Part Eleven: Elder Sword
Chapter One: First Sword
Ranma touched down lightly in the enclosure of the walls of his
home with his trembling burden still gripped firmly, yet gently, within
his grasp. He glanced down at Akane's face, taking in her clenched shut
eyes and trembling body and the way her arms locked about his neck with
his pained sapphire eyes. When a tear traced its way down a cheek which
still bore faint marks despite their miraculous healing, Ranma could
barely hold back the furious growl that threatened to tear its way past
his clenched teeth.
Mars landed with a slight thump on the ground behind them just
moments later. She was winded and tired after her long chase after him,
but she tried to hold that back. However, when she took a step forward to
lay a comforting hand upon Ranma's shoulder, he suddenly spun about with
a look of such fury written upon his face that she couldn't help but
flinch bodily backwards in fear.
"Don't touch me." He snarled, his voice emerging from deep in
his chest and rumbling outwards in a bass growl. "Don't touch Akane. In
fact, why don't you just get your backstabbing self out of here before I
do something that I MIGHT regret later."
Akane's eyes fluttered open at the raw, unmitigated fury in his
voice. A hand roughened from years spent sending cinder blocks to their
Maker gently brushed against his cheek and turned his gaze from where
Mars cowered to where Akane yet still laid in his arms. Her body still
trembled with the memory of what had happened to her that night, and yet
her dark eyes that hid untold depths of pain within them pleaded with him
in their own unique way.
"Ranma." She whispered, the name sliding easily off of her tongue
as it always had whether in anger or in worry despite what had been done
by the vicious beast Raetheon. "Don't."
And with that one particular word from that one particular person
on that one particular morning, Ranma stopped. For Akane on that morning,
he stopped. How could he do anything less for one who had suffered as she
had that night? How could anyone as chivalrous as he possibly do anything
else?
And so, the Pretty Sailor-suited Soldier Sailormars, otherwise
known as the beauteous young temple maiden Hino Rei, was not torn apart
piece by piece at the hands of a righteously furious young man, that she
had earlier so unwarrantedly assaulted, that night. All because the man
in question found himself incapable of deliberately performing some action
which would cause distress to the woman in his arms.
"I'll deal with you later." Ranma snarled as Akane's eyes fell
shut again, his voice much more sullen than it had been earlier. "Right
now, Akane's well being is far more important to me than beating the hell
out of someone like you."
With that, he strode purposefully into the house before him.
***********
The sullen light of late evening after the night-long battle against
Raetheon the Destroyer, which ended rather inconclusively at the dawning of
a new day, found Ranma sitting up through the ever thickening dusk in
dedicated vigil to one Tendo Akane, despite his burgeoning exhaustion. Rei
hid herself in the background, a scurrying figure trying with desperation
to find herself exit from the unpleasant situation she had inadvertently
placed herself within by following Ranma away from the battlefield. Akane
curled tight about herself in a fetal ball on the red bedspread of Ranma's
bunk.
The setting was a relatively spacious room in the Hino Residence
whose absence of decoration fair screamed the name of the primary
resident. The spartan room bore little furniture to match its lack of
ornamentation. The bed upon which Akane laid was pushed tight against
the far wall from the doorway. On the wall to the immediate left of the
door, which lead to the hallway through its sliding panels, their stood
a simple wooden clothespress and the window which stood above it and allowed
some sparse particles of light admittance into the somber room. The wall
across from it was bare as was the wall which fronted the hall, since Ranma
had stored his pack in the hollow under his bed.
Ranma gazed at Akane's torturous expression through half-lidded
eyes with the same spaced-out quality as found in people who force
themselves to continue despite the fact that they are obviously exhausted.
The heavy lids slowly drooped lower and lower over the clear sapphire eyes
that gazed up the girl who had captured his hand in an, at times painful,
grip. Behind them, Rei hoped and prayed for Ranma to fall into the clutches
of the Lord of Dreams, because she honestly believed that that was the only
way for her to make good her escape.
But her hopes and prayers were in vain, for at the very moment
which Ranma's eyes slid completely closed and she began inching towards
the door, Akane finally fell into a more peaceful slumber and her hand
gently loosed Ranma's. The cessation of pressure upon his hand awoke the
teenaged combatant from the fitful slumber he had been dropping into. With
a sigh, he pushed himself up off of the ground and gently arranged Akane's
hand beside her on the bed.
As his back was turned, Rei made an attempt for the door. But at
that moment, Ranma turned to her. She found herself ensnared by the
unfathomable depths of his eyes the deep stormy-gray of the waters of a sea
grasped in the throws of a hurricane.
Then the moment was over, and he strode silently past her into the
hall. With that single look he had instructed her to follow him, and she
obediently followed along.
She trailed after him down the stairs to the main hall, back into
the kitchen pantry, down into the cellar and then further. The entire trek
to the library was made in silence broken only by the sound of their
footsteps upon the stone. Ranma's stride was grimly purposeful, yet Rei's
was filled with hesitation and nervousness.
***********
When they finally arrived in the grim silence of the cavernous
athenaeum, Ranma paced the length of the room in reticence to the far
end of the long, highly polished table, trailing his slender fingers
lightly along the glistening surface as he walked. Once he reached the
end, and the throne-like chair which presided over the room from there,
he turned and sat within the depths of the place of honor. Steepling his
hands before him at first, he soon placed them fast upon the marbled stone
and gazed upon them with the rapt fixedness of a man who did not know
exactly where to begin.
Rei, for her part, waited nervously near the door, fidgeting
helplessly with the hem of her yellow sweater. She shuffled her feet
softly on the macadamized parterre, though not enough to disturb Ranma's
reverie. Her violet eyes gazed apprehensively down the length of the room
to rest upon Ranma's reposed figure. After some time, he did look up and
direct his attention upon her.
"Why, Rei?" he asked, his normally overwhelmingly confident voice
hushed to almost a bare whisper, confidence nearly overwhelmed by resignation
and exhaustion.
The murmured question cracked slightly at the end. A slight upward
pitch, almost undetectable to any who didn't know him, but Rei noticed it.
With two words, he had managed to convey the pain of betrayal held within
his heart because of what she had done. The next few words didn't help her
feel better at all.
"What the hell possessed you to try and turn me into a living
campfire, Rei? I thought we were supposed to be friends! We're cousins,
Goddammit!" His furious voice trailed off into silence, leaving an opening
clear as day for her to pick up with an explanation of her actions towards
him.
She cast desperately about for something, anything, that could
possibly save her from having to face that accusing gaze which he had
leveled upon her. What she found was the bookcase that lined the walls
of the enclosure. Moving slowly, trying hard to make the move look casual
and unconcerned, she wandered over to the case and gently drifted her
fingertips along the wooden cases of the ancient scroll containers and
over leather bindings stiff with age. She allowed her eyes to pour over
the graceful characters that outlined the contents hidden behind the
age-old covers.
She was a long time in answering, but when she did finally give
tongue to her thoughts, the words did not come with her typical grace or
charm. A heavy, gilt-edge tome was shifted from its resting place and into
her hands before she spoke. Its delicate hand-lettered pages still crisp,
despite the yellowing of the parchment the characters were inscribed upon.
She poured over the meandering rivers of text for some minutes before she
spoke.
