Waters Under Earth

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

Chapter 6 : Stained Be My Soul

Dewdrop, let me cleanse
In your brief, sweet waters...
These dark hands of life
-Basho

     It was a slow numbing this time.  Ranma could feel a cold
sensation start to flow from somewhere in his centre to all parts
of his body, as if his blood had turned to icy water.  The tall,
slim woman in the blue-white robes standing before him seemed to
be moving disjointedly, like a bad stop-motion animation, as she
stepped forward past the fallen form of Happosai.  She raised her
strange weapon and pointed at him.  It was a black wooden rod, a
little over two feet long, tipped at the far end by two curving,
blunt-ended blades and attached to her wrist by a silver chain
that led to a bracelet around her black-gauntleted wrist.

     "So you don't fight girls all out, do you?" she said in her 
grating voice.  She'd given her name as Denkoko, he vaguely 
remembered.  It didn't really seem important.

     "Don't like to," a part of him said from very far away,
behind the spreading ice.  He shifted and prepared himself for
any of a dozen different approaches the woman might take; the
still bodies of Happosai and Cologne gave testament to the fact
that this woman and her companion, the black-clad Yamiko, were
not to be taken lightly; granted, they had both had the 
advantages of surprise and distraction over the two masters, but
it was the fact that neither of them was getting back up that
really disturbed Ranma.  A hundred feet away, he could see Ryoga
and the others beginning to circle the shadowy form of the other
woman.

     "What a foolish boy," Denkoko said.  "Little foolish boy."

     <She's trying to distract you,> an inner voice said.  <Keep
you talking.  You've done it yourself.  Pay attention.  Look at
what's going on.  Take in the situation.>

     He did, slowly.  Cologne was starting to move, just a
little; the strange, living shadow that had revealed Yamiko had
apparently been powerful enough to hurt even the ancient Amazon,
although she didn't look so ancient anymore.

     <She's not with them,> the voice said.  <But still a
possible foe.  Keep your eye on her.>

     Happosai was very still, with smoke still rising from his
body.  Denkoko's weapon was obviously dangerous.  <Reach
advantage, and powerful too.  Remove it from her as soon as
possible.>

     Akane was hanging back with his still unconscious mother and
the paralysed Shampoo, as Ryoga, Ukyou, and Mousse approached
Yamiko.  A part of him wanted to go to her, but that part was
diminishing very rapidly beneath the slow but inexorable tides of
ice washing through him.  <They are far away.  No matter.  Let
them handle the other woman.  This one before you is your foe.>

     All that taken in in a second, but still too much time,
still too much time, because Denkoko was moving, and she was
fast, very fast, faster than she'd been when she'd attacked
Happosai.  Three quick steps forward, long strides, right arm
still tucked inside her robes, left arm with the rod raised.
Even amidst the half-frozen time of the ice, she was almost
blindingly quick.

     He sidestepped her charge, threw a punch, missed as she
whirled and stabbed the rod at him in a straight-armed blow, one
that forced him to step back, put him on the defensive.  Even the
touch of the thing would probably be deadly.

     Forward she came, and she was fast, she was so very fast,
even here, even with the ice upon his senses and his body, she
was fast.

     And not just fast.  Skilled as well, very skilled.  She 
moved with deadly grace, like a dancer, making short, quick jabs 
at him with her weapon, the tips of which were now humming and 
crackling, filling the air with the stink of ozone as blue sparks 
slashed between the blades.  She was leaving no openings for him, 
none at all, because he couldn't risk the touch of that weapon.

     He continued backstepping, a momentary glance risked behind
him showing that one side of the forest was approaching rapidly.
A few more seconds and they'd be among the trees, where there'd
be less room for her to use her weapon and more things for him to
hide behind.

     He heard someone scream in pain, from far away.  Ukyou, it
sounded like.  But there was so much ice, and beyond the ice was
fire, and within the ice was something else, some hidden core he
could not yet see, and Ukyou and Shampoo and Mousse and Ryoga and
even Akane were beyond all those things now.

**********

     "We don't want to hurt you," Ryoga said as he stepped
lightly forward, balancing on the balls of his feet with every
muscle loose and ready.

     "Unless we have to," Mousse said from beside him, his hands
tucked into the sleeves of his robe.  Ryoga glanced at him
worriedly; the other boy's voice sounded very cold.  Of course,
seeing Shampoo nearly kill herself to stop Ranma from having to
fight Cologne would surely have affected him deeply.  Ryoga
himself was still half in denial of what had happened.  It had
only been Ranma's quick intervention, moving so quickly that
Ryoga hadn't even seen him move, that had stopped the girl from
plunging the knife into her heart.

     "So take your friend and back off," Ukyou said.  She was
advancing behind the two boys, her big spatula gripped in one
hand at the hilt and resting on her shoulder, her other hand
holding a fistful of razor-edged throwing spatulas.  "I don't
know if you two are with Cologne or what, but I've had a really
bad last couple of days and I'm not in the best of moods.  So if
you don't wanna get hurt, just get out of here."

     The woman in front of them made an unpleasant gurgling sound
deep in her throat and half-crouched, empty hands out to her
sides with the fingers curving slightly inwards towards her 
palms.  Her long braid of dark hair swung over one shoulder as 
she jerked her head abruptly to one side and hissed at them from 
behind the black leather mask that covered everything below her 
eyes.

     The shadow she cast was too large, not even human in shape,
looking more like a pool of night-black water, rippling and
twisting in front of her, in defiance of the position of the sun.
Ryoga wished she would speak, make some kind of sound beyond
those damp noises emanating from behind her mask.

     "Well?" Ryoga asked cautiously.  "What's it gonna be?"

     In response, the woman sprang, an impossibly long leap
taking her through twenty feet of intervening space to land a
half-dozen steps away from the three who faced her.  Behind her,
her shadow bent and twisted, whipping along the ground beneath
her as she leapt.

     Mousse yelled and cast his arms out.  Chains, shuriken and
knives exploded from his sleeves, half-a-hundred flashes of
gleaming steel filling the air.

     The woman howled in a voice like a rotten thing bursting and
threw her arms wide.  Her shadow exploded from the ground in
loops and whirls of darkness that twisted around her limbs like
serpents for a moment before they wove themselves into a
shimmering velvet curtain in front of her.

     Mousse's weapons plunged into that two-dimensional curtain
and vanished utterly, as if that hanging, flapping weave of
darkness were a bottomless pit.

     "What the-" he said, eyes widening behind his glasses for
just a moment before the woman threw her arms forward, fingers
outstretched, and the shadow-curtain leapt forward, an arrow of
dark, and smashed Mousse in the chest like a great fist.  The boy
was sent tumbling heels over head backwards, a low cry of pain
bursting from his lips as he bounced across the rocky plain to
lie motionless on his back.

