FATE
A Ranma1/2 fanfic by PansutoTarou5925
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Disclaimer to follow at end of chapter
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Ranma wandered the train, in a daze. If she hadn't made Hild make that promise, would the Amazons have ever been able to lock her? Even if she was only as strong as Saffron... but Hild didn't think much of Saffron...
"Son-in-Law, I don't think I need to tell you that you're in a world of trouble now, do I?" Cologne had said, looking down with an expression of... anger? sadness? Ranma couldn't quite read the expression on the aged Amazon.
"I don't care about your stupid laws," Ranma said irritatedly. Really, this sort of stupidity was par for the course with the Amazons. They weren't bad people - by Ranma's rather generous standards - but their stupid laws threw monkey wrenches into everything.
"Our laws are our life," Cologne insisted. "We can't simply pick and choose which ones to follow. You've had a child with some outsider woman, Son-in-Law-"
"That happened before Shampoo decided she was married to me," Ranma snapped, "even if I cared about your dumb laws in the first place. Which I don't."
Cologne stared down Ranma for a few minutes before speaking again. The other people in the store they were both in at the moment took an opportunity to clear the hell out of the building. Finally Cologne looked away. "I may like you, Ranma, and I might even have taught you were you not married to Shampoo, but you have had a baby with this outsider woman. If you go with her," Cologne turned back, her eyes narrowed, "it would be an insult to the entire Amazon nation."
Ranma flipped her the bird. He knew where his responsibilities lay.
"So that's your answer?" Cologne asked.
Ranma nodded and dropped the baby stuff he had been sent to get, taking a stance. "You want to fight, then fight."
Cologne smiled. "Impertinent and fearless," she said, chuckling. Then her face hardened. "You might have defeated Saffron, but that doesn't mean you can defeat me. Especially as you don't have the Gekkaja here."
"I don't need that to beat you, old woman," Ranma said, his eyes hard. He shifted backwards and took up a defensive stance.
Cologne shook her head. "Then so be it. Ranma, you are an enemy of the Amazon tribe until such time as you return to your lawful wife."
"Make me, old hag." And with that, Cologne flashed forward, almost faster than Ranma could see. He bent backwards and twisted around, barely clearing the tip of her cane. With his free hand, Ranma smashed one of the racks of shelving in the store, spilling buckets and wastebaskets all over the floor.
The elder stood her ground. Ranma had managed to disappear under one of the scattered containers, a trick he'd undoubtedly picked up from Happousai at some point. No matter. With a mighty kiai, Cologne pushed them all away with her aura into other racks and shelves, hoping to smoke Ranma out.
Nothing.
Cologne cursed under her breath as she noticed Ranma had taken the baby stuff he'd dropped and left. She quickly exited herself, not wanting to be caught at the scene of the disaster.
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"Good, she's leaving," Ranma said softly to himself. He'd managed to go up and hide above the acoustic tiles in the ceiling without Cologne noticing.
"So, Ranma, what did you do to get Cologne-chan after you?" Happousai said conversationally, scaring Ranma half out of his mind. He did, however, manage to stifle any sound.
"I kinda had a kid and it wasn't with Shampoo," Ranma answered quietly. "What the hell are you up here for?"
Happousai looked insulted that Ranma couldn't figure it out, and opened his mouth just before realization hit. "Wait, you have a kid?" Happousai got a lecherous look to his face. "So who was it? Akane-chan? Ukyo?" He rubbed his hands together. "I bet it was Kodachi. She's always seemed the kinky type."
Ranma turned beet red. "None of the above, old geezer."
"Oh, managed to see a girl on the side? Ranma, m'boy, I'm so proud of you!"
"Nothin' like that! It was a girl I knew before all the engagement stuff!"
Happousai's eyes widened. "So this baby is already born? That's good to know. Of course, now you have two targets to protect..."
Ranma blanched. "They wouldn't possibly..."
"Oh yes they would!" Happousai said. "'Obstacles are for killing', I think is what they call it."
