Simulacrum

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum 

This copy of the story is from my centralized fanfiction archive
at http://www.thekeep.org/~harnums/fanfic.  I can be reached by
e-mail at harnums@thekeep.org

All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakugan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.

Author's Note:  This will make little sense if you aren't
familiar with the manga up until at least Volume 37.

**********

Simulacrum: n. (pl. -ra).  Image of something; shadowy likeness,
deceptive substitute, mere pretence.  [f. L simulare (similis:
like)]

**********

     "It's okay, Akane.  It's just dreams again."

     His voice is there, on the razor's-edge between waking and
sleeping, that terrifying sensation you only sometimes feel, like
the sensation of falling that snaps you wide awake even though
you're lying down, and like always, it is his voice that brings
me back.

     "It's okay."

     He's a dim shape next to me in the bed, sitting up with one
knee pulled nearly to his chest, the covers draping him from the
waist up.  He has his hand on my shoulder, gently massaging it.

     He reaches down with his other hand and brushes away a track
of tears from one of my face.  "Same one, huh?"

     I pull myself up slightly, and mutely nod.

     "Oh, honey," he says, wrapping his arms around me.  "Ah
geez.  Did you forget to take your pills last night?"

     "Of course not," I snap, trying to replace fear and
uncertainty with the more familiar anger.  "Do you think I'm
stupid or something?"

     "Sorry," he says quickly.  That's how it's been between us
for years now; my temper's gotten little better, but he's relaxed
and mellowed slightly.  Like always, when he apologizes, I look
at those last few seconds and realize that he's only concernd,
only looking for an answer.

     "No, I'm sorry," I say, tightening my grip around his waist
and lightly kissing his collarbone.  "I'm just..."

     "I know," Ranma says, running his fingers through my hair.
"I know, Akane.  Don't worry.  I know."

     Twenty years last August.  Twenty years married, twenty
years with the same dreams and nightmares.  Never any others, and
not often anymore ever since the pills started, but always the
same ones.

     I've told him about the nightmare part of it.  I've never
told him about the dreams that always come before, because the
contrast is so pure that I know not what to think of it.

     I've read that flying is the most common subject for a
dream.  And yet even though books say it should seem utterly
real, somehow even the dreams I have seem too real.  They are the
best dreams I have ever had, the most pleasurable, and unlike the
nightmare, they are always radically varied.  Different
landscapes, different vistas of clouds and sky, a change in
temperature, snow fresh-fallen on the ground.

     The ground speeding by below in a swirl of colours, the wash
of air across my body, the unfamiliar landscape of sharp-peaked
mountains... It is like I am there.  In the dreams it seems as
real as day or night, and each time I awake the memory is as of
life and not of a dream.

     As is the nightmare that always follows.  I am never sure of
the transition between the glorious dreams of flight to the
nightmare.  I've sat down and thought for hours, running over the
two in my head, trying to find that point where dream becomes
nightmare.  I know it comes somewhere, and I do not know where.
But always the dream is followed by the nightmare.

     It has changed over the years, actually.  Not the tremendous
variety of the flying dreams, but it has changed, adapted itself
to the reality.

     At first, when they began, it was only his face horrified
before me, as I stretched out talons to grasp at him.  As the
children came, they were added.  First Ryoichi, going over the
years from an infant in his father's arms, his face awail with
terror, to a toddler clinging to Ranma's legs, eyes wide with
fear.  By the time two years has passed, he is bigger, but he
still clings to my husband's legs in the dream and cries, as I
reach out for him with questing claws, a mocking parody of a
mother's embrace.  And Katzuko is there now too, held in Ranma's
arms like Ryoichi was before, not crying, only staring, tiny face
pale, eyes wide, mouth pursed in an O.

     It's another common theme, Tofu and the other doctors have
said.  The fear of rejection, the fear of bringing injury to
one's family.  The only strangeness is the constant repetition.
Take these pills and the nightmares will go away.

