The Dying of the Light

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum 

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

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

Part 10 : Within the Darkness and Amidst the Stone

**********

     It had been only a few minutes.

     A few minutes since Hikaru Gosunkugi had watched the ground swallow up
friends and acquaintances.

     A few minutes since he'd watched the earth take Kodachi Kuno, the girl
he'd only just realized he was in love with.

     It had been only a few minutes, but it felt like hours.

     "Anything?" he said to Sasuke, who was frantically scanning the
channels with the communications gear they'd hastily erected in the back of
the large van belonging to Shigeki Kiyokuro.

     The small ninja bowed his head.  "Nothing.  There is no respone from
either the tracking devices or the radios."

     "Shit!" Hikaru said, uttering a rare curse.  He banged his fist
against a wall of the van, and yelped in pain.

     "Punching walls will do nothing," Sasuke said.

     "Should've expected this, of course," Hikaru said.  "Anything that can
put out the sun is gonna be capable of jamming a little radio or satellite
communication."

     "We must hope they are alive," Sasuke said.  "That is all we can do."

     Hikaru rested his forehead against the cool, dark wall of the van,
forcing back tears.  "Damn..."

     He thought of them all, as he struggled not to give into the despair
that had gripped him.

     Ranma and Akane, and their fathers.  Ukyou, who'd become a friend in
the past few days.  That ninja who worked at her restaurant, Konatsu.
Shampoo and Mousse, from the Nekohanten.  Shampoo's great-grandmother had
died a few nights ago, when the apparently separate attacks of three
different and powerful beings had plunged their lives into chaos for a few
hours.  Those three, the possesed body of the sorcerer Richard Stalford,
the snake-woman Hibino Kyofu, and the son of Cologne, Tensai, now appeared
to have all been manipulated by a thing of immense power, an ancient being
known as the Herald or the Messenger.  It was this being, according to the
kitsune called Kitzuiri, that had most likely been responsible for the
events that had culminated a few hours ago, when the entire world had
watched in stark horror as darkness had bound itself across the sun and put
an end to the light.

     There were others down there, as well.  The old man, Happosai.
Hinako-sensei, one of his teachers from Furinkan.  Shigeki Kiyokuro, the
enigmatic man about who none of them knew very much.  Kodachi's brother,
Tatewaki Kuno.  The fox-spirit, Kitzuiri, who'd told them of the great war
of the spirits millenia ago, when they bound the abominations from outside,
the awful alien beings who were to planets what infections were to a human
body.

     They were all down there, each and every one of them.  Down under the
earth, amongst the darkness.  They were all strong, all skilled, all of
them with their own abilities.  But the foe they faced now was old as the
beginnings of time.

     "Yeah," he said finally to Sasuke.  "They're alive.  I don't know why,
but that thing wants them alive.  If it wanted us dead, it would have
killed us all by now."

     "Could it have?" Sasuke said quietly.  "Is it that strong?"

     "To a thing that could put out the sun," Hikaru said.  "Do you think
the lives of a few humans are any trouble?"

**********

     "Owwww..."

     It took Ranma a while to realize he was conscious, because there was
absolutely no change.  Darkness more pure than anything he had ever seen
was still in front of his eyes, even as he opened them.

     He could feel smooth, cold ground underneath him, probably stone.  He
put a hand down and confirmed it.  Where was he?

     The last thing he remembered was the hill shaking, seeing a pit open
beneath Akane.  He'd dived for her, caught her hand, but then the ground
had opened wider and swallowed them both.  He'd tried to get his body
underneath her and cushion whatever fall they might have, but he'd hit his
head against something on the way down and lost consciousness.

     "Akane?" he called softly in the darkness.  He tried to listen for the
sound of breathing or movement, but there was nothing but his own.

     It only took him about a minute of calling Akane's name frantically in
the dark before he remembered he had a flashlight.  Or he'd had one; had he
lost it in the fall?

     He searched through his clothing, and was relieved to find the small,
slim shape was still in his pocket.  He pulled it out, wincing a bit as he
heard it rattle in a way it probably shouldn't have.

     But when he slid the switch up, the light clicked on and shone a
narrow white beam into the darkness.  Now he could make out the details of
where he was.

     The floor, as he'd thought, was stone, smooth and completely black,
with a slightly oily sheen to it as if it had just been polished.  The air
down here was a little stale, and he'd guess he was probably underground.

     Wherever he was, it was big.  The beam could reach the ceiling, about
twenty feet above, but he couldn't see any hole he might have entered from.

     "Akane?" he called, playing the beam around the chamber.  It just
barely reached to the walls, showing a darkened corridor leading off in
each of the four walls.

     On his second sweep through the chamber, his beam passed quickly over
a crumpled form a dozen feet ahead.

     Sick with worry, he ran to the figure, but was slightly relieved as he
got closer when he saw it was too small to be Akane.  The bright orange
hair gave it away as the fox-spirit, Kitzuiri.  He felt a momentary flare
of renewed anger at the mild manipulation of his mind and memory the
kitsune had engaged in, but pushed it down when he remembered the current
circumstances.  They all needed to stick together.

     "Kitzuiri?" he said, kneeling down beside the still figure of the
small boy.  There was no answer, and as he came closer he could see the
large pool of blood by the head.

     "Ah geez," he said, hesitantly feeling the neck and finding no pulse.
"Ah, I thought you spirits were tougher than... Oh man..."

     "BOO!" the boy said abruptly, flopping himself over to look at Ranma.
The puddle of blood vanished.

     "GAHH!" Ranma said, jumping back and keeping the light trained on the
now laughing child.  "What the hell are you playin' jokes for at a time
like this?"

     "You... you should have seen the look on your face..." the spirit
giggled.  "Oh, that was rich..."

     Ranma resisted the urge to throttle the boy.  "This is no time for
playing around.  Where the heck are we?"

     "Beats me," Kitzuiri said.  "Sure is dark, though.  Let's see if we
can't do something about that."

     He raised his hand and began to sing wordlessly in a smooth, high
voice.  A spark grew in his hand, as orange as his hair, and gradually
expanded to the size of a baseball, glowing bright and casting light in a
wide circle around him.  The light swept through the chamber, pushing away
the darkness and reaching all the way to the walls.

     When the sphere was about as big as basketball, the kitsune stopped
singing and tossed it into the air above his head, where it hung, bobbing
occasionally a few inches up or down like a balloon.

     "Neat trick," Ranma said.

     The kitsune looked around.  "Well, I'd say we're underground."

     "Good deduction.  What gave you the hint?  The fact that we all fell
down holes to get here?"

     "No need to get snappy."

     "Plenty of need.  I don't know where Akane is, I don't know where
anyone is, the sun's gone out, I'm worried..."

     "Ranma?" someone called.

     "Akane!" Ranma said, turning in the direction of the voice.  To his
relief, Akane was standing in the entrance to one of the corridors that
branched off from the room they were in.

     He ran to her, closely followed by Kitzuiri, and grabbed her into an
embrace.  "Damn!  I was worried for a while there."

     "Me too," Akane said.  "It's good to see you're alright.  I hope
everyone else is... I tried to use the radio, but..."

     She held up something in her hand, a jumble of melted plastic and
wires.  "It didn't work too well.  Where are we, anyway?"

     "It appears to be some kind of underground city," Kitzuiri said.
"Perhaps even one of the cities of the abominations."

     "They had cities?" Ranma said.

     Kitzuiri nodded.  "Many of them, filled with their terrible servants,
like the snake-people or the sea-children.  The cities were like their
inhabitants; creatures of chaos, where stone might flow like water at any
moment and change the shape to something entirely different."

     "That would explain why we all got split up like this," Akane said.
"But what do we do now?"

     "This at least means we are on the right track," Kitzuiri said.  "The
Herald is here; I can feel his power.  When the seals were bound, these
cities became prisons for untold numbers of the abominations.  He may have
awakened some of them somehow; we'd best be careful."

     "Well, I guess the only thing we can do is look around," Akane said
unhappily.  She glanced around.  "Do you think it's safe to call their
names?"

     "Anything that would be alerted already is," Kitzuiri said with a
sigh.  "It's probably best not to do it too much, but go ahead."

     "DAD!  MR. SAOTOME!  RYOGA!" Akane called, cupping her hands and
shouting through them.  "ANYBODY?"

     The words echoed through the vast hall of black stone, but there was
no answer.  Akane sighed.  "I hope they're all okay."

     "Might as well get walking," Ranma said with a shrug.  "This place
looks to be pretty big."

     So they began to walk, down a corridor chosen at random.  The light of
the kitsune's sphere shone above their heads as they went.

**********
     
     Genma Saotome sincerely wished he'd stayed asleep when he woke up.
His head hurt, his leg felt sore, and he was lying on something that wasn't
very comfortable.

     "Guhh..." he said intelligently, shaking his head and opening his
eyes.  When he didn't see anything, he tried to open them again, only to
realize they were already open.

     "Dark in here," he said to no one.  Just what was he lying on, anyway?

     He got out the small flashlight, but was dismayed to find that it was
apparently broken.  Being of the school of fix-it that believes anything
will work if you bang it hard enough, he smacked it with his fist and
winced when he heard glass breaking.

     "Oh well," he said, shrugging invisibly.  "So much for that."

     He tossed the flashlight off in a random direction, and heard a rattle
as it bounced off something.  He shifted, trying to make himself more
comfortable, and tried to think about his situation.

     He was hungry.  It was dark.  He was alone.  Somehow, some horrible
creature from outside the normal boundaries of reality had put out the sun.

     It had not been a good day.

     On the other hand, he had his wife back, to judge from their behaviour
of the past few days.  It felt good to be back in her favour again, and
maybe if he tried hard this time he wouldn't screw it up.

     Thinking of his wife made him think of everyone else, and he sighed.
He hoped his son and Akane were alright.  And everyone else, of course.

     He also wondered where Tendo was; his old friend had been right next
to him when the ground had abruptly opened up.

     "Ah, Tendo," Genma said.  "I wonder, shall I ever see you again, my
friend?"

     There was no answer.  "Perhaps I'll just be here in the darkness
forever, Tendo.  I'll never play shogi with you again, or see our children
united in marriage, or..."

     He wiped his eyes.  "Ah, Tendo.  I almost feel you're with me now, old
friend."

     "Saotome..."

     "I almost imagine I can hear your voice," Genma continued, shifting
again.  He was sitting on something horribly uncomfortable.

     "Saotome!"

     "I'm almost expecting you to appear at any time, Tendo..."

     "I can't do that, Saotome."

     "Why, Tendo?  Why?  Why did I allow you to get out of my sight?  Now
you're probably all hysterical and..."

     "I can't do it because you're sitting on me, you great oaf.  Get off,"
Soun's voice said.  Whatever Genma was sitting on moved and tossed him off
to land unceremoniously on his face.  There was a click, and a bright light
shone in the darkness.

     Genma blinked and looked up.  "Hello, Tendo.  Are you alright?"

     "Aside from nearly suffocating under your bulk, yes," Soun said,
standing up and brushing himself off.  "Where are we?"

     Genma looked around as Soun swept the beam of his flashlight through
the area.  They appeared to be in a small room, no more than ten by fifteen
feet.  The walls were smooth, black stone, and the ceiling looked to be
only about ten feet above their heads.  The only exit from the room
appeared to be a narrow gap in the far wall.

     "Strange," Genma said.  "I suppose we must have fallen in here, but
there doesn't appear to be any holes in the ceiling."

     "Give me a boost, Saotome," Soun said, holding the flashlight between
his teeth.  "I'll see if there's some kind of hidden trapdoor."

     "This place gives me the creeps," Genma said, making a saddle of his
hands.  Soun put his foot on Genma's hands, then balanced himself with one
hand on Genma's shoulder as he was lifted into the air.

     He felt the cool, smooth ceiling with his free hand and frowned.

     "Nothing," he murmured around the flashlight.

     "HELLO!  HELLO!  CAN ANYONE HEAR ME!  IT'S DARK AND I'M SCARED!"

     Genma winced at the high, piercing voice that echoed throughout the
area.  Soun stumbled and fell back, comically pinwheeling his arms before
toppling to the floor.  The flashlight fell from being gripped in his teeth
and rolled along the floor, playing its beam wildly around the room.
Genma grabbed it back up and shone it out into the gap that led out of the
room.

     "Hinako!" he called, recognizing the voice of the teacher.  "Are you
alright?"

     "IT'S DARK!  I DON'T LIKE THE DARK!"

     "Turn on your flashlight, girl!" he called.

     "OH!  I FORGOT ABOUT THAT!  THAT'S MUCH BETTER!  OOPS!  I DROPPED IT!
WAIT A MINUTE, I'LL... EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

     "Damn," Genma said, helping Soun to his feet.  "Doesn't sound like
she's too far off.  Let's go find her."

     The two of them ran out into a narrow corridor, trying to follow the
direction Hinako's voice had come from.

     A few moments later, she helpfully screamed again.

     They rounded a corner to find her shining her flashlight on a large
skeleton.  The child's face was white, and relief shone in her eyes when
she saw them.

     "There's... there's a dead thing there..." she said, gesturing with
the beam of her flashlight at the skeleton.

     "It can't hurt you," Soun said soothingly.  "Don't worry."

     "Where are we?" Hinako said.  "I don't like this place... I don't like
this place..."

     "Hinako," Genma said firmly.  "You're not a child.  You are an adult,
no matter how you may look right now.  You must calm down."

     Hinako took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.  A noticeable change
came over her face; tension flowed from it, and when she opened her eyes
again they were calmer and less frantic.  "I... I'm sorry... It's... It's
so hard to think, so hard to..."

     "It's alright," Soun said.  "We understand.  Saotome and I often don't
act too mature ourselves, do we Saotome?"

     "Speak for yourself, Tendo," Genma said.  He walked over and shone the
flashlight beam on the skeleton.  "This has been here for a long time."

     The bones looked dry and brittle; Genma frowned slightly.  The
proportions looked wrong to him.  Hesitantly, he touched the ribcage, then
jumped back, startled, as the thing crumbled abruptly to dust.  "A very
long time."

     "Where's everybody else?" Hinako said, her voice threatening to slip
back into her child's tone at any time.  "Are they..."

     "We don't know," Soun said.  Genma could see his friend was close to
breaking down; he would be almost beside himself with concern for Akane
soon.

     "I'm sure they're all okay," Genma said, although he had no evidence.
It was important that they all remain calm right now.  "I saw my son grab
your daughter's hand when they fell.  They must be together."

     Soun breathed a relieved sigh.  "Of course.  Ranma will protect her."

     Hinako tugged on his hand.  "We should go look for them."

     Soun nodded, and didn't protest when the little girl didn't let go of
his hand and began to lead him down the corridor, holding her flashlight
ahead to light the way.

     Genma shrugged and began to follow, then paused.

     <Genma...>

     "Huh?" he said.

     <Genma, you've been...>

     The voice trailed off.

     Genma shuddered slightly.  "Must be hearing things."

     He hurried off after Soun and Hinako, not quite sure why the voice
sounded so familiar.

**********

     Shampoo groaned and raised herself up.  Trust Mousse to do something
stupidly noble for her like trying to break her fall with his body.  From
the sound he'd made hitting the ground with her on top of him, it might not
have been only the fall that was broken.

     Still, she'd remained conscious throughout the whole long fall,
through what had appeared to be a long series of branching shafts, slick
without being wet or slimy.  They'd fallen in absolute darkness, and the
last thing she'd heard was Mousse saying something about how he'd protect
her.

     Then there'd been no more shafts, and they'd been falling, and he'd
rolled in the air, cushioning her fall.  He was underneath her now; she
pressed her fingers to his neck and tried not to be too relieved when she
felt a strong, steady pulse.

     "Shampoo no want to lose you too," she said softly, pulling out the
flashlight and hoping it hadn't been damaged in the fall.  Turning it on,
she saw the two of them were alone in a large, dark cavern.  It was
smooth-floored, but the walls and ceilings were rough, although it looked
as if attempts had been made to smooth them.  It was as if the work had
been partially completed and then abandoned or interrupted; she saw several
objects on the floor that looked as if they might be tools.

     Much of the floor was covered in rubble; jagged spears of rock or
crumbling blocks of stone.  They'd been lucky to land on one of the few
clear spots.

     She turned the flashlight on Mousse, examining him carefully.  Running
her fingers through his dark hair, she found a sizeable lump at the back of
his skull, but no blood.

     "Stupid Mousse," she said, but there was affection in it this time.

     She sat back, pulled her knees up to her chin, and glanced warily
around the cavern.  There was little she could do beyond think, at least
until Mousse woke up.  And thinking was something she'd been trying to
avoid doing for a long time.

     Ever since great-grandmother's death.  She'd always been prepared for
it; she knew the old woman would be gone someday.  But it had never really
occured to her that it might happen soon.

     Or so violently.

     Now, the only one who could possibly help her in dealing with the
strange dreams and visions was gone.  Gone to wherever it was the dead
went.

     Oh, she had the letter, of course, and all great-grandmother's notes.
But those were no substitute for the old woman.

     "Miss you so much, great-grandmother," she said softly.  If only she'd
let them stay to help her in the restaurant.

     If only she'd let Shampoo stay to help her on the astral plane.

     If only Tensai had never been born.

     "Damn you, Tensai," Shampoo said, clenching her fist.  She was hoping
that wherever the misguided child of her great-grandmother was, she would
find him soon.

     She had a lot of things to discuss with him.

     Mousse groaned softly, but didn't wake from his unconsciousness.
Shampoo gently touched his face, and smiled softly as she examined his
handsome features under the harsh glow of the flashlight.  The bright light
made every part of him seem more defined, more real somehow.

     He was not Ranma.  But he didn't have to be.  He was Mousse.

     Perhaps that was all she needed.

     She cocked her head, listening.  There; something tapping rhythmically
on stone, from far away, but growing louder by the second.

     Footsteps.  One person, walking steadily, marching almost.

     Coming towards them.

     She stood, glanced around the cavern, and was relieved to find that
both her bonbori had come down in the fall as well, lying a few feet away.
She grabbed one up and switched her flashlight to her left hand, holding
the weapon in her right.  She steadied herself, glanced once at Mousse, and
waited.

     The footsteps tapped towards them, steady as flowing water.

**********

     Happosai decided he was either having a severe hangover or he was
slowing down in his old age.

     When he was a young man, falling a few dozen feet headfirst into a
stone floor shouldn't have even fazed him.  Now, he had a huge headache and
had probably been unconscious for a few minutes even.

     It was dark, as well.  Darkness you only got deep underground, the
pure darkness you get when no light can reach a place.  He had the
flashlight, of course, but he didn't have any need of such a thing.

     He concentrated, focusing his energies.  A warm feeling spread through
him, finally bursting into a bright yellow glow on his hand that
illuminated the entire chamber of black stone he was within.

     "They sure built them big back then," he said.  "So this was why you
needed to do it here.  An entire city, buried beneath the ground here for
who knows how long.  Incredible."

     The place stank spiritually; to someone with his sensitivities, it was
like being in the middle of a cesspool.  He frowned and narrowed his eyes
at the feeling of malevolence and the sense of being watched.

     "I can feel you," he hissed.  "Oh, yes, I can.  You're very close."

     The familiar darkness, the familiar foul taint.  The thing that had
wound itself around Tensai all that time ago.

     The thing that he'd carried a fraction of within him ever since that
awful failed ceremony to drive the darkness from Tensai.  The thing that
whispered to him seductively, that grew stronger and stronger each time he
resisted it, until he couldn't resist it anymore.

     He'd held it back at first for as long as he could.

     Then he'd awakened one day to find that a week had passed, and that he
had no memory of it.  He found also that the city he'd been in was living
in fear of a shadowy figure, moving faster than any of them would have
thought possible, breaking into houses.  The women of the city were living
in fear, and the men of the city sat up at night guarding their wives and
daughters and sisters to no avail.  Anyone unfortunate to stand in the way
of the attacker had been beaten to within an inch of their life.

     He'd never again tried to resist the urges for too long.  He'd found
he could get by, could survive, could satisfy the thing that drove terrible
excitement and lust through his body each time he saw a woman.  He could
keep it chained slightly, only slightly.  He only thanked whatever luck he
had that he hadn't killed anyone while under the thing's control that one
time.

     He could feel it pushing about inside him, straining like a chained
beast to be free.  Kasumi had helped somewhat; apparently even contact with
a female was enough.  But it was growing stronger.

     But he could hold it.  He could hold it long enough.

     Happosai reached out around him, felt for the direction that would
carry him towards the enemy.  But there was more down here than that
ancient thing, much more.  The walls themselves seemed to glare
malevolently at him as they flickered within the light he'd created.

     "Happosai," someone called.

     "Huh?" he said, looking around.  The voice seemed terribly, terribly
familiar.

     "Put out the light, Happosai," the voice said, light and sweet and
seductive.  "I'm afraid to come into the light.  It hurts my eyes."

     "Who are you?" he said.  He strove to place the voice.

     "Happy, please," the voice pleaded.  "The light..."

     Happosai exhaled slowly, and let the light fade from existence.

     In the darkness, he heard someone walking towards him, light, feminine
footsteps tapping across the floor.

**********

     Tatewaki Kuno was having a wonderful dream.

     Akane Tendo had finally realized that Ranma was a foul sorcerer.  She
was running to his arms in a slow motion, through a field of flowers that
waved and danced in slow motion.

     Somewhere between the time she leapt into his arms, though, she
changed.  This often happened in his dreams, but this time, instead of
changing into the pig-tailed girl, her form was that of another girl, a
girl with quick, intelligent eyes and a lovely face, and an immaculate head
of short brown hair, though longer than Akane's...

     "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!  YOU'RE STILL A PERVERT!"

     Something flat and metal hit Kuno's head with a hard clang and bent
slightly on impact.

     Then there was light shining in his eyes, and he was staring dazedly
up, lying on his back, with the beam of a flashlight overhead shining
enough to show the black ceiling of wherever he was.

     Someone with long brown hair and an extremely large spatula was
standing over him.  The said spatula was pulled back over one shoulder in a
position similiar to the way you'd hold a baseball bat right before you hit
a baseball extremely hard.

     "Please, Ukyou," another voice said.  "My brother has enough
difficulties without further blows to the head."

     "Well, he shouldn't be getting so grabby," Ukyou said, lowering the
spatula a fraction of an inch.  "I leaned down to check on him and, bam,
glomp city."

     "Your pardon, fair chef," Kuno said.  "I was within the throes of some
pleasant dream that acted upon my reality."

     "Alright," Ukyou said, with a tone of voice that made it quite clear
that it wasn't alright.  "Hey Shigeki, is Konatsu awake yet?"

     "He's just coming around," a nondescript voice called from somewhere
to Kuno's left.

     "Whither the others?" Kuno said, standing up.  His sister was nearby,
holding a flashlight trained on him and Ukyou.  Another flashlight was held
by the tall man, the one called Shigeki.  He was kneeling down near Ukyou's
friend, the ninja.  Kuno wasn't too sure, but he seemed to remember Konatsu
having been a girl before.

     Although considering how confused he'd gotten with the pig-tailed
girl, he probably wasn't best able to comment on that, he realized slightly
bitterly.

     He felt for the sheathed sword at his belt, and was relieved to find
it there.  He drew it forth, meaning only to test the balance and weight.

     As soon as the last inch of the blade was free from the tooled black
leather, he gasped in surprise.  He felt more aware, as if every sense had
been sharpened.  Whatever aches and bruises he'd had vanished.

     Then he gagged; there was a sense of overwhelming foulness suddenly.

     "What?" he said.  "What is it?"

     The sword began to glow softly, a dark red light that nonetheless
illuminated the area far better than any of the flashlights.  The chamber
they were within was vast, with pillars of smooth stone springing up
seemingly at random from floor to ceiling.

     "What manner of place is this?" he said.

     "Nice trick, Kuno," Ukyou said.  "Can you show me how to make my
spatula do that?"

     He heard her voice vaguely on the edge of his senses, but all his
attention was on the sword.

     "The lair of foulness," he murmured after a moment.

     "Who're you talking to?" Ukyou asked.  "Hey, earth to Kuno."

     "Brother, are you alright?" Kodachi said.

     "Yes, girl," Kuno said.  "I am better than I have been in a long
time."

     He saw Ukyou shudder slightly.  "Anyone hear something?  It almost
sounds as if there's something coming."

     "Let it come," Kuno whispered under his breath, watching the
flickering red light of the blade.  "Oh, let it come again."

**********

     Ryoga was lost again.

     That was bad enough, but he was also lost in the dark.  His flashlight
had shattered when he'd hit the ground.  It was just a good thing he was a
lot tougher than a flashlight, although the fall through the long series of
nearly-vertical shafts had left him feeling a little battered.

     He'd vaguely remembered reading somewhere that even a blind person
could find there way out of a place by feeling the walls.  He wasn't quite
sure how it worked, but he'd resolved himself to give it a try.

     He'd discovered it didn't work at all.  At least not for him.  He kept
on losing the wall, or wandering away from it.

     He'd also fallen over things numerous times, and he wasn't feeling in
a very good mood right now at all.

     Maybe it would be better if he just sat down and waited for someone to
find him.

     Someone had to find him eventually.  After all, if he'd gotten through
the fall okay, everyone else probably had as well, right?

     He sat down, leaned back against the wall in the darkness, and sighed.
It might be a long wait.

     After a moment, he frowned.  It almost felt as if there'd been a small
tremor in the wall.  Probably nothing.

     So Ryoga waited, and the darkness waited with him.

**********

     <Genma!>

     "What?"

     "Saotome, who are you talking to?"

     They'd entered another chamber after a long walk through a tangled
maze of narrow corridors.  This one was larger, and they'd stopped to rest
a few minutes and gather their thoughts.

     "I wonder where we are," Hinako said quietly, resting her chin on her
knees and playing the beam of her flashlight across the room.  "I don't
like it."

     "Well, it's obviously not natural," Soun said.  "These corridors and
rooms have to have been carved by somebody."

     <GENMA!>

     "Saotome, are you alright?  You seem unusually silent."

