Let the Curtain Fall

by Mike2

Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored; Light dies before thine uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall; And universal darkness buries all.

5. The Siege

What has gone before:

Ranma came into possession of a strange book.  Two men called Karadoku and Zara challenged him for it.  Ranma lost, only to discover Akane had already stolen it.  In using it, she became marked by magic she released.  Soon after, a string of savage murders plagued Nerima: young girls slaughtered by a beast drawn by Akane's unwitting use of the book.  Ranma defeated it, but realized that more would soon come.  In the aftermath of his success, he helped his fiancee deal with the guilt she felt for having (she felt) inadvertently caused innocent people's deaths.  Allies were called in and they prepared for the inevitable assault.

***

The heavy hand on her shoulder was both reassuring and frightening.  "Make me proud, my youngest daughter," Father said.  Pride was the furthest thing from her mind.  I'm scared, she wanted to say.  The strong presence of Father behind made it unnecessary, made her doubts irrelevant.  He already knew her deepest fears, controlled her secret needs utterly--and left no possibility of turning back.  Already her new brothers and sisters were changing, releasing the anger that Father had blessed them with.  The scene would have been nightmarish had she not seen it before: skin peeling back and flesh exploding outward as the inhuman shapes beneath stood revealed in the soft moonlight.  The anxious whispers of a moment ago became animalistic sibilant hissing, deep-throated wet gurgling, and the sharp snapping of skeletal jaws.  Seen before, maybe, but she still wanted to squeeze her eyes shut and found herself whispering, "this can't be happening how did this happen to me can't do this," incessantly, the words repeating in a litany of panic.

              Father's grip on her shoulder tightened.  "It is your turn," he said.  Leaning closer, his soft voice was now meant only for her.  "My newly appointed child, my specially chosen daughter, first of my new brood: I know you will do me proud.  Fear neither this night nor the bloody deeds you must do.  Embrace them as you embraced the gift my love drew out of you.  Join your brothers and sisters in their revenge, daughter.  Join them as they make of the mangled corpses of your enemies a gift raised to my glory.  Do you feel your brethren's anger, their hate?  Do you feel the same stirring deep within?  Embrace it.  Release it!"

              The cool night air brushing past tickled her arm, carrying to her the scents of elsewhere.  Stars far above and the moon filled the dark spaces between her and the house with silvery paleness.  Loud sounds of heated argument drifting to her from within her goal.  Nearby, the impossibly still readiness of her eldest brother standing forward; the lithe serpentine stretch of her eldest sister next to him; and her two other brothers arrayed next to Father.  She breathed deeply and closed her eyes.  Held herself in perfect peace for a single moment that seemed to stretch forever, and then opened her mind to the reality of what she had to do.

              She would follow her new family into that house and she would kill everyone inside.  For the first time in her life she would grab her own victim--weak, helpless, ignorant--and feast.  Plunge her hand through his belly and clutch at the slippery lengths inside.  Something long and black and chitinous erupted from what had been her right arm.  Plunge her face into that softness and feed on the meat, long loops of entrails sucked back to feed the insatiable hunger within.  The skin on her face rippled and crawled away, revealing venomous sharpness beneath.  The deserving pain that filled her was nearly as sweet as the strength she now felt, and she raised her head to the sky in a wailing cry of tortured pleasure that abruptly twisted into a series of rapid, high-pitched inhuman clicks.

              "Forward!" ordered Father.  "Kill them!  But leave the girl to me!"

              His will surged and filled her utterly.  He filled them all and, overcome with his bloodlust and the resonating urges that echoed within, Ayumi Utada charged forward alongside her siblings.  All doubts gone.  The wind blowing through her long hair as she ran, her spine twisting and innards churning.  It all makes sense now, she thought.  Her sight shattered into fragmented perception, her left eye first bulging out and then splitting into bulbous clusters.  Like this I'm not nothing.  Only the momentary wetness in the other eye kept her vision from being perfectly clear.

Let the Curtain Fall

by Michael Noakes

(June 26/2001-September 01/2001)

An epic fanfiction set in the Ranma 1/2 world of Rumiko Takahashi.

Previous chapters found at http://www.geocities.com/noakes_m.

Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored;

Light dies before thine uncreating word:

Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;

And universal darkness buries all.

The Dunciad

Act One,

Chapter Four:

The Siege

Numbly and with a terrified scream bubbling up inside, she stumbled back as the sliding doors were ripped from their track, something massive and wet and red crashing into the room and tearing down the wall, charging into her friends, still off-balance from the last attack, confused in the aftermath of that terrible anger Akane had somehow dispelled, and bumping into the wall behind Nabiki Tendo felt weak in the knees, thinking, they're not ready, we're screwed!

              The hulking red figure--is it covered in blood? she absently wondered--smashed its massive fist into the confused huddle of young martial artists.  Reflexes returned instantly and they scattered and then the beast staggered back as Cologne slammed her stick into its chest, leaped past and intercepted another figure sliding in, a long tailed lizard-like woman, scaled and carrying long wavy knives in its many arms, it struck quickly but was deflected by the lightning-fast blocks of the ancient Amazon, Shit, Nabiki thought, I've never seen the old woman move so fast, but she's buying us the time we need.  Then a third figure entered, a man, tall, flesh desiccated and taut, nearly skeletal, wrongly-bent arms a sudden blur and then Kuno was in front of her, bokken flashing down, something shattering against the edge of his blade mere centimeters from her neck, and then he was moving again, knocking her roughly down as he jumped for Mrs. Saotome, his sword again catching an unseen projectile.  Stunned and unable to regain her feet, Nabiki watched from her sprawled position as Ukyou leapt into the battle, giant spatula scything down at the lizard woman, only to have the shaft of her weapon caught between the blades of three knives and twisted, the okonomiyaki chef sent flying into Mousse, the Chinese boy's flurry of knives sent astray but deflected by her father as he pushed Kasumi behind him, his outraged cry answered by something incomprehensible in Chinese as Shampoo smashed her bonbori into the side of the massive red thing, sending bloody gunk spattering everywhere but to little effect as it twisted around and sent her flying with a backhand, the purple-haired warrior nearly clipping her grandmother as the old woman leapt to-and-fro, shoring up the sudden gaps left as the younger fighters got knocked around, and through it all Nabiki noticed Ranma standing unmoving and unresponsive in the middle of the room, Akane a few hesitant steps behind.

              Nabiki's scream tried bursting free but caught in her throat, more a hiccup of fear than a proper cry, as the huge crimson creature suddenly loomed before her supine form, and she realized that it _was_ blood, that a three meter tall human-shaped mass of bleeding seeping bubbling flesh was about to crush her with a fist the size of her torso, I don't think I can blackmail this guy, she thought inanely, hope briefly returning as a flurry of spatulas imbedded themselves in its chest; but to no effect; and then the fist came down and with a reverberating howl Ryouga slammed into the monster, physically picking it up and carrying it away with his charge and crashing through the wall and out of the house.

              A helping hand pulled her up.  "Methinks we had best retreat to a safer position," Kuno said.  He pulled her towards the stairs.  She noted that Mr. Saotome was doing the same with his wife and Dad was covering Kasumi, the four of them already climbing towards the second floor.  Her samurai-wannabe came last, bokken held low.  The top of his hakama fluttered open from a long slash across his body.  Beneath the loose cloth she could see blood trickling along the length of his well-muscled chest and mixing with the sheen of sweat.  His eyes never left the enemies held in the main room of the house.  Nabiki looked back and saw the skeletal figure, utterly still with arms bent mantis-like before him, but checked by Ranma and Akane; apparently the martial artist had finally woken up.  The lizard-like creature with the knives was gone, but so were Shampoo and Mousse and Ukyou.  Standing at the entrance was a new opponent: a tall strongly built man, or so Nabiki thought but it was hard to tell, he wore no clothes and his skin was entirely black, mirrored obsidian, and he seemed an extension of the night lurking beyond the lights of the house.  The darkness seemed to roil about him, vacant wisps and curls flicking across his surface.  Cologne stepped in front of the man, and then Kuno forced her further up the stairs.

              A sudden eerie calm descended.  Her hurried breathing and the heavy steps ahead were the only breaks in the silence.  Mr. Saotome led the way, moving quickly and pulling his wife along with a strong grip, taking them away from the stairs.  They gathered near the end of the hallway.  Ms. Saotome looked lost, holding to her empty scabbard with a strong grip.  Somehow Kasumi still managed to look serene despite the attack, though her face was dotted with perspiration.

              Nabiki listened for sounds of pursuit.  She thought she could hear muffled thumps from outside.  Faint Chinese cries from the front.  Yells from downstairs--Ranma?  All around the sounds of battle, but distant, nearly overwhelmed by the hammering of her heart.  She felt disjointed from the reality of what was happening.  Friends were fighting for their lives, for _her_ life, even her sister, so near and yet there was nothing that she could do to help.

              "I think we're safe for the moment," Genma said, standing tensely, and Nabiki couldn't tell whether he was relieved to be away from the battle or wanted to rush back into the fray.  He looked more frightening, somehow, than the cowardly, stupid fat man she had grown to despise over the last two years.  The eyes behind his glasses were hard and dangerous, and they watched the staircase attentively.

              A sudden hiss from Kasumi's room.  The sound of cats, the single hiss taken up by many, a screech that sent her skin crawling.  Then a multitude of yowls and feline cries, almost humanlike in their pitch.  A rapid series of wet slapping sounds, dull thuds, and heavy silence once again.  The new quiet stretched out and Nabiki realized she was starting to shake.  Well, there goes Ranma's backup plan, she thought.  Kasumi gasped, one hand raised to her lips in mute horror.  She must be picturing what happened, Nabiki thought, trying to avoid doing the same, and then sudden renewed fear: I thought they were all downstairs!

              The three men oriented on the door to Kasumi's room, faces grim.  They crept forward slowly, their steps silent, not even flinching at a sudden detonation which flashed outside, the window flaring brilliantly and sending their shadows scuttling across the floor.  Kuno held back as Genma nodded once at her father, and the two took up positions on either side of the entrance.  Her father lifted his fist, raising fingers in a silent count, as his friend reached for the door.

              The door behind them exploded outward.  It cracked into the back of Genma's head and knocked him down.  Out of Happosai's guest room leapt a new enemy, a brief glimpse of long hair and insect legs seen through the flying fragments of wood.  Ms. Saotome, the closest, stumbled back and into Kasumi, the two falling down in a heap.  A small, slender woman stepped past them--small except for the long, thorny spider-like legs that erupted from her right side, shoulder, and back; the cluster of eyes that spread across the left half of her face, glinting above the grotesque mandible that protruded from her drooping jaw; and the swollen sac that hung off her distorted belly.  Dad turned quickly but that heavy sac flipped up, spraying something white and viscous that hit him square in the chest.  He flew back and thudded into the wall, dazed.  Even as he slumped the liquid solidified, ensnaring him in thick web-like strands.  He cried in impotent rage as the half-spider woman ignored him.  She blocked Kuno's swift strike with the outside of one arachnid leg and simultaneously smacked him across the face with another; the third slammed him across the chest in the opposite direction.  The kendoist went sprawling and bounced hard off the wall.  He fell unconscious to the floor.  She stepped forward almost delicately, walking with the fine precision of a dancer or model over his body.  Hell, where she's not all deformed and all spidery she's actually pretty hot, Nabiki thought, she's even kind of familiar looking and shit, shit, she's coming this way what the hell am I thinking am I going to do?

              She turned and ran.  She managed less than three steps before her world suddenly tilted.  Legs ripped out from under, she slammed into the ground, gasping at the jarring impact.  She flipped onto her back and saw webbing encasing her legs, stretching back to the bulging belly of the woman.  Those horribly long spider-legs blurred as they swiftly spun the strands back.  Nabiki's fingers scrabbled futilely at the grooves in the wooden floor as she was dragged closer.  She saw herself reflected in those clustered eyes, but nothing else--certainly no pity, and the single human eye looked dead.

              An unexpected yell interrupted.  Behind the woman, Genma jumped back to his feet, tossing the door aside.  Hope flared in Nabiki.  "C'mon, you worthless panda!" she cried, "Do something already!"

              "You should mind your manners, girl," he growled, charging forward.

              His entire body jerked savagely before he could take more than a single step.  Blood blossomed from his shoulder, spraying the opposite wall.  He stared down numbly at the pair of thick, whip-like tendrils plunging through his back and out his front.  They curled and twisted sinuously, then swiftly retracted back through the closed door into Kasumi's room.  With a groan of pain, Genma collapsed to one knee.

              The door to Kasumi's room opened and a short, portly man calmly stepped out.  Balding, face stubbly with unshaven patches, naked but for a pair of startling white, obviously new briefs--he would have been laughable had it not been for the blood smeared across his face and hands.  The newcomer took an obvious moment to savour the situation.  He looked disdainfully at Nabiki's scattered family and friends.  His lips twisted into a condescending smirk and then he kicked Genma in the face.  The fat, older Saotome rocked back and fell over, and then the man began wordlessly beating the shit out of the downed martial artist.