     Over the years they've grown, in the life and in the dream.
Seventeen and fifteen, my children are.  Ryochi is much like his
father at that age, although his edges are smoothed a little, and
he's parlayed that inexplicable charm into a seemingly endless
succession of dates that never seem to go anywhere.  Katzuko
reminds me of a weird mixture between my two sisters, combining
Nabiki's manipulative nature with Kasumi's desire to keep
everyone happy.  And of course, she knows best what makes
everyone happy; she's constantly bothering any girl Ryochi brings
home and trying to find out if she is, as she's put it "the right
one."  What she intends to do when she finds the right one is
anyone's guess.

     "You feel like going back to sleep now?"

     I shake my head.  The memory is too clear, too awful.  "I
can't.  I..."

     "Shh... it's alright," he says gently, kissing my hair.  His
breath whispers against my ear.  "I know.  But it's a big day
tomorrow."

     "I'll try to sleep," I say.

     "Don't feel you have to," he says.  "Look, why don't you go
take a bath?  That'll relax you."

     "Sounds like a good idea," I say.  "Wanna join me?"

     He stiffens slightly.  "Maybe some other time.  I gotta be
rested up for tomorrow."

     I give a mock sigh of regret that covers the real
disappointment.  "I'll hold you to that."

     Sliding my legs out from under the covers, I stand up in the
darkened bedroom, the dim light peering in under the door and the
full moon outside giving a little illumination.  He's still
sitting up in bed, watching me.  I smile and reach up, edging one
strap of the nightgown down my shoulder.  "You sure?"

     He groans and lies back.  "Akane, I wanna sleep."

     I sigh again and grab my robe from where it hangs on the
door.  "Don't know what you're missing."

     He mumbles something in response that I don't hear.  I can't
really blame him, of course.  Tomorrow is a big day for us; old
friends visiting, but more than that.

     Every year on tomorrow's date, Shampoo and Mousse come back.
For twenty years they've done it, without fail, except in that
one terrible year during the Fragmentation.  Tomorrow will be
the twentieth anniversary of Cologne's death, but it is even
more than that as well.

     They have a cure.  A real one, it seems, this time.  They
both say they no longer suffer from the Jusenkyou curses.  They
didn't go into specifics, and it took a long time to convince
Ranma it might work this time.  Twenty years of disappointments
have given him, at last, a cynical attitude towards any possible
cure.  No one knows how the Jusenkyou pools really work;
according to Plum's research, a mixture of curses produces
entirely random results.  Sometimes it cures you, sometimes it
melds the cursed forms together.  In a few instances, the strain
becomes too much and the subject dies.

     Faced with those realities, everyone has kept the curses
they hold.  I know they long to be rid of them, especially Ryoga.
The silence in the room that falls whenever he changes in front
of me is awful to behold; I forgave him long ago, but I don't
think Akari ever did entirely.  And he's never forgiven himself.

     As I walk down the stairs of the house, careful not to make
too much noise and wake the children, I remember how it was
Cologne's death that changed everything.  Her and Happosai's,
although there's no one who mourns his death, not after what he
became and why he became it.

     Ranma burned the scrolls after he found them.  He said there
were some techniques that should be lost to the past.  He told me
many years later he wished his father had done the same with the
scrolls for the Umisen-ken and the Yamasen-ken all those years
ago.  Ryu Kumon took out an entire office building in Yokohama
four years after he first showed up here, before the police
brought him down with snipers.  His mind had snapped completely;
he was demanding the secret scrolls from the hostage negotiators,
and when the police made their raid he ripped the foundations of
the place apart and killed nearly four hundred people, most of
them when the building collapsed.

     There's a news film of him, taken from a helicopter.  He
climbs out of the rubble of the building and screams at the sky.
His eyes are blank as moons, and there's spittle and blood
running down his jaw.  His clothes are little more than shreds
from the collapse of the building; in one corner of the picture
you can see a woman's hand with red-laquered nails poking out
from beneath a chunk of masonry.

     He looks up, and sees the helicopter, and a smile comes onto
his face.  Then he points his arm at the camera and the
perspective goes insane.  He took off the back rotor with one of
his blasts; the last shot before the helicopter hits ground is of
the bullets seeming to strike him from every angle.  The film
survived; the crew didn't.

