A Reflections Mini-Sequel
A. V. Morgan
Part Seven
The absence of the Saotome Triplets had not gone unnoticed, but Nodoka and Cologne shared the opinion that it was better none of them were present when Akane was escorted into the Matriarch's home. At least, if the grieving note of self recrimination lacing their discussion with Ryouga was any indication. None of them would have reacted well to the shock of Akane's transformation into a man again, and the specifics of how and why it happened would have sent them off on a guilt trip significantly more orbital than even Akane's famous mallet could launch. Nor did the two women feel they would have had much success calming Akane if Ranma, Ranko and Fa Shen were present. He had come in the door, trailed by dozens of shocked amazons, swinging wildly between hysterical laughter and bitter tears, set off in turns by the comments the natives made about his transformation as they tried to inform Cologne about what they had witnessed or surmised about the situation.
It had taken long enough to drive out the spectators and gather the most learned elders at the table, and finally begin coaxing the truth out of the youngest Tendo. It was going to take even longer to draw out the complete story from Akane, since the beginning of his tale caused such an uproar among the old women. Certainly, they had all heard the rumors about Akane accusing the triplets of incestuous infidelities. But before they could accuse Akane of making up the story of catching them in the act, both Nodoka and Cologne shocked them—and Akane—by verifying that it was true.
"Bu- Wha- H-How!? You KNEW about it!?" Akane exploded.
"Sit. Down." Cologne waited until Akane stiffly returned to his seat, the magnificent corona of spiritual flames diminishing to a flicker under the neo-boy's skin akin to smoldering coals. Clearing her throat, she explained, "As it happens, Nodoka and I found out about this only this afternoon. We overheard the three of them explaining the situation to Ryouga. Not that it comes as a surprise, really. Both I, and apparently your Doctor Tofu, had suspected this might happen, given their unique situation."
Akane stared at the older women. Around him, Shampoo, Ukyo, Mousse and the assembled elders exchanged studied and curious looks.
"Perhaps you should elaborate," one of the elders suggested.
"This really is not the crisis we are here to discuss," Cologne reminded them, looking pointedly at Akane. "Since it bears on Akane's situation, I'll tell you the significant parts, but we are not going to discuss or debate this topic until Ranma, Ranko and Fa Shen can participate—"
"If they no running for hills," Shampoo muttered, cringing as she realized she had interrupted her great-grandmother. When Cologne turned on her with a demanding look, she meekly announced, "Ranko come into bath, break up Shampoo and Fa Shen getting, er… Shampoo help washing Fa Shen's back, Ranko come in drag Fa Shen off. Shampoo try hurry to follow, hear Ranko tell Fa Shen Nodoka and Great-Grandmother hear everything, must go find and warn Ranma. Then they both vanish in thin air. Shampoo no see them since. Come in here and find Akane is man again."
There was a pause, and then Nodoka asked, looking apprehensive, "Do- do you think that either of them knows about Akane?"
Shampoo shrugged.
Cologne cleared her throat, "We will have to worry about that later, Daughter. One problem at a time." She turned back to her audience, focusing on Akane but taking in everyone at the table. "Akane, if you caught Ranma masturbating in the furo, would you feel that he was cheating on you?"
Akane blushed furiously, glaring at Cologne for having the audacity to ask him such a question. "I don't care what that pervert does!" she growled.
Cologne whacked him on the head. "This is not the time to indulge in your jealousy and insecurity, Child. Now, answer the question."
Akane hunched, rubbing his head. In an extremely embarrassed voice, he shrugged, "I am sure that- that- that PERVERT can't even stop himself. You don't want to know how many times I caught him at it! That- that sick JERK did it as a GIRL more often than he did it as a BOY!"
There was a strangled noise from Nodoka. Too late, Akane realized that was one of the secrets he should have kept to himself forever. In a smaller voice, he amended, "Well… I forgot, he- SHE was really Ranko inside back then, so I guess it makes sense she'd like it better like that…" Akane swallowed, wondering why that seemed to make it sound even worse.
Cologne resisted the urge to laugh aloud, but a definite smirk was straining it's way onto her face. "Yes. Well. That is an interesting observation, if not precisely an answer to the question."
Akane flushed again, forcing his mind to dredge up the exact words of Cologne's question. Running them through his head, he nodded sheepishly and answered, "It- it wouldn't be cheating."
"There," Cologne smiled cheerfully. "That wasn't so hard, was it?" There was a round of subdued laughter from the elders. The younger witnesses looked about as uncomfortable as Akane, studying random objects and avoiding meeting anyone else's eyes. Cologne rapped the table with her knuckles, "Very well then. You've all been told that, Ranma, Ranko and Fa Shen are all the same person. The fact that that person has three different bodies, three different identities, and three different lives, only confuses the issue. The different facets only made it seem more likely that they would act on being drawn to each other."
"Huh?" the younger group blurted.