              The spider-woman stepped in front of her, blocking her view.

              Nabiki could only watch in immobile disbelief thinking, how the hell did this happen?  How did this shit doesn't happen to students the worst thing I should have to worry about is deadlines and perverted professors and shit shit she's reaching for me where the hell is everyone else has normal families why'd mine have to be so weird she's opening my fucking shirt and think Nabiki think get yourself out of this why does she look so familiar, think dammit!  One of the long, overreaching spider legs pulled along the front of her shirt, popping buttons.  Then it carefully peeled the shirt open.  The leading edge of the leg glinted in the light, not razor sharp but close enough, the chitin forming a narrow edge, and it drew a slow line across the length of Nabiki's trembling belly.

              "I have to do this," the woman unexpectedly said, voice distorted by the mandible protruding from her mouth but still recognizable, and the leg lifted until it stood poised above Nabiki's exposed stomach, the point pressing into the skin, ready to plunge down, and then with a flash of sudden insight recognition hit the mercenary Tendo: if one of these things could be a banker, then why not an up-and-coming pop idol?

              "Hey, aren't you Ayumi Utada?" she asked conversationally.

              Ranma Saotome watched his opponent warily.  They were alone: Akane, and the attacker, and himself.  By some unspoken agreement Cologne and the obsidian man had pulled back to the dojo to continue their fight there.  Now he faced this final opponent: a tall, gangly-limbed man, painfully ugly, emaciated enough to be nearly skeletal, with dry and leathery skin stretched taut across jutting bone. Nearly two meters tall but made shorter by a curving back, the spine clearly outlined, it stood utterly unmoving with both too-long arms poised mantis-like, the joints unnatural-looking on something so human, long fingers hanging slim and narrow.

              It stood there watching him impassively.  Narrow eyes seemed to look right through him.  No, _past_ him, he realized . . . and right at his fiancee.

              "Stay back, Akane," he said.

              "Hey, I'm a--"

              "You're out of your league," he cut her off abruptly.  "We all are."

              "Then you'll need my help!" she insisted.

              "Dammit, Akane, one of these things almost killed me last night!  If it's even half as tough, you might get--"

              Without seeming to move, the desiccated man suddenly appeared directly in front of Ranma.  "You are the one who killed my brother?" it said, voice dry and raspy, head cocked inquisitively to one side.

              With a yelp of surprise, Ranma leapt back, keeping Akane behind him and thinking, I didn't even see it _move_!

              A blink, and then it was standing behind him, mere centimetres from Akane.  She gasped and he yanked her away.  "Father said you were a girl."  Suddenly next to Akane again, it calmly continued.  "Doesn't matter, I suppose."  Again next to Ranma, this time on his left.  "As eldest, it is my duty to avenge his death," it said, the skin of its face drawing tighter across protruding cheekbones.  He realized it was smiling.

              Both martial artists jumped away.  It was already waiting for them where they landed.  "And I think you will find me far more than merely 'half as tough' as my unfortunate sibling. . . ."

              The first attack came, not nearly as fast as it moved yet still blindingly quick, barely visible to the martial artist's trained eyes, mantis-like arms snapping out.  Ranma blocked the attack, bruising forearm impact, flicked a kick out, missed, stepping in and leaning to avoid the counter, other leg lashing up but glancing off his enemy's knee, pulling back, twisting into a loose stance, backhand whipping out and whistling through air.  Open palm held forward, right fist chambered by his ribs, the first trickle of sweat dotting his forehead as he shifted his stance to track his opponent's reappearance a few meters away.  Its movements were impossibly quick, invisible as it zipped across the room.  It resumed its earlier immobility.

              "Stand still, dammit!" Ranma yelled, leaping forward, punch flashing out, striking nothing, his foe again on the other side of the hall.  Its arms blurred, flinging something; Ranma barely twisted his head aside from the first as it zinged past his nose; and he snagged the second from the air.  In the palm of his hand lay a moist razor-sharp ring: a spinal disk.

              "Dude, that's gross," he said, and then its limbs were a blur, faster this time but still visible--barely--to the martial-artist's sight: arm reaching over the shoulder, tearing another weapon from its own spine, the protruding ridge healing instantly, the ring then flung shuriken-like his way.  He ran perpendicular to his foe, projectiles cutting into the wall behind, narrowly missing, trailing shirt edge sliced as he leapt forward.  He hit the ground and rolled, wooden thud as tatami behind ruptured in bamboo shreds, and twisting as he rose he caught the last two disks in each hand.  He snapped them back as quickly as they reached his fingers.

              It wasn't there anymore.  It was behind him.  Dry strangling fingers wrapped around his neck.  By iron strength he felt himself lifted off the ground, air completely cut off, his fluttering rear kicks hitting nothing, and then dizzying lurch as the grapple twisted, flipping Ranma upside down--and slammed him face-first into the floor.   Mats split and wooden planks cracked and his head imbedded in the cold earthen ground beneath.

              So you wanna play rough, huh? he thought.

              He pushed off with one hand, popping straight back out of his hole.  Somersaulted in midair and landed in a three-point crouch, senses fully extended.  It was standing in front of Akane, both her wrists wrapped in one long hand and effortlessly held suspended off the ground.  She glared furiously as it curiously looked her over.

              "So you are the Key," it observed.

              "Leave her alone!" Ranma screamed.

              He rushed forward, a tightly restrained shadow of his earlier anger surging through him.  The idea of this thing touching Akane enraged him.  Of his friends getting hurt.  Those girls who died.  He still didn't know why.  His own cowardice, the fear he felt at the beginning, reluctance to join the battle, only the Old Ghoul's quick reflexes blunting the initial charge, should have been him, but he had been left weak and impotent as that impossible rage Akane had seen through drained away, terrified at what he almost did--kill a friend, hit Akane!  Nearly as bad, the euphoria that rage fed, what it seemed to empower him to do, the possibilities unravelling, the very ideas, his father's lesson, Saffron, to kill. . . .  "Don't touch her!"

              He reached Akane in a flash but it was already gone, his fiancee dropped.  Ranma caught her in his arms before she hit the ground.

              "You okay?" he asked.

              She nodded mutely.

              He gently put her down.  Their opponent stood several meters away, again unmoving, impassive.  Its eyes never left Akane.  This infuriated Ranma all the more.

              "You can't have her!" he yelled.  "She's mine!"

              "No," it answered, "Now she belongs to Father."

              It attacked, crossing the distance in an instant but somehow no longer invisible, Ranma's anger heightening his senses, the faintest hint of movement as it ran, phantom image instinctively glimpsed.  Suddenly close it unleashed a constant flurry of bruising open-palm strikes, the edge of its hands glancing painfully off of the martial artist's desperate blocks.  A spear-hand slashed across one shoulder and he felt wetness there, blood; and then he realized those steel-strong fingers could easily lance straight through flesh.  Damn, he thought, I've got to put this guy down quick, I can't keep this kind of blocking up all day.

              As it was, he was already entirely on the defensive, barely able to match his foe's speed, unable to slip an attack of his own in, so focused on blocking and redirecting strikes he was unable to take advantage of its immobility.  It just stood there, arms lashing out without even any real martial skill, without emotions, eyes never leaving Akane.

              "You have no idea how important she is," it said, the exchange of attacks and blocks stretching out.

              Ranma grunted, pain erupting in his side as an attack slipped through.  "I know how much she means to me," he answered.  I won't lose, he told himself, I'll wear him down, he can't keep this up for long. . . .

              But his opponent showed no sign of weariness, of even really paying attention to him, while he began to feel the burn in his muscles, the pain in his bruised arms spreading, breath becoming hotter.  I can't keep this up, he thought.  He looked for a pattern in his opponent's strikes and found none: or rather, saw a complete lack of skill or technique, and recognized the attacks for the untrained flailing of a beginner--but released with strength and speed beyond reason.

              Time to show this guy what twelve years of training is worth, Ranma thought.  He started to sneak some advanced technique into his blocking.  Complex redirection meant to set up his opponent for a counterstrike; rapid weaving blocks intended to slide him inside his foe's reach; and slowly, he found himself inching closer.

              "What do you want with her?" he asked, lead foot sneaking a centimetre forward.

              Without glancing his way, it answered, "Her death means freedom for us all."

              "Not while I'm alive, asshole."  With a sudden burst of speed he shifted his stance and slipped within its reach, absorbing a glancing strike against his ribs and narrowly sidestepping the other arm.  "An opening!" he shouted, and up close he twisted sharply, rear hand thrusting forward, palm-heel slamming into its sternum, body humming with desperate strength.  His entire arm shuddered with the impact, brief numbness flashing through his shoulder, side, leg and heel.

              It didn't flinch.  It didn't even fall back a step.  Both hands slapped down and grabbed the martial artist by the shoulders and lifted him off the ground.  It looked annoyed.

              "You hit me," it said.

              "Twice!" Ranma snarled.  Grabbing the grasping limbs and bracing himself against the strength of those arms, he snapped his legs up from the waist, extended feet thudding into its head with crushing strength.  His foot throbbed with the impact.  It was like kicking a wall--no, worse than a wall: more like Ryouga.

              A vertiginous tilting, and it flipped him upside down and slammed him face first into the ground again.  Ranma's head punched another hole in the floor.  Before he could recover he felt those long fingers wrap around his ankles and suddenly drag him lengthwise.  Wood planks and tatami mats crumpled and splintered against his chest as he ripped a long gouge across the floor.  His arc lifted him free, and then he went flying as it released him.  He smashed through a wall and crashed into the kitchen and impacted the fridge.  He pulled himself from the dented metal and leapt back into the room.

              It stood over Akane's sprawled form, the shattered remains of a table scattered around it.  Blood trickled from the edge of her mouth.  Her cheek was bright red.  It reached down to grab her.

              "I said don't touch her!" Ranma screamed.  He attacked with renewed fury, the weariness in his limbs forgotten, reaching for more speed, greater strength, determined to put this bastard down, nobody touches Akane!  And though it still kept its eyes on Akane, its speed did not seem as impossible as before; Ranma's anger allowed him to squeeze in the occasional attack.  I can beat this guy, Ranma told himself.  I can match his speed--no, I can do better!  Again the flurry of exchanged strikes lengthened, but this time his body thrilled with the surety of victory and kept exhaustion at bay.  His senses seemed to expand, reaching out to encompass the entirety of the battle: a sudden hole knocked into the ceiling, Kuno's dazed head popping through; Shampoo unexpectedly running past, sword held high; and. . . .

              A sudden loud scream rang out from upstairs.  And Akane, having pulled herself away and hovering anxiously at the edge of Ranma's vision, faced the noise.  "Nabiki," she cried.  She turned away.  Started to run to her sister.  Leaving herself open.  Dry taut skin pulling back in a smirk.  Ranma realized: the bony bastard was keeping him busy--for minutes, as his friends were being slaughtered elsewhere!

              "No!" he cried.  "Akane, wait," but in reaching for her he left himself open.  A blow slammed into his chest with sledgehammer power, sending him reeling.  As he stumbled back, gasping for air, that same blurred image appeared ahead, his enemy suddenly looming over him, again uncaring but momentarily turning its full attention his way.  One hand speared out, fast, far faster than any previous attack, too quick to see let alone follow, he hadn't come _close_ to challenging this thing's speed, and Ranma flung himself aside to avoid the strike: thunderous eruption of wet pain in his head, and then everything tilted over.  The young martial artist thudded into the ground.  He had a brief glimpse of his enemy turning towards his fiancee's receding back, and then everything dropped into darkness.

              Kasumi Tendo backed away, rising fear threatening to dispel the tenuous hope she was desperately holding to.  She still believed everything would come out okay, in the end: she had to, otherwise the reality of what was happening would be too much to handle, too horrible, the spider-girl talking to Nabiki, that horrible naked man hurting poor Mr. Saotome, Mrs. Saotome still clutching her empty scabbard, staring numbly as her husband was thrown against a wall, and her own father straining futilely against the webs that held him; and then the horrible man was turning towards her, a smirk dancing faintly across his lips.  He stepped over Kuno's prone form, eyes widening with an anticipation that sent an unpleasant shiver down Kasumi's spine.

              She looked away and found little comfort.  Mr. Saotome groaned, battered and bloodied, a heap in the corner, his wife rushing to his side.  At least Nabiki seemed to be doing well, she told herself:  She seemed to have made a new friend.

              "You're just, like, my favorite," her younger sister squealed, sounding more like a teenager than she ever had in youth.  "I just bought your new CD, I love it!  Especially that third track, 'Automatic Love Machine Evolution'?  It, like, really spoke to me, you know, touched something deep inside, right?"

"Really?" the spider woman gurgled, the words coming after a long pause.  It lifted its long leg away from Nabiki.

              "Oh, yeah, you're like totally awesome super cool!  Sometimes, I wish I could be just like you!  Like, in that new video you did, you know, with those, er. . . guys. . . that stup-, er, cool!, yeah, cool boy band, you know-"

              "Ravashi-6?"

              "Yeah!  That was like, er, wow, you know, just . . . _wow_!"