     Genma couldn't face himself after that, or anyone.  It was
like a revelation for him; all the things he'd done wrong in his
life seemed to catch up with him all at once, brought down on his
head by the fall of a building and the loss of twentyscore lives
to a young man that he set on the path towards madness.

     He left without a word; none of us ever saw him again.  We
don't know if he's alive or dead.

     In the scrolls that we found in Happosai's room after his
death were the secret of his longevity.  Cologne's had been a
combination of good genetics, exercise, meditation, ki techniques
and a sheer, stubborn refusal to die.

     Happosai's had been something far, far worse.  Every year,
the thing he'd made his pact with took a little more from him,
took away a little more humanity, gave back a little more of
itself, a slow slide into damnation.  It took from him what made
him human, and it gave him back immortality.

     And then it took his soul.  The thing inside Happosai's
frame nearly killed us all, before Cologne took it, herself, and
half a block of Nerima out with a ki technique that produced the
equivalent of a contained nuclear explosion.  There was nothing
left beyond a crater a hundred feet deep at the centre.

     I remember watching the fight, the two of them dueling
amidst the devastation of the buildings that the battle with
whatever was using Happosai as its vessel had left.  We'd been
taking the wounded out, leaving Cologne to fight it alone.  Ryoga
had a gash across his head that had rendered him unconscious from
where he'd been hurled headfirst through a window, three inner
walls and another window, and Shampoo had been slowly bleeding to
death from a gaping wound in her stomach.  She still has the scar
from it.

     Ranma was carrying Ryoga, his face covered with ash and
soot from rushing into the flames to drag him out.  Mousse had
Shampoo in his arms, whispering prayers under his breath as he
ran for the ambulances we could see in the distance.

     I was trying to help Kodachi run; her left leg had been
nearly shredded down to the bone by shrapnel from when the thing
that looked out from behind Happosai's eyes had blown the car
she'd been crouching behind to pieces with a wave of its hand.
Tatewaki was cradling his half-severed arm as he ran beside
Ukyou, his face ashen from blood loss.  

     I looked back to see the thing which Happosai had become
smash Cologne facefirst into a concrete wall.  It turned and
hurled her nearly fifty feet; she bounced just once on the
pavement and shattered glass and lay still, a tiny, withered form
in a brown robe stained red from dozens of wounds.

     I can still remember what the thing's laughter sounded like
even now, a triumphant sound, utterly inhuman and mad with the
insanity of a caged predator finally unleashed.  It came forward
in a blur, to render the final blow.

     Cologne staggered to her feet, and I could see that half her
face was nothing beyond burned, bloody ruin.  She leaned upon her
staff, and somehow stood upright.

     Then she raised the staff high in both hands and snapped it.
The sky split above her like a yawning crevice in reality, and
white-hot fire burning beyond the heat of stars exploded down
from the heavens, bathing her and the thing in Happosai's body
with the plasma of its passage, rolling out across the wasteland
of shattered buildings, destroyed cars and mangled bodies that
the thing's rampage had left.

     Everything within that spreading column of destruction
simply ceased to be.  For a moment, a black three-dimensional
shadow of whatever was touched was caught within the solid walls
of white flame like a fly in amber, and then it became dust and
vanished.

     The heat and shock washed over us and threw us to the
ground, and when we looked back they and their battleground were
gone.  She had done it for all of us, I realized in the end.
Because she knew that she would die, and she was willing with her
death to bring an end.  

     The death of someone close has a way of forcing you to
realize things.  Shampoo and Mousse returned to China a few days
later, wishing Ranma and I the best.  I think the only reason
Shampoo managed to get through the next year was because of him;
perhaps that was where the love grew.

     Tatewaki and Ukyou I have no explanation for, beyond perhaps
the fact that it was his insane, stupid, impossibly brave attack
as the thing in Happosai's body loomed over Ukyou that saved her
life and meant that any sword he ever wielded would be with his
left arm; he never regained full use of the right one.  

