Two days later . . .
"Next time we go looking for a new place to stay, remind me to make sure you bring along some umbrellas," Ranma-chan said as she trudged through the streets. Her white-streaked red hair shone in the dim sunlight even as the clouds began to clear up. "Damn, I should have remembered what the weather here is like." She glanced down at the noticeable budge in the front of her shirt. It began to wiggle around so she lightly whacked it.
"Chu!" came an angry cry deep from the lump.
"Don't you dare use that tone on ME boy, you're forgetting whose currently the more powerful of the two right now. Be quiet Chiba, is it my fault you fell into the wrong spring?"
"Chu!"
"Hmmm, well, you're right. You could have fallen into the spring of the Almost Drowned Akane, and then you would have been a violent uncute tomboy whenever hit with cold water. Yeah, I suppose there are worse things than being what you are." They stopped at a street corner and Ranma-chan quickly glanced up and down the street, searching for a car. She didn't see any so she crossed over to the other side.
As she was walking, her nose picked up the sharp scent of noodles. "All right!" She hurried down the street to the food vendor she saw ahead of herself, effortlessly skipping around those few people who lay before her. As she was reaching the place, something black shot out off a side street and she stepped on it.
*splut*
"BWEEE!"
"Pika?"
"Oh damn, it's you."
". . . Bwee?"
Ryouga thought to himself that he should be proud of what he was. Sure, he had been lost for most of his life and the ability to become a little, semi-helpless black piglet really wasn't quite something he could call a blessing. However, he was a martial artist and one of the best at that. Above that, he had a gold visa card with a five thousand dollar spending limit that his parents had given to him when they managed to get together for the first time in nine years . . .
He was lonely though. And lost. And hungry. And human.
*Well, one out of four wasn't so bad,* he considered as he made his way through unfamiliar streets. *You'd think that with all the traveling I had done all my life I would actually be able to recognize a place. Oh well.*
He slowly made his way down the empty streets, wondering where all the people and cars were. As he made his way across the street, a lavender cat streaked by him, her tail in the air and her ears perked with determination. Ryouga stopped and stared after it.
"Now," he began softly, "where have I seen that cat before? I could swear it was Shampoo but . . . Nah. Must be some sort of rare breed." That was when, from the direction the cat ran to, a scream sounded. Ryouga turned around to see a buxom redhead whiz by him with the cat on her head, closely following by a dark-haired mallet-wielding person yelling, "Hold still so I can whack her, Ranma!"
Ryouga blinked. "I could swear that scene should be dead," he said to himself as he looked after the two disappearing people. He scratched his head and then wandered across the street, reasoning it was the mushrooms he had for dinner last night. He was promptly glomped by a young man with dark hair and, unfortunately, glassless.
"Shampoo!" he called. "My love!"
Ryouga pushed away with a look of horror on his face. "Where the hell am I?" he yelled, running away from the blind Amazon. Mousse stared blankly at his surroundings before the crash of Ranma hitting something solid and screaming as she did it caught his interest and he ran after it. Ryouga ran as quickly as he could away from his past, wanting to shake it and make it leave him alone. It was bad enough that he had to stick around with Ranma and that insolent son of his, but this was too much!
It had to be those mushrooms he had for dinner last night. It wasn't as if there was anything around for him to eat to begin with though.
And that was when he hit something solid. It went, "Oof!" and both he and whatever he ran into fell down onto the solid pavement. He opened his eyes to gaze . . . At Ranma-chan. His eyes quickly settled upon the triple-earring set in her left ear. "You!" He leaped to his feet and grabbed the front of her shirt, lifting her off the ground. "What the hell is going on around here?" he demanded.
"Nice to see you too, Ryouga," she replied flippantly without batting an eye at the fact her feet were a good foot off the pavement, her pointed toes wavering slightly in the air.
"Oh no! You aren't getting out of this that easily! What the hell is going on and why do I see dead ghosts of the past running around in circles?"