Cologne sighed. "Ranma and Fa Shen are two sides of the same coin, the male and female version of the same person. In their normal lives, only one side of that coin was ever shown. Because of reincarnation and the cursed springs, Ranko was created, a version of that person who could show both sides of the coin. When she encountered the mirror, it confronted her with reflections of each side of that coin—but it was like the Cat's Whiskers Splitting Hairs technique. The metal of the coin, the solidity of it—her soul—was whisked around in a flurry to create the illusion that there were three coins." Cologne paused and looked at her audience until looks of comprehension dawned in even the slowest witted. Clearing her throat, Cologne continued, "What happened should never have happened. At least, it violated the normal rules of reincarnation by resurrecting the original Fa Shen and Ranma."
"What do you mean, 'should never have happened'!?" Ukyo asked angrily, rising up in her seat accusingly. "Are you telling us Fa Shen should have stayed dead!? That Ranma should have become Ranko!?"
"It would have been best," Cologne returned sternly, glaring at the okonomiyaki chef until she settled back down. "It would have been more difficult for Ranko to emerge from Ranma under the normal circumstances, but the fact remains that Ranko is the solution, the perfect blending of Fa Shen and Ranma. I did not expect her to survive their awakening. They literally ripped her in half, left an afterimage of the coin in her place. I expected them to be horribly scarred or crippled, each holding only half the coin, neither having the other side to balance them out. In terms of relative power, they were as whole as any normal person, but incomplete.
"I thought this was proven by each of them being drawn into the wrong body, each spiritual gender drawn into bodies of the opposite physical sex," Cologne confided. With a faint laugh, she carried on, "I never anticipated what would happen if they brought the two sides of the original coin together.
"I see now that I was completely wrong about the mirror in Ranm- Ranko's case," she finally admitted. There was a swell of murmurs that was quickly silenced when she explained, "If the reflections had slept with each other, the outcome would have been the same as when Ranma and Fa Shen had sex. Divided as they were, coming together in that way opens the door to creating new life. Being of the same soul, instead of sparking the birth of a new soul, it unlocked that soul allowing it to flood the existing vessels. They poured new metal into an existing mold. It made all three of them solid and whole!"
There was another pause as the audience digested this.
"I'm not sure I understand," Ukyo broke into the silence.
"Well, that was a different way of explaining what we already know," Cologne reminded her. "Ranko was barely clinging to life, a healthy body desperately sheltering the wisp of spirit freed from the curse I cured. She had a physical reality, but most of what she was had been divided between Ranma and Fa Shen. She was an echo that was fading gradually from reality. Only the infusion of ki from Ranma and Ranko could save her. We expected the pair would have to process their own ki and supply her with the excess freed up through sexual activity. The amount of energy given up to conceive a baby is only the spark that lights the flame, however. Nowhere near sufficient to sustain an adolescent human being in the full flower of life.
"The surprise, of course, was when Ranko was fully healed during one liaison between Ranma and Fa Shen," Cologne stood up and crossed her arms. "I noticed it at once, but with the distractions at the time I decided not to confront them with my suspicions. I knew they had stumbled onto something much greater than simply healing Ranko and themselves, but they were reluctant to confide in me. Today I learned I was right. When Ranko was healed, the three of them forged a connection to the raw, limitless potential of their soul. It is only opened by intercourse and with it, they can harness the power of a god." She hopped up onto her staff, and looked down on the room from that perch. Seeing her listeners were too shocked to react, she turned to look at Akane, "Ranma and Fa Shen have been sleeping together in order to allow Ranko to master this power, to protect themselves and everyone else from it."
Akane stared up at the tiny elder, his mouth flapping in disbelief.
Nodoka frowned, "But, I thought they were trading bodies to master their curses."
Cologne looked at her adopted daughter. "They are mistaken about the side effect of these unions. I do wish they had come to me at the beginning, but I suspect they will figure it out themselves. Individually they are not be underestimated, and collectively I cannot put anything past them."
One of the elders let out a pent up breath, "If these are just the highlights, I'm afraid to hear the full story! The power of a god, you say!?"
Cologne shuddered, "The power, yes. But not the restraints and wisdom of a god. More like a force of nature unleashed. A sun brought down to the surface of the Earth, only possessed of will and intelligence. If not for what I already know about the child, I would be terrified to even contemplate it."
"You can't be serious," Akane babbled.
Cologne cleared her throat, "As I warned, that is all I intend to say on this for now. It was important for you to know, Akane, why your fiancé 'betrayed' you. Now, let us focus on what we can do about your situation."
Akane stared for a moment, then nodded, gratefully pushing all but this conclusion from his mind. If any of Cologne's tale was to be believed, the triplets had a lot more on their minds this morning than what their actions would mean to Akane. Swallowing a lump of heartache, he remembered Ranko's reaction to his intrusion that morning, the wild, overwhelming nature of the power she had been struggling to harness, the red-head's concern about Akane getting himself hurt by interrupting her practice. "I think… I've seen the power you are talking about," Akane gasped, sweating suddenly, remembering the sensual feelings evoked by Ranko's restrained aura. It had been raw, erotic, seductive.
