Chapter Thirty-One – Before It Drags You Under: Part One

[TW] Deadnaming, Misgendering, Transphobia, Homophobia, Transphobic Assault, Attempted Outing, Discrimination, Genma Saotome's A+ Parenting, Outdated Language and Social Norms, Sexism, Misogyny, Dark Thoughts, Light Self-Harm, and some very upsetting descriptions and depictions of Abuse. This chapter is intense. Remember that this is a period piece from the 1980s. Also, this TW will apply to both Part One and Part Two. Please read with care.

Ranko

Ranko sat on the bed and stared at the boxes of waterproof soap.

They were innocuous. Such a mundane solution to the grand drama that had dominated the last few months of her life. After all of the hardship she'd undergone to reach this point, simply being handed the curative to her aquatic condition was anticlimactic, to say the least.

"Man, what a letdown."

"What's a letdown?"

Nabiki leaned back against the doorframe and raised an eyebrow at the soapboxes. Ranko hadn't even noticed she was there. She was so tired, yet couldn't bring herself to relax. Jumpy. Hypervigilant. It had taken too much effort to not to hide the boxes the second Nabiki walked into the room.

"Don't even get me started," Ranko groaned.

"You mean your little mishap at school?"

"What? You know?!"

"Relax, sis. I ran into Yuka and Sayuri on their way out of the nurse's office, they told me what happened."

In the grand drama of Ranko's life, nothing made her more stressed than incomplete information: people taking it upon themselves to do 'what was best' for her through whispers and secrets behind her back. Ranko walked through the world with her uniform smoothed and her pigtail tied tight. She couldn't afford to grow lax – even a lone moment of relaxation could lead to ninjas tossing boiling water at her friends or her father kicking her headfirst into a cursed spring. Ranko worked so hard to keep herself put together. But they all watched her in the halls, whispering her name, passing her traumas around like sugared sweets. She was a pariah in her own mind, wasn't even allowed to be herself when she was alone, teetering on the edge of a meltdown in her own room, where there would be nobody to judge her but the walls and the wind. Because if she let herself be her true self…

How could Ranko face herself when she inevitably returned to the cruel reality of her life?

Lies became secrets. Secrets became rumors.

Even waterproof soap washed off eventually.

Stupid soap, she thought, and hung her head over her folded legs.

Nabiki drifted to her side. "Ranko?"

"Did they tell ya that we ran into Ryoga and his stupid hot Chinese fiancee?" Ranko demanded. "Did they say that it turns out that Shan Pu's old hag of a great-grandmother is the elder of the nearest village to Jusenkyo? Or that she's got a solution for my little water problem? Did they tell you about the waterproof soap?"

"Waterproof soap?"

A sudden fury overtaking her misery, Ranko ripped one of the soapboxes open and dumped the bar out onto the bed, then chucked the empty box at the wall and flung herself into her pillows, burying her face in the soft fabric. She hid her burning eyes. It was so stupid, and she hated the way the choice was overwhelming her. She didn't get choices. How was she supposed to make such a life-altering decision? Pops was going to hate her.

Genma was going to hurt her.

She felt nauseous.

The mattress indented by her side. "Hey," Nabiki said. "Ranko-chan. It's okay. You're okay. This is a good thing, right? If I understand what you're saying… This soap, it can keep you locked in your girlmode? So you won't change back and forth?"

Ranko nodded into her pillow.

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"It is."

Ranko rolled over to stare at Nabiki, who watched her with naked worry. Nabiki reached over to brush at her hair, trying to tuck a loose strand behind her ear, but Ranko shied away. Her back pressed to the wall. Cold plaster grounded her, keeping her dislodged. Nabiki worked little muscles in her jaw, at obvious war with herself; how much effort it must have taken her, to make such a gesture, to come that far outside of her shell. The Ice Queen of Furinkan, trying to comfort her houseguest with physical touch. Hell, that had been practically Kasumian. Ranko didn't want to hurt Nabiki. She didn't want to spurn her comfort. Nabiki cared about her. She wanted to help her. She wanted to help her, but Ranko didn't want helping, so why- Why?

"Sorry," Ranko whispered.

Nabiki shook her head, drawing her tight fingers into her lap. For a second, Ranko caught a brief glance of the adult she might one day become. Not cold but stern. Controlled. It was a precision of demeanor, a sharpening of posture, terrifying to the debtor but harmless to the en passant.

