A Gift for Kasumi
By DojoRanma
Chapter 7 - Dreams of the Lost
Randomly written legal statement about not owning Ranma 1/2 (besides legitimate and bootleg copies of DVDs, VHS, Manga, Wallscrolls, Posters, Card Decks, etc.) and that I don't profit monetarily writing this literature.
Akane trudged along the darkened roadway, the lightposts guiding her path through Nerima. The nipping chill in the wind as it brushed by her went unnoticed. She was already numb.
'What happened to me? I lost control again.' She clenched her hands into fists and pulled them close to her chest, the images of the mallet striking Ranma and Kasumi flashed unbidden and unwelcome in her mind. She shook and began to sob lightly.
'Why?' She thought back. Ranma always came out on top. Every time she hit him, the pervert just bounced right back up and came back to receive his punishment or save the day and gloat over it. 'Why was it that this time felt different?'
There was a weight in her stomach as she replayed the scene in her mind.
Akane rounded the corner a few blocks from the dojo, to see Ranma and Kasumi standing close and tears flowing down Kasumi's cheeks.
"RANMA!"
Rage filled her to the very core. 'That jerk hurt my sister!' She hefted her mallet from subspace and stalked towards Ranma.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SISTER, YOU BASTARD!"
Ranma panicked. 'I knew it. Guilty of hurting Kasumi.' She saw him try to blur out of the way and make a break for it via the rooftops.
Reacting to Ranma's movements, she launched her mallet end over end at him.
At that moment, her vision became crystal clear with every second that transpired.
Ranma was cradling Kasumi. The mallet was dead on target and Akane's rage fizzled in that moment. The mallet and the roofline blocked her view as the mallet struck her intended in the leg and snapped it inward. But the true horror was when the mallet had moved from her vision, and almost made herself sick seeing her sister limp and lifeless in his arms as they death spiralled beyond the roof and disappeared behind the line of houses forty yards away.
She sank to her knees. Her oldest sister, her confidant, her idol, her surrogate mother. 'She's gone.'
She tried to get angry, but the soft tears streaking down her cheeks wouldn't permit it.
'This is Ranma's fault.' She thought, a familiar soft red hue began to engulf her, but was suddenly snuffed. 'Isn't it?'
I love you.
Akane shook out of her melancholy. 'What was that?'
The voice repeated again in her head, much clearer this time. 'I love you.'
She blinked repeatedly. 'Was that...?'
I love you, you stupid tomboy. I love you!
The images flooded her memory. Saffron, the battle, waking up and returning home, the failed wedding.
'When did he say that?' She thought back trying to piece it together, not able to find the memory but still hearing his voice.
I love you, you stupid tomboy. I love you!
'It's almost like a dream.' She thought wistfully, 'Baka could never man up and say it for real.' Anger flaring up briefly, but doused again by another memory.
"Are you cold?"
"Wh...what?"
"I said, are you cold?" he asked as the boat rocked. They had been on it for a couple of hours and the grey skies and the rough wind and waves were shifting it about like crazy.
She nodded hesistantly as he sat down on the crate next to her. Undoing his shirt, he pulled it off and wrapped it around her shoulders. She pulled it tight around her, taking a moment to sniff the collar and briefly revel in the scent. The smell of the grass and trees, campfire smoke, a hint of the salt from the sea and him. Unmistakably, 100% Ranma.
'Warm,' she thought, as she drew herself tighter into the shirt. She looked over and saw him smile kindly at her, causing her to bashfully smile back.
"Thank you, Ranma."
"You... You're welcome."
The creaking of the wood boards as the ship rocked filled the silence that lingered for several minutes, neither party wanting to break the ice to start back up the conversation.
Akane peered beyond the bow of the ship. No land, just endless waves and ripples criss crossing each other extending towards the grey horizon.
"How long until we get back to Japan?" Akane asked.
"Be probably another several hours, the wind's pushin' against the ship, so the crew 're really having to tack back and forth to navigate through the storm."
Akane looked at him oddly, like he had grown a second head or something.
It took him a moment to notice how she was staring at him. "Oh, I was helping out on the boat when we were going over to China. Got to learn some new techniques, some of these guys practice an odd martial art called Sea Fu. It's kinda like Drunken Boxing, focusing on using the rocking and the waves to both find balance and center as well as using attacks to throw your opponents off balance."
Akane rolled her eyes.
"No, really." Ranma continued, "There was this one guy who had a few crazy moves. He had a move that was on par with the amaguriken called the Octopush, I thought he really had eight arms."
Akane laughed as Ranma rambled on about the odd techniques. 'Leave it to Ranma to find weird martial arts techniques absolutely anywhere.'