              Kasumi felt a hand on her chin gently pulling her gaze back, and she saw the man standing in front of her.  He left something wet on her cheek, and she tentatively touched her fingers to it: they came away spotted with red.  His smile grew and he raised his hand.  It was covered in blood and clumps of fur.

              "You--you shouldn't have done that," she said weakly.  "They never did anything to you."

              He shrugged wordlessly, eyes dancing with amusement.

              "What do you want?" she asked.

              He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

              "Please don't hurt my family."

              Something in her words suddenly angered the man.  His lips twisted into a scowl, eyes narrowing with disgust.  One hand grabbed her shoulder and shoved her back into the wall and held her there.  The other settled softly around her throat.

              "Please," she pleaded.  "Don't hurt my sisters."

              At that he smiled again, widely, lips parting, and as his mouth opened she gasped at what she saw within: an absence, an empty space, the fleshy curve of the inside back of his head clearly seen--but then movement, and rushing into that void a mass of twisting, writhing tendrils, thin and pale.  They reached from his mouth, twisting obscenely, as his hand on her shoulder pulled her down and he raised his open lips towards hers . . . Kasumi felt something expand inside, a bubble of fear pushing at the boundaries of her serenity as she watched those crawling cilia reach for her . . .then something popped, and terror flushed through her and a scream she hadn't known was building inside rose in her throat, and already she was screaming inside, help me oh God help me somebody, and before her voice tore free another scream responded, no, not a scream, but a fierce howl of rage: Father.

              The horrible naked bloodied man holding her buckled as something powerful hit him from behind, and then he was suddenly wrenched away.  "Leave my daughter alone!" Father yelled as he picked the man off the ground.  Behind him the wall lay shattered, spider-webbing scattered, strands still fluttering from his brown dogi as he lifted the flailing man overhead.  "Get out of my house!"  He threw the man hard against the wall, and then rushed to her side, grabbing her by the arm.

              "Father!" she gasped.

              He flashed a quick smile, moustache bristling and eyes sharp.  "Your old man isn't finished yet!"  He gently pushed her towards Akane's room and turned back for his other daughter.  The spider-girl looked up from her sister.  Nabiki took the opportunity to pull away and started pulling at the thick strands around her feet with a piece of broken wall.

              The fallen man lifted himself onto one knee.  His head was flattened on one side, but he seemed unhurt, eyes blazing with anger.  One hand snapped up, and Kasumi glimpsed something reaching out, before everything tilted as Father pulled her aside.  A long, wetly-gleaming whip-like tentacle hung momentarily where she had just been before swiftly retracting back into the man's forearm.  Her sister's voice called out.  Kasumi looked up at her father.  Hopeless indecision etched his face as he looked between his two daughters, the spider-girl standing between him and Nabiki.  The naked man regained his feet and turned towards them, even as the spider-girl took a threatening step forward.

              "Get her out of here!" yelled a voice from behind.  "I'll save Nabiki!"  Mr. Saotome, back on his feet, face covered in blood, dogi hanging in tatters off his large frame.  Mr. Saotome, with his wife held protectively behind him, and a hardness of expression she had never seen before shining in his eyes.

              "Old friend!"

              "Go!"

              Kasumi found herself carried forward, Father's strong arms keeping her low, something lashing out overhead and cleaving twin long gouges along the wall, and then they ducked into her sister's room and into darkness and surprising quiet.

              "Father?" she asked, unsure of what to do.

              "The window," he said, pointing.

              They ran across the room, reaching the window and pulling it open.  The door behind them was ripped off its hinges.  Framed against the hallway's light stood the girl, her spider-like half a monstrous distortion of the slim silhouette.

              "Quickly!" Father said.  His foot hooked and flipped up one of Akane's stray barbells.  He sent it flying towards the girl as he wrapped a strong arm around Kasumi's waist.  "The roof!"  Without hesitation he jumped out the window, something white and sticky spattering against the wall behind.

              Twisting in midair, his free arm reached out and grabbed the edge of the roof.  Even as they swung back he twisted his grip, absorbing the impact of hitting the wall with his legs; and then with a grunt of exertion he pulled them both onto the roof.

              "Are we safe here?" she asked.

              "I don't know," he answered.  "But I won't let them hurt you."

              They heard a crash below: Akane's window shattering.  They ran along the roof to its furthest edge.  From this vantage point Kasumi could see the entirety of the grounds that made up her home.  She realized that Ranma's friends were down below, still fighting.  At the back of the house, near the pond: the one who always came to visit and that other girl, the cook, Ukyou, rushing in and out against the massive red thing she had seen earlier.  In the front of the house, within the gates: Ranma's two Chinese friends, leaping swiftly to-and-fro as they fought something lithe and lizard-like.

              "Kasumi," her father said.  "I'm afraid we may have to jump. . . ."

              "Oh my."  I don't think even Akane can't jump like that, she thought, not the way Ranma and the others do.  "Did that girl follow us?  I can't see her. . . ."  The roof remained empty and silent but for the two of them.

              "I don't know," he answered.

              From here, the sounds of battle were muted, the winds swirling past carrying them away.  Faintly heard cries, crashes from within, a weak rumble.  Momentary peace lengthening.

              Then everything was loud and frightening again, Father grabbing her arm and rushing back, the spider-like girl swiftly crawling onto the roof directly in front of them and moving with surprising speed and stealth.  Kasumi stumbled, skinning her knee as she fell.  A gasp of pain escaped, calling her father back.

              "Kasumi!" he cried, leaping past her and for the creature.

              "Father, no!" she cried.

              Father attacked with a desperate fury unlike any Kasumi had ever seen from him before: he ducked a leg slashing horizontally at his neck, sidestepped the second and caught the third with the thick of his arm; and braced like that he slammed a kick into the woman's stomach.  She doubled over, face twisting in pain, and he continued his forward rush, fist pounding into the side of her head, sinking into the fleshy mass around the clustered eyes.  She staggered back.  He rained a flurry of punches into her side, painful-sounding cracking of fists against chitin, and she fell back further.  Then Father ran forward, shoulder tackle slamming into the girl . . . and carrying them both over the edge.

              "Father!" she cried, her voice ripped away by the wind.

              Kasumi stood shivering and alone.  The moon hung heavy and bright in the sky overhead.  She listened but heard nothing.  Below and to her right she watched Ukyou swing her spatula at her massive foe.  The blade sank deep into the creature but it twisted and she lost her grip, and then one massive hand bashed her and sent her flying into a tree.  Ranma's other friend, Ryouga was his name, ran to her side and received a body-sized fist to his back.  He fell and it hammered him again and again, the ground cratering beneath his body.  She turned away at the sight, only to see Ranma's Chinese friends fall on the other side of the house: the lizard-woman grabbed a length of chain reaching back to the long-haired boy and, seemingly without effort, swung him about and straight into the battered-looking purpled-haired girl.  They both collapsed in a silent heap.  A loud bear-like roar echoed from within the house.  Kasumi watched as the woman below turned towards the sound.  With a single leap and a shattering of glass she broke into the second floor, disappearing from view.

              Kasumi felt something new and unpleasant rise within.  A scrabbling at the edge of the roof forced her attention.  The spider-girl returned, lifting herself over the edge, and from her heavy sack hung a thick rope of strands.  She pulled it up and hauled her father's body onto the roof.

              "Kasumi!" he said, straining against the webs wrapped securely around his arms and legs.

              Before she could move, the girl's head dropped down, and that single barbed mandible sunk into his shoulder.  He cried in pain as she bit deep into the meat of his arm, and then his head lolled to the ground.

              "Father?" she asked softly, taking a slow step forward.

              The woman stood once again and turned arachnid eyes onto her, and smiled viciously.

              Without hesitation, Kasumi rushed forward, completely ignoring the monster threatening her.  She crouched at her father's side.  "Father, are you alright?"

              "I'm sorry," he answered weakly, words thick and slurred.  "I'm so sorr. . . ."

              "Shhh," she hushed.

              His eyes fluttered shut--into unconsciousness, she noted with relief, expert fingers finding a weak but definite pulse.  Only then did she again become aware of the thing standing behind her.  Kasumi stood and turned and fixed both the clustered eyes and the single human one with a strong, cross glare.

              "Leave him alone!" she demanded.

              It stepped forward and right up to her.  Kasumi could smell the stench of its breath, her father's blood still staining those human lips, its breath rattling with a strange clicking noise within a distended throat.  It stared at her, and Kasumi stared straight back.

              "This is my family," she said.  "Please.  They're my life."

              All three arms, long and sharp and black, reached over and pressed into her from behind, the points forcing her straight up against the slender creature.  It looked up at her, and its human expression was as alien to Kasumi as the spider's.  She stood there in its grasp, trembling slightly but refusing to look away.  From below she could hear increasing sounds of combat.  Its mouth opened as if to speak, but nothing emerged.

              It roughly pushed her back, and she fell next to her father.  When Kasumi looked up again, they were alone on the roof.

Genma Saotome lay sprawled on the ground, shivering in pain and fright.  His shoulder was numb; his body ached from the beating.  He didn't want to move; he wanted to lie there and play dead and wait for everyone to go away and only get up when everything was safe and comfortable again. Impossible.  These things weren't going to go away, not without killing everyone in the house first.  Which meant he had to flee.  He wanted to.  Run away; grab the boy and just take off.  Impossible.  No way the kid would abandon his friends.  Or Akane.  Ranma loved her, even if the stubborn shit wouldn't admit it.  He would die for her.  Way things were going, maybe tonight.  Could already be.  No.  He'd know, his son, so long on the road, everything done for the boy but for himself as well.  Nodoka could try but couldn't break the bond: the boy was his.  His life.  Entirely the boy's.

              With surprising ease Genma regained his feet.  The pain he felt drained away, only the coldness in his shoulder persisting.  Nabiki's plight cut through the last of the confusion clouding his mind.  Soun stood several meters away with Kasumi, torn with indecision, trying to protect his eldest but incapable of leaving the younger behind.

              "Get her out of here," Genma called out.  "I'll save Nabiki."

              Soun turned, and their eyes met.

              You understand, don't you, Genma thought.  Just like the old days.

              "Old friend!" Soun said.

              So much to say.  Or was there?  Nothing more than, "Go!" in the end.

              Soun left, taking Kasumi with him and with the half-spider girl in close pursuit.  The other one made one last attempt for his friends then turned to face him, smiling condescendingly.  It passed one hand through thinning hair before rubbing its palms together with anticipation.  Genma felt a redoubling of fear within, mixed with revulsion at the sight of this alien little man; but beneath it all a slow burn unfelt for many a year began to simmer. . . .

              "Husband," Nodoka's tremulous voice reached him from behind.  "I'm so ashamed," she said, her hands clutching at his back.  "But I'm afraid."  He spared her a glance and she stared up at him with tearful, hopeless eyes.  Genma watched Nabiki as the young Tendo girl tugged at the thick strands wrapped around her ankles.  Their eyes met, and all he saw there was desperation and fear.

              My own wife, he thought, afraid even though I'm standing with her.  The warmth inside grew.  This arrogant Tendo girl, convinced that I'll fail her, convinced I'm nothing more than a useless panda.  An almost forgotten emotion swelled through his body: pride.  He started to shake, and the approaching monster smirked at what he took for fear, and his wife moaned with fright, and the Tendo girl sawed at her bonds with renewed panicky vigour; but the only thing rushing through Genma Saotome at that moment was rage.

              He stood tall and strong.  With a single jerk he yanked his tattered dogi top off.  He wiped the blood from his face and discarded the garment.  He cursed them: these things attacking his family, his family convinced of his uselessness, the arrogant presumption of these clueless children; but most of all he cursed himself for not just running away.

              The thing that faced him smiled, eyes widening with mock fear.  It raised both arms.  The skin along the inside of its forearms peeled back.  Two thick and serpentine tentacles slid free, hanging loosely.  They curved sinuously for a moment, coiling wetly in the air.

              Flick of the wrist.  Twin tendrils lashing out.  For his face, whip-fast.

              With nearly casual ease, Genma grabbed both from the air.

              It stared at him in shock.  The things in his hand twisted and tried to retract but could not escape his grip.  Now it was his turn to smile.

              "I don't think so," he growled.  "Come to Papa Bear!"  He yanked hard.  It stumbled forward, off balance.  Genma charged forward and delivered a punishing blow to the stomach with his knee, even as he slammed his elbow into its head with bear-like strength.  But where he expected to feel a meaty thud or the crunching of bone, there was nothing--the head crumpling like so much paper beneath the strike.  He sidestepped away, guard raised, keeping his opponent in front as it recovered from the attack.

              Slowly straightening, it turned and faced him.  The side of its head had been torn open and his knee had punctured a hole in its stomach, but beyond both gaps he saw nothing but emptiness.  Its eyes darkened with cold fury, but its thin-lipped smile only tightened.  In those spaces Genma's attacks had left in its fleshy shell there was movement: a mass of tiny shivering tendrils filling the emptiness within.