     Kodachi somehow managed to come to terms with herself after
that terrible day.  She and I talk a lot these days; she
understands what it is like to have a nightmare you cannot
escape.  

     I step into the bathroom and pull off my robe and nightgown,
then start the water running in the tub.  When it is finally
filled, the warm steam rising from the surface, I sit on the
stool and douse myself with the cold water.  Shivers break along
my body, goosepimples rise across the flesh.  But the contrast
between the chill water and the warmth of the tub always make it
more pleasurable.

     Sighing with delight, I slip into the warmth of the water,
feeling transformed by the heat.  I slide fully under the water,
letting it cover my face and body, feeling my hair flow out
behind me.  It's not as long as it was before Ranma came, but it
goes a little past my shoulders.  I like it that way.

     I start as I hear the door slide open, and then hear Ranma's
voice.  "Ya know, I thought about it, and I decided maybe I
didn't wanna miss this after all."

     He stands in the half-open doorway, only a towel around his
waist, and he's still so handsome after twenty years it makes my
breath catch.  He steps in and smiles, then lets the towel drop
and goes to the sink, filling the basin slowly.

     He sits down at the stool and pours it over his head, and
the change goes through him.  I'm almost a little jealous,
sometimes.  She's still as beautiful as he is handsome, still
youthful looking.  Of course, she hasn't had to go through two
pregnancies and twenty years of being married to Ranma Saotome.

     She turns and looks at me, blue eyes sparkling, the same
smile on her face.  "Thought I might get one last look at her
before I finally get cured."

     I can hear the joke in her voice, but the tremulous hope as
well.  He wants to be rid of it.  Oh, how he wants to be rid of
it.  He's learned to live with it over twenty years, but oh, how
he wants to be rid of it.

     "Stop staring at yourself and get in the bath," I murmur.
She stands up from the stool, taking light steps across the
tiled bathroom floor, and delicately places one small foot on the
edge of the tub.

     "You know, I gotta say I still look damn good after all the
years," she says, glancing back at her reflection in the mirror.
"No sagging, no..."

     I reach up and grab her by the shoulders, pulling her down
into the bath with a surprised high-pitched squawk that becomes
a masculine yell as she hits and changes, as blue eyes change to
grey, red hair to black, soft curves to hard muscle, and his lips
and body are upon mine.

     Later, lying in his arms in the cooling water for a moment,
I whisper softly.  "It'll be nice to see them again."

     "Yeah," he says. 

     "I hope it works this time."

     "Me too."

     "It must be hard to be something you're not some of the
time."

     "Yeah."

     "I love you, Ranma.  No matter what body you're in."

     "I love you, Akane."

     He sighs and embraces me.  "We better get some sleep."

     We do.  No more dreams or nightmares come to me in the
night, and I arise next morning feeling refreshed.  Shampoo and
Mousse won't arrive until this afternoon; there is plenty of time
to relax.

     But relaxing isn't my intention this morning.  Everyone else
in the house sleeps late, and it's in the early morning on the
weekend like this that I look at the notebook.  It's the other
part of the nightmares that I've never told anyone about, like
the dreams that always come before them.

     The nightmare is not silent.  My family does not scream in
terror as the expression on their faces says they should be
doing, but there is always a voice speaking in the background.
It says different things every time; I write them down in the
notebook and try to make some sense of them, when I can remember
them at all.  The voice is very vaguely familiar, strangely
accented, partially Chinese and partially something else that I
have never been able to distinguish.

     Sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, I glance
through the notebook at the scattered fragments of the voice.  It
does not always sound the same; sometimes it is coldly
analytical, sometimes it sounds stricken with guilt or grief.

     I page through the notes, carefully trying to put together
the puzzle.  I know the meaning is in here, somewhere.  I just
have not found it in twenty years of looking.

     (Sad):  ...never... you to... how was I to...

     (Cold):  ...owned twins...

     (Sad):  ..orry.  I... I will do what I...