"Pika!" A yellow head popped out of the front of Ranma-chan's shirt. It glared ominously as Ryouga. "PikaCHU!" A wave of electricity shot from the bulging cheeks of the little mouse-like animal and Ryouga was thrown across the street to crash against a telephone pole. The metal bent backward under his body. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. He dimly heard running steps coming toward him, which slowed to a stop as his side. He peered upward at the busty redhead with the yellow bulge tucked neatly in the front of her shirt.
"Pika!" it declared.
"Yeah, nice to see you too, Chiba," Ryouga groaned before falling backward into a dark blissful state.
It stirred, feeling the chaos far above itself in a world that it longed to exist in. It ruffled its still body, having little more substance than that of the darkness that filled their world, far below the ground. It shuffled side to side, brushing against the others of its kind.
Here, below, in this world where was nothing but darkness, it was hard to believe one could exist. And so lived these poor creatures, day-to-day, hour-by-hour. They lived, yes, but only in the absolute sense. It was easy to think, but also too painful. Trapped forever in this dreary realm, there was nothing to do. They could think. A little. The thought came slowly and in fragments, as if they had to broken into small pieces to be stuffed down a long, almost endless funnel.
And then it happened. In a seemingly random act of coincidences, someone above in the ground hit a spot in the ground just right with just enough anger in the impact from the emotion to arc through the ground to the far reached below in the caverns of the trapped being and touched the mind of one that still had dim memories of having once lived before in the light, with the ability to touch, feel, see and hear all things.
A thought occurred to it.
Weakness.
A long moment passed, and then another thought came.
This weakness could be worn down.
The next thought was rushed and breathless, though still slow by normal standards.
And if the weakness is gone, then we will be free!
The mind of the creature reared up against the anger and the surging hope-so foreign, but welcome-reaching forth above to the weak spot in the ground and tore desperately at it. Slowly, it was worn away and the creature could feel life and emotions beyond.
Akane shivered and skidded to a halt, forgetting about running after Ranma-chan and neko-Shampoo. She glanced over her shoulder at the riverbank that wore the imprint of her hammer. She stared at it for a moment, feeling some emotion beating around inside her, trying to tell her something. Fears of the darkness came back alive and she shivered. She absently took a step away from the spot and from the gnarled old tree that grew over the bank and shadowed the stream. She turned from it and she caught the sight of Ranma-chan disappearing. Knowing that the nekoken was inevitable but wanting to be there for Ranma when she needed her, she quickened her pace to catch up with them.
Behind her, unnoticed to the world, the old tree shuddered and its branches dipped downward. One leaf curled up and turned black before breaking away from the tree and drifting down to the river's pristine water.
"Well, it's been a couple years since the last time I saw you. Tell me, how's it been and how'd you get here?" Ranma asked sweetly as he stirred several large teaspoons of sugar into his tea. Chiba and Ryouga arched their eyebrows at it. All three of them were currently sitting in a somewhat empty little street café, under a bright blue-and-white umbrella. Other booths with similar umbrellas decking them and throwing elegant shade lay on either side as one waiter moved among them, wiping at the tables with a damp cloth.
"Pop, I thought you decided to give up sugar after you were too hyper to fight and made me do it instead."
"Nah, I decided to give up enough sugar to make me unstable."
Ryouga watched the words tossed back and forth between father and son. "So, what happened to bring this on?" he ventured to ask.
"Pop decided to have a little bit of tea with some sugar one day. He was bouncing around like the energy bunny from those foreigner ads, and he couldn't grip anything because it kept coming loose and he dropped it." Chiba gave his father a shame-on-you look as Ranma returned it with a sheepish smile, one hand behind his head. He looked at Ryouga and then shrugged. "It wasn't too hard to dispatch the Orca, he took one look at Pop and had a heart attack on the spot!"
Ranma's mouth popped open in an undignified frown. "No he didn't!"
"Did so! He fell right over, clutching at his chest and choking!"
Ranma looked thoughtful. "You mean he wasn't laughing?"
". . . Whatever . . ." Chiba lifted his tea cup to his lips, his lavender eyes shifting over to carefully watch Ryouga, who, true to his directionally-challenged ability, had mistaken the salt for the sugar and had just found out.
