lost in his thoughts, he forgot that he hadn't had dinner, and crawled in the tent and slept.
The last thing he thought before he sunk into a sleep beyond dreams, was that of a girl with long brown hair, and a spatula that glowed like the shooting star that had crossed the sky right after he entered the tent.
--
Review.
Dark red, faded in some places, faded to plainer red and even dark pink in some places. Ryoga stopped walking and looked up to stare into the folds of the umbrella shielding him from the cold rain.
How, anyway, could an umbrella fade? Only from years of constant use. Well, that fit the desctiption pretty well. He smiled to himself half-heartedly.
Rain splattered on top of his umbrella. It sounded like a heavy torrent outside of the thick-leaved forest he was in, but inside this forest of large leaves (tropical? No, too cold) there was no wind, therefore the raindrops fell straight down. Ryoga suddenly realized how familiar the sound was. He was shocked at the thought...familiarness? He looked around the forest, and all the trees looked new and undiscovered to him, the only familiar thing was the drops on the umbrella.
"Fitting, isn't it." The voice almost surprised him, until he realized it was his own. He shut his mouth fearfully. He couldn't start talking to himself now, he could not go insane.
The forest was blurred by the rain, but the greenness of the leaves stood out against all the blue-brown-gray of the forest. There were some orange and red spatterings, as it was late August, but green took over here.
It really was beautiful, wasn't it. Even with the rain. Being careful to keep the umbrella above his head, he reached down to the forest floor and carefully, so as not to get too wet, picked up a leaf. It was a vivid orange.
Lost in world and soul, he stared into the veins and wrinkles of the leaf hoping for an answer. His thoughts drifted to Akane and Akari. As he thought of Akane, the depression he was so used to began to slowly engulf his body. He sighed, and still staring into the leaf, was torn between the maddenning desire to curl up into a little ball and shield himself from everything, or the equally compelling desire to look up to the leafy canopy and sigh.
His thoughts were put on hold by a sudden scream.
"RYOGA-SAMA!!!" Damn that Akari Unryuu and her bloated pig. She was running towards him, holding a bouquet of wildflowers tied with a card. The leaf was still in his hand, and he looked down into its bright orangeness, searching for an answer.
He found none. On the spur of a moment he thought of a reply.
Before Akari could start to give him the flowers, he grabbed her wrist.
He could tell from her eyes that she was expecting him to tell her he had missed her and loved her and all that waffy stuff, but he did not hesitate before saying it.
"Akari..."
"Yes, Ryoga-sama?" Anticipation and happiness was in her eyes. She was bordering on Azusa-ish.
"I hate pigs." Well, he'd MEANT to be more nice...
Akari looked a bit shocked, but recovered quickly. "It's okay, Ryoga! I don't mind...I'll give up pigs for you..." Ryoga was speechless for a second. Akari, give up pigs? For him? Then that must mean...that she actually loved him for something besides his cursed form...kami, telling her will hurt her like hell...
"No, Akari. You don't understand. I don't love you. I never did." This was so unlike himself. Ryoga steeled himself for the storm of tears that were sure to come. He looked at Akari, anticipating some sort of girlish breakdown.
"The flowers with..." she said incredulously. Ryoga was equally puzzled.
"Why would I care about some flowers and a...." Ryoga was going to say card, but was cut off by a sharp slap from Akari. She was no martial artist, but she was very strong for her level of instruction. Akari kicked him, and he did not fly above the forest as he did when Ranma caught him off guard, but he could feel a bruise starting to form.
"Ow..."
"DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD THAT WAS, RYOGA HIBIKI!?!? YOU LITTLE INCONSIDERATE BITCH! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!"
She threw the bouquet into his face, grinding the flowers into his nose until they lost their sweet scent and grew bitter.
She then ran off into the woods.
Ryoga stood, blinking, for about half a minute.
He sat down again. He needed to comprehend this.
Apparently, Akari had offered to give up pigs for him, gotten mad when he had said he didn't like her, called him a bitch, said something about something being hard, slapped him, and run off.
He had never, ever seen Akari slap someone before. Least of all, him..."Ryoga-sama..." But still, something in the way Akari was to him reminded him of the way he wanted to be to Akane sometimes. Something about the way she was so out of character, something in the way she slapped him.