     (Cold):  Spring of the Drowned... distillation to impart
both...

     (Angry):  ...mmit!  How was I to know you couldn't swi...

     (Cold):  ...memory and personality along with the
     phyiscal...

     (Angry):  BREATHE!  GODDAMN YOU, GIRL!  BREATHE...

     (Sad):  ..no.  No, no, no... breathe, damn it...

     (Angry):  ...swim and walk!  Why couldn't you do at least
     two of three!

     (Sad):  ...forgive me...

     (Cold):  ...locks perm... sed for...

     The voice has become more and more indistinct, more
fragmented over the years.  I did not hear it at all last night.
I've always hoped it is a sign that the nightmares are fading.  I
realize I've been looking through the notebook for nearly two
hours now, undrunk tea gone cold on the table beside me.

     I close the book and put it with the others on the shelf in
the living room.  No one would really understand it if they saw
it.  Then I go upstairs to wake my family.

     I wake Ryoichi first.  His room used to be father's.
Opposed as Nabiki, Kasumi and I were to Hinako at first, I have
to admit she's been good for him.  They moved out after they got
married five years ago, saying they didn't want the house to get
too crowded.  Her aging seems to go about half-speed both ways,
and they make an odder and odder couple each passing year, but
he's at least managed to let go of some of the hurt mother's
death brought him.

     Knocking on the door and hearing no response, I slide it
open and step inside.  He's sprawled on the bed in a tangle of
covers, in a pose so reminiscent of his father it brings back a
flood of memories.

     "Ryoichi," I say, bending down at the edge of the bed.
"Wake up."

     That is one thing he does not have in common with his
father; he is a light sleeper.  His eyes snap open, dark grey
like storm clouds beneath black bangs disordered by sleep.

     "Hey mom," he says with a yawn.  "Time to get up, right?"

     "Uh-huh," I say, pecking him on the cheek.  He makes
distressed, disgusted teenage boy sounds and gives me a
half-hearted shove away from him as he yawns again.  I make my
way out of his room and to Katzuko's door.  A moment before I put
my hand on the knob it opens, and my daughter steps out, already
dressed.  "Hey mom."

     She really does remind me of Nabiki more than Kasumi, I have
to admit.  Her hair is cut shorter than mine ever was, but her
skirt and blouse are more daring than anything I would have ever
worn back then.

     "Are you really wearing that?"

     "Yeah.  That a problem?"

     I shake my head, remembering from experience it's best not
to try to impose on a strong-willed teenage girl.  "Nope.  Just
remember that Shampoo and Mousse are here tonight."

     "They're bringing Long, right?"

     I manage, thankfully, to repress a smile.  Hai Long is four
years older than her, an incredibly handsome young man combining
all the best features of his father and mother.  He spent a few
months with us last year as part of his studies, and Katzuko had a
crush on him so obvious it is was almost painful to see.  "They
didn't say."

     "Not that I care or anything," she says quickly.  "I just
wanted to know."

     She darts down the hall past me and takes the stairs two at
a time.  Ranma is sitting up in bed when I go to wake him,
staring out the window at the sky.  "Hey Akane."

     "Well, you're up," I say with a shrug.  "So are the kids.
I'll go start breakfast."

     And with that I leave him staring at the sun.  My cooking's
gotten better over the years, not up to Kasumi's, but then, what
is?

     Katzuko is in the kitchen when I get downstairs, gobbling
cereal from a bowl.  "I was going to make us all breakfast," I
say.

     "I gotta meet my friends," she says.  "Don't have time.
Sorry."

     She finishes the last of her breakfast and takes the bowl to
the sink.  I walk with her to the door, where she pulls on her
shoes and grabs a light jacket from the closet.  "Have a nice
time, dear.  Be back by four; that's when Shampoo and Mousse are
arriving."

     "And Hai Long."

     "Yes, dear.  And maybe Hai Long as well."