     As Ryoga and Ukyou stepped forward to engage her, they saw
that she cast no shadow upon the ground.  The solid thing that
had struck Mousse was gone; now Yamiko's robe swam with ripples
of darkness, black water over which a slow wind blew.

     Ukyou cast her throwing spatulas at the woman; Yamiko
sidestepped with graceful ease and spun backwards, her left leg
coming around in a kick that Ukyou barely avoided.  The dark-clad
woman could have pressed the attack, but now she had to deal with
Ryoga, and he was much more than Ukyou was.

     "Can't throw those shadows around all the time, can you?" he
asked as he came at her, suppressing whatever dislike he had of
fighting a woman beneath images of her striking down Cologne and
Mousse; she was obviously extremely dangerous.

     Yamiko gurgled wetly, her eyes narrowing, and then sprang at
him, fingers spread wide like claws.  But she had no weapon, and
it was almost as if--

     He saw the glint of metal on her black-lacquered nails just
in time, and that saved him from far worse than what he got.  A
desperate backstep meant that the razor-edged blades inserted
under her fingernails caught cloth and a little skin, instead of
opening his jugular as she'd intended.  Four long parallel
scratches welled with blood down his chest, beneath the torn
fabric of his tunic.  They hurt, but just a little.  No time for 
worrying about anything beyond her, because she was coming at him 
again, shadows rippling and flowing in her eyes and the depths of 
her robes.

     He deflected one hand, smacking her wrist aside with his
forearm, and tilted his head to the side, letting her other blow
fly past, nicking his ear slightly.

     Then he struck back.  Not as hard as he would have against a
man, but still a strong blow, under the ribs to drive the air out
of her.  Her robes were icy cold; touching them was like plunging
his hand into a half-frozen lake.

     He'd expected the blow to take her out immediately, but she
was tougher than she looked.  A hissing cry of pain escaped her,
but then her hands came up, blades glinting beneath the nails,
and went for his eyes.

     He barely got his arms up in time to block, one arm for each
hand, and got his forearms nearly shredded down to the bone for
the trouble.  He shrieked in pain, and it finally dawned on him
in that moment that she really was trying to kill him, like the
other woman had told her to.  Before that revelation could lead
him to do anything, one knee lifted into his stomach and an elbow
slammed into the side of his head, knocking him sprawling to the
side, head tilting back, throat wide and exposed.

     He probably would have died except for Ukyou, who stepped
in and swung her spatula in a blow against the other woman's
head.  It didn't connect, but it forced Yamiko to step away from
him for a moment.

     He was hurt badly, blood soaking the strips of cloth that
remained of his heavy shirt on his arms.  Feeling a little woozy,
he turned to see Yamiko raise a hand to smash down Ukyou with
another shadowy blast like she'd used on Mousse.  The girl
crumpled to the ground without a sound.

     And like that first revelation that she was really trying to
kill them, there came now a second that she might actually
succeed.

**********

     Akane felt numb, mostly.  Everything had happened so fast;
Ranma had said he'd go back to China with Cologne and Shampoo,
because without a marriage to him Shampoo would likely be killed,
exiled at best.

     Then Shampoo had tried to kill herself.  Ranma had stopped
her.  For some reason, he and Cologne were still going to fight.
Ryoga had made her come away from them.

     And then these two women had appeared.  One in blue-white,
one in black.  Ranma was fighting the one in the blue-white
robes, the one who'd struck down Happosai; Ryoga, Mousse and
Ukyou were fighting the one in black.

     And what was she doing?  Sitting with Ranma's mother and
Shampoo, both of whom were out cold.  There were lots of reasons
for it; they couldn't be left alone, someone needed to watch over
them.

     She knew the real one was because she'd just have gotten in
the way.  These two women were good; she could see Ranma in the
distance dodging fractically as the one he was fighting stabbed
at him with her rod so quickly her arm was just a blur.  It was
hard to follow the two of them, they were moving so fast.

     "Oh, Ranma..." she whispered.  There had been a change in
him, so quickly, when he heard what Cologne said about the
Joketsuzoku Council and what they would do to Shampoo, after he'd
stopped Shampoo from stabbing herself.  He'd gone... cold.  There
was no other way to describe it.  It was as if he was no longer
who he had been.

     She saw the woman in black raise her hand and hit Mousse
with some kind of attack, a solid bolt of shadow that knocked him
senseless to the ground.  She saw Ryoga come forward and engage
the woman, and felt her heart leap into her mouth as he staggered
back moments later, the blood streaming down his arms visible
even at this distance.

     A weak groan tore her attention away from the fight for a
moment.  Shampoo was coming around.  Akane watched her carefully,
wincing as she heard Ukyou scream, piercingly high.

     "Shampoo?"

     "Uhh..."

     The Chinese girl blinked her eyes a few times and sat up.
"Ranma?" she asked.

     "Two women showed up after you got... knocked out."

     Cologne had done that, hitting one of the girl's sleep spots
moments after Ranma had stopped her from driving the knife into
her heart.  Even now, the event didn't seem to have really
happened.

     Akane licked her lips and tried not to look into Shampoo's
eyes.  "They're fighting now.  Your great-grandmother's down;
so's Happosai.  I think he followed us up here looking for
Cologne."

     Shampoo's eyes were very, very cold.  She stood up and
pulled twin bonbori from her belt, knuckles white on the handles.

     "Stay with Ranma mother, Akane."

     "Shampoo-"

     "Stay."

     Whatever desire the girl had held for her own death was
apparently gone now, transferred into some rage long-hidden
within her.  Not even looking to see if Akane was staying, she
stalked off towards the battling figures of Ryoga and the
black-clad woman, moving lightly and swiftly across the rocky,
barren ground.

     Akane glanced nervously behind her at the cliff-face that
she was next to, and then to where Ranma was heading further and
further away from her with the other woman, towards the forest.

     Each step took him away from her, bit by bit.

**********

     "Hold still.  This won't hurt much," Denkoko said cheerfully
as she struck at him.

     The impact of the weapon blew a jagged hole in the trunk of
the tree Ranma had been in front of moments before.  "Actually,
that's a lie.  It will hurt quite a lot.  It won't kill you, but
it will hurt."

     Deeper and deeper they went into the forest, and denser and
denser grew the trees.  Denkoko could not hit him, but she was
too careful, too cautious a fighter to leave any opening he could
exploit, and he couldn't risk even a touch of her rod.