     "Nothing, Tendo, I'm just-"

     <YOU'VE BEEN A BAD BOY, GENMA!>

     *"Please, father..."*

     <A BAD, BAD BOY!>

     *"I just-"*

     <SHE NEEDED TO BE PUNISHED, GENMA!  NOW YOU NEED TO BE PUNISHED AS
WELL!>

     *"I'm sorry-"*

     "Saotome? What's wrong?"

     Soun's voice sound very far away to Genma.  Everything seemed far
away.  He was immersed in the memory; thirteen years old, listening to his
parents fight downstairs, fight like they always did.  Lying in his bed,
terrified.  Hearing his mother cry out in pain, as he'd heard so often
before, but this time not able to ignore it, refusing to ignore it.

     <What are you doing, boy?>

     *"Stop it!  Stop hurting her!"

     <I'll stop when I'm->

     *"STOP IT!"*

     His father had beaten him, of course.  He was still young, just
leaving behind the chubbiness of his youth.  He was getting stronger,
tougher, but his father was infinitely stronger and tougher.  And then when
he'd finally battered Genma enough that he couldn't fight back anymore,
he'd gone back to his mother.  Lying there, bloody, bruised, he'd listened
to her scream, and he'd never hated anyone more in his life than his
father.

     He'd promised himself then, promised himself that he'd get strong,
that one day he'd be strong enough to beat his father, to make his father
stop hurting them.

     But more than that, he'd promised himself he would never become his
father.

     The only refuge he'd had in his youth had been Soun Tendo's house.
His friend's father was utterly unlike Genma's father, a warm, kind man
with the kind of inner strength to match the outer.  His mother was like
Genma liked to imagine his might have been, had not she had her spirit
broken long ago by the brute he was shamed to call his father.

     He'd trained constantly, with his father, without his father, with
Soun and with Soun's father.

     Three years later, he thought he'd been ready.  When his father's
temper had risen again, as it always did, he'd put himself between his
father and his mother, and fought his father with everything he could.

     He'd been beaten again, so badly his mother had wanted to take him to
the hospital, but his father wouldn't allow it of course.  She'd sat up
with him, tending him as best she could.

     <You shouldn't fight him, dear.  It's only worse if you fight him...>

     *"But I have to stop him from hurting you."*

     <He only does it because of what I do, it's only because...>

     *"NO!  He can only do it because he's bigger and stronger!  Someday,
though, I'll be bigger and stronger than he is, and then he'll have to
stop!"*

     A year later, he had beaten his father.  Soundly.  The man was
getting old, and he'd had a growth spurt that year.  He'd thrown his father
out of the house, screamed at him to never come back.

     He never had.

     They'd lost the house, and the dojo.  His father wasn't there to teach
classes, and without the money from that, they couldn't pay the mortgage.
They'd moved into an apartment, and he'd dropped out of school, found jobs
where he could, supported him and his mother while he tried to complete his
high school education at night.

     He remembered meeting Nodoka, at one of those night classes.  So
terrified to approach her, having no idea how to deal with women, fearing
he might somehow hurt her, like his father hurt his mother.  He could only
stare at her, admire the way she moved, the sweetness of her voice as she
answered questions, the delicate features of her face.

     <Why are you looking at me all the time?>

     Her voice had been light, joking, but he hadn't realized it.

     *"I'm sorry."*

     <You must think I'm pretty.>

     *"..."*

     <You mean you don't think I'm pretty?>

     *"Oh, no, that's not it..."*

     <Then you do think I'm pretty.>

     *"Yes..."*

     <Great!  Would you like to get something to eat after class?>

     He'd been so careful, so careful to keep his feelings in check,
worried that his gradually growing affection for her would somehow turn
into the rage of his father.  She'd been patient with him, more patient
than any woman had the right to be.  She'd slowly drawn him out, and he
loved her for it, and he'd hoped she loved him back.

     Then his mother had died, when he was twenty-two.  He wouldn't have
made it through without Nodoka.  A few months later, he'd asked her to
marry him, and she'd said yes.

     The night before the wedding, he'd made up a contract with himself.
It had been simple, witnessed only by him, signed only by him.  He still
had it, carefully folded and hidden away.

     *"If I ever once lift my hand in anger against my wife, may my death
follow swiftly by my hand or another's."*

     He'd kept it always, though he'd never had any need to recall it.  He
never found himself even close to behaving as his father did, but it was
always there, the terrible fear that it was somehow hiding within him.

     He saw a reflection of his father, sometimes, in how he dealt with his
son, and it sickened him when he bothered to notice it.

     And now, for some reason, he was hearing the old man's voice again.  A
man who he hadn't seen in over twenty years.  A man he never wanted to see
ever again.

     <GENMA!  YOU'VE BEEN A BAD, BAD BOY!>

     Was that where his father had gone?  Done here, down into the darkness
where the light couldn't reach?  Had he been waiting here, waiting all this
time, waiting for when he knew Genma would come down here, waiting for-

     "SAOTOME!"

     Someone was shaking him, but he wasn't sure who.  In the beam of the
flashlights, the faces of Soun and Hinako swam in front of him, and
changed, became other faces.  His father's face, his mother's face.

     His father's face changed, became his face.

     His mother's face changed, became Nodoka's.

     "No," he whispered.  "No, never, never.  Better my life."

     <Better your life?>

     And then the faces were darkness, and darkness fell over him.

**********

     "Thank you, Happy," the voice said as the footsteps danced closer.
Whoever it was, she was only a few feet away.  "Thank you for putting out
the light."

     "What was wrong with the light?" Happosai breathed in the darkness.

     "I don't want you to look at me," the voice said.  "I really don't
look my best right now."

     "That's you, Cologne-chan, isn't it?" Happosai said.

     "Yes, Happy," Cologne's voice answered right in front of him.  "I have
something I wish to give you."

     "And I you," Happosai said.  The light flared to life on his hand
again, burning like torch in the darkness.

     The thing in front of him howled and covered its eyes with clawed
hands.  The ones who had snuck up silently around him did the same,
shrieking as light speared into eyes that were never meant to see light.

     He vaulted backwards, over the heads of the two behind him, kicking
them forward into the two at his sides as he did.  Even in the light from
his aura, they were indistinct, shadowy, forms rippling and flowing,
growing and dissolving limbs seemingly at random.  But he could see red
eyes, half-closed slits in the painful glow, atop the lumpy, bubbling dark
shapes that might have been heads.

     And he could see claws, and fangs.  Those didn't ripple and move like
living shadow as the rest of them did, but glimmered sharp as razors in the
light, though where they were placed and how many there were might be
changed often.

     There were dozens of them, all around him, gurgling and mewling and
flowing into different shapes, hunger radiating from them.

     "You dare," he hissed.  "You dare to take her voice, to defile her
memory."

     The things came at him.

     His aura flared like a sunrise, and then he was among them.  Power
flared from his hands, kicks and punches tore them apart, blasts of light
struck them down into tattered scraps of dissolving dark flesh.  It was
over quickly; he had not felt so enraged, so powerful, in a long, long
time.

     When it was done, he sighed and sat down on the floor.  "What am I
going to do?"

     He looked at his hands, his tiny, wrinkled hands.  He remembered when
they'd been strong, powerful, unlined.  "No.  Don't think about what I
would do.  What would Cologne do?"

     He sat there for a moment, thinking about it.  Then he made his
decision, and he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his
shoulders.  He smiled, a smile different from any he'd had in a very long
time.  "Of course.  That's exactly what she would do."

     He stood up and began to walk, with the golden glow lighting his way.

**********

     "Geez, this place is big," Ranma said as they walked.

     "Old, too," Akane said.  "I hope we find some of the others soon.  I'm
worried about them."

     "Why don't you try calling again?" Kitzuiri said.  The sphere of light
bobbed above the spirit's head, making his orange hair even brighter.  It
moved with him as they walked through a seemingly endless series of
tunnels.

     "HELLO!" Akane called.  "Is anyone there?"

     "HELLO?" someone called back.

     "Ryoga!" Akane called.  "Is that you?"

     "Yeah!" Ryoga answered.  He sounded close.

     "Ryoga, you stay right where you are," Ranma said.  "We'll come find
you."

     "Okay!" Ryoga said.

     The three of them began to walk quickly in the direction of Ryoga's
voice, the kitsune's light casting its beams ahead of them down the
corridor as they moved.

     They saw Ryoga at the edge a few minutes later, standing up in the
centre of the corridor.  He waved and grinned cheerfully, if a bit wearily.

     "Boy, am I glad to find somebody else," he said.

     Then the wall beside him opened wide, stone yawning like a great
mouth.  Black, rubbery tentacles spewed forth, accompanied by a low sound
like dozens of voices chanting in unison.

     Ryoga didn't even have time to cry out.  They wrapped around his arms,
his legs, his chest, his head.

     And then they drew him instantly inside, and the stone wall closed
behind him.

**********

     "Huh?" Ukyou said, looking at Kuno.  "What do you mean, let it come?"

     Shigeki and Konatsu approached, walking within the circle of light
cast by the sword and staring intently at it.

     "Brother, isn't this that the old sword that..."

     "It is a magnificent weapon, is it not?" Kuno said, tilting the blade
left and right and watching the glow shift.

     <Thank you,> something said to him.  <Thou knowest a fine blade when
thou sees it.>

     "How come I never realized before how beautiful you were?" he said.

     "Kuno, may I see the sword?" Shigeki said.

     "Thou hast thine own weapon," Kuno said, indicating the large bow and
quiver of arrows Shigeki carried.  "Keep thine hands from mine, knave!"

     "Brother, you're speech is becoming a bit antiquated even for you,"
Kodachi said.  "Did you have a harder bump on the head then-"

     "Silence, sister.  I tire of thy prattle and barbs," Kuno interrupted.

     "Hey, what's gotten into you?" Ukyou said.

     "Can we worry about that later?" Konatsu said quietly.  "I think we
have company."

     They did.  Shadows loomed from behind the pillars.

     Shadows with claws, and fangs, and red, red eyes matched only by the
crimson glow of Kuno's sword.

**********

     Shampoo made a few experimental swings with the bonbori, and tried to
push back the growing fear she felt.  She told herself that she was not
afraid, that she was an Amazon, that an Amazon was not afraid.

     But she was afraid.  She was afraid because Mousse hadn't made any
sign of waking up, and because those footsteps were growing closer and
closer, and the weapon was feeling like a lead weight in her hands, and she
was worried the flashlight was going to die at any minute and leave her
here in the darkness with those awful rhthymic footsteps.

     From the corridor ahead, a figure appeared.  The source of the
footsteps.

     She looked him over, as he paused for a moment, blinking in seeming
surprise at the light that shone in his eyes.  He was tall, probably about
the same height as Kuno, which made him tower more than a head over her.
His built was slender but muscular, swathed in a dense cloak of dark brown
material.  The hood was down, exposing a handsome, sharply chiselled face.
It was marred somewhat by a long-faded but prominent scar on the forehead.
His hair was long, straight and black, falling to his shoulders in a dark
wave.

     More remarkable than anything, though, were his eyes.  They were not
dark like his hair but a startling deep blue.  They stared at Shampoo for a
moment, then narrowed, and his gaze was cold as ice.

     She took in last the long weapon he carried loosely in one hand, a
polearm with a single, slender curved blade; a naginata.

     "Tensai," she said after a moment, knowing without any doubt that this
was him.  This was her great-grandmother's son.  This was the one
responsible for all the chaos, all the destruction.

     This was the one responsible for her great-grandmother's death.

     She had not expected him to be so young; he could be no more than a
few years older than her, barely out of his teens.

     "Yes," Tensai said, bringing his naginata up into a guard position.
"And you are the kin of Cologne, the lying witch who claimed to be my
mother.  You are the one who killed Hibino."

     "Yes," Shampoo said, remembering with distaste the monstrous
serpent-woman.  "I kill her and I glad."

     She saw Tensai frown.  "I had hoped perhaps you were simply misguided;
now I see you are as foul and depraved as your dead ancestor."

     "You no talk like that about great-grandmother," Shampoo said.  "I no
care whether you her son or not.  You die.  You know what you do?  You know
what you unleash?  The sun go out, Tensai."

     Tensai shook his head.  "I will listen to no more lies from barbarians
such as you."

     "Is not lies," Shampoo hissed.  "How long you down here, Tensai, down
here in darkness with this lying thing that say it is your mother, that it
is Amaterasu?"

     "You deserve not even to speak her name," Tensai said.  "Enough talk.
You seek my death, and I seek yours.  But I shall find what I seek, and you
shall have it denied."

     Shampoo stepped forward, brandishing the weapon and trying to keep the
flashlight steady on Tensai.  "We see, Tensai.  We see."

**********

     "RYOGA!" Akane cried as the wall closed.

     "No... Dammit, Ryoga, no!" Ranma said, rushing up the few dozen feet
that had remained, to the spot where Ryoga had stood only seconds before.
He pounded on the wall.  "OPEN UP, DAMMIT!"

     "Ranma, get away from there!" Akane called, tears streaming down her
face.  "We can't lose you too!"

     "Ryoga..." Kitzuiri whispered.  "What... what am I going to tell
Akari... I promised her..."

     "RYOGA, DAMMIT, QUIT FOOLIN' AROUND!" Ranma screamed, his voice hoarse
with grief.  He slammed a fist against the stone as if he could crack it
open.  "Come outta there, you dummy..."

     He slumped down, feeling how the stone of the wall where it had opened
and swallowed Ryoga was warm.

     "Ryoga," he whispered, tears in his eyes.

     He heard a distant rumble in the wall.

     "Wha-"

     "Ranma, come away," Akane said.  "Please..."

     She approached hesitantly.  "There... there's nothing we can do..."

     "Shh..." Ranma said.  A slow, hesitant grin broke across his face.

     Small, faint, far away, somehow carrying through the stone.

     A voice.

     "Bakusai Tenketsu!"

     Another rumble.

     "Bakusai Tenketsu!"

     Again a rumbling, closer this time, a shriek of pain that didn't sound
human.

     "BAKUSAI TENKETSU!"

     Ranma jumped back as the wall exploded outwards in chunks of black
stone.  A few grazed his hands and face, as Ryoga stumbled out of the wall,
a few severed bits of tentacle and dark black ichor sprayed across his
body.

     "I really don't like this place," Ryoga said woozily, collapsing
forward slightly into Ranma's arms.  His face was streaked with dark blood,
and some of it was his own.  The skin on his hands and face where the
tentacles had gripped him was worn almost raw, and his clothes were scraped
and shredded in the places where the tentacles had touched them.

     "Ryoga!  I knew you were too tough for... whatever that thing was,"
Ranma said.

     "Didn't get too good a look at it," Ryoga said, panting heavily and
leaning on Ranma for support.  "A little dark in there.  Kinda felt a big
worm with tentacles when I hit it.  The thing ate my umbrella too, I think,
or it's way back there in the tunnel.  I'm not even sure if I killed it,
but it ate a lot of rock shrapnel at close range."

     "Ryoga, I'm so glad you're okay," Akane said, throwing her arms around
the two boys as she rushed up.  Kitzuiri sighed with relief and came up
closer, examining Ryoga carefully.

     "Doesn't look like much," he said, looking at the wounds.  "You feel
okay?"

     "Yeah," Ryoga said.  "As much as someone who just got sucked into a
wall can be."

     Ranma laughed, couldn't help it.  Ryoga's flippancy in the face of the
horrible darkness, the vast subterranean city, and whatever creature had
just appeared was too much to take.  The other three soon joined him.

     "Let's move on," the kitsune said.  "I can't keep this light up
forever.  We need to find the others."

     They walked, the light bobbing behind them, a single bright beacon
amidst all the dark.

**********

    "Damn," Ukyou said as the five of them made a circle.  "They've got us
surrounded."

     "There are not so many," Kodachi said.  "Perhaps two dozen.  No match
for us."

     "What are they?" Konatsu said in a small, scared voice.

     "Yes, just what are we?"

     The voice that spoke was soft, echoing and vaguely metallic, cynically
amused at the sight it saw.  From behind one of the larger pillars,
something flowed on a bed of dozens of tentacles, something as broad and
thick as a small car at the base, but taller than a man, towering over ten
feet.  It looked like little more than a forest of tentacles; from the
thousands of tiny, glistening strands of leprous green-black flesh that
tangled together and seemed to compose the thing's body to two huge,
seven-foot pillars of flesh as thick as a man's waist at the base that
extended from the upper body.

     The thing would have been awful enough without the head, which was
grossly distorted and blistered, but unmistakably human in form.  It sat
atop the forest of tentacles like a bloated melon, female and hideous and
horrible in its warped humanity.  Sores and blisters were splattered at
random across the face, weeping, corrupted wounds that leaked yellowish
fluid.  Despite that, it could be seen that the face would have been
startlingly beautiful had not it been so ravaged.

     "Well, let me think," the creature said.  A few tentacles idly stroked
her chin as if they were fingers touched to the face in thought.  "I know
what I am.  I am Shel'Negroth, and these are my children.  The question is,
what are you?"

     The thing laughed, hollow and ringing, a voice filled with the scrape
of metal on stone and ancient, terrible age.  "I know," she said.  "You are
food, and playthings."

     "Don't bet on it," Ukyou said, raising her spatula.

     "Stick together," Shigeki said as he nocked an arrow to his bow.
"Don't let them surround us."

     Howling, the shadows came, with the titanic form of their mother
flowing slowly behind them, tentacles waving the air.

     Kuno raised the red-glowing sword.  There was a strange gleam in his
eyes.  "Foul things... I was forged to slay thee..."

     "Brother?" Kodachi said, glancing at him.  "Brother, what are you
talking about?"

     Kuno didn't answer, only charged forward, out of the defensive circle
they'd formed towards the huge, bloated creature called Shel'Negroth.

     "Damnation," Kodachi said vehemently as she followed behind him.

     "We were supposed to stay in the circle," Konatsu said quietly.

     "Too late for that now," Shigeki said.  His bowstring sang, and an
arrow pierced the eye of one of the oncoming shadow-things.

     Ukyou hurled a glittering arc of throwing spatulas through the air,
slicing into dark, rippling bodies and sending howls of pain through the
horde.

     The three of them began to move backwards, trying to join up with the
Kuno siblings while keeping the shadow-things at bay.

     The Kunos didn't seem to be having any trouble; Kuno was cleaving the
things in half with that strange sword as Kodachi followed behind him,
picking off any survivors.  The two of them were making their way towards
Shel'Negroth, who laughed and waved her tentacles at them in hideous
greeting.

     "So brave, so brave," she crowed in her metallic voice.  "Just like
all those millenia ago.  So brave and so very stupid.  Now, my children."

     And from behind the pillars flowed more shadows.  Dozens more, as if
the very darkness itself were giving birth to them.

**********

     "What's wrong with him?" Hinako said, as Soun trained the flashlight
on Genma's still form.  His friend had suddenly collapsed without a word,
lying on his side on the stone floor.  His eyes were open, but rolled up
into his head, showing only the whites.  His breathing was shallow and
slow.

     "Saotome..." Soun said, kneeling down beside his friend.  He shook him
gently, gulped and tried to hold back panic.  Every muscle in Genma's body
was rigidly tensed, feeling almost like stone, and they were growing tenser
by the second.

     "Let me see," Hinako said, crowding in next to Soun.  Her voice
sounded calmer, less childlike.  She lightly touched her fingertips to
Genma's forehead.  "Oh!"

     "What is it?" Soun said.

     "His aura..." she said fearfully.  She backed away, shivering
slightly.

     "Wha... what?" Soun said.

     "Can't you see it?" Hinako said.  "Something's... something's attached
itself to his aura.  It's draining his life force..." the girl said, her
eyes wide.

     "Like you do?" Soun said without thinking.

     The little girl turned a hurt gaze to him.  "I only drain battle
auras, maybe a little ki," she said, as if the difference was night and
day.  "I probably could drain life if I tried."

     "Well, can you help him?" Soun said, indicating Genma.

     The maturity drained from Hinako's voice like water into dirt.  "I'm
scared.  I don't wanna."

     "Please, Hinako," Soun said.  "He's... My friend is dying... If you
can do something to help him..."

     There was a noticeable struggle on Hinako's face, between fear and
determination.  Determination eventually won out, and the voice that spoke
then was a child's voice with adult tones.  "Yes.  I'll try."

     "Thank you," Soun said.  He backed away, gulping and staring at Genma.

     Hinako pulled out a five-yen piece and stood over Genma, holding it
between two fingers.  She didn't say any words as she usually did, but
golden light began to spiral up from Genma's body to the hole in the coin.

     And then something dark and vaguely human shaped flowed from Genma's
body and leapt along the stream of light, talons shining and reaching for
her face.

     Soun stepped in the way, and the thing did not crash into him as
expected, but flowed like shadow through his body.

     <Dear, the test results...>

     *"NO!  It's not true..."*

     And then it was gone, and the thing had the now-adult Hinako by the
throat.  

     "Inside this head what nightmares?" it grated.  

     Hinako shrieked, and the thing laughed like metal scraping on stone.
"Feed mother well yes with these little dreams feed her hungry she make me
so hungry..."

     The thing laughed until Soun grabbed it by the neck and hurled it into
the wall.  The flesh was like solidifying smoke under his hands, and stung
to touch.  Hinako dropped with a cry, and the thing rose up.

     "Old man old old old what's inside your head peel it open and see..."
it gibbered, and it flowed into a twisted, scaled shape with razored nails
and leapt for him.

**********

     Ranma walked beside Ryoga, half-supporting him.

     "I'm telling you I'm fine," Ryoga said.

     "Then try to walk on your own," Ranma said.  "You're still weak.  Just
let me help you."

     "Okay," Ryoga said.  Akane was walking ahead of them, beside Kitzuiri.

     "That shouldn't happen," she said to the kitsune.  "Walls... walls
should stay walls..."

     "They should," the spirit in the form of a small boy said grimly.
"And water should stay water, and earth should stay earth, and air should
stay air and fire should stay fire.  The presence of the abominations warps
and twists the natural order of things."

     He growled slightly.  "They are unclean, befouled beyond befoulment.
Everything about them is-"

     "Wait," Akane said.  "I hear something."

     She was right; up ahead they heard faint battle cries, and the shrieks
of things that were definitely not human.

     "I think we've found some of the others," Akane said.

     "But it looks like something may have found them first," Ranma said.

     The four of them began to run.

**********

     Shampoo charged in, trying to surprise Tensai with a quick attack.
Her bonbori whirled in her hand as she came at him.  Tensai shifted
slightly, a flowing motion as graceful as any river.

     His first sweep, with the bladed end of the naginata, caught her
weapon under the head and tore it from her grasp, sending it clattering to
the floor a dozen feet away.  His second attack was only a reversed
movement of his first, bringing the other end of the weapon around as the
blade end continued through with its motion and hooking Shampoo's legs out
from under her.

     She landed hard, wincing as she broke her fall with the arm that
didn't hold the flashlight.  She rolled to the side, and the naginata
struck sparks from the floor where her head had been.  She flipped to her
feet and cautiously looked at Tensai, illuminated as he was in the beam of
the flashlight.

     "You are no match for me," Tensai said simply.  "This is less like a
duel then a slaughter.  I like it not."

     Shampoo glowered; it was true.  He was obviously at least as good as
her great-grandmother had been, possibly even better.  He was faster than
she was, he had a height and strength advantage, he was armed and she
wasn't, and he wasn't burdened with having to carry a light to see by.

     Coldy estimating her chances, Shampoo was surprised she wasn't dead
yet.  She shifted her stance, got into the best unarmed position she could
while still maintaining a grip on the flashlight, and glared at Tensai.

     "Come on," she said.

     He came, weapon held in front of him like a lance.  Shampoo jinked to
the side and vaulted over, lashing out with her leg as she did so in a wide
kick.

     She felt the point of her foot hit something, and then a searing line
of pain blazed across her hip and she was tumbling away, barely managing to
land on her feet.  One leg promptly collapsed under her; the wound on it
was already bleeding steadily.

     Tensai rubbed his shoulder and looked at her a bit sadly.  "Why do you
fight me?  You know you cannot win."

     "Is better to fight you... then let you win unchallenged..." Shampoo
said, gritting her teeth and hesitantly touching the slash in her leg.

     "But why?" Tensai said.  "I never understood why.  Mother never
explained to me just why so many opposed me, only that they did.  Surely
there must be some..."

     "Because she not your mother," Shampoo said.  "Because thing you think
is your mother is something evil, something dark."

     "Lies," Tensai said, but Shampoo heard the doubt in his tone.  She had
to keep him talking as long as possible.

     Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mousse beginning to stir.

     "Look around," Shampoo said, indicating the rough, dark stone of the
cavern, the broken rubble.  She didn't know much about Japanese legend, but
she knew at least that Amaterasu was the sun goddess.  "This look like
palace fit for queen of the heavens, Tensai?"

     "I will not listen to this," Tensai said, bringing the naginata up so
it was level with her head.  "You are seeking to confuse me, seeking to
hide from me the truth, as those who called themselves my mother and father
did."

     "Father?" Shampoo said.  She'd never given much thought to it;
Happosai had said the man was long gone.

     "Yes, my-"

     Mousse groaned and raised himself up on his hands; Tensai turned,
looking at him.

     "Who is this one?" he said softly.  "Another foe?"

     "He is Mousse," Shampoo said.  "He is..."

     She trailed off as Mousse looked up, his eyes opaqued behind the
lenses of his glasses in the dim light her flashlight cast.

     "Who are you?" he said blearily to Tensai.

     "I am Tensai," Tensai said evenly.  "You are..."

     A strange battle suddenly took place across his face; for the last few
minutes, it had been sad and contemplative.  That expression now warred
with a bitter, angry one.

     He finally settled on the angry one, and his eyes no longer held
sadness.  "Yes, mother.  I understand.  They seek to distract me with their
lies."

     Mousse leapt to his feet and flung his sleeved arms wide in one smooth
motion.  Silver glinted in the light as he flung a hail of knives, shuriken
and other projectiles at Tensai.  The cloaked man flung himself to the
side, dodging most, but several tore through the whirling fabric of his
cloak.  Almost instantly he was charging Mousse, only to have Shampoo throw
herself forward into a roll, ignoring how the motion sent pain driving anew
through her injured leg.