Ranma and Chiba watched as Ryouga coughed, hacked, and made general bad faces to convey his disgust at the taste. He saw how the two other men were scrutinizing him and then began to grasp around for his dignity. When that didn't work, he decided to change the subject. "So, are you two going to explain to me exactly what has been happening lately?"
"Sure, just a moment." Ranma lifted his hand and dropped a little black piglet onto the table.
"Bwee?"
"Ryouga, meet P-chan. P-chan, meet Ryouga."
"Pop, why didn't you use hot water on him when you got it for your and my self."
"For the mere fact I've been waiting to do something like this for years!" Ranma pointed at Ryouga, who had the chance to see himself as others saw him. Ranma leaned over to Chiba and nudged him in the side. "I wonder what he is thinking," he gleefully wondered.
*Damn, I really am cute!*
"Ranma, are you going to wake up any time soon?" Akane grumbled as neko-Ranma-chan continued to snore away in her lap. They had barely reached the bridge when Ranma-chan went into full neko-form. She instantly beat up (slightly) the trailing Mousse, who had grabbed neko-Shampoo at the last moment and blindly ran into the river. The last Akane saw of them was a sulking purple cat sitting on top of a duck with a pair of glasses as they floated down the river. After that, Ranma-chan had curled up in Akane's lap and went to sleep.
Akane didn't mind it too much, preferring the overall peace of the drowsy afternoon and watching the clouds pass by. But she was worried about Ranma-chan because, in her panicked running, the wound in her side had opened and now the side of her shirt was beginning to show fresh patches of red.
Akane had tried to lift the shirt up to look at the bandage, but the sleeping Ranma-chan had wriggled around in such a way that Akane was unable to get at the wound. She sighed with annoyance and quelled the urge to shake Ranma-chan awake before hitting her for being so hard. A cold wind blew across the air, touching Akane's cheek with icy fingers. Akane shivered and rubbed her arms. She frowned when she realized her legs had gone numb.
It pounded against the weak spot, clawing desperately at it. It could feel the emotions of those passing near and it dearly wanted to reach out and experience these feelings. As it worked closer to its goal, a glowing bloodlust to take back what it had been denied for centuries past began to grow. As it did, the bloodlust began to touch and fuel itself in others of its kind.
One by one, they began to join it in tearing the spot down.
"And that is what we figured happen," Ranma finished, taking the opportunity of Ryouga's distracted thinking to swipe his sugar cubes. Chiba frowned at him and he smiled.
"Hey, I never get this kind of sweetness back at home."
"After that Orca nearly died from a heart attack, I don't blame the Amazons for hiding the sugar." Ranma shrugged and decided not to say anything. He reached across the table to nudge Ryouga in the shoulder. The Lost Man looked up expectedly. Ranma folded his arms on the table, resting his chin against the iron-hard muscle.
"I don't know how you got here," he began. "but I think it might be because you get so lost as easily as you do."
"How many times do I have to tell you," Ryouga began in mock-seriousness as he petted a protesting P-chan. "I am directionally-challenged."
"Yeah, yeah. I'll let you live with your excuses."
"Feh. And I suppose the next thing that'll happen is Tarou himself is going to be popping up and making a regular hell out of this mess."
Ranma shrugged. The playfulness in his eyes died out. "Why not?" he asked sadly. "He's the last one who is still alive besides you and myself."
The only sound for a few moments was the squealing protest of P-chan. Chiba frowned suddenly.
"But none of this makes sense," he cut in. "Why now and why here? We haven't seen Ryouga since I fell into the spring of the drowned pikachu and that was more than four years ago. Something is wrong here."
Ranma shrugged. "Yeah, it would be nice if we knew what the date was." He sat up and twisted in his chair, looking for the waiter. "Hey you!" He waved his hand frantically. The water looked up from where he had been wiping a seat off. He straightened up and tossed the cloth over his shoulder.
"Yes?" he inquired as he drew close to Ranma.
"What day is it?"
"Friday."
Chiba snickered behind his hand as Ranma frowned. "Well, that doesn't help us," he grumbled. "Give me the details about it. What day of the month? What year?"