He finally finished his story about his encounter with Silver John, and hopped off his perch next to her and stretched before shivering a bit.
"Aren't you cold, Ranma?" Akane asked worriedly. "Did you want to go inside now?"
"Nah," he tried to brush it off, "You needed the extra warmth, I don't want you to catch a cold. I can just go workout to warm myself up. I'm actually going to go and practice a few balance and offensive techniques from that Sea Fu style for a while."
With that he turned and walked toward the stern. He hadn't got more than 6 feet when a splash from the waves careened over the side of the ship and drenched the back end of the ship, Ranma included.
Onna-Ranma screeched in frustration. She was soaked to the bone shivering, clad only in her muscle shirt and black slacks and stomped past a giggling Akane to go below deck to clean up.
Akane's mirth was short lived as another splash crested over the side of the ship, caught her by surprise and doused her as well, to the amusement of a laughing Ranma-chan.
"Grrr... Shut up you BAKA!" She stormed off to get dry.
A small smile crossed her face as she stood up and started walking again. The two of them wound up together for the remainder of the trip, as they both shivered together with towels wrapped around them and their feet sharing a small, steaming bucket of hot water.
He had been so nice to her, there were feelings there, she was sure of it. 'Why couldn't things have continued like that? Away from everyone else, we were great together. Sure, there were insults back and forth between us and sometimes what he did would get on my nerves, but nothing we couldn't work through, right?'
And then, that image appeared.
Ruins. The decorations, the Dojo, the Saotome home. The destruction that rained down from the wedding stretched from one end of Tokyo to the other. Authorities wrote it off under the IPMA/DYASS/AoG bylaw and let the insurance adjusters handle it.
Put in place after so many unexplainable occurrences by district officials, Parliament put together the "Insanely Powerful Martial Artists/Demon, Youma and Sailor Scout/Acts of Gendo" bylaw (Formerly known as the Gigamonster Destruction Act) after countless reports and cases being reported from a couple of particular district officials.
Akane was livid. 'Those Hussies. Harlots. Destroy my wedding!' The bombs and weapons and Kodachi in that black dress fresh in Akane's mind.
She paced back and forth in the yard, her aura growing as she continued.
'And then those selfish jerks at the Saotomes!' Remembering the boys chasing after that stupid cask. Ranma's cure. Everyone lost that day. The last of the water, gulped down by that diminuitive perverted grandmaster.
"Akane?"
She whipped her head around at her intended and glared at him.
"You. You let this happen. You RUINED EVERYTHING!"
"I can explain..."
"Garbage! You ran off on me for some stupid cask!"
"My cask. My LAST chance at being a true man! Stolen from me by your father who tried to blackmail me, all the while trying to protect you from the girls and keep the guys from killing me! Did you see Kuno? He had a sword! A real life, 'cut your head or any other limb you want' SWORD!"
"Yeah, Ranma." She spat with venom. "Blame everyone else. All you had to say was 'I do' and it all would've gone away."
"Gone away?! You mean, 'get married and then run for our lives with everyone and their pets out to kill us' gone? Because that's what it would've been."
"If you had gotten rid of them..."
"Rid o' them? Good luck! Half of them are psychotic, the other half want one of us dead to be with the other... except the Kunos, they are both and want both half of me dead and the other half bound to them."
"I'm your fiancee!"
"So are Shampoo, Ukyo, and gosh knows how many others my father sold me to for food, money and who knows what else. And guess what? Before this happened, Shampoo and Ukyo both had legitimate claims on me that would have dishonored myself and both our clans."
"And what am I then?!" Her temper right at the boiling point.
He looked at her sadly and then turned away. "The girl I WAS going to marry..." She stood flabbergasted as he took two quick hops and disappeared over the wall and into the evening air.
Akane's tears flowed freely as she stepped on the train and it left the station. The only word that kept floating through her mind was 'Why?'
Authors notes:
WOOHOO! Chapter 7 done. 40,000 views all-time. Thank you very much. The response to my return has been overwhelmingly positive and I thank you very much. I appreciate all the reviews and feedback I've gotten.
This chapter has been the hardest to write and has been the focal point as to why this story fell off. Trying to understand and create a background and story from someone like Akane's viewpoints on life and her psyche following the incident is challenging to begin with. This chapter needed to be not only somewhat true to Akane from the series/manga but also work and progress in this story. I did not have both necessities for that, back when I started writing this, and could not find the right balance.
That being said, I really hope you all enjoy this chapter and I appreciate all the reviews that have flooded in. Next up, back to the party or Ranma and Kasumi or stay with Akane? Find out in the next chapter.