     She smashed him behind one knee with the other bonbori, grabbed from
the floor in her roll,  and he screamed and stumbled slightly.  He lashed
back, cracking his foot in a glancing blow across her chin, and then Mousse
slammed into him, hitting him in the stomach with his shoulder and grabbing
the handle of the naginata with both hands.

     Tensai fell back, nearly tripping over Shampoo and stumbling
backwards with Mousse still driving him back.  Mousse wrenched the naginata
away from him and tossed it off into the darkness, where it clattered
somewhere out of the range of the flashlight.

     Tensai regained his feet almost instantly, flipping backwards as
Mousse stabbed at his head with a sword.

     "Not so tough without your weapon, are you?" Mousse said, weaving in
and slashing in a tight circle of steel that Tensai backed away from.

     Shampoo groaned and got shakily to her feet, tasting a bit of blood on
her lip.  The wound on her leg was throbbing painfully, and she could feel
the leg of her pants was growing slowly wet with blood.  She needed to
bandage it, and soon.

     "Mousse, be careful," she said.  She stumbled, her leg nearly giving
out, and only stopped from falling by using the bonbori like a cane to
support herself.

     "No, I suppose I am not quite as good unarmed as I am armed," Tensai
said with vaguely sardonic humour.  "That always was a weakness of mine.
But I'm good enough without my weapon to beat you."

     He darted past Mousse's next swing, hammered a fist into his stomach,
brought his forearm into Mousse's chin and snapped his head back, then
pulled back his fist and punched for Mousse's throat.  Mousse got his head
back down at the last minute, and the punch cracked across his chin with a
sound like a gunshot.

     Tensai stepped in further, moving with a smooth grace that was almost
inhuman.  He grabbed Mousse's arm at the wrist, the one that held the
sword, slammed his hip sideways into Mousse's body, and then twisted the
motion fully through and hurled him.  Mousse fell badly, crying out in
pain, the sword skittering across the ground.

     Shampoo hit Tensai from behind, but she couldn't get any speed behind
it with her leg hurt.  With a glance back, Tensai kicked the bonbori from
her hand, whirled around, grabbed her other hand hand that held the
flashlight, and squeezed until she screamed and dropped the light.  He
kicked it, hard, and it flew and shattered, the light winking out and
leaving them in pure darkness.

     Pure darkness that Tensai could somehow still see in.

     A palm heel crashed into her ribcage so hard that it felt as if her
heart would stop.  Someone brought a knee up into her stomach, and all the
air left her body in one quick, pained gasp.  A fist snapped hard across
her face, then again, but she didn't have enough breath left in her body to
cry out.  Her lip cut against his teeth, and she tasted coppery blood on
her tongue.  Her leg throbbed horribly, and she barely realized that she
was suddenly airborne, hitting hard against one of the walls of the room
and landing heavily on her back, pain coursing through her whole body like
fire.

     "SHAMPOO!" she heard Mousse scream in the darkness.  "I'LL KILL YOU!"

     "No, boy," Tensai answered softly, and there was such sadness in his
voice now that despite everything, Shampoo felt a terrible pity for him.
"I have to kill you."

     Mousse screamed, a sound that tore at Shampoo's heart.  There was the
crack of something smacking into stone, and then nothing.

     She heard footsteps, careful and measured, walking across the ground.
There was a clink of metal, as if someone were picking up a weapon from the
ground.

     Somewhere far away in the darkness, she thought she saw something
glowing dimly golden.

**********

     "Kill them!  Kill them all, and feed the glory of your mother!"
Shel'Negroth echoed, as the shadows flowed around them, living darkness
illuminated in the beams of the flashlights and the red glow of Kuno's
sword.

     Ukyou ripped her spatula through another, saw it dissipate into wisps
of greasy smoke, then turned and intercepted the flight path of one leaping
for Konatsu with a thrown spatula.  She was fighting near the ninja and
Shigeki, as the Kuno siblings drove a path through the horde towards the
hideous thing of tentacles and flesh that was Shel'Negroth.

     "I shall rend ye, foulness," Kuno screamed, and there was something
terrible in the hoarse fury of his voice that was nearly as frightening as
the living shadows or their mother.  "Know ye fear again, fear the light as
ye did millenia ago!"

     Ukyou had never really seen Shigeki fight before; only briefly, on the
island, had she seen him use his chosen weapon, the great dark bow he now
carried.

     She had to admit, he was good.  Very good.  Man and weapon seemed less
two separate things then one.  He whirled and turned, spindly form moving
with grace and agility that seemed impossible.  There seemed little
interval between the time one arrow left his bowstring and the next one was
fired.  And each shot brought down one of the shadows, piercing it through
eye or throat or chest.

     She saw him draw an arrow from the large quiver on his back and not
even nock it to the bow, simply flicking it underhanded with the shaft and
head extended along the curve of his forearm.  It took a shadow only a few
feet away through the throat and it fell, gasping and dissolving into
nothing.  But there were many more, and she could see his arrows weren't
going to last forever.

     "We need to get someplace where they can't surround us!" Ukyou called,
as claws scraped off her spatula's head before she slammed it against the
enemy in front of her and knocked it sprawling.

     "A wise suggestion, but my brother seems more intent on getting
himself killed," Kodachi said, her ribbon lashing like a whip through the
ranked shadows.  "Brother, come!  We must make a strategic withdrawal, at
least from this area."

     "Nay, sister!" Kuno said.  He was getting further and further ahead of
Kodachi now; the shadows seemed to shrink away from the scarlet light of
the blade.  "This foulness must be slain!"

     Shel'Negroth burbled metalically.  "Foolish boy!  You can no more slay
me then you can this city!"

     She waved her tentacles, lashing the air, and laughed again.  "Oh, you
may bind me, but I am the Lady of the Dark City, and I have waited ten
millenia, more even, for a time when their children would come again!
Come to die upon my black stone floors, come to spill their blood at the
hands of my children, come to be swallowed!"

     And then Kuno was closing with her, and he was close enough to see how
the vast bulk of her body did not move across the floor so much as it did
through it.

     And he could see how the pillars, the pillars that stretched randomly
from floor to ceiling, were not pillars at all, but impossibly huge,
glistening bulks of tenticular flesh that pulsed softly.

     He sucked in a breath, holding back bile at the hideous foulness of
the dark city and its mistress.

     <Slay her,> the sword whispered.  <Slay her and her city.>

     And the last of the shadows were gone from his path, and he was in
front of Shel'Negroth.  "FOULNESS, I SAY YE ARE!  UNCLEAN AND FILTH AND
ABOMINATION!"

     "Oh, yes..." Shel'Negroth hissed.  Her two main tentacles lashed out,
and Kuno cleaved both of them away in one quick motion, but Shel'Negroth
did not scream but laugh.

     And then Kuno leapt, brought the sword down, and split her down the
middle, tearing apart head and body before finally yanking the sword free.

     The shadows that were her children gave an awful cry, as Kuno stood
and watched the bulk collapse in front of him in a spatter of black fluid.
The few drops that spattered on his hands and face burned.

     The others pressed forward, driving the shadows back and clearing a
circle.  They quickly joined Kuno.

     "Nice work, Kuno," Ukyou said.  "You were kinda freaking out for a
minute there, but..."

     The shadows were continuing to wail, but there was something different
in the tone now.

     Laughter.

     "FOOLS!" the voice echoed from the walls, and the pillars, and the
very floor itself.  On the body of Shel'Negroth, rent flesh began to knit
back together.  "YOU CAN BUT STOP THIS BODY FOR A SHORT TIME!  I AM THE
CITY, AND THE CITY IS ME!"

     "So be it," Kuno said smoothly.  "Let then this city die, and your
abomination die with it."

     Then he whirled, crossed the floor in a few quick steps, and cleaved
through the closest pillar, which was now pulsing darkly.

     Now the cry that echoed from the walls was pure pain.  The ground
shook beneath them, and the shadows screeched and vanished, flowing back
into the darkness beyond the range of the light.  Shel'Negroth screamed and
collasped, flowing into the floor and sealing her passage with dark,
featureless stone that looked as if it had been there for thousands of
years.

     "KUNO!  Are you crazy?" Ukyou said.

     "Yes," Kodachi breathed.  "Look at his eyes..."

     He turned, and they could see that his eyes now shone with the same
red light as the sword.  "My name be not Kuno.  I am the death of foulness,
the cleansing fire.  I shall destroy this place of abomination."

     He smiled terribly, and sliced through a second pillar.

     "If you are so intent on bringing the ceiling down on top of all your
heads, I am glad to oblige..." something hissed in the darkness, the voice
choking on its own pain.

     And metallic laughter rang in the air as the ceiling overhead began to
collaspe.


**********

     The floor buckled and pitched suddenly beneath Ranma's feet; he and
the others with him stumbled and almost fell.  There was a crash up ahead,
and the whole corridor shook again.

     "What the hell-" Ranma said, but he was cut off when he heard a voice
wailing, someone crying as if their heart would break.

     It was Konatsu.

     They began to run faster.

**********

     "NO!  UKYOU!" Konatsu screamed, scrabbling at the pile of rubble.
"Ukyou!"

     "There... there's nothing to be done..." Kodachi said, her face pale
and shocked from where she stood slightly behind him.

     "No..." Konatsu whispered brokenly from where he knelt in the passage.
The last few seconds looped themselves back and forth in his mind
hideously.

     The ceiling falling.  Running for the exit as fast as they could.

     Hearing Ukyou yell.  Turning to see her stumble and fall.

     Seeing Shigeki throw himself at her as if he could somehow shield her.

     Beginning to turn back, thinking he could somehow do something, though
Ukyou was now a dozen feet behind him.  Kodachi grabbing his arm, yanking
him out into the passageway, screaming at him.

     Just before a thousand tons of stone smashed down into the chamber
with a sound so impossibly loud it washed away all sense of anything else,
as if sound could somehow render you blind and mute along with deaf.

     He vaguely heard footsteps, running footsteps.  The rubble was piled
about five feet high, in huge chunks of slick black stone.  Perhaps he
could dig through, perhaps she'd somehow...

     He collapsed, sobbing pitifully, even though he'd heard somewhere that
real men weren't supposed to cry, that real men weren't supposed to cry,
that real men weren't supposed to cry...

     And someone was gently touching his arm , crying with him, whispering
softly.

     And other people were shouting questions.  "What happened?  What
happened?  Was there anyone in there?"

     "He... The ceiling came down," the person touching him said.
"Ukyou... and my brother..."

**********

     Soun stepped to the side, moving with speed he hadn't known he had
anymore, and as the thing flashed by him, he caught it in ribs that felt
like iron with a kick.  That seemed to hurt it at least, and it whirled and
tore at the shoulder of his gi, claws getting away with a few scraps of
flesh.  He punched it in the face, snapping fangs just barely missing his
hand.

     Then it went inky and malleable again, and came at him.

     "HAPPO TSURISEN GAESHI!"

     The blast caught the thing and ripped it in half at the waist.  It
shrieked and fell, stumbling forward and going half-solid again before
dying with green-black fluid spilling from its torn midsection.

     "Oh..." Hinako said, still an adult.  "I... I killed it..."

     She sounded on the verge of tears, and Soun wasn't much further away.

     "It's alright," he said, trying to remain calm.  "Are... are you
alright?"

     "Yes," Hinako said.  She stood up from where the thing had dropped
her, and Soun looked away as she adjusted her clothing.  "How's Genma?"

     Soun knelt and checked.  He sighed with relief.  "He's going back to
normal."

     The floor heaved suddenly, and they heard a distanct crash.  Hinako
stumbled.  Soun caught her, then coughed nervously.  "Excuse me."

     He looked around.  "That didn't sound good."

     Genma groaned and opened his eyes.  "Father..."

     Soun blinked.  "What was that, Saotome?"

     "Nothing, Tendo," Genma said.  "I... nothing."

     "We'd best get moving," Soun said after a moment.

     Genma stood up, still looking a little shaky.  "Yes.  We must find our
children."

     The three of them began to walk.

**********

     Shampoo struggled to her feet, and promptly fell back down against the
wall as her body screamed in protest.  Tensai's footsteps were coming
closer and closer.

     <I will not scream,> she told herself.  <I will be brave until the
end.>

     "Mousse," she called softly, her words echoing in the darkness.

     There was no answer.

     Tears of grief began to mingle with the tears of pain in her eyes.
The thought that Mousse might be gone tore at her in a way she had never
imagined it could have.  She thought of his face, his eyes, his foolish
bravery in the face of all things, always trying to protect her even if she
didn't need it.

     "I had not thought you capable of crying for another," Tensai said
softly, his deep voice rich and warm in the darkness.  "Yet you do.  You
cry for him.  Why?"

     "<Because he is my friend,>" Shampoo sobbed, not even knowing if
Tensai could understand Chinese.  "<And because I love him.>"

     The words were revelation even to her, but she realized they were
true.  And she had never told him, never told him that she loved him.

     And now the footsteps were coming closer, but they did not seem harsh
anymore.  There was a softness to them.

     "Mother, I..." she heard Tensai say.  "Mother, this is wrong.  She is
so young, mother.  Perhaps she is only misguided.  And she is helpless,
mother.  You wish me to cause her more pain?  She deserves at least a
clean... I... I..."

     The golden flow flickered, just on the edge of her vision.

     Someone began to weep softly in the darkness.  "No, mother, no.  I...
I..."

     A change came over his voice.  "Yes," he said coldly.  "Yes, mother."

     "No, Tensai," the source of the golden glow said, stepping into view
from around the passageway.  "No.  Deny it, boy.  That thing is not
Amaterasu; that thing is not your mother."

     Happosai's face looked old and tired, but there was fierce, awful
determination in it.  The golden aura flickered around him, lighting the
darkness, letting Shampoo see Tensai with his face cold and hard as if
sculpted from iron, letting her see Mousse crumpled against a block of
stone, still and motionless.

     "Liar," Tensai said.  "You are a liar.  You are all liars; I am her
son!  I am the salvation of this land!"

     "Look around you, boy," Happosai said gently, and there was such
compassion and a sense of terrible, terrible weariness and loss in his
voice that Shampoo began to weep from sadness as well as pain, although
she barely understood why.  "Is this the kingdom of the Queen of Heaven,
Tensai?  This place of darkness?  Would Amaterasu live in a kingdom of
dead stone where no sunlight can reach?"

     "She is imprisoned," Tensai said.  "I... I must free her..."

     "But there was nothing to free," Happosai said.  "Or at least not what
you thought, Tensai.  This place looks not like heaven to me, Tensai.  More
like hell."

     Tensai's face looked stricken in the golden glow.  He made a motion as
if to move forward, and then turned and ran, his footsteps erratic now as
he made his way down one of the passages.

     "Oh, Tensai," Happosai said.  He sighed and walked slowly over to
stand by Shampoo, looking down at her with an expression that she'd never
imagined Happosai capable of having.  There was no lust, no lechery, only a
kind of gentle, almost fatherly, affection.

     "Did he hurt you badly, dear Shampoo?" he asked.

     "My leg," Shampoo said quietly.  "Bad cut."

     Happosai knelt down by her and carefully examined the wound.  "It's
not deep.  I'll bandage it."

     He did so, tearing off a strip of cloth from the lower leg of her
pants.  She could see his hands shaking as he did so, sweat beading his
forehead.  He licked his lips nervously, his eyes gleaming strangely in the
golden light.  But he made no move to touch anything more than he needed
to.

     "Mousse?" Shampoo said.  "Is... Is Mousse okay?"

     Happosai walked the short distance and checked on the boy.  "He's had
a few hard knocks on the head, but he's alive.  I... he held back.  He must
have."

     He sat back down by Shampoo and sighed.  His aura was still glowing
golden, a bright, shining gold, healthy and warm and comforting.  It
reminded her for some reason of fires burning in the village square during
one of the Amazon festivals, the fires in which her great-grandmother had
told her you could see the spirits of your ancestors if you looked hard
enough.

     "You know, I've finally realized what Cologne saw that I never did,"
he said.  "You can bury the past as much as you want, but it'll always come
back to haunt you.  I've tried to forget it all; I've tried to forget the
times before I had this voice whispering inside my head, this thing inside
my body.  I've tried to deny what happened, to say it was not my
responsibility, but I see now that it was ours.  We gave that thing the
window into our son, and he took it.  Maybe, just maybe..."

     He trailed off, then spoke again.  "I may say that his father died a
long time ago, and I guess maybe he did die.  At least, the man he was can
never return.  But it's still my blood that flows in his veins, and he's
still my son."

     Shampoo was silent, shocked in the face of Happosai's speech.  He
smiled, softly and sadly, and continued.

     "I'm sorry I told Kitzuiri to hurry up with his story," Happosai said.
"The poetic version is very beautiful.  I thought it was."

     He began to speak, his words in a rhthym.  "To undo the undoing of the
misguided one, blood must be spilled in the place without sun.  Under the
earth must the misguided fool, spill blood of his kin or the darkness may
rule."

     He sighed again.  "That's just a small part of it.  I guess the story
wasn't just a history, it was a kind of prophecy as well.  Only one who
knows not what he does may undo that which must not be undone.  And to undo
what the misguided one does, blood must be spilled.  Blood of his kin."

     He looked at Shampoo.  "That means you or I, dear child."

     He turned his back to her.  "I guess it's time.  I've had a long
enough life, and a fun one, I guess.  I could give a lot of reasons why I'm
doing this; I could say it's because I'm willing to give up my life to save
the world, or because I don't want you young people to suffer because of
our mistakes.  But you know, I really think I'm doing this for selfish
reasons."

     She saw one withered fist clench.  "I'm doing this because I'm mad.
I'm mad because that thing, whatever you want to call it, the abomination,
the Herald, or whatever, it took from me the best thing I ever had.
Cologne and I may not have got along all the time, but we had love, at
least for a little while.  And maybe we could have worked things out; if
that thing hadn't taken our son and twisted him, played with him like a
toy.  Maybe I could have been your great-grandfather, instead of just some
twisted old lech who happens to know a lot of martial arts.  I used to
think that might made right, but now I see that all my strength is nothing
if I have no determination.  I can't fight for the sake of fighting; I have
to have something to fight for.  Something better than underwear or a quick
grope."

     He looked back at her.  "Even now, you wouldn't believe the thoughts
that are running through my head.  You're practically helpless, while I'm
still strong.  I always had an eye for the ladies in my youth, but I never
had a voice that whispered inside my head until that thing came.  I've
spent two centuries indulging that voice; I guess it's about time I started
denying it again."

     He smiled softly at her.  "I guess I'm doing this because this thing
took away from me any chance I might have had to lead a life I could be
proud of.  And that really pisses me off."

     His smile disappeared, and he looked sad and old.  "Do... do you think
you could tell them all?  Tell them I'm sorry for all that I've done; tell
them I didn't run away in the end?"

     "Yes," Shampoo said softly.  "Yes, I tell them."

     "Thank you," Happosai said.  "I guess you'll need this more than I
will.  I can make my own light now, for the time I'll need it."

     Happosai reached into his clothing and walked over, handing her the
flashlight he had no need of.  Their hands brushed, only for a moment.
"You have her eyes..." he whispered, so softly she almost didn't hear him.

     Without another word, he turned and walked into the darkness,
following the path Tensai had taken.  Shampoo watched him go until the glow
he cast was only a pinprick, and then it was gone entirely.

**********

     "Oh no..." Ranma said, dropping to his knees.  "Ucchan... Kuno..."

     "It was his fault," Konatsu said, sobbing hysterically.  "He... he
brought the ceiling down."

     Kodachi slapped him, not hard, but it was like a gunshot amidst the
silence.  "My brother lies in there, and you can but blame him!  You saw
what he looked like; that damned sword, that awful thing-"

     "I... I'm sorry," Konatsu said, some control coming back into his
voice.  "I... I... Ukyou..."

     Kodachi put a hand on his shoulder.  "We all feel grief, but we must
carry on.  Would they not have wanted it that way?  They may not be the
last to fall; this night is hardly done."

     He looked at the face of the girl before him, tears streaming down her
face, tracking along pale lines of scar tissue along each cheek.

     "I... I know," he said.  "But... it hurts so much.  Why does it hurt
so much?  Men... men aren't supposed to cry like this... I..."

     Akane knelt down beside them.  "Konatsu, it's okay.  It's okay to cry;
but we have to fight this thing.  We can't let this beat us."

     Ryoga was beside Ranma, tears streaming silently down his face as he
looked at the rubble that covered most of the room beyond the passageway.
Their flashlights showed only dark, crumbled stone.

     "There's no chance, is there?" Ranma said softly.

     Ryoga only bowed his head.

     "Oh, Ucchan," Ranma said.  "Oh geez... Kuno and Shigeki..."

     "I am sorry for the loss of your friends," Kitzuiri said softly.  The
sphere of light bobbed above his head.  "But... we must move on.  We must
find the source."

     There was the sound of stone shifting, and then an explosion of red
light flashed across their eyes.

     Kuno, his body glowing dark red, crimson wreathing his limbs like
fire, carrying a sword that glowed an even darker red, was pulling himself
from the rubble.  His clothes were dirty and shredded, but he himself was
untouched.

     "Oh, what power," he said, and his voice was awful to hear, drained of
all emotion but raw fury and hatred.  "Power enough to tear apart the
abominations as if they were paper... My duty goes unfulfilled..."

     And the sword pulsed darkly in his hand.

     "Oh, gods," the kitsune said.  The sphere of light dimmed slightly.
"Where in all the world did he get that sword?"

     "It's been in our family for ages," Kodachi said, rising up and
looking in disbelief at her brother.  "It... it never seemed a good weapon
before."

     "Oh yes, it's a very, very bad weapon..." Kitzuiri said.  "That is
Fuwaken, the blade of strife."

     "What?" Kodachi said, turning her tearstained face away from her
brother to look at the spirit.  "What do you mean?"

     "It is an awful thing," he said, shuddering slightly.  "A thing of
darkness, forged to slay the darkness.  It was given only to those who felt
they had dishonoured themselves beyond any measure.  They would go off
alone, to slay as many of the unnatural things as they could, and when
they fell their honour would be restored.  And the sword would somehow
find its way to its new owner, waiting for when the time was right."

     "Who art thou?" Kuno called.  "Who art thou who knows of Fuwaken?"

     "I am Kitzuiri Oshisa no Inari," Kitzuiri yelled back.  "Release your
hold upon him."

     "He chooses this path," Kuno called, but it didn't sound like Kuno.

     "You choose it for him," Kitzuiri said.

     "Brother, please, put down the sword," Kodachi called.

     "I cannot," Kuno said, and he was Kuno now.  "I... I have dishonoured
myself.  My conduct towards Ranma Saotome and Akane Tendo shames me.  There
is naught left for I but to break this worthless weapon that is myself upon
the very gate of hell if need be, and in breaking perhaps break some of
that place's power."

     He turned and began to walk, the sword pulsing bloody as a vein in his
hands.

     "KUNO!" Ranma called.  "KUNO, YOU IDIOT!  I FORGIVE YOU!  AKANE
FORGIVES YOU!  PUT DOWN THE SWORD!"

     He continued to walk, picking his way through the rubble, and Ranma
swore and began to climb up the rubble to go after him.

     Kodachi stopped him with a hand on his arm.  "No.  You must go and
find the true enemy; I shall save my brother, if such a thing can be done."

     "You can't go alone," Ryoga said.

     Kodachi smiled at him, and their was terrible sadness in that smile.
"You do not understand...  I must go alone."

     She was onto the rubble in one quick leap; Kuno was already making his
way down one of the other passageways, dimly illuminated by a red glow.

     "If... If I do not make it back, please tell Hikaru I am sorry,"
Kodachi said.  "And tell him I cared for him.  More than perhaps even he
knew."

     "Good luck," Ranma said.  "I know we'll see you two soon.  Both of
you."

     Kodachi nodded and headed after her brother.  Ranma looked around.
Ryoga was staring with his fists clenched at the rubble-filled chamber.
Konatsu was still weeping on the floor, as Akane tried helplessly to
comfort him.  Kitzuiri had his eyes closed and his head bowed, and the
sphere of light was dim and indistinct.

     Ranma looked at the rubble, and realized he'd been crying for some
time now.  Underneath it, somewhere, there must be the body of his oldest
friend, but that was not all.  There was something else, something he could
not remember, some other loss...

     But it was still not over; this long, dark time was still far from
over.  It would not be over until they knew that the sun shone again, that
the seals bound the abominations again.  Until then, they could not grieve.

     He realized, with dull acceptance, that the task of leader had fallen
to him now.  The kitsune was more knowledgeable, but he was not a leader.

     "Come on," he said quietly, choking back his tears.  "Kitzuiri, can
you show us which way to go?  You can feel him, right?  You can feel the
one who has done this?"

     "Yes," Kitzuiri said, his eyes still closed.  "I can feel him."

     "Then let's go get him," Ranma said.  "Let's go stop this thing.  For
Ucchan."

     He didn't mention other names; his father, Mr. Tendo, Hinako-sensei,
Shampoo, Mousse, Happosai, Kodachi, Kuno.  They were not here; they might
not make it back either.  But his grief right now was too great to consider
that, for to consider that would be to engulf himself in such sorrow that
he would not be able to force back the sorrow and continue to fight.

**********
     
     The ceiling was falling, the stone was cracking, the laughter was
ringing in her ears, ringing horribly, and she was running, but then
something tripped her and she fell, and knew she was dead, and then someone
threw themselves on top of her. 

     "I bring this one to see if she shall be the one."

     And she could hear stone crashing down around them like thunder, but
it was growing distant like a retreating storm.  Her body was tingling
everywhere, and she felt as if she were floating slowly and relaxingly on a
peaceful river.
     
     Then the river turned to a waterfall, and she fell a thousand feet and
landed gently as a feather on a cool wooden floor.  Her body was
hypersensitive; she could feel the shape of every board, the metal heads of
every nail, the small variances between the grain of the wood.

     "You alright?" Shigeki asked, his voice sounding unbelievably loud.
He was lying beside her on the floor, breathing heavily.

     "Yeah," Ukyou said after a moment.

     "Good."

     "Where are we?" she said, standing up on shaky legs.  The room they
were in looked like a small study; it was cool, but not uncomfortably so.
A candle burned brightly on a large table, and several shelves of books
were scattered throughout the room.  There was a small door in one corner,
and curtains of a dark grey colour were drawn closed in another over a
window.