"Don't apologize to me," Nabiki said without bite.

Easier said than done.

Ranko bit down until her lip was sore.

They stayed like that for a good while, sitting with the uncertainty of the changing state of things. As leaves stretched out to the sun, Ranko drifted away from the wall. Nabiki took her hand, staring out the window to the pale light of winter. It lasted – but only for a moment.

In a quiet tone, Nabiki asked, "What are you going to do?"

Unable to conjure an answer, Ranko let go of her hand, rose from the bed, and slipped her way out of the bedroom.

The Tendo Dojo had become familiar to her. She knew these wooden halls. There was something sacrosanct about the property, like as a refuge or a shrine; perhaps it was only the ritual of her engagement, the promise of an inheritance that would lead to an inevitable marriage. A family. She had fallen in love here. And when her bare feet padded along the wooden slats, and her hand ran along the thin walls, Ranko could imagine herself like a girl grown out of the cedar planks, an edifice of the very building itself, her curves polished down to their glistening sap. She moved like the wind, and fought with the immovable strength of forests, but no number of tatami mats or secret techniques could save Ranko Saotome from the hidden rot in her roots. She was enculturated by womanhood, arrogated by the failures of her higher mind, and now that body had returned to her, she could not escape it, the woman she had become. The woman she had chosen to be. Declared herself unthinkingly in an okonomiyaki shop, only now that declaration had subsumed her, and Ranko had no choice but to accept that she no longer suffered from the curse of womanhood, but had become the curse itself.

Through the turning of the seasons, she had been refracted; like autumn leaves that drifted through the toriis, spinning around her inner spirit, her questioning and unwitting transition had placed her into such a bafflement that it seemed there must have been some other explanation for her plight. But there wasn't, no matter how hard she searched. Ranko was a transsexual. She would still be a transsexual, she feared, even if she hadn't gotten a magical curse which had done the work for her. But now she was a woman, or girl, it didn't matter. She was weak- No, she wasn't weak, she was feminine. Her boy – god, didn't that just make her sound like a girlfriend – was on the other side of the mirror now. It was he now that she looked upon so disdainfully, and shunned him. Locked him away. And he deserved it. She hated him. Ranko hated Ranma; she hated the person that Genma had made him into; Ranma was a bad person, a horrible, awful, cruel disaster of a man, and Ranko was glad that he got to suffer the way he deserved now. She wouldn't be like him. She was good. She loved her family, she loved her friends, she tried in school, she didn't constantly get into fights. Ranko was the only part of her that mattered now.

I'm not Ranma, Ranko thought, even though it made her feel sicker.

He wouldn't go away.

She wanted to cut him out of herself, out of her soul, but Ranko couldn't exculpate herself of the boy that some dark corner of her heart still wished that she could be.

Transsexual girls weren't supposed to have feelings about their male selves. They were supposed to want them to go away.

So Ranko willed those spiteful yearnings – nothing more than another relic of her father's abuse, assuredly – down into a deep corner of her mind, and threw away the key.

No sooner had she walked into the kitchen than Ranko stopped short, frozen at the sight of her father at the kitchen table. Kasumi puttered by the stove, beginning her dinner preparations in her frilly apron; Soun sat in silent contemplation at the shogi board; and in the center of the room, as though he had done anything to belong there, Genma sat pensively in a cross-legged position, deep in thought with a rag tied around his head. The moment Ranko crossed the threshold, his sharp eyes whipped toward her and turned cold. He laid one hand on his thigh and stared at her.

"Boy," Genma said.

"Wow, you really don't get it, do you?" Ranko said, doing her best to cross the room and sit on the other side of the table without meeting her father's eyes.

There was no response.

She'd never noticed the grain on the wooden table. It was a humble piece of furniture, immaculately maintained. Kasumi really knew her stuff. Would they be able to keep the table so clean when she went to university in a scarce few weeks? It was a silly thing, fretting over Kasumi attending college. The house would feel empty without her. But it wasn't right to keep her here, Ranko thought, not when Kasumi deserved better. She deserved so much better than what Soun had given her. How could Soun have let down his family so badly after his wife died? Kasumi should never have had to clean the tables – or even so, it shouldn't have been her responsibility alone.