"I don't know." She paused for a second, collecting her thoughts
for a second attempt. "I mean, it's difficult to explain."
"Difficult to explain?! You sure as hell didn't seem to have any
difficulties setting me ON FIRE!" Ranma raged, causing her to flinch away.
"I think..." she stumbled over her words, trying to find the right
ones, the one's that would keep his incandescent fury from falling upon her
unprotected soul. "I think maybe it was because... You remember, don't
you? The past? Back on the Moon?" she asked, her need to know tinting her
tone brilliant.
"Some. Bits and pieces. A name. Friends. What the hell does THAT
got to do with anything?!" was his answer. "I don't see what some stupid
prick from Mars who gets off talking to FIRE has to do with either me or
the question at hand!"
Rei deliberately ignored the prick comment with some effort, it
had struck a bit close to home in her mind. "I - I've been having memories
too. When I'm sleeping. In my dreams, I see the past. The Moon. The girls.
It's all so real, that I know, I hope, it's not just a fantasy. And in those
dreams, I've seen you. Not like you are now. But how you were. Back then.
When you were my brother and you took care of me.
"I wanted to have that again. I wanted that closeness. That love."
She sighed, closing the book in her hands gently and replacing it upon the
shelf. For once, Ranma bided his time, letting her decide whether or not
she was going to manage to explain herself or just dig her grave that much
deeper. "I've never been really close to anyone before. What with Mother
dying when I was so young that I don't even remember her as anything but
a name on a stone. And Father always away on his trips. Of course, there's
always Grandpa, and I love him, really I do. But it's just not the same.
Nothing's the same as it could have been. As it was."
"At least you have a father instead of some prick like pop. My
mom's alive and all, but I spent most of my life being no where near her. I
spent most of my life going through HELL. Akane's not been drug all over
the place but her life ain't much better than mine. Don't tell me OR her
about how bad YOUR lot's been." Ranma interjected softly. "You've never
seen hell until you've even lived a PORTION of our lives."
"In my dreams, you were more than just my brother, Ranma." Rei
continued as if he had never spoken. She had to, or she knew she would
never finish. "You were my best friend. You were always there for me. No
matter what. You never gave up on me. Never decided I wasn't worth the
effort. You took my side. You fought for me. Oh, you fought for all the
girls, but you fought for me first. That was my first memory from back
then. The sounds of battle followed by your battered and bloody face
looking down at me in my cradle with a simple smile."
"I would have done that anyways. You just weren't willing to
let me." Ranma muttered.
"Now, you're my distant, and somewhat estranged cousin with barely
any memory of any family beyond a exceedingly nasty SOB who calls himself
your father. You don't know me any better than you know any of the other
girls." She turned from the books and made her way to the table where she
seated herself at one of the simple chairs there. Slouched over her hands
on the cool stone of the tabletop, the long strands of her raven black hair
draped down and effectively concealed her face from Ranma's view. "I'm a
fool to think that things would change, but I had to try. I needed to know
if it could be possible."
"Hell! You couldn't believe that making me super crispy could
possibly make things BETTER could you?!" Ranma was, in a word, stunned. But
Rei pretty much ignored him again.
"I've never had any real friends before. Sure, there's always the
girls, and I suppose some of those harpies from T*A* Academy could possibly
be considered my friends. But for most of my life, the only life I knew was
the shrine. The only friends I had were Phobos and Demios. Two crows. I
talked to them a lot, I was so lonely.
"Thus I was seen as the 'crazy temple girl who talks to crows'. Not
exactly the best board to hang if your in the market for a friend, you
know? Then I got into T*A* thanks to Father, and those girls are majorly
into seeing what they can get people to do. They're manipulative little
bitches. All they do is use each other and then spit them out again when
they're all done. And I got sucked right in to that little culture.
"It caused me to put up walls around my self. I didn't want to left
anyone in. Because if they got close enough to make me care, they were close
enough to hurt me. Those walls were very firmly in place when Usagi showed
up on my steps for the first time. I didn't know any other way to treat ..
friends. So, I left those walls in place for a long time, until I finally
figured out that they didn't want to hurt me. That they weren't going to
abandon me.
"By that time though, the damage was already done. I was the Ice
Maiden. Not even my fires could thaw out the chill on my heart. Not that
they didn't try. At first, anyways. After a while, they just sort of took
me at face value and stopped trying for any real depth in our friendship.
Which isn't to say no depth ever developed. Because it did. It couldn't be
helped. Not with everything we went through together. But its not as deep
as it could have been. If I just could have been a little more trusting,
then maybe... but that doesn't matter.
"What matters is that I did something that was totally and completely
horrid to you, just for my own selfish reasons. You're a good man, Ranma.
And you were beginning to be a good friend of mine, all on your own
reconnaissance. But I really screwed that up in a properly royal fashion,
didn't I? Blessed Fires, I'm just as bad as any of those little two-time,
scamming bitches back at T*A* Academy, aren't I? I just can't let a good
thing be."
Ranma waited. He finally realized that the conversation was going
somewhere.
"What it all comes down to though, is that I'm sorry. For once in
my life, I'm really and truly sorry about what I've done. And I know, beyond
any hope of a sliver of a shadow of a doubt, I know that there is no way
that I have any reason to believe that you would ever, could ever, forgive
me for what I did. But I still must apologize for those actions. I'll
understand completely if you never want to see me again. Anything you ask,
I'll do. Maybe it's just a vain attempt to pay back the damage I caused
but..."
Finally, for the first time since beginning to speak, she looked
up and met his steady gaze with her reddened violet eyes brimming with
tears. "I just wanted someone to love me like I remembered you did."
"That sounds like Akane's typical line of reasoning." He mused,
turning those stormy eyes of his back to the study of his callused hands.
"You want someone to care, so you do something that will invariably end
up with that person getting the living hell beat out of them, possibly
on a regular basis. Geez. What am I? Flypaper for violent people?!"
With that last outburst, he shoved himself up out of his chair.
Pacing around to stand across from her, he leaned back upon the table
and ran one hand through his thick hair only to stop when he came to his
unnaturally long braid. Pulling a good portion of that braid up over his
shoulder, he pondered it for a time. After a while of trying to figure out
his hair, he gave it up as pointless and looked back over his shoulder at
Rei.
"I really don't have a clue what I'm going to do with this mess.
But, I promised Mom that I wouldn't check out before the year is up, so
it looks like I got a couple more months around these parts before I head
back to Nerima." He gestured upwards with his eyebrows, "And then there's
Akane. I don't see how I can force her to go back to Nerima, so I'm afraid
I'll have to keep her here. Not HERE here!" he hurriedly added, as if
afraid that Rei would get the wrong idea, possibly with good cause. "But
in Juuban. Somewhere."
He sighed and pushed himself up off of the table. "Right now, I'm
exhausted, so I'm going to go up and check on Akane then check into my
sleeping roll. You can head home, or stay in the guest room. Whatever
you want to do. At this point, I don't care if you turn into a purple
gerbil."
Then he wearily plodded out of the room and back the long trek
to the main house. Behind him, he left Rei slowly regaining her composure.
***********
Ranma paused at the washroom for a glass of cold water before he
went on into the room he would be sharing with Akane for the night. Looking
into the mirror at his masculine features with the glass of water in his
hands, he smirked wryly at his reflection. The irony didn't surpass him for
once. He thought about what he had scene during that strange time after he
changed when he wasn't in control.