"Hell will freeze over before they hurt a hair on my kid's head."
"You're going to need training." Happousai looked at Ranma keenly. "You will train your child in Anything-Goes?"
"Of course," Ranma answered.
"Then I'll train you," Happousai said. "You have seen to it that the school survives another generation - if YOU survive. Besides, I need another person to stay on the kill-on-sight list the Amazons have. Keeps some of the heat off." Happousai chuckled.
"No panty stealing?" Ranma said suspiciously.
"No. None." Happousai said seriously. Then he frowned. "Well... maybe some panty theft. In the interests of training."
Ranma rolled his eyes.
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Ukyo walked through the train, a worried expression on her face. The look on Ranma's face was truly terrifying, as if some revelation had shattered her whole world. She wasn't going to leave her friend to wander around the train in a total daze. Ranma might do something stupid, after all, or make a scene.
More of a scene that a one-eyed redhead on a Japanese train would make, at any rate.
She hustled back in the direction she'd seen Ranma go when a hand reached out and grabbed her coat. She slapped it away and looked down in irritation, then paused in startlement.
The young girl in the chair pulled her headphones off. She had pale platinum blonde hair much like Hild and Chiyeko, along with the same tanned skin. "Hello, Ukyo,' she said smugly.
Ukyo backed up. "And who are you?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.
"You don't recognize me?" the young girl said, even more smugly.
"You look a lot like Hild or Chiyeko-chan..."
Smirk. "I do look a lot like Hild, don't I?"
Ukyo decided that, as interesting and enigmatic as this was, her first priority had to be Ranma. "I don't have time to play twenty questions," she snapped, "so either cut the suspense and tell me or shut up. I've a very upset friend-"
"-who is currently hiding in the lavatory," the girl finished. Ukyo gave her a blank look. "I was just keeping an eye on Ranma."
"You're Hild, aren't you?" Ukyo asked.
"Smart girl," Chibi-Hild said, smiling.
"Is this some sort of weird technique like Hinako's? And arent't you supposed to be with Chiyeko?" Ukyo looked around for her friend's daughter. She'd be a much better help at getting Ranma out of her mood.
"I'm in two places at once," Chibi-Hild said.
Ukyo quirked an eyebrow. "Nice trick."
Hild smiled. "I certainly think so. Now, do you want to wait until Ranma comes out of the bathroom, or break down the door?"
That question required a bit of thought, before a better solution occurred to the okonomiyaki chef. "Actually, Konatsu could jimmy the door open, if I knew where he was. Uh, for that matter, Genma could probably open it, too... blasted thief. But he's decided to run away and hide, like usual, so no luck there." She cursed the fat panda in her head - the one time his thieving, dishonorable tricks would be of use, so naturally, he wasn't around.
"Let's go find him, then."
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Chiyeko coughed a few times, getting the scent of ozone out of her lungs. Nifelheim looked much the same as her brief glimpse of it eariler: dim, cold, and suffused with a red glow off in the distance. She'd asked her mother why it was cold, because she always heard that demons lived in firey pits and such, but apparently it varied by region. Helheim was cold and fairly boring, if you ignored the venomous snakes.
In answer to her previous joking question, however, it turned out that she did have a private hell, and she was literally in it. At the moment, she was trying to make a futon.
"Just picture the futon in your mind, and sing it into existence like the last one," Hild said encouragingly. They'd been singing together for a while, and several futons (progressively getting less futon-like as you went down the stack) were piled up against the door.
"Easy for you to say," Chiyeko grumbled.
"What was that? What would your father say if you had such a poor attitude?" Hild said, trying to mimic Ranma's bellyaching motivational style.
"You know, that really doesn't work for you," Chiyeko said. "Dad can sound far more pathetic. Probably because he's not the Queen of the Demons and all."
"Shut up and sing," Hild growled.
Chiyeko gave it her best shot, missed several notes, and ended up with a lumpy pad with fuzz growing out of it like an enormous moldy slice of half-eaten bread. "Yech," she said, not wanting to touch it. She finally decided to kick it away.