              It attacked, twin tendrils lashing out again.  Genma dodged, rushing past and landing solid hits, the body ripping beneath his punches.  Again and again he danced in and away, narrowly avoiding its counterstrikes.  But after several passes he had achieved little if any effect: it stood there riddled with fist-sized holes from which a multitude of tendrils writhed and swayed, and it seemed unbothered by the destruction of its outer skin.  Its remaining eye narrowed dangerously.

              Uh oh, Genma thought.  I think it's angry.

              It threw its arms wide, back arching and half-face raised up, and its whole body shuddered once; a half-dozen more thick tentacles erupted from its body, stabbing outwards in every direction and puncturing holes in the surrounding walls.  Genma leapt aside, narrowly avoiding being skewered, but even as he landed all eight reached for him again, whipping out with stunning speed.  He dodged and twisted and slapped those he couldn't avoid aside and tried to keep his distance.  It advanced slowly towards him, maintaining a constant barrage.  He stumbled on the broken door; every tendril curved up and stabbed straight down; and quickly catching himself he flipped aside.  It imbedded itself in the floor.  Genma took to the air.  He bounced off a wall and launched himself at his enemy.  His outstretched arm took it in the neck in a powerful clothesline, and he felt it crumple against his forearm.  When he landed, its empty shell of a head floated paper-like to the floor, reddish worm-like cilia tumbling free.

              "Ha ha!" Genma chortled.  "How'd you like--"

              Another cilia forest erupted from its exposed neck as it unerringly faced him.

              "You're not going to make this easy, are you?" he grumbled, before jumping aside as it pressed the attack with renewed vigor.  Genma found himself on the defensive.  Hurried glances showed Nabiki was finally free, pulling the idiot kendo boy away from the action and towards her room.  His wife remained stuck in the corner, eyes wide with fear . . . and pride, he realized, as she watched him, and he felt an unexpected surge of pleasure.

              A lancing pain across his forearm brought him back to reality, and he knew he was slowing down.  The numbness that still gripped his shoulder was spreading, his arms beginning to lose feeling.  Worse, he was starting to feel tired.  Shit, he thought.  The boy was right.  I've let myself go.  Right then.  That's that.  Can't fight when I'm tired, now can I?  I bought them some time, now the best thing to do now is pull a strategic retreat.

              Instead, he pulled on reserves of stamina long unused and continued the fight.  He ran in circles around his enemy and drew its attention away from his wife and Nabiki.  It scored a few weak blows, mainly wet slaps from its sinuous limbs when there were too many thrashing about to fully dodge; and while the pain was negligible, he noticed a gradual enveloping chill anywhere it touched him.  Great, he thought, the bastard's poisoning me, too.

              "This isn't fair, you know," Genma observed, breaking away for a moment.

              It paused, and though its lack of a head made it difficult to tell, it seemed to shrug apologetically.  Hundreds of small tendrils squirmed from the dozens of gaps across its body, and from within their midst reached its thicker, wetly gleaming limbs.

              "I mean, you've got poison and hollow skin and all those arms," he added conversationally, walking in a slow circle around his foe, keeping a wary eye for any sudden attacks.  "But what do I have?"

              There was a moment of intense silence.  All he could hear was the sibilant hiss of a thousand writhing limbs rubbing against each other.  He took another step.  Right about here, he thought, and stopped.  "You're a big, ugly monster," Genma said, and shrugged, "and I'm nothing but a fat, lazy--"

              It attacked, just as he smashed his foot down through the floor.  "Panda bear!" he finished, as cold water geysered up from a broken water pipe and engulfed him.  It hesitated in its attack, suddenly confronted with the massive spotted bear squeezed into the hall; but for Genma there was only a heady rush as he swept forward.  One massive paw, claws fully extended, arced forward and blasted its way through its midsection as he charged past.  There was a gory explosion as papery skin and squirming flesh splattered back.  Without pause, Genma reached down and grabbed the door to Kasumi's room; and yanking it from its hinges and lifting it overhead with both furry arms, he turned and released a fierce animalistic roar, and slammed it down on his staggered foe.

              There was a loud squish, and then silence.

              Genma's sign read, Who's the Man?  He flipped it over: I'm the Man!

              "Husband," Nodoka started, rushing to his side, and he prepared to bask in glory well deserved. I'm the Mack Daddy, he grinned, preparing to whip out another sign.  And I didn't even have to use--

              The wall at the end of the hallway exploded inwards amidst a shattering of glass.  Suddenly silhouetted against the darkness behind, he saw a lithe, serpentine figure slither closer.  It was a woman, the bottom half of her body fading into something long and lizard-like with a half-dozen legs; and on either side of her doubled breasts reached three pairs of arms.  She held wavy knives that she twirled with expert ease, and she smiled with cold-blooded cruelty.

              Great, Genma thought, just great.  Here we go again.

              Mousse sat up with a gasp, one hand clutching at his head.  Blood seeped from a long gash along his forehead.  The red trickle welled up against the rim of his glasses and ran in sticky rivulets down his face.  Pain throbbed throughout his body: unhealed injuries of yesterday compounded by the battering that snake-bitch had just dealt him and . . . Shampoo!

              He leapt to his feet, pushing through the exhaustion, and saw her lying unmoving a few meters away.  Mousse rushed over and knelt next to her, checking for injuries.  New injuries: her old ones, worse than his, were still painfully apparent, and he feared the battle had aggravated his love's unhealed wounds. Her face was pale, vibrant purple hair matted with blood, and both her bonbori lay severed in three next to her.

              "Shampoo," he said, voice trembling.  "My love?"  He reached out with one hand to shake her.

              With a sudden scream she sat up, one hand chopping for his throat.  He gulped as it stopped millimetres from his Adam's apple.  Her eyes slowly focused.  She spat to one side, spit tainted a frothy pink.

              "Stupid Mousse," she growled, struggling to her feet.  "Why you let Snake-girl get away?"

              Because I was unconscious, he thought rebelliously, just like you were; but what he said was, "I'm sorry," his voice whinier than he would have liked.

              His love gasped softly as she regained her footing.  She staggered toward a nearby tree, from which her long jagged sword protruded.  One hand clutched at her stomach.  There was redness there, the blood from her reopened injury reaching through both bandages and the silk of her dress.  He hovered at her side.  "Shampoo," he said.  "Maybe you should take a rest.  Your injuries. . . ."

             "Are mine!" she hissed, switching to Chinese.  She yanked her blade free.  Her beautiful eyes burned with fury.  "Not yours."  She took a hesitant step towards the house, then another, and again, somehow pushing past the debilitating pain she must feel.  Despite the pain of her refusal, he felt a renewed swell of love for her.  So strong, he thought, and so beautiful.  Blood and dirt and sweat did nothing to diminish her charms.  They merely added to it.  The contrast: her lovely softness curving beneath the tightness of her short dress, the luxurious sweep of hair glimmering in the moonlight; the strong tautness of her arms, the cruel hardness of her gaze.  Even after all these years my love remains undiminished.  Perhaps through this battle I can finally prove myself to her.

              "It came this way," Shampoo said, examining the ground.  "But the tracks stop.  It jumped."  She pointed to the house.  "There."  Part of the second floor wall had collapsed inward, and light beamed out of the exposed hallway into the night.  A shadow-puppet display of battle danced at the hall's edge, and Mousse realized that an intense battle must be taking place at the other end.

              "Um, excuse me?" called a faint voice from above.  Surprised, Mousse looked up and saw Akane's older sister leaning over the edge of the roof, silhouetted against the stars above.  He didn't have time to wonder how she ended up there.  "I'm sorry to bother you, but I think Ranma's friend needs help.  The boy with the bandanna?  That thing has him pinned to the ground. . . ."

              Shampoo spoke to him before he could answer.  "Go help him."

              "What?" he asked incredulously.  And leave your side?  Let you take on that thing alone?  Injured and weakened?  How can I prove myself if I'm helping that idiot pig-boy?  "Shampoo!  You can't . . . you can't be serious!"

              "Listen to me," she hissed, grabbing a handful of his long hair and yanking him down.  She fixed him with her furious gaze.  "Listen to me, you stupid man."  Mousse winced in pain but refrained from pulling free.  "I don't need your concern.  I don't need your help.  I am a warrior of the Joketsuzoku!  I have been shamed twice in as many days by defeat--I will not fail again, and I don't need the assistance of some pathetic male tainting my victory."  She pulled again on his hair, hard.  "Do I make myself clear, Mousse?"

              He stared back at her with pleading eyes but saw no softness there, no possibility for compromise.  Mousse knew then that further begging would only serve to delay them, placing his--well, comrades, if not friends--at further risk.  He gave a slight nod, the only leeway her tight grip allowed.  "I understand," he said.  All too well, he added to himself.  The pride of an Amazon.

              A chill passed through him, and he saw Shampoo shiver as she released him.  A moment later, a scintillating column of light exploded upwards in the air.  A faint, agonized cry reached them on the wind.  The light reached high into the air, slowed, flattening into a shimmering ball; and then it plummeted back down again, disappearing on the other side of the house.  There was a thunderclap explosion and the earth trembled beneath their feet.

              "Ryouga," they said, echoing each other.

              "Go," she said, and turned away.  Mousse watched her as she left, limping slightly, injuries preventing her from making the leap to the second floor.  He would have gladly helped her had she but asked.

              With a sigh, he turned away from his love to rush to the assistance of a pig.

              So cold.  So dark.  Briefly shining hope illuminated the murky hollowness of his life, but feeble illusions are so easily shattered.  He was alone, so alone--and cold, and weak.  He lay there in numb apathy, awaiting the inevitable.

              "Ryouga," whispered a voice, as if from far away.  His head lolled aside, but the voice was insistent.  "Ryouga?"

              Akari?  He opened his eyes.  He wished he hadn't.  She stared down at him with disgust and disappointment.  "How could I have been so wrong?  I thought you were strong like a pig, stubborn like a pig, manly like a pig!"  She turned away in disdain.  "How could I have said 'I love you'?  You're no pig--you're no better than a . . . than a duck!"

              "No, wait!" he called out.  "I'm not a duck!  I'm a pig--a pig!"

              "You're a pig?" said Akane, eyes widening with surprise.  "You're--you're P-Chan, aren't you?  You pervert!  Why didn't you tell me?  I would have forgiven you if you had told me, but now it's too late!  May your lies carry you down to Hell!"

              "Akane, I meant to tell you, I did, Ranma made me-"

              "What, Bacon Breath?" asked his friend.  "I never made you do nothin'." Ranma smirked condescendingly as he glanced down at Ryouga.  He nudged him with a toe.  "Man, you seem pretty much dead to me."  He shrugged.  "Oh well.  You never were much of a rival, anyway.  See, this is why I always get to be the hero.  While you're busy bleeding to death, I'm back in that there house kicking all _kinds_ of ass."  He gathered both girls into his arms and led them away.  "Don't worry, dude," he said over one shoulder.  "You just go off and die now . . . I'll keep these lovely ladies safe for ya."  He faded from view, his final words lingering in the darkness:  "Say, Akari, you're pretty hot, how'd you like to be my concubine?"

              "Nooooo!" screamed Ryouga.

              Darkness shattered.  Feeling rushed back into numbed limbs.  His body throbbed with renewed agony.  He welcomed it: life was pain; the happiness of the last few months had almost made him forget.

              The red thing loomed over him.  Somewhere off to one side Ukyou lay in an unconscious heap. One massive paw held him pinned a full half-metre into the ground.  He felt its flesh crawl against his, a thousand tiny pinpricks piercing his skin--and draining him dry.  It was sucking his blood, his energy, his very will--it was snuffing out the light and sinking him back into the darkness.  Ryouga's clawed feebly at the arm that effortlessly kept him down.  The edge of his vision began to dim once more.

              "Yes," he whispered.  "I'd almost forgotten.  Forever alone."  He stared up at the sunken, puffy eyes of the beast holding him down.  "Because of you," he said, voice deepening into a growl, suddenly strong fingers sinking into the ropy flesh at the edge of its hand.  Ryouga pushed, his entire body clenching with the effort.  With a sickening slurp, the hand lifted away.  Dozens of vein-like protrusions popped free from his bloodied chest.  Its eyes widened with surprise.  It pushed down harder . . . but Ryouga refused to budge, arms and back and sides burning with the strain of keeping the massive hand away, those hungry cilia wiggling centimetres from his skin.  "Do you hear me?" he repeated.  "You sent me back to the darkness!"

              Akari.  Akane.  Even Ranma--all taken away, again alone, numbing pain, wandering, family, friends, grey emptiness: never again.  Dark emotions surged from deep within, black rage and darker depression welling up through the layers of his being; all of it cold, iciness focusing in some abstract point below his belly; then swelling, filling him even as he continued to strain against the massive paw crushing him deeper into the earth.  A fragile moment, eyes rolling back and body suddenly absent as the entirety of his consciousness focused on restraining that bubble swollen to its tenuous maximum; impossible to hold back: the bubble burst.

              Ryouga gasped as the river of his emotions rushed torrentially through his body, limbs singing with returned sensation; and the words tore themselves from his lips:

              "Shishi Houkou Dan!"