     "This is my place, I guess," Shigeki said as he stood up as well.  "My
sanctuary."

     "How... how did we get here?" Ukyou said.

     "There was no other way to save you from the collapse," Shigeki said
softly.

     "Wha... What about Konatsu and the others?" Ukyou said.

     "I could do nothing for them," Shigeki said sadly.

     "Why?  Why not?" Ukyou whispered.

     "Because they are not you," he said quietly.  "I could not bring them
here."

     "What... what do you mean?" Ukyou said.

     "Come to the window, Ukyou," Shigeki said.  He walked slowly towards
the curtained window, waiting for her to follow.  She came and stood by
him, and he gripped the curtains with long, thin fingers and tugged them
open.

     Ukyou gasped.  Outside were whirls of colour, bright and eyecatching,
blue and green and orange in a kaleidoscope of light.  They were sky and
clouds and rain and everything in between, patterns and formations that the
eye could not quite describe.

     "What... what..." she said.  "It's... strange... but..."

     "You get used to it after a while," Shigeki said quietly.  "I've had a
long time."

     "How long?" Ukyou said gently.

     "Six hundred years," Shigeki said.

     "Why?" Ukyou said.

     "Because I am the hunter," Shigeki said.  "It is my blessing and my
curse, and more than anything it is my duty."

     "What's going on, Shigeki?" Ukyou said.  "Just what are you?  Just
what makes me so special?"

     "You have the potential to be my sucessor," Shigeki said.

     Ukyou blinked.  "What?  I don't want to-"

     "Do you think I did?" Shigeki said.  "It is not a matter of choice."

     He glanced at her.  "You were chosen, surely as I was chosen, surely
as Tensai was chosen."

     "Tensai?" Ukyou said.  "You mean Cologne's-"

     "Yes," Shigeki said.  "He could have been the succesor.  But the
darkness found him, and claimed him as its own."

     "Oh," Ukyou said.  "Then what's going to happen to me?"

     "It depends," Shigeki said.  "Throughout life, if one is chosen to be
the hunter, you endure much loss.  Loss of love, loss of faith, loss of
friends and family.  It prepares you for the most awful of all losses; the
loss of your memory."

     "Like amnesia?" Ukyou asked.

     Shigeki smiled and shook his head.  "No.  Not your own memory,
although my own thoughts often grow jumbled after six hundred years.  But
the loss of other's memories of you."

     "What?" Ukyou asked.  "Is that why Happosai-"

     Shigeki nodded.  "As long as I come here on my own, I am alright.  But
as soon as I bring another back here, whether they succeed me or not, then
my memory shall fade."

     "Then it's not a sure thing?" Ukyou said hopefully.

     "No," Shigeki said, and her heart ached at the sorrow in his voice.
"I would not wish this upon anyone, but I am so weary, so tired... of
hunting, of killing, of being forgotten... I want only to rest."

     "I'm sorry," Ukyou said.  "If I could somehow..."

     "But you cannot," Shigeki said, looking at her sadly.  "That is why
you were chosen, I think.  Because you would be willing to give all of
yourself if it would stop one person from feeling pain.  You have known
loss, Ukyou Kuonji, but you have not allowed it to break you."

     She flushed slightly.  "It's not..."

     "No, it is," Shigeki said softly.  "It is not strength and power that
are truly needed for this duty, but compassion and self-sacrifice.  For
there is no reward in it.  Your name is not even remembered in the end, by
those you might call friend or comrade under any other circumstance.  Until
you either take on the mantle of the hunter or have it taken from you, you
will know little but loss."

     He idly stroked a hand through his dark hair.  "That boy... Konatsu.
How do you feel about him?"

     "I... I don't know," Ukyou said.  "It's so confusing, you know..."

     "No," Shigeki said.  "I don't.  It has been a very long time since..."

     He bowed his head.  "Arisa..."

     "Who was Arisa?" Ukyou said softly.

     "She was a girl I loved," Shigeki said.  "A long time ago.  So long
ago it does not matter anymore."

     "Don't... don't you want to tell me about her?" Ukyou asked.

     "She was very beautiful," Shigeki said.  "And gentle, so gentle.  She
loved life, loved beauty..."

     He sighed.  "She died.  So did many of my friends and family."

     Ukyou was silent, watching with sadness as a few tears slipped down
his face as he talked.  "It was so senseless.  The plague, the sickness.  I
didn't know what to do, so I wandered.  And I met him.  Nobuo, who carried
the hunter's duty before me.  I trained under him, at first, learned how to
use the bow, how to hunt, how to lurk within the shadows.  How to kill so
that those things that should not walk upon the earth do not.  Then he told
me what he truly was, and he gave to me the Hunter's Kiss."

     "What?" Ukyou said.

     "It either removes or bestows the duty of the hunter," Shigeki said.
"To me, it gave the duty and to him it gave rest after nine hundred years."

     "What... what happened to him?" Ukyou asked.

     Shigeki smiled slightly.  "Even I don't quite remember... he changed,
I think.  Like I've changed, over the years.  Every time I remove the gift
from a potential succesor, my body changes.  My bones lengthen, I get
taller, lighter, faster.  I lose my strength, get more fragile, more easily
injured, but for one such as me it doesn't really matter."

     "What do you mean, one such as you?" Ukyou asked.

     "I cannot die," Shigeki said simply.  "My wounds heal almost
instantly, although I may feel weak for days afterwards.  Even if I am
killed, I will rise again.  My hunt can only be ended by the passing on of
the duty."
     
     "Oh my god..." Ukyou said.  "Do you mean you've... died before?"

     "Many times," Shigeki said.  "The difference is, I come back."

     "What... what's it like?" Ukyou asked.

     "Can't really remember," Shigeki said.  "Probably best that way."

     "My god..." Ukyou said again.  She felt a sudden urge to touch him,
see if he was real.  Her hand reached up and gently stroked his face; he
seemed surprised, but smiled at her.  His flesh was warm, the sharp
features of his thin face defined and long under her fingers.

     "I am forgotten by all," Shigeki said softly.  "All but my succesors,
or those who could have been them.  They remember me always."

     He looked at her, smiled.  "It is time to see if you shall be my
succesor, Ukyou Kuonji."

     "And if I am?" Ukyou asked in a small voice.  He put his hand over
hers where it rested on his face and smiled.

     "Then I am sorry," he said softly.  "But that is the way it must be.
Your memory will slip from the minds of your friends, from the minds of all
who have known you.  They shall not ever remember you, although perhaps at
times they will have vague flashes.  You will feel the call of many things,
and you must answer the call.  You will hunt; you will kill.  You will do
all that one person can to hold back the darkness, if you so choose."

     "Doesn't sound too bad," Ukyou said softly.

     "It gets a little tiring after six centuries," Shigeki said with
rueful weariness, and a vague sense of bitter humour.

     He pulled her hand from his face, put it gently at her side, and
smiled again.  He towered above her, tall and narrow-faced and thin, and
not handsome in any way, but there was a quality to him, a nobility, that
made him very attractive in that moment.

     For some reason, she found herself wanting to kiss him.  But she held
back.  He put his hands on her shoulder and whispered a few words she
didn't hear.  Then he bent down and pressed his lips to her forehead.

     And her life was passing before her eyes, like your life was supposed
to pass before your eyes when you died.  It was rushing by, so quickly, too
quickly, only able to grab a few images.  Vague memories of childhood, of
learning to crawl, to walk, to speak.  Her father, gruff but loving, her
mother a contrast in manner but not in love, but taken from them early, so
early, too early.  On the road with her father, going from place to place,
the cart the only true home they had.  Meeting Ranma, knowing Ranma, losing
Ranma, the long and terrible interval between when she threw all her pain
and loss into training, abandoning her gender, abandoning her love,
abandoning everything but vengeance.

     More now, not in order, images flashing by seemingly randomly.
Meeting Ranma again, finding herself able to love again, slowly realizing
that he did not love her back, convinced that somehow she could change
things.  The wedding, the horrible few weeks after when he wouldn't speak
to her.

     Staying over at the Tendo house as the killer roamed the area, finally
truly telling him she loved him, knowing it was not returned.  Near death,
so near death, the carrion stink of the gaki choking everything.  Then
gone, then light, such light, and the light faded, and from the light came
more images.  The battle in the alley against Stalford's servants, the dead
men with their black-sewn eyes and mouths.

     The island, the inhuman people of Kappamura, the terrible pity she
felt for Satoshi Okamoto, and the even more terrible horror of what he
truly was.  The shattering of the Spire, and the light, so much more light,
seemingly endless expanse of light, bright and warm and beautiful so
beautiful she'd forgotten how beautiful it had been, they'd all forgotten,
for how could you remember something so beautiful, and then the cool grass
of the Furinkan athletic field beneath them, crisp and clean and so alive,
so beautiful.

     The dreams, all the dreams, the dreams and Ranma and her attempts to
escape them both.  And how that escape had become a prison in itself, and
her freedom, finally freedom, after ten years of caging herself.

     Konatsu's return, the strange impulses she now felt around him, the
giddiness.  The night of chaos, when Cologne died and the Tendo house was
attacked.  The horror of the thing that rode Richard Stalford's body, and
the awful sound of the name she thought she'd forgotten, but it was still
there, there inside her, and now it was being drawn out and she was living
it again, living it all again, barely and vaguely conscious of the lips
pressed to her forehead, and then they were there, the last memory, of lips
pressed to her forehead and every part of her, every iota of Ukyou Kuonji,
every pain and joy and sorrow and triumph, it gathered itself up into a
single bright thing and stabbed out from her like a spear cast by an
immortal arm.

     For a moment, there was a void within her, and she was empty of all,
and then something moved to fill the void.  A feeling of terrible loss,
terrible loneliness.  So many memories, so many more than hers, but all of
them dark, all of them terrible.  Dying by so many things, but rising
again, bone-weary, but going on, trudging on like a traveller in the desert
who believes that just beyond the next rise will be an oasis that he cannot
yet see.

     Temptation, so much temptation.  To stop the fight, to lay down the
hunter's weapons and rest, rest for a day, a month, a year, a century.  But
no rest; needing not sleep or food, but needing the hunt more than anyone
ever needed those two things.

     Lonely, always so lonely.  Always forgotten, eventually, except by a
few.  Wanting not to reach out, to form bonds, forming them anyway, and
then having them broken, having all of it forgotten.  And even those who
remembered, even those who could remember, they too would eventually die
and fade, and he would go on, always on.  Always alone.  Always forgotten.
A thing of light confined to darkness.

     But always below that, below the weariness, below the temptation,
there was something else.  A core of compassion, a just soul that knew with
every part of his being that what he did was necessary, what he did was
right.  And he went on, always on, knowing he would be forgotten, but
knowing also that one day, one day, he would have rest.  Never, ever losing
hope.

     "Oh my god," Ukyou whispered, and she realized she was crying, and
then she realized she was pressing her lips to his, desperately needing him
in that moment for some reason she did not know, tears streaming down her
face, pulling his head down to kiss him, feeling the shape, the thin,
delicate shape of his face, tasting him, trying to know him even more than
she already did.

     And thin hands were on her shoulders, pushing her gently but firmly
away.  "No."

     The word was finality, the word was release, and she recovered herself
some, but not completely.

     She looked at him.  Ukyou Kuonji looked at Shigeki Kiyokuro, at the
forgotten one, at the one who dies but lives again.  At the hunter.

     And she realized that she still wanted him, still wanted to show him
somehow that she would remember, that someone would remember, that he was
not alone.

     "Please..." she said, looking at him deep-set eyes, at the sharp
angles of his face.  "You are so... you are so..."

     She knew it wouldn't sound right, coming out this way, but there were
no other words to use.  "You are so good..."

     "Perhaps I am," he said, as if he did not quite believe it himself.

     "Oh, Shigeki," Ukyou said.  "It's so... lonely..."

     "Yes," he said.  "It is.  But it must be done.  If I do not do it,
then who shall?"

     "But... you are only one person...  What would..."

     "I am only one person," Shigeki said.  "But one person, one light
against the darkness, that is a more important thing than anything."

     "It... it didn't work, did it?" Ukyou said.  "I'm not your succesor."

     "No," he said, and that one word carried so much sorrow in it, but
also a strange happiness.  "My journey goes on.  What hangs over you, that
which caused you loss before, is sundered from your soul."

     She looked at him, realizing there had been a change in him.  He was
taller even than before, thinner, and his eyes were brighter and sharper
than any eyes she'd ever seen.  There was warmth in them, but it was the
warmth of a fire that would burn you if you strove to come too close.

     He brought up a hand with fingers impossibly slender and delicate, and
gently brushed a few tears from her cheek.  "You offer yourself to me, and
you are beautiful, Ukyou Kuonji.  But I cannot give you what it is you
need, and nor can you do the same for me."

     "I'm sorry," Ukyou said, blushing terribly.  "I don't... I don't know
what came over me..."

     "It is no fault of yours," he said quietly.  "It has happened before.
A bond occurs for a moment, and we feel a great attachment to the person,
for we know them, truly know them.  It is a wonderful thing, but it is also
disturbing."

     "Yeah..." Ukyou said.  "Now what?"

     "Now you will go back to your friends," Shigeki said.  "They have need
of you.  Moreso than I do."

     Ukyou almost spoke, but kept silent, for his eyes held her as surely
as any grip could have.

     "I'm so sorry," Ukyou said after a moment.

     "Do not feel sorrow for me," Shigeki said.  "It is always a choice to
become the succesor.  If you had been the right one, you still could have
chosen.  I chose to give Nobuo his rest, as I hope the one who may
succeed me shall do.  I knew where this path would lead me, and I chose it.
Given the chance, I would choose it again."

     "You know," Ukyou said.  "I think the reason that whatever it is that
causes people to be chosen chose you is the same one you said it chose me;
you would give all of yourself to make sure that one person will not feel
pain.  And that's what you've done, really.  You've given up rest, friends,
love, anything, that there might be one less person in the world who knows
pain, knows loss, knows sorrow."

     "Thank you," Shigeki said.  He nodded, indicating the door that led
from out of the room.  "Now, you should go."

     "Will... will I ever see you again?" Ukyou said.

     Shigeki shook his head.  "It is best you don't.  Best also you do not
try to remind your friends of me."

     Ukyou nodded, understanding but not quite sure why.

     "I'll go then," she said.  "But... what do I do?"

     "Step out the door," Shigeki said.  "And think of the one you wish to
be with.  Only make sure you choose the right one."

     Ukyou smiled slightly, and threw her arms around him tightly before he
could do anything to stop her.  He felt thin, so painfully thin, but there
was no fragility to him.  Beneath that thin, tall frame, there was a
strength and will that had endured six hundred years, and she knew would
endure six hundred more if he had to.

     "Goodbye," she said.  "It's been nice to know you."

     Shigeki smiled slightly, a smile she didn't see, and gently stroked
her hair for a moment, thin fingers trailing through the wave of rich
chestnut silk.  "It has been a pleasure and an honour for me to know you
and your friends.  A pleasure and an honour to fight at your sides.  A
pleasure and an honour."

     She pulled away from him finally, and walked to the door, trying to
hold back any more tears for him, because she knew he didn't want them.

     She paused and looked back with her hand on the doorhandle.

     He smiled.  "Remember me."

     Ukyou opened the door and stepped through, the tears coming now.  It
closed behind her.

     Shigeki sat down at the table and put his head in his hands.

     He stayed like that for a long time.

**********

     Tensai ran, not knowing why he ran, the words of Happosai ringing in
his ears like thunder.  He ran through the lightless depths that were
somehow lit for him, and when at least he stopped he was in a chamber much
like the one he had fled from, leaving behind the liar who he'd once called
father, and the two who were not even of this land, who were of the same
barbarian tribe that his false mother had belonged to.

     Why had he run?  Why had he not battled them?

     He did not even know.  He looked around, at the dank black stone, at
the terrible sense of infinite age this place carried.

     "Are you still imprisoned here, mother?" he asked.  "I thought I freed
you.  Why are you still here, in this lightless place?"

     Something smashed against him like a thunderbolt, and it was gone, all
gone, all the doubts and fears and worries gone, replaced only by raw cold
rage as sourceless as the fleeing he had done before.

     <They keep me here,> his mother's voice whispered, and behind the soft
tones he almost heard something awful.  <They bind me here.  Their lives
are forfeit for this.>

     "How... how can they do such a thing?" Tensai said.  "Mother, answer
me!"

     But she did not.

     Up the passageway ahead, he saw a small figure still outlined by a
golden glow approaching.

     "It's time to end this, Tensai," the old man said as he stepped into
the chamber.  There was no rubble to disrupt it this time, only the smooth
black floor, mirrored by the ceiling a hundred feet above.

     "You're right, 'father'," Tensai said, and the rage and hatred and
mockery in his tone was an awful thing to hear.  He was stripped of all
traces of regret or doubt; he brought up the naginata and smiled grimly.

     "This has gone on over two hundred years too long," Happosai said
softly, drawing his pipe, letting the familiar shape of the weapon rest
loosely in one hand.  "One last battle for me, then."

     And they began.

**********

     Shampoo stumbled to her feet a few minutes after Happosai left, and
made her way with agonizing slowness to Mousse's side.  Her leg was growing
stiff and numb, but it was bandaged now, at least.  The flashlight shone
brightly, lighting the way as she came to sit down beside him.

     "Oh Mousse," she said quietly, stroking back some of the dark hair and
smiling gently at him.  There were still tears in her eyes, the memory of
Happosai slowly walking away into the darkness lingering with her still.

     "Shampoo..." he murmured weakly.  "Are... are you alright?"

     "Yes," Shampoo said, although her whole body hurt from the battering
Tensai had given her.  "I fine."

     "Okay then..." he said.  "I think I'll go to sleep now..."

     She frowned with concern, and gently felt around the back of his head,
where the lump he'd gotten earlier had been joined by another even larger
one.

     "No sleep," she said vehemently.  "You have head injury.  Go to sleep,
maybe never wake up."

     "But I'm so tired..." Mousse said.

     "Stay awake for Shampoo," Shampoo said.  "If... if Happosai right,
then this be over soon."

     "What... what did he say?" Mousse asked.

     Shampoo was about to speak, but then she heard footsteps approaching,
several sets of them.  "Hello?" she called on a hesitant urge.

     "Hello!" someone answered, a deep male voice.  "Is that you, Shampoo?"

     "Yes," Shampoo called back to the voice she recognized as Genma.  "You
okay, Genma?"

     There was a pause.  "Yes," Genma finally answered.  Genma stepped out
of a passageway and into the chamber, the beam of his flashlight stabbing
the darkness.  Soun and Hinako followed behind him.

     "My god, you're a mess, girl," Genma said as he came close enough to
see Shampoo.

     "Ran into Tensai," Shampoo said.  "Happosai go off to fight him..."

     She was about to see more, but trailed off, not quite sure how to put
it.  Perhaps it would come to her later.

     "Have you seen any sign of Akane or the others?" Soun said, looking
concerned and possibly about to cry.

     Shampoo shook her head.  "No... but..."

     She paused, not sure how to express this part either.  "I... feel they
are okay.  They alright."

     Genma nodded.  "Very well, then.  Are you and Mousse well enough to
travel?"

     Shampoo looked at Mousse.  "Shampoo help him."

     She stood up, took his hand in hers, and slowly pulled him to his
feet.  He swayed woozily, and she draped his arm over her shoulders and
supported him, not caring about how it made her leg wound throb to take the
extra weight.

     "Come on then," Soun said.  "We must find the others."

     They began to walk, alone or leaning upon another for support or
giving support to one who needed it.  The beams of their flashlights lit
the darkness, dimly, but they lit it all the same.  And the darkness had to
wait until the light had passed to return.

**********

     Kodachi picked her way nimbly through the rubble-choked chamber,
heading for the passageway her brother had taken.  Here and there pillars
still stuck up, pillars that were of dark stone and not the extensions of
Shel'Negroth that her brother had hacked through.  She could see that the
entire ceiling hadn't fallen, as if the support pillars had been hacked
out; it looked more like several large holes had been blown in the black
stone throughout the chamber, raining down debris upon their heads.

     She forced herself to remain calm.  There could be no grief, nothing
yet, until she had either brought her brother back or failed.  One of their
number, a girl who had not been a friend but had at least been an ally, a
comrade-in-arms, lay beneath these tons of black stone that had fallen,
either due to her brother cutting through the pillars that were truly the
massive tentacles of the thing that had been the leader and mother of the
shadow-creatures, or due to the creature collapsing the ceiling on top of
them of them in an attempt to kill them.

     She wanted to hope for the second; it would tear her brother apart to
know that he had, even if possesed by the sword, caused Ukyou's death.

     But though she felt sadness for Ukyou's death, and for something else,
some other loss that was there on the tip of her memory, but not quite, she
had to be numb now.  Numb to allow her to save her brother, if such a thing
could be done.

     She was in the passageway now, the flashlight seeming a small thing
against the surrounding darkness and the numbing closeness of the black
stone walls.

     "You move quickly, brother," she said softly.  "This blade lends you
an obvious vitality and strength."

     The passageway continued straight for perhaps fifty feet, then forked
off in two directions.

     "Which way have you gone?" Kodachi said.  "Which way, brother?"

     She paused for a moment, as if she could somehow sense which way he
had gone.

     After a few seconds, she realized that she could.  It was not hard; it
was easy, in fact, so easy to know which direction he had taken that she
nearly didn't realize at first it was anything more than a hunch.

     But she knew with utter conviction that he had gone to the left.

     She began to follow, running swiftly and surely after her brother.

     After a few minutes, she saw a dim red glow ahead, a dim red glow that
lit a figure standing with his back to her, carrying a sword that glowed a
darker red than the rest of him.  He appeared to be studying something
intently, something that at this distance she could not see.

     "Brother," she called.

     The figure turned, and it was her brother, but there was something
else with him as well, something that set his noble face into sharp, hard
lines like the blade of a sword, that made his body tense and strung like a
wire.

     "Stay back," he said, and there was promise in his words of
consequence if she did not.  There was an awful predatory air to him that
he had never had before.

     "Tatchi," she said, using the name she'd used for him as a child,
trying to reach him.  "Tatchi, put down the sword and come away from
there."

     She came forward a few more steps, until she stood only a dozen feet
from him, and she could see what it was he studied.  A black stone slab,
nearly flush with the floor with only the barest inch of lip to set it off
from what it rested upon.  Lit by the red glow of Fuwaken, the sword of
strife, the symbols carved into it shone dark and bloody like new scars.

     Millenia old, older than history, the wards ran across the vast black
slab, carved there both by human and nonhuman hands, carved there to seal
away the things below, to seal away the abominations, the unnatural things.
To seal away the darkness.

     "She lurks down there," her brother said.  "She fled down there, back
to where they didst seal her away.  She and her children are waiting for
me, for they know my name and my name is destruction.  I shall slay them
all."

     Kodachi knew, in that moment, that if her brother were to disturb that
slab of night-dark stone, he would unleash a thing far worse than the Lady
of the Dark City.  Terrible as she had been, Kodachi knew somehow that she
was only a fraction, a small part of whatever truly lurked down there.

     "Dear brother," she said, taking a few steps closer.  "Do not go down
there, brother.  That is what they wish, brother.  Tatchi, they desire you.
They want you to unleash them."

     "Then the war shall begin again," Kuno hissed, and his eyes flared
with scarlet light.  "My edge shall sup, and I shalt have glory again."

     "Fuwaken," Kodachi said, naming the sword as the kitsune had named it.
"Release your hold upon my brother.  The time when you drank of the flesh
of the abominations is gone.  The war is won."

     "The war shall not be won," Kuno said.  "Until they are purged."

     "And shall you purge the earth to rid it of them?" Kodachi asked.
"Will you cut off the face to spite the nose?"

     "What are the lives of humans?" Kuno said, and Kodachi realized that
what she was speaking to now was not her brother.  "What are their lives?
I have drank them, and I have drank of spirit and demon, and I have drank
of the lives of things worse even than that."

     "Brother, if you are there, then hear me," Kodachi said.  "You were
weak-willed in some ways brother, as was I.  But you would never have
allowed yourself to be subsumed beneath this thing.  I know you are there,
Tatchi, and I know you can hear me.  Your dishonour is forgiven; they
forgave also mine.  You do not have to take this path into darkness,
Tatchi.  You may step back."

     Kuno's face shifted, softened for a moment, and then it was hard and
razor-sharp again.  He stepped forward, raising the sword.  "Leave us,
girl."

     "I will not leave my brother," Kodachi said.  "You have saved my life
twice, Tatchi.  Do you not remember?  I am your sister, and I now must save
you from this."

     She stepped forward.  Only a few feet separated them, and the red glow
made her close her eyes.

     She was wearing her leotard, long sleeved, and tights, for even she
had to make some concessions to the cold weather.  She took another step,
rolled up the sleeves, and held her wrists towards her brother, long-faded
scars looking bloody and new in the crimson light of the blade.

     "Remember, brother?" Kodachi said.  "Remember the first time you saved
me?"

     The blade trembled slightly in his hands.  If he moved to cut her
down, he would succeed, she knew that.  "I know how hard it was," she
continued, kneeling before him and holding out her wrists like a
supplicant.  She could hear his breathing, harsh and heavy and loud as
thunder.  "It was hard for both of us.  I was so fragile on the outside, so
weak, and you seemed so strong.  But you forced it down inside you, and it
came out in other ways.  She left us so early, brother, with no
explanation, no note, nothing.  Father would tell us nothing either, saying
only that she was gone.  Seven years without her, brother, without knowing
what had happened to her.  If she was dead or alive."

     She sucked in a deep breath, her words bringing back her own memories,
things she did not like to think of or remember.  "And then father left as
well, and we found the records.  Records of the divorce.  And the address."

     She laughed, but it came out more like a sob.  "He never told us
anything.  Even if he'd lied to us, that would have been better.  But he
would never tell us, never give us an answer to where she'd gone.  And then
he went mad and went off to Hawaii, and going through the papers..."

     She was crying now, crying like she hadn't dared to cry in years.  "I
don't even know why we went, brother.  Surely if she'd wanted to see us,
she would have contacted us, sent for us.  I guess we both believed,
somehow, that she wouldn't have just abandoned us, that she must have
somehow loved us."