"Not bad for your first try," Hild allowed. "Now try again."
"You know, when I told Dad school was like hell, I didn't think it was literally true."
"Less talk, more singing!"
She sighed and tried again, feeling the flow of magic within her.
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The worst moment of her life kept flashing before her mind's eye.
"What the hell did you do to me, old ghoul?" Ranma shouted angrily.
"Nothing major," Cologne said. Ranma's bedroom was suffused with thick, choking incense, now glowing lightly after Cologne had activated it with a short incantation. She grinned evilly. "Feeling different?"
Ranma paused. Hild and Chiyeko had bailed out of the room, thank the kami. If this was poisonous... but it didn't feel poisonous.
Then Ranma noticed her chest was slightly... more there. "What have you done?" he said, with a sinking feeling.
"Nothing that hasn't happened to you before," Cologne said, still smiling. "Just locking your curse again."
"...I'll kill you," Ranma said.
"You'll try," Cologne taunted, "but you're still 99 years too young to defeat me."
"Bet you're wrong," Ranma said, advancing as his - her? - features steadily feminized. "Just ask Saffron." He lunged forward, flashing faster than he'd ever moved before, and nearly clipping Cologne with a punch.
"Temper, temper," Cologne said, darting backwards out through the window.
Ranma followed, not caring that the elderly Amazon was doing it to get more maneuvering room. He gladly followed her into the spiral and let her launch him.
"Fool," she said simply, and turned to head after the other two insults to Amazon honor when the tornado suddenly died out.
"Hiryuu Korin Dan!" Ranma yelled, sending the collected energy back down towards Cologne, who barely made it out of the way and was flung aside by the blast. After a quick check, Ranma ascertained that the change had indeed progressed almost all the way, and she burned with anger. "Don't think I don't know the counters to your moves," Ranma said angrily.
"I haven't showed you all my tricks," Cologne said, gathering herself.
"Neither have I," Ranma said, and vanished. Cologne instantly went on guard, but failed to block the first finger strike to her back, although she managed to deflect the rest by striking Ranma with her staff.
"Ingenious," Cologne said. "I've never seen such a technique." Her statement was met with silence. She wondered if he had taken the opportunity to leave the fight again, and was making her look like a fool. There was only one way to find out. She swept her staff over the ground explosively, lifting a veil of dust and grass. Knowing Ranma would seek the high ground to keep her in sight, she hurled a powerful ki blast into a tree that was the most likely place.
Ranma leapt out of the tree, flipping gracefully as he descended, and dropped his invisibility in order to close with her.
Cologne and Ranma clashed violently, dancing around each other in a terrifying battle between near-equals. They tore up the yard and beat each other senseless.
He was too focused, Cologne realized, for her to easily win, even if she killed him. Ranma was hellbent on killing her, and probably would even if it killed him. She accepted that as neccessary - dying at the hands of Saffron's killer would make her go down into Amazon legend.
She almost didn't notice the paper firecrackers surrounding her until it was too late. She scrambled out of the way, taking a heavy hit from Ranma as she did.
For her part Ranma was knocked out in the blast. Happousai had chased away Cologne...
"I hate her," Ranma said, curled up in the train lavatory. "I hate her..."
...a cold body curled up in the moonlight, dead, with her heart torn out, Ranma standing over her like a vulture in the moonlight, a red left eye glowing like the embers of hell...
"...I killed her, I killed her..."
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Chibi-Hild placed a finger over her lips, and then pointed to a compartment door.
Ukyo pointed to it and mouthed, 'Konatsu is here?' How the hell did Hild know? Konatsu was a skilled ninja.
Hild crouched down and pressed her head against the door, ignoring the looks she got from other passengers. She smiled and giggled, knowing Ukyo would get curious and listen in as well. Sure enough, the chef crouched down and put her head against the door. You couldn't really hear well through the doors, but you could identify who was in the compartment, namely, Konatsu and-
"Atasuke?" Ukyo said in surprise, jumping back from the door. She then opened it quickly, catching the two secret perverts in the act of hurriedly hiding their hentai manga. "You perverts!" she said automatically, and smashed the duo across the head with her spatula.