He remembered looking down into a still pool of steaming water and,
instead of seeing his feminine reflection, he saw himself as a man. And he
had control over that reflection. Seeing through the reflection's eyes, he
watched as his girl-type had begun to step into the crystal clear depths,
somehow knowing what would happen if she did.
A sudden fear had gripped his mind and he struggled against the
bonds that held his reflection still in the pool. He would have sighed with
relief if he could when she stopped. They had spoken through kanji traced
on the surface and somehow come to an understanding.
Reflecting upon the fact that it would no longer be himself in
control when he changed form, he slowly poured the glass over his head.
Ranko smiled back at the mirror before she strode out of the room
with a comfortable swagger. It was time to see her friend, reborn after so
long.
***********
Akane was awake when Ranko walked into the room. Her puzzled
features when Akane looked at the other girl prompted a response.
"Ranma didn't want you to feel uncomfortable with him in the room,
so he sent me instead." Ranko offered shyly.
"B-but aren't you Ranma?" Akane was majorly confused by this point.
"Actually, not really. I mean, this is his body and all, but
something happened while he.. we.. were missing. And I got to come out. My
name is Ranko." She smiled at Akane. "And long ago, your Ranma was my
Shima. He was my first and foremost friend, nothing more. I loved him
dearly, but I loved you as well. You were my first friend after Shima." She
reached out and grasped the shocked Akane's hands in her own as she sat down
on the bed beside her. "And once I learned from Ranma what had happened to
you, I knew that I had to be there for you. I won't leave you alone,
Akane. I promise."
Akane smiled through the tears that threatened to spill down her
face. Through all that had happened to her, she was discovering the truth
to having real friends. And she did remember Ranko, dimly, from her dreams.
It was good to have friends like the small red-head. Comforting. And
comfort was what Akane needed right then.
She suddenly broke into sobs as the full magnitude of what had
happened broke upon her. Ranko merely smiled sadly and drew the sobbing
girl into her embrace. For she truly had meant what she said, and there
was nothing that would change that. Especially not now, that they were
all the same age.
***********
A few days layer with a bone-deep weariness still plaguing his
steps, Ranma made his way slowly back the long journey from school and
up the stairs to the futon still rolled up in the corner of his room. Once
there, he paused a moment to briefly brush a stray strand of hair from
Akane's still slumbering features. She hadn't managed a full nights sleep
in days, and he wasn't willing to make her move somewhere else until she
finally managed to garner a whole night of rest.
He crossed to the room and began the slow task of unrolling the
narrow pad of the futon that had been his bed for the past few nights, as
his normal resting place was still engaged by his engaged.
"Ranma?" the sleepy voiced murmur disrupted him from his random
reverie.
He turned sharply towards Akane with the startled alertness of a
gazelle. "Akane? You're awake." He mumbled, not quite awake enough to
state the unobivious, though he was becoming more aware by the moment.
"Ranma?" she whispered once more, though it sounded almost like a
whimper.
"What?" was Ranma's somewhat less than brilliant reply.
"Ranma, I don't.." she trailed off, as if she wasn't quite certain
of what words to use next.
"Want me in here with you." Ranma finished for her, as he began
gathering up his things. "That's okay. You've been through a lot, I guess.
Seeing me probably doesn't help anything. I'll just go sleep in the guest
room - no, wait, Rei might be there again."
"Ranma." Akane attempted to interrupt his rapidly becoming
monologue, but failed rather miserably.
"I guess I can sleep in the living room. Or maybe the dining
room..."
"Ranma!" The tone was much firmer and her face was becoming more
than slightly flushed.
Ranma spun around, dropping everything he had previously gathered
in the process. "What?" he yelped.
"That's not what I meant." She sighed. "I-I don't mind if you
sleep in here tonight." The concession was little more than a whisper,
but it echoed in the spartan room.
Ranma coloured slightly, but he somehow managed to refrain from
making any comments.
"What I meant..." she paused, collecting her thoughts. "What I
meant was that I don't want... this..." she waved about the room with a
hand that trembled slightly in the effort, though she wasn't hurt
physically. "to affect..." another pause, this one slightly longer as she
slowly raised her eyes to meet his. "us..." her cheeks coloured slightly
as she mumbled the last word, letting her eyes drop to the floor as she
did.
Ranma stood there in silence for a moment before speaking. "What
do you mean by us?" he asked, slowly.
Her eyes met his again, she looked confused. "I meant us. You
and me. Our - our relationship."
"And what kind of relationship is that, Akane?" he knew that he
was being rather cold, but he refused to allow any warmth to colour his
responses. This had all the earmarks of being an important break-through
in how they dealt with each other, and he wasn't going to ruin that.
"What do you mean, Ranma? I-I thought we were starting to get
close." Her voice was pained, her words anguished, but he didn't relent.
"Close? You can't possibly think that we're getting close. Not
when you still use me as your punching bag every time you get mad about
something and I'm near by. It hurts when you hit me, Akane. It really
does." She knew that it wasn't easy for him to admit that she managed
to hurt him, but he did it.
"But... you can always dodge! You dodge everything I throw at you
in training, why don't you dodge when I'm- I'm angry?" she had some
difficulty getting out the confession of her anger, but she managed.
"I don't dodge because every time, every single time I have dodged
before I just get hit again, usually a lot harder! And it's not always you
who does the hitting either! No! It's pop! Claiming that I'm bringing
dishonour to the family name! As if he has a clue about honour! Or it's
your dad! All yelling that I've hurt his baby girl! When the hell is he
gonna realize that you're an adult now, goddammit!" Ranma raged. "Do you
really think that I've got any honour to be found in allowing my wife to
beat the hell out of me for any little thing?!"
He paused, thinking about what he had last said, as he watched
Akane's eyes widen and her jaw drop. "Dammit. I shouldn'ta said that. Not
with the other girls still after me. Now I've really screwed things up." He
flopped down on the ground and pulled his knees up towards him.
"Ranma?"
"What?" His voice was sullen, and he refused to look up at her.
"Did - did you really mean that?"
"Mean what?"
"Mean what you said - about your wife."
"Maybe, why?"
"Does that mean... that you lo... like me?" she had learned about
his reactions to the L word.
He finally looked up at her with a strange look in his sapphire
eyes. "Like you? Yeah. I guess. But, I can't..." he gathered his thoughts,
"I can't let myself feel anything more until you learn to control your
anger." She looked crestfallen at that, but he continued. "You keep on
claiming that you're a martial artist. But a true martial artist can control
his or her temper."
"What about Ryouga? Or Mousse?"
"No matter what you might think about Ryouga, he's not angry all of
the time. A lot of the time, yeah, but not all of the time, like you seem to
be. He's depressed a lot. And he's got reason for it, though it's his place
to tell you, not mine. Mousse is a lot like Ryouga, except he was raised to
believe that might makes right. In his culture it may be true, but in coming
to ours, he just doesn't fit in. They're both martial artists, not because
they happen to be good at it, but because they're dedicated to the Art and
because they do have control. I'd be dead, several times over, and a lot of
innocent people as well if they didn't. You, on the other hand, don't have
any control at all. Or any dedication. Breaking bricks isn't going to make
you a better martial artist. It just makes you better at breaking bricks.