He noticed the mangled flowers were still tied with the card, and he reached to untie them, until he realized that the card was not a card. It was a packet. The part facing toward him said "For you, Ryoga-sama. I can see you're not happy the way you are, and the way I want you to be. Maybe we can both be happy, with this. From your best friend, Akari Unryuu. P.S. I love you." Curious, he turned over the packet.
OH. Oops.
He figured he should be happy now, now that he had it. He looked at the unfamiliar Chinese characters that Akari had translated into Japanese for him. When he got back to Nerima...When, he assured himself, not if...he wondered whether Akari would act like herself, or this scary new Akari. He liked the old Akari better, he thought. The old Akari had no depth, all she was was herself, the pig-lover and Ryoga-lover. There had been nothing else.
The rain had stopped, when had that happened? He absent-mindedly folded up his umbrella and fixed it onto his backpack.
He could not, no matter how hard he tried, shake the feeling that somewhere he could relate to the words of Akari Unryuu. But...she was a bimbo, and he didn't like her at all, and he was totally confused.
As usual, his thoughts drifted to Akane. But this time was different.
Now, he saw something else when he thought of her. She was not an angel anymore.
He saw pictures of her playing with his emotions. Pictures of her and Ranma, her sneaking glances at Ranma when she thought nobody was looking, unknowingly causing many many big green balls of houkodan. And he could easily imagine her not caring one bit.
Terrible pictures from the Tunnel of Lost Love of her using him to get at Ranma Saotome. Sadness when he realized that she did not love him like she loved Ranma, and would only love him as her pet pig, and that didn't really count.
Suddenly he felt no more guilt about Akari. Everyone had demons. Akari had to learn to face her own.
Where had this all come from? Maybe it was something in the rain. Perhaps it was acid rain, and it had caused mind delusions? Maybe the next day he would wake up with Akane in his head, and maybe next day it would rain, just like it did before, before when he was still Ryoga Hibiki, 24-hour Akane freak.
He needed to sit down, he was dizzy. He attempted to, and almost fell off the rock he had been sitting on before.
He looked at the packet. Might as well get out of this hole of a forest so I can use it properly, he thought.
The realization of Akane weighed down on him like a sackful of sand in his pack. Weren't they all bitches, though? Girls? I hate girls, he thought. Then he realized he was talking like Akane did about boys, and just as he started to think about Ranma he realized who he was thinking about really...Akane...and pushed it all away.
There was more sun on the floor of the forest now. He was probably nearing the end. He hurried despite his impossible weight, and just before he stepped into the light he wondered, why when he thought of Akane being so mean in the Tunnel of Lost Love, why did his thoughts turn to the okonomiyaki chef, Ukyo Kounji, holding his hands near the bathhouse as they were plotting Ranma and Akane's demise, and why was he thinking of how they managed to survive all the ghosts of broken-up couples together? And how on that horrible island, she asked his help to save her...well, _sort_ of...
Those thoughts were all erased, however, when he stepped past the last tree.
He was on a mountain. A very tall mountain engulfed in forest except for about a half mile near the flattish top of the mountain, which was easily the flattest thing within about 20 miles. He noticed the packet in his hand. It would only work once, he knew. He put it in his pack to keep it safe, and decided to look around the mountain. The sun was setting, and this looked like a nice, if unsheltered, place to sleep.
As he walked, he noticed a...pond!?!? On a mountain? It was actually a fairly large pond, as it was a large mountain, it stretched about 1/4 mile. He touched the water ith his fingertip, and it was cold, but not very cold. He quickly stuck his finger in his mouth to turn the cold water hot. He looked out over the water. It had been so long since he'd swum outdoors. He sighed.
"I must be crazy, using it like this." His steps were less weighted by the demons now, but he could feel the mental dirtiness of years of rejecting and being rejected, and as he sprinkled the Instant Spring of Drowned Man Jusenkyo powder into the pond, he tried to smile despite all the tears that he knew wouldn't come.
The powder was a sort of gray-white. Not gray at all, but just a darker white. It swirled in the water as he poured it in, making a sort of whitish cloud. The surface of the water stayed serene.
He changed into the swimming trunks that were (conveniently) in his pack, and then Ryoga Hibiki jumped into the water.