Staring at Soun, Ranko tried to keep her hostility off her face. Soun had been very generous to let her stay in his home. She knew better than to antagonize him. But the Tendo patriarch was pissing her off. Why couldn't Soun have been a better father to Akane, huh? To Kasumi? To Nabiki? He had three incredible daughters who needed him, and he'd let them all done. Real Father of the Year material, Ranko groused to herself, toying with her fingers. Least he could have done is carried his own slack. What's it supposed to mean, being a man if you ain't even willing to take responsibility for your damn kids?

Kasumi could be free now. She could go off to university and make her own way through the world.

Ranko didn't understand why the thought made her feel like crying.

"Ranma-chan?" Kasumi asked, cutting through her anger. "Are you alright?"

Scoffing at the question – of course she was fine – Ranko wiped at her face, managing a weak smile for Kasumi's sake. She'd be strong. This was Kasumi's big moment.

It wasn't about her and what she wanted.

"I'm fine."

The doubt in the room was palpable. Kasumi stared at her with an uncertain gaze. The creases in Genma's brow deepened. Even Soun seemed wary of her emotions, in danger of bursting into tears himself. Ranko felt more than heard Akane enter the room behind her, fresh out of the shower, though her arrival was heralded by a questioning noise. It was something in her ki, which Ranko tried to pretend she couldn't sense most of the time.

Coming to sit beside Ranko, Akane asked, "Did I miss something?"

Ranko gritted her teeth.

"Ranma."

An instant hush fell across the room, broken only by Nabiki's entry, the last member of the Tendo clan joining their impromptu gathering with an obvious wariness. Genma sat up ramrod straight, an uncharacteristically solemn expression falling across his features. He frowned, readjusted his glasses, then looked Ranko dead in the eye, paralyzing her in place.

"Pops," Ranko managed.

There were a lot of things that she might have expected to hear in that moment: more cruelty, probably, or perhaps judgment passed, condoning her curse or her form, her girlishness or her perverted relationship. She was steeled to hear about her weakness and her failures. What came out of Genma's mouth, though, swept her completely off balance.

"I'm proud of you," Genma said.

A plate clattered from Kasumi's hands to the sink. Akane blinked.

Ranko blinked at her father. "What the hell are you on about?"

"Ne, can't a father praise their son?"

"Um. No?"

"My own son, so cruel to me…"

Son, son, son. Ranko clenched her fists, forcing herself to hold her composure; she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing how he needled her. They had no relationship. She didn't know when it had died – maybe sometime between him putting her into a coma and her discovery that she was a girl. But it still shocked Ranko to realize how little compassion she felt for her own father.

"Stop yammering and spit it out."

Genma sobered. "I've been too hard on you, Ranma," he said. "I knew it on some level when I stopped forcing you to spar in the morning, but I should have been more sensitive to your situation. As your teacher and father, I should have recognized what you needed months ago. And I'm sorry that I failed you in that way."

It was surreal to hear such words coming from his mouth. Ranko opened her mouth, inspired by a brief hope that perhaps he was being genuine. Could it really be? Genma, apologizing to her? Akane looked shocked; across the room, Nabiki had her eyes narrowed in disbelief, her discomfort obvious in the way her shoulders shrunk in around her. In her moment of weakness, Ranko allowed herself to believe him.

"I should have seen that it was the curse."

Her hope died a cold and miserable death.

"At first I had written it off as confusion," said Genma in a simpering tone even as his piggish eyes bored into her, evaluating her femininity, her curves. It was a lecher's gaze, though any pretense of perversion had long since evaporated into the cold calculus of a father auctioning off his only daughter to the highest-bidding man. "How could my poor son be so weak? I though, 'Oh, surely it was only the coma. Surely my only son would not debase himself these ways, acting like a scared little girl in a foreign land.' You seemed so lost. So confused. You weren't trying as hard in our spars."

Genma narrowed his eyes at Ranko, curling his lip in cruel censure. "I should have know that was a foolish hope."

Nobody dared to speak. Ranko couldn't breathe.

"I watched this curse consume you like a poison." Genma's voice filled every orifice of the space around them. "First you fought it. Then you made excuses for it – finding reasons to dress up, to act like a little girl, to change your sex at school. Don't think I was blind to your little secrets and games, son. I saw everything."