Martial arts is more than that. Much, much more."
Akane was almost in tears by that point, but she had to ask. "But
you never try to train me. You never hit me. You hit other girls, just not
me. Sometimes I think that it's because you hate me. Why not train me? When
you came you brought so many people that were on your level and I just keep
falling so far behind."
Ranma looked positively uncomfortable, but he managed to come up
with a decent answer for once. "It's part of who I am, Akane. I don't hit
girls, and I don't hit people who can't defend themselves. It's what I was
raised with, Kami-sama only knows how. Now, I've hit girls in the past,
true. But the main reason for not hitting girls is simply that most of the
girls I grew up with fell into the second category. They couldn't defend
themselves from my attacks. Which made it really, really unfair to them. I've
hit Ukyo, Shampoo, Kodachi, and a few other girls since I came to Tokyo, but
they could defend themselves from my attacks. Sure, I won, but then, I'm the
best. I couldn't stand to lose, so I didn't. It doesn't mean I liked hitting
them" He shrugged.
"You though, can't defend yourself. I'm not saying it's cause you're
weak or nothing. Hell, I've got the scars to prove that's wrong. It's cause
you never bothered to learn to defend yourself. You're all for charging
straight at your opponent and trying to run him over. It just don't work. Not
on my level, or on anyone else's, besides you and the Horde o' Hentai. And
it's gotten to the point where it doesn't really even work on your level
either. Plus, you're brutal. I watched you fighting with the Horde o'
Hentai, and I know you didn't have to be that rough with them. It doesn't
take much to knock a person unconscious, though it does take some finesse.
You didn't need to break bones, though you did."
Akane was in tears, almost to the point of sobbing, but Ranma forced
himself to ignore that fact and continue.
"I know I'm mean and even cruel sometimes. But that's how I was
raised. It's what I know. I don't know how to be nice and sweet and gentle
and romantic and all that stuff like the other guys at school can be. It's
not me. You want that? You should go find it in one of those other guys.
Because it's one of the reasons why you should think before you hit me. I
mean, sometimes I know it's my fault, and those times, I take the hits
because I deserve it. Other times, it's not my fault, and that's the hits
that make me angry, and makes me stop liking you a little bit."
He got up and moved across the room to kneel on the floor next to
Akane, who turned her tear-stained face away from him. "Look at me, Akane."
"I don't want to." She muttered.
He wouldn't have any of it. He reached over and gently turned her
face to look at him. "Look at me, Akane. I would never lie to you. I will
never lie to you. Believe me. I swear upon what honour I have left that it's
true."
She looked up at him through eyes blurred with tears and nodded
slowly.
"Now, if you don't want Raetheon and what he did to you to come
between us, that's totally up to you. If you actually want something to
exist between us besides him, I've given you my reasoning on it. You want
to make something of it, it's your turn. Now sleep on it, and we'll talk
again in the morning." Then he leaned down and gently pressed his lips to
her forehead in a fatherly fashion.
Walking over to his futon, he clambered in and pulled the thin sheet
up over his shoulders. "'night, Akane." He muttered as he drifted off.
Akane lay for a few minutes still. One hand delicately laid up the
spot where he had kissed her. Then she slowly turned her head and looked at
his sleeping form. "I want to be your friend, Ranma. And maybe, someday, we
can be something more than just friends. Good night, Ranma."
***********
Ranma awoke to find himself in a very foggy place. He climbed up and
looked around, only to discover that he was no longer in his room, and had
instead been lying upon a marble floor.
"Where the hell am I?" he snarled, staggering forward into the
blinding fog bank.
He didn't know how long he traveled. Only that it was a long time
and his feet were beginning to ache, when he suddenly came upon tall wall
that scaled many, many times his own height. The glossy obsidian surface
glinted his reflection back at him rather sinisterly. Then, off to the
side, he heard a muffled giggle.
There, standing not even ten feet away from him and leaning against
the wall in complete ease, was his curse form. The red-headed succubae was
giggling apparently at the disoriented expression on his face.
"Well, if it isn't the magnificently manly Saotome Ranma." She
chortled, coming over to lounge against the wall at his side with an almost
insolent attitude. "I'm sure we've met. I'm Ranko. That's it. Just... Ranko.
Last names for the peasants hadn't been invented yet when I walked the lunar
surface a free woman. It's kinda my fault you got stuck with my shape and
what's left of my soul, after who knows how long, floating around in you.
Some sicko tried to make me a part of his harem while my guardian wasn't
around. I created the curse of the springs in response. The sicko got to
be the first, and only, Guide. I think his name was Kuno Ikari, or
something."
"Kuno? It's Kuno's fault??"
"Well, something like that. You've got a Kuno bothering you too?
Gee, what a cowinkydink." She smirked at him, then glanced up. "Oh,
what'd'ya know. My guardian's coming."
"Guardian? What? Where?!"
"There." She pointed upwards in a fashion that could only be
described as casual.
Ranma's eyes darted towards the skies rapidly. All he could detect
however was an uncanny glowing of the upper realms of the fog bank. The glow
was steadily increasing in brightness though.
Then suddenly, the source of the glow was upon him! He flinched
backwards from the heat of the massive terraces of incandescence holocaust.
As the searing torridity burnt away the surrounding fog, he slowly grew
accustom to the warmth and rose his eyes to meet the newest arrival.
The man was, in a word, Ranma. But not the same as Raetheon the
Destroyer. No. This man was older, but with the same cocky attitude as
Ranma. He smirked at the younger man, even as his hand alit gently upon
the hilt of an apparently broken sword.
"Are you from my future?" Ranma whispered haltingly.
"No. From your past. I'm ancient history." The older man replied
easily. Ranko giggled in the background.
"Who-who are you?"
"My name is Shima, of the Royal House of Mars. I was the Heir
Apparent to the War Throne of Mars. I am the Champion Among Mortals For
The Lord Phoenix."
"That bastard Saffron?!" Ranma snarled, his emerald katana forging
itself in his grasp.
"Saffron? Hardly." Shima snorted in contempt. "I serve none but the
True Phoenix."
Ranma relaxed, though he didn't dismiss his katana, then realized
what Shima had said earlier. "So you're the great Shima, huh? I've heard
of you a bit."
Shima looked bemused. "So you're the great Saotome Ranma, huh?
That's a nice knife you got there, kid. But when are you going to grow
up and get yourself a real sword?"
"This is a real sword!" Ranma fulminated.
"Maybe. But once you've barred the Sword of the High Prince, you'll
know it's nothing more than a butter knife." Shima replied, with infuriating
calm. "The Sword waits for none but he whom it doth chose. The Sword has
chosen you, Saotome Ranma. Now it is awaiting you. Find it and free it. As
I did many years anon. Now, the day is growing bright, and you must soon
awake. But worry not. We shall meet again."
Then Shima spread his massive wings bright and launched himself
back into the heavens.
"The Sword is in a secured place, Ranma." Ranko stated, dragging
him from his reverie. "You'll find it, if you can find some culture."
Then everything went black.
***********
Ranma awoke with a start into the predawn light. He quickly mopped
the sweat from his brow and pulled himself from the bed. Glancing over, he
assured himself that Akane remained asleep.
"I'll find it, if I can find some culture." Ranma mused as he pulled
on a clean shirt before heading out for his morning exercise. "Now, what did
she mean by that?"