"Er," the waiter gave Ranma an odd glance. "It is July 5th, 1995."
Chiba stopped snickering as he watched the color fade out of Ranma and Ryouga's faces. Ranma jumped out of his seat, sending the chair clattering against the pale blue tiling as he snatched the waiter up by the front of his shirt. "What time is it?" he yelled. The waiter took one look at the wild look that filled Ranma's blue eyes and then went slack.
Ranma stared with disgust at the fainted body and effortlessly tossed it aside. "Where's a clock?" he demanded. He turned to his son. "What time does your watch say?" he demanded, snatching the wrist with the speed of his roasting chestnuts attack. He glanced at the watch and paled even more. "Damn! Ryouga, it's nearly two thirty!"
Chiba jumped to his feet even as Ryouga leaped over the table and hurried after the quickly disappearing men. "What is it?" he called after them even as he hurried to catch up with the disappearing duo, trying to ignore the sharp, persistent burning in his side where a rib was currently missing.
As he saw his father disappear around the corner, Ranma's voice shouted out to him, thick with emotion. "Today is Black Friday!" Chiba stumbled in shock and pain. When he had recovered himself, both Ryouga and Ranma were gone.
"Bwee?" Chiba tossed a random glance over his shoulder to see a puzzled-looking P-chan. He stepped forward slowly, and then dived to make a wild grab at the black piglet as he decided maybe it was safer to run and then fight later. He caught the back leg and ignored the beating hoof against his wrist. He hugged an arm around the throbbing pain in his side.
"Hush, I'm only going to use you as a decoy should I need you. Orcas delight in the taste of pork more than anything else."
"BWEE?!"
Light! After so long! Light! The creatures poured of out of their prison and arched towards what had been denied to them for the past years. Awkwardly, they stumbled around in an attempt to take in all their surroundings.
It reached out to touch the old tree, even as it rotted and its leaves withered up and died-and then howled in agony when it realized it could not longer touch anything. Its anguish echoed and settled itself within the souls of the others. Mirrored and multiplied, the anguish grew in leaps and bounds until the pain lashed out for others. In a blind rush, it reached out to share its pain with anything. It found frustration and annoyance tied in a neat little ball within her. Recognizing the creature as being human, it reached out to make her hurt as much as it did.
"NO!" Ranma's hand arched upward and flashed as a dragon-steel blade appeared in his hand. His wide blue eyes narrowed as angry tears shone bright within their depths. As if in slow motion, Akane, sitting on the bank of the river with Ranma-chan in her lap turned to see the person she has mistaken as Ranma earlier, dressed in a sleeveless blue jumped, rushing towards her with a sword and a wild light in his eyes.
Reacting accordingly, Akane pushed the sleeping Ranma-chan out of her lap and leaped out of the way. As she moved, her skirt flared out beside her. Something hissed through the air and landed where she had been sitting, the edge of her skirt shredding into little more than dust and the ground ripping and sinking. Ranma-chan, free of her nap spot, rolled over the bank into the river. Akane dimly heard a splash as she tucked her body and then jumped to her feet, noticing a shimmering over the spot where she had been.
At that moment, the Ranma-look-alike descended upon the spot, slashing at the shimmering. His sword flashed in the sunlight as crisscrossed red lines began to appear on the shimmering. It molded and leapt at him. His legs stumbled backwards even as his arm continued to guide the sword back and forth, his lips curling upwards in an open-mouthed scowl.
Ranma-chan popped out of the river, water dripping from her flattened bangs. Her eyes widened as she saw the other Ranma and then they grew wider as her gaze traveled through the distance. She whirled around to face Akane, spotting the shimmering rushing towards her. "Akane!" she screamed, launching herself upward, her feet skidding across the wet grass as she sprinted towards the other girl.
"No!" The other Ranma whirled around from what he had been slashing at and his form disappeared and then reappeared as he scooped Akane up. The ground where she had been sitting on exploded into dust. His sword flashed in his hand as he swiped long with it, leaving slight afterimages in its passing. Blood blasted in the air against the shimmering and then disappeared as a slight dust formed and floated down to the ground.
It hurt.
It really hurt.