     Laughter again, mixed with tears, sounding so bitter and
grief-stricken to her that it hurt to hear.  "It would have been so funny
to anyone else, you know.  Two little rich kids, getting on a plane to San
Francisco without anyone knowing.  Thirteen and twelve, the girl a fragile
little thing scared of every noise, the boy looking so strong and capable.
What a pair we made."

     She didn't even dare to look up at him, to see if her words had were
somehow reaching him.  "Wandering around, you speaking that damned
Shakespearian English to every cab driver, and none of them would take us.
Finally, we found one who spoke Japanese, and we somehow got to the house.
To the address.  She'd married again; that was why she'd had the divorce.
It was a nice house, a rich one.  You sent the cab away; we wouldn't need
it.  You believed so sincerely that she would take us in, that we would
spend the night at our mother's house.  And I believed as well."

     She heard him make a small, grieving sound, the only sound he'd made
beyond breathing since she'd started talking.  "And we went to the door,
and it was answered.  No, the lady of the house had no children.  We were
not welcome here; we would have to leave, or the police would be called.  I
think you were going to push your way by him, and then she came down the
stairs and just looked at us.  Looked at us like we were some kind of
interesting insect.  It would have been better if she'd looked at us with
hate, but it wasn't even that.  As if we weren't worth the effort, weren't
worth her time.  And she knew us; she knew who we were, and why we'd come,
and..."

     She trailed off, overcome for a moment with grief and sorrow.  "And
she didn't care.  She didn't even care that we'd come thousands of miles to
see her because she was our mother, because she'd given birth to us.  So we
did the only thing we could; we went back to the airport, called home to
Sasuke.  He was so frantic, beside himself.  He was out there as soon as
possible; it took him hours, of course, but he got there.  I don't know how
long we were waiting in that airport.  We got back home."

     She put her hands to her face as if she could somehow hold back the
words, hold back the tears.  "And I went up to my room, and locked the
door, and smashed that mirror and cut my wrists with the glass.  Then I lay
down on my bed and waited to die, because that was all I wanted to do."

     Kuno made a long, low sound.  "Dachi..." she heard him say.

     "I don't know how you knew, brother," Kodachi said.  "Maybe there has
always been some kind of bond between us, so we can know when the other
needs us, how to find them.  I don't know how you found the strength to
break down that door."

     Her voice was a whisper now.  "You stayed with me, brother, bandaged
me, would not leave until you were sure I would live.  And you never told
anyone, did you?  Not even Sasuke; you wouldn't even tell him.  I don't
know how you hid everything, but you did.  I wanted only to die, and you
forced me to live.  I hated you for that for so long, and I bound up all
that hate within me, all that rage, and I let it come forth as a new
Kodachi, a Kodachi who couldn't be hurt by anything, who would live not to
suffer but to bring suffering.  I learned the wrong lessons, Tatchi.  I
learned that to not be hurt, you have to cut yourself off from other
people, to hurt them before they can hurt you.  I cut myself off from you,
from everyone."

     She'd run out of tears now, and her throat was hoarse from crying and
talking.  "Until him.  Until dear Ranma, and all his nobility and beauty
and strength.  He saved me, without even knowing who I was, simply because
I was someone who needed help.  He became some great ideal for me; someone
who would not hurt me, who would feed my darkness with his light."

     The red glow had grown stronger and stronger, finding its way through
her closed eyes to turn the darkness blood-tinged.  "And then that thing
came, brother, and nearly killed me, and you saved me for the second time.
And I slowly realized that I was not alone, that I had never been alone.
That you had always been with me brother, even if you had no one to be with
you.  You had forced me to live, and a twisted life it was.  But I am
changed, brother.  I am not the Black Rose; I am not the thorny beauty I
once was. I am Kodachi Kuno, and you are my brother, Tatewaki Kuno."

     She sighed softly, down there in the darkness with her brother above
her, rage like a volcano making his face a terrible thing.  "And I love
you, brother.  Know that; know that you are loved by your sister.  Put down
the sword, brother.  Step from the darkness towards the light."

     Kuno gave a great, pained cry that seemed to come from deep inside
him.  Kodachi looked up, blinking her eyes open, and all she saw was a
field of scarlet.

     And then she saw her brother.

     And the sword was coming down, through the scarlet haze, bleeding
red light like blood from a wound.

**********

     Konatsu trailed behind the rest of the group, each step dragging,
grief cutting him like a knife with each foot he walked.  He tried to hold
it in, strove to hold it in, because he knew that was what men did.  Men
did not cry, men did not show their feelings, men did not clean or cook or
dress like women or...

     Right now, he hated being a man more than anything in the entire
world.

     "Ukyou," he said, and the word carried so much more.  "Why?"

     Akane looked back at him, and there was such understanding, such
sympathy and compassion on her face that it hurt to see.  "Konatsu," she
said, pausing for a moment to let him catch up to her.  Ranma was walking
ahead with Ryoga and Kitzuiri, none of them talking.  "I'm so sorry.  We're
all so sorry; she was such a good person."

     "I loved her," Konatsu said, gulping with the words.  "I loved her and
I thought one day she might love me back..."

     "We all loved her," Akane said.  "She... she deserved so much love.
More than nearly anyone I know.  She gave so much, she never asked in
return.  She... she..."

     Akane trailed off, breaking into tears.  "Oh Ukyou..."

     "You know, maybe I should stick around for my funeral," someone said
from the darkness behind them, a light voice they all knew.  "If you're all
gonna say such nice things about me, I gotta hear them."

     Akane and Konatsu paused, and up ahead the other three paused as well,
in total disbelieving shock, as Ukyou stepped out of the darkness and into
the light.

     "Hey guys," she said, smiling lightly.  The enormous trademark spatula
was held loosely, resting on one shoulder.  "I miss anything?"

     "UKYOU!" Konatsu said, not even caring that all logic and everything
else denied her existence.  He rushed towards her, wrapped her in a tight
embrace, sobbing hysterically although he thought he'd run out of tears
long ago.

     "Wait a minute," Ranma said.  "How do we know this ain't a trick?
How do we know this is... this is really..."

     He trailed off.  "That better be Ukyou, because if it's some damn
imitation that's gonna turn into something awful and eat us I'm gonna be
real pissed off."

     "No," Kitzuiri said, pleasure shining on his innocent, ageless face.
"That's her.  I can tell."

     Akane was already with Konatsu and Ukyou, embracing them both tightly,
and they were all crying, and Ranma realized he was crying as well, but he
didn't care, because it felt so good to cry.  He and Ryoga rushed up, all
things forgotten in the face of this small joy.

     Kitzuiri watched, and a small smile lit his face.  "Yeah.  It was
worth it."

     And he watched them, giving them a few minutes, because he moreso than
any other knew of what was to come.

**********

     Happosai hadn't felt like this in two and a half centuries.

     He dodged, parried, rolled, dived, and used every trick and maneuver
he knew.  And his son countered all of them, responded with maneuvers
Happosai had never seen, ones he knew his son had made up himself, and
Happosai countered those, made up moves on the spot.

     And it was glorious, glorious and wonderful.  He remembered when the
boy had taken his first steps, had made his first clumsy imitations of the
actions of his father and mother.  He'd become so strong, so skilled.  He
could have been so great, greater than his mother and father, greater even
than any fighter who had ever lived.

     But that thing had taken him, and twisted him, destroyed what he was
and everything he ever could have been.  But it had needed something first;
it had needed a boy who was utterly alone in the world, the child of two
parents whose love was like a fire that had raged high and then died.  It
had needed a boy who desperately needed to belong, but never could.

     And it had found him, and made him its servant, and he had loosed upon
the world darkness.

     Darkness that could be removed only by the spilling of blood.

     But not yet; he could feel the time was not yet right.

     And son and father dueled for the last time, within the darkness and
amidst the stone.

**********

     They'd had a short reunion with Ukyou, of necessary shortness, and now
they walked again.  Everyone wanted to walk next to Ukyou, to touch her, to
assure themselves that she was real.  And she smiled, and nodded, and
answered their questions as best she could.

     "But I saw you trip and fall," Konatsu said.  "Kodachi pulled me out
of the way, and I didn't see, but there was..."

     Ukyou looked thoughtful for a moment, thoughtful and sad.  "I... I..."

     She said a name softly, a name none of them knew or remembered.

     "Who?" Ranma asked.

     "No one," Ukyou said.  "I managed to get out another passage just in
time, but it took me a long time to find my way to you guys."

     "Oh," Konatsu said.  Somehow, parts of the story didn't add up, but
here was Ukyou, alive and before him, so that must be how it happened.

     Ukyou sighed, and kept the tears from her eyes.

     And she saw the small child look back at her, and Kitzuiri gave her a
sad look that let her know in that moment that though human minds might
forget, the minds of some others might remember.

     They walked, following Kitzuiri's lead and the bobbing sphere of
light.  They were going towards something, something they did not know, but
gradually they were heading towards the centre of this vast underground
city.  Towards the end of their journey.

     None of them knew quite how long they walked, talking and speculating
hopefully about where everyone else might be.  They assured themselves that
all was well, that their friends were alright.  They had to believe that.

     The light Kitzuiri had conjured seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer, so
gradually they did not notice until the bright sphere no longer cast any
light beyond the circle of the six of them.

     "We're nearly there," he said.  "You can feel it, can't you?"

     They could.  Conversation had died in the last few minutes to nothing,
as the darkness pressed around them like a physical thing.  They huddled
together nervously, watching the shadows cast by the light.  Where they
were now seemed even deeper, more remote, more ancient than where they had
been before.

     And then they turned the next bend in the corridor, and before them
lay the heart of darkness, the centre of this inhuman city.  The sphere of
light suddenly winked out, and left them in blackness for a moment, pure
and utter blackness that let them see nothing.

     And then a flame rose in the darkness, a flame casting impossible
amounts of light that illuminated the entire vast chamber.  It was huge,
so huge it made them feel tiny and small and insignificant as insects.

     It was octagonal in shape, with eight great pillars square and blunt
and the size of small buildings rising to the ceiling hundreds of feet
above in each of the eight points, and eight huge entrances at each face of
the octagon.  The rest of the city had been unadorned of decoration, and
this place was much the same.  There were no statues or gargoyles to break
the monotony of that slick black stone, but every surface, walls and
ceilings and floors and pillars, each was covered by line after line of
writing and symbols, loops and swirls sketched into the rock that seemed to
twist and change before their eyes in the flickering light of the flame.

     The flame that rose from the hand of the man at the centre of the
room, a full hundred feet from where they stood at one of the entrances to
this place, to the centre of the city.  He was upon a raised dais, eight
tall steps that rose over two feet off the ground each to a platform twenty
feet above the floor.  He wore an exquisitely cut dark suit, shoes polished
so they shone in the flame's light, a shirt white as fresh-fallen snow
beneath a jacket dark as a raven's wing.  The flame he'd conjured did not
move like a regular fire; it was too quick, too darting.  It was like
lightning made of red-gold fire sparked in his hand.

     And before him, floating inexplicably four feet off the ground in
front of him, was a sphere of darkness blacker even than the suit.  Light
did not, could not reflect from the sphere of darkness; it was sucked
within in an instant.  The black orb hung perfectly still but for the
occasional ripple along its dark face, as if it were water that someone had
dropped a stone into.  Somehow, there was a terrible, hungry look to the
thing, small and dark and the size perhaps of a soccer ball.

     "Welcome, children," the man said, and his voice, sharp and cruel as
any blade, bounced off the ceilings and was redoubled in its echo.  "You
have come at last.  As I knew you would."

     He laughed, and that laughter made his face more handsome and cruel
than even it had been before.  "You wouldn't believe what I've seen.  The
same stories with a million different faces, but we're all playing the same
parts.  I come, and you all come to fight me.  There is trial, and
hardship, but in the end I lose and you win.  It's all so boring after a
while."

     He shrugged.  "Time to make new stories, children.  Time to rewrite
the ending.  It can be done; I've seen it.  This little tool shows me
glimpses into lots of things.  My kin and I extend through all of it,
different aspects of the same thing.  Maybe I'm just a shadow of a shadow,
or all the others are shadows of my shadow.  But none of that matters any
more."

     "No, it doesn't," Kitzuiri said.  "Your time has come."

     "Yes it has," the Herald said.  "Yes, it has.  Let me ask you this,
humans.  Would you join with me, be my servants, worship and adore me, help
me in forging a new world?  I can give you much."

     "No," Ranma said.

     The thing snorted.  "Didn't think so.  You all still fail to realize
that I shall inevitably win.  It is written in a thousand different worlds.
We are the end of all things; we are entropy made flesh.  The end of life
is death, the end of building is destroying, the end of beauty is
corruption.  What use is beauty, what use is anything, if it cannot last
forever?"

     Kitzuiri laughed, strong and powerful, no childishness in his voice
now, no trickery.  "That is what you can never see, you poor pitiful thing.
True beauty is not found in eternity; true beauty is in transcendence, in
the knowledge that we may only gaze upon something beautiful for a short
time.  My lady is as beautiful as the rising sun, yet she pales in
comparison to the falling of cherry blossoms.  For their beauty is only for
a short second, while she is as eternal as anything can hope to be and
still be a part of this world."

     The Herald laughed.  "Even gods may die.  By fire or darkness, they
all shall die by my hand eventually."

     Kitzuiri shook his child's head sadly.  "I never understood why some
of them felt pity for you, abomination.  Now I do.  You are like a little
boy who cannot play with a toy, so you would destroy it that others cannot
enjoy it."

     The Herald's face was stricken with rage for a moment, and it seemed
as if the kitsune's words had struck somehow true.  Then his expression
twisted into a cold smile.  "Enough talk, spirit.  The time has come for
slow deaths, that you may all have the honour of being the first of my
playthings."

     He stroked his hand lightly through the air above the sphere of
darkness, as if it were a cat.  The thing seemed to ripple in response.
"And my tool's as well."

     "What is that?" Ranma whispered to Kitzuiri.  They were all still
standing in the entrance to the chamber, not sure just what to do.

     The kitsune looked at the dark sphere and shook his head.  "I don't
know."

     "You might ask one who knows," the man upon the dais said.  "And I
know.  I was there to see it forged, and it was I who awakened it only days
ago."

     He smiled and stroked a finger above the surface of the sphere, not
quite touching it.  "I remember how you named us all, spirit.  You named us
with titles that you might not speak our true names.  But you did not
understand that no matter what name you give something, you give it power.
You named me the Herald, and my message is delivered.  This is my message."

     He indicated the dark sphere.  "Now I shall name it for you, as you
name us.  It will be a name you can hear, and understand, and comprehend."

     He laughed again.  "In fact, let us give it many names.  Let us call
it Starkiller, or Lightsnuffer, or Darkbringer.  Let us call it Render of
Worlds."

     The darkness of the sphere rippled again, as if in pleasure.  He
moved the hand that held the flame, and it hung where he had left it,
lighting the room, as the sphere of darkness floated and sucked the light
the flame cast hungrily.

     The Herald moved his hands to either side of the sphere, only a
fraction of an inch from touching it.  "Yes, let us call it Render of
Worlds.  I like that name best of all."

     The sphere pulsed rapidly, beating like the heart of some vast,
invisible beast.

     Ryoga was slammed sideways into the wall as if a train had hit him.
He groaned and slid down the wall with agonizing slowness.

     "Ryoga!" Ranma said, running to his side.  His friend murmured softly
and opened his eyes.

     "Ow," he said.  Ranma turned and pointed a finger at the figure of the
Herald.

     "Listen, you..."

     Akane cried out as something invisible knocked her legs out from under
her.  Something twisted her arms behind her back as she fell, and she would
have hit her head on the black stone floor had Konatsu not caught her and
stopped her fall.

     "Be quiet and listen," the Herald said mildly.  "Or next time I'll
smash her like an eggshell; I can do it, believe me."

     Ranma glowered at the thing that looked like a man across the hundred
feet of space between them, and the thing smiled back at him and continued
to speak.  "It was to be our final weapon in the war.  We knew we would
lose; our age was ending, and the cycle was coming to a close.  But we
could ensure our cycle of ascendence would come about far sooner than any
of them had imagined.  We forged it with our own blood, and with yours,
little ones."

     Render of Worlds rippled darkly as the Herald talked.  "We drew lots
and chose ten of our number.  Ten of the great ones, the ones who should
rule, the ones whose names you pitiful things cannot hear.  We drew them
one at a time, and then each of us fell upon them and destroyed them,
binding their dying agonies eternally within Render of Worlds.  And each of
us knew that we might be next, and the ones chosen fought those who chose
them, but they were one against many, and even a god may die, eventually."

     The Herald laughed, and he waved a hand dismissively.  "When that was
done, we brought out the prisoners.  Every one we had, men and women and
children and spirits.  More than a hundred thousand, gathered in one place,
scared and frightened and stupid as cattle.  Then we fell upon them, we and
our children, and it took us a full three days to kill all of them.  And we
bound them too within Render of Worlds.  Then we wove our spells around it,
wove our power within it, and gave it more power than any of us.  Power to
grind cities to dust if we wished, but precise enough to knock a bird from
the air or smash a single ant as well."

     He paused for a moment, and smiled terribly.  "Power enough to put out
the sun.  But you had been at work as well, you pathetic little children,
you and your weak gods.  You bound us, and you bound Render of Worlds as
well.  You bound me within that weak frame, snuffed out my power for
thousands of years, left me to wander as a human."

     There was terrible rage, terrible hate in his voice now.  "But I grew
strong.  I grew stronger than my kin, and I caused more death than any of
them ever did.  Even before you bound us, I worked in different ways, and
you couldn't stop all of them with your seals."

     He laughed.  "I grew strong, and I dreamed always of Render of Worlds,
of Starkiller, of what would give me power over all the others, over
everything.  None of my kin seem able to comprehend their own immortality;
we are ageless, outside any boundary time places upon any of you.  We have
all the time we need.  All they want to do is destroy you and crack this
planet in half, as we have cracked so many others in so many different
times and places.  But after thousands of years walking among you, I've
discovered something interesting."

     Somehow, even at this distance, they could see his eyes, and they were
shining darkly with joy.  "I actually rather like you all.  You're so
funny, so creative, so entertaining.  You are pleasant toys, though you
break so easily.  I could snuff out life on this planet in an instant with
Render of Worlds; I could smash your cities, boil your seas, turn the
atmosphere to poison.  But I would rather see what you all do, now that I
have put out your star.  I want to see how long you will cling to life,
imagining that somehow the light will return.  But the light will never
return, because I do not wish it.  I am the master of this world now, and
soon you all shall bow before me.  Bow before me and die quickly.  Serve me
and live forever."

     "No damn way," Ranma said.  "The light's gonna come back on.  Because
we're gonna stop you."

     "Stop me?" the Herald said with terrible amusement.  "Stop me?"

     He laughed, merry and amused and evil beyond imagining.  "Boy, I have
walked among you for more than ten thousand years, and I have been opposed
by many strong as you.  Cities burned at my whim, and I danced so many
puppets upon my strings that even I have lost count.  I am a god, little
children.  You think you can challenge a god?"

     "You are no god," Kitzuiri hissed, and there was hatred in his child's
voice that burned just as brightly as the hatred within the voice of the
Herald.  "You are an abomination, an unnatural thing that does not belong
here.  We cast you out once, and we shall cast you out again."

     His form wavered and shifted, and a fox the size of a large dog stood
where he had been, speaking in a commanding voice.  "In my lady's name, in
the name of all that is good and right and natural, I shall fight you till
the death."

     "So shall we all!" Ryoga cried.  He raised his fist.

     "Fine with me," the Herald said, with laughter so horribly human and
tainted with malice beyond humanity that it hurt to hear it.

     He cupped his hands to the sides of Render of Worlds again, and smiled
at them like a cat smiles to mice.  "Till the death, then."

     And a great, invisible weight fell upon them, pressure that smashed
them to the floor and held them there, and made moving impossible, made
speaking impossible, made breathing impossible, made even thinking of
anything but terrible, terrible pain impossible.

     And the laughter of the Herald rang in their ears as Render of Worlds
slowly crushed the life from them.

**********

     Happosai dodged another swing of the naginata, and then he suddenly
knew that it was time.  He gulped, steeled himself, and dragged up every
memory he had of the time before his son had been twisted, of when Tensai
had been a small boy and he'd taught him, he and Cologne had taught him to
fight, but they had never taught him what to fight for.  He dredged from
deep within himself memories of Cologne, of his youth, of the only love
he'd ever had, the only love that he'd ever known that was true and good
and born of something more than lust.  He thought of her face, her voice,
her strength and her beauty.

     And he wrapped all of it around himself like armour, pushed back all
the fear he felt, all the fear of what lay beyond for him, and he was
ready.

     He spread his arms wide, offering no guard to Tensai's next blow.

     "Willingly I give myself," he whispered.  "I fear not what awaits me.
Let my blood end what my blood began."

     *"But if a sacrifice is made willingly, rather than by chance, the
ends achieved can often be much greater."*

     The naginata swept down, an arc of silver glowing in the golden light
of his aura, the golden light he'd cast to light his way amidst the
darkness.  It seemed to be moving in slow motion, the light catching every
razor-edged inch of it.

     <Speak the words,> a voice whispered in his head.  It was weak, and it
sounded in terrible pain, but it was still the most beautiful voice he had
ever heard, and in that one single moment that beautiful voice drowned out
the other one he'd heard for more than two centuries.

     <I know them not,> he answered.

     <You always have,> the voice said gently, persuasively.

     And he always had.  He spoke the words, or perhaps they spoke
themselves through him, used him as their vessel, for these words had been
waiting a long time for when they would need to be used, need to be used by
the one willing to do what he did now, and then the naginata was upon him.

     It hit him in the shoulder, ripped down through his body, and the
pain was terrible, terrible, terrible, and though he'd been sure he
wouldn't scream, he would be silent, he screamed all the same as the great
slash nearly tore him in the half.

     And the first drops of the blood of the father, spilled by the hand of
the son, splashed upon the stone floor of the dark city.

**********

     Darkness is thought of by some as only the absence of light.  But
there are others who do not believe this true, and many who have ever
walked alone late at night with fear in their heart, casting their eyes to
every shadow, might agree with them.  There are some places in the world
where darkness hangs heavy like a shroud, and it takes more than light to
drive that kind of darkness away.  There is a kind of darkness that is a
palpable thing, a physical thing, not an absence but an opposite of light.

     Silence is the absence of sound, we might say.

     But if there can be darkness that can swallow light, cannot there be
silence that swallows sound?

     Light travels faster than anything.  Anything but darkness, perhaps,
for darkness is always there before it.  But silence moves quickly as well,
silence that is true silence, not just the absence of sound, as true
darkness is not just the absence of light.

     Happosai's blood fell upon the black stone floor, the first blood from
a wound that no one could survive, a terrible gaping wound that could not
be healed or bound fast enough to stop so much blood from pouring forth
that survival was impossible, a wound from a blade that had torn through
him and ripped him apart inside and out.

     And when the blood hit the floor, the silence washed out through the
darkness of the city like a vast ocean wave.  It washed over Happosai first
of all, and his screams ceased, and he was at peace for the first time in
over two centuries.

     It flowed like water through the underground city, as a river runs
through the dark caverns beneath the earth until it finally reaches the
surface and the light, and from there runs out to the sea and joins with
the waters of other rivers.

     And from beneath the city, from beneath the earth, beneath seas and
mountains and other places, places that were just outside the normal bounds
of the world, trapped beneath the seals that imprisoned them, a hundred
voices, a thousand voices, a million voices, screaming with inhuman rage,
for they knew what the silence meant, and the wheels turned back even in
the face of all their rage.  But even as they lifted their voices to yell,
lifted voices that were not of this world, the silence washed across them
and stifled their rage.

     It washed across a brother who stood above his sister with a sword
raised high, and it washed across the sister who knelt before him and
offered all that she could give if he would turn back from the darkness.

     It washed through a chamber where five mortal children and one
immortal spirit with the nature of a child were pinned beneath the will of
a thing that was child of nothing, that had never been born and could never
die, that hated the world as only a thing that could never belong to the
world and all its fragile beauty could hate.  And the seals there carved
upon the walls burned brightly, and the link between dark master and darker
tool was broken, snapped apart in the face of their light.

     It washed across all those children of this world who walked in this
place that was ruled by things not of this world, and all their worry and
sorrow and pain were rendered meaningless for a moment.

     And the silence fled the city of darkness, and washed out across the
world, going faster than light, faster than darkness could ever hope to
follow.  It travelled through the cities, and the voices of the mobs and
those afraid were stilled as the silence fell upon them.

     It wound itself through rivers and oceans, it danced among the
forests, it scaled the mountains and hills, and everywhere the silence fell
was still and clear as a mirror lake.  Atop the mountains, atop Fuji and
Ontake and Shirane and others, the silence brought light, as the seals
flared anew and began to bind themselves again, strong as they had been
when they were forged all those ages ago, ages ago to hold back the
darkness, that the world would not be ruled by spirit or demon or god or by
things far, far worse than that, but by the hand of mortals. 

     It was not beautiful, the silence.  It could not be beautiful.  But it
was pure, and that purity in itself was a beautiful thing.  For a moment,
just a moment, the world hung still upon the silence of a single second,
and was at peace.

     And then the silence was gone, leaving and reaching out into space, to
join with that single great silence that had been there before the worlds
had formed, before the stars had been birthed, before even there was light
for the darkness to try to swallow, and before there was darkness for the
light to banish.

     It strove onwards, reaching towards the sun, striving with all that it
was, like a tree pushing roots through stony ground to reach water, like a
flower striving in the shadow to reach upwards to the light, like a single
candle burning bright against all the dark.

     And the silence washed across the sun, hidden beneath an impossibly
huge cloak of darkness that rippled and bubbled across the face and blocked
the light, a darkness so vast and hungry it could match and swallow even
the light of the sun.  And the darkness fled before it, dissolving away
into nothing, falling before that silence like it had refused to fall
before the light of the sun, becoming once again only the absence rather
than the anthithesis of light.