Chapter One: First Sword
Ranma touched down lightly in the enclosure of the walls of his
home with his trembling burden still gripped firmly, yet gently, within
his grasp. He glanced down at Akane's face, taking in her clenched shut
eyes and trembling body and the way her arms locked about his neck with
his pained sapphire eyes. When a tear traced its way down a cheek which
still bore faint marks despite their miraculous healing, Ranma could
barely hold back the furious growl that threatened to tear its way past
his clenched teeth.
Mars landed with a slight thump on the ground behind them just
moments later. She was winded and tired after her long chase after him,
but she tried to hold that back. However, when she took a step forward to
lay a comforting hand upon Ranma's shoulder, he suddenly spun about with
a look of such fury written upon his face that she couldn't help but
flinch bodily backwards in fear.
"Don't touch me." He snarled, his voice emerging from deep in
his chest and rumbling outwards in a bass growl. "Don't touch Akane. In
fact, why don't you just get your backstabbing self out of here before I
do something that I MIGHT regret later."
Akane's eyes fluttered open at the raw, unmitigated fury in his
voice. A hand roughened from years spent sending cinder blocks to their
Maker gently brushed against his cheek and turned his gaze from where
Mars cowered to where Akane yet still laid in his arms. Her body still
trembled with the memory of what had happened to her that night, and yet
her dark eyes that hid untold depths of pain within them pleaded with him
in their own unique way.
"Ranma." She whispered, the name sliding easily off of her tongue
as it always had whether in anger or in worry despite what had been done
by the vicious beast Raetheon. "Don't."
And with that one particular word from that one particular person
on that one particular morning, Ranma stopped. For Akane on that morning,
he stopped. How could he do anything less for one who had suffered as she
had that night? How could anyone as chivalrous as he possibly do anything
else?
And so, the Pretty Sailor-suited Soldier Sailormars, otherwise
known as the beauteous young temple maiden Hino Rei, was not torn apart
piece by piece at the hands of a righteously furious young man, that she
had earlier so unwarrantedly assaulted, that night. All because the man
in question found himself incapable of deliberately performing some action
which would cause distress to the woman in his arms.
"I'll deal with you later." Ranma snarled as Akane's eyes fell
shut again, his voice much more sullen than it had been earlier. "Right
now, Akane's well being is far more important to me than beating the hell
out of someone like you."
With that, he strode purposefully into the house before him.
***********
The sullen light of late evening after the night-long battle against
Raetheon the Destroyer, which ended rather inconclusively at the dawning of
a new day, found Ranma sitting up through the ever thickening dusk in
dedicated vigil to one Tendo Akane, despite his burgeoning exhaustion. Rei
hid herself in the background, a scurrying figure trying with desperation
to find herself exit from the unpleasant situation she had inadvertently
placed herself within by following Ranma away from the battlefield. Akane
curled tight about herself in a fetal ball on the red bedspread of Ranma's
bunk.
The setting was a relatively spacious room in the Hino Residence
whose absence of decoration fair screamed the name of the primary
resident. The spartan room bore little furniture to match its lack of
ornamentation. The bed upon which Akane laid was pushed tight against
the far wall from the doorway. On the wall to the immediate left of the
door, which lead to the hallway through its sliding panels, their stood
a simple wooden clothespress and the window which stood above it and allowed
some sparse particles of light admittance into the somber room. The wall
across from it was bare as was the wall which fronted the hall, since Ranma
had stored his pack in the hollow under his bed.
Ranma gazed at Akane's torturous expression through half-lidded
eyes with the same spaced-out quality as found in people who force
themselves to continue despite the fact that they are obviously exhausted.
The heavy lids slowly drooped lower and lower over the clear sapphire eyes
that gazed up the girl who had captured his hand in an, at times painful,
grip. Behind them, Rei hoped and prayed for Ranma to fall into the clutches
of the Lord of Dreams, because she honestly believed that that was the only
way for her to make good her escape.
But her hopes and prayers were in vain, for at the very moment
which Ranma's eyes slid completely closed and she began inching towards
the door, Akane finally fell into a more peaceful slumber and her hand
gently loosed Ranma's. The cessation of pressure upon his hand awoke the
teenaged combatant from the fitful slumber he had been dropping into. With
a sigh, he pushed himself up off of the ground and gently arranged Akane's
hand beside her on the bed.
As his back was turned, Rei made an attempt for the door. But at
that moment, Ranma turned to her. She found herself ensnared by the
unfathomable depths of his eyes the deep stormy-gray of the waters of a sea
grasped in the throws of a hurricane.
Then the moment was over, and he strode silently past her into the
hall. With that single look he had instructed her to follow him, and she
obediently followed along.
She trailed after him down the stairs to the main hall, back into
the kitchen pantry, down into the cellar and then further. The entire trek
to the library was made in silence broken only by the sound of their
footsteps upon the stone. Ranma's stride was grimly purposeful, yet Rei's
was filled with hesitation and nervousness.
***********
When they finally arrived in the grim silence of the cavernous
athenaeum, Ranma paced the length of the room in reticence to the far
end of the long, highly polished table, trailing his slender fingers
lightly along the glistening surface as he walked. Once he reached the
end, and the throne-like chair which presided over the room from there,
he turned and sat within the depths of the place of honor. Steepling his
hands before him at first, he soon placed them fast upon the marbled stone
and gazed upon them with the rapt fixedness of a man who did not know
exactly where to begin.
Rei, for her part, waited nervously near the door, fidgeting
helplessly with the hem of her yellow sweater. She shuffled her feet
softly on the macadamized parterre, though not enough to disturb Ranma's
reverie. Her violet eyes gazed apprehensively down the length of the room
to rest upon Ranma's reposed figure. After some time, he did look up and
direct his attention upon her.
"Why, Rei?" he asked, his normally overwhelmingly confident voice
hushed to almost a bare whisper, confidence nearly overwhelmed by resignation
and exhaustion.
The murmured question cracked slightly at the end. A slight upward
pitch, almost undetectable to any who didn't know him, but Rei noticed it.
With two words, he had managed to convey the pain of betrayal held within
his heart because of what she had done. The next few words didn't help her
feel better at all.
"What the hell possessed you to try and turn me into a living
campfire, Rei? I thought we were supposed to be friends! We're cousins,
Goddammit!" His furious voice trailed off into silence, leaving an opening
clear as day for her to pick up with an explanation of her actions towards
him.
She cast desperately about for something, anything, that could
possibly save her from having to face that accusing gaze which he had
leveled upon her. What she found was the bookcase that lined the walls
of the enclosure. Moving slowly, trying hard to make the move look casual
and unconcerned, she wandered over to the case and gently drifted her
fingertips along the wooden cases of the ancient scroll containers and
over leather bindings stiff with age. She allowed her eyes to pour over
the graceful characters that outlined the contents hidden behind the
age-old covers.
She was a long time in answering, but when she did finally give
tongue to her thoughts, the words did not come with her typical grace or
charm. A heavy, gilt-edge tome was shifted from its resting place and into
her hands before she spoke. Its delicate hand-lettered pages still crisp,
despite the yellowing of the parchment the characters were inscribed upon.
She poured over the meandering rivers of text for some minutes before she
spoke.
"I don't know." She paused for a second, collecting her thoughts
for a second attempt. "I mean, it's difficult to explain."