"Ukyo-sama!" Konatsu pleaded. "It's... it's exactly what it looks like," he finished lamely, and bowed deeply. "I'm so sorry!"
Ukyo rubbed her eyes. "Don't worry, Konatsu, I already knew about your little... hobby."
"Really, Ukyo-sama? Would you mind if I used Instant Nyannichuan?" Konatsu asked hopefully.
Ukyo turned green. "I don't want to know!" she said, and smashed him with the spatula. "Geez..."
"It's an honest question," Atasuke said, pushing his glasses up his nose in a thoughtful gesture. "After all, you used to date a man who turned into a girl."
"That isn't... Ranma didn't want that curse!" Ukyo snapped.
"But-" Atasuke said, stopping when he noticed Chibi-Hild. "Who are you?"
"I'm your worst nightmare," Hild said, poking Atasuke in the head.
"You look like a shrimpy version of Hild," Atasuke opined. "Is Urd your mother?"
As much as she wanted to keep being mysterious and annoying, she recognized a perfect setup when she saw one. "Yes, Urd's my mother," Hild said. "and I'm going to tell my Auntie Chiyeko what a pervert you are." Atasuke sweatdropped.
"Konatsu, would you like to get back in my good graces?"
"Anything, Ukyo-sama," the crossdressing ninja said, clutching at Ukyo's leg.
"First, let go of my leg," she said, "and second, help me break into the women's restroom."
"Lead the way," Konatsu said.
Atasuke looked at the girl left behind. "Are you sure there I can't convince you to tell Chiyeko?"
Hild innocently looked him in the eye. "I want a pony," she said.
'What the hell?' Atasuke thought. "Um, that's kind of expensive," he said.
"I want YOU to be my pony," Hild said.
"Uh..."
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Back in Nifelheim, Hild was chuckling evilly to herself.
"What's so funny, Mom?" Chiyeko asked, looking at the older demoness suspiciously.
"Oh, perhaps you'll find out someday," Hild said nonchalantly, twirling some hair around her finger. "Nothing serious."
"Where are we going, anyways?"
"We're heading down to the central offices for Nidhogg, the main computer system of Nifelheim," Hild said. "Much like Yggdrasil is used by the gods and goddesses to help them run the world, Nidhogg helps us in our duties, keeps things organized, provides you with power while you're on Midgard - think Earth - that sort of thing."
"So, uh," Chiyeko said, being far more ignorant of computers than others her age, thanks to her constant wanderings with her father, "I have to log into this computer or something?"
"Oh, no," Hild said. "I logged you in shortly after you were born. I just want to show you my office, and teach you a few things most normal users don't know about the system." She looked at Chiyeko with a frown. "You must promise never to tell Sifu or the goddesses anything about what I'm going to teach you."
"Even Urd?" Chiyeko said, thinking of her half-sister.
"Even Urd. Especially Urd, actually," Hild said. Urd, being half-demon, could actually use some of the things she was about to show her daughter.
The doors opened to Hild's private office, and they stepped through. "So the elevator stops right at your office?" Chiyeko asked.
"The elevators will stop anywhere, if you're allowed to go there," Hild said. "You shouldn't limit your mind to mortal concepts."
Chiyeko looked around the Daimakochou's office with interest. It was unusually understated for belonging to one of the most powerful beings in the universe, with polished black surfaces accented by the occasional touch of brass. She sank into one of the chairs, finding the silky cushions immeasureably comfortable.
"More relaxing than it looks, right?" Hild asked.
"Yeah," Chiyeko said. "Can I have a chair like this?"
"Maybe," Hild said distractedly. "That isn't what I wanted to show you, though." Hild waved at the back wall as she sank into the chair next to her daughter. The wall behind her desk seemed to come apart into many panels flying through space, revealing an enormous void behind the wall seeming to extend off into infinity. Long threads of rainbow hues ran through the void, glowing brightly or fitfully in their turn. "This is a representation of the structure of human destinies," Hild said.