     He could see it was growing harder for her, though.  Tree
branches were getting in her way much of the time, although she
showed no sign of growing tired.

     And then, she made a mistake.  Just a small one, a minute
over-extension of her arm on one thrust, but it was enough.  He
stepped by, grabbing the rod behind the bladed head and wrenching
it to the side with one hand, his other hand coming by to slam
into her chin in a flat blow.  A part of him quailed at the ease
with which he hit her; another part of him said, woman or not,
this was a foe, and a dangerous one.

     The fury of the ice was upon him in full now, burning cold
throughout his body and mind.  Her head snapped back, and he
heard her teeth click together.  He whirled around her, still
keeping his grip on the weapon, wondering off-hand why she was
keeping her other hand inside her robes.  Spinning behind her,
he planted the point of an elbow into the small of her back and
felt her arch backwards involuntary.  He released his grip on the
weapon, turned again, and kicked her in the head with the side of 
his foot, knocking her to the ground.

     She fell, blood trailing from one corner of her mouth, and
rolled backwards away from him in a graceful movement as he
rushed at her.

     Her right hand came out of her robes, and he saw why she'd
hidden it.  It was little more than a twisted, withered claw,
looking like it belonged on a desiccated corpse.  The brown,
wrinkled skin was blackened by weeping sores and blisters.  The
hand pointed at him, and the fingers painfully spread open to
present a flat palm.

     He almost made it in time.  He was about to level a kick at
her when the first bolt of white-hot lightning exploded from the
twisted right hand.  That one struck him in the chest and sent
him staggering backwards with pain burning through every nerve of
his body; the second laid him flat on his back with blood
streaming from his nose, mouth and ears.  He coughed, and found
he was having trouble breathing.

     "You must be alive," he heard Denkoko say in her rasping
voice; there was the sound of dry twigs cracking under her feet
as she got back up.  A shuffling, soft shoes coming across the
dirt floor of the forest towards him.  "It does not mean you do
not have to be in pain."

     He already was.  Quite a lot of it.  It was as if the ice
had half-melted, burned away by the fury of the lighting that had
exploded from her hand.  He realized with a sick feeling that the
kick he'd been going to give her would have broken her neck.

     And then he forgot all about that, because when Denkoko
slammed the rod into his chest and twisted it he began to
discover that the pain he was currently in was not very much at
all, as pain went.

**********

     Cologne came awake abruptly, throwing herself to her feet at
the memory of what had happened before.  She looked around; Ranma
was nowhere in sight, and neither was the woman who'd appeared.
There was a second one, far away, fighting with Shampoo and
Ryoga; the two children appeared to be barely holding their own
against her.  The fallen forms of Mousse and Ukyou made the
situation look even worse; had the odds been four to one at the
start?

     She took a step towards them, leaning on her rake for
balance, and feeling weak and sick as if she'd just awakened from
a long illness.  Her eyesight was superb now that she was young
again; even at this distance she could see the blood soaking
Ryoga's clothing.

     The plan was all falling apart, and if she didn't act
quickly, someone was going to die.  A fool she'd been; she should
have spoken to Ranma from the start.  The boy's true heart had
shown itself when he'd stated his willingness to go to China lest
Shampoo suffer for not marrying him.  She hadn't expected that.

     She hadn't expected her great-grandaughter to try and kill
herself either.  Neither of those things had been figured into
the equation.

     Neither had the two women.

     And, she realized, glancing at the fallen old man a dozen
feet away, neither had Happosai.  But things were where they
were, and when the unexpected came along, you either removed it
or worked with it.

     She moved quickly to Happosai's side, as quickly as she
could manage in the state she was in.  That shadow attack had
somehow drained her energy; she couldn't have raised enough power 
to move a leaf.

     "Happi?" she said, crouching down by him.  The last memory
before she'd lost consciousness had been him calling her name.
He really did look younger, incredibly so.  She was almost sure
she saw a wrinkle in his face smooth out as she looked.  Slowly
but surely he was getting his youth back.  The Nannichuan water
he'd drunk at the wedding must be somehow working on him from the
inside, incorporating itself slowly but surely into his internal
body, spreading throughout until it reached the outside.

     There a large burn across his side, and the cloth of his
shirt was shredded.  The faint scent of an electrical discharge
still hung in the air, along with a rather sickening smell of
scorched flesh.

     "Happi?" she said again.

     "Dear Cologne..."

     Happosai reached up, his eyes still closed, and placed both
hands firmly on her breasts.  For the first time in many years,
Cologne had absolutely no idea what to do.

     His eyes snapped open, and he let out a long coughing fit,
letting his hands fall back to his sides to raise himself up.
"That's the stuff.  A female body, and quite a nice one."

     "I can't believe you just did that," Cologne muttered as she
stood up and adjusted her clothing in an attempt to get the feel
of his hands off her skin.

     "Oh, come now, Cologne, and you've known me how long?"
Happosai said as he stood up.  "You should have seen that coming
for miles.  After all, you're so much better looking now."

     "I cannot say the same for you," Cologne lied.  He did look
better, she had to admit that.  Taller, at least, if not any 
handsomer.

     "Be nice," Happosai said, brushing himself off.  "You want
to tell me what the hell's going on, Cologne?

     "I would," she said.  "But there's really not much time.
Those children need our help."

     He put his hand on her arm, very gently.  "Make time."

     "Happy..." she said in a soft voice.  "Please..."

     "I'm only a fool for a pretty face so far, Cologne," he said
softly.  "I could never see your reasons for doing a lot of
things, but I know you always had them.  Why'd you take his
mother?  Why?"

     "Because it had to be done," Cologne said.  "Those two...
they are only hands.  There are a hundred more, and they are all
grasping at him.  I had planned to remove him from it in such a
way that none would follow him."

     "Explain it later, then," Happosai said.  "They need our
help.  You're right about that."

     Cologne blinked.  "Just like that?"

     "If you believe it had to be done," Happosai said with a wry
smile and a gleam to his eye she recognized from when she'd known 
him a century ago.  "Then it probably did.  You can tell me more
later.  And you will, won't you?"

     Cologne slowly nodded.  "Help my great-grandaughter and the
others against that one.  I'm going after Ranma."

     "You can sense him or something?"

     Cologne laughed.  "How can you not?"

     Happosai looked at her, confused, then wheeled and began to
run towards the fight a hundred feet away.

     Cologne stood still for a second and focused herself.  She 
reached out, her senses mingling with the air around her, tasting
the scents and traces of the late afternoon.

     And Ranma was a thread among it, burning bright as a sun to
her vision.  But she sensed something she had not expected; pain,
and quite a lot of it.

     She began to run as well, towards the cover of the woods.