Akane repeated his story, paying closer attention to the details, reconstructing the confrontations of that day, and examining his reactions. "I didn't understand… It just hurt so much that he- they could do something like that. I mean, I thought they trusted me now. I thought, since they knew I knew it had happened once, to heal Ranko… if there was a REASON for them to do something like that, I'd understand. As bad as it was, for them to be doing that, to be sneaking around, even if it wasn't exactly cheating—they could have at least tried to explain THAT—knowing they didn't trust me, it- it-"
Akane covered his face, trying to fight back the feelings that had dominated him all day. "It hurt so much. It made me so angry. But it also made me feel so terrible about everything. The more angry I got, the more it hurt, and the more it hurt, the more I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. So I just got more angry. It didn't help to take it out on Ranma. That made it worse," he confessed. He described the last confrontation, careful not to state right out that he had clobbered Ranko, but only that he had realized he was so angry he might, if she came up to him in male form. "So, I just left the village. I found someplace to think past the fields, and about an hour later I did the ki blast that turned me into a guy!" he sobbed.
This being the reason for being there, the elders had listened to the whole story, and then proceeded to question Akane for specifics. By the time they were finished, the sun had long fallen below the horizon, lamps had been lit, a meal served and picked over. Akane had no appetite. The ordeal he had gone through on his way to China, the growing dread of ending up forever transformed into a man, had finally reached it's pitiless conclusion, and he could not deny he had truly brought it down on his own head.
"I don't see anything left to talk about," he said bitterly, as plates were cleared away by Mousse and Shampoo. "The Nyanniichuan was destroyed when Fa Shen got thrown back into it. Instant Nyanniichuan won't help, since this curse is like Ryouga's pig curse! I'll just turn back into a guy the next time I lose my temper, and even I know that happens a hundred times a day!" He made to get up and leave, but a voice interrupted his dramatic exit.
"That is incorrect."
"Wha-?"
The old woman who spoke up met
Akane's glare. "Anger alone will not reactivate your curse. All the
witnesses described the color of your ki projection. It was teal. That
signifies a mixture of anger and depression, both emotions usually laced with
pain. The ki technique you have created is fueled by defiance," she calmly
pronounced. Seeing Akane pause and settle back into his seat, the old woman
smiled, "I also dispute the need for using any form of Nyanniichuan as a
remedy. These mutated curses you and your friend have been inflicted with
originated as Jusenkyo curses, the mechanism of which I have studied in
exhausting detail."
"Huh?" chorused, Mousse, Shampoo and Akane.
"That right!" Shampoo pealed after a second look at the woman. "This Po Shen, Matron of Mysteries, she village expert on magic. She trying for ages to find cure for Jusenkyo curses," Shampoo informed her Neriman peers.
Po Shen grinned at Shampoo's enthusiasm. The girl had been trying to corner her since her return to the village, desperate to learn the status of her cure research. "Thank you, Shampoo. I forgot to introduce myself," she patted the purple-haired amazon before returning her attention to Akane. "Now, all Jusenkyo curses have a built in reversal mechanism. I do not see why that should change simply because the trigger has been altered. There is a simple experiment I can perform to determine if your true form is still locked away in your ki. It is something I have come up with to test women applicants for locked or mastered curses, to ensure candidates wishing to join the tribe truly are women. I need but a moment to prepare the test, if you are interested."
Akane considered that. " You don't think my real form was lost? You think I might be able to change back to normal?"
"Not at all. You've recovered your 'lost' male form well enough. My guess is that you re-infected yourself with the full curse. If I am correct, it will only be necessary to discover what will trigger it's reversal," Po Shen reassured Akane. "I'll be back momentarily. Don't you worry, Child. All is not lost."
One of the elders commented, after Po Shen bustled out of sight, "It was these weird side effects from the Instants that convinced her they could not be relied upon as cures to the curses. I wonder if she thinks this might show her how to use them a different way?"
"Not much of a cure if it can only be used by ki adepts."
"What did you say?" Akane whipped around. "Did you call me a ki adept?"
"What would you call an individual who could have leveled this village with the attack you let off? I think it's fortunate that you were not upset with US all day, or you certainly would have kept aiming in the same direction," the woman retorted somewhat soberly. Then, with a dramatic sigh and wicked grin, "That Ranma certainly landed a husband worthy of herself!"
"Erk!" Akane choked, as Mousse and Shampoo laughed at him.
In spite of the fact that Ranko's suggestion sounded plausible, that Ranma was liable to resurface if they lost themselves in the fusion of sex, the two Fa Shen's hesitated to act on her request. For one thing, they were not about to strip down and go at it right there in front of Ryouga. For another, Ranko had not been entirely correct in her guess about Fa Shen 'fantasizing' about experiencing sex as man and woman at the same time. What happened in the circuit was close enough to satisfy any curiosity Fa Shen had about that experience, since once the boundaries of identity dissolved, she had found herself in that state anyway. The truth was, she was frightened by the thought of finding herself in that position with just herself—without, as she had experienced each time before, Ranko's personality dominating the event. From the look they exchanged, Onna- and Otoko-Fa Shen caught each other wondering why Ranko had not realized that her fantasy was the reality of their trinity's unions. How could Ranko have missed the fact that she was the gestalt, the personification of any union of Ranma and Fa Shen? How could she miss the fact that, while Ranma and Fa Shen started and finished it, it was always in truth Ranko who was having sex with herself? That Ranma and Fa Shen literally lost themselves in the event?