     And the light was born again in that silence, the true light, the
light that gave all the world life, although none on the earth could know
it yet, for in truth light travels slower than silence, and it would take
eight minutes, eight agonizing minutes, to reach the earth, though the
silence had reached it in only a single second.

     And lastly, last of all, it washed across Tensai, who stood before his
dying father, slain by his hand, and the silence washed away all the lies
and confusion, and he saw in that single moment all that he had done and
all the consequences, and he knew that he was the son of mortal man and
mortal woman, and he realized in that single second just what the thing
he'd called his mother truly was, but those revelations did not flee him
when the silence ended. 

     "Father," he whispered brokenly, dropping to his knees beside the torn
body of his father, stripping the cloak from his shoulders as if he could
somehow bind the gaping, terrible wound.  "Father, father..."

     Blood soaked through the cloth in an instant, stained his hands, his
hands already stained, stained with the blood of his mother and Lukkosai,
the blood of many more, the blood of any of those taken by the darkness
he'd unleashed upon the world.

     "It's alright," Happosai said, somehow finding voice amidst all the
pain.  He smiled, as well as he could.  "I forgive you, son."

     "I killed mother, father," Tensai said, a great sob heaving from his
body as if he would tear himself apart from grief.  "I killed her and I
killed Uncle Lukkosai and I killed you, I killed you, I killed you..."

     "I forgive you," Happosai said again, and there was such warmth, such
love and compassion in his voice that it made Tensai's crime all the
greater.  "Your mother would forgive you too.  It wasn't your fault."

     "Father..."

     The old man, so old, so very old, coughed with a rattling breath.
"It's nearly over, son.  You know what has to be done... the past must be
buried... you have to end this, son..."

     And then the light in his eyes died, and he was gone.

     "Father..." Tensai said, gently wrapping the cloak around the tiny
body like a funeral shroud.

     "Father..." he said again, and there was grief behind it, grief and
rage and sorrow and pain.  And there was a promise, a promise as well.

     Tensai laid his father upon the ground, bowed his head for a moment
and prayed, although he knew not who might be there to hear one so lost as
him.  Then he picked up his weapon from the ground and carefully cleaned
every trace of his father's blood from it, for he wanted his blade clean
and bright for what he must do.

     And he began to walk, leaving his father behind.

**********

     The world was blood, and blood was her world.  She heard the sound of
a sword sliding into something solid, and Kodachi Kuno waited for the
darkness to fall over her.

     It did not.

     Hesitantly, she raised her head and looked up.  The sword still glowed
dully red and lit the darkness, driven as it was up to the hilt into the
wall next to her head.

     Slowly, seeming as slow as the movement of continents, her brother's
hands unwrapped from around the handle of the katana, the handle of
Fuwaken, the blade of strife.

     "Sister," Tatewaki Kuno said slowly, kneeling down and looking
Kodachi in the face.  "That was possibly the most dangerous thing you have
ever done."

     "Oh, I don't think so," Kodachi said.  "I knew you would never hurt
me, Tatchi."

     "I have asked you not to call me that," Kuno said, but there was no
anger behind it.  Hesitantly, as if it would break her, he opened his arms
and enveloped her in an embrace.

     They sat like that for a short time, the sword glowing angrily red
beside them, shining still through the wall, basking in being, for just a
few moments, brother and sister, and everything that entailed.

     "Oh sister," Kuno said, clutching her as if he might somehow lose her.
"I have done such wrong.  I nearly killed us all."

     "Brother,"  Kodachi said soothingly.  "You think cutting out two
pillars made the ceiling fall?  That thing tried to kill us; you are not
responsible."

     "How I wish I could believe that," Kuno said.  "What is left for me
but scorn?  What is left for me but hatred?  I have dishonoured myself so
often, done so much wrong."

     "And so have I," Kodachi said.  "And I have found forgiveness.  You
will find it too."

     She stood up, slowly untangling her arms from him.  "Come, brother.
Let us find the others.  Let us find the light."

     She clicked on the flashlight again, as the last of the red glow
dimmed.  Kuno was still on the ground before her, grief and pain across his
face.

     She offered him her hand, and he took it.  Slowly, she pulled him to
his feet.  And the two of them, brother and sister, walked quickly to find
the others.

**********

     The eyes twinkled merrily at the six creatures crushed upon the floor
before them.  The lips smiled, and the hands tangled in the air around the
black sphere, never quite touching, drawing power to their own use and
casting it forth.

     And suddenly it was gone.  All the power was gone.  The sphere died,
no longer rippling with darkness, gone flat and featureless.  And the mind
within the body raged, for it had known failure before and knew it again.

     But it had prepared this time.  Even as the power died before the the
hands, power flowed in from another source.  Power bound within a human
form, now free again to return to its master.

     The eyes turned themselves upon the six before them, and began to
gather that power for an event it had been waiting a long, long time for.

**********

     The pressure relaxed atop Ranma, just as he felt like he was going to
burst.  He looked up, feeling weak and sick.  The others were on the ground
beside him; the flame still lit the darkness.  Render of Worlds still hung
before the Herald, but now it was a flat, featureless thing, without the
rippling darkness it had possesed earlier.

     The dark god wore an expression on his cruel, handsome face of shock
and surprise.

     "No..." he whispered loudly.  "No... this cannot be... he would never
have... I knew him... I knew him...  And I would not have let him kill the
girl... cripple her, yes, but her death would fall to me..."

     "No," Kitzuiri said, as the huge fox rose to all four legs, and there
was joy and sorrow intermingled in his voice.  "You did not know him, dark
one.  Only he knew himself."

     "What happened?" Ranma said as he helped Akane to her feet, as Konatsu
and Ukyou and Ryoga stood up around them.

     "Oh, Happosai," Kitzuiri said softly, so softly none of the others
heard.  "The blood of the father has been spilled by the hand of the son,
and so the undoing is undone."

     "NO!" the Herald screeched, the rage still terrible in his voice.
"RENDER OF WORLDS, ANSWER ME!  ANSWER THE ONE WHO COMMANDS YOU!"

     There was no answer.

     Slowly, the six of them began to advance.

     "Be careful," Kitzuiri said.  "He's still strong.  Still powerful.
But now he can be beaten.  He has expended much power to bind Render of
Worlds, to work his will upon the world.  He will be weak, for what he is."

     The thing in the dark suit raised his hands to the air, and black fire
snapped between his palms like lightning, negative energy that was the
physical manifestation of all the darkness that lurked inside this false
human shell.

     "Don't you get it, worms?" the thing that looked like a man said.
There was a crude, guttural quality to the voice now, without the
sophisticated tones it had possesed before.  "I've got the only party in
town anymore."

     "So let's party," Ranma said, cocking his fist.

     "Yeah," the man said.  He grinned ferally.  "Let's party."

     The black fire slashed into the air around him, made a glittering web
of darkness that spun out behind him and gnawed at the air.  "Can I bring
some friends?"

     There was a harsh sound in the air, a tearing like the ripping of
paper or the buzz of insects.  Kitzuiri's eyes widened, and his form flowed
from four legs to two, child where animal had been in an instant.

     He threw a hand forward, sang wordlessly, and a great blast of shining
white-gold power burst forth and smashed into the web and the figure in
front of it.  The radiance forced them to blink and close their eyes, but
when it cleared the Herald and his web still stood there, Render of Worlds
bobbing dead and flat in front of them.

     "Trickery and illusions," the thing that looked a like a man snarled.
"Foolish little games."

     The sound in the air was louder now, moving through their bodies like
electricity.  The web was pulsing and heaving, looking as it was going to
tear at any moment and reveal whatever it was that pushed behind it.

     The Herald raised a hand, and a pulse of force smashed the child back
a dozen feet.  "That is true power, little fool.  Not your tricks."

     "The web..." the spirit croaked as he struggled to his feet.

     Ranma nodded and looked to Ryoga.  The other boy nodded back and they
set themselves, gathering their energy in preparation to direct it against
the web that was spreading rapidly through the chamber near the ceiling.

     The floor suddenly heaved beneath them, cracked in places, and from
those cracks flowed inky darkness that staggered upright into semi-human
shapes, shifting and flowing as if unsure of the form they took.  Great
fists and arms that were blades and hands tipped with razored talons
clutched at the air, and howling voices screamed hatred of all that was
natural and right.

     "Play nicely.  I've got work to do," the thing in the dark suit said.
He turned his back to them and faced the web of darkness, raising his hands
to the air and shrieking words human lips were never meant to speak.

     Ranma sidestepped and turned the power he'd been building against one
of the things that had loomed up in front of him.  The blast shattered its
midsection, and it folded over upon itself, mewling and shrieking and
leaking black fluid upon the stone.  The darkness these things were formed
of seemed to be growing more solid, defining in greater detail the forms
they had taken.

     "You have to stop him!" Kitzuiri called as he ducked under the swing
of a clawed hand.

     "We're just a little busy right now," Ryoga said as he drove back two
of the things in front of him.  The things were swarming all around them,
and more seemed to be flowing from the cracks in the floor around them.

     And the Herald's voice sang like that of a fallen angel, and the web
spun wider overhead.

**********

     Shampoo screamed aloud suddenly, her eyes rolling back into her head
for a moment.  The others who walked with her looked about in shock.

     "IT COMES!" she shrieked.  "IT COMES!"

     Her gaze went normal again, and she staggered forward.  Mousse barely
managed to hold her upright, his head still aching.  "What is it?" he
asked.

     "Hurry.  Now," Shampoo said.  She struggled forward, moving as quickly
as she could on her injured leg.  "Not much time."

     Mystified, the others followed.

**********

     They were everywhere.

     Ranma dodged, sidestepped, whirled about the solid shadows and laid
into them with all his strength.  But where one fell, two rose from the
heaving floor to stand in its place.  The symbols in the chamber where
glowing, illuminating it better than the flickering light of the flame had.
Sometimes, they would flare with power and the things they fought would
stumble and fall, momentarily vulnerable, but then the voice of the thing
on the dais would rise in pitch and speed, and the web would weave wider.

     "What's going on?" Ranma called to Kitzuiri as he kicked in the head
of a thing that had begun to look like a rotting combination of a horse and
a bat.  The things were not only increasing in number as the fight went on,
they were becoming more solid, more real, more there somehow.  Forms that
had been shadowy and indistinct were growing solid, muscled arms and ropy
tentacles, and those stayed, and did not dissolve to shadow.

     And they were starting to get faces.  Faces that yawned and leered and
gibbered, that were becoming more and more detailed as time went on.  It
was a losing battle they fought; as the things became more solid, they
became stronger and harder to hurt.  Before, a good kick or punch would
tear one of them into wisps of shadow; now, they had to take several good
blows before they went down and dissolved.

     "I don't understand it," the spirit said.  He backstepped away from a
towering thing that looked like a tree shaped from darkness, with a huge
red-lipped mouth, and cast up his hands.  Light burst from them, and the
thing staggered, blinded, pained if not actually injured by the light.
"The seals have been restored.  But..."

     "It's him, isn't it?" Ranma asked.  "He's doing this."

     "But he shouldn't be able to," the kitsune said petulantly.  "He-"

     "Whether he should be able to or not doesn't really matter, hon,"
Ukyou said.  She cleaved open what might have been the head of the creature
in front of her.  "The fact of the matter is, he is."

     "We can't fight these things forever," Ryoga said.  "We've gotta get
to him."

     The six of them drove like a wedge through the hundred feet between
them and the Herald, a distance that was rapidly filling with the twisted
mockeries of life the floor was giving birth to.

     They drove on, fighting with all they had, as the Herald shrieked
words that echoed in the chamber and their minds.  Ranma and Ryoga smashed
the foe aside with ki blasts, while Ukyou, Akane and Konatsu fought the
things off as they recovered momentarily.  The kitsune stood in the centre,
having no useful skills for fighting beyond blasting the eyes of the foe
with blinding light.  The few illusions he tried of a different sort were
promptly ignored; the things were too mindless to be fooled by mirror
images of those they fought or illusionary foes appearing suddenly.

     They were nearly there when disaster struck.  The floor heaved, and a
huge hand reached up and tripped Ranma.  He fell, recovering instantly, but
in that moment, the things howled and pressed in on them, a solid wall of
twisting shadow given shape, with eyes slitted half-closed against the
light and mouths open wide to screech and gibber.

     The one that had tripped Ranma wrenched itself up from the floor, and
the contours and lines of its indistinct shape solidified into a horrible
mix of a half-dozen different forms, all claws and fangs and stunted,
deformed wings.  Konatsu thrust his shortsword through one of its five
eyes, and the thing shrieked and batted him aside with a hand that left
raking claw marks across his chest, soaking the dark red of his ninja suit
with blood.

     Ukyou cried aloud and buried her spatula blade in the thing's chest,
driving it back, and then another one with mouths opening wide in hands the
size of a man's head was upon her, ripping into her shoulder with the teeth
of one palm that chattered and whirred like the blades of a circular saw.

     "What ARE these things?" Akane said.  She shattered the ribcage of one
of the most human looking ones, aside from the fact it had no head and two
and a half too many arms.  And a fanged mouth yawning in the centre of its
stomach.

     "He's making them!" the kitsune said.  Ryoga smashed in the skull of
the one the spirit was currently avoiding.  "He's simply shaping them.
How can he-"

     Ukyou gripped her spatula in the one arm she could still feel.  The
thing had attached itself to the shoulder of the arm that had been injured
a few days earlier, and the pain was unbelievable.  It was slowly but
surely gnawing down to the bone.  She slammed it into the belly of the
thing, and it shrieked and reached for her face with the other hand, with
the teeth of that mouth whirring hungrily and buzzing.

     Someone screamed a cry of battle, and a wooden blade split the thing
down the middle from behind, rending it apart into wisps of dark, tattered
flesh that began dissolving immediately.  "Fear not!  Tatewaki Kuno is
come!"

     She staggered back, clamping a hand to her torn, bleeding shoulder, as
Kuno and Kodachi joined the battle, ribbon and wooden sword wielded against
the abominations.  They both goggled when they saw Ukyou, but then they
turned their attentions to the battle.

     The twisting lines of script upon the walls chose that moment to flare
again, a light bright and pure, and the things shrieked in pain and their
forms grew wispy for a moment.  And for a moment, they pushed them back,
and pushed ever closer to the figure upon the dais.

     Whose voice rose higher, who sang in the tongue of chaos made material
of cities ground to dust and planets scorched to ashes, of the inevitable
triumph of darkness, and whose words wove a glittering web of steely
darkness that was now stretching to encompass the entire chamber, bound and
anchored to the eight great pillars.  The lights of the burning seals
dimmed beneath the song, and the forms solidified back to reality.

     "Ranma!" Ukyou called.  "We'll hold them here!  You and Ryoga go for
that thing!"

     Ranma glanced once to Ukyou, holding a hand to the wound upon her
shoulder.  He glanced to Konatsu, staggering to his feet and gripping his
short sword in bloody hands.  He glanced to Akane, who was holding her own
beside Kodachi and Kuno, and he realized just how much skill she had
gained.  He wanted to protect her still, though.

     She looked at him, smiled slightly as a kick staggered one of the
things.  "If you let that thing win because you have to be all stupidly
macho and protect me, I'll never forgive you."

     Ranma looked to Ryoga, who gave him an unsympathetic shrug.  He slowly
smiled.

     Then he nodded.  "Let's do it."

**********

     Mousse, Shampoo, Genma, Soun and Hinako looked upon the scene before
them.  The great eight-sided chamber lit by the hovering flame and the
burning words upon the walls, the titanic mass of foul, corrupted shapes,
the beautiful and awful figure upon the dais, the glittering web that spun
across the chamber and seemed to fight with the bright-burning words for
dominance.

     And there, near the middle, their children and friends.

     They plunged into the fray, trying to make a path towards them.

**********

     Ranma and Ryoga slowly left the others behind, carving a path through
the enemy together, ki blasts and their own strength leaving dozens of foes
broken and dissolving upon the black stone floor.

     They weren't without injury, though none were serious.  The rakes of
claws across arms, a bruise from a fist that got through their defenses,
lashing marks from a whiplike tentacle.  But they pressed on, and the foe
fell back before them.

     Ranma saw Ryoga shatter a thing into nothing with a punch, his fist
glowing yellow.  "How'd you do that?"

     "You think I haven't been training for six months?" Ryoga said.  "It's
all a matter of focus.  Like building for a ki blast, but not letting it go
right away."

     Ranma nodded.  "Got it."

     His next blow sent out an explosion of blue light that rent one foe
apart with a burst of unpleasant black fluid.  "Good move."

     "Do you have to steal all my techniques?" Ryoga said.

     "I don't steal your techniques," Ranma muttered.  "I improve on them."

     "Maybe this isn't the time for us to be fighting," Ryoga said with a
small chuckle.

     "Maybe it isn't," Ranma said.  They were nearly there now, and they
could see that the horde of beasts stopped dead at the edge of the dais,
upon which the thing that looked like a handsome man in a dark suit was
ignoring everything except his own chanting.  The flame hung beside him,
and Render of Worlds hung behind him, but he was oblivious to all but his
words.

     And then they were through, and upon the steps of the dais, coming up
towards the one who'd set it all in motion, towards the ancient thing in
the form of a man.

     And then their eyes settled upon Render of Worlds, flat and
featureless and still hungry, even though it now looked dead.

     <Touchmetouchmetouchmetouchmetouchmetouchmetouchmetouchmetouchme->

     Their eyes drew them towards the thing, and they stretched out their
hands towards it.

     <Touchmetouchmetouchmetouchmetouchmetouchme->

     Ranma jerked himself away, gathered power, and threw a blast of ki
against the back of the figure on the dais, the strongest he could manage
without totally exhausting himself.

     But it was enough.  The thing staggered, just slightly.  The song of
chaos ended for a moment.  The seals of the chamber shone like stars, and
the web dissolved to nothing.  A great cry rose from the horde, and with
the end of the dark web so too ended them.  They collapsed, forms
dissolving to nothing, unable to endure the burning light of the seals
without the dark power the web had been providing.

     And the thing turned and looked at them, and his face was flesh over
seething rage as old and merciless as time's beginning.  The eyes burned,
and pierced Ranma to the very core of his soul.

     "Interfering worm..." the man hissed, and his face rippled like a
serpent crawled beneath the skin.  "Interfering little worm and your
interfering little gods..."

     "It's over," Ranma said.  "You've lost."

     He came at it, Ryoga beside him, like he had come at it two months
ago, atop a tower of stone upon an island.  He couldn't quite remember
exactly why he'd gone there in the first place, but he was sure it would
come to him in time.

     And the thing reached up and caught them both by their throats.  The
hands were cold as if they were carved from ice, the grip as implacable as
that of a machine.  "FOOLS!"

     He lifted them high, and Ranma was held as helpless as he had been
upon that spire, as was Ryoga.  "FOOLS!"

     He hurled them back, and they rolled as they hit the floor, landing
near their gathered companions.  "FOOLS!"

     He laughed.  "Little stupid fools!  Look at the seals!  LOOK AT THE
SEALS!"

     They looked.  All the seals glowed still, looking strong and bright
amidst the dark stone.

     All except a few.  In places, seemingly at random, some did not glow
after all.  They were flat and dead.

     "What the..." Ranma began, but he was cut off again as the man on the
dais laughed.
     
     "I am free," the Herald said, and they could see that his suit was
trailing dark, thick smoke now, and they could no longer see where skin
ended and suit began.  "I am free now.  By my pawn's hand thrice now taken
the lives of those who took a part of me within themselves over two
centuries ago, and so that which is my power returns to me."

     Wisps of dark fire were bursting from small cracks forming in the skin
of the figure on the dais now, rents crawling and ripping along the body
of the Herald as if an earthquake boiled beneath the flesh.  His skin was
bulging in places, as if somewhere beneath the form he wore, something
struggled to break free.  "Two hundred years beneath the earth, locked
within the mind of their son.  Imprisonment worse even than that of being
locked within a human form.  Until the final sacrifice was made."

     "Wha..." Ranma said.

     The Herald's face bulged obscenely, as if a second face were waiting
to emerge from underneath.  "So many children, so many young lives my
servant took.  But they were not enough, and he failed.  But my gift I gave
unto him, and he returned from beyond death to give one final life to me,
and so set me free.  But weak I was still, pitifully weak.  And now the
third one is gone, and my power is mine again."

     An image came to Ranma, from somewhere he did not know.  A photo of a
sheet-covered body, lying on the streets.  A missing girl, a girl never
found.  A skeletal thing, skin over bone and nothing more.

     "But the seals..." Kitzuiri said.

     The Herald shook his finger.  "Oh, foolish one.  Why do you think it
took me so long to act?  The first two days I spent snapping each and every
one of the seals that bound me to this human form.  Not just disrupting
them; destroying them utterly.  I needed only to wait for the old man's
death.  Don't you see?  Either way, I have won.  Your sun may return, but I
am loose now upon the earth, and there are none who can oppose me now.
Look upon me, children.  Look upon the new ruler of the world."

     The hollow laughter rang again, and the body of the man who was not a
man became to change.  The black suit tore away into tattered, wispy
strands of smoky darkness, and beneath it the skin split away like a
snake's, like a reptile's, and the thing beneath ripped free, tore away the
masks, tore away the human form it had worn for countless millenia, a human
form that had worn a thousand different faces, and stood in the form it had
shaped for itself over the ages, the form it had chosen to wear when it was
free.

     When first it came from beyond, from the vast spaces between, from the
true primal chaos that lies between those tiny scattered pockets of order,
it had held the same diseased, corrupt, vast shape that its kin had had,
things of chaos without body forced just slightly to obey the laws of this
universe, but their physical forms mockery of all that life was, rotting,
seething corruption that yet moved and lived.

     But over the ages it had shaped and refined itself, taking scattered
bits and pieces from countless minds, from countless fears.  It had created
the body of a dark angel with a soul like an abyss.  It had taken a very,
very long time to choose this shape.

     It had the shape of a human, and wore flowing robes, robes that
rippled like living flesh and shone darkly with every colour of the
spectrum, and some that were not.  The face was terrible in its beauty,
pale as alabaster and carved into sharp angles and hard lines by the hand
of a sculptor skilled beyond any human measure.  It smiled with the promise
of agony beyond anything that could be endured for those who beheld it.

     They had come to think of the Herald in masculine terms, but in truth
a thing such as it could have no gender, and that was reflected in the form
before them.  It was utterly androgynous, and the face could have been that
of a lovely woman or a handsome man.  The robes rippled and flowed, curving
sometimes in the suggestion of full breasts or feminine hips, at other
times filling with the broad shoulders and flat chest of a man, sometimes
mixing between both as the form beneath the robes boiled and rolled,
mercifully hidden from sight, for only the hands and face could be seen,
and those stayed the same, though a terribl cold and beautiful sameness it
was.

     It held in the hand that had been raised a rod, a rod of plain black
iron that skewed the air around its tip and bled black light.  In the hand
at its side it held a sword, massive and dark and twisted with crimson
lines of a script that made the eye ache to look at it.

     The robes covered the legs, or perhaps it had no legs, and the Herald
floated a foot or so off the ground, for worse than anything, worse than
the terrible cruel face or the shifting robes or the rod of iron or the
dark sword, were the wings.

     They were vast and black, seeming to brush even the ceiling of the
great chamber, but they were not of feathers or skin.  They were darkness,
black rents in the air that were portals into an abyss, and within that
abyss could be seen the glimmer of far-off stars and the whirl of
impossibly distant nebulae.  They were streamers of icy ebony fire, and
their edges shone like the blades of the sharpest swords ever forged.

     The wings flapped powerfully, stretching and fighting with the air for
possesion of the space they occupied, and the air around them rippled and
twisted as if in pain.  The eye hurt to look upon them, even as the gaze
was drawn to their terrible cold beauty.

     And the Herald laughed, a high, keening, inhuman sound like the
cracking of ice or the breaking of glass, or the shattering of a world.
And the laughter cut through them like a knife.

     Its eyes scanned the room, and they were vast and awful like dark
stars, yawning holes in the fabric of reality.  And as each of them felt
the eyes upon them, they knew that the Herald in that moment knew
everything they were and everything they were not, and could never be, and
they felt unclean and befouled by that gaze, for it stripped clean and laid
bare their souls and their innermost secrets to a thing of primeval chaos,
a thing whose nature was bound up in an evil that reached beyond the limits
of time and space.  

     You are nothing, the gaze said.  You are insects, beneath my notice,
unworthy to be looked upon by me, for I am a god.  But because you have
stung me, I shall smash you.

     The eyes settled upon Ryoga, and Ryoga shrank back slightly from that
terrible gaze, behind which an abyss loomed, as surely as an abyss loomed
within those terrible vast wings.

     "You first," the Herald said, and there was no joy there now, for
bereft of human form the Herald held in its voice only a terrible and
implacable will, because there was very little room for joy in what it was.

     A rippling black wing curved out towards Ryoga, as unstoppable as
anything that had ever been.

     Kitzuiri leaped, small child's body flowing in mid-air to a lean,
long, red-furred shape, a fox the size of a man, hitting Ryoga with all the
weight he could manage and checking him out of the way, hurling himself
into the path of the wing.

     The wing wrapped around the fox-spirit and gripped him like a hand.
It lifted him high, squeezing him tightly, and the spirit cried in pain as
chill black fires wreathed his body and scorched away the lustrous red fur
and burned the skin beneath.

     It lifted him high, and slammed him down once upon the ground with a
horrible wet sound of bone breaking and the spirit shrieked, a sound of
pain and torment like nothing they had ever heard, with all the agony of a
child and an animal rolled into one.  Once upon the ground, and then the
wing raised itself again, blood spilling from within the cold dark depths
of it like tears, and smashed down again with a strength that shook the
floor beneath their feet, and there was no shriek this time beyond the
triumphant, keening cry of the thing that had just killed with its own hand
for the first time in countless ages.

     Then it hurled what was left of Kitzuiri Oshisa no Inari against the
nearest pillar with a splatter of blood.  The remains, the shattered,
scorched, torn remains of the once-beautiful spirit slid sickeningly down
the pillar.

     "How noble," it said.

     And it laughed, laughed as if it were playing some kind of wonderful
amusing game, laughed like a child ripping the wings from flies, laughed
with the voice of every power-mad, sadistic thing to ever walk the earth.