**********

     Ranma slammed back against the trunk of the tree with a
pained groan.  He could taste blood in his nose and mouth, and
the wet dripping down the sides of his face certainly wasn't
water.

     And then Denkoko was there, as she had been every time, as
she was every time he'd tried to feebly fight back.  The rod came
up, smashed into his stomach.  Every bone in his body suddenly
had the marrow replaced by hot lead.

     He groaned again, because his throat hurt too much to
scream.  It couldn't have been more than a few minutes, but how
could so much pain be fitted into a few minutes?

     She slapped him, lightly, with the withered claw that was
her right hand.  "Oh, my little pet, we shall enjoy breaking you
to our demands.  Oh, the Circle shall have some fun with you.
Such a pretty young man."

     There was no ice, no fires burning in his head.  It was
gone, all gone, washed away beneath a pain that was less an
outside thing than a part of his being now.  He didn't think you
could hurt this much and still stay conscious.

     Her withered hand grabbed him by the chin and tilted his
head back.  "This hand is hideous, is it not?  We all bear marks,
all of us.  The price of what we are.  Why do you think Yamiko
wears a mask?  But you'll learn to love this hand, my pet."

     You really shouldn't be able to hurt this much and stay
conscious.  But apparently, you could.

     Apparently, you could hurt even worse.

     There was a terrible strength in that right hand of hers,
he'd learned.  She lifted him effortlessly by the collar, with
that single hand, and hurled him across the clearing they'd found
themselves in.  He landed, barely breaking his fall with one arm,
an arm that hurt so bad it felt as if he shouldn't be able to
feel it anymore.

     He tried to roll over into his back, get to his feet, but
then someone drove something that felt like a railroad spike
through his lower back.  The shock burst through his body, sent
his limbs spasming as crackles of electricity crawled along his
skin.

     "And you'll be my special little pet," Denkoko grated from
above.  "Because I broke you first of all, my little pet.  We'll
all break you, but you'll break first to me.  We know what you
are, little boy, with your silly little honour games and all your
little fiancees.  We've watched you since before you were born;
Yoko's gift goes deep, my pet, foolish coward that she is.  Would 
you like me to tell you how many women your father had in his bed 
while you were on the road?  I can.  Would you like me to tell you 
the youngest was no older than you are now?  Would you like me to 
tell you how he paid for her with the money for your dinner and 
let you go hungry that night?"

     "Shut up," Ranma said through the pain, because defiance was
all he had left at this point.  "You sadistic bitch, shut the
hell up.  Who are you, anyway?  What the hell are you after me
for?"

     "From this day forth, I shall be your new mistress," Denkoko
said, grinding her rod into his arm without using it as an
electrical conduit this time.  "The time shall come soon when you
bend on your knees before me and do whatever I ask."

     He could only see the dirt of the forest floor, lying with
his face pressed into the ground.  Denkoko had one foot on his
back; the pain was agonizing.  He tried to turn over again, but
could only manage to tilt his head slightly to the side.  Out of
the corner of his eye, he saw blue sky and little more, and the
spreading, green-laden arms of the trees.

     "My own special little toy," Denkoko crowed happily.

     He spat blood onto the dirt and wished with all his heart
for the ice, craving it with a thirst beyond anything he had ever
felt.  Even the cold, frightening detachment would have been a
hundred times better than this pitiful state.

     Everything seemed hypersensitive; the feel of the ground
beneath him, the pain throughout his entire body, the soft
shifting of the leaves in the wind.  The sound of water, cool
water, flowing nearby.  They must be near the stream that ran
from the top of this mountain to the bottom. 

     Cool water, cool water to wash away the blood from his face, 
wash away the pain, wash it all away...

     He fought to remain conscious, keep his final defiance here.
It was a losing battle.
     
     And then it all happened very quickly.  
     
     "MIZUCHOUSENZANYOKU!"
     
     He felt Denkoko's foot lift from his back, heard a sound
like a drawn-out lightning strike, and felt a half-dozen bladed
shapes whip by him at incredible speed, spraying dirt and stone
across his face.

     "I'm afraid I can't let you do that," a voice said from the
air above.       
     
     "What a prize!  A woman with wings.  How can you fly?  You
shouldn't be able to bear your own weight.  A hollow bone
structure, perhaps?  Well, when I drag you back and we cut you
open while you still live, we'll find out, and you'll find out
just exactly the penalty for interfering with us."

     There was a boom of lightning, and a surprised cry of shock
from somewhere high above his head.  He heard Denkoko's footsteps
pounding on the forest floor as she ran away from him.

     "Kima?" he croaked softly, incoherently.  What was she doing
here?

     There was the sound of wings flapping, and a dark shape
landed next to him, drawing his eye to it.  A huge raven,
looking as if it were almost as big as an eagle.

     "Great," he croaked.  "I get saved by someone whose king was
trying to toast me a little over a week ago, and now I get to
have my eyes plucked out by the crows."

     The bird laughed, croakingly.  "Raven.  Big difference
between crows and ravens.  Crows are carrion scavengers, filthy
vermin.  Little more than country pigeons.  We ravens..."

     Ranma groaned.  "I shoulda known you were going to talk."

     "I talk to those who will listen," the raven said, shrugging
his wings as if they were shoulders.  "Few know how to listen to
me, though."

     "I'm hallucinating, aren't I?" Ranma said.

     The bird snickered, a remarkably human sound.  "Far from it.
I am real, and you are real.  What else is there?"

     "I think I'd like to go to sleep now," Ranma murmured.  His
body ached with weariness.

     "Sleep brings dreams," the bird said.  "To rest is to step
beyond the threshold of ourselves."

     "What are you?"

     "The name I bear at this time and place is Shiso."

     "You have other names?"

     "Don't we all?"

     "I'm Ranma.  Just Ranma."

     "Are you?"

     "Who else am I?"

     Laughter again.  "Would you like to know?"

     He hesitated.  The pain was very bad now.  "Yes," he
finally said.

     "Then close your eyes," the raven said.  "This will only
take a moment.  Soon, you will have to give aid; though her
spirit is dauntless, this one she faces goes beyond her."

     "You mean Kima?"

     "That is her name at this time and place."

     "Do you always talk like that?" Ranma asked softly as he
closed his eyes.

     "Sometimes," the bird said, and though his eyes were closed,
Ranma knew beyond any doubt that the bird had shrugged again.

     "In this time and place, you talk like that?"

     "You're starting to catch on, child."

     Two light touches of a beak, softer than the touch of a
feather, upon each eyelid.  "You will not remember this.  Not
yet."

     He knew he wouldn't.

