Escapsim
2
Ranma woke slowly, twisting around lazily on his futon as his body got used to the idea that it was time to get up. His eyelids opened a crack as the door to his room slid open and a familiar figure poked her head in.
"Time to get up, Ranma-kun."
"Uhhhh . . . five more minutes Kyoko, okay?"
"Mother says if you don't get up now you won't have time to eat before you have to leave for college."
Kyoko snickered as the sheet shrouded form of her little brother stiffened then began to rise up like a creature awakening from the dead.
"I knew that would get your attention. See you at breakfast, little brother."
Ranma groaned as his sister walked away and rubbed sleepily at his face before struggling to his feet. A quick soak in the furo and he'd feel a lot better, he decided. Drifting up from downstairs Ranma could hear the sounds of his family – sisters, mother, father – talking over breakfast. After washing and dressing, feeling much more awake, Ranma headed down to join them.
"Hey, that looks good."
"Thanks big brother!" Madoka said happily.
Ranma ruffled his little sister's hair as he sat down next to her.
"So you cooked today, hey squirt?"
"Uh-huh – and don't call me that!" Madoka told him, pleasure warring with petulance in her expression.
"You did have some help from mother," Kyoko observed from the other side of the table.
"Only a little," Madoka shot back, her attention diverted from one sibling to the other. The friendly bickering passing between his sisters failed to register with Ranma, who was too interested in his breakfast to pay them much attention. His regarded him with a mixture of affection and resignation as he consumed enough food as the rest of the family put together.
"If he this keeps up, Orino-kun, we're going to have to sell the car to pay our food bills," she told her husband, only half joking.
"I'm sure we'll manage somehow Mai-chan," he replied, not looking up from his newspaper.
Mai Wa sighed at his obliviousness and stood to gather up the plates when it became apparent that her children had finished eating.
Akane wasn't worried when she got home that evening to find Ranma wasn't there. She wasn't even worried when there was no sign of him long after he would have normally arrived home. She was, however, angry.
"Kami-sama knows where that baka is," she muttered over dinner – takeout, of course, with Ranma absent. She went to bed assuming that Ranma would show up at some point – and that she'd punish him suitably for running off wherever he had.
He's such a jerk, Akane thought sleepily. We're still in the same old mess we were when he got here, more or less, and he hasn't done anything about it. Even after that mess of a wedding he wouldn't put his foot down with Ukyo or Shampoo and now he's going off to college and doing who knows what! It makes me so angry! If he'd just do something to sort all this out I know things would get better, I know it! Why won't he do . . . something . . . then I could . . . tell him . . .
The thought that Ranma might still be searching for a way to resolve the situation never crossed Akane's mind. Neither did it occur to her that it might have been easier for him if he'd had her support. As sleep claimed Akane her thoughts were still running in the same circles as they had countless times before.
Akane woke to the sound of her father's shrill complaints and Genma's angry rumbling.
What's happened now? she wondered. It wasn't long before her question was answered when Soun and Genma came charging into her room.
"Akane! That faithless boy has run out on you!"
"What?" Akane yelled.
"The boy never came home last night," Genma muttered furiously, wondering what the hell his ingrate son was playing at.
"WHAT?" Akane yelled again, much more loudly.
Genma and Soun exchanged a look, realizing for the first time that they had not managed this as well as they could have.
"I'M GOING TO KILL HIM!" Akane screamed, her thoughts wild.
WHERE TO, WHERE TO? UCCHAN'S – NO SHE'S VISITING HER FAMILY, I BET HE'S AT THE NEKOHANTEN, THOSE DAMN AMAZONS ARE ALWAYS PULLING STUNTS LIKE THIS, SO I'LL TRY THERE FIRST AND THAT DAMN SHAMPOO WON'T BEAT ME THIS TIME!
Akane strode down the street like a woman possessed, her battle aura so potent that she was leaving a trail of black patches behind her where her feet had landed. Soun and Genma trailed along behind her like fallen leaves being carried down a gutter by storm water. When Akane arrived at the Nekohanten she didn't bother knocking. One chi enhanced punch was enough to knock the door off its hinges and send charred pieces flying into the restaurant. Akane marched inside – and stopped dead at the sight of Cologne calmly balancing on her cane in the middle of the room, manifesting a battle aura that dwarfed Akane's.
"I felt your anger from several blocks away child," Cologne informed her coolly, the force of her aura lending emphasis to her words. "I would like to know exactly what has happened to make you this angry."
"You can't trick me!" Akane replied heatedly, determined not to back down. "I want to know what you've done with Ranma right now!"
"Has something happened to son-in-law?"
"YOU KNOW DAMN WELL HE ISN'T AT HOME SO DON'T LIE TO ME!" Akane screamed, her temper surging at what she believed to be Cologne's attempted deception, counteracting the small degree of calm she'd gained when the strength of Cologne's aura had shocked her out of the worst of her rage.
"I. Am. Not. Lying." Cologne replied in a voice that would have raised goose bumps on a corpse. The Amazon Matriarch gave a mental nod of satisfaction as Akane backed down in the face of a technique that made her father's Demon Head trick look pathetic by comparison.
"Now," she continued in a much more normal tone of voice, "suppose you tell me what happened?"
I don't like this at all, Cologne decided a few minutes later after hearing what Akane had to say.