     "How terribly, terribly noble."

     The rod stabbed the air, and black light flared in front of their eyes
as a wave of force swept forth from the tip and knocked them sprawling.

     "Don't you see?" it said.  "There is nothing I cannot destroy, no
creation of your world I cannot ruin.  Nothing can stand before what we
are."

     It spoke not only to them, but to itself, to assure itself of its own
power, its own supremacy, of the fact that it was greater than this world
that it could not be a part of.

     "BASTARD!" Ryoga howled, leaping to his feet with energy crackling
around his body.  "I'LL KILL YOU!"

     He cupped his hands and yellow light streamed from them in a huge
beam, and Ryoga screamed with rage and sorrow, pouring all of himself into
the blast.  The gaze that had scarred his soul and the death meant for him
that had taken Kitzuiri's life rolled themselves into a tight ball of anger
inside him, and stoked his power to a peak never before seen.  He took his
soul, and his body, and threw them both against the Herald, and the Herald
crossed its wings over itself, wrapped itself in the dark, vast folds of
them, and shielded itself from the light.

     But the even the most noble soul and even the strongest body can only
give so much, and Ryoga had been through much this night already, and
despite all that he was, all that he was could not match in pure power the
thing that stood upon the dais.  But he tried all the same.  He kept up the
flow, uncaring of how his skin burned, of how every nerve in his body was
stabbed with pain and for a few long moments the others watched the battle
between mortal and god.

     Then at last Ryoga made a small sound and fell back, deathly pale and
breathing slowly.  Ranma caught him and held him up, and all of them looked
nervously at the Herald, wings still wrapped around its body like a cloak.

     And the Herald's wings unfolded, unravelling to the same impossibly
large size they'd held before, twisting the air around them, and it smiled
without humour.  There was no mark upon the body, no indication that it had
been injured.

     "I nearly felt that," it said.

     "GET IT!" Ranma screamed, laying Ryoga upon the floor gently and
charging the Herald.  If he could somehow reach it, somehow distract it,
let the others escape, let Akane escape...

     A black wing slammed against him like the slap of a giant, horribly
cold as the void of space and hot as the fires of hell, and he was flying
through the air in a lazy loop that smashed him against the wall and
knocked him senseless, though he managed to keep from having any bones
broken.  He heard cries of pain as power flared from the rod again, and the
others were smashed down by the force of it.

     The Herald lashed out with another wing, and grabbed Shampoo from
where she sprawled on the floor, holding her aloft and drawing her in
towards it, lifting the black sword high as she struggled and screamed in
pain, and the wings twisted with black fire and began to drain the life
from her body.

     "Die now, little child," he said.  "As your great-grandmother died."

     And Mousse was screaming as well, charging, although he could hope to
do no more against this thing than Ranma or Ryoga had, than any one of them
could, and then something flashed past him.  Something clothed in grey and
black that resolved itself into a running figure, face carrying an endless
depth of sorrow, naginata snapped out at his side like a lance and moving
impossibly quickly, running all out so fast he was simply a blur of motion.

     He took a great leap at the edge of the dais, up the twenty feet or
more towards the Herald, and the naginata lashed out, flashing silver, and
sliced through the wing that held Shampoo, ripping a wide tear in the
black void that closed nearly as quickly as it opened, but that allowed her
to struggle free.  She dropped, and Mousse caught her, but all eyes were
upon Tensai, for it was Tensai, son of Cologne and Happosai, who had now
turned upon the thing that had warped and twisted his mind for over two
centuries.  He spoke no words, for what words could he say, what words to
either them or the Herald, after all that he had done?

     "So the pawn becomes a knight," the Herald intoned, turning a gaze
older than almost anything in the world upon Tensai.

     Tensai said nothing, dropping to his feet a few steps from the Herald
and coming forward, face hard as stone, though it looked soft as cotton
next to the face of the thing on the dais.

     The Herald laughed, and the wings swept down like guillotines.  One
Tensai dodged, but the other took off his left arm near the shoulder in a
spray of blood before the terrible cold heat of the wings cauterized the
wound in an instant.  He did not scream, or cry out, and no expression of
pain crossed his face.  

     The wings swept out to the sides, and the steely glitter of their edge
caught the light of the flame and the glow of the seals, and drew the gaze
hypnotically within their horrible cold depths.  The next sweep of them
would tear Tensai to shreds, rend him apart and burn him to ash.  

     Then Tensai hit the Herald, driving the naginata with the one arm that
still gripped it through the guard of the black sword it raised to block
and through the chest of the robed thing and out the other side, driving
half the shaft along with the blade straight through where the heart would
have been in a human.  With impossible strength, fighting through the pain
that threatened to overwhelm him, he twisted the naginata and threw himself
forward, spitting the weapon all the way through the Herald, and the glow
that wreathed the blade was white so bright it hurt to see.

     The Herald shrieked, pierced to the core of all it was, and even all
that it was knew that in this moment, it could not stand, for reality tore
against its very existence and the wound was terrible.  For even with all
its power, with all its strength, it could still be hurt.

     It reached out, with power impossibly vast.  It grabbed fault lines,
lashed itself around magma channels, stirred whirlpools and tidal waves,
harnessed the winds to hurricane force.

     If it could not have the world, it would visit upon it such
destruction as had not been done since the ancient war, when the Celestial
Spear had fallen from the heavens upon the world against it and its kin,
and mountains had risen and crumbled in its wake.  The destruction then had
been such that it had snuffed out all but the fragments of the true
history, and it had taken untold ages for civilization to rebuild itself,
to sculpt mythology around the truth, to remember the shadows of shadows of
what had been.

     If it could not have the world as its plaything, it would leave it a
smoking ruin.  It had the power; it had more than ten thousand years of
stored rage, of hate for the world it could never belong to.  It needed
only to direct it, to set in motion the forces of nature, to sow the wind
and reap the whirlwind upon the earth.

     It began to chant, in the language of the unformed, in the words of
chaos that would bend reality to its will.  It could not hope to have the
power it had wielded before, a power that could snuff the sun, although
that had taken nearly all of the energies it wielded.  But what it had
would be enough.  It would burn all of its existence into this action, and
by its own destruction it would seek to shatter the world.

     And finally, Tensai spoke, his voice ringing out clear against the
words of the Herald.  "No," he said.  "I shall not allow it."

     "Foolish little boy," the thing burbled, and there was black blood
leaking from its mouth, and its voice was light and beautiful as that of
any woman who had ever walked upon the earth, but now Tensai could hear the
falsity that lay behind that voice.  "My sweet, sweet pawn, you are mine
now and forever."

     And it raised the black sword and brought it forward, and pierced
Tensai through the heart as he had pierced it through the heart, and it
twisted the sword as it wrenched it back out.

     The wound burned like fire and froze like ice, but somehow, somehow
Tensai found it within himself to move, even at his lifeblood began to pump
from the wound.  He staggered forward, released his hand from the naginata,
the one hand he had that still remained.

     Weeping with pain, for a wrong that had spanned more than two
centuries, weeping for all that he had lost, for all the darkness he had
done while thinking it was light, weeping for parents slain by his hand,
for all that he could have been and for what he had become, he threw
himself forward and made his last act, his last act to deny the hold of
this thing of ancient evil upon his soul.

     With his left arm gone from the razor-edged wings, with his heart
pierced by a black blade, with his mind torn and shattered by guilt and
sorrow, he grabbed the throat of the thing before him in a grip of
impossible strength with his one remaining arm, and he locked eyes with it
and gazed into the depths of those ancient, night-scarred orbs that spun
wildy like dark stars within the face of the thing, and he looked upon them
with no fear in his heart.  He tightened his hand upon the throat of a
thing whose skin was colder than dry ice, a hand that was already burning
down to the bone from even touching the thing before him, and he took the
last step on the dark path he'd travelled.

     Somehow, he lifted the Herald, lifted the vast weight of all it was,
and he cast them both into the dark sphere of the abyss that was behind
them, he cast them into Render of Worlds, he cast them into Starkiller, he
cast them into the thing shaped from the dying agonies of ten beings of
impossible evil, bound with the death screams of tens of thousands of
mortal souls.

     And the black sphere flared to life, rippling darkly like a heatwave,
and the Herald cried out in his true voice, and that voice could not be
described and they could only hope that one day they might forget the sound
of it.  The Herald and Tensai shifted, flowed like water going through a
tiny hole, into the dark depths of Render of Worlds.  The wings remained
for only a few moments, shifting and writhing and flapping as if they could
escape, and the stars within them burned and twisted like the eyes of gods.
They changed form, became other things, clawed at the air in a hundred
thousand different shapes.  Faces rose from the black depths of them, faces
that were sometimes beautiful and sometimes plain, sometimes human and
sometimes inhuman.

     Some seemed familiar; a face you saw on a handsome man who passed you
on the street, whose eyes you couldn't meet.  The face of a beautiful
child, glanced out of the corner of your eye, whose gaze frightened you for
reasons you didn't know.  Something that looked like your own face, or the
face of someone you loved, but with a subtle wrongness to it, nearly
unnoticeable, but there when you looked.

     Other faces rose within it, faces they had gazed upon before.  The
gaki, withered and awful, eyes crimson slits of rage.  Stalford's face,
dark eyes intense and crazed.  Hibino's face, both the human guise and the
awful reality.  It was trying everything it could, every form it had worn,
the face of every puppet whose strings it had pulled, every pawn it had
moved out against the world it so hated, in the hope that one of them could
somehow escape from what was consuming it.  The faces shrieked as one by
one, they vanished.

     Then the wings became wings once again, tiny and weak, flapping one
last time in a desperate final attempt to escape.

     Then they were gone as well, instantly and totally, as if they had
never been there, wrenched down into the infinite darkness contained within
the tiny, floating object.

     In the oceans, the waters stilled.  In the air, the winds calmed.  The
earth ceased to shake.  Beneath the mountains, magma cooled and retreated
back down below.

     Render of Worlds rippled slightly, then vanished with a pop of
imploding air and a small sound that might have been a laugh, but was
probably just more air imploding.

     Probably.

**********

     Tensai was gone.  The Herald was gone.  The tool forged with enough
power to snuff the sun was gone.

     The city had a sense of peace now, none of the watching malevolence it
had possesed before.  It was no longer a stronghold of the dark; now it was
a prison again for those who had formerly ruled it.

     So by the light of the seals, still glowing dimly, they found each
other and gave each other what comfort they could, for there were none of
them who were not wounded in some way, be it body or spirit or both.  They
mourned over the remains of Kitzuiri, whose promise had been kept, and
though many of them seemed shocked when Shampoo explained Happosai's final
decision, they mourned him as well.  And one of them mourned someone else,
silently, who none of the others could remember.  

     So after their reunion in the darkness, lit by the light, after
mourning had been done, they could do nothing more but walk.  They walked
slowly, for some were wounded and needed help to walk.  But they walked
without fear, for the end of their journey had come, and the darkness was
sealed away again.

     And they all walked together.  

**********

     It had been a few hours.

     Hikaru and Sasuke had settled down into awful, waiting silence, having
gotten no response from any of the locators no matter how often they'd
tried.  Finally, they'd just given up.  A few minutes ago, they'd looked
out the window to see the moon in the sky.  That meant that whatever else,
they'd managed to stop whatever was blocking the sun.  But of those who had
been swallowed down into the earth, there was no sign yet.

     Desperate to fill the void, Hikaru spoke.  "Hey Sasuke?"

     "Yes?" the small man asked mournfully with a sniffle.

     "Where'd this van come from, anyway?"

     "I thought it was yours."

     "I can't drive yet, Sasuke."

     "I guess it must be mine, then."

     "Who drove it here?  You drove the limo."

     "Beats me."

     Someone knocked on the door of the van.  Hikaru's next words died in
his throat.

     Hesitantly, afraid of what might be waiting on the other side, he
called out.  "Who is it?"

     "Are you alone in the van?" someone asked.

     A slow, disbelieving grin broke across his face, and he opened the
door.  Kodachi smiled up at him, and behind were the others, nearly all of
them.

     "Where's..." he began, then stopped.  He knew the answer.

     He stepped out of the van, looked at Kodachi and smiled.  "It's over,
isn't it?"

     Kodachi nodded slowly, and wrapped her arms around him, needing to
feel that he was real and solid and there.  "Yes," she murmured softly.  "I
think it's finally over."

     Around them, the snow began to spiral down from the sky, white as the
moon that shone above.

**********

     And it was over.  The pool was clear again now, one image wavering in
the depths.  A hand trailed through it, breaking the stillness, and
scattered droplets like tears upon the surface, as the image slowly faded
away from sight.

     She rose, weak and weary, and went to rest.

**********
     
     The celebration did not occur on the chosen day.  It did not occur
until a week later, when exams were finished, when Shampoo and Mousse had
with Captain Otani's help arranged to sell the land the Nekohanten had
occupied.  Then, it took place, as a few snowflakes drifted down outside
the windows.  It took place in the dojo, which was the only place big
enough to hold all of them, but people wandered through the house as well,
congregating in the dojo as a place to socialize and eat.

     It was a celebration, and a remembrance.  It was for both those who
were gone, and those who remained.  They had survived, and they had
triumphed.

     The chaos wrought by the Herald and Render of Worlds would remain for
a long time, though.  The financial world was still a mess, as thousands
had sold their stocks all over the world, in the belief that the end was
near.  Now, with end of the world seemingly averted, there was an economic
boom in response, but it would take the markets a while to recover, and the
major trading companies could still be in a lot of trouble, as Nabiki was
fond of saying to anyone who would listen.

     There was rebuilding to do as well; there had been a lot of damage in
major cities around the globe, as every terrorist group in the world had
decided the apocalypse was probably the best time to make a political,
religious or social statement as any.  Not only that, but there was still
civil unrest in some of the larger American cities, although that was
winding down.

     There had been rashes of disappearances all over the world, some
entire small towns vanishing overnight.  The people would not be back, and
added up, the toll of the missing was in the thousands.

     The scientific world was also facing turmoil, as anyone with a Phd in
anything strove to explain just why the sun had been darkened for several
hours.  Theories ranged from dark matter to an enormous invisible asteroid
to, of course, UFOs.  The people who knew the truth, though, would probably
not speak of it.

     Happosai's death had undone what his son's hand had wrought, but it
could not undo the chaos that occured because of it.  There were people who
would never again be seen, buildings that would have to be rebuilt.  There
had been minor earthquakes all over Japan, and in the last week the
incidence of natural disasters in the world had been on the upswing.  The
actions of Tensai had thrown the world out of balance; now, it was slowly
sliding back towards it, but it would be some time before it was as it had
been.  Perhaps it could never be as it had been.

     But the past was buried, and the world was on the mend, and so the
Tendos and the Saotomes and their friends, their comrades-in-arms,
celebrated for long into the night.

**********

     "So you're really going then?" Ranma said as he sat down next to Ukyou
in one corner of the dojo.  It was a quiet spot, one away from the bustle
of food, conversation and people that occupied the dojo.

     "Yeah," Ukyou said.  "Nothing like confronting your own mortality to
make you think about stuff you might have missed out on doing if you hadn't
made it back.  Things between my father and I weren't too good when I left,
you know."

     "I can dig where you're coming from," Ranma said with a short laugh.

     "You seen how your mom and dad are acting lately?" Ukyou said.  "It's
like they're teenagers again."

     "I know," Ranma said.  "Pop's actually almost making himself seem like
a decent guy recently, you know.  Musta had some kinda, whatzit...
revelation."

     "Something like that," Ukyou said.

     "Konatsu going with you?" Ranma asked, raising one eyebrow and looking
at Ukyou.  She blushed and nodded.

     "I'd like dad to meet him," she said.

     Ranma grinned ferociously.  "You guys are such a cute couple."

     Ukyou beaned him on the head with her spatula.  "We are NOT a couple."

     "Yeah, whatever," Ranma said, moving himself closer and wrapping an
arm around her shoulders in a friendly embrace.  He punched her on the
shoulder and grinned.  "And me an' Akane don't love each other."

     Ukyou laughed and glanced to the side.  "That the ring she gave you?"

     "Yeah," Ranma said, and it was his turn to blush.  "I think Nabiki
helped her out, because you know that tomboy ain't ever gonna pick
something that looks this..."

     "Ain't that tomboy thing getting a little old, Ranchan?" Ukyou said
sweetly.

     "Nahh," Ranma said with a shrug.  "Besides, the truth is..."

     "What?" Ukyou said interestedly.

     "I've always kinda liked tomboys," he said.

     Ukyou laughed and punched his shoulder as he had hers.  "The truth
comes out."

     "Yeah," Ranma said.  "It's got a way of doing that, don't it?  How
people really feel, what they're really like..."

     Ukyou looked at him; he suddenly looked depressed.

     "Ah, cheer up," she said.  "I won't be gone forever.  Just a week or
two."

     "I know," Ranma said.  "But it's like everybody's leaving.  Shampoo
and Mousse are goin' back to China, Nabiki and Kuno are gonna be going back
to college, Happosai and Cologne are gone..."

     He sighed.  "Geez.  So much for my good mood."

     Ukyou laughed.  "Cheer up; go find Akane.  She'll make you feel
better."

     He nodded.  "Probably right.  Konatsu was looking for you, ya know."

     "Okay," Ukyou said.  "I'll go find him in a few minutes."

     Ranma stood and walked off.  Ukyou smiled and watched him go.

**********

     Mousse was staring out the window at the falling snow when someone
approached and put their hand on his shoulder.

     "Hello," he said without turning.

     "Hi Mousse," Akane said, stepping up beside him and smiling.  "How you
doing?"

     "Pretty good," he said with a mild shrug.  "Just thinking, you know."

     "What about?" Akane asked.

     "Going back home," he said.  "Going back to the village with Shampoo.
Telling them about Cologne, about Tensai... It's not going to be easy."

     "Will there be any trouble?" Akane asked.

     Mousse shrugged again.  "I don't know.  First of all we need to enter
Tensai's name on the list of ancestors."

     "Even after all he did?" Akane said with a quirk of her eyebrow.

     "An Amazon is born an Amazon and dies an Amazon," Mousse said slowly.
"For good or for ill.  And he did save us, in the end."

     "You're right," Akane said.  "He did do that."

     "So how are things with you?" Mousse said, tilting his head to one
side and looking at Akane.

     "They're great," Akane said.  "I wish you guys could stay for the
wedding, but we're still not sure when it is yet, and..."

     "I wish we could stay as well," Mousse said softly.  "But this place
is not our home.  We need to go home, Shampoo and I.  It has been too long
since we were home."

     Akane smiled a bit sadly.  "I'm really going to miss you both, you
know that?"

     "I'll miss you," Mousse said.  Akane suddenly threw her arms around
him and hugged him tightly, and after a moment he hugged her back.

     "We've been through a lot, haven't we?" Akane said.  "I hate to think
it's finally over."

     "I think it is," Mousse said quietly.  "I think it really is, you
know.  I've been thinking about it; all these dreams of Shampoo's, all
these things.  Perhaps we were drawn together for a reason; have you ever
thought about how odd it is to have so many people like us, all
concentrated in one small area?"

     "I try not to," Akane said.  "It makes it easier to deal with."

     Mousse laughed.  "To each their own.  Perhaps we are like rivers, you
know?  Our streams run together for a while, and then split apart, but in
the end we all reach towards one ocean."

     "That's very poetic," Akane said, looking a bit surprised at his
words.

     "I think I'm turning into Kuno," Mousse said with a grin.  "Feel free
to bash me over the head."

     Akane snickered and gave him one last squeeze of her arm before
pulling away.

     "Mousse," someone said from nearby.  "What you doing with tomboy?"

     "Ahh..." Mousse said, turning and looking at Shampoo, who was gazing
at him quite fiercely.

     "Excuse me," Akane said, stepping to one side and laughing again.

     "If Mousse want to hug somebody, hug Shampoo," Shampoo said,
proceeding to demonstrate how.  Mousse sighed with relief, and Shampoo
turned to look at Akane.

     "And Akane go find Ranma if she want somebody to hug," she said,
sticking out her tongue at the other girl.  Akane stuck out her tongue in
response, and wandered off to find Ranma.

**********

     Ranma was heading across the dojo floor towards the exit that led back
to the house, which was where he'd seen Akane headed a few minutes ago.  He
was intercepted suddenly by Kuno, who loomed up in front of him from out of
nowhere.

     "Ranma Saotome," the older boy said, looking down at him with a
controlled expression.  "I would speak to you of this marriage between you
and Akane Tendo."

     "Listen, Kuno-"

     The remainder died in his throat when Kuno knelt on one knee before
him.  "Ranma Saotome, I ask your forgiveness."

     Ranma was utterly speechless for the moment.

     "It is not an easy thing for me to do this," Kuno said.  "For I have
much pride, Ranma Saotome.  Perhaps even too much.  But one thing I did not
have until recently was the ability to see beyond myself.  I have done much
wrong to you, and to Akane Tendo."

     Kuno's voice was utterly serious.  "We are not friends, Ranma Saotome.
Perhaps we never will be.  But we have been comrades in battle, and you
have proved yourself many times over a man of noble spirit.  I could not
see this until now, and that was my error.  I would make redress for what I
have done, for the dishonour I have brought upon myself and my family."

     He looked up, meeting Ranma's eye with his.  "If you ask, Ranma
Saotome, then my life is yours.  If my death is what it..."

     "Hey Kuno, shut up," Ranma said.  "This samurai movie stuff gets on my
nerves.  Get up."

     "If you wish," Kuno said as he stood.

     "I forgive your actions," Ranma said, rolling his eyes.  "I don't know
just how much you realize how much crap you've put me through, but it's
okay.  It's forgiven."

     "Thank you," Kuno said.

     "And none of this 'my life is yours' crap, okay?" Ranma said.
"There's been way too much people gone already.  Happosai, Cologne,
Kitzuiri..."

     Kuno nodded.  "You have changed, Ranma Saotome."

     "You have too, Kuno," Ranma said after a moment.

     "I offer my blessing your union," Kuno said.  He smiled, as if unsure
how, and met Ranma's eyes with his.

     Ranma deflated and smiled back finally.  "Alright."

     He extended his hand.  "Shake on it?"

     They shook, and went their separate ways, Ranma to continue to look
for Akane and Kuno to look for whatever it was he was seeking.

**********

     Nabiki watched Kuno and Ranma part from a dozen feet away, crossing
her arms over her chest and smiling broadly.  "Way to go, Kuno-baby," she
said quietly, leaning back against the wall and taking a sip of her drink.

     "That was extremely hard for him to do, you know," Kodachi said softly
from Nabiki's side; Nabiki hadn't even heard the other girl approach.  "He
is prideful and stubborn."

     "You're telling me," Nabiki said, looking at Kuno's sister and rolling
her eyes.

     Kodachi smiled in response.  "I forget often how close you and my
brother are."

     "Kuno-baby and I are not close," Nabiki said stiffly.

     "Of course not," Kodachi said.  "That little pet name means nothing."

     "It bugs him, though," Nabiki said.

     "Oh, I've always thought it was kind of cute," Kodachi said with a
shrug.  "A way to show the other girls he's yours."

     "He is NOT mine," Nabiki said.  "Why is everyone convinced that..."

     She shook her head and trailed off.  "Forget it, Kodachi.  I don't
care what people think."

     "That is good," Kodachi said with a nod.  "A nice balance.  He cares
too much, although he never shows it."

     "Shouldn't you be off with your boyfriend?" Nabiki said, looking at
Kodachi flatly.

      "I hope you do not insult dear Hikaru by that," Kodachi said.  "They
are far worse men in the world than he, or my brother for that matter."

     "Alright, Kodachi," Nabiki said, looking the other girl in the eyes.
"I'll level with you.  Let us get a few things straight; yes, I think your
brother is kind of cute.  Yes, he can be tolerable at times.  Yes, all that
samurai drama stuff is even kind of charming after a while, and he can be
awfully gallant at times.  Yes, a girl could probably do a lot worse than
your brother.  But she might be able to do a lot better, as well."

     Kodachi looked at her, and a small, strange smile quirked her face.
"Yes, in time, in a year or two years or five years or ten, she probably
could.  The question is, does she need to?"

     Kodachi turned and walked off without another word.  Nabiki shook her
head, looked across the room to where Kuno stood by himself, looked across
the other way to Kodachi walking away from her.

     She looked from brother to sister again, then shrugged and finished
her drink.

**********

     Ryoga stepped up to Akari as she came in from outside.  "Are they
alright out there?"

     She smiled.  "Of course.  We breed our pigs for toughness, and that
includes being able to endure a few snowflakes."

     He put an arm around her waist and pecked her on the cheek.  "That's
good."

     She sighed into his embrace and leaned her head on his shoulder.  "I
love you, Ryoga."

     "Love you too, Akari," Ryoga said.

     "It hurts to think I nearly lost you," she said.

     Ryoga nodded.  "If it hadn't been for..."

     He trailed off, remembering Kitzuiri slamming into him, knocking him
aside and falling into the path of the terrible dark wings of the Herald.
He remembered the dark angel laughing as it killed the spirit.

     Akari wiped at her eyes.  "He was such a good friend when I was a
little girl... I always thought he was just someone I made up, to keep
myself from getting lonely."

     "Well, you're not alone any more," Ryoga said.  "I'm not alone either.
We've got our friends, and we've got each other."

     "Yeah," Akari said.  "We do."

     And her words rang true for both of them.

**********

     Kasumi was in the kitchen of the house, refilling a tray with cookies
to take back to the dojo.  Even though she was somehow managing to stay in
her adult form for the evening, Hinako still had a large appetite for
sweets.

     It was still a mild annoyance to see how much she fawned over father,
but it was an annoyance Kasumi could finally tolerate; he was an adult and
it was none of her business.  Besides, he did seem to be enjoying her
company.

     She was just getting ready to leave the kitchen when she heard a
knock on the front door.

     Balancing the tray on one hand, she went to answer it.  "I thought all
the guests had arrived," she murmured softly.

     She opened the door and nearly dropped the tray.

     "Hello, Dr. Tofu," she said politely after a moment.

     "Hello, K... Kasumi," he replied.  She could see a struggle on his
face, terrible nervousness.

     "Won't you come in?" she said.