              His mind sank even as his depression tore free from his outstretched hands.  The release of that fullness left an emotional wasteland in its wake.  There was a moment absent of time before he could bring himself to even open his eyes.

              He lay at the bottom of a deep, bloodied crater.  He struggled to stand: first one knee, a deep breath, and finally he did it, swaying unsteadily.  His shirt was mere tatters, his torso a crimson expanse of seeping wounds.  For several seconds Ryouga stood there, confused, mind clouded by loss of blood and the aftermath of his attack.

              The gurgling howl of pain snapped him back to attention.  Pulling himself free of the rubble, he quickly found his enemy.  It was standing several meters away, clutching at the stump of its right arm. Head lifted to the stars, it screamed into the night.

              "How'd you like that?" Ryouga snarled.

              It dropped its gaze to fix him with pudgy eyes burning with fury.  Its cry echoed a final time across the neighbourhood.

              "There's plenty more where that came from!"

              The martial artist snapped his arms forward, palms outwards, reaching again for the dark well lurking deep within.  It remained far from empty.  It didn't respond as overwhelmingly as before, but there yet remained a lifetime of pain to share with his enemy.  It charged forward, lumbering across the distance as it picked up speed, earth trembling beneath its feet.  Ki rushed through Ryouga's body as he again yelled, "Shishi Houkou Dan!"

              His projectile splashed against its huge chest--and broke, like waves against breakers; and it crashed through his attack and crushed its remaining fist into his chest.  It felt like a stone jackhammer, sharp and jagged, the draining softness of earlier gone, and Ryouga sailed back before slamming into the ground.  Dazed, it took him a moment to recover, and even as he sat up it found him again with a wide backhand.  It might as well have slapped him with a boulder.  The impact sent him flying into a tree, and it splintered behind him.  Stunned and numb, he slumped to the ground.

              The ringing in his ears and spots before his eyes made Ryouga only vaguely aware of his opponent's heavy approach.  He knew he had to move, but his body refused to respond.  Just another few seconds, he thought, I just have to catch my breath. . . .  Instinct told him he didn't have the time.  Then the pain ebbed and his vision cleared, and he saw the fist coming, and knew it was too late. . . .

              Something coiled around his chest and arm and yanked him away, the massive fist narrowly missing and pulverizing the remaining tree stump into matchsticks.  Ryouga hit the ground and finally slid to a stop.  Laying on his back, he stared up at his unexpected saviour.

              "You're not very good at this, are you?" Mousse asked, and smirked.

              Ryouga shrugged off the Chinese fighter's lasso and struggled to his feet.  "Very funny."

              "Need some help?"

              "I won't say no."

              The creature, after a moment's confusion, turned towards them.  Whereas before it had been a shambling mound of soft, dripping flesh, now it resembled a lumbering collection of jagged edges, a towering three-meter giant made of crimson rock.  It clenched its remaining fist into a body-sized boulder and took a step towards them.

              Mousse sent a flurry of knives flying its way.  With a chorus of sharp clangs, they bounced off without any effect.

              "Great help," Ryouga said, as it took another step towards them.

              "You got any better ideas?" Mousse retorted.

              "You're asking me?  I thought _you_ were the sneaky one," he answered, but his mind was racing elsewhere, considering the possibilities.  Its skin was like rock; his ki-blast hit hard, but did nothing. What if he hit it harder?--that was always a good tactic!  He was faster than it--much faster, thanks to two years of fighting with Ranma.  He even had a new technique he was sure could work.  Squinting, he looked closer.  He glanced down and pulled a tiny splinter of its fist from his chest.

              "Here we go," Mousse muttered, a giant mace popping into his hand.

              "Wait!" Ryouga said, raising his hand.  "I've got an idea!"

              "Great."

              "Trust me.  You got anymore of those lassos?  The ones with the spikes at the end?"

              "Heh.  I'm sure I've got a few kicking around somewhere."

              "Get 'em ready!  We're gonna pin this bastard down."

              Ryouga stepped forward, again reaching for the unhappiness he carried inside.  He squared off his opponent.  It stared down at him with a jagged smile and raised its fist high in the air.

              "I really wanted to save this new technique for my next real fight with Ranma," Ryouga told it.  "But I guess you'll have to do!  Shishi Hijuuken!"

              Its fist crashed down, shattering the earth as Ryouga danced aside and within its reach.  From the wellspring of his depression surged the familiar heaviness--but instead of concentrating it in a ball, he coalesced it around his body, wrapping himself in a cloak of air.  Heavy air: for a moment, nearly too heavy, pinning him to the spot.  With his entire body straining against the weight, he punched forward, super-compressed and emotionally-charged air flowing forward and gathering around his fist . . . the strain was enormous, knuckles popping and his hands felt as if they were being crushed . . . and then his air-wrapped ki-heavy punch thudded into its rocky hide.  There was a loud crack--its skin, not his hand--and then Ryouga's second punch connected and the thin fracture split wide open.

              Releasing his depression and suddenly feeling featherlight, Ryouga leapt back as it twisted and swept its hand through where he had been.

              "Now Mousse!"

              Blind outside of combat, the Master of Hidden Weapons proved amazingly accurate when necessary.  What looked like a harpoon trailing a metal cable found Ryouga's opening and imbedded itself in the softness beneath.

              "Quick!  Before it can yank it out!" Mousse yelled.

              "Thanks for the update," Ryouga muttered, and jumped back in.

              It was very touch-and-go.  The "Lion Hide Heavy Punch' proved far more tiring than he had expected, quickly draining his endurance and emotional reserves--oh well, he thought, punching another hole in its side, not bad for a first combat trial.  Good thing I didn't save it for Ranma.  I hadn't expected the attack to momentarily pin me to the ground like that: against anyone smarter or faster, they would've cleaned the floor with me.

              But as Ryouga jumped back one final time, nearly falling over from exhaustion, he noted with satisfaction that his plan had gone as expected.  Mousse had planted a dozen or more chains, whips, ropes, and giant-sized yoyos into its body, and tied the other ends down to every solid object scattered across the Tendo backyard.  At the centre of the maze of crisscrossing line strained the captured beast.

              "Great!" Mousse said, tying off a final knot.

              "Thanks."

              "Now what?"

              "Huh?"

              Mousse stared at him in disbelief.  "_This_ was your plan?"

              "Hey!  It worked, didn't it?"

              With a loud grunt, the creature yanked one of its bonds free.

              "Oh," Ryouga said.

              "Tying it down won't do.  I'm almost out of lines, anyway.  We have to _kill_ it, not restrain it.  And quickly--I have to get back to Shampoo!"

              "Before it gets free, you mean," the bandanna'd boy muttered.  He absently pried another piece of its shrapnelled flesh free from his knuckles.

              From behind thick glasses, Mousse's eyes widened.  "What's that?"

              Ryouga shrugged and tossed it over, as their enemy roared and took a heavy step their way, uprooting a tree.  "Its skin.  I figured I could crack it open and pin it down when I saw it wasn't made of rock at all: it just scabbed over--I guess all that blood makes a pretty hard shell of dead skin."

              Mousse blinked.  "Dead?  As in, 'not alive'?"

              "Yeah.  But the inside's still all bloody and soft."

              "But the outside isn't?"

              "Naw.  Just dead skin, dried blood."  He eyed the beast nervously.  "We should really-"

              "What do you with dead things, Ryouga?"

              "Bury them?  Listen--"

              "No, you idiot!  You blow them up!"

              "Maybe in China you do, you sicko, but in Japan we . . . blow them up?"

              Mousse nodded, and smiled nastily.  "Go do your thing, Piggie."

              Ryouga bared his fangs in return.  "And you do yours, Duck Boy."

             With a howl, it finally freed itself of the last of its bonds.  Blood seeped from numerous cracks in its shell, but it seemed otherwise unhurt.  Not for long, Ryouga thought.  We're putting you down for good.  Running to meet its charge, he stumbled, exhaustion suddenly catching up to him.  If I don't screw up, he added.  I think I've only got one chance at this. . . .

              He leapt for its chest, index finger extended, yelling, "Bakusai Te--"

              With unexpected speed, its hand swept across and snagged him out of the air.  Iron-strong fingers curled around his body and slammed him into the ground.  Without letting him go, it raised him in the air and held him in its giant grip.  It began to squeeze.

              A cry of pain escape Ryouga's lips.  He could feel his bones grinding, creaking, ribs rubbing together, on the edge of snapping . . . it felt like something popped inside and blood erupted from his mouth, and he sagged against its grip, nearly unconscious.  From far away, it seemed he could hear the sound of metal clanging ineffectually off of stone.

              Pain eased for a second as it brought Ryouga up to head level.  Tiny liquid eyes buried deep inside its head watched him with amusement as he slumped in its hand.  It grinned and opened its mouth wide, and bit forward.

              The martial artist reached out one trembling hand and tapped it on the nose.  "--Ten Ketsu," he whispered.

              A latticework of hairline fissures spread across its face.  Red fluid geysered from amidst the widening cracks, spraying out in high-pressured sheets--a moment later, its face exploded.  Ryouga saw swirling fibrous redness sunken deep within shattering flesh, and even further in he glimpsed a human skull, jaw extended wide in a voiceless expression of pain.  It staggered and fell backwards, hitting the ground with a loud crash; suddenly free, Ryouga tumbled through the air like a rag doll.  He landed flat on its chest as it struggled to regain its feet, globs of crimson flesh spilling from its neck.  With the last of his rapidly fading strength, he tapped it over the solar plexus.

              Its chest collapsed with a gory explosion.  Ryouga again fell back, sliding off its gaping torso.  As darkness rose to engulf him he had a final sight of Mousse, hovering high overhead, robes thrown open, glasses glinting in the moonlight, arms spread wide, as he yelled, "Muusuno Furumonti Totsu," and an entire arsenal of sharply gleaming weapons stabbed straight down.

              "Tatewaki Kuno fights on!"  With these words the mighty kendoist shot to his feet, wooden blade held at the ready, hawk-like eyes darting about in search of his enemy.  "Wither is that evilly arachnid, yet strangely compelling, woman?"

              "About time you woke up," muttered a voice at his side.  He glanced back and saw his charge, the mercenary Nabiki Tendo, standing next to a door.  Judging by pictures she had shown him previously, he stood in her very bedroom.  Sounds of ongoing combat slowly filtered in through the ringing in his ears. He quickly strode to her side.  "The battle yet rages?"

              Nabiki nodded.  "I don't know where the others are.  Mr. Saotome is out there holding two of them off on his own."  She toed the door open a crack.  "I had no idea the old sack of lard still had it in him."

              Kuno peered into the hallway.  The father of the vile sorcerer Saotome moved with a speed and grace that belied his bulk.  He danced between twin spouts of water spraying from holes in the floor, and slipped past the attacks of his multiple enemies.  The old man laughed as he pushed off a wall and bounced off the head of the vile spider-woman; he spring-boarded forward and planted his foot in the face of another woman, this one resembling a serpentine lizard.  The martial artist fought with either a genius' skill or an idiot's disregard--being the father of the sorcerer Saotome, he rather suspected the second--but either way, he was successfully holding his own.  For the moment: to Kuno's trained eye it was apparent that Saotome's father's strength was rapidly flagging.

              "How can I sit idly by whilst others risk their lives?  Unforgivable!" he stated, throwing wide the door.  "I return to battle!"

              "Kuno, no, wait!" Nabiki Tendo exclaimed behind him,  "Remember the plan!"  He disregarded her concern.  True warriors disregard planning; his place was in battle!  He leapt forward, attacking the nearest foe: the newly encountered lizard-woman.

              "Take this!" he exclaimed, and his blade lashed out, scoring a strong slash across its back.  Scales split and greenish ichors sprayed beneath his might.  "A very palpable hit!"

              With blinding speed the creature before him spun around.  He had a glimpse of a woman's face--cold, glassy eyes like a snake's, sharp features, long fluttering tongue--before sharp metal flashed across his vision.  He stumbled back a step, then glanced down.  His bokken held together a moment before falling into two.  The advancing monster smiled cruelly.

              Kuno returned an arrogant smile of his own.  "Ah ha!  You think you are the first to slice my might bokken in two?"  He caught the two fragments and twirled them expertly in his hands.  "The great Tatewaki adapts and battles on!"

              He leapt to the attack once more, noting that it skilfully wielded four blades between six hands; a daunting advantage, certainly, but he felt no fear.  'Twas a modern-day samurai's duty to defeat such evils!  He parried the beast's opening thrust and riposted, engaging two other flashing knives with the broken blade he wielded in his left hand.  Another strike, a flurry of blocks, twisting aside, stabbing down with both half-bokkens: and it wasn't there, slithering aside with lightning speed.  Before he could track it, pain slashed across his left forearm--a wound delivered in passing.

              "Little samurai boy," it hissed, smiling.  "I'll enjoy feasting upon your entrails."

              His nose wrinkled with distaste.  "I'll not have my innards eaten by one of such low stock as you," he replied.  "The mighty Tatewaki's insides are for those with a refined palate!"  He charged forward once again--or tried to, suddenly finding his movement arrested.  He looked down and found its long tail wrapped securely about his leg.

