Chapter 9 – A Day in the Life of Ranma Saotome. (Ranma's POV)
(Starts before the end of the previous chapter, and runs until after it finished)
I was standing on the grass in the park, running through a few forms as I waited for Kirika to show up. She was running a tiny bit late this morning, but it didn't really bother me. I knew she wasn't quite as much of a morning person as I was. I absent-mindedly added nine vitals kicks into the form I was doing. Not really traditional, but they just felt right there.
Doing so much Tai Chi had been good for me really, forcing me to concentrate on smoothness and perfection in my forms. Over the month or so I'd been here, I think I'd captured something I'd been missing for a while in my arts. I was flowing again. Of course it could be the relative lack of craziness in my life recently. Something inside me added it was also because of the sparring partner I'd had. Instead of kicking that thought down into the depths of my brain like I woulda before, I let it travel around a bit. I slipped in a chestnut fist aimed at the floating seed of a dandelion, sliding across the grass to follow it as it was buffeted by the displaced air of the attack. Damn, I was good. Hah. And I hadn't felt like this in years.
Holding her hand last night had felt really nice too. Heck, the last time I'd held a girl's hand had been during the infamous Psychotic Pachinko Parlour Bomber Twins incident last year, and that had been in quite a different set of circumstances. I dunno, as well as being small and cute, like the rest of her, her hand felt sort of like an anchor to me. Hell, years ago that woulda terrified me. An anchor for me? No way. But now I guess things were different, because the sense of belonging I had with her fit me like... the last puzzle piece. It was hard to describe.
But she was here in the park now, walking towards me with that little smile she seemed to have a lot. Nice to be able to make a girl smile, just for once. I bow to her, and we start to dance. Ok, we're doing Tai Chi together, but it's probably the closest we'll get. After all life will send us spinning off in different directions soon, and I don't know how to dance anyway. That thought doesn't make me feel really good, and come to think of it she doesn't seem so centred this morning.
"Hey...," I say to her, stopping my set, "what's up? You're... messin' up this morning."
"I'm sorry Ranma," she says to me, stopping her set as well. "Mirelle talked to me about you last night. She doesn't really trust you."
"Man... I mean, I can totally understand. I don't think I'd trust me, if I was her."
"Ranma," she says with a smile, "you're being silly."
"Yup," I say, glorying in my ability to bring out that smile of hers. I still got good memories of that one day she was lookin' down and I'd actually made her laugh out loud, teaching her the 'Crouch of the Wild Tiger'. "You think there's anything I can do to change her mind?"
"I don't know. With time I'm sure she'd trust you, but..."
"You think I don't have much time?"
"Mmmm." She makes sort of a non-committal noise, and sits down on the grass. "Mirelle and I... we might have to defend ourselves again soon. We've heard rumors."
I sigh and sprawl down next to her. "Maybe it'd be better if we didn't meet here every morning then. Maybe just when we call and agree to meet somewhere? In code, I guess."
She looks relieved and sad too. "Ranma, that would be best, but..."
I grab onto her hand and give it a squeeze. I can see her blush, and know she can see me blushing too.
And then we just sit there, holding hands.
Getting ready for work and getting there are one of the few times during the day when I have some time for thinking. I was down, I couldn't deny it. Thinking that life was going to separate the two of us, and then less than an hour later have it turn out just that way was too disheartening. But I couldn't think of an alternative. I was in the Police. At least in theory she was an assassin. I mean, I might like the girl, but what was there to fight for?
Anyway, it's not like we were having tons of soul searching conversations or anything. Sure we'd spent quite a bit of time together. Ok, especially in the last couple days we'd spent a lot of time together, but there were a lot of topics that were off limits for both of us. I didn't ask about her life, and she didn't ask about mine. We talked about food, music, martial arts, you name it. Lots of stuff.
But I didn't ever ask, "So what's life like when you're one of the premiere assassins in the world?"
Somehow things were just left in limbo. Our contact with each other was separate from the rest of our lives. It might be comfortable, but what's a relationship like that really worth? Maybe the best thing we could do was to just drift apart, and eventually never see each other again.
I wasn't really prepared for how the bottom dropped out of my stomach when I thought of not seeing her. Or at least that's what it felt like. Dammit. It's easy to think all sorts of romantic thoughts when you're flowing through a kata in a park in the early morning sun. Sittin on a subway heading in to work will bring you back down with a crash. There were some real problems with us being together that I couldn't just blow off and ignore.