"Whoa," Chiyeko said, words failing her.
"It's impressive, isn't it? Even other demons here don't get to see this, usually." The threads zoomed by, as they seemed to be flying through the void. They came to a particularly dense cluster of threads, intricately knotted, with many bright threads. Some of them were almost blindingly intense, with a single red thread of deepest crimson being brightest of all, followed by a line shading from blue to red along its path. The two seemed horribly tangled, although that went for most of the lines in the vicinity.
"Those lines," Chiyeko said, seeing what was obvious. "Those are you and Dad, right?"
"Yes," Hild said simply. She pointed to a spot where a dark red line broke off from the two and looped around, tying the cluster of lines into even worse snarls than before, then closely orbited Ranma's line. "That was when you were born. If I had never brought you to your father,." Hild gestured and the lines shifted, with Chiyeko's line looping tightly around Hild's, and Ranma's line changed to a pure blue all the way, as the threads took up a much more orderly path.
"Why did you bring me to Dad, then, if it would make everyone's life hell?" Chiyeko asked, secretly fearing that Hild would laugh evilly or something.
Nothing of the sort happened.
After a few awkward moments of silence, she turned to see Hild looking at the ground seriously. She caught her daughter's eye and gestured at the threads again, restoring them to their tangled state. "Chiyeko, your father would agree that it is better to know your child, and live a life of hell, than to not know your child, and have all the power in the universe."
They sat there in the darkness for a while, silently thinking. "Urd," Chiyeko said, breaking the silence.
Hild nodded and looked sad. "I miss Urd. Any mother would." She looked at Chiyeko's line again and traced it with her eyes. "After Urd was taken from me, I wished that I could be a mother and not make the same mistakes. And here I am, having let your father raise you... it's like I didn't learn anything at all."
"Mom?"
"Yes?" Hild said, still so distracted by the threads of fate that she didn't notice Chiyeko get out of her chair until she'd been tackled.
"Don't say stuff like that!" Chiyeko yelled, hugging her mother. "It's not true!"
Hild smiled and laughed, and Chiyeko joined in.
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Chibi-Hild and Atasuki found Ranma being helped back to her compartment by Ukyo and Konatsu. It was obvious that Ranma was totally out of it and lost in her own world of recrimination and memories. "Hey, loverboy," Hild said, "snap out of it!"
Ranma's eye seemed to blearily come into focus on Hild's face. "Hild? What are you doing here?"
"Hild?" Atasuke said. "Hild! Hey!" he said, angrily shaking his fist.
"Now, quiet, you. I'll tell Chiyeko." Atasuke instantly shut up.
"Huh?" Ranma said, still not totally there. "Hey, how come you're a shrimp? And aren't you supposed to be with Chiyeko?"
"I can be in two places at once," Hild explained.
"Oh, cool," Ranma said, suddenly standing on his own. "Hey, could both of you be adults?"
"Why, Ranma," Hild said smoothly. "That's a very perverted suggestion. Two of me-"
"That's not what I meant!" Ranma said, all flustered. "I meant I wanted to know if I could learn to do it!"
"Two of you?" Hild said thoughtfully. "That's even more perverted."
"As a martial arts technique! Not like that!" Ranma said, even more flustered, her previous concerns completely forgotten. Ukyo and Konatsu shared a knowing look and led them back to their compartment.
And Atasuke? He was passed out with a horrible nosebleed.
But you probably guessed that.
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DISCLAIMER: Ranma ½ is the property of Rumiko Takahashi, Shonen Sunday, Viz, and other parties; I make no claims of ownership of any of the intellectual or other properties pertaining to it. Oh! My Goddess belongs to Kosuke Fujishima, Studio Proteus, Dark Horse, and other parties, and I make no claims of ownership of any of the intellectual or other properties pertaining to it, either.
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Author's Note: It's not dead yet! I'll finish this soon, I hope...