"Difficult to explain?! You sure as hell didn't seem to have any
difficulties setting me ON FIRE!" Ranma raged, causing her to flinch away.
"I think..." she stumbled over her words, trying to find the right
ones, the one's that would keep his incandescent fury from falling upon her
unprotected soul. "I think maybe it was because... You remember, don't
you? The past? Back on the Moon?" she asked, her need to know tinting her
tone brilliant.
"Some. Bits and pieces. A name. Friends. What the hell does THAT
got to do with anything?!" was his answer. "I don't see what some stupid
prick from Mars who gets off talking to FIRE has to do with either me or
the question at hand!"
Rei deliberately ignored the prick comment with some effort, it
had struck a bit close to home in her mind. "I - I've been having memories
too. When I'm sleeping. In my dreams, I see the past. The Moon. The girls.
It's all so real, that I know, I hope, it's not just a fantasy. And in those
dreams, I've seen you. Not like you are now. But how you were. Back then.
When you were my brother and you took care of me.
"I wanted to have that again. I wanted that closeness. That love."
She sighed, closing the book in her hands gently and replacing it upon the
shelf. For once, Ranma bided his time, letting her decide whether or not
she was going to manage to explain herself or just dig her grave that much
deeper. "I've never been really close to anyone before. What with Mother
dying when I was so young that I don't even remember her as anything but
a name on a stone. And Father always away on his trips. Of course, there's
always Grandpa, and I love him, really I do. But it's just not the same.
Nothing's the same as it could have been. As it was."
"At least you have a father instead of some prick like pop. My
mom's alive and all, but I spent most of my life being no where near her. I
spent most of my life going through HELL. Akane's not been drug all over
the place but her life ain't much better than mine. Don't tell me OR her
about how bad YOUR lot's been." Ranma interjected softly. "You've never
seen hell until you've even lived a PORTION of our lives."
"In my dreams, you were more than just my brother, Ranma." Rei
continued as if he had never spoken. She had to, or she knew she would
never finish. "You were my best friend. You were always there for me. No
matter what. You never gave up on me. Never decided I wasn't worth the
effort. You took my side. You fought for me. Oh, you fought for all the
girls, but you fought for me first. That was my first memory from back
then. The sounds of battle followed by your battered and bloody face
looking down at me in my cradle with a simple smile."
"I would have done that anyways. You just weren't willing to
let me." Ranma muttered.
"Now, you're my distant, and somewhat estranged cousin with barely
any memory of any family beyond a exceedingly nasty SOB who calls himself
your father. You don't know me any better than you know any of the other
girls." She turned from the books and made her way to the table where she
seated herself at one of the simple chairs there. Slouched over her hands
on the cool stone of the tabletop, the long strands of her raven black hair
draped down and effectively concealed her face from Ranma's view. "I'm a
fool to think that things would change, but I had to try. I needed to know
if it could be possible."
"Hell! You couldn't believe that making me super crispy could
possibly make things BETTER could you?!" Ranma was, in a word, stunned. But
Rei pretty much ignored him again.
"I've never had any real friends before. Sure, there's always the
girls, and I suppose some of those harpies from T*A* Academy could possibly
be considered my friends. But for most of my life, the only life I knew was
the shrine. The only friends I had were Phobos and Demios. Two crows. I
talked to them a lot, I was so lonely.
"Thus I was seen as the 'crazy temple girl who talks to crows'. Not
exactly the best board to hang if your in the market for a friend, you
know? Then I got into T*A* thanks to Father, and those girls are majorly
into seeing what they can get people to do. They're manipulative little
bitches. All they do is use each other and then spit them out again when
they're all done. And I got sucked right in to that little culture.
"It caused me to put up walls around my self. I didn't want to left
anyone in. Because if they got close enough to make me care, they were close
enough to hurt me. Those walls were very firmly in place when Usagi showed
up on my steps for the first time. I didn't know any other way to treat ..
friends. So, I left those walls in place for a long time, until I finally
figured out that they didn't want to hurt me. That they weren't going to
abandon me.
"By that time though, the damage was already done. I was the Ice
Maiden. Not even my fires could thaw out the chill on my heart. Not that
they didn't try. At first, anyways. After a while, they just sort of took
me at face value and stopped trying for any real depth in our friendship.
Which isn't to say no depth ever developed. Because it did. It couldn't be
helped. Not with everything we went through together. But its not as deep
as it could have been. If I just could have been a little more trusting,
then maybe... but that doesn't matter.
"What matters is that I did something that was totally and completely
horrid to you, just for my own selfish reasons. You're a good man, Ranma.
And you were beginning to be a good friend of mine, all on your own
reconnaissance. But I really screwed that up in a properly royal fashion,
didn't I? Blessed Fires, I'm just as bad as any of those little two-time,
scamming bitches back at T*A* Academy, aren't I? I just can't let a good
thing be."
Ranma waited. He finally realized that the conversation was going
somewhere.
"What it all comes down to though, is that I'm sorry. For once in
my life, I'm really and truly sorry about what I've done. And I know, beyond
any hope of a sliver of a shadow of a doubt, I know that there is no way
that I have any reason to believe that you would ever, could ever, forgive
me for what I did. But I still must apologize for those actions. I'll
understand completely if you never want to see me again. Anything you ask,
I'll do. Maybe it's just a vain attempt to pay back the damage I caused
but..."
Finally, for the first time since beginning to speak, she looked
up and met his steady gaze with her reddened violet eyes brimming with
tears. "I just wanted someone to love me like I remembered you did."
"That sounds like Akane's typical line of reasoning." He mused,
turning those stormy eyes of his back to the study of his callused hands.
"You want someone to care, so you do something that will invariably end
up with that person getting the living hell beat out of them, possibly
on a regular basis. Geez. What am I? Flypaper for violent people?!"
With that last outburst, he shoved himself up out of his chair.
Pacing around to stand across from her, he leaned back upon the table
and ran one hand through his thick hair only to stop when he came to his
unnaturally long braid. Pulling a good portion of that braid up over his
shoulder, he pondered it for a time. After a while of trying to figure out
his hair, he gave it up as pointless and looked back over his shoulder at
Rei.
"I really don't have a clue what I'm going to do with this mess.
But, I promised Mom that I wouldn't check out before the year is up, so
it looks like I got a couple more months around these parts before I head
back to Nerima." He gestured upwards with his eyebrows, "And then there's
Akane. I don't see how I can force her to go back to Nerima, so I'm afraid
I'll have to keep her here. Not HERE here!" he hurriedly added, as if
afraid that Rei would get the wrong idea, possibly with good cause. "But
in Juuban. Somewhere."
He sighed and pushed himself up off of the table. "Right now, I'm
exhausted, so I'm going to go up and check on Akane then check into my
sleeping roll. You can head home, or stay in the guest room. Whatever
you want to do. At this point, I don't care if you turn into a purple
gerbil."
Then he wearily plodded out of the room and back the long trek
to the main house. Behind him, he left Rei slowly regaining her composure.
***********
Ranma paused at the washroom for a glass of cold water before he
went on into the room he would be sharing with Akane for the night. Looking
into the mirror at his masculine features with the glass of water in his
hands, he smirked wryly at his reflection. The irony didn't surpass him for
once. He thought about what he had scene during that strange time after he
changed when he wasn't in control.