              "The Great Father should have made me a cat," it said.  "For I do so enjoy playing with my food."

              A savage yank and Kuno found himself lifted and thrown across the hall, crashing painfully into the opposing wall.  Another pull, slamming into the ceiling, then down, shoulder going numb as it cracked the floor open.  A final toss and he went flying into Nabiki's door.  It shattered and he tumbled into her room.

              Through blurry eyes he saw Akane's sister screaming at him, lips forming unheard words; then his vision was filled with the form of his enemy.  Slender feminine arms possessing surprising strength lifted him up.

              "You weren't much fun at all," it said.  "Perhaps I'll save you for my sister."  Then the world tilted and he felt multiple arms bash him into the floor.  He blacked out.

              It has misjudged the mighty Tatewaki Kuno's head, was his first thought upon regaining consciousness a few moments later.  'Tis made of stronger stuff than mere wood!  He quickly noted his position: he half-dangled into the room below, wedged between planks of wood, his posterior ingloriously protruding into Nabiki's bedchamber.  He felt something--perhaps its tail--cruelly slap his rear before leaving.

              That fiend shall pay for this ignoble treatment of my backside, he raged.  Yet how can I continue this battle?  It destroyed my mighty bokken!

              He opened his eyes.  "Hullo," he whispered.  A mere half-meter away, the Saotome family katana lay imbedded in the ceiling.

              The snake-woman slowly turned about, Akane's borrowed barbell tumbling from its perch atop the monster's head.  Nabiki stared numbly at her own hand.  Did I just throw that? she asked herself.  For Kuno?  It slowly approached, half-walking half-slithering, head bobbing from side to side as if trying to get a better perspective on its prey.  A trickle of something green seeped from its back, beading along the curve of her shoulders and catching along the inner sweep of the bottom pair of breasts.  It didn't seem to care, smirking disdainfully as Nabiki backed away, trembling.

              "Um . . . I'm sorry?" she suggested hopefully.  She tried to find some familiar features, anything recognizable beneath the reptilian sheen, but this new attacker drew a complete blank.  Why couldn't it be an air-headed bimbo pop-star like the last one?  Nabiki couldn't think of any way to distract this one.  Would anyone even come to her rescue if she did?  How much longer could Genma last; where the hell was Ranma anyway; what about all those other goon friends of his who kept wrecking the house?  If only Kuno hadn't charged off --their backup plan was so tantalizingly close. . . .

              Less than a meter away it halted, and in its reptilian features Nabiki thought she detected some confusion.  Its long, forked tongue flickered rapidly in the air.  That's how snakes smell, isn't it? she thought.  Smell: hadn't Ranma said something about them tracking Akane by the scent she left on him?  And that they wanted to capture her?  Maybe if this thing thought she was Akane. . . .

              "Um, hi," Nabiki said, trying a hesitant wave.  "I don't think we've met.  My name's Akane Tendo?"

              It paused, glassy eyes boring into her.  It fingered the edge of one of its blades, its tongue flicking tentatively.  "Is that s-so?" it asked with a sibilant hiss.

              "Yup, you betcha.  The all-important youngest Tendo sister, that's me!"

              "I'm s-so glad I found you firsst," it said.  "Father would betray the family through his ambition, but I will not s-stand by as he brings ruin upon uss all."  A sinking feeling grew in Nabiki's stomach.  "I shall reap the reward of your death and overthrow Akuji; I shall usurp my elder brother'ss place and asssume leadership of the family!  Through your death I shall become clan Mother!"

              "Death?" Nabiki squeaked.

              It smiled.  Before she could move it darted forward, grabbing her by the shoulders with its free hands.  It effortlessly picked her up and slammed her against the wall.  "Don't worry," it said.  "This will hurt a lot."

              Nabiki did the only thing she could think of: she screamed, loud and hard.  Somewhere in the back of her mind she thought: this is embarrassing.  Two years of this shit, and I never screamed once.  C'mon Kuno, get your ass out of the floor and save me!

              "Unhand her, vile fiend!"

              My hero.

              With a loud hiss the snake-woman spun about, tossing Nabiki aside.  Kuno stood by the hole in the floor, the Saotome katana held low and ready.  Bare-chested, his skin gleamed in the faint light, and his dark gaze smouldered with fury.  "Though this blade be unworthy of the honour, it shall be the vehicle of my vengeance: none may abuse the mighty Tatewaki Kuno's posterior and live!  Feel my fury . . . Strike!"

              The kendoist darted forward, metal point stabbing rapidly.  His foe parried and reposted and attacked with her other knives; but Kuno countered every strike and held the monster at bay amidst a shower of sparks and ringing metal.  Nabiki watched breathlessly as her samurai-sans-shining-armour struggled for dominance.  He really _has_ gotten better, she thought, inching away from the fight.

              "You shall not s-stand in the way of my ascendancy!" it snarled, and even as its attacks became more furious its tail lashed out for Nabiki.  She tried to escape but was too slow; she found herself picked up and viciously thrown against the wall.  She bounced off and hit the ground hard and lay there in pain. An acrid taste filled her mouth--blood.  That's it, she thought.  The bitch is going down.

              Kuno cried out.  With an unexpected burst of speed, a blade slipped through his defences and stabbed him in the shoulder.  He staggered; deep slashes appeared across his chest as it blurred forward, and a sudden punch sent him sprawling into the wall.  He slumped to the ground, dazed.  The snake-woman slithered towards him, knives poised for a killing blow.

              "Yo, She-Witch!" Nabiki called out.  She staggered across the room, using the wall for support. She spat to one side and fingered her swollen, cracked lip.  "Let's go."

              It snarled and lunged forward, just as Nabiki called out, "Tendo Special Attack!"  She threw her closet door open and leaped to the side, thinking, I've always wanted to say that!

              The beast screeched to a halt as the trap was triggered, but it was unable to avoid the avalanche pouring from the closet.  It tried backing away, desperately slashing and blocking with multiple blades, but to no avail.  It found itself overwhelmed.  A moment later the deluge abated.  Unharmed, it stood there and blinked amidst a devastation of flowing red, spattered green, and black seeds.  It stared dumbfounded at the chunks of watermelon clinging to it scales, the pieces speared by her knives, and the whole melons she held in each hand.

              "I have seen the evil," growled a voice from behind, "and it is green!"  Kuno stood once again, and shadows danced across the room as he blazed with unholy fury.  His eyes flared red and he raised the Saotome blade overhead.  "Vile demon fruit!  Red infernal juices and black hellspawn seeds!  You mock me!  You mock me with your delicious ripeness!  Death to you--DEATH!"

              Nabiki almost felt sorry for the creature as it charged forward to meet Kuno's ranting and raving. She sat back and idly dabbed at her swollen lip, and watched as first one limb, then another, flew across the room.  Not really, she amended.  Damn thing gave me a fat lip.  She sat back and watched as Kuno, screaming about the 'dire plumpness of the dark gardens of the underworld', whittled the creature down to a single arm within a minute.  Only once the ichors and blood had washed the melon away did Kuno lose interest, and he started attacking the fruit scattered about the room.  With a screech it broke away.  It crashed through a wall and disappeared from sight.

              Darn, it got away, Nabiki thought, keeping well clear of Kuno's slashing disposal of the remaining watermelons.  Or not, she added, as a loud trailing squeal rang out, and was abruptly cut off.  Shampoo stepped through the hole in the wall a moment later.  Her long, jagged blade dripped gore.  The Amazon looked disappointed.

              "Hey, Shampoo," Nabiki said, waving her in.

              "Shampoo sad," the Amazon said, keeping a wary eye on the kendoist.  "Silly Stick-Boy made kill too easy."

              Nabiki shrugged and was about to try and calm Kuno down, when a scream echoed through the house.  Loud and pained, it was chilling to hear and she stood in stunned silence until, reduced to a hoarse croak, the cry died out.  She met Shampoo's alarmed gaze, mirrored it.

              "Ranma?"

              Pulse pounding, blood soaring, muscles thrumming with triumphant energy, exhaustion, pain, injuries somehow made irrelevant, a decade of fear lifted away, overrun, buried by the violent joy coursing through his body: Genma Saotome felt alive for the first time in years.  He laughed as he slid beneath the spider's scything leg, bounced off a wall, and head-butted the snake; he balanced there head-to-head for a second, giggled, then thumbed his nose at his opponents and tumbled away.  He would leap into the spout of cold water and slam an enemy back; hot water and returned nimbleness helped him dodge away.

              He knew he couldn't keep it up forever--he was amazed he had lasted as long as he had.  Alone against two opponents: even the boy had barely survived last night's fight--hell, he had needed help!  You've still got it, Genma, he told himself, you're still The Man!  The last decade spent training Ranma, spent in flight from his own wife, the constant dodging of responsibility, gnawing fear, unable to face the same conflict his own son now faced: all of it somehow irrelevant, his own core rediscovered.  The greatest victories of recent memory had been Ranma's victories: watching his son master a technique overnight, watching the boy tear a God down from the skies, and thinking, 'I created that, I trained that'; but always vicarious thrills once removed, another's accomplishments, his blood but not _his_ . . . somewhere in the last twenty years, Genma realized, I forgot myself, I lost my own path.

             Sliding side-thrust, slamming the spider-girl into the wall, twisting around to meet the snake-girl's attack and finding it gone, distracted by the Kendo boy's attack.  Good, he thought, now I can put this first one down, make her regret returning, I hope Soun's okay, if this bitch hurt him I'll rip those legs off . . . but even as Genma turned back to his enemy there was an eruption from behind, the door he had earlier slammed down thrown up and hurled his way.  The martial-artist met the door with a loud shout, hand knifing down and slicing the wood in two.  Stepping through, he saw his earlier opponent.  Any illusion of humanity was gone, not even a shell remained: a squirming mass of tendrils and flailing tentacles shambled his way, and from within the whole he glimpsed a snapping, jagged jaw.

              Good, he thought, I wouldn't want this to get _too_ easy. . . .  He stood alone.  By his orders even his wife was gone.  His son, elsewhere, protecting the girl he loved.  Tendo, comrade of youth, maybe already fallen.  The torn expanse of hallway, open to the outside, other rooms, walls shattered, sounds of battle nearby, and on either side these monsters; and his breathing was laboured, battle euphoria slipping, pain forcing itself onto him, and a dread awareness that there was no way he could win this, not without breaking promises made long ago, settled upon him like a heavy weight.

              You've broken enough promises in your lifetime, Genma, he told himself.  But not this one.  He still wanted to run: who could blame him?  He had created the Saotome Special Technique for just this occasion.  But he knew the consequences--with heated blood singing in his ears, he could hardly ignore them as usual.  If he didn't keep these two busy, they would turn to other targets: Tendo's daughters, that useless kendo boy, even those Chinese kids would be slaughtered before the added onslaught.  But where youth fails, maybe a fat old panda can shoulder the weight, eh, Genma old boy?  With a wide smile he quelled the final urge for flight, and stepped forward.

              "Welcome back," he said to the pile of quivering limbs.  He gave a short bow to the spider-girl. "Let's finish this, shall we?"

              Genma Saotome charged back into battle:  Take 'em quick forward rush the girl is weaker of the two at a time to show everyone what I'm able of taking these two on one was almost too much for the boy is finally learning.  Careful now focus and how'd you like that, bitch, woops, too close, how the hell do I hurt this thing?  Technique.  Jab jab sidestep cross backstep twisting uppercut block block block block weave closer cross backhand hopping back crescent kick--pain, damn it got me, arm numb, not enough, not enough, technique.  No.  Lines drawn years ago, I shouldn't have told the boy, his own choice now.  Duck: yeah, that's right, tangle that thing with your own webs, girl!  Heh heh.  Ouch--damn, it's strong, already free, no way I'm not done teaching the boy knows so little time left secrets he'll never learn my legacy is right now dammit I won't lose to these things are monsters; I've seen worse.  Get the hell over here, girl, think that'll stop me, take this and this and up you go, yeah, Panda Airways one way flight to the other thing, that's _gotta_ hurt!  No?  No?  Then again and again again again again; go down already!  A scream?  Nabiki . . . what, do I have to save everyone myself?  Focus--Un.  That hurt.  Pull it together, Genma.  Just a little longer.  Where's the boy?  He'd be proud of his old man now.  Wouldn't he?  I held three of these things off.  Kept the girl's sisters alive.  Kept the wife safe.  Nodoka, you see, not a failure.  Still the man you fell in love with.  But the kid's mine.  You'll know after tonight.  I'm through running.

              Genma Saotome stood wearily amidst the carnage of the second floor of the Tendo residence.  He felt distanced from his own body, light-headed and aloof.  Seemingly from afar he viewed himself.  I look terrible, he thought.  The barest suggestion of a dogi hung in tatters from his battered frame.  Blood slowly seeped from a dozen wounds across his bodies--bites and slashes, gouges and punctures--and he was awash in red.  Shoulders hunched, arms hanging limply, curved back: only the hard glitter in his eyes showed his continued defiance.  With some reluctance he forced those heavy legs into movement; every action seemed removed, unfelt through the pervasive poisoned numbness gripping his body.