     "You do not go deep enough to remember yet.  Not yet.  But I
shall tell you all the same, that in time, when you shall know, 
you shall know that you knew before.  Listen, now, and hear the 
first of your names..."

     Night-black feathers brushed against his face, and the raven
began to whisper softly into his ear.

**********

     The woman spun away from Shampoo's left-hand blow and ducked
under the right one, turning to sweep Ryoga's legs out from under
him and then lashing out with razored fingernails that caught
nothing but air as Shampoo stepped nimbly away from her.

     "Ryoga?  You okay?" Shampoo asked worriedly.  The boy
staggered to his feet; his lack of speed was telling in a fight
with a foe this fast and carrying razors in her very hands.  The
wounds on his arms were the worst, but he had another on his
side, and a rake across his face where Yamiko had almost taken an
eye.

     "I'm alright," he said groggily, stepping back into the
complex dance of combat the three of them had been engaging in.
Ukyou and Mousse had shown no sign of movement; Akane was still
hanging back with Ranma's mother.

     Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her great-grandmother
get to her feet and walk to Happosai's side; but there was no
time for distractions, no time, because Yamiko was coming at her
and she was so fast, so very fast-

     Her dodge half-worked this time; a blow that would have
opened her face down the side slashed through one white-clad
shoulder and ripped down her upper arm.  Blood stained the white
as she bit back a scream and launched a vicious overhand sweep of
the bonbori in her right hand.

     Yamiko blocked with her left forearm; there was metallic
clang.  The woman must have some kind of parrying devices 
inserted under her robes.

     The worst thing about fighting her was the silence.  She
didn't talk, or make any noise beyond gurgling sounds of pleasure 
or a low hiss of pain.

     And the two on one advantage Shampoo and Ryoga had wasn't
doing them much good; half the time they had to pull blows to
avoid hitting each other.  The woman was very good, better than
either one of them alone.  Together, they could barely keep her
at bay.

     "You know, you look very pretty.  But there's something
about that aura of yours that turns even me off."

     And then Happosai stepped forward, and it was three on one.

**********

     The trees were very dense on this side of the river.  Tall
willows, bent nearly double by the weight of their branches, wept
a continual stream of leaves into the water, dark water the
colour of black silk, rippling and flowing as it winded its way
far into the distance.

     The ground was damp and spongy under his feet; he looked
down and saw a bed of broken rushes by the river bank, with other
rushes growing from between them.

     The river was very, very wide, and swiftly flowing.  Mist
shrouded the area, clinging to his hands and face and obscuring
vision.  Across the river, he could barely see other shapes
moving, other people.

     He wanted to go them, but the water was wide, so very wide.
Depthless and black, too deep to wade, too wide to jump, too
fast-flowing to swim.

     He ran along the banks, rushes crushing under his feet with
dull snapping sounds, seeking a shallow spot, a narrow spot,
rocks that he might use to get across.  But the river only became
wider, and the shapes across from him more and more indistinct.

     And then the river forked into a perfect Y, still far too
wide too cross, but following this river now would not lead him
the same way as those he wanted to go to.

     But there was no way back, he saw, for the mists had closed
behind him into a solid wall, and to run back into them was to
risk a long fall into those depthless rushing waters.

     "No," he said, sinking to his knees on the damp rushes and
stretching out a plaintive, desperate hand to those dim shapes
across the river.  "No, wait.  I'm still here.  I'm still here."

     "It's alright," someone said from behind him, a voice that
made the whisper of velvet across skin sound harsh and grating.
"Fear not.  All rivers lead, in the end, to the same place.  All
rivers lead back to here.  Fear not, my child, for there is
nothing more to fear here.  This is a place beyond many things,
and fear is one of them."

     He turned, and saw a very beautiful woman, all in black,
with her hair falling all about her in a dark waterfall.  Her
face was young, but her eyes were impossibly old, as dark as the
sight of the blind, as deep as an ocean trench.

     "Who are you?"

     "I am what you see," she said.  "The question is, who are
you?"

     "I'm..."

     He didn't know.

     His eyes fell to the waters, to the face in them.

     Whose face was it?  Whose eyes, whose lips, whose nose?
What colour were his eyes?  What was the shape of his face?

     No reflection.

     "I don't know what I am."

     And with that revelation, he put a face he did not know into
hands he knew neither, and wept.

     Soft arms gathered him as if he were a child, and let him
weep upon a black-clad shoulder that smelled of old rooms and
lilies kept in cracked china vases.  She spoke no words, only
held him, gathered him to her, and a memory rose from him, a
memory that nearly all of us bear, the memory of when we were
small, and we were held and made to feel safe, and the centre of
our world was the soft embrace of one who had loved us since the
day we were born.

     "I'm tired," he said.  "I'm so tired."

     "Shh... sleep.  Sleep, child, and awaken again.  We shall
not meet for a time yet."

     "Who are you?  What's your name?"

     The woman did not answer, but she began to sing, very
softly, like a lullaby, and she cradled him in her arms as if he
weighed nothing at all, for to her, he did not.

     *All things to me are gathered*
     *The shattered, lost and torn*
     *To wait beyond the waters*
     *For the coming of the morn*

     The voice was so beautiful, he felt as if his heart might
break.  Her arms were holding him so tightly, and he felt so
very, very small and safe that he did not want to lose that
feeling and fall asleep.

     *I wait for all that sorrows*
     *All children ever born*
     *To wait beyond the waters*
     *For the coming of the morn*

     He could feel himself fading, though, and the last thing he
remembered was that voice, so very beautiful, carrying him away
to sleep upon itself.

     *For endless are the oceans*
     *But my river bears them on*
     *To wait beyond the waters*
     *For the coming of the dawn*

**********

     Kima decided perhaps this had not been the best idea in the
world after the second lightning bolt.  The first had left her
with a few scorched pinions on her left wing from a desperate
aerial dodge that had wheeled her away with the other woman in
pursuit, and the second, booming from the air to her right, had
forced her to land.  The woman had easily struck aside her 
attacks from the air with her odd weapon, but she had no such
defence against the cracking bolts of electricity.

     "...and after that's done, I think I shall nail your wings
to the door of my chamber, as a reminder of the first time I ever
dissected a person with wings.  Tell me, are you born from eggs,
or is it live birth?  Can you mate only with your own kind,
or..."

     "Do you always talk this much?" Kima said with a sigh,
drawing her sword and taking two quick steps in.  "I mean, empty 
threats are bad enough, but you keep on repeating yourself."

     "Who are you to be so arrogant?" the woman said in her
gravelly voice, parrying a sword slash with the rod and striking
back snake-quick in a blow that caught nothing but air.