Sooner or later, someone was going to see me and her together. For all I know, that'd already happened. I'm sure the Special Crimes section I was working with would be real happy to hear I'd been dating one of their bitter enemies for a month or so. Hell, I had my own set of enemies who'd be happy to use her as leverage against me. For that matter, she probably had her own collection of pissed off people from her past. Maybe someone would kidnap me for a change, wait for her to come storming into their mountain stronghold to stop our marriage. Yeah. Somehow I got the feeling that the guys I'd done the rescuing from were overall a bit nicer than the collected evil hitmen of Europe.
At least from my side though, I was a bit more comfortable about Kirika and her ability to take care of herself. She was sharp as a blade when it came to martial arts, even if she wasn't in my league, and I knew that wasn't her real strength anyway. I could see in her eyes sometimes that she could be as hard and as cold as she needed to be. Sure she used guns not swords, but she had the same metal in her as any samurai.
All that strength, but she was cute too. Sure, I might have thought at first she was a bit plain lookin, and maybe she would be for some people. Not important though. She was so serious most of the time, with a little spark of goofy humour deep inside somewhere. Smart, modest, pretty... all sorts of good stuff.
I almost missed my stop, but scrambled off in time and headed into the station. I met up with my partner, and could feel there was something off right away. I mean, he was in a good mood, but there was something more there. He was pretty excited about something, but trying to cover it up. I was a bit surprised, since he was a pretty laid back cynical guy, but I suppose everyone has their moments.
"Excuse me Frank, but I notice you are excited today about something," I asked as we walked upstairs to our department. He looked at me a bit surprised, but recovered quick.
"You can tell?" he asked. "The fact of the matter is, I've just got a tip from one of my old contacts that might lead us to some new information. The whole thing might seem a bit strange, so I haven't talked to any of the others about it, but after lunch we can go out and see what we can find out."
"Sure. I understand about some contacts being hard to talk to others about," I said. I was thinking of some of mine back in Japan and other places. Three hundred year old panty thieves could be a bit much for some people to swallow.
The last month working in Paris had been more than a bit odd for me. I'd been in situations before when all the truth about a case hadn't quite made it into my report. Ok, I'd been in that situation a lot actually. After all, if you didn't want a quick trip to the loony bin it wasn't wise to hand in reports detailing your arrest of a giant ghost cat for sexual harassment.
Worst mistake I made that first week on the job back in Japan.
But I'd never actually been in a situation where I was dating the target of an entire special taskforce, that I was incidentally a member of.
No matter what Kodachi might tell ya, I might have been on the task force but no way was I dating her.
Anyway, so I'd made some discoveries for them. I'd looked over the data I had and pointed out some things about the crime scenes that they hadn't noticed. I'd engaged in some pretty thorough re-enactments of some of the fights with them. I thought maybe if I convinced them just how dangerous Noir was, they'd be less willing to rush into a situation. Maybe their hesitation would give Noir a chance to get away without having to hurt or kill any of them.
But more than anything else, I was hurting because each dead body I read about in the reports was one more that I knew was haunting Kirika's thoughts.
Maybe that's why it would never work out for me and Akane. Here I was, a martial artist, dedicated to protecting the weak, and I was feeling sympathy for someone who'd killed others in cold blood, and who would almost certainly kill again.
I think Akane would be horrified. She wouldn't understand at all, and for that matter neither would Ryoga, Ukyo, Mom, Kasumi, or any of the others in Nerima.
Looking back on it, I think my perspective started to change when I tore Saffron apart, and things sorta snowballed from there. Of course Saffron came back, but none of the others have. Each death on my hands was one more nightmare that I had to deal with, and the others in Nerima who were more sheltered would never totally understand.
You should feel horror when you kill a person. Taking life should never be acceptable. Eventually though, you don't feel it as much. You think you should feel it every time, feel it deep down in your core or something. That's only right, after all. Somehow it doesn't work like that though, and the feeling gets duller and duller until you can tell yourself you aren't feeling anything at all.
Sorta like the breaking point training, but much, much worse.
Anyway, I was still having all sorts of deep thoughts when Frank came and got me, and drove me out to meet his contact. I'm sure I wasn't very good company for him in the car, but he was still making an effort, chattering away at me regardless of my short responses.
He seemed really up about this, like maybe he'd just had a major breakthrough. I hoped he hadn't, in a way. I mean, someone actually getting a clue about what was going on would make things far more difficult.