"Daddy," Ranko whispered.

"Daddy," Genma mocked, making his voice abrasively pitchy. "It's to protect me from my fiancee, daddy. It'll just be for a little bit, they won't even notice. Oh, daddy, I'll be my own cousin. It'll be fine. You don't even care about the art anymore. I raised a man, not a simpering little twit. It's not even worth hitting you anymore. You'll just flinch away."

Ranko flinched then began to quietly cry.

Genma smiled maliciously at Ranko, a final sort of fire dancing through the gleeful fury in his expression. "But then, I though about it differently," he said. "You aren't yourself, Ranma. You've become so corrupted by this magic that I can't really even call you my child, anymore, can I? It's consumed you. So I am proud of you, Ranma. Whatever's left of you in there. You fought valiantly against an invulnerable opponent. You lost, yes. But that's what Daddy is here for, isn't he? Don't worry, son. I haven't given up on you yet."

In the kitchen, Nabiki wore the most murderous glare that Ranko had ever seen. Fingers twitching, she stalked forward and slammed her hands down on the table, placing herself between Ranko and Genma. "And what," Nabiki snarled, "exactly do you mean by that, Saotome-san?"

Giving her a saccharine look, Genma said in his most condescending tone, "None of your business, girl. This is Saotome family business."

"Nabiki is my family," Ranko said through her tears.

Genma looked murderous. Nabiki smirked.

It had snuck up upon her, the truth of her own words. Everywhere she looked she saw the shape of it. Nabiki had written her new name in her family registry. Genma had given up on her. Kasumi had sat with her in the middle of the night while she was falling apart. Genma didn't love her anymore. Akane still wanted her, even though she wasn't a real girl. Maybe Genma never had. Nodoka was still searching for her son, after all this time. Genma loved his son. Genma didn't have a son. She wasn't Genma's son. She was nobody's daughter.Nodoka wanted her daughter back, her son-daughter, her daughter-son, her half and half and half and half and their faces swam in her imagination, Ukyo and Ryoga and Yuka and Sayuri and every last person who had looked at her and pretended to see Ranko. Ranko hadn't felt the gratitude then, and she couldn't feel it now; the nerves deadened her feelings, deadened her mind, deadened everything she was down to the very core of her, because she was a hollow space, a vacancy in the Tendo dojo. Genma had poured himself into the very heart of her, and when he drew away- When he disengaged, Ranko didn't know who she was anymore.

Why did nobody talk about transsexuality? Ranko didn't have the vocabulary to describe the way she was feeling. It came in the sense of unbodiliness, the big-smallness of her arms and her knees, the arc of her back, the crippling diminutivity she felt in her chest. It crawled between her legs like a demon, like a spirit seeking to possess her. It was all she could do to keep it encased in her skin. She was hyperconscious of her body, of the way he made her feel. His words were sexist, or something, but Ranko hadn't been a woman long enough to have internalized the pejoratives she could taste on the tip of his tongue. Bitter like embalmment, sour in her throat. Her body was a sarcophagus. It encapsulated within her a grotesque masculine enormity, however remembered – wide shoulders, deep voice, a chronic aquatic reflex to reemerge the male state. She didn't remember how to suffocate, but she wanted to. There would be a comfort in the pressure. Salvation in the release. She didn't have a name for the feeling. She didn't have words for the sickness in her chest. All that she knew was that she was sick. And when all her thoughts together could not conspire to name the disease, Ranko could only conclude that there was no illness that bore its name; the sickness was herself.

Meanwhile, all three of the Tendo sisters had begun to loudly argue with Genma.

"If it's such a curse," Nabiki was snapping, "then why aren't you rolling around in the backyard and munching on bamboo?"

"Well, there's a reason I'm the master and he's the student, isn't there?" Genma said, sickly sweet in his dismissiveness once again.

"Oh, bullshit. Ranma's twice the martial artist you are!" Akane shouted.

Kasumi had given up on washing the dishes entirely, and stood before the table with her arms crossed, a rarely seen cold steel in her eyes. "I haven't seen you do much more than gamble and drink lately," she said. "I find it hard to believe that a freeloader like you has much by way of mental acuity, no?"