Fa Shen, looking at her male duplicate, in dread. It was bizarre, but somehow the act that could bring two strangers closer than anything else promised to open a rift within herself wider than she could fathom. Ranma's presence, at the start and finish, and Ranko's domination through the act, gave her the illusion of intimacy with another that she desperately needed to cope with the intimacy. That was all that let her view it as sex, and not masturbation. It was all that kept her from being mortified with shame at herself.
Fa Shen, looking back at the female version of himself, could easily guess her thoughts, but found his obsessed with a more poignant realization. He had painfully comprehended the process Onna-Fa Shen described, the manner in which her identity had shifted from that of Ranma, through that of Ranko, to settle into being Fa Shen. It was exactly what Fa Shen had described to Ranko in the dreamscape before awakening in his new body. If Fa Shen tried to be Ranko, Fa Shen effectively ceased to exist. It was a paradigm shift. Ranma, Ranko and Fa Shen were all the same person, but the differences were in how that person understood his or her own existence. Which brought to mind the problem he faced now.
Fa Shen was not man enough to engage in intercourse with any of the three women present. Not because the attraction, the lust, was not there, but because of the way he would react to each of them. Fa Shen, Ranko and Ryouga would each arouse the part of him, currently dormant, that was Ranma. The desire HE felt for the three far outstripped any feelings Fa Shen had for them as a man. If one of them were Onna-Ranma, he could get over it, because Ranma would be just as repelled at the idea of screwing his female self. So, the only way he could stay Fa Shen, was if Ranko or Onna-Fa Shen became Ranma. But they had already made their choices about who they were in this triumvirate. Again, that seemed to leave him without a choice. But that was an illusion. There was a clear choice. The choice to accept the truth. To accept that he was Ranma, had been all along, and merely believed at the moment that he was Fa Shen.
Which was rather mind boggling.
The difficulty really was not in choosing to accept that truth. To reclaim the identity that belonged to him. The problem was knowing why he was refusing to. Fa Shen sighed heavily, sensing that he knew what was discouraging him, what he was afraid of. He had taken keen note of it, listening to Onna-Fa Shen describe her ordeal. It was simple to test. He stood, grabbing the kettle from the fire and approaching Ryouga. Restoring the lost boy to his native form, Fa Shen looked down into his face, as Ryouga stared up indignantly, wiping fluid out of his eyes.
"You could have warned me, you know! Hell, if you want to deal with my guy side, you could just ASK! I hate it when people push a change on me!"
Fa Shen shrugged, setting down the kettle, "You did it to Ranma all the time. Now, stand up. Please."
Ryouga ground his teeth, but nodded, "Only because you asked." He stood up, confronting the face and form of his rival, wondering aloud, "Now, what's the idea? What do you need me to be a guy for?"
"For the same thing she did," Fa Shen gestured to his girl counterpart. Looking into Ryouga's eyes almost fearfully, he elaborated, "I need to know how I will react to you. It's one thing to say I am Fa Shen, I think it's a little different to really BE Fa Shen." While he was saying this, he was observing himself closely. There was a strong attraction. The physical response from past intimacy, and the reaction of her feminine psyche to Ryouga's masculinity. That fit his notion of being Fa Shen. He did not want to act on it, particularly. It was not hard to keep a grip on himself. But, there. Something was stirring inside, something that was reaching out to the boy in front of him hungrily. Closing his eyes, he focused on that part.
After a moment, he decided that part of him was in conflict with itself. In fact—his eyes sprung open as he stared at Ranko—it seemed that he was in two minds about Ryouga, deep beneath the surface. On one hand, there was an overwhelming love, laced with passion and vulnerability, that turned violently, fearfully away from acting on it. On the other hand, was a hope, a longing, a loneliness straining to make contact with the boy, muted by self doubt and uncertainty. The second was much closer to the surface, much closer to what Fa Shen would recognize as his own personality. That was Ranko. The first had to be Ranma, and when he turned to summon that part for further study, it dove even deeper, out of reach.
With a stifled moan of understanding, he stepped away from Ryouga. Ryouga was the reason he refused to accept. Man-among-men, manipulations of the mind, and Ranko's heart all taken aside, Ranma wanted Ryouga, and despised himself for it. From the way Onna-Fa Shen was looking at him, he knew she knew it. He knew when she was telling her story, that she was trying to warn him of it. She had already felt it. "Damn."
"What is it? What's going on?" Ranko popped up and grabbed him.
Fa Shen looked down, avoiding her eyes.
"Tell me!" Ranko demanded.
"He's jealous of you," Fa Shen breathed.
Ranko stiffened. "What do you mean?" she demanded.
"Ranma…" he began, swallowed and trailed off. Shaking himself, he tried again, "I want to be Ranko. I can't be Ranma because Ranma wants to be you. Because Ranma wants to be with Ryouga." He had to catch his balance as Ranko shoved him back in her haste to distance herself from him.