On the other hand, maybe it would be better if Kirika had to leave, to go somewhere else and hide for a few years. Maybe it would be better if I was off this case and back in Japan. I don't know, no matter what I'd like to think, maybe I wasn't really the sort of thing she needed in her life, and maybe she wasn't what I needed in mine.
That seemed like the most sensible course of action to take after all.
We pulled up at the entrance to one of the huge cemeteries in the city. While in some ways that might seem to be an odd place to meet with a contact, who knew? Even in our line of work, there were still enough people who loved drama.
You know, they wanted to stage the arrest in front of news crews, or the hired gun who wants a fight in an abandoned temple in the dead of night. Whatever. It's all down to personal taste I guess.
The sky overhead was a bit dark, but didn't look too threatening. Thank goodness. I'd been lucky so far with the weather since I'd arrived here. The lack of rain might have been hurting all those Parisians with gardens outside their suburban homes, but it suited me just fine. If I didn't have to I didn't really want to explain my curse to another group of people.
We walked further and further into the cemetery. This contact was obviously one of those people who confused deserted with safe and private. In fact, there's probably no better way to let someone with a shotgun microphone hear everything you're saying, but there you go.
Francois stopped, shielded from view by trees and other tombstones and crypts. He had been silent for the entire walk in, but turned to face me now with a smirk on his face.
"Saotome Ranma," he said. "Prepare yourself for death."
And then he charged in to the attack.
I was so stunned that his first two strikes hit me, staggering me and driving me backwards.
He kept at me fast and hard. His strikes were direct and precise, and he still had that damn smirk on his face. Between the surprise and the hits, I was having trouble rebuilding my defences, and he kept pressing me.
He'd been holding back when we sparred. Bastard.
But so had I.
He committed too much to a wicked hook kick that would have almost taken my head off if it'd connected. But it didn't.
I was back out of his engagement distance, with my defences up before he could do anything about it.
He roared in again but he just didn't have the skill to pressure me when I was ready for him. The initiative was mine when I wanted to take it.
I took in the surroundings again. Isolated. Cut off from view.
A fresh grave already dug.
For me.
"Surprised at my skill," he asked, taunting me as he moved in to attack again.
I wasn't, not anymore. I absorbed and contained his attacks with no effort.
He lost the smirk on his face. He started leading up to the crescent kick I'd seen when I first sparred with him. His ki strike then.
I braced, prepared for the energy.
The crescent kick blazed in.
Not a flicker of ki.
I saw a glint of sun off his shoe, and threw myself backwards in a flip.
He stood, smirking again: a blade visible at the tip of his shoe.
I reached up and felt blood on my neck.
The fact that my partner was trying to kill me finally sunk in. In fact, he'd almost done it. He'd almost done it with a cheap parlour trick.
My control snapped.
He was already moving in for another strike when my battle aura snapped out, pounding the grass flat in a circle around me.
I jammed his kick, beating his leg down with mine, leaving him limping.
He tried to absorb my snap kick but couldn't stop the palm strike that dislocated his shoulder.
He tried to draw his gun, but I slapped it out of his hand and shattered it in midair with a kick.
He folded up around my first as it drove into his stomach, and he fell back into the grave he'd prepared for me, gasping for breath and gagging.
I jumped into the grave after him, focussing all my anger into a roiling ball of ki in my hand and prepared to strike. At this range it would blow through him like an anti-tank missile.
And then I stopped.
I controlled. I slipped down the long, cold path into the soul of ice.
I let the ki dissipate slowly, straightened up and jumped out of the pit.
"You will be in work tomorrow as if this had never happened. I will ask you some questions then."
"If you try to escape this, I will kill you," I stated. "You got that, bitch?"
He nodded weakly, and I walked away, leaving him lying there.
Half an hour later, I was still walking, and still angry. But I was angry at myself more than anything else. It had been sloppy to let him hit me at the start, shameful to let him tag me with that little knife, and disgraceful that I'd almost killed him right then and there.
Still, I needed to stop brooding about it and get some things done. I flipped open my cell and dialled Kirika's number from memory. That was one number I'd never be storing in my phone.
"Hello," she answered. I wasn't really prepared for how my heart somehow unclenched when I heard her voice.
"Hi, it's me," I said, avoiding my name. Just in case. "Look, someone just tried something against me. You should be careful."
"Oh..." she said, real quiet. "Do you think it was connected to..." she trailed off.
"Yeah, I think so," I said. "But don't worry about it. I didn't really get hurt."