     "Kima of Mount Phoenix," Kima said as she deflected another
swing of the rod by smacking it away behind the head; from the
sparks crackling between the blades, it was probably a bad idea
to bring her own weapon into contact with them.  "Seneschal to
Lord Saffron, the Phoenix King."

     A slow smile crept across the other woman's face amidst the
clash of weapons.  "How interesting.  I am Denkoko of the Circle 
Eternal.  Talk is done.  I think I will hurt you now."

     And then she stepped in, moving with speed Kima hadn't
thought she had, and drove the rod into her side as hard as she
could.  The air seemed to explode into sharp fragments around
her; she felt the charge rush through her body, sending nerves
and muscles into painful spasms.

     Denkoko took another step and had her by the throat with the
twisted, hideous right hand.  The weeping sores upon it stung
like fire on her bare skin.

     Another charge, from the hand this time, not as strong as
the first, but still making her jerk convulsively.  Her sword was
flung away, and she heard herself scream from somewhere far from
here.     

     Denkoko smiled, and went about the process of hurting her
with a cheerful kind of enthusiasm, born from long practice in an
art greatly enjoyed.

**********

     Cologne dashed through the forest, cursing every time
branches snagged her clothing, which was far too often for her
liking.  She was still weak, far slower and less agile than she
would have been at her peak.  Following Ranma's thread, she
marvelled at how far the boy had gone into the woods; his speed
must be incredible, under the right conditions.

     The pain was not quite so fierce anymore, and none of it
new.  Perhaps he'd defeated his foe, and was now lying injured.

     He was very close now.  In this deep, the trees were thick;
loose soil and pebbles skittered under her feet as she ran.  The
sun, just beginning to descend into the west, cast diffused light
through the branches and laid shadows on the path before her.

     She absently noted that many of the trees looked as if
they'd been struck by lightning, and very recently.  The air was
filled with the same kind of smell you got after a particularly
fierce storm.

     It was when she began to see spots of blood amidst the
blackened stumps of trees that she began to worry.

     And then she burst into the clearing and gasped in shock at
the sight of Ranma.

     His shirt was little more than tattered shreds, soaked with
blood and blackened as if by fire.  There looked to be hundreds
of small cuts, all over his body.  One leg was twisted at a
strange angle beneath the other.

     Shiso sat beside the fallen boy, black feathers gleaming
a dark purple in the sun.  "Took you long enough."

     "Oh, light, child, what did she do to you?" Cologne said,
falling to her knees at Ranma's side.  "Oh, by my ancestors..."

     His pulse was a weak, fluttering thing beneath her hand, and
her fingers came away sticky with blood.  His hair was matted and
tangled, his face covered in blood mixed with dirt.  His lower
lip was split at the side, puffy and swollen; a massive
yellow-black bruise blossomed over his right eye.

     But his pulse was steady, at least.  No danger of him
slipping away.  Cologne breathed a sigh of relief and pressed a
few strategic points on his body, ones that numbed pain and
helped to speed healing, and then turned her attention to Shiso.

     "Where is Kima?"

     "Fighting," Shiso said.

     Cologne frowned.  "Against the woman who did this to him?"

     The bird nodded.

     "She's not good enough, is she?"

     The bird nodded again.  "No."

     Cologne swore softly under her breath and stood up to begin
running again.       

**********

     It was Happosai who turned the tide in the end.

     You always forgot, Ryoga would say, much, much later than
this.  Somewhere amidst the lechery and groping, amidst the 
inane plotting and scheming, amidst the panty raids, you forgot 
how just how damn good the old man was when he wanted to be.

     Yamiko blocked the first punch Ryoga threw.  The second she
missed completely; it smashed into her shoulder and spun her
around, right into an upswung bonbori from Shampoo that she
managed to catch on the side of her face rather than directly on
the chin, a glancing blow only that would have shattered her
cheekbone with an inch or two of difference.

     There might have been a chance to strike back, but then
Happosai was there, his hand sweeping across so fast it was a
blur, in an open-handed strike that knocked her flying to the
ground, barely managing a somersaulting fall that threw her,
staggering, to her feet.

     The three closed in on her.

     The time had come.

**********

     They were near a river now, Kima thought.  She could hear
the sound of water over a rock; it seemed very, very loud.
Perhaps because she was trying, really trying, to listen to it.
It was better than listening to what Denkoko was saying, or the
noises she herself was making.

     She was flat on her back, staring at the sky with red-tinged
vision through eyes slitted closed because of the pain.  She'd
stopped counting individual blows a while ago, stopped being able
to tell whether they came from hands or feet or from Denkoko's
rod.  Some stood out, if only because they hurt the worst; a
particularly hard slap across the face that seemed to rattle her
teeth, a kick to a nerve in her leg that she didn't know she had,
but that hurt very much all the same.  A blunt-toothed rod driven
into her sternum that sent her entire body convulsing on the
ground, wings and arms and legs thrashing as electricity slashed
through her body.

     She tried to console herself by saying that she'd had worse
than this, but she knew hadn't.  Then all thoughts ended for a 
time, because Denkoko smashed her across the face with the rod 
and everything went into a dark haze of pain.

     The river ran on in the background, a clear and beautiful
sound amidst all the pain, something to cling to, something that
was not pain.  She remembered the water, back home, far away, the
water flowing again, flowing softly through the stone channels,
from the fountains, the circling flow in the Hall of Speaking...

     She felt a withered hand reach down and yank several long
feathers from her wings, but that hurt so little compared to
everything else that it didn't seem important, although before
her wings had always been her greatest pride.

     "Souvenirs," a grating voice said sardonically.

     She felt herself lifted roughly by the neck, and tossed
backwards.  She rolled on the ground, over sharp rocks and rough
dirt.

     Into cool, clear, cleansing water that washed over her,
washed away the dirt, washed away a little of the pain, washed
away the blood staining her skin and clothes and wings, washed
away the form she wore.

     And then she heard a soft gasp.

     "Well, this is even more interesting."

     And then someone drove a lance of fire into her stomach, and
she screamed as loud as she could in a voice that did not belong
to her.

**********

     Ranma snapped awake.  For a moment, there was a lingering
feeling of incredible peace, a sense of being utterly and
completely safe.

     And then that was shattered, because he heard Akane scream
as if she were being tortured.

     And then he realized she probably was, and his rage was an
inferno stoked upon the sound of that pained cry, a blade scraped
to the edge of a razor, honed by the scream.  Fury sang in his
very bones, engulfed the pain and ripped it to shreds with dark
claws.

     "Ranma, lie down.  You're hurt.  I'll make sure it's
alright."