     He came in, shrugging out of the light coat he wore.  His dark hair
was powdered with snowflakes, and his glasses fogged up slightly on coming
in.

     "I... I was surprised when I got invited," he said.  "Ranma's mother
came by and introduced herself a few days ago.  She..."

     He sighed; Kasumi put down the tray of cookies on the hall table and
took his coat, hanging it up in the closet.  "I haven't seen you in a
while, Dr. Tofu," she said quietly.

     "I missed your visits," he said quietly.  The silence between them was
palpable.  "You were always so..."

     He sighed again and took off his boots.  "I made some mistakes, I
think.  Acted like a little boy when I should have acted like a man."

     "We all make mistakes," Kasumi said neutrally.  "Why don't you come
and say hello to everyone else?"

     "I'd like that," he said, giving her a hesitant smile.

     Kasumi gave him one back; she saw his face twitch slightly, breaking
momentarily into a familiar goofy smile before he visibly got himself under
control again.

     "Everyone's in the dojo," she said to him, picking up the tray again
with one hand and putting her fingers gently on his arm.  "This way."

     She kept them there for just a moment longer than she needed to, and
headed off with Dr. Tofu following behind her.

     Perhaps it was a beginning.  It was something, at least.

**********

     Hikaru was at one of the tables, grabbing a can of soda from the large
bucket of ice, when Kodachi came up behind him and put her hands over his
eyes.

     "Guess who?" she purred.

     "An extremely attractive woman?" he said.  She slipped her hands off
his eyes and he turned around and looked at her with false disappointment.
"Oh.  It's just you, Kodachi."

     Kodachi huffed and turned her back to him as if to walk away.

     "I was only kidding!" he said frantically, putting a hand on her
shoulder to stop her.

     She turned around and snuggled against him.  "Of course you were."

     He laughed and put an arm around her shoulders.  "You just like
teasing me, don't you?"

     "You always fall for it, dear," she said, pecking him on the cheek.
"It's so cute."

     Hikaru grumbled and kissed her briefly.  "Yeah, yeah."

     "Did you see my brother speaking to Ranma?" she asked.

     Hikaru nodded.  "Didn't think I'd ever see him bowing to anyone,
least of all Ranma."

     Kodachi smiled.  "He's changed.  So have we all."

     "What were you talking to Nabiki about?" he asked.

     Kodachi shrugged.  "Girl talk.  You wouldn't understand."

     "No, I probably wouldn't," he said.  "God, what a time it's been..."

     He shook his head and laughed.  "Maybe it is over, though.  All the
fights, all the romantic entanglements..."

     "Can't say I'll miss it," Kodachi said.  "It's about time we had some
stability around here."

     "Stability's nice," Hikaru said.  "Maybe a bit boring at times."

     "Everything has to end sometimes," Kodachi said quietly.

     "Yeah," Hikaru said.  "I guess it does."

**********

     Soun Tendo was feeling a strange combination of nervousness and
happiness.  He was happy because he was celebrating the engagement of his
youngest daughter, the true engagement this time, not the arranged one that
had ceased to mean anything long ago.  This was an engagement of their own
free will, and to him it was a far more valuable thing.

     He was extremely nervous, on the other hand, because he really wasn't
used to a woman as beautiful as Hinako Ninomiya paying attention to him
like this.  It had been a very long time since he'd had any contact at all,
really, with women beyond his daughters.

     It was all very confusing.

     Soun sighed and looked to Genma; Hinako was away for the moment,
standing a few feet away and talking to Nodoka.  The two women would
occasionally glance at Soun with a conspirational air about them that made
him extremely nervous.

     "Things have worked out for them at last, haven't they Saotome?" he
said.

     Genma nodded and looked up at the ceiling.  Soun's old friend had
been strangely contemplative all evening.  "Hopefully so, Tendo."

     "Is everything alright, Saotome?" Soun asked.

     "Just thinking, Tendo," Genma said.  "About the past."

     "Seems strange for you," Soun said.  "You've always had very
here-and-now attitude about you, old friend."

     "Perhaps that was the problem," Genma murmured, so softly Soun almost
didn't hear it.  "Look always ahead and you'll never see what's coming up
behind until it's too late..."

     "You're in a strange mood, my friend," Soun said.

     "That I am," Genma said with a mild sigh.  "Perhaps..."

     "And what are you two talking about?" Nodoka said as she came up with
Hinako.  "You're so quiet all of a sudden."

     "Nothing much, dear," Genma said as his wife came to stand beside him.

     "I'm so glad you invited me, Mr. Tendo," Hinako said as she came up to
Soun and put a hand on his shoulder.

     "Well, yes, of course, you are my daughter and Ranma's teacher and
you've been such a help with all the monsters and demons and evil spirits
and kidnappings and such," Soun stammered nervously in one breath.

     "Thank you," Hinako said.  She giggled slightly.  "It's good I'm able
to stay an adult tonight."

     "Hmm?" Soun asked.

     Hinako indicated a fishbowl sitting on a table in the corner.  "I'll
explain later."

     Soun nodded.  "Well..."

     He coughed nervously.  "Uh..."

     "Err..." Hinako stammered.

     "Do you think he's going to kiss her soon?" Genma whispered to Nodoka
from where they stood surreptitiously watching the clumsy interplay between
the two.

     Nodoka sighed and shook her head, trying to remember exactly why she'd
married him.

     "He's like I was with you," Genma said softly.  "So nervous..."

     He chuckled softly.  "It's been about time he started letting go of
the hurt..."

     He put a hand on her shoulder and smiled at her.  "I love you,
Nodoka.  Maybe I don't tell you enough, or do enough to show it, but-"

     "Ah," Nodoka said with a small smile.  "That was why."

     "Huh?" Genma said.

     "Never mind," Nodoka said.

     "Alright," Genma said, because it was.

**********

     Akane stepped into the dojo and promptly bumped into Konatsu.

     "Excuse me," she said with a small smile.

     Konatsu smiled back.  "Have you seen Ukyou, Akane?"

     "Not in a while," she said.  "Sorry.  You seen Ranma?"

     "I think he's in here somewhere," Konatsu said.  "Where did I see him
again..."

     "He went to look for you, Akane," Ukyou said as she came up and leaned
on Konatsu, resting one elbow on his shoulder.

     "Guess we must have missed each other somewhere," Akane said.  "He's
probably in the house.  You guys having a good time?"

     "Yeah," Konatsu said a bit shyly.  "It's nice to meet all your
friends..."

     "Okay," Akane said as she stepped back towards the house.  "I'll see
you guys later."

     Ukyou switched from resting her elbow on Konatsu's shoulder to having
her arm around his waist.  "Hey hon.  I missed you for a while."

     "I got in a discussion about the role of the ninja in modern society
with Sasuke," Konatsu said with a shrug.

     Ukyou blinked.  "Whatever.  So, we're heading off tomorrow to Kyoto?"

     Konatsu nodded.  "If that's where you're going, I'm going as well."

     Ukyou laughed slightly.  "Now and forever, huh sugar?"

     "If you don't mind," Konatsu said.

     "No," Ukyou said.  "I don't think I do.  Not in the least."

     She sighed and looked away for a moment, sadness passing across her
face.  She said something softly under her breath, something Konatsu didn't
hear.  A name, perhaps.

     "Is everything alright?" he asked.

     She smiled, a bit weakly.  "Just fine.  I was just thinking..."

     "About what?" Konatsu asked.  The two of them started to walk around
the dojo, looking at where people huddled in knots of conversation.

     "Imagine what it would be like," she said after a moment.  "If one
day, everyone just forgot you existed.  You could still see them, still be
near them, but they had no idea who you were."

     "That would be awful," Konatsu said, his dark eyes shining.  "Why are
you thinking about something like that?"

     "No real reason," Ukyou said with a sigh.  "Just something to think
about, you know."

     She pecked him lightly on the cheek; her breath was warm against his
face.  "This is supposed to be a happy occasion, you know... God, it's been
a hard last little while, you know..."

     "Yeah," Konatsu said softly.  "So many people... all those towns, all
those terrorist attacks..."

     "People we know, as well," Ukyou said.  "Cologne, Happosai..."

     She laughed softly.  "God, I was convinced for so long those two were
going to outlive all of us..."

     She wiped a hand across her eyes.  "I guess nothing lives forever..."

     "Everything lives forever," Konatsu said, a bit hesitantly.  "As long
as it is remembered."

     For some reason, some reason Konatsu didn't understand and never
would, Ukyou began to cry.

     Stricken, he looked at her.  "What... Oh, was it something I said...
Ukyou, I'm so sorry..."

     She shook her head, gulped slightly and embraced him, resting her head
on his shoulder and wrapping her arms around his chest.  "I'm the one who
should be sorry... I'm just all..."

     "It's alright," Konatsu said, mystified.  "You can tell me."

     He meant it with all sincerity, all the love he held in his heart for
her.  But in truth, she couldn't tell him.

     "It's nothing," she said.

     And to him, it was.

**********

     Mousse and Shampoo took the long way back to the dojo, that led from
the back door of the house out across the snow-speckled yard, to the back
door of the dojo, from which light and laughter emanated.

     "<Going home,>" Shampoo said after a moment.  "<Back to the village,
back to the tribe...>"

     She sighed.  "<Feels funny, doesn't it?>"

     Mousse nodded.  "<This place... rather feels like home at times,
doesn't it?>"

     "<Many friends here,>" Shampoo said with another sigh, looking up at
the night sky.  "<Good times, bad times...>"

     "<Shampoo...>" Mousse said after a moment.  "<I... I know things are
still... there's still a lot we need to sort out, and->"

     Shampoo kissed him suddenly.  "<Shh... Don't talk for a while.  Just
listen.>"

     He was quiet, and the two of them stood in silence under the night
sky.  "<What are we listening to?>" he asked after a moment.

     Shampoo looked at him, a bit sadly, as if she saw something he could
not see and never would.  "<Silence.>"

     "<How can you listen to silence?>" Mousse asked.

     Shampoo didn't answer, only kissed him again.  "<I love you,
Mousse...> she whispered softly.

     Mousse blinked and nearly fainted.  "<Wha... what did you...>"

     "<I said I love you,>" Shampoo said.  "<You've gone deaf as well as
blind now, have you?>"

     "<Sh... Sh... Shampoo...>" Mousse said, and in his voice was an
inflection she hadn't heard in a long time.  "<I... I love you too,
Shampoo!  I love you too!>"

     He laughed delightedly and began to dance around the yard.  "<She
loves me, she loves me... Oh, happy day!>"

     Shampoo watched him, shaking her head and wondering just why it was
she loved him.  Then she realized that was a question perhaps better left
unanswered.

     She looked up at the sky again, and sighed.

     "<Great-grandmother,>" she whispered quietly.

     *"Nothing ever dies.  Life is but one journey, and death the next
road for us.  I do not fear what waits beyond."*

     "<Dreams have stopped, great-grandmother,>" she said quietly.  "<But
more will come.  I will do my best to follow them.>"

     She bowed her head for a moment, then went to calm Mousse down before
he fell into the pond.

**********

     Nabiki watched Kuno out of the corner of her eye, as he stood and
looked out one of the windows in the wall of the dojo at the falling snow.

     Arms crossed behind his back, posture straight, his pose was as it had
been the last time he'd stood like this, nearly two weeks ago, watching the
snow spiral down.  Before the journey home, before the sun had been
darkened, before they'd all returned with stories of cities beneath the
earth, of shadows that flowed like living things.  She'd heard a little of
what had happened, and Akane had said something about Kuno.  Something
about a sword.

     Probably the only ones who truly could have told her what had happened
to Kuno down there were him or his sister.  And Nabiki didn't really feel
up to asking either one of them.

     But he'd been avoiding her; the casual manner they'd shared for a
little while was gone, and she found she missed it.  But she knew not what
to do; people were not numbers, and you never knew how people were going to
react when you did something.

     She often thought she liked numbers better than people, but there was
a lot people could give you that numbers couldn't.  People could give you
friendship, protection.  They could give you love; they could save your
life.

     Perhaps it was time she started trying to like people better than
numbers.

     She came up behind him, put a hand on each shoulder.  "Hey Kuno-baby.
You feeling okay?"

     He glanced back, smiled a bit sadly at her.  "Perhaps, Nabiki Tendo."

     "What happened to just Nabiki?" she asked softly.

     "I am sorry," he said.  "Nabiki."

     It sounded forced, and she wilted slightly inside.  "Only if you want
to call me that..."

     "I shall call you whatever it is you wish..." he said quietly.
"Only..."

     "What is it?" Nabiki asked.

     He sighed, and she felt his body tense.  Unconsciously, she settled
her hands a bit more firmly on his shoulders.  "There are many stains upon
me, Nabiki."

     "You're not the only one," she said softly.  "You think you're the
only person here who's ever done wrong in their life, Tatewaki?"

     She moved her hands slightly, a half-caress across his back and
shoulders, not quite sure why she did.

     *"Yes, in time, in a year or two years or five years or ten, she
probably could.  The question is, does she need to?"*

     "Hey Kuno-baby?" she said, turning him gently around.  His eyes were
sad, and he could not quite meet her gaze.

     "Yes, Nabiki?" he said, finally looking at her.

     "I never really thanked you for saving my life... After all, it's not
too often a girl these days gets rescued from a demon by a handsome
samurai..." she said softly, smiling invitingly at him.

     Kuno looked at her as if she'd just grown a second head.

     She glanced around the room, not quite sure what to do now.  She
looked at Kodachi, talking quietly to Hikaru.  She looked at Ukyou as
Konatsu embraced her, offered her comfort for some grief Nabiki didn't
know.

     She looked at her father, talking with Hinako-sensei and Genma and
Nodoka.  She watched as her older sister entered, talking to a remarkably
controlled-looking Dr. Tofu, who as far as Nabiki could remember Kasumi had
stopped visiting a while ago.

     From outside in the backyard, she heard someone shouting joyfully in a
language she didn't know.  She couldn't see Ranma and Akane, but she was
pretty sure wherever they were, they were together.

     "Oh, what the hell," she said finally after a long second.  She threw
her arms around Kuno's neck, pulled his head down, and kissed him hard on
the lips.

     Kuno's eyes rolled back into his head and he looked as if he might
faint.  In the end, though, he didn't.  Eventually, when his brain started
working again, as well as it ever did, he kissed her back.

**********

     Akane went upstairs finally, unable to locate Ranma in either the dojo
or the bottom floor of the house.  He wasn't in his room when she looked;
she was scratching her head in the hallway when she saw a crack of light
coming from under the closed door of what had been Happosai's room.

     She pushed it open and stepped inside; Ranma was going through the
closet, pulling out boxes and bags and books, the old man's childish scrawl
across most of them.

     "Ranma?" she said softly.  "What are you doing?"

     "I... I don't really know," he said, not looking up, and his voice was
thick with sadness.  "It's just... nobody's been in here since he... and I
thought maybe we should clean it out, see if there's any..."

     He laughed slightly.  "I don't even know what I'm sad about.  He was
such a pain in the ass, but..."

     The book he'd been taking out dropped to the floor with a thump,
fallen from limp fingers that didn't seem to have the strength to hold it
anymore.  "Geez... I'm gettin' all weepy over the old lech..."

     Akane came and sat down beside him on the floor, gently embracing him
after a moment.  "I know what you mean.  I... when Shampoo told us about
what he'd said, about what he went off to do..."

     She sighed.  "What he said to her... that he was sorry.  That he
wanted us all to know he didn't run away in the end..."

     Ranma nodded.  "Ya know... what that thing said.  That there was a
part of it contained inside Happosai, and Cologne and Lukkosai as well, I
guess.  You think... you think that made him..."

     "Maybe," Akane said.  "Just maybe."

     "I think... I think I would have liked to have known him before it
happened," Ranma said finally.  "Just..."

     "I know what you mean," Akane said slowly.  "But it's too late now.
Let's try to remember him for what he did in the end, not for what he did
before."

     "His own son..." Ranma said.  "Their own son turned against them...
It's awful... I..."

     He shuddered slightly, and Akane held his head against her shoulder,
and in that moment as he sought comfort in her, he seemed very small and
vulnerable, and the love she had for him burned so hard that it hurt.  "I
hope when we have a kid, it turns out better than that."

     The words brought a kind of nervous laughter to the two of them.
Ranma straightened up a bit, stroked Akane's cheek with one hand, looked at
the glitter of the ring on his finger, matched by the one on hers.

     "I think it's gonna be okay now," Ranma said after a moment.  "I think
things are gonna be just fine."

     He kissed her.  It went on for a long time, and after a while Akane
found herself lying back on the floor, Ranma beside her, his hands moving
along her body and his lips on hers.

     "You know..." she said as he broke off from one kiss.  She traced a
finger along his chest.  "Perhaps this isn't the best place to do this.  Of
all the places in the world, the last place I want this to finally happen
is in the room formerly occupied by the world's most dirty old man."

     That drew long laughter from both of them, with sadness mixed in it
for a man they'd both wished dead within their mind a hundred times.
"Yeah," Ranma said, his voice strangely hoarse.  "Besides, you just know
someone's gonna walk in, or I'm gonna get a bucket of water dumped on me,
or somethin' would happen to screw it up..."

     Akane kissed him again, for a long time.  "Yeah.  Maybe later,
though."

     "You better watch it," Ranma said with a smirk.  "I'll hold you to
that promise someday."

     "Someday soon, I hope," Akane said, kissing him again.  "I love you,
Ranma."

     "I love you too, Akane," Ranma said.  He got up from the floor, helped
her up with a hand.  They spent a few moments adjusting their clothing,
blushing nervously as they did so.

     "Come on," Akane said.  "Dad said he'd like us to say something about
all this, about the engagement, about Happosai, about...  I'm not sure
what, but..."

     "Guess we'll see when we get there, won't we?" Ranma said with a
smile.  "Always have."

     So the two of them stepped out of the room, turning out the light as
they went and leaving the room in darkness, closing the door behind them
and heading downstairs.

**********

     And the celebration wound down eventually, and they all went their
separate ways, as all friends must in time.  Perhaps their paths would
cross again, perhaps they were never again to meet in this world.

     They had fought together, both against each other and against other
things.  They had known sorrow, and known joy, an abundance of both.  They
had all been connected to each other somehow, through family, through
rivalry, through love and through friendship but now the threads that had
held them together were splitting apart, branching out and weaving their
own paths through the world.

     But they would not forget each other, not ever, for some things must
never be forgotten.  For it takes but one single memory to let a precious
thing live forever.

     And boarding the train to Kyoto, watching her friends bid her and
Konatsu goodbye from the platform, Ukyou Kuonji saw out of the corner of
her eye a tall figure, thin and quick and standing in the background, wave
once and then be gone, and she would remember, though she might never see
Shigeki Kiyokuro again.

     And leaving their families behind and heading back to college,
Tatewaki Kuno and Nabiki Tendo let their hands brush once as they sat, and
smiled at each other, and they would not forget.  And watching her brother
go, with her hand in Hikaru Gosunkugi's hand, Kodachi Kuno would not forget
either.

     And standing in the forest near their house, Akari Unryuu and Ryoga
Hibiki were almost sure that they heard the light laughter of a child that
became the bark of a fox, and then vanished like a whisper of leaves,
though there could be no leaves in winter.  And they would remember.

     And on the plane that soared across the Sea of Japan to China,
sleeping with Mousse's arm around her shoulders, Shampoo had a dream of two
people, a man and a woman, walking through a forest in the summer, a forest
more beautiful than any forest she had ever seen.  And a child walked with
them.  And though she never did quite figure out what that dream meant,
though she came to find the meaning of many, she never forgot it till the
end of her days.

     And watching their children, as they played endless games of shogi,
always cheating, never caring who won, Genma Saotome and Soun Tendo would
see suddenly a small reflection of themselves in their children, and no
matter how small a reflection it might be, they would remember.

     And at his wedding day, as Ranma Saotome looked to Akane Tendo, to the
ring upon her finger, he remembered another ring, and what it had taken for
him to give it to her, and someone who was not at the wedding, who could
not be, and he too would remember.

     They all would remember, for it is in memory that all things live
forever.  It takes but one memory, as it takes but one candle.  One candle
to light the darkness; one single candle, no matter how small, for as long
as even but one candle burns, one single light against the darkness, then
the darkness shall never truly rule, and the light shall never die.

     What had begun in a summer where death stalked the streets had
continued into an autumn of fear, and from there into a winter when
darkness, however briefly, had nearly ruled over everything.  But now, like
waking from a dream, the spring would be coming, and for now it was only...

                                  THE END

                 Do not go gentle into that good night
                 Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
                 Rage, rage against the dying of the light

                 Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
                 Because their words had forked no lightning they
                 Do not go gentle into that good night.

                 Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
                 Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
                 Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

                 Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
                 And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
                 Do not go gentle into that good night.

                 Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight                  
                 Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
                 Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

                 And you, my father, there on the sad height,
                 Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
                 Do not go gentle into that good night.
                 Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle".

**********

Author's Notes:

Well.  That was an extremely long finale, wasn't it?  It's more than double
the size of any previous chapters, and bigger than any two of them put
together.  But hey, when you go, go with a bang, I've always believed.  ^_^

This story is many things.  Fundamentally, it is (as I envision it, at
least) a story of a son's betrayal, and of his final redemption.  Though at
what a cost redemption comes at times...

There are a lot of major and minor themes running throughout the ten parts
of this story.  You can decide for yourself what most of them are, but I'll
mention quickly the three major ones I kept in mind while writing.

The first is the power of sacrifice, be it for the sake of many or the sake
of one.  Being willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of your own life,
whether it is necessary or not, can allow a person to accomplish much
greater ends than the efforts of someone who fears their own death more
than they fear the consequences of their failure.

The second is the ability of a person to redeem themselves, to try and make
amends for past wrongs they have done.  The two figures within this story
who this is most important to are Happosai and his son.  Both have done
great wrong, and both, in the end, give all that they have to undo some of
that wrong.

The third major theme is that of the past, of how it can shape and control
our lives even years later.  Again, as with the first two themes, this is
exemplified in Happosai's character.  As I envisioned him within this
universe, he became a rather tragic figure, a man crippled, both literally
and figuratively by the demons of his past.

Of course, these three themes are true for many other characters within
this work.  But looking back, if there is any character who shows most
blatantly these three themes, it is Happosai, probably the most disliked
major character within the series by most people.  He has few redeeming
qualities, but if he was entirely and unrepentently evil, I think someone
with his power and skill would be far, far worse than what he is.

In the end, I would like to think that he managed to make some right from
all his wrong, some light from his darkness.  That was the best one such as
him could hope to do.

The inspirations for this story came from many different sources.  The idea
of Cologne and Happosai's son came from thinking about just how little we
know about the past of either of these two, given their age.  We know that
they have met before, sometime in the past, but each gives a conflicting
version of what went between them.  That was the story idea as it first
emerged; the story of Cologne and Happosai's son, and how the darkness took
him all those years ago, and left wounds between those two that could never
be healed.

Other inspiration came from widely diverse sources, including other anime,
literature, and traditional Japanese mythology.  I was most inspired, I
think (as I was with Thy Fate Shall Overtake) by the works of H.P.
Lovecraft and the other writers of his circle.  It was both the fantastic
mythology Lovecraft and others created and their vision of the world that
inspired me; the idea that the shadows of the past are far darker and far
more terrible than we can ever imagine, that what we know of history is but
a grain of sand upon a beach, and that there are powers out there that are
not so much evil in the traditional demonic sense as they are evil simply
by their total and utter alien nature.  That idea became melded with some
elements of Japanese mythology, which I have tried to remain as true to
within the context of the story as I could, and with numerous other
sources.

This is the culmination and final part of the saga that began with "Our Own
Damnation" six months ago; when I wrote that work, I had no idea of what
was going to emerge.  I suppose when the muse takes hold, though, we can
sometimes only hope to hang on for the ride.  What really set up the
continuation, though, was the appearance of Shigeki Kiyokuro in the last
few pages of "Our Own Damnation".  He plays a relatively minor role within
"The Dying of the Light", and the final truth of his nature is a sub-plot
next to Tensai and the manipulative plots of the Herald, but he is
important in both his relationship to Ukyou and in providing another link
to Happosai and Cologne's past.  Looking at what he became, I would say his
character comes most from Michael Moorcock's books; the tragic, unlikely
hero forced to a fate not of their choosing by circumstance and a
dedication to a duty to which he may not be entirely suited, but which he
takes on all the same.

I could go on for pages about the sources of other characters, but I think
I'll leave those be.  Decide for yourselves where they come from, if you
wish.  I know most people don't care much about these author's notes
anyway, but, hey, I like to write them.  ^_^

This has been an extremely long fic, hasn't it?  I don't think I'll ever
write one this large again (I hope I never write one this large again...).
A big epic like this is extremely satisfying to write (hopefully to read as
well), but they leave you feeling extremely drained creatively.  I've got a
half dozen smaller story ideas I want to do that I've had on the back
burner for the past three months while I worked to finish The Dying of the
Light, but right now I feel so tired of writing... *sigh*

Now that I've finally finished ranting about the story, it's time for the
thanks.  I could not have written all this without the following
people/things to aid me along:

Rumiko Takahashi - It goes without saying.  Without Takahashi-sama, there
would be no Ranma fanfic in the first place.  (The horror... the horror...)

H.P. Lovecraft - Started my whole obsession with the idea of dead alien
gods, ancient evil from beyond time and space, and a whole buncha other
keen stuff.

Many other fanfic authors - Who kept me entertained during the long, long
time it took me to write all of this.

People who wrote - Thank you.  It makes it all worth it to know that
someone, somewhere, is reading this.  

RAAC and all the lovely folks who make it happen- For providing a forum
into which I can spew my creative output.  ^_^

Bulk E-mailers - Who filled my mailbox with their tasteful and useful
advertising, MMF schemes and X-rated site addresses.  (In case you don't
know, I'm being sarcastic...)

Coca-Cola Classic - For help with writing late into the night, and for
caffeine induced hallucinations that reveal to me the secrets of the
universe.  @_@

You - Because you've read all the way to the end of this saga, and to the
end of these authors notes.  I have no more to say.  Farewell.

"Destiny always calls just when you sit down to dinner..."

Sayonara,

-Alan Harnum, January 16, 1998