Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma or Inu yasha.
Chapter 28Ranma had hoped that the fight with the Joketsu wouldn't come to this, really she had. But now that she stood facing the four village elders, she wondered if the confrontation could have come out any other way. The Joketsu were really quite predictable. Their hatred made them that way.
Ranma watched the elders in front of her with caution. It was easy to believe that they were, in fact, elders – the title fit them well. Their pale, wrinkled skin, crisp white hair, and shrunken stature gave them away just as it had with Kho Lon. They were clearly very old, and their eyes held too much wisdom for them not to be respected. Ranma even felt a grudging respect for them herself.
She was about to begin the fight against the four elders when suddenly there were only three. Her eyes flew to the ground on one side of the log and found Inu-Yasha had knocked down one of the elders, driving her head into the ground.
"Ranma," he spoke without turning, keeping his attention focused on the crone in front of him. "I wouldn't waste my mercy on them."
With that he picked up the elder by her withered head and flung her into one of the village buildings. The walls caved in around her point of impact and the structure swayed for a prolonged moment before collapsing in a billowing cloud if dust and debris. Ranma looked from the building – the former building – to Inu-Yasha. The hanyou was only staring at the building, scratching his head in surprise.
"I didn't expect the thing to fall down," he muttered almost in annoyance. The grating sound of shifting debris caught Ranma's ears, and she turned to the pile of fallen walls in shock. The elder was rising shakily from what Ranma had been sure was her grave. How can she still be alive?
Inu-Yasha was after her in a flash, and Ranma would have continued to watch had her ears not caught the subtle sound of a drawn bowstring. She leaned backwards for a moment, and an arrow flew by her face, barely missing her nose and shifting her flame-red hair in its passage. It drove into the trunk of a tree some distance off. Ranma's attention was back on the elders before it hit, and she was faced with only two of them.
She quickly located the missing figure off to the side, the crowd moving from that spot as one mass. That spot where Akane was locked in a fast-paced battle with an elder of the Joketsu. She seemed to be holding her own, and Ranma didn't have time to see if that would change because she was too busy dodging a volley of arrows from the remaining elders. I guess we missed a few of the bows…
She slipped in-between the projectiles with a fluid grace, inching closer to the aged mikos. Before she was in arms length of their weapons, the elders abandoned that strategy, disappearing instantly from Ranma's sight. She whirled around, expecting an attack from behind – and she got one, when she was forced to leap over the arrow that would have cut into her stomach, had she not turned in the first place. Without pause she sent her fists in the direction of the shot, feeling immensely satisfied when they connected with the miko's flesh. The old ghoul hadn't moved.
Ranma watched as the elder flew backwards, regaining control after a moment and flipping to land on her feet. Then the other one flickered and re-appeared, but her focus was not on Ranma.
"How dare you interfere!?" she cried in outrage at a smirking Kagome.
"Don't let that spell fool you, Ranma," she called, completely ignoring the elder's outburst. "They have to remain in the same spot while they use it."
"Thanks," Ranma grinned at her, and swerved to the side of a blow from one of the mikos. The other had leapt off the log and was moving furiously to attack Kagome. She never reached her target though, because just after she was stopped by Kagome's shield Inu-Yasha sliced her neatly in half with a sword nearly as big as himself. He snorted, resting the blunt edge of the weapon over his shoulder, and turned to Ranma.
"Take her out fast," he said, "The rest of the Joketsu are beginning to fight."
Ranma blinked at him, surprised by the elder's sudden death, before looking to the crowd. Where before they had been watching the fight attentively, they were now searching out fallen weapons and opponents. She could see a few fights breaking out already.
Her perspective of the battleground changed suddenly as she was blown backwards by an invisible force, skidding on her back across the length of the log and slowing to a painful halt at the end of it. She raised her head enough to glimpse the last of the elders fire an arrow towards her chest and found she couldn't move.
A sword shot through the air, cutting clean the shaft of the projectile and embedding itself into the Challenge log. The life returned to Ranma's limbs, leaving a feeling of warmth and blood-rush. She hopped to her feet in time to see Mousse leap to attack the elder and be blown back just as she had been. What kind of spell is that?
The elder turned her gaze on Ranma. Their eyes met, and a thousand things whirled through her mind. Then the old miko raised her hands in front of her. Ranma raced forward, pulling the sword from the wood. Her opponent placed one hand behind the other, palms facing forward. Ranma was an arm's length away. The elder let out a blast. Ranma let the sword fly.