He remembered looking down into a still pool of steaming water and,
instead of seeing his feminine reflection, he saw himself as a man. And he
had control over that reflection. Seeing through the reflection's eyes, he
watched as his girl-type had begun to step into the crystal clear depths,
somehow knowing what would happen if she did.
A sudden fear had gripped his mind and he struggled against the
bonds that held his reflection still in the pool. He would have sighed with
relief if he could when she stopped. They had spoken through kanji traced
on the surface and somehow come to an understanding.
Reflecting upon the fact that it would no longer be himself in
control when he changed form, he slowly poured the glass over his head.
Ranko smiled back at the mirror before she strode out of the room
with a comfortable swagger. It was time to see her friend, reborn after so
long.
***********
Akane was awake when Ranko walked into the room. Her puzzled
features when Akane looked at the other girl prompted a response.
"Ranma didn't want you to feel uncomfortable with him in the room,
so he sent me instead." Ranko offered shyly.
"B-but aren't you Ranma?" Akane was majorly confused by this point.
"Actually, not really. I mean, this is his body and all, but
something happened while he.. we.. were missing. And I got to come out. My
name is Ranko." She smiled at Akane. "And long ago, your Ranma was my
Shima. He was my first and foremost friend, nothing more. I loved him
dearly, but I loved you as well. You were my first friend after Shima." She
reached out and grasped the shocked Akane's hands in her own as she sat down
on the bed beside her. "And once I learned from Ranma what had happened to
you, I knew that I had to be there for you. I won't leave you alone,
Akane. I promise."
Akane smiled through the tears that threatened to spill down her
face. Through all that had happened to her, she was discovering the truth
to having real friends. And she did remember Ranko, dimly, from her dreams.
It was good to have friends like the small red-head. Comforting. And
comfort was what Akane needed right then.
She suddenly broke into sobs as the full magnitude of what had
happened broke upon her. Ranko merely smiled sadly and drew the sobbing
girl into her embrace. For she truly had meant what she said, and there
was nothing that would change that. Especially not now, that they were
all the same age.
***********
A few days layer with a bone-deep weariness still plaguing his
steps, Ranma made his way slowly back the long journey from school and
up the stairs to the futon still rolled up in the corner of his room. Once
there, he paused a moment to briefly brush a stray strand of hair from
Akane's still slumbering features. She hadn't managed a full nights sleep
in days, and he wasn't willing to make her move somewhere else until she
finally managed to garner a whole night of rest.
He crossed to the room and began the slow task of unrolling the
narrow pad of the futon that had been his bed for the past few nights, as
his normal resting place was still engaged by his engaged.
"Ranma?" the sleepy voiced murmur disrupted him from his random
reverie.
He turned sharply towards Akane with the startled alertness of a
gazelle. "Akane? You're awake." He mumbled, not quite awake enough to
state the unobivious, though he was becoming more aware by the moment.
"Ranma?" she whispered once more, though it sounded almost like a
whimper.
"What?" was Ranma's somewhat less than brilliant reply.
"Ranma, I don't.." she trailed off, as if she wasn't quite certain
of what words to use next.
"Want me in here with you." Ranma finished for her, as he began
gathering up his things. "That's okay. You've been through a lot, I guess.
Seeing me probably doesn't help anything. I'll just go sleep in the guest
room - no, wait, Rei might be there again."
"Ranma." Akane attempted to interrupt his rapidly becoming
monologue, but failed rather miserably.
"I guess I can sleep in the living room. Or maybe the dining
room..."
"Ranma!" The tone was much firmer and her face was becoming more
than slightly flushed.
Ranma spun around, dropping everything he had previously gathered
in the process. "What?" he yelped.
"That's not what I meant." She sighed. "I-I don't mind if you
sleep in here tonight." The concession was little more than a whisper,
but it echoed in the spartan room.
Ranma coloured slightly, but he somehow managed to refrain from
making any comments.
"What I meant..." she paused, collecting her thoughts. "What I
meant was that I don't want... this..." she waved about the room with a
hand that trembled slightly in the effort, though she wasn't hurt
physically. "to affect..." another pause, this one slightly longer as she
slowly raised her eyes to meet his. "us..." her cheeks coloured slightly
as she mumbled the last word, letting her eyes drop to the floor as she
did.
Ranma stood there in silence for a moment before speaking. "What
do you mean by us?" he asked, slowly.
Her eyes met his again, she looked confused. "I meant us. You
and me. Our - our relationship."
"And what kind of relationship is that, Akane?" he knew that he
was being rather cold, but he refused to allow any warmth to colour his
responses. This had all the earmarks of being an important break-through
in how they dealt with each other, and he wasn't going to ruin that.
"What do you mean, Ranma? I-I thought we were starting to get
close." Her voice was pained, her words anguished, but he didn't relent.
"Close? You can't possibly think that we're getting close. Not
when you still use me as your punching bag every time you get mad about
something and I'm near by. It hurts when you hit me, Akane. It really
does." She knew that it wasn't easy for him to admit that she managed
to hurt him, but he did it.
"But... you can always dodge! You dodge everything I throw at you
in training, why don't you dodge when I'm- I'm angry?" she had some
difficulty getting out the confession of her anger, but she managed.
"I don't dodge because every time, every single time I have dodged
before I just get hit again, usually a lot harder! And it's not always you
who does the hitting either! No! It's pop! Claiming that I'm bringing
dishonour to the family name! As if he has a clue about honour! Or it's
your dad! All yelling that I've hurt his baby girl! When the hell is he
gonna realize that you're an adult now, goddammit!" Ranma raged. "Do you
really think that I've got any honour to be found in allowing my wife to
beat the hell out of me for any little thing?!"
He paused, thinking about what he had last said, as he watched
Akane's eyes widen and her jaw drop. "Dammit. I shouldn'ta said that. Not
with the other girls still after me. Now I've really screwed things up." He
flopped down on the ground and pulled his knees up towards him.
"Ranma?"
"What?" His voice was sullen, and he refused to look up at her.
"Did - did you really mean that?"
"Mean what?"
"Mean what you said - about your wife."
"Maybe, why?"
"Does that mean... that you lo... like me?" she had learned about
his reactions to the L word.
He finally looked up at her with a strange look in his sapphire
eyes. "Like you? Yeah. I guess. But, I can't..." he gathered his thoughts,
"I can't let myself feel anything more until you learn to control your
anger." She looked crestfallen at that, but he continued. "You keep on
claiming that you're a martial artist. But a true martial artist can control
his or her temper."
"What about Ryouga? Or Mousse?"
"No matter what you might think about Ryouga, he's not angry all of
the time. A lot of the time, yeah, but not all of the time, like you seem to
be. He's depressed a lot. And he's got reason for it, though it's his place
to tell you, not mine. Mousse is a lot like Ryouga, except he was raised to
believe that might makes right. In his culture it may be true, but in coming
to ours, he just doesn't fit in. They're both martial artists, not because
they happen to be good at it, but because they're dedicated to the Art and
because they do have control. I'd be dead, several times over, and a lot of
innocent people as well if they didn't. You, on the other hand, don't have
any control at all. Or any dedication. Breaking bricks isn't going to make
you a better martial artist. It just makes you better at breaking bricks.
Martial arts is more than that. Much, much more."