"You got hurt?" she asked. "Are you sure you're ok?"
"Yeah," I said, "I really am ok. Look, I'll get in touch with you later from a land line and tell you more. Take care of yourself, ok?"
"You too," she said, "please be safe," and rang off.
She sounded really bad about it. I mean, I suppose I can understand, 'cause if she got hurt in something involving someone from my past, I'd be pretty upset.
That was what it boiled down to really. Each of us had a past that wasn't going to let us go easily. Really though, since when was my life easy?
All of a sudden it hit me, and I stopped walking and stood in the middle of the sidewalk.
I'd been thinking about things too much, I guess. There was something for me to fight for after all. I could fight for her, and maybe, just maybe, she'd fight for me. Between the two of us, there probably wasn't much we couldn't take on.
Standing there, I was getting more excited, and feeling more positive about things than I had most of the day. It was a big risk for both of us. We'd have to go out on a limb, expose ourselves, roll the dice, all that stuff. But she was worth me taking a risk for. Screw the tightrope act.
I ran back to my apartment.
Not even the dousing with cold water, and having to use some tea to change back irritated me. Ok, I'm lying. It did, and I was still grumbling when I got back into my place and finally met up with Mirelle. Kirika had told me a lot about her actually.
I hope she didn't think I was too weird. I mean, I didn't really concentrate that much on her. She was there to protect Kirika, so she was on my side. Even if she didn't know it yet.
I didn't really notice at the time, but the cut on my neck had already healed. I wasn't sure when that'd happened, but it was a bit of a surprise. I'd have to look into that later on.
After she left I flipped up onto the roof and worked out for a little while. Calmed myself down.
Then I showered, headed out, and called Kirika from a telephone box.
"Hello?" she answered again.
"Hiya," I said. "Everything is fine. I was just wondering..." I trailed off. Even my mood wasn't quite enough to make saying this sort of thing easy for me.
"Yes," she prompted.
"Well, I was wondering if you could meet up with me tonight. I... ummm... I really want to talk to you about some stuff."
"Oh... of course... if you'd like to," she said. I couldn't see her, but I could hear the smile in her voice.
"No need to blush about it, ok?" I said. "I'll drop by sometime after ten and tap on your window."
"Ra... you... well you're blushing too," she said.
Sadly, she was right. There was a few seconds of embarrassed silence from both of us as we tried to get our capillaries under control.
"Oh, Mirelle dropped by a bit earlier," I said. "I hope I didn't say anything too weird to her; I was thinking about some other stuff."
"What did she ask you about?"
"Well, I'm not exactly sure. Umm... I did tell her that I'd do my best to protect you though."
There was a bit of a shocked silence from her. This wasn't really something that we'd talked about before.
"That's sorta what I wanted to talk to you about," I said. "I'll see you later, ok?"
"Ok," she said. "I'll wait for you. Take care."
"You too," I said. I had a few things to pick up on my way there like a bit of food for the two of us, and of course a thermos of hot water, and one of cold water.
I guess it was time to lay my cards out on the table, and hope that she wanted to do the same thing. I also had to hope that meeting a certain red-headed alter ego wouldn't drive her screaming into the night. Damn Jusenkyo.
End Chapter 9
Ok, this one was a bit longer than usual. On the other hand, I still didn't cover everything I'd really intended to. The extra space was really taken up by Ranma thinking about his relationship with Kirika. The way I see it, the two of them have gotten really close, but at the same time they've both been holding a lot back from each other. He just had to make the decision to throw himself into it, and worry about the consequences later.
There was some action in this chapter at last, I guess. Ranma will have more of a chance to think about the fight itself and what it'll mean when he actually meets up with Francois to talk.
If the fight seemed a bit brutal, it was intentional. First, to demonstrate with actions some of the ways Ranma has changed over 10 years. Second, to set the tone of things a bit. Like I said in the intro of the first chapter, I'm aiming for darker than Ranma, and about the same as Noir.
I know that the constant changes of Point of View between chapters is really bugging some people, and I'm sorry if it is. I'm going to continue writing in the same way though. At the moment for me, it's really the only way I can explore each of the characters. I mean, at the moment I'm really not sure what the complete story is about how Kirika is feeling after she's been dating Ranma for a month, but after I get the next chapter written, I will =). Please just bear with me, gentle readers! (Yes, I've been re-watching Tenchi Muyo TV Time and Space adventures recently.)
Sorry there seemed to be some problems when I uploaded this chapter. Hopefully it's fixed now.