Akane had been fighting for a time. She didn't know how long, but it was beginning to grate on her nerves. Not only because she had no idea how Ranma was doing against the rest of the elders, but also because the fight was taking much longer than she wanted it to. She had gotten some good blows in, and she was the faster and stronger of the two, but the old miko was clearly more skilled.
Akane was preparing to launch another attack when she found her opponent jumping straight into her blow. She didn't hesitate to execute the attack and follow through with a few more blows while the elder was off-guard. She finished her opponent off with a sharp kick to the head that sent the old crone to the ground, unconscious.
Breathing a satisfied sigh, Akane looked up to see Nodoka, her sword drawn, watching her critically. It was clear to Akane that she had sent the miko into her path with an attack of her own.
"Thanks…"
"You would have, most likely, won eventually without my help," Nodoka said coolly, sheathing her katana. Her cold eyes shifted to the Challenge Log. "But perhaps my… son… is another story."
Akane turned to see Ranma pulling herself to her feet atop the length of scarred wood. She watched in a kind of awe as Ranma ran forward, drawing Mousse's discarded sword from its wooden sheath and sending it hurtling towards the elder's head just as she unleashed some sort of gigantic blast from her palms. The air seemed to ripple around the miko's outstretched hands and Ranma was forced into the air, her limbs limp and weighted. The sword drove itself into the elder's forehead, splitting her skull and impaling her against the ancient log. Akane wasn't really paying attention to her, though.
All her focus was on Ranma as she plummeted down to Earth, dropping like a stone. Akane was moving before she knew it, her body running automatically. She moved only faster when Ranma's unmoving form hit the ground somewhere beyond the unsettled mass of the Joketsuzoku, which had grown considerably smaller.
A pile of bright red lay before her, and then the feeling came back to her numbed senses. She could feel the pounding of her feet against the hard-packed dirt, the strain on her muscles as she pushed herself to go faster. She could feel her nails digging into her palms, and hot tears running down her cheeks, drying near-instantly in the wind-force. That… that MORON!!
And then she was at Ranma's side, falling to her knees. She wasn't dead, Akane knew. She had known the entire time. She knew Ranma wasn't dead, wouldn't die, and yet it hurt just to see her that way. Her clothing torn and filthy with mixtures of blood and dirt, her hair a tangled mess, her limbs and ears as limp as any doll's.
"You're such an idiot," Akane whispered, shaking her head and taking Ranma's hand in her own. Ranma cracked an eye open.
"Hey, I won, didn't I?" she asked, her voice tired and dry. Akane laughed through her tears. She would have found something to say, but Nodoka approached them from behind, casting her gray shadow over them both.
"You've done well so far, Ranma," she said, fingering the hilt of her sheathed sword. "The rest of us will take care of the cleanup."
Ranma and Akane exchanged glances. This was another test, and they both knew it. Nodoka was anything but courteous, and she would expect them to take responsibility no matter how injured Ranma was.
"No," Ranma sighed, "Let us help."
Ranma's mother merely nodded, as if she had expected nothing less from them. She didn't even make an attempt at trying to dissuade them, and it spoke volumes.
"Do you think we could have a minute, Mrs. Saotome?"
Nodoka looked Akane over critically as she spoke those words. There was a moment of silence as she matched stares with Akane, then turned to go, leaving only her words.
"Fine. Don't be too long."
The two hanyous watched her until she was out of their hearing range. Then Ranma let out a slow breath blowing her hair from her eyes.
"Say, do you think there's any hot water around here?"
"Ranma, I would really hate you," said Akane, and her frown made Ranma shiver. She folded her arms, and looked down on him for a minute before her eyes softened, a smile gracing her features. "If I didn't love you already."
"What can I say? I'm a loveable guy."
Akane took in Ranma's flaming hair, feminine features, and unbound breasts and laughed outright. And Ranma laughed with her. And the wind blew their laughter across China, a signal of the change to come.
A/N: I regret to inform you, that I'll be posting the epilogue as soon as I get it written. Yes, this is the LAST CHAPTER. I had to end this story somewhere, and this was the best place to do so. It's really hard to find a good ending place for AU's that don't have definite plot lines. But I'm sure most of you could tell it was coming to a close… uh, right? Well, anyway, at least I won't have to write anymore battle scenes. God, am I tired if writing those! But I just couldn't end it with one chapter… Okay, I just want to thank all my reviewers sooooo much! And that's all I have to say, so c ya.