"No," she breathed. Louder, "I took it back. It was me! It should have been me, you- you- How can you be saying this?"
He dropped his chin entirely to his chest, staring straight down at his feet. The ground under him seemed so solid compared to the wild shifting that had started to undermine his thoughts at the confession. As his mind settled in the position his heart demanded, flesh flowed and shifted just as fluidly to accommodate the person who needed to express herself. "It was me," she breathed, bringing her eyes level with the original Ranko. With a shuddered breath and a flutter of eyelids, tears spilled down from each eye, "Ohgod. This is even worse than I feared. I am Ranko."
Ranko, the girl who had staked her claim to that identity, and stuck it out through all the changes that followed, gasped. "I thought you were Fa Shen," she accused weakly.
"I made the same mistake. It was the only place to hide from the truth," she mumbled, tightening her eyes to stem the flow of misery. Choking past an aborted sob, she reached out for her other, innocent self, "At first, when the memories of him flooded back, I tried to hide as Ranma. But I still loved Ryouga. I still wanted him. Then you added to it, taking the choice I had made and making it for yourself, forcing me to go back to who I was, before… before the curse. I mean, someone had to be Ranma. Our honor depended on it, and the choice had been made for me. But it was so hard to be Ranma when I needed to be Ranko. I…"
Ryouga glanced over at Fa Shen, the remaining Fa Shen, and saw the pain of comprehension in her eyes.
The crying Ranko regained her voice, "This is so stupid. I don't have to explain this. You feel this just as much as I do! We aren't different people. We're- I am just in different places. It's easier to be Fa Shen, in some ways, because of where we are, because all this confusion is nothing compared to knowing everyone I know and love died a long time ago. But it's hard too, since being Fa Shen means holding onto the past, standing alone, walking away from everything in the hopes of finding someplace new to start over. It's that or become you. Become Ranko. It's the only way I can be honest about who I really am. Once Fa Shen. Once Ranma. Both and neither.
"But, DAMMIT!" she shouted. "No, there had to be THREE of me instead. There had to be all these people who want me to be Fa Shen. And everyone else wanting me to be Ranma, so they can marry me, defeat me, control me, make me into whatever they want!" This tirade rose in volume, and sent a cold arctic chill through the dry eyed Ranko. It finally hit her that she really was listening to herself. Her own confusion and frustration given a separate voice.
Ryouga was looking terrified. He had a vague inkling of the depths of this disturbance, a sense of triumph at the realization that his gut instincts had been right. The true compass of his heart sent spinning because his universe had three north poles, each of which was not sure where it wanted to establish itself.
"I once said, the only way I couldn't be Ranma was to not want what Ranma wanted," the crying girl sobbed. "But now I can't be Ranma. He wants to be you, and I can't be. I can't be me."
Ranko watched her impassioned other fold in on herself, to huddle in a miserable knot in the dirt. The shock of each word had become like lightning bolts through her brain. Her private feeling, that she had evolved from the acceptance and understanding of her previous incarnations—that instead of turning her back on either past, she had embraced the best of what she was to become who she was—was proving itself before her eyes. It was not possible for her to go back to being Ranma or Fa Shen, because even if she forced herself back into either personality, instinct would lead her back to where she was now. This simple truth was torturing the part of her she had dumped all of Ranma's responsibilities on.
"No. NOnoNOnoNOnoNooOOOoo!" she cried out, dropping to gather her twin into her arms. "This isn't what I wanted! This isn't what I meant!" As she pulled the other girl close and began rocking her, her twin seized her, clinging on for dear life. Shortly, a third pair of arms encircled both of them, soothing them with soft, inarticulate syllables of comfort.
Even in her state of shock, Ranko—the one not crying—was aware that the girl she was holding was not the first to break down like this. Looking up, she met her other twin's eyes and asked desperately, "How did you make it through this?"
Fa Shen, finding herself straining to cling to that identity, laughed bitterly while jabbing herself in the chest, "I ran straight through it and hid here. I threw myself back into being Fa Shen, but I don't know how long I can stay."
Ranko shuddered. This was totally out of hand. The three of them, each taking different paths, were converging on the same spot and she was damned if she knew how they could get past each other without going to war over her identity. "Dammit! I wanted to avoid this!"
"You can't change who you are," Fa Shen sighed, hugging both girls in her arms. "You can't deny it, either."
"But, what are we going to do?" Ranko begged, giving Ryouga a fleeting glance. In her heart, she knew she would share him with her other selves, if it came down to it, but knowing also that other relationships and obligations would make that solution unattainable.
Fa Shen did not have to guess what the glance meant. She had avoided looking at the lost boy as much as possible to keep from sliding back into what she had escaped. "I had hoped h- she could go back to being Ranma. Given enough time, we can become independent. If we stop melding, if we let our lives take different paths—"
"But we have to want different things, or we'll all be chasing after the same dreams," Ranko cut in to finish the thought. How ironic that this mess was started by an attempt to keep three "Ranmas" from all chasing after Akane. Hell, it had been hard enough to allow Copy-Ranko to go on that date with Ryouga. Ranko had wanted him just as badly after that last trip to the mirror. Biting her lip, she asked herself if she could make the same decision she had then. In order to help an all girl Ranma become Ranko, she had given up her hopes of being with Ryouga. Could she do it again, to help a Ranko go back to being Ranma? She already knew it was the part of her that was Ranma that was so desperately in love with him.