"Of course he's an idiot," Nabiki scoffed. "He can't even get his damn lies straight. What happened to the 'invulnerable opponent,' Genma? If it's such a poison, then you wouldn't be able to fight back either."

Soun remained silent.

"What would you know about fighting back, girl?" Genma sneered.

"Are you kidding me?!"

"You're unbelievable."

"You're going to pay for that, old man."

"Shut. Up."

Everybody looked at Ranko, who had spoken without even registering the words coming out of her mouth. Ranko stared down at her lap- her crossed legs- her hands balled into fist, the blur of the table before her, the muting of the world around her – she was fading in, fading out, and her body felt like nothing, like numb tubes of flesh, and she had to hold herself back, she had to pull her punches, she had to do something; they were weak, and it was her responsibility to protect them (her father) so she didn't hurt them (her father) or else she would fail (her father) to be the honorable martial artist that (her father) she had always dreamed of, and-!

"Shut up!" Ranko shouted, jerking to her feet and lurching away from the table. "Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!"

Her words brought silence.

Ranko stood with the eyes of her entire family upon her, trembling as the first sputtering spasms of a breakdown shook her slender frame. She breathed in and out like she were in the heat of battle, one foot slid back into a ready stance, nails dug deep into her palms – she couldn't punch like that. She fixed her stance. Forcing out her hyperventilating pants, Ranko looked from face to face, eyes darting back and forth, trying to find a way out. But there wasn't a way out.

Genma's eyes softened into the worst condemnation he could have given her. Pity.

"Boy," her father said like he always did.

But she couldn't take it anymore.

"I HATE YOU!" Ranko screamed, her voice ripping through the shrillest corners of her range.

It was the great mark of her failures, the punishment leveled by her foolish forbidden desires. She had always borne her inadequacy in flesh.

Bruises and scratches then.

Now, femininity.

Ranko took a faltering step backward. Then she turned on her heel, and sprinted out of the room as fast as she could go. It could only have been expected when the screaming began in her wake. But she was gone, she wasn't there anymore. The walls were paper thin.

But Ranma Saotome was gone.

Ranko

She'd drawn herself a cold bath. Freezing really. But it was fine – Ranko had trained long hours in the freezing cold, and she could endure it, endure anything that was thrown at her. She never half-assed endurance training, or else when the moment came when she would really need it, she wouldn't be able to endure. Crutches, respites, they were all distractions. Illusions. She was stronger than that. She could outlast herself – though apparently not the curse.

There was no steam in the furo.

Ranko curled tighter in the frigid water, shivering as she used her inner spirit to keep her blood circling and stave off the frostbite. She would give herself pneumonia. Ice cold, face down in the tub. She would survive that too. She'd swam across the Sea of Japan. No water would ever be as miserable as that first swim from Japan to China, though she couldn't remember her comatose journey back.

She'd brought the soap into the bathroom with her. She didn't know why. It sat there across from her, taunting her, its white box obscuring the medicine inside. She'd played this game with Genma before. Ranko had been eight, and she honestly couldn't remember what she'd done, but it must have been bad because Genma had decided that it was time to play 'Martial Arts Hostage Scenario Survival.' Pops had tied her to the inside of a shed with rope, had placed an entire plate of food (always a scarce commodity) in front of her, rice and fish and vegetables and pork,and told her that if she could make it to sundown, she'd get to eat the whole thing. Ranko hadn't eaten since the morning before.

Being tied to the pole wasn't that bad. She'd gone through worse

What had really stung was being forced to watch as the rats found her torturous feast, and proceeded to eat the entire plate in front of her before she ever got a chance to respond.

Genma hadn't taken very fondly to her 'failure.'

Why am I thinking about this? Ranko wondered miserably. She slid down until the water came up to her chin, only to be startled by a knock at the furo door.

"Ranko?" Kasumi said. "Are you okay in there, dear?"

"I'm fine," Ranko snapped, her high voice echoing off the walls.

She really was a changeling, wasn't she?

Kasumi didn't sound fine. Kasumi sounded upset. Distraught, even. Ranko hated that sound. She'd put it there. God, why couldn't she even do anything right, why couldn't she, why couldn't she-

"We kicked him out of the house." Kasumi's voice was muffled, but she respected her privacy, and the part of Ranko that was lucid enough to care was grateful for it. "Splashed him then called Animal Control about a panda in the area, and Akane chased after him when he tried to run away with a bucket. You shouldn't have to deal with him again for the rest of the night."