     A voice.  Cologne's voice.  Lost amidst the fire, fire
rushing down on him in waves like a storm of it.  Burning,
burning away his pain with its own pain, burning away everything
beneath it.

     "Boy, how can you-"

     The voice didn't matter.  Nothing mattered, because Akane
screamed again, ripping at his heart.  Ice began to swim amidst 
the fire, glaciers floating upon a burning lake, so vast and 
cold they could freeze the fire, change those arcing prominences 
of flame into pillars of ice dozens of feet high, jagged and 
sharp with frozen thorns.

     He stood up.  His body screamed in protest, and promptly
tried to fall back down.

     Rage driving him, he willed it to stand.     
     
     There were no other words for what he did.  He clawed his 
fingers into the rising spires of ice and hauled himself up by 
sheer force of will, and he stood straight and tall in the centre 
of the clearing.

     "Ranma, there's not much time.  You-"

     The voice was beginning to annoy him.  He could almost see
the ice now, a great sheet in front of him, vaster than a
mountain and rising still.  And through those translucent walls,
he saw something lurking within them, a dark shape curled upon
itself, the vague impression of arms wrapped around legs, a head
huddled tightly to a thin chest, knees drawn up beneath the chin.

     He pressed his face against the ice, embraced it, cooled his
senses and himself upon it.  He felt as if he were sinking into
it, as if his body were slowly melting a place within that vast
jagged wall, a place where he could stay forever, where he would
always be within that glacial palace and nothing could ever touch
him again.

     "Boy, you'd best-"

     He was almost entirely within the ice when Akane screamed
again, long and agonized, a wordless cry for aid.  Akane.  She
needed him.  He could not be entirely ice.  Not entirely.  Not
yet.

     The ice shattered around him like a tower collapsing, and as
things began to go dark, as jagged chunks rained down from the
frozen heavens upon the endless plains of his mind, he stretched
out and grasped the black core at the centre, and felt something
fall within his body like an inner skin.

     It was hotter than the fire.  It was colder than the ice.
It was everything and nothing, life and death, creation and
destruction, light and darkness.  It was all things and none.

     And it was within him.

     "Ranma, I'm sorry, but-"

     There was that voice again.

     And now a hand, slender, feminine, two fingers outstretched.
Going for a point on his neck.  Moving so impossibly slowly.  He
noted that the nails were in need of a manicure, and would have
found that amusing had he been what he was before.

     But he was not what he had been.

     Someone needed him.  He did not know quite who.

     But this person was trying to stop him from going to them.

     He grabbed the hand, twisted, and flung whoever the hand
belonged to behind his shoulder as if she were a rag doll.  He
heard a yell of pain, the impact of a body with something solid,
the cry of a raven.

     Running now.  So fast, everything was blurring by him.
Green leaves, brown trees, black dirt, blue sky, a whirl of
colours, a rainbow, refracted rainbow, broken rainbow, broken
light, fallen now into the dark.

     Sounds now.  His own feet running.  Soft whispers of wind.
The cry of a raven.  Water flowing.  A voice calling his name
from far away.

     Sound, smell, taste, sight, touch, they all blended, they
all came together, came together into one sense, one sense that
encompassed everything, that let him taste the wind and see the
colours within the sound of the raven's cry and smell the blue of
the sky and touch the tang of water in the air-
     
     The water.

     (...and the shining waters flowed and bore him on...)

     Oh, the water.

     (...and the waters flowed and carried him down, down,
down...)

     Into a sparser area of forest now, with water flowing.  A
river, a stream.  Water flowing, flowing on-

     The waters.

     A woman, blue-white robes and short dark hair, cruel and
beautiful face, a twisted claw for a right hand.  The left hand
holding a strange rod.

     A sadistic grin on her face as she drives the rod into the
arm of the younger woman in the stream.  Short dark hair, a
familiar face, an unfamiliar outfit that he realizes belongs to
someone else but it doesn't matter in that moment because there
is only her, the tall woman in the robe, and she is hurting...

     Someone.

     He does not know who.

     But the sight sends such rage through him that he would have
feared it, had room been left in him for fear.     
     
     "You can still move?  What incredible endurance.  I was
right to take you; we cannot allow you to go far from us, not 
now.  Yoko is a fool."

     He came forward.

     The rod came up.

     He reached out and twisted her wrist in such a way that her
arm broke there and at the elbow and shoulder.  The rod slipped
from her fingers and dangled by the chain from her wrist.

     The right hand came up, fingers spreading, and there was a
crackle in the air, a building storm, the sharp colours of ozone
and electricity dancing before his eyes, visible now, 
everchanging, chaotic, the wild beauty of their patterns like
snowflakes made of pain-

     He laced his fingers between hers on the right hand and
broke them all like twigs.

     There was someone screaming.  It was very far away, and it
was right in front of him.

     *"My own special little toy."*

     He broke the right arm as he had the left.

     *"...you'll bend on your knees before me..."*

     He shattered her left knee with a swift kick.

     *"My own special little toy."*

     He caught her eyes with his.  They were very dark eyes, very
beautiful, and there was pain in them, and fear.  From the look,
both those things were unfamiliar to her.

     He said nothing.

     There was nothing to say.

     The black centre of his soul rose and turned everything to
nothing and nothing to everything, broke apart all that he was
and reformed it into something new, some true reflection with all
else stripped away.

     His hand came up.  It was a blur, a thing as unstoppable as
age, as merciless as death, a thousand thousand ages of power and
warrior's skill embodied in that moment in his fist.

     One punch.

     Straight to the throat.

     The sound of her neck breaking was the loudest thing he'd
ever heard in all his life.  It seemed to break throughout all of
him.  Whatever other sound she might have made was lost amidst
the damage of a crushed throat.  Her body flew back and slammed
into a tree, life already gone from it, and fell, limbs twisted
and eyes still open, to the ground with boneless grace.

     Everything fell away.  Colours, sounds, light, darkness, all
went away, and left him as he had been once before.

     And he realized, with that terrible realization that comes
upon you a moment after you do a terrible thing, the realization
that makes you plead with any powers that might be listening to
let you go back, to let you make a change, to make what has just
happened be a dream, just what he had done.

     And then, with the thing that had been driving him beyond
the point at which his body should have given up gone, he went
into a long, long fall from which there was no escape, and the
last sound he heard was the sound of a woman's neck breaking,
again and again and again.

     And the sound of a raven's cry amidst the flowings of a
river, mingling together into one mournful, wordless song.

**********

     Happosai closed in on the staggering, black-clad woman,
Ryoga and Shampoo close behind.  "It's over, girl.  Surrender
before we have to really hurt you."