(Starts before the end of the previous chapter, and runs until after it finished)
I was standing on the grass in the park, running through a few forms as I waited for Kirika to show up. She was running a tiny bit late this morning, but it didn't really bother me. I knew she wasn't quite as much of a morning person as I was. I absent-mindedly added nine vitals kicks into the form I was doing. Not really traditional, but they just felt right there.
Doing so much Tai Chi had been good for me really, forcing me to concentrate on smoothness and perfection in my forms. Over the month or so I'd been here, I think I'd captured something I'd been missing for a while in my arts. I was flowing again. Of course it could be the relative lack of craziness in my life recently. Something inside me added it was also because of the sparring partner I'd had. Instead of kicking that thought down into the depths of my brain like I woulda before, I let it travel around a bit. I slipped in a chestnut fist aimed at the floating seed of a dandelion, sliding across the grass to follow it as it was buffeted by the displaced air of the attack. Damn, I was good. Hah. And I hadn't felt like this in years.
Holding her hand last night had felt really nice too. Heck, the last time I'd held a girl's hand had been during the infamous Psychotic Pachinko Parlour Bomber Twins incident last year, and that had been in quite a different set of circumstances. I dunno, as well as being small and cute, like the rest of her, her hand felt sort of like an anchor to me. Hell, years ago that woulda terrified me. An anchor for me? No way. But now I guess things were different, because the sense of belonging I had with her fit me like... the last puzzle piece. It was hard to describe.
But she was here in the park now, walking towards me with that little smile she seemed to have a lot. Nice to be able to make a girl smile, just for once. I bow to her, and we start to dance. Ok, we're doing Tai Chi together, but it's probably the closest we'll get. After all life will send us spinning off in different directions soon, and I don't know how to dance anyway. That thought doesn't make me feel really good, and come to think of it she doesn't seem so centred this morning.
"Hey...," I say to her, stopping my set, "what's up? You're... messin' up this morning."
"I'm sorry Ranma," she says to me, stopping her set as well. "Mirelle talked to me about you last night. She doesn't really trust you."
"Man... I mean, I can totally understand. I don't think I'd trust me, if I was her."
"Ranma," she says with a smile, "you're being silly."
"Yup," I say, glorying in my ability to bring out that smile of hers. I still got good memories of that one day she was lookin' down and I'd actually made her laugh out loud, teaching her the 'Crouch of the Wild Tiger'. "You think there's anything I can do to change her mind?"
"I don't know. With time I'm sure she'd trust you, but..."
"You think I don't have much time?"
"Mmmm." She makes sort of a non-committal noise, and sits down on the grass. "Mirelle and I... we might have to defend ourselves again soon. We've heard rumors."
I sigh and sprawl down next to her. "Maybe it'd be better if we didn't meet here every morning then. Maybe just when we call and agree to meet somewhere? In code, I guess."
She looks relieved and sad too. "Ranma, that would be best, but..."
I grab onto her hand and give it a squeeze. I can see her blush, and know she can see me blushing too.
And then we just sit there, holding hands.
Getting ready for work and getting there are one of the few times during the day when I have some time for thinking. I was down, I couldn't deny it. Thinking that life was going to separate the two of us, and then less than an hour later have it turn out just that way was too disheartening. But I couldn't think of an alternative. I was in the Police. At least in theory she was an assassin. I mean, I might like the girl, but what was there to fight for?
Anyway, it's not like we were having tons of soul searching conversations or anything. Sure we'd spent quite a bit of time together. Ok, especially in the last couple days we'd spent a lot of time together, but there were a lot of topics that were off limits for both of us. I didn't ask about her life, and she didn't ask about mine. We talked about food, music, martial arts, you name it. Lots of stuff.
But I didn't ever ask, "So what's life like when you're one of the premiere assassins in the world?"
Somehow things were just left in limbo. Our contact with each other was separate from the rest of our lives. It might be comfortable, but what's a relationship like that really worth? Maybe the best thing we could do was to just drift apart, and eventually never see each other again.
I wasn't really prepared for how the bottom dropped out of my stomach when I thought of not seeing her. Or at least that's what it felt like. Dammit. It's easy to think all sorts of romantic thoughts when you're flowing through a kata in a park in the early morning sun. Sittin on a subway heading in to work will bring you back down with a crash. There were some real problems with us being together that I couldn't just blow off and ignore.