Fa Shen read her mind, "You wouldn't…"
"What else can I do? I took him from Ranma, and I wasn't playing fair. Ranma can't go back, but he can go forward if I get out of his way," she almost sobbed, fighting to keep from diving into an emotional abyss. Gritting her teeth and steeling herself, she stood up and thrust the girl in her arms at Ryouga. "Take her. Go!"
Ryouga awkwardly shifted the weight of Ranko's twin, almost dropping her when she jerked around to stare at Ranko.
"What are you doing!?" she demanded.
"Don't ask questions!" Ranko shouted. "He's yours, Ranma! I-" she broke off and looked down. "I am so sorry. I never meant for this- Would you please just GO!?" she began to shake, whipping around to avert her eyes.
"Ranko…"
"We CAN'T be the same person, Ranma. The only way I can keep you is to let go of him. Don't make this any harder than it is. You win," Ranko lost it then, her throat closing as the flood gates opened. In a flash, she bolted from the clearing, swallowed by the darkness of the woods.
"Get her home, Ryouga. I'll
take care of Ranko," Fa Shen shoved the couple in the other direction
forcefully. In the morning, they three of them might be able to face each other
and discuss this, but right now she was the only one who could talk to Ranko.
After all, she had made the same sacrifice, and maybe she could learn from her
twin what her next step was.
As Fa Shen slipped into the
darkness, Ryouga looked into the eyes of the girl in his arms in utter
confusion. "Ranma?" he asked, almost pleading. She nodded hesitantly,
as if still testing the idea in her mind. Ryouga took a deep breath, "Can
you tell me what the hell all of that was about?"
Ranma wriggled in his arms, pressing against his chest, "Put me down." Once she was standing on her own feet, she took a few calming breaths, scrubbed her face to obliterate the tracks of tears, and replied, "I'm still pretty confused myself. I'm me again, but for a while there I was Fa Shen, then Ranko. That's pretty scary."
Ryouga nodded enthusiastically in endorsement.
Ranma tentatively leaned into his chest, letting the mental and emotional outcome come to rest within her. After a moment, she said, "What just happened… I think we—is it 'we' or is it 'me'? Whatever—we've been lying to ourselves, Ryouga, and it just caught up to us."
Ryouga frowned. "I think I got that part. You really are all the same person, I guess, but that's not what I meant." Suddenly he burst out laughing, "I mean, I've heard of throwing yourself at someone, but I never pictured it happening like that!" The gentle way he slipped his arms around Ranma, sheltering her, while at the same time getting into position to keep her from slipping away, sent a thrill through her.
"What are you really asking, Ryouga?" she asked, knowing what the responding question would be.
Ryouga frowned. "Why am I the reason you did not want to be Ranma?"
Ranma laughed, "Come on, P-chan. You're not that dense. 'Cuz of you, I'm a living contradiction. I mean, really! There I am, the Man-Among-Men; the guy who chased me halfway around the world to kill me makes a real woman outta me, and I fall in love with him for it. Even when Ranko took everything else away, I knew I had to be a girl and I had you to thank for it."
Ryouga coughed and stammered for a moment. "Y- you- you're staying a girl?" he asked rather meekly.
"I wouldn't be me otherwise," Ranma replied, offhand. Then with a second's thought, "Oh, I'll still be a guy too. Ranko an' me are exactly the same that way. I just ain't gonna act like there's somethin' wrong with me bein' a girl."
"Oh."
Ranma turned to look up at him at that. "What'sa matter, Ryouga? You worried about me makin' a woman outta YOU?" she teased. When Ryouga gulped, she laughed. "Well, I seem to remember you makin' an offer along those lines…"
Ryouga seriously began to fidgit. "Er. Ah. Aren't you, ah, worried about, erm, you know. That marriage thing?" he tried to dodge the issue.
Ranma shrugged. "An amazon marriage ain't like a real marriage, Ryouga. If it takes me off the market here, I say we go for it. Won't count otherwise unless we make it official back home, you know, with a ceremony an' all." There was a long silence in which Ranma stood in awe of the sudden freedom Ranko had given her. The weight of the world had been taken off her shoulders, somehow. She HAD grown. All the pretending to be her old self aside, she had truly metamorphosed into the person she wanted to be. The wide grin faltered a bit, as she realized Ryouga had a lot further to go to catch up. Turning back to look at him seriously, "Hey, I was just jokin' Ryouga. You don't gotta be a girl for me. You didn't push me, an' I promise you I won't push you. I didn't choose this 'cuz I thought your curse gave me an out."
Ryouga gaped once more, fighting the sensation of his heart flipping over and over in joy, determined to find out now if there was a catch, another disappointing flaw in their relationship. "What about Akane… or your mother, Ranma?" he cringed as he summoned the most frightening specters known to loom over Ranma's head.