Ranko didn't know what to say, so she didn't say anything.

A ragged sigh drifted through the door.

"Ranko?" Kasumi echoed with a plea creeping into her voice

"I said I'm fine."

"Are you-"

"Leave me alone, Kasumi," Ranko snapped.

The water ripped around her knees.

"…If that's what you need right now, Ranko-chan."

Her footsteps echoed away down the hallway, and Ranko immediately loathed herself for pushing away help. It started as a kernel, a little seed of guilt, then slowly ballooned until it was the only thing she could thing about. Kasumi, who was good and pure and never had done a wrong thing in the world, deserved better than her. They all deserved better.

Ranko could give them better.

She reached for the soap.

It was ivory in her hands, a balm on her skin – bewilderingly so, the way that the solution adhered in place and made the water slough off her skin, at first only where she touched, but slowly spreading beyond it. Ranko was still in the water, but that distinct feeling of wetness simply vanished, leaving the odd sensation of fluid motion without absorption in its place. But it wasn't enough to let the magic spread on its own.

She scrubbed her legs. She scrubbed her feet – the bottoms, too, and between her toes. She scrubbed her arms. She lathered her hands. She scrubbed her shoulders, her neck, her face. Ran it over her ears and her hair. She scrubbed her belly, then her waist, then her back, then her butt, until there was nowhere left to scrub but the places which left a lump in her throat. She didn't know how to touch herself – with Genma always around, she had never had a moment to, well, explore, and she and Akane hadn't gotten that far yet. It was a taboo space. But she couldn't stop, so she scrubbed her hips. She scrubbed between her legs, though she didn't dare to linger. And finally, with a nervous swallow, Ranko scrubbed her boobs, letting her fingers linger over the curves, shivering at the unfamiliar – or unprocessed – sensations. It felt familiar, now. She was clean. Why couldn't she believe it?

She let the tub drain, enough to leave her shivering and exposed. Then she turned the hot water on.

Water poured from the spigot. It was cold first, and Ranko gasped – the water had gotten more lukewarm while she'd been lying there, and she'd forgotten how it had bitten in the beginning. Then cool. Then warm. Then hot. Then scalded. And she kept waiting for it, bracing for the twisting, the rearranging of her inner bits, but it didn't come, it didn't come. Shan Pu and Ku Lon had told her the truth.

Ranko sat in a scorching hot bath of water.

She was still a girl.

The bath was burning her. She turned off the spigot. But Ranko couldn't bring herself to get out, so she sat there, her skin and her body screaming in protest, and waited for the water to cool down again.

It worked, Ranko thought desolately. It worked. I did it.

With the furo's steam lifting around her and a thousand broken expectations weighing down upon her shoulder, the knowledge that the one goal she had worked toward for her entire life – becoming a Man among Men – rendered utterly impossible, Ranko hid her head between her knees and let herself fall to pieces.

[A/N] At long last, we've come to the last two chapters of Act Three of Gender Sleepy. There's not much I want to say about this one until Part Two is out. Thank you guys for being as patient and understanding as always about my sporadic upload schedule. I'll do my best to get Part Two out in the next month or two so y'all won't be left on a cliffhanger for too long.

I'll also say that it makes me happy that GS has started doing well on AO3 too – you've made switching main platforms a total breeze, and that warms my silly little author heart. If you're still reading Gender Sleepy on FFN, I would strongly encourage you to come find me on AO3! I've got a bunch of fics up there now that aren't on FFN, including no less than three AO3-exclusive transbian fics as well as a fun (and very explicit) lesbian Genshin Impact AU. AO3 is really flourishing right now, and trust me, it's a lot more queer positive than FFN. If you're reading this on AO3, good job lol. Have an author kudo.

Thank you so much as always to Lukkai, Beedok, NobleHeroine, Shiagur, Trixilee, FullOfNuns, Xadlly, Caimano, The_Deviator, Nickelwit, WhatOtherPlanet, Pumpkin, and ScrapTonic for commenting! Y'all know how much your feedback means to me.

Part Two will be the big one. I had to split it up cause I didn't want it to be a 10k chapter – I hope you're ready for the second half of this roller coaster.

Don't forget to tell me what you think.

Love, Allie