     She nods with carefully feigned absence and leaves without
saying anything else.  I make breakfast for my son and husband,
and watch the two of them become mirror images of the other in
how fast they devour it.  Then they are up and gone, to the dojo
for the morning sparring.  Ryochi inherited all his father's
skill, if not quite the same level of obsession.  Katzuko could
not care less about the Art, although she has almost the same
potential.  She thinks fighting is a stupid way to resolve
things anyway; another reflection of Nabiki.  She has yet to
realize that sometimes there is nothing left to do but fight.

     The day passes quickly, and I spend the morning going over
the accounts for the house and dojo.  Classes are cancelled
today, but usually Ranma would be teaching from late morning till
after the sun set.  There's been a resurge of interest in the Art
in recent years, coinciding with the gradual upswing in the
economic state of most of the world.  After the discovery of the
technology for the production vats and the extensive progress
with terraforming changing deserts and swamps into fertile,
habitable land, the fear of the swelling population of the world
running out of food and space has diminished greatly.  There's
even been talk of what terraforming might be able to do with some
of the inner planets and moons, over a period of decades, of
course.

     Nabiki talks about it a lot; she sits on the board of the
company that pioneered the production vats, and has business
dealings with the Kuno family industries, which has in recent
years held most of the patents for the process and technology of
the terraforming efforts.

     By the time four rolls around, the house is cleaned and
ready for our guests with Ranma and Ryoichi's help.  Katzuko
arrived home a half-hour ago, wearing a lot of makeup she wasn't
wearing when she left the house.  Apparently her friends were
helping her prepare for tonight's visit.

     Ranma has grown tenser as the day went by.  Nothing shows
beyond a tightening of his shoulders and a quickening of his
movements, but I can see it in him.  I hope so badly that this
cure works; after so many disappointments, let this one work.

     The doorbell rings; I shoo the rest of the family to their
seats and go to answer it.

     "Hello, Tendo-san," Hai Long says from where he stands.  "It
is a pleasure to see you again.  My mother and father are
coming."

     Mousse and Shampoo are proceeding up the walk, the tap of
Shampoo's cane accompanying their footsteps.  Her leg was wounded
in the fighting during the Fragmentation War, when the Communist
government in China collapsed eight years ago.  But by the end of
the Fragmentation War, the government of the Autonomous State of
Free China had been born from the ashes, beginning in Central
Qinghai and now controlling the country.  It had stood alone
against the armies of five different warlords who'd tried to
gain control, and won.

     Mousse and Shampoo don't like to talk about what happened
during the Fragmentation War, but I've heard scraps and
fragments, and stories from Hai Long, even though he was only
eleven at the time.  Stories of rebel armies storming through the
mountain passes and being met with hails of arrows from nowhere,
fleeing when they found no targets for their guns.  Stories of
tanks shattered by blasts of light.  Stories of impossible
bravery, of a stubborn refusal to surrender despite all the odds
being against them.

     I still have a picture in a scrapbook, clipped from the
newspapers, of Mousse serving as Free China's representative as
he signs the papers that hand control of Tibet back to the Dalai
Lama.  Another of him shaking hands with the Lama.  The holy man
is a combination of aged frailty in his robes and a deep strength
that endured more than half a century in exile.  The smile on his
face is one of pure joy, of a dream finally realized.

     Hai Long is an impossibly handsome young man, even I have to
admit that.  His face is a combination of his mother's and
father's, the strong lines and slender features that made Mousse
attractive mixed with the exotic beauty of his mother's face.  He
is taller than his father is, too.

     "Hello, Akane," Mousse says as he and Shampoo come to the
door.  He has a large bag over his shoulder; as he stops walking
for a moment, it rattles slightly.

     "What's in there?" I ask, pointing to it with a questioning
expression.

     "The end of a certain red-haired vixen," he says with a
small grin.

     Shampoo whacks him on the knee with her cane, although not
hard.  "Stop making stupid jokes, Mousse.  Hello Akane.  I hope
we're not late."

     They aren't.  I usher them into the house and to the living
room.  Katzuko almost springs off the couch to throw her arms
around Hai Long as if he is long-lost brother; I see his face as
he accepts the embrace with the same good nature he did her
constant attentions when he stayed here before.  Behind her back,
Ryoichi and Ranma both roll their eyes almost simultaneously.