It's a good thing I sent Shampoo and Mousse out when I felt the girl and those two old fools coming. Just the fact that all three of them were coming here together meant it was something out of the ordinary – something I might have had to deal with myself – but I wasn't expecting this.
To someone only casually acquainted with life in the unconventional suburb of Nerima it might not have seemed terribly unusual for one of its most colourful inhabitants to go missing for a day or so. To someone who understood the underlying dynamics of the situation it was worrying indeed.
The boy is like a homing pigeon when it comes to the Tendo's, Cologne reflected. His attachment to the familiar is so strong that the only circumstances under which he would not return there at day's end are if he'd been kicked out – which is not the case – or if he was being kept away somehow.
And Ranma being who he was, there was no way of knowing who, or what, had gotten hold of him, or what their purpose was.
"And the last place you saw him was at home, the night before last?" she asked Akane.
"Yes," Akane replied, her voice taut with frustration.
Cologne decided no to bother asking if Akane had noticed anything unusual about Ranma then. The girl was not exactly observant.
"Then I would like to see his room," Cologne informed her.
"What? Why?"
"Because it is the last place we know he was," Cologne replied acerbically.
"Oh."
Akane sighed, then nodded, managing to look annoyed, angry, resigned and worried simultaneously. Without another word she turned around and headed outside, Cologne following. The Matriarch ignored Genma and Soun's blustering queries as the strange little procession made its way to the Tendo Dojo. Under different circumstances Cologne might have missed the tingle of magic she felt as she entered the Tendo's home unless it had been waved under her nose, but with all her senses sharpened to their utmost it was easy to sense.
It's coming from upstairs.
Cologne moved past Akane and headed upstairs, the magical signature growing dramatically stronger as arrived at the door to Ranma's room. She looked inside and her attention was immediately drawn to the book lying on the floor that gleamed with magical energy to her enhanced vision. Cologne drew back as she recognised the magical artifact for what it was.
Oh no.
"Keep back!" she hissed as Akane came up behind her.
"What's going on?"
"I said keep back!"
Cologne turned around and herded Akane down the stairs.
"Hey! What are you-"
"I will explain after we're away from that room!" Cologne declared as she shepherded Akane into the living room where Soun and Genma were standing.
Cologne thought hard as she faced Akane, her father and Ranma's father. Explaining this was going to be difficult – and it was entirely possible that she wouldn't be believed. She drew a deep breath before beginning to speak.
"Ranma has been caught in a soul entrapment."
Silence.
"WHAT?" Genma roared.
"NOW THE HOUSES CAN NEVER BE JOINED!" Soun wailed.
Akane, however, remained curiously silent.
"What do you mean?" she asked quietly, after Soun and genma ranting and railing had died down.
"There was a book lying on the floor of Ranma's room," Cologne told her, "although I doubt you noticed. It's an example of a type of magical artifact known as a soul entrapment, as I said."
"Is that bad?"
If the situation hadn't been so serious Cologne would have rolled her eyes at Genma's question.
"Yes," you fat, ignorant fool, "it's bad. A soul entrapment is a spell bound to a physical object that ensnares a person in a private world of their own making. More than that, it cannot be invoked without the will of its subject, which makes it impossible to break."
"Are you saying Ranma wanted this to happen," Akane asked incredulously.
"I doubt Ranma even realized he was making such an arrangement, but yes," Cologne replied, wondering as she did so if anything apart from the last word of that sentence would register with Akane.
Apparently not, judging by the way her face had crumpled up.
"Well how the hell do we get the stupid boy out?" Genma demanded.
Cologne looked at him steadily.
"You can't."
It was past one in the morning when Akane snuck into Ranma's room, clutching her sheets around her. It had been a bad day. After Cologne's announcement her father and Genma had both exploded. They'd yelled, screamed, demanded, pleaded, begged and threatened (much good that would do them against someone like Cologne, Akane had thought at the time), but it hadn't made any difference. The Amazon Matriarch had been adamant that there was no way to rescue Ranma from the soul entrapment. When they hadn't been able to get an answer more to their liking from Cologne the two men had ordered her out of the house in a fit of rage. Akane had gotten the impression that Cologne hadn't wanted to leave with the book just lying around, but she didn't remember the morning's events very clearly. With a choked sob Akane sank down onto Ranma's futon. After Cologne had left, her father and Genma had argued frantically with each other about what to do. When her father had said something about telling Ranma's mother Genma had practically gone through the roof. Akane hadn't been paying much attention to anything by that point, but she vaguely recalled Genma saying something about the neko-ken . . . 'damn woman kicked me out of the house . . . all I could do to keep the boy here . . ." It didn't matter to her. She just wanted Ranma to come back.
Funny how it's so much easier to admit that after he's gone . . . a nasty little voice whispered in the back of her mind.
I just want him back, Akane thought miserably. I wish I could go after him somehow.
It was than that she noticed the book lying on the floor.
Ranma Saotome's Nice Normal Life.
Weeping quietly, Akane picked up the book and began to read.
Akane had fallen asleep with Ranma Saotome's Nice Normal Life lying open in her lap. In the early hours of the morning the letters began to glow with a soft, silvery grey light. The glow strengthened and for a moment flashed so bright it lit the room like day, then vanished.
As did Akane.