Sooner or later, someone was going to see me and her together. For all I know, that'd already happened. I'm sure the Special Crimes section I was working with would be real happy to hear I'd been dating one of their bitter enemies for a month or so. Hell, I had my own set of enemies who'd be happy to use her as leverage against me. For that matter, she probably had her own collection of pissed off people from her past. Maybe someone would kidnap me for a change, wait for her to come storming into their mountain stronghold to stop our marriage. Yeah. Somehow I got the feeling that the guys I'd done the rescuing from were overall a bit nicer than the collected evil hitmen of Europe.
At least from my side though, I was a bit more comfortable about Kirika and her ability to take care of herself. She was sharp as a blade when it came to martial arts, even if she wasn't in my league, and I knew that wasn't her real strength anyway. I could see in her eyes sometimes that she could be as hard and as cold as she needed to be. Sure she used guns not swords, but she had the same metal in her as any samurai.
All that strength, but she was cute too. Sure, I might have thought at first she was a bit plain lookin, and maybe she would be for some people. Not important though. She was so serious most of the time, with a little spark of goofy humour deep inside somewhere. Smart, modest, pretty... all sorts of good stuff.
I almost missed my stop, but scrambled off in time and headed into the station. I met up with my partner, and could feel there was something off right away. I mean, he was in a good mood, but there was something more there. He was pretty excited about something, but trying to cover it up. I was a bit surprised, since he was a pretty laid back cynical guy, but I suppose everyone has their moments.
"Excuse me Frank, but I notice you are excited today about something," I asked as we walked upstairs to our department. He looked at me a bit surprised, but recovered quick.
"You can tell?" he asked. "The fact of the matter is, I've just got a tip from one of my old contacts that might lead us to some new information. The whole thing might seem a bit strange, so I haven't talked to any of the others about it, but after lunch we can go out and see what we can find out."
"Sure. I understand about some contacts being hard to talk to others about," I said. I was thinking of some of mine back in Japan and other places. Three hundred year old panty thieves could be a bit much for some people to swallow.
The last month working in Paris had been more than a bit odd for me. I'd been in situations before when all the truth about a case hadn't quite made it into my report. Ok, I'd been in that situation a lot actually. After all, if you didn't want a quick trip to the loony bin it wasn't wise to hand in reports detailing your arrest of a giant ghost cat for sexual harassment.
Worst mistake I made that first week on the job back in Japan.
But I'd never actually been in a situation where I was dating the target of an entire special taskforce, that I was incidentally a member of.
No matter what Kodachi might tell ya, I might have been on the task force but no way was I dating her.
Anyway, so I'd made some discoveries for them. I'd looked over the data I had and pointed out some things about the crime scenes that they hadn't noticed. I'd engaged in some pretty thorough re-enactments of some of the fights with them. I thought maybe if I convinced them just how dangerous Noir was, they'd be less willing to rush into a situation. Maybe their hesitation would give Noir a chance to get away without having to hurt or kill any of them.
But more than anything else, I was hurting because each dead body I read about in the reports was one more that I knew was haunting Kirika's thoughts.
Maybe that's why it would never work out for me and Akane. Here I was, a martial artist, dedicated to protecting the weak, and I was feeling sympathy for someone who'd killed others in cold blood, and who would almost certainly kill again.
I think Akane would be horrified. She wouldn't understand at all, and for that matter neither would Ryoga, Ukyo, Mom, Kasumi, or any of the others in Nerima.
Looking back on it, I think my perspective started to change when I tore Saffron apart, and things sorta snowballed from there. Of course Saffron came back, but none of the others have. Each death on my hands was one more nightmare that I had to deal with, and the others in Nerima who were more sheltered would never totally understand.
You should feel horror when you kill a person. Taking life should never be acceptable. Eventually though, you don't feel it as much. You think you should feel it every time, feel it deep down in your core or something. That's only right, after all. Somehow it doesn't work like that though, and the feeling gets duller and duller until you can tell yourself you aren't feeling anything at all.
Sorta like the breaking point training, but much, much worse.
Anyway, I was still having all sorts of deep thoughts when Frank came and got me, and drove me out to meet his contact. I'm sure I wasn't very good company for him in the car, but he was still making an effort, chattering away at me regardless of my short responses.
He seemed really up about this, like maybe he'd just had a major breakthrough. I hoped he hadn't, in a way. I mean, someone actually getting a clue about what was going on would make things far more difficult.