              At least they don't look so hot either, he thought.  I can still take them.  Yeah.  Of course I can.  He attacked, sluggishly and with what felt like a kitten's strength.  A long limb coiled around his waist and picked him up.  It slammed him into the ground.  He hardly felt it.  He broke free; he didn't know how.  Something slammed across his head.  He fell to one knee.  The spider-girl raised one glinting limb.  Their eyes met: amidst the wreckage of her face, the broken nose and pulped clusters, a single human eye wept in pain and hopelessness.  Yeah, great, thanks, he thought wryly, as the leg stabbed straight for his chest.

              Then the monster stopped.  Its eye dimmed and rolled up in unconsciousness.  It rocked to one side.  Akane stood there, jaw set with determination, second fist hammering down into the back of its head.  I can't believe it, he thought.  Saved by the girl.  She looked down at him in concern.  "Are you okay, Mr. Saotome?"

              Do I _look_ okay? he was going to answer, when he saw the thing approaching behind her.  Time seemed to stop.  Akane stood as if frozen.  His senses exploded outwards, and for a moment his body resonated powerfully with returned awareness, a heady mixture of pain and potentiality that Genma had only felt rarely before, and not once in over two decades.  He could have cried with pleasure, with joy--I forgot! he wanted to cry.  For a moment--there was nothing but the moment, and he felt terribly alive within it--it seemed he could grasp the entirety of the battle around him: the wounded tentacled thing behind him, Kuno and Shampoo and Nabiki nearby, his best friend alive on the roof, Akane's eyes caught between concern and surprise, even the boys and that cook outside, surrounding the black man from earlier; and his son, struggling to his feet . . . too far, and too late.  Too late.  Son.  His life.  Entirely the boy's.

              Everything stood immobile outside of that savagely held second, except for himself--and the thing coming up behind Akane.  It walked forward at an insultingly casual pace, eyes locked on the back of the girl's head.  It came to a stop behind her, both mantis-like arms poised overhead, fingers held together spear-like.  It stabbed down.  With a loud roar that came from the very depths of his being, the martial artist regained his feet and, shoving Akane aside, he slammed the strongest kick he could muster into the thing's side.

              There was a loud crack.  He felt bone shatter: its ribs, his own leg.  It staggered but did not fall.  Only then did Genma look down and notice the arm thrust through his chest.  Somehow, he felt numb to the pain.

              "Fool," the thing whispered to him.

              "Not anymore," he answered.

              Smiling broadly, Genma Saotome let go of the moment.

              Ranma staggered to his feet.  He felt dizzy, vision blurred, and with his first few steps he wobbled into a wall.  He touched the side of his head and found it wet with blood.  Burgeoning panic and the impulse to do something, the instinct that everything had gone terribly wrong, filled him; but his need slammed against the pain in his head and he held himself trembling against the wall, fingers digging into the wood, trying to think, think his way through the pain--what was missing?

              Where was Akane?  Her absence shattered his confusion.  He sprinted up the stairs, turned the corner. . . .

              And saw his father.  On his knees, slumped back with his head nearly touching the floor . . . his chest a bloody ruin.  Ranma's enemy from earlier stood over his father, one hand stained crimson.  Akane stumbled away, eyes wide with disbelief.  Mouth open with a silent scream that wouldn't come.  The tall man shoved the bloodied body away, and Genma fell with a dull thud at Ranma's feet.

              "Pop?" he said, voice soft.  He kneeled next to his father.  "Dad?'

              His father's eyes flickered open. "Hey, Son. . . ."

              "Shit, Dad, no, oh man no, this can't . . . hold in there, Pop, c'mon-"

              "Ranma-"

              "Don't talk, Pop, we'll-"

              "Shut up, Boy!  I'm trying to pass on my wisdom here!"

              Ranma nodded.

              "Remember the riddle?  Yesterday's story?"

              "With the stupid tiger and--"  Ranma swallowed, and nodded again.

              Genma gave a small chuckle, and winced.  "I was right.  I was right!  I ate the strawberry, Son . . . and it's the most delicious thing I've ever tasted."  His eyes slowly drooped shut, and his head lolled to one side.

              "Dad?"  Ranma rocked his dad.  "Father?"  There was no response.  He shook him again.  Nothing.  He looked at the ruined body before him, bloodied, broken, empty.  Genma Saotome was dead.  His father was dead.  "C'mon, Pop," he tried again, giving the body a final shove.  "Get up, you shitty old man!"

              "Ranma?"  He turned hopeless eyes to Akane.  She looked at him with empathic grief.  He turned from her to the two creatures standing mere meters away.  Watching his pain.  Responsible for his father's death.  Ranma slowly rose to his feet.  He looked at his father's battered corpse; at his fiancee; at the ruins of the Tendo household, his home; and then back at his father.

              His father was dead.

              He didn't know where it came from; he was hardly aware of doing it.  Ranma screamed, head tilted back, arms thrown wide, frustration and anger tearing through him, this was impossible, his father was dead, what did these things _want_, his father was dead, rage mingled with self-loathing infused every fibre of his being, his father was _dead_, he should have been here, fought harder, stronger, his father. . . . was dead.  It's my fault, he thought, the cry dying in his throat.  Pop even told me.  His final lesson.  He looked down at his father one last time.  "You were right, Pop."

              No more holding back.

              "Don't worry," said a harsh voice.  The mantis-like man from before.  "You will soon you're your father, boy."  A blink, and it appeared before him.  Arms poised to strike.  Akane's cry reached Ranma from somewhere far away.  An immensely strong hand speared forward with its full, impossible speed.

              Ranma caught the hand at the wrist.  He stopped it a few centimetres from his chest.  Only then did he look up.  Sunken eyes widened in a very human expression of surprise--and fear.  Ranma could feel the arm in his grasp straining to pull away.  It was strong, but at this moment nowhere strong enough.  Ranma searched its face and saw in its sudden terror a fragmented reflection of what his own visage must resemble.  He noted the flailing mass of tentacles squirming a few meters behind, and thought to himself, It all ends here.

              "My name is Ranma Saotome," he said.  "You killed my father.  Prepare to die."

              The martial artist flowed forward.  He felt colder than ever before, his own Soul of Ice brought to a new level; and through that chill he reached for his father's techniques.  Pop's a genius, he thought; was a genius, he amended, and with the faintest hint of a grim smile he opened himself fully to the power of the Umisen-ken and the Yamasen-ken.

              He effortlessly slipped phantom-like within his opponent's reach.  Ranma lunged forward with twin spear-hands of his own.  Metal-strong flesh of before parted like paper.  Both hands plunged deep into the creature's chest.

              Geimon Tetsusen Shi, he told himself.

              With a fierce kiai he threw his arms wide, as he kicked forward with all his strength.  In an explosion of blood and gore, the body in front of him ripped asunder, and spraying chunks of torso were thrown in a wide arc across the hall.  He stepped down and through the expanding crimson cloud.

              Mouko Kaimon Ha.

              The alien mass before him didn't move.  Whether frozen with fear or simply too slow to react, it was irrelevant to Ranma.  Arms still thrown wide from his father's "Fierce Tiger Opening Gate Blow" slammed together in a fierce embrace.  The mass squirmed and flailed and something hard at the center snapped and bit, and it thrashed fiercely in an attempt to break free of Ranma's crushing squeeze.  He hugged the creature and tightened his grapple until he heard something crack.  Both his hands rested on either side of something hard and skeletal found at the core of his enemy.  He felt it split and crumble beneath his father's attack.

              Kaichuu Houjiyu Satsu.

              He reached past the Soul of Ice for something stronger, angrier--and he found a seething wellspring of rage at his disposal.  It was hot and fierce and demanded release.  How long had he restrained this power, and to what end?  The fullness of it felt briefly in the fight with Saffron, but denied, frightened at what it suggested.  A mere hint of it touched in the fight last night--the demands of necessity, but still he had been too cowardly to accept the possibilities.

              If he had, his father would still be alive.  Ranma immersed himself fully into his rage.  It flowed through him, hot and powerful, bitter.  The potential.  That instant last night; the fragment glimpsed just before he threw Saffron down: the same, fleeting moments in which anything seemed possible, reaching beyond the frail limitation of human flesh.  Standing within it, the moment no longer seemed so ephemeral.

              Ranma let go of the moment.  Twin blasts of unbridled energy poured from his hands.  They met in a bright detonation of light and power, and Ranma threw his arms wide and let the torrent escape in a brilliant swath of expanding destruction.

              Kanseikei Mouko Takabisha.

              "I'm sorry, Pop," he whispered, and dropped to one knee.  Eyes closed, fists clenched, he shuddered with both the release and with something else he was afraid to admit: heady pleasure.  For an indefinite period it seemed all he could do was crouch there and shake, wracked with emotions he could neither restrain nor fully understand.  The tremors finally subsided, and with a trembling breath he wearily rose to his feet.  Ranma opened his eyes.

              A corner of the house was gone.  His "Complete Fierce Tiger's Dominance' had ripped Happosai's guest room away.  The night air billowing in felt cool against his feverish skin.  The chill of before was gone: now he felt hot.  His rage was far from spent.  He turned back towards the house.

              His friends were there: Kuno, Shampoo, Nabiki.  His mother.  And Akane.  They all watched him with wide eyes, and behind the shock he recognized fear.  Perception pulled back, and only then did he become fully aware of the destruction he had wrought.  His ki-blast had reduced the second creature to a fine paste spread across the floor and walls.  Father's Yamasen-ken techniques had ripped the desiccated 'eldest brother' into four, and scattered the bleeding portions in different directions.  Innards coiled and spread across the floor.  His clothes were soaked in others' blood.  A part of him quailed in horror at what he had just done; but mostly he took grim pleasure in his father's vengeance.

              Ranma knelt by his father's body, only dimly aware of his mother coming to his side.  He wanted to shed tears, but nothing would come.  He stayed there by Genma's side holding one limp hand, head bowed in silence.  He sunk himself deeper into his rage, and grew hotter with every passing moment.

              The young man knelt next to his dead father.  His mother stood at his side, and by her expression it was clear she yearned to comfort him.  Akane recognized Ms. Saotome's impulse, for she felt it herself.  But there was no approaching Ranma.  Not now.  He was lost in his grief--and through his pain, he had found anger.  She had seen it; they all had.  The absolute ease with which he had slaughtered his opponents, and the extreme violence used: she never would have thought Ranma capable of such brutality.

              But then, she had only been dimly aware of his actions atop Mt. Phoenix.  The possibility of her death had driven him to reluctantly kill before; the sight of Mr. Saotome's torn body pushed him over the edge.  Earlier tonight, under the influence of the initial attack, she had seen a glimmer of the anger her fiance was capable of.  Now he revealed it in full, and Akane felt frightened.

              There was a loud crash from below.  Oh no, she thought, it's not over!  There were four accounted for here, but what of Ryouga's opponent and Cologne's target--were they still alive?

              The others rushed for the stairs, cursing as they went.  Akane hesitated, unable to pull her eyes away from Ranma.  There was a whispered exchange between mother and son; and after a final moment of silence, her fiance stood up.  He looked at her.  The surge of emotions expressed by his eyes, etched into his face, both tugged at and repelled her.  Such anger and pain; bloodlust and fear--he seemed somehow lost, and the grim smile he still wore creased his features into unfamiliar lines.

              "Ranma?" she said, her voice hardly above a whisper.

              He shook his head and wordlessly turned away.  With slow, measured steps he walked towards Kasumi's room.  Akane remembered: in preparation for the siege, neighbourhood cats had been rounded up and stored in her sister's room.  A backup plan--an emergency strategy to be used only if something went terribly wrong.

              Everything was terribly wrong.  It was only as the martial artist left the reach of the few remaining hallway lights that she noticed: Ranma was glowing.  In the pool of darkness outside Kasumi's room, he stood revealed within his own aura; and tiny tongues of flame danced across his body.  With a final glance back, he stepped into her sister's room.

              I don't want to see this, she thought, in this state of mind, who knows how he'll react?  She nearly fled down the stairs, and only as she neared the main hall did she realize that, at that moment, she feared her own fiance more than whatever final challenge awaited her here.  Only as she reached the first floor did she ask herself why: her confidence that Ranma could never willingly hurt her remained absolute, so what was she afraid of?  She turned the corner and saw that last remaining opponent.

              He stood in the middle of the room, nearly invisible against the looming night behind him.  An obsidian man with flowing darkness wrapped about him like a cloak.  Nearly two meters in height, the suggestion of taut muscles rolled beneath the glassy smoothness of his skin.  The approach of new defenders seemed merely to amuse him.  Akane then noticed her other friends: Mousse and Ukyou lay in a groaning heap on the far side of the room, slowly untangling themselves; opposite them, a painfully battered-looking Ryouga struggled to stand.

              "Watch out!" the bandanna'd martial artist called out, as he unsteadily regained his footing.  "He's unbelievably strong!"