Why should it feel this pain and not feel the pleasure of touching? HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? The rage burning within it burst and its thoughts came clear and bright.
Why should its form bleed? Who was this person who dared to stop it and then began to kill of its kind!
Retreat! It sent up a call among its kind and descended into the ground, deliberately sinking past the rocky soils into the far depths. Behind it, many of the others followed the orders, but a few did not.
"Damn it all! Where's help when I need it?" the Ranma-lookalike demanded as his blade skittered across the figures that lay between him.
"Right on it!" a voice called and an older-looking Ryouga came from nowhere and took his place beside the Ranma-lookalike, clumsily slashing at the shimmering. It easily dodged his blade.
"And just when was the last time you tried to fight with a sword?"
"About four years ago."
"And that is supposed to be comforting?"
"I never said it was."
Ranma-chan reached the spot where Akane was sitting, stunned at being dropped on her backend in favor for some more fighting. "Let's get out of here," she said between gritted teeth, pulling at Akane's arm.
"Wait, there is something about them that I must find out," she said, jerking her arm out of Ranma's grip. The memory of being possessed, of descending into the darker levels of his mind and suffering through the neko-ken training resurfaced in Ranma-chan's mind. She grabbed Akane's arm again.
"Let's go," she snapped in a cold voice. "They are the ones that made me do what I did."
"Them? But they look like you and Ryouga and I've talked to the Ranma person before! He's really nice!"
"Not them, but those things they are fighting."
"I'm getting tired!" the other Ranma wheezed.
"Maybe old age is catching up with you?" Ryouga wondered as he ducked an onslaught of shimmering.
"Maybe. We're both pushing past sixty."
"It's hard to imagine that we'd ever live that long."
"Yeah, isn't it?"
"BWEEE!! BEWEEE!!"
Heads turned at the sound. Ancient hunger for succulent pig meat rose and the shimmering jumped away from the Ryouga and Ranma-look-alikes even as a little black piglet wearing a yellow and black-spotted bandana was tossed into the fray.
"P-CHAN!!" Akane screeched as she watched her beloved pet try to dodge the shimmering figures. Ranma-chan groaned.
"Oh no! Not you!"
"Better run, P-chan!" Chiba called from where he was standing on the street overlooking the river.
"Hey!" The other Ranma brightened up. He turned and looked at Ryouga with shining eyes. "Why didn't we think of that?" Ryouga conveniently tripped onto his face in shock as the shimmering brushed past his hair. Black and gray strands of hair drifted to the ground.
"Oh no you don't!"
Akane jerked herself free from Ranma-chan's grasp, throwing her back into the water, and launched herself forward, aiming for the little black streak that ducked and avoided the shimmering. P-chan tripped over something and went still. She screamed when she saw the shimmering strike out at him.
The Ranma-look-alike's head swiveled as if on a hinge. "AKANE!" The scream threw off the shimmering that aimed itself at Akane at the last moment. Instead of striking her dead center in the chest, it swerved and skimmed across her shoulder. The shirt ripped open upon contact. Blood splattered as the skin on her shoulder parted neatly. "AKANE!" The look-alike launched himself across the distance that lay between them, his sword moving like quicksilver, slicing anything that got into his way.
Akane dropped to her knees, stunned at what had happened. Ranma-lookalike snatched her up as another shimmering jumped at her. His sword came up and struck the shimmering in the center. It ripped through the shimmering and a red-black liquid splattered out, running down the sword in rivulets. The shimmering turned black and faded as the other shimmerings fled downward into the ground. Ranma-lookalike dropped the sword as the liquid poured down the blade, onto the handle to barely touch the skin on his hand. It smoked and red welts arose at the touch.
The older Ryouga reached their side and pulled Akane's shirt back. The wound was bleeding freely, the edges silver with a frost-like substance.
"Quick!" Ranma-lookalike stood up with Akane in his arms. He sprinted suddenly down the street. "We have to find Cologne!"
"The old goul?" Ranma-chan climbed her way out of the water. "Hey!" She started forward but was tripped by P-chan. "You stupid pig!" Her hand shot out to grab the animal and she stuffed him down the front of her shirt. Ryouga, true to his nature, promptly blacked out from a massive nosebleed.