On the other hand, maybe it would be better if Kirika had to leave, to go somewhere else and hide for a few years. Maybe it would be better if I was off this case and back in Japan. I don't know, no matter what I'd like to think, maybe I wasn't really the sort of thing she needed in her life, and maybe she wasn't what I needed in mine.
That seemed like the most sensible course of action to take after all.
We pulled up at the entrance to one of the huge cemeteries in the city. While in some ways that might seem to be an odd place to meet with a contact, who knew? Even in our line of work, there were still enough people who loved drama.
You know, they wanted to stage the arrest in front of news crews, or the hired gun who wants a fight in an abandoned temple in the dead of night. Whatever. It's all down to personal taste I guess.
The sky overhead was a bit dark, but didn't look too threatening. Thank goodness. I'd been lucky so far with the weather since I'd arrived here. The lack of rain might have been hurting all those Parisians with gardens outside their suburban homes, but it suited me just fine. If I didn't have to I didn't really want to explain my curse to another group of people.
We walked further and further into the cemetery. This contact was obviously one of those people who confused deserted with safe and private. In fact, there's probably no better way to let someone with a shotgun microphone hear everything you're saying, but there you go.
Francois stopped, shielded from view by trees and other tombstones and crypts. He had been silent for the entire walk in, but turned to face me now with a smirk on his face.
"Saotome Ranma," he said. "Prepare yourself for death."
And then he charged in to the attack.
I was so stunned that his first two strikes hit me, staggering me and driving me backwards.
He kept at me fast and hard. His strikes were direct and precise, and he still had that damn smirk on his face. Between the surprise and the hits, I was having trouble rebuilding my defences, and he kept pressing me.
He'd been holding back when we sparred. Bastard.
But so had I.
He committed too much to a wicked hook kick that would have almost taken my head off if it'd connected. But it didn't.
I was back out of his engagement distance, with my defences up before he could do anything about it.
He roared in again but he just didn't have the skill to pressure me when I was ready for him. The initiative was mine when I wanted to take it.
I took in the surroundings again. Isolated. Cut off from view.
A fresh grave already dug.
For me.
"Surprised at my skill," he asked, taunting me as he moved in to attack again.
I wasn't, not anymore. I absorbed and contained his attacks with no effort.
He lost the smirk on his face. He started leading up to the crescent kick I'd seen when I first sparred with him. His ki strike then.
I braced, prepared for the energy.
The crescent kick blazed in.
Not a flicker of ki.
I saw a glint of sun off his shoe, and threw myself backwards in a flip.
He stood, smirking again: a blade visible at the tip of his shoe.
I reached up and felt blood on my neck.
The fact that my partner was trying to kill me finally sunk in. In fact, he'd almost done it. He'd almost done it with a cheap parlour trick.
My control snapped.
He was already moving in for another strike when my battle aura snapped out, pounding the grass flat in a circle around me.
I jammed his kick, beating his leg down with mine, leaving him limping.
He tried to absorb my snap kick but couldn't stop the palm strike that dislocated his shoulder.
He tried to draw his gun, but I slapped it out of his hand and shattered it in midair with a kick.
He folded up around my first as it drove into his stomach, and he fell back into the grave he'd prepared for me, gasping for breath and gagging.
I jumped into the grave after him, focussing all my anger into a roiling ball of ki in my hand and prepared to strike. At this range it would blow through him like an anti-tank missile.
And then I stopped.
I controlled. I slipped down the long, cold path into the soul of ice.
I let the ki dissipate slowly, straightened up and jumped out of the pit.
"You will be in work tomorrow as if this had never happened. I will ask you some questions then."
"If you try to escape this, I will kill you," I stated. "You got that, bitch?"
He nodded weakly, and I walked away, leaving him lying there.
Half an hour later, I was still walking, and still angry. But I was angry at myself more than anything else. It had been sloppy to let him hit me at the start, shameful to let him tag me with that little knife, and disgraceful that I'd almost killed him right then and there.
Still, I needed to stop brooding about it and get some things done. I flipped open my cell and dialled Kirika's number from memory. That was one number I'd never be storing in my phone.
"Hello," she answered. I wasn't really prepared for how my heart somehow unclenched when I heard her voice.
"Hi, it's me," I said, avoiding my name. Just in case. "Look, someone just tried something against me. You should be careful."
"Oh..." she said, real quiet. "Do you think it was connected to..." she trailed off.
"Yeah, I think so," I said. "But don't worry about it. I didn't really get hurt."
"You got hurt?" she asked. "Are you sure you're ok?"