     Ranma rises out of his seat, barely concealed eagerness in
his face.  "So, what's this about a cure?"

     "Can't you let them put their feet up for a minute first?" I
say with a sigh.

     Shampoo laughs softly.  "He's waited longer than any of us,
Akane.  I don't blame him for being impatient."

     "It really works?" Ranma asks, sitting back down as the rest
of us do.

     Shampoo nods.  "It really works."

     "How?"

     In response, Mousse opens the silk bag and draws forth a
thin, high bucket with a dipper and a small, battered kettle.

     "The Chisuiton?  The Kaisufu?" Ranma says.  "What the-"

     "It is a cure that works without actually affecting the
curse," Shampoo says.  "It works through a loophole.  The Free
China government recently worked out a treaty with the Musk
Dynasty, negotiated through the Joketsuzoku.  Prince Herb told us
about the cure."

     "How?" Ranma says.  "Ryoga and Mousse, they tried..."

     "It's so simple," Mousse says quietly.  "I'm surprised we
didn't see it before.  The Chisuiton locks whatever is hit in its
current form, but it had to be used with hot water if it's to
cure a Jusenkyou curse.  The hot water must be boiled in the
Kaisufu."

     "All this time," Ranma whispers.  "All this time..."

     "Funny, isn't it?" Mousse says, but his laughter is bitter.

     "How'd you ever get something worked out with Herb?" Ranma
asks.  "He was a majorly arrogant guy, if I remember."

     "He's mellowed a little since he got married," Shampoo says.
"He's not a bad sort, really."

     "Married?" I ask, feeling strange to hear them talk about
these people as if they are familiar, wanting to sound as if I
have something to do with this conversation.

     "Yes," Shampoo says with a slight smile.  "To Kima."

     "Kima?" Ranma says.  "Phoenix Mountain Kima?"

     Mousse nods.  "Although she is Queen Kima now."

     "What happened to Saffron?" Ranma asks.

     An expression of sadness passes across Mousse and Shampoo's
features for a moment.  "Saffron was killed in the Fragmentation
War.  He left no heir, and the position always goes to the leader
of the King's Guards.  That happened to be her at the time.  He
was no longer needed anyway, really, not after what happened to
the water supply."

     "I thought he was immortal?" Ranma says.

     "Not against a tank-gun shell, as it turned out," Shampoo
says softly.  "It was during the Bayan Har Shan Battle."

     The Bayan Har Shan Battle is spoken of as the turning point
in the Fragmentation War, where the armies of the Free China
leaders broke the back of the combined forces of the five
warlords who'd united against them.

     "We thought it was the end," Mousse says, quiet remembrance
in his voice.  "They were upon us from all sides.  The gunfire
was everywhere, like stars, they had so many troops, and tanks,
and planes..."

     "Then they came," Shampoo says, picking up the story.
"There must have been twenty thousand of them.  Saffron was at
the head; he'd brought them out of their mountain to aid the
Free China army.  He was only thirteen."

     Ranma laughs softly.  "I guess they really did raise him
right that time."

     "He'd made his transformation again," Shampoo says.  "It was
the water they needed, and the spring in Phoenix Mountain served
just as well.  He singlehandedly destroyed their air support, and
was starting on the tanks when..."

     She breaks off, and I can see the pain on her face, the
horrors of the war she'll always remember in her mind and in her
leg.  "But enough old stories.  Talking about it always makes me
want something strong to drink, and as soon as we cure Ranma, we
can catch up on the past year."

     Mousse stands up, the Kaisufu's handle in one hand.  "I'll
get the water.  Get ready to be a man again, Saotome."

     Ranma laughs and stands up, rubbing his hand together, such
naked joy on his face that my heart swells with love to see him.

     "Never gonna be a girl again, never gonna be a girl
again..."

     I can hear water running in the kitchen from the tap, and
then Mousse comes back, steam rising from the kettle he carefully
holds in front of him.