Akane was almost in tears by that point, but she had to ask. "But
you never try to train me. You never hit me. You hit other girls, just not
me. Sometimes I think that it's because you hate me. Why not train me? When
you came you brought so many people that were on your level and I just keep
falling so far behind."
Ranma looked positively uncomfortable, but he managed to come up
with a decent answer for once. "It's part of who I am, Akane. I don't hit
girls, and I don't hit people who can't defend themselves. It's what I was
raised with, Kami-sama only knows how. Now, I've hit girls in the past,
true. But the main reason for not hitting girls is simply that most of the
girls I grew up with fell into the second category. They couldn't defend
themselves from my attacks. Which made it really, really unfair to them. I've
hit Ukyo, Shampoo, Kodachi, and a few other girls since I came to Tokyo, but
they could defend themselves from my attacks. Sure, I won, but then, I'm the
best. I couldn't stand to lose, so I didn't. It doesn't mean I liked hitting
them" He shrugged.
"You though, can't defend yourself. I'm not saying it's cause you're
weak or nothing. Hell, I've got the scars to prove that's wrong. It's cause
you never bothered to learn to defend yourself. You're all for charging
straight at your opponent and trying to run him over. It just don't work. Not
on my level, or on anyone else's, besides you and the Horde o' Hentai. And
it's gotten to the point where it doesn't really even work on your level
either. Plus, you're brutal. I watched you fighting with the Horde o'
Hentai, and I know you didn't have to be that rough with them. It doesn't
take much to knock a person unconscious, though it does take some finesse.
You didn't need to break bones, though you did."
Akane was in tears, almost to the point of sobbing, but Ranma forced
himself to ignore that fact and continue.
"I know I'm mean and even cruel sometimes. But that's how I was
raised. It's what I know. I don't know how to be nice and sweet and gentle
and romantic and all that stuff like the other guys at school can be. It's
not me. You want that? You should go find it in one of those other guys.
Because it's one of the reasons why you should think before you hit me. I
mean, sometimes I know it's my fault, and those times, I take the hits
because I deserve it. Other times, it's not my fault, and that's the hits
that make me angry, and makes me stop liking you a little bit."
He got up and moved across the room to kneel on the floor next to
Akane, who turned her tear-stained face away from him. "Look at me, Akane."
"I don't want to." She muttered.
He wouldn't have any of it. He reached over and gently turned her
face to look at him. "Look at me, Akane. I would never lie to you. I will
never lie to you. Believe me. I swear upon what honour I have left that it's
true."
She looked up at him through eyes blurred with tears and nodded
slowly.
"Now, if you don't want Raetheon and what he did to you to come
between us, that's totally up to you. If you actually want something to
exist between us besides him, I've given you my reasoning on it. You want
to make something of it, it's your turn. Now sleep on it, and we'll talk
again in the morning." Then he leaned down and gently pressed his lips to
her forehead in a fatherly fashion.
Walking over to his futon, he clambered in and pulled the thin sheet
up over his shoulders. "'night, Akane." He muttered as he drifted off.
Akane lay for a few minutes still. One hand delicately laid up the
spot where he had kissed her. Then she slowly turned her head and looked at
his sleeping form. "I want to be your friend, Ranma. And maybe, someday, we
can be something more than just friends. Good night, Ranma."
***********
Ranma awoke to find himself in a very foggy place. He climbed up and
looked around, only to discover that he was no longer in his room, and had
instead been lying upon a marble floor.
"Where the hell am I?" he snarled, staggering forward into the
blinding fog bank.
He didn't know how long he traveled. Only that it was a long time
and his feet were beginning to ache, when he suddenly came upon tall wall
that scaled many, many times his own height. The glossy obsidian surface
glinted his reflection back at him rather sinisterly. Then, off to the
side, he heard a muffled giggle.
There, standing not even ten feet away from him and leaning against
the wall in complete ease, was his curse form. The red-headed succubae was
giggling apparently at the disoriented expression on his face.
"Well, if it isn't the magnificently manly Saotome Ranma." She
chortled, coming over to lounge against the wall at his side with an almost
insolent attitude. "I'm sure we've met. I'm Ranko. That's it. Just... Ranko.
Last names for the peasants hadn't been invented yet when I walked the lunar
surface a free woman. It's kinda my fault you got stuck with my shape and
what's left of my soul, after who knows how long, floating around in you.
Some sicko tried to make me a part of his harem while my guardian wasn't
around. I created the curse of the springs in response. The sicko got to
be the first, and only, Guide. I think his name was Kuno Ikari, or
something."
"Kuno? It's Kuno's fault??"
"Well, something like that. You've got a Kuno bothering you too?
Gee, what a cowinkydink." She smirked at him, then glanced up. "Oh,
what'd'ya know. My guardian's coming."
"Guardian? What? Where?!"
"There." She pointed upwards in a fashion that could only be
described as casual.
Ranma's eyes darted towards the skies rapidly. All he could detect
however was an uncanny glowing of the upper realms of the fog bank. The glow
was steadily increasing in brightness though.
Then suddenly, the source of the glow was upon him! He flinched
backwards from the heat of the massive terraces of incandescence holocaust.
As the searing torridity burnt away the surrounding fog, he slowly grew
accustom to the warmth and rose his eyes to meet the newest arrival.
The man was, in a word, Ranma. But not the same as Raetheon the
Destroyer. No. This man was older, but with the same cocky attitude as
Ranma. He smirked at the younger man, even as his hand alit gently upon
the hilt of an apparently broken sword.
"Are you from my future?" Ranma whispered haltingly.
"No. From your past. I'm ancient history." The older man replied
easily. Ranko giggled in the background.
"Who-who are you?"
"My name is Shima, of the Royal House of Mars. I was the Heir
Apparent to the War Throne of Mars. I am the Champion Among Mortals For
The Lord Phoenix."
"That bastard Saffron?!" Ranma snarled, his emerald katana forging
itself in his grasp.
"Saffron? Hardly." Shima snorted in contempt. "I serve none but the
True Phoenix."
Ranma relaxed, though he didn't dismiss his katana, then realized
what Shima had said earlier. "So you're the great Shima, huh? I've heard
of you a bit."
Shima looked bemused. "So you're the great Saotome Ranma, huh?
That's a nice knife you got there, kid. But when are you going to grow
up and get yourself a real sword?"
"This is a real sword!" Ranma fulminated.
"Maybe. But once you've barred the Sword of the High Prince, you'll
know it's nothing more than a butter knife." Shima replied, with infuriating
calm. "The Sword waits for none but he whom it doth chose. The Sword has
chosen you, Saotome Ranma. Now it is awaiting you. Find it and free it. As
I did many years anon. Now, the day is growing bright, and you must soon
awake. But worry not. We shall meet again."
Then Shima spread his massive wings bright and launched himself
back into the heavens.
"The Sword is in a secured place, Ranma." Ranko stated, dragging
him from his reverie. "You'll find it, if you can find some culture."
Then everything went black.
***********
Ranma awoke with a start into the predawn light. He quickly mopped
the sweat from his brow and pulled himself from the bed. Glancing over, he
assured himself that Akane remained asleep.
"I'll find it, if I can find some culture." Ranma mused as he pulled
on a clean shirt before heading out for his morning exercise. "Now, what did
she mean by that?"