Ranma stiffened, fists balling as she almost pulled away from him. Scowling at the ground, she barked out, "No. Once- ONCE Akane would have won hands down, but after that night she was a consolation prize. Bait to lure me back to my old life. But ask yourself, Ryouga, if she offered herself now, would you let go of me to have her?" It was a difficult question to ask, since Ranma had fears about just that.
Ryouga stared into her face, letting the wonder and dread of his love for the person in front of him roar through him. With a deep sigh, he repeated his original conclusion, "I'll always love her, Ranma, but I know she'll never love me back. You can't say the same though."
Ranma looked away guiltily. "Okay, maybe it's not the same. Maybe she'll keep fighting you for me, but all the rest, the engagements, the promise my mom made to her dad… All of that doesn't matter now. Ranko, and probably even Fa Shen, they're going to help carry the weight of all that. My mom's problem is easy enough, if I marry you. I just have to have a kid and raise him to be a real man—a- a gentleman. I think you an' I can manage that a lot better than my old man, huh?"
Ryouga stared at her, boggling. "You're really serious about this!"
"Of course I am!" Ranma shouted. "You think I'd watch Ranko rip her heart out for me an' NOT do my best to make you happy!?"
"To make… ME happy?" Ryouga reeled back.
"What? You mean you didn't get it?" Ranma stared at him, in faint disbelief, "Man. I KNOW you're not this dumb! This was as much about you as it was about me!" Ranma huffed in sudden unhappiness.
She dropped to the ground, legs akimbo, and willed her eyes to stay dry. "That night, when we came home, she pulled the rug out from under both of us. There was never a real big difference between me and Copy-Ranko. That whole thing about me wakin' up, thinkin' nothing after the curse had really happened to me, it was true an' it wasn't true. Fa Shen figured it out before they 'woke' me up. I became Ranko when I got that curse. At the time, the difference between bein' Ranko and bein' me was turnin' into a girl. An experience like that can change everything about the way you look at your self. The only way I could go back to bein' Ranma was to change back to how I was just before the curse happened. To see everything like that again.
"Of course, that woulda only worked if I'd been the one to wake up in the male copy," Ranma laughed humorlessly, folding her arms protectively over her heart. "I was SO not ready for being a girl. I didn't even understand what you were doin' to me, Ryouga." She grinned fondly up at him, "But, I certainly liked it, and I remembered that I liked you. It felt really weird, and you were acting so strange. Not that bad. I'd never had anyone be that gentle, that sweet to me. Went completely over my head, but again, I really liked it. It was fun watching your reactions.
"It got a little scarier when I began to pick up the memories left over from Ranko," she shivered. In her memory, she remembered how hard she had fought the realization of what she'd done, how it had come about. "Once I got an idea of what we'd done, I had to cling to those memories to keep from completely losin' it. Told myself it was natural an' all for a girl who used to be a guy to maybe snap the first time they let it all go, and tried real hard to adjust to bein' Ranko.
"If she hadn't taken that away from me, you and I would have been together all this time," Ranma concluded. Taking a ragged breath, she shrugged, "Unless there was some way for us to all fuse together, one body, one mind, there was no way Ranko could hold onto what she took from me. Not that she really did anything wrong. It was all so confusing, and we were so much alike deep down, she couldn't help but see my feelings as hers."
Ryouga knelt down in front of her, facing her, "Do you know why she- she gave up on me? Gave me to you?"
"I'm not entirely sure. I know that if she hadn't I would not have been able to hold it together. I couldn't be Ranko, refused to be Ranma and I'd lost my grip on bein' Fa Shen." Ranma pulled her knees in to her chest and hugged them. The disorienting chaos of those final moments was still too close to the present for her to be comfortable talking about them. "Sometimes when you lose, you win," she muttered, remembering someone saying something like that during the mirror crisis. "I was losing it pretty bad, I guess."
Ryouga nodded, timidly, still very concerned that things were not entirely stable in her.
Ranma realized she was staring off into space and brought her focus in on Ryouga. With a sudden thrill of vulnerability, she swallowed. "Ryouga?" she waited until he met her eyes. Her fingers suddenly fumbling helplessly with the ties to her shirt, she asked, "Wi- will you make love to me?"
Ranma was forced to launch herself sideways through the air to avoid a fountain of blood from her paramour.
Ukyo found herself on the edge of the village, with little idea of how she had gotten there. From the moment she had laid eyes on Akane's male form, something inside her had snapped. Only by sheer force of will had she managed to sit there and listen to the story of how it had happened. As the old woman—Po Shen's words penetrated, suggesting that Akane had granted herself a version of the curse Ukyo was pining to inflict upon herself, Ukyo had finally lost it. The promise she had made to Ranma and Ranko surged up to choke her, reminding her that she was forbidden to do what Akane, damn her blackened soul, was getting away with. It was beyond unfair. Whatever Ranko and company said, she had no doubts that they secretly desired a mate who could truly compliment them. Ryouga's curse had all but guaranteed Ranko would choose him, and the same would be true for Akane and Ranma.