     I don't know what it is, some irregularity in the rug,
perhaps a manifestation of blindness long ago cured by laser
surgery.  But he trips, and the kettle flies up and dumps all
over me before I even have a chance to shout.

     The water is very hot, not boiling, but my scream is not
because of that.  It all seems to happen at once.  The impossible
looks of uncomprehending horror upon the faces of family and
friends, the change as the wings sprout from my shoulders and
tear through my blouse, as my body changes and grows taller.

     As my hands become talons, and the nightmare becomes
reality, and more than twenty years of memories belonging to
another person explode through my head.  The caverns of the
mountain, the stone hallways of the palace, the screech and cry
of birds.  The incredible, impossible joy of flight, of the wind
flying through my hair and caressing my body like a lover, the
beginning of the service to a child-king whose dictates must be
obeyed.

     A plan gone horribly, horribly wrong, and a guilt that seems
to tear at the soul.  A name, in Chinese.

     Akanenichuan.

     Spring of Drowned Akane.

     It is like the Chisuiton and the Kaisufu, a thing so obvious
it was not seen.  Jusenkyou is the Pools of Sorrow, and all
stories there are tragic.  Why should mine not be the same?

     A terrible guilt, and an attempt to make things right.  The
Spring of the Drowned Twins, a ceremony handed down from parent
to child since the beginning of Jusenkyou, since the beginning of
Phoenix Mountain...

     To call back the spirit of one drowned in the pools and give
it a body.  To call back memories and emotions and thoughts along
with the physical form.

     Only once, only once can it be done for each pool, and only
for the first being ever cursed within it.  And it is so seldom
done, so long forgotten.  But it was done.

     What is my name?  What is my name...

     Akimakane-

     NO!

     I am Akane.  Akane.  Akane...

     The memories are fading, going away now... vanishing like
dust upon the wind... ashes to ashes, dust to dust... my
nightmare is made flesh...

     I am Akane, and yet I now have knowledge of what I truly am.

     Ranma crouches down in front of me.  "Akane?"

     I look at him, and see the fear on his face is gone, and it
is only confusion, concern.  "Akane?"

     I nod my head, slowly.  The wings upon my back are limp; I
am not sure how to work them.

     "Ranma..."

     I am weeping, because I know it has to end now.  I know what
I am.  I am nothing.

     Nothing...

     He reaches out, uncaring of the talons, unfearing of what I
have become, a love so deep shining in his eyes that it hurts me
to see it, hurts me because I know I do not deserve it.

     He embraces me, and the five standing around us are silent
as stone.

     "Don't worry," he whispers.  "Don't worry.  I don't know
what's going on.  But it'll be alright.  I promise."

     Sobs are heaving from me.  "But I am..."

     "Akane," he says.  "I love you.  No matter what body you're
in.  It'll be alright."

     And I know he does not understand, and that when he does it
may drive him away.

     But I allow myself to think, for just a moment, that perhaps
it really will be alright.  Perhaps we will go soon with Shampoo
and Mousse and Hai Long and our son and daughter, and we will go
to the park that stands now where an expanse of city had been,
that stands where the battleground Cologne died was, and lay the
wreath woven from lilies and willow branches beneath the tree
that grows to mark where she fell, as we have done for the past
twenty years.

     Perhaps it will really be alright after all.

                                   THE END

Author's Notes:

     This fic is the result of way too much thinking about
Jusenkyou.  Throughout the manga we are told of the tragic
stories of every pool, of the poor creature that drowned in it so
many years ago.  It does not, on examination, make sense that you
are simply able to dunk someone in a spring and have it take
their form, as Kima does with Akane in V37.

     Granted, it must make sense because it is Takahashi's work,
it is canon, and Akane apparently did come through okay.  I like
to think she did.  I really hope she did.  

     But what if she didn't?

     This idea came to me when I first started Waters Under
Earth, but it didn't fit within the scope of that series.  Yet it
gnawed at me so much that I had to get it out of my head, and
there was no way beyond writing.  I get a lot of ideas like
that...