The cold water took over his skin, sending a sharp yet plesant tingling all over him, and he half expected to feel that disgusting shifting feeling of turning pig-like. In normal circumstances, he would have whooped and danced around for pure joy, but now he felt so tired and dirty, even though he had slept long, and had had a hot bath the day before.
There were no waves from his jump, just large ripples mildly disturbing the still calm surface.
The sun reached a point where it reflected directly onto the water, making it no longer look blue, but pink and yellow and purple and red, but still mostly orange, the same orange as the leaf from the forest. He recognized the pink as the same pink of the dress Akane had worn on that "date" with Ranma Nabiki had arranged to keep Ranma out of her hair. He shuddered, but not for cold, and closed his eyes to block out it all, but opened them in a second in spite of himself.
The sun was a vivid orange ball, sinking, making all the trees look a deep, almost evil black in comparison. Akane had been his sun, before. Akane, vivid. Akane, a bright light keeping him from losing himself to darkness. The sun was a wonderful thing.
But trees are not black. Thoughts of Ukyo danced around the edges of his mind, and he fought to keep them away. He lost. As usual.
He took in a breath and dived under, letting the water surround himself. Wash it all off, he told himself. Wash everything off.
You can start over, Ryoga. You can wait a few months, and then go back to Nerima. People will be different then. You can start over. He told himself all these truths that seemed to come from nowhere, but seemed amazingly true despite that.
Bring a lamp. You need no sun, said the deep part of himself that often was kept from shining by the light of Akane.
He realized that this was pointless, like trying to wash off a suntan.
But suntans are only burned skin, suntans are only scars. Suntans come off.
His foot touched a rock causing a horrible-sounding shifting feeling, and the water began to flow out of the pool, his pool.
He looked at the water, the water that had stayed serene and reflected the sunset, the sacred Jusenkyo-powder water. He wanted to catch some in his hands for a second, but then thought better of it. He was sick of anything having to do with Jusenkyo.
He sat in the flowing out water, letting it slide around him on its way down the steep drop below. Magic water, magic not only because of the powder. How long had the pool, *his* pool, been there, he wondered.
Eventually the water was gone, and the sun had turned red, about to set.
He sat in the leftover puddle of water, and noticed that the basin had no sand near the bottom, no erosion, and also that it had not rained a lot recently. He was suddenly frightened by the water, and climbed out of the pool's basin.
Drying himself with a blanket, he quickly dressed and saw a high ledge, at the very peak of the mountain. He quickly set up a tent where he was, as that was shielded from the wind, and rain if there was rain to come, and climbed the mountain to the ledge above.
He was on the top of everything, all of a sudden. There was no sun, but near the west horizon there was a bright red glow that turned from a lilac-pink to orange-yellow to pink-red to an almost-green to many spectres of blue, to a deep, starry black.
Ryoga absent-mindedly undid his bandana and twisted it around in his hand as the color left the sky, leaving nothing but a deep blank, starry sky. He unfolded his bandana carefully, and felt the sticky texture of photos. He could always try to sell them back to Nabiki, except for two drawbacks...they weren't hentai or large size, therefore killing their value in selling to Kuno, and she probably had the negatives anyway. He tore them carefully into squares, and folded them into cranes. They were not very good cranes, as the light was bad, but they would pass.
Like him.
He threw the Akane cranes off the cliff edge, like they were birds, like they were really flying, like their wings would open up and they would disappear into the dark shadows of the trees.. He waited to hear them fall, but it was a windy night and besides, the drop down the cliff was almost fifty feet. He waited a while, staring up into the sky, hoping for some kind of shooting star or something waffy like that. That was too much to hope for, though, he knew...that sort of thing was reserved for Ranma and Akane. He tied his bandana back on.
If he hadn't been in this mood, he would have noticed the absence of sadness pangs at the mention of Ranma and Akane.
The climb down the ledge was slippery from the rain, and steep, but he managed. Lost in his thoughts, he forgot that he hadn't had dinner, and crawled in the tent and slept.
The last thing he thought before he sunk into a sleep beyond dreams, was that of a girl with long brown hair, and a spatula that glowed like the shooting star that had crossed the sky right after he entered the tent.
--
Review.