They did not see the black figure behind them, frantically waving his hands, jumping up and down, and yelling "HEY! What about me?" Chiba made a face from where he currently was. His hand subconsciously came up to gently touch his aching ribs. "I don't know where Cologne is!" he grumbled beneath his breath before turning away to make his way around the river.
Cologne was sitting inside her empty restaurant, having a very nice cup of tea that soothed her sore bones and brightened her day up. That was when the front door was nearly ripped off its hinges and Ranma-with Akane, damn her hide-burst through. Cologne found herself in an awkward position when Akane was thrust before her.
"Help her!" Ranma pleaded, his eyes wide with terror. "Orca poison!"
"Orca!" This was more surprising; the ancient enemy of the Amazon had been buried within the earth many centuries ago. That Ranma should even know the name of the feared demon was a shock in itself. Cologne's eyes traveled over their faces, and then realization hit her. Akane was indeed poisoned; her eyes held the vacant look that a victim was told to have, as well as the wound on her shoulder being tinged with silver. And this person was not Ranma. At least, not the Ranma she knew. This Ranma was much older, and much more battle-hardened.
And familiar with the poison. She found herself staring at Akane even as Ranma continued to babble. "I don't have the supplies needed for the cure, but you do! You must, you said you did!" Not knowing what he meant in his last sentence, Cologne silently hopped from the table into her kitchen, glad for once that her great-granddaughter was on a delivery and would not be in the way.
She rummaged through her supplies, searching for the herbs needed to create a poultice that would draw the poison from the wound and awake Akane from her dreaming-sleeping-awaking mood. The ingredients were quite common, thankfully, otherwise there would be no way for her to do anything about it. She heard her door slam open and then shut. Hoping they were customers that would go away in a few moments, she set to placing a pot full of water onto the stove. When the footsteps hurried into her kitchen, she looked up to see Ryouga-older than what she was accustomed to-and the real Ranma.
"Good day, son-in-law," she said as she turned back to mixing ingredients. Not taking it as a barb as he usually did, Ranma-chan stayed silent. Her eyes settled upon the prone figure that lay across the kitchen table. The other Ranma turned to Ryouga.
"They dispersed and went underground. Normally, they would recooperate and come back tomorrow, but that was then and this is now. We don't know what they are like or what they are going to do this early and this inexperienced."
Ryouga nodded his head in agreement. "Right." As one, they turned and walked towards the door. The real Ranma started towards them.
"Stay here!" snapped the other Ranma without looking around.
"Wait!" Cologne hopped from her stool before the stove and one towards them. "What are you two going to do?"
The Ranma smiled grimly. It wasn't a comforting sight. "We're going Orca hunting. As soon as we know that the Orcas will stay underground for the time being and will do the ususal thing-which is come up the next morning-we will be back." Once more, they walked towards the door. As Ryouga opened it and walked through, Ranma grabbed the side of the door and turned back to look at them. "I will be back," he promised again. "Stay here, do not venture outwards. If you do and the Orcas have come back . . ." He did not finish his sentence, but turned away from them with shining eyes.
Cologne shrugged her shoulders and went back to making her poultice. Ranma was silent for a time.
But only for a time."
"What's wrong with Akane?"
"She'll be alright just as soon as I give her the antidote to her problem."
Another pause, and then: "Which is?"
"An ancient remedy." Cologne left it at that. Several minutes passed until the water was boiling and she had added the necessary ingredients. The water became thick and the air was filled with the many scents of herbs, rosemary being the prominent of them all. Cologne bade them to place Akane on one of the kitchen table and then poured the poultice directly onto the wound. The silver edges turned white, then pink, and finally faded.
Cologne made herself another cup of tea when she found that hers had become cold, and then set to waiting. By the time sunset was drawing near, Mousse and Shampoo had both come and gone twice out on deliveries at different intervals They had, of course, demanded hotly to know why Akane (or Ranma) were doing there, and why was Akane sprawled across the table?