"Yeah," I said, "I really am ok. Look, I'll get in touch with you later from a land line and tell you more. Take care of yourself, ok?"
"You too," she said, "please be safe," and rang off.
She sounded really bad about it. I mean, I suppose I can understand, 'cause if she got hurt in something involving someone from my past, I'd be pretty upset.
That was what it boiled down to really. Each of us had a past that wasn't going to let us go easily. Really though, since when was my life easy?
All of a sudden it hit me, and I stopped walking and stood in the middle of the sidewalk.
I'd been thinking about things too much, I guess. There was something for me to fight for after all. I could fight for her, and maybe, just maybe, she'd fight for me. Between the two of us, there probably wasn't much we couldn't take on.
Standing there, I was getting more excited, and feeling more positive about things than I had most of the day. It was a big risk for both of us. We'd have to go out on a limb, expose ourselves, roll the dice, all that stuff. But she was worth me taking a risk for. Screw the tightrope act.
I ran back to my apartment.
Not even the dousing with cold water, and having to use some tea to change back irritated me. Ok, I'm lying. It did, and I was still grumbling when I got back into my place and finally met up with Mirelle. Kirika had told me a lot about her actually.
I hope she didn't think I was too weird. I mean, I didn't really concentrate that much on her. She was there to protect Kirika, so she was on my side. Even if she didn't know it yet.
I didn't really notice at the time, but the cut on my neck had already healed. I wasn't sure when that'd happened, but it was a bit of a surprise. I'd have to look into that later on.
After she left I flipped up onto the roof and worked out for a little while. Calmed myself down.
Then I showered, headed out, and called Kirika from a telephone box.
"Hello?" she answered again.
"Hiya," I said. "Everything is fine. I was just wondering..." I trailed off. Even my mood wasn't quite enough to make saying this sort of thing easy for me.
"Yes," she prompted.
"Well, I was wondering if you could meet up with me tonight. I... ummm... I really want to talk to you about some stuff."
"Oh... of course... if you'd like to," she said. I couldn't see her, but I could hear the smile in her voice.
"No need to blush about it, ok?" I said. "I'll drop by sometime after ten and tap on your window."
"Ra... you... well you're blushing too," she said.
Sadly, she was right. There was a few seconds of embarrassed silence from both of us as we tried to get our capillaries under control.
"Oh, Mirelle dropped by a bit earlier," I said. "I hope I didn't say anything too weird to her; I was thinking about some other stuff."
"What did she ask you about?"
"Well, I'm not exactly sure. Umm... I did tell her that I'd do my best to protect you though."
There was a bit of a shocked silence from her. This wasn't really something that we'd talked about before.
"That's sorta what I wanted to talk to you about," I said. "I'll see you later, ok?"
"Ok," she said. "I'll wait for you. Take care."
"You too," I said. I had a few things to pick up on my way there like a bit of food for the two of us, and of course a thermos of hot water, and one of cold water.
I guess it was time to lay my cards out on the table, and hope that she wanted to do the same thing. I also had to hope that meeting a certain red-headed alter ego wouldn't drive her screaming into the night. Damn Jusenkyo.
End Chapter 9
Ok, this one was a bit longer than usual. On the other hand, I still didn't cover everything I'd really intended to. The extra space was really taken up by Ranma thinking about his relationship with Kirika. The way I see it, the two of them have gotten really close, but at the same time they've both been holding a lot back from each other. He just had to make the decision to throw himself into it, and worry about the consequences later.
There was some action in this chapter at last, I guess. Ranma will have more of a chance to think about the fight itself and what it'll mean when he actually meets up with Francois to talk.
If the fight seemed a bit brutal, it was intentional. First, to demonstrate with actions some of the ways Ranma has changed over 10 years. Second, to set the tone of things a bit. Like I said in the intro of the first chapter, I'm aiming for darker than Ranma, and about the same as Noir.
I know that the constant changes of Point of View between chapters is really bugging some people, and I'm sorry if it is. I'm going to continue writing in the same way though. At the moment for me, it's really the only way I can explore each of the characters. I mean, at the moment I'm really not sure what the complete story is about how Kirika is feeling after she's been dating Ranma for a month, but after I get the next chapter written, I will =). Please just bear with me, gentle readers! (Yes, I've been re-watching Tenchi Muyo TV Time and Space adventures recently.)
Sorry there seemed to be some problems when I uploaded this chapter. Hopefully it's fixed now.