              Akane watched from the edge of the room as her friends scattered and formed a semi-circle around their final opponent.  Numerous emotions swelled within as she saw the determination in their eyes, noted how battle-weary and wounded they all were.  This was all her fault--indirectly, she accepted, as Ranma had convinced her earlier tonight--but her friends were still fighting to protect her.  Fighting, it seemed, to the very end.  She swallowed hard at the thought: Ranma had already lost his father because of her actions.  Blinking against the sudden sting of tears, she took her place in the circle around their enemy.  He turned toward her as she joined the group, and smiled.  "At last," the man said, his voice deep and mellifluous.  "The prize approaches."

              "I'm not your prize," she answered.  "This isn't a game."

              He seemed to consider that for a moment.  "But it is.  Oh, believe me, it is: one that has dragged on for far, far too long.  And tonight I take the first step toward ending it once and for all."

              "People have been hurt!" she yelled at him.  "There's a man dead upstairs!"  She was crying, thinking of Ranma, of his loss, the pain and tortured acceptance of what he had done in order to avenge his father's death.

              At that, the man seemed to grow angry.  "A man dead?  My family is dead!  You have killed my family, my beautiful sons and daughters!"  He levelled one accusing finger at Mousse.  "That one slew my son."  Turning, he then pointed at Shampoo.  "And that one cut down my beloved eldest daughter."  Turning back to Akane, he fixed her with a baleful glare.  "Do not speak to me of loss!  My family lies slaughtered--by children!  By small, young, pathetic children!"  He took a single step towards Akane, and her friends tightened the circle around him at the movement.

              He stopped, his smile returning.  "But you make it all worthwhile, my beautiful and elusive Key."  With a sweeping gesture he took in the encircling martial artists and beyond them, the destruction of the house.  "My family can be replaced, but you--oh, you, my wonderful, precious treasure, are a unique opportunity.  Let us put an end to this foolishness.  Come with me, child, and I'll spare these ignorant friends of yours."

              Ryouga's growl cut off any answer she could have made.  "She's not going anywhere with the likes of you."

              "The likes of me?" he repeated, voice growing in volume.  "The likes of _me_?  Idiot child!  Do you even know who it is you face?"

              "It doesn't matter," Ryouga answered.  "I won't let you touch Akane."

              "Do you think you can stop me, then?" the obsidian man answered, and his smile grew.  "Will you offer me a greater challenge than that old crone?"

              An audible gasp from Shampoo, a sharp intake of breath by Mousse; and Akane felt her own stomach sink at his words.

              "Great Grandmother?" whispered a stunned Shampoo.

              "An amusing divertissement," the man answered, "but little more."

              "No!" shrieked the purple-haired Amazon, leaping forward with her sword held high.  A beat later her friends joined the charge: Kuno with the Saotome katana, Mousse wielding two wicked looking jagged axes, Ukyou and her giant spatula; and finally Ryouga, unleashing a blast from his cupped hands, his words unheard over everyone's battle roar.  Akane hesitated a moment before attacking, and therefore saw the assault end even as it began:

              Ryouga's ki-blast splashed without effect against an unseen barrier a full metre from his target; with a sweep of his hand, the obsidian figure sent a wash of energy crashing into Mousse and Ukyou's forward rush--they were flung back like rag dolls into the wall behind.  Kuno's charge was met with an outstretched hand that slipped within his reach, grabbed him by the neck, and threw him flailing across the room--Akane had to leap aside to avoid the tumbling body.  Shampoo got through: descending from above and with a fierce cry in Chinese, her sword sliced down against the man's neck.  The blade shattered like glass.  Turning smoothly, he seized her by the throat and effortlessly lifted her off the ground.

              "Let her go!" howled Mousse, charging once again, joined by Ryouga.  The darkness that slid about the man flared up briefly in a full nimbus of inky hue; it reached out and flashed over the two martial artists.  The long-haired boy was plucked from the ground and held suspended in coils of darkness, but when the blackness lifted Ryouga stood free, his own aura glimmering weakly.

              "Interesting," the man said.

              "You can't have Akane," Ryouga panted.  He glanced her way with pained eyes, and took a shuddering breath.  It was amazing that he could even stand.  "I made a promise."

              "One you cannot keep," the man said, and quicker than her eye could follow he placed the palm of one hand against Ryouga's forehead.  Her friend went rigid, and when the man pulled away the martial artist's face was deadened and grey.  A moment later he toppled over.

              The obsidian man turned towards Akane.  He still held Shampoo by one hand, her futile struggling growing weaker.  Mousse, floating a metre above the ground and trailing after him, seemed unconscious in the dark bonds gripping him.

              As the man approached, Akane suddenly realized that she was alone.  What could she hope to accomplish, where all her friends had failed?  Eyes wide with anticipation, smiling faintly, her enemy came closer, and she felt afraid--so very afraid, beyond even shame at her own perceived cowardliness.  We lost, she thought, we actually lost. . . .

              "And now," the man said, reaching for her, "there is no one left to save you."

              A haunting yowl reverberated from upstairs.

              The pigtailed youth walked down the stairs without making a sound.  Not walked, really: he _stalked_, moving with a rolling grace that could only be described as feline.  His very bearing conveyed a primal and animalistic image, something in the arc of his back, the coiled way he held his lightly clenched fists.  But as he trod into the room, it was clear that this time the Neko-ken had manifested itself in a very different fashion than usual.

              Ranma was glowing.  Tongues of flame danced across his body; when he uncurled his hands, the fiery corona reached beyond his fingers and highlighted invisible long and curving claws.  Heat radiated from his body in palpable waves.  His face was smeared with blood and fur, his features twisted in an expression of plaintive confusion--why were his cat friends dead?  Eyes narrowed to dangerous slits as they fell upon the obsidian man threatening the woman he loved.  Lips curled back, teeth bared, a feral growl rumbling in his throat: he was deep in the throes of the Neko-ken, but the dark glimmer in his eyes was entirely human, the desire for revenge, the need to inflict pain, purely human.  He rode the raw instincts of the cat released inside of him, but somehow the dreadful anger he carried proved a stronger instinct still; and the hungry set of his jaw was offset by that same hinted grim smile.  Padding past his female, Ranma watched as his enemy tossed aside his playmates.

              "What do we have here?" the man said.

              Ranma-the-cat released a fierce hiss and leapt forward.  His prey stepped back, his aura flaring up in a negative halo around him.  Dark tendrils lashed out at the feline martial artist.  With casual ease, he bounced between the reaching attacks and swiftly closed the distance.  A final upsurge swept between him and his opponent.  With a screech, Ranma lashed out with his leading paw.  Fiery trails ignited the air behind his strike like blistering tracers.  His claws clove through the darkness and raked across his target's face.

              The obsidian man howled and staggered back, one hand clutching at his face.  Darkness once again surged about him, this time in a spiralling cyclone that drove the madly springing cat back.  Ranma landed and licked at his paw, keeping one careful eye on his opponent.  The violent gout subsided.  The man pulled his hand away from his face.  Three long jagged lines, glowing fiery red, ran across his left cheek.  The glow quickly faded, but the triple flaw in the mirrored perfection of his face remained.

              "You wounded me," he said, voice equal parts disbelief and anger--underscored, the barely rational part of Ranma's mind noted with pleasure, by grudging respect.  "Even the Amazon bitch failed to touch me, and she was the most amusement I've had in years."

              The martial artist crept in a slow, wary semi-circle several metres from the man.  Stepping softly on all fours, he retraced his steps, keeping himself between the aggressor and his mate.  Caught in the primitive, powerful emotions of the cat, there was no denying the fierce love he felt for the woman under his protection.  Ranma would rather die than lose her.  No, the enraged fragment of his mind insisted, I would rather kill than lose her.

              "I see," the obsidian man continued.  "You are the one that killed the last two of my family, then? 

My eldest son, even.  It would seem that I underestimated you.  I underestimated all of you."  The darkness outside seemed to flow forward, flooding the room, and in the sudden dimness the man seemed taller, stronger, his eyes flaring a brilliant red.  In a voice turned deeper and harsher he continued: "No longer!  I will not be denied what is mine!"

              Ranma-the-cat pounced, swiping with flaming claws at the dark-shrouded man.  His burning aura pushed back the shadows, but his strikes failed to touch his prey.  Fiery arcs sliced through reaching murky swells--and shredded the house beyond--but the man proved as elusive as dancing shadows.  He flowed aside and beneath the martial artist's attacks, narrowly evading Ranma's furious barrage of feline swipes.  The pigtailed boy bounced like a hyperkinetic pachinko ball around his target, and yowled in frustration at his inability to score a hit.

              And then, landing in a crouch, his foe blurred before him, and one ebony arm slammed into his chest.  The cat in him screeched in pain; the barely rational part of Ranma's mind could not remember having ever being hit so hard.  The impact would have hurled him back through the house, but sudden coils of night snatched him from the air.  He hung suspended there, flailing in frustration.  Every inky curl he cut to ribbons reformed behind the trailing blaze.  Ephemeral bonds of darkness somehow tightened around his body, pinning hands to his side and forcing his legs together.  As much as he twisted and thrashed and howled in feline frustration, he could not break free.

              "All too easy," the man said, and his bonds tightened further.  Howls of frustration turned to screams of pain.  Glacial cold cut through the heat of his fire.  Ranma felt his hold on feline instincts slipping, felt his own frightening slide into unconsciousness--if not something deeper and far more permanent.  Struggling subsided and he slumped in his enemy's grip.  His previously fierce aura faded to a dull glimmer.  Pervasive coldness brought with it an insidious numbness, and sibilant whispers offered the peace and calm of sleep.  The boy felt hollow and chilled to his very core.

              An angry flame yet burned at that core.

              Ranma remembered: a similar brutal dichotomy of coldness and heat felt once before.

              _primal flame, heat; pervasive chill of death_

              His father, and a stupid story about a strawberry.

              _glorious suspension between heaven and earth_

              Akane.

              _love lying dead in his arms, too late, too slow_

              Ranma grabbed hold of that tenuous, flickering anger, and shielded it with his waning will.  He stoked the flame with his memories, his fears, frustrations, loss.  He stared deep into his rage and suddenly understood that beyond it seethed and roiled broad expanses of yet untapped power.  It was a source only fleetingly touched upon once, and the residual fear he carried from that earlier encounter momentarily threatened his resolve.  Bonds tightened; a girl screamed; a father's words resonated deeply.

              With no further hesitation, the martial artist passed through his own fire and immersed himself fully in what lay on the other side.  He didn't remember much of what happened after that.

Continues in:

Chapter Five: Tokyo by Night

***

Author's Notes:

Special attacks used in this chapter:

(Is it just me, or was there a lot of them?  Generally, I'm not too big on the usage of Japanese in an English story, but attack names are a manga-staple I refuse to translate.  Where possible, I try to slip the English translation into the text soon after, but sometimes I can't quite manage it.  Therefore, a quick glossary.)

Shishi Houkou Dan:

'Lion's Roar Bullet' -- Ryouga's trademark depression-fuelled ki-blast.  The vertical (and generally more powerful) version was initially called the 'Kanseikei Shishi Houkou Dan' -- the complete version.

Shishi Hijuuken:

'Lion Hide Heavy Punch' -- my invention.  I figure that raising sumo-pigs has got to get boring, so he came up with this on a slow day.  Helps to keep the pigs in line, too.

Bakusai Tenketsu:

'Exploding Point' -- well, the literal kanji translation would be 'Explode Break Point Hole,' but that's just a tad too cumbersome.  Another Ryouga trademark, makes 'not-alive' things explode: rocks and so on.  Would it work on scabbed-over flesh, or am I taking liberties?  We'll see. . . .

Muusuno Furumonti Totsu:

Did you get this one?  'Furumonti' is katakana: Full Monty.  'Mousse's Full Monty Strike.'  Well, the narrative did say 'robes thrown wide open.'

Umisen-ken, Yamasen-ken:

'Thousand Sea Fist', 'Thousand Mountain Fist'.  These are extremely violent arts designed, and then hidden by, Genma.  The styles parallel the human body with a house, the practitioner with a thief.  True enough, Ranma never used the Yamasen-ken before (at least that we see in the manga), but if he can learn the entire Umisen-ken from a single display by his father, then he must've been able to pick-it up off of Ryuu Kumon.

Geimon Tetsusen Shi

Mouko Kaimon Ha

Kaichuu Houjiyu Satsu:

Moves previously used in the Ryuu Kumon story arc.  'Welcome Gate Iron Fan Fingers', 'Fierce Tiger Opening Gates Blow', 'Pocket Jewel Death Embrace'.  Though they might be losing something in the translation.  Damn kanji compounds.

Kanseikei Mouko Takabisha:

'Complete Fierce Tiger's Domineering'.  The Mouko Takabisha is Ranma's confidence-fuelled ki-blast. Unlike Ryouga, he never displayed a 'complete' version in the manga.  Leaves you to wonder what the 'ultimate' version would be--and what could inspire 'ultimate' confidence?

Neko-ken:

'Cat-fist'.  The art of fighting with the ferocity of a cat.  Apparently Takahashi has never met _my_ cat.