True, if what Cologne had said, there was one last chance in Fa Shen. The ancient amazon made it sound as if it was only a matter of time before all three of them turned into versions of Ranko. Ukyo had raced out of the house, intent on stealing the cask of nanniichuan and dousing herself on the spot, then tracking Fa Shen down and defeating her before her personality shifted enough to have the same absurd objections Ranko and Ranma had made. They would be married and time would turn her into the man Ukyo ached for.
But the fallacies of this fantasy hit her before she could break into the stone vault. What were her chances, really, of defeating Fa Shen in combat? Maybe if she joined Mousse in training with those Musk idiots, and Fa Shen was hit with the weakness moxibustion, Ukyo could pull it off. Then, there was the little fact that she could never expect Fa Shen to be more than half a man at best. Ranko had managed to make at least that much clear about her current personality. It was patently stupid to expect Fa Shen to swing as far over as the prototype stud himself, Ranma.
With a scream of rage and frustration, she had fled from her prize, listing the competition she faced, with men like Herb vying for the same bride. Compared to the likes of him, Shampoo, Mousse, Ryouga and possibly one of the triplets themselves, she was barely in the same league. In spite of her insane devotion to avenging her honor on Ranma, she had long learned that the needs of supporting herself had taken the vital edge off her training, left her just that unforgivable smidgen less talented a martial artist than the others.
It was worth crying over, but there was the one consolation. She WAS better than Akane. At least, she could out fight her strongest rival. If Akane really got a handle on chi attacks, following her disastrous breakthrough, that might not hold true. Still, there was a faint hope of staying in the running, and if she kept her wits around her, she knew that amazon marriage laws were not the best way to claim one of the red-heads.
This calming realization had freed her mind in time to notice she was about to leave the village, and put her in a state to consider her options. "I need to do what Akane did. I only need instant nanniichuan," she patted her clothing down and produced a packet with an evil grin. "Check. Then, I need a chi attack. I can put out as strong an aura as that witch any day! Right now, I could pull off a shishihokodan easily enough!" As she brought up her aura, she noticed with a sick kind of fascination that it was a blue tinged chartreuse, that blended into a fine, glowing teal as her emotions became more focused.
"What do you know, it is an aura of defiance," she mused.
Closing her eyes, she revisited the memory of many battles and reconstructed the technique used by Ranma and Ryouga to channel their chi into devastating attacks. Her own school of martial arts taught more subtle chi manipulations, and those skills were more than sufficient for a raw display such as that. It was far less complicated than channeling chi through her weapons, or using it to enhance her physical capabilities. Then the aura flickered out. "But, can I really convince anyone it's an accident, when everyone saw me there listening to Akane's story?" she asked herself anxiously. "Damn!"
She considered returning to the manor to rethink her plan when two forms burst out of the darkness, racing towards the village. Ukyo had her mega-spatula out in her hands, dropping into a guard position, when the shapes resolved into twin Saotome girls.
Ranko seemed to notice her and dropped to a halt in front of her. With characteristic friendly concern, she asked, "Ukyo? Are you alright? What are you doing out here?"
Ukyo waited until the other girl came to a stop next to Ranko, "Hey, Ran-chan. Fa Shen. I, uh, guess I was looking for you. Where's Ranma?" Ukyo raised an eyebrow as Ranko twitched at her brother's name and Fa Shen reached out a comforting hand. Ukyo noticed there were tear tracks on Ranko's face and filed the observation away, "Er, I suppose you know the cat's outta the bag?" She received the expected cringes at the metaphor and then their nods. "Right. I don't think anyone's mad at you. Cologne said something about how dangerous the power you've got could be, and implied it was best you were practicing with it. But that's not the real problem right now," she prepared to drop the bomb on them, rushing to cut off their questions about the sex thing. "Akane's turned herself into a boy. Like Ryouga's pig curse."
The two girls reared back in shock, "Whaaaaat!?"
Ukyo nodded sadly, "Yup. She got so worked up about being betrayed by all of you she went and threw off some kind of defiance chi blast. Big one. Like Ryouga's perfect shishihokodan, and she nailed herself with it."
Ranko made a strangled sound of misery and rage.
Before Fa Shen could stop her, Ranko was streaking off through the village. Fa Shen paused to glare at Ukyo, "Don't you think there might have been a better way to tell us about this! She's torn herself up enough for one night!" With a snarl, Fa Shen was gone, and Ukyo was left to trudge back to the manor alone. After a few steps, she glanced back over her shoulder, "Weird. They didn't say where Ranma was."
A few moments later, she realized who else was pointedly absent.
"Ryouga…" she breathed, then remembered the signs of Ranko's initial distress, some of which she had masked as she reached Ukyo, and Fa Shen's comment clicked together. It was not a great leap from there to guess what Ranko would be so "torn up" about. With wide eyes, she whipped around to stare off into the forest, "No! They wouldn't have!"
But the suspicion would not leave. Her fist tightening around her spatula, Ukyo raced out of the village, eyes peeled for any sign of the trail Ranko had left in her passage. If Ranma and Ryouga were up to no good, she, Ukyo, was going to catch them at it. She promised herself, if so, there would be hell to pay!