Cologne merely looked at them, a silent warning as to what would happen if they questioned her again. Mousse and Shampoo grumped, frowned, pouted (and hugged Ranma, in Shampoo's case), and then went back to their duties.
By the time the other Ranma and Ryouga came back, both were still gone. They seated themselves at the table and Cologne wordlessly gave them teas meant to give their tired bodies extra boosts of energy. By that time, Akane had woken up. She began to ask what happened and what was currently going on, but the Ranma-lookalike waved her to silence.
She sat down between the two Ranmas who silently regarded one another with hostility, as if the one was an intruder in the other's territory.
Ryouga, not Cologne, was the one who spoke. "This is unnerving," he said softly. When the Ranma-who-was-not-Ranma looked up to see what Ryouga was talking about, the other man smiled, showing his characteristic fangs. "Now you know what it feels like, don't you Ranma?"
Ranma, who was still a girl, was the next person who spoke. "You're me. But you aren't me."
The Ranma looked thoughtful. "Yeah. I guess that just about sums it up."
They fell silent once more. Cologne felt it was her turn to speak. "So what do you know of the Orcas, how did you come to find out, and something I'm sure we others all want to know: who are you?"
Ranma looked thoughtful and distant. "So many questions," he said softly, "yet there is only one way to answer them. I believe that, rather than tell the story many times over, I would do so only once, but everyone must be present. Well, Akane's family, my father, you, Shampoo and Mousse. No exception otherwise."
And that moment, the fainted P-chan came awake. He instantly leapt at the first Ranma he saw (the male one) and was immediately flattened against the table with one absent-minded whack from Ranma. Ryouga smacked him across the head.
"Hey! That generally hurts, you know!"
"I never thought the day would come." Chiba frowned and thoughtfully crossed his arms. "And now I know exactly how uncle Ryouga feels: Where in the hell am I now?"
After some protest, loud demands for explanations, and finally, streams of tears, everyone the Ranma person (whom had taken to being called Elder Ranma after he told Shampoo he was sixty-three years old) called for had arrived. Elder Ranma and Elder Ryouga (who also said he was sixty-three) remained quiet and unmoving through it all.
A glazed look came over Elder Ranma's eyes as he watched Akane sitting in her chair, snuggling P-chan close to her chest.
"Okay Elder Ranma, tell us now," Cologne said as she and the others poured themselves cups of teas and watched both Elders closely. Elder Ranma opened his mouth to say something and that was when the door to the restaurant swung open.
"Can't you read the sign?" Cologne demanded, glancing over. "We're closed."
The figure at the door glared coldly at her. Elder Ranma swung around in his seat and gave the person a gentle smile. "Come here," he said fondly, opening his arms wide. The person limped forward and finally collapsed on top of Elder Ranma. "Everyone, I'd like you to meet my son, Chiba." Chiba slowly slid from his father's lap onto the floor at his feet.
"Son . . ." Genma leaned over the table to stare at the ragged figure, who glared back at him. "Is he yours and Akane?" he wondered eagerly. Soun jumped up and planted himself over Genma, pushing the larger man into the table.
"He has Akane's eyes!" he cried, tears flowing from his eyes. Nabiki, Ranma, Shampoo, and P-chan jumped in with their own questions.
Akane glared at Chiba, who gladly returned it with a look as equally cold and angry. *My eyes aren't that color,* she thought to herself, more surprised than angry.
Elder Ranma held his hands up as a signal for silence, but was ignored.
Elder Ryouga banged the table with a fist. The table cracked and then collapsed on the floor.
"Thanks." Chiba slid from his father's lap onto the floor. He pulled his legs beneath himself and pressed his body against Elder Ranma's legs. He surveyed the others across the rubble. Cologne knocked Elder Ryouga across the head with her walking stick.
"Don't do that again," she warned him. Elder Ryouga rubbed his head and nodded empathetically.
Elder Ranma crossed his arms before him and composed his facial expression into neutral. "I called you all here for an explanation of my past, what I am doing here, what I am, and what just happened. Why, you may wonder? Be quiet as I tell my tale; any interruptions will be ignored and I will answer any and all questions after I'm done."