     The woman hissed, and the shadows deepened around her.
Dozens of thin, glowing streamers of ki so dark red they were
almost black exploded into the air around Happosai, trailing like 
smoke a half-dozen feet above his aged head.  His white hair, no
longer sparse, blew back in a sourceless wind.  "You aren't fast
enough, girl.  I want some answers.  Who are you?"

     A ragged sound came from the woman, like some muted wet
explosion.  The shadows seemed to loom around her like a cloak of
night; Happosai drew himself up to his full height, a little over
five feet, and his manifested battle aura rose higher, waving
like the fronds of an undersea plant.  "HOLD!"

     Yamiko stood there, shadows flickering around her body and
the ground around her, shadows without source, and then they drew
tight around her.  She laughed, just a little; it sounded like
some large animal slowly dying in enormous pain.

     "HOLD!" Happosai shouted again, and the ribbons of his aura
leapt forward like a net of power, to entangle, to trap.

     Too late, as it was.  The shadows suddenly flared like an
inversive burst of blinding light, exploded into a hurricane of
darkness centred around her, and when they vanished, Yamiko was
gone and Happosai's aura had caught nothing but air.

     "Damn," Happosai muttered.  He rounded on Ryoga and Shampoo.
"Boy, you need to bandage yourself up before you faint from blood
loss.  Shampoo, you make sure Mousse and Ukyou are alright."

     The two teenagers bit back any protests they might have had,
because something in Happosai's eyes was there that never had
been before.  It might also have had something to do with the
fact that his battle aura was still visible, still flaring about
his body.  Not a twisted, giant shadow of himself as he'd often
done before; more like a cloak of power.

     "What about you?" Ryoga asked, trying to staunch the blood
flowing down his arms and chest from half-a-dozen ragged wounds.
It was only a testament to his endurance that he was still on his
feet at all.

     "I'm going to look for Cologne," Happosai said, turning his
back and letting his aura fade as he walked away from them.  "And
Ranma."

     Ryoga glanced sideways to Shampoo and smiled a bit weakly.
"I think I'll go find myself a band-aid or two."

     Shampoo nodded mutely and glanced sideways at the
red-stained shoulder of her tunic.  The leather breastplate had
five long scratches in it where it had come between her heart and
the woman's hands.

     Then she turned away from Ryoga and began to walk towards
the dazed, half-conscious forms of Ukyou and Mousse.

**********

     The body of Denkoko lay in a crumpled heap within the pool
of shadows cast by the tree.  Blue-white robes were spattered
with blood; very little of it was her own.  The blow that had
killed her had left little trace of itself.

     Her eyes stared up, dead and unseeing, at the waving leaves
of the tree overhead.  There was still fear in them, though her
mouth had twisted itself into a half-smile that clashed with the
fear in her dead eyes.

     Around her body, the shadows suddenly deepened, stretched
out and thickened.  From within them, as if emerging from
submersion beneath a pool of water, a black-clad figure rose,
mask covering her face.

     A low sound emerged from beneath the mask, a sound like the
hiss and bubble of acid upon metal made into a twisted parody of
human weeping.  Yamiko came forward a few steps and knelt down
beside the tree, gathering up the broken body of her sister in
her arms and rocking her as if she were a child.

     She stood up, still making that awful sound, though no tears
came from her eyes.  What she was was no longer capable of tears,
and had not been for some time.

     The black rod on its silver chain was missing from her
sister's left wrist.  But in the twisted claw that passed for a
right hand, something was clutched tightly, half-hidden in the
sleeve of the robe.  A long white feather.  She could see a few
others scattered around the ground.

     Beneath the mask, what passed for a mouth gave its closest
approximation of a smile.  Yamiko's hand gently took the feather
from her sister's hand and tucked it away into her robes.  

     She cradled the body of Denkoko in her arms, letting her
sister's head rest on her shoulder as one of her hands gently
stroked back dark bangs from over dead eyes.

     The shadows rose around them, and they were gone.

**********

     After Ryoga had been bandaged and they'd assured themselves
that Mousse and Ukyou were alright, the five who'd come up the
mountain with the vanished Ranma sat on the ground near the still
unconscious form of the woman who they'd come to take back,
uncertainty and a little fear written on all their faces.

     "Well," Mousse said finally, rubbing the bridge of his nose
with one hand as his glassed dangled from the other.  "What do we
do now?"

     "Wait for Happosai to get back, I guess," Ryoga said
wearily.  His chest was bare, his shirt little more than
tattered, blood-stained scraps on the ground beside him.
Bandages were wrapped over his arms and chest, dotted with small
spots of blood.

     "We can't," Akane said, shaking her head.  "He... Ranma's
out there somewhere.  Those two women are still around.  He might
be in trouble..."

     "Akane right," Shampoo sighed.  "Have to look for Ranma.
Happosai find us if he need to."

     "Just let me rest for a few more minutes," Ukyou said.  She
had both hands on the ringed end of her spatula, with the haft
between her knees and the bladed end resting on the rocky ground;
leaning on it appeared to be the only thing keeping her sitting 
up.

     "I could do with a little rest as well," Mousse said.  "I
don't know what she did to me, but I feel as if I haven't had any
sleep for the past week."

     "It was some kind of ki draining attack."

     There was mutual surprise among all of them; none of them
had heard Happosai approach.  It was the first time Akane, Mousse
or Ukyou had really gotten a close look at him since he'd shown
up.  His face was the same, although considerably more unlined
than it had been before.  He had a full head of hair now, and his
dangling white moustache seemed thicker.  His eyes were hard and
bright beneath bushy white eyebrows.

     The primary change had been in height; he was short, but no
longer dwarfish.  He now looked now like an extremely old but
still fit man.

     "Did you find them?" Ryoga asked before anyone else spoke.

     Happosai shook his head and didn't sit.  "No sign.  The
forest looks like a lightning storm hit it, but I didn't find
anyone.  This mountain is huge; if we're going to look for them,
we've got to cover a lot of ground."

     "Any idea what's going on?" Ryoga said.

     Happosai sighed.  "None whatsoever.  I don't know who those
two women were, or what Cologne was up to with this.  But I
intend to find out."

     "Should we split up?" Akane said.

     "Under any other circumstances, I'd say we should," Mousse
quietly said.  "But we have no idea if those two are still around
here somewhere, and if one of them was able to hold all of us to
a standstill for a while, I doubt we want to meet up with even
one if we're split up."

     They all glanced, not quite realizing it, to Ryoga.  He
slowly nodded.  "She tore me up pretty bad.  These aren't...
these aren't people like we're used to fighting, I think.  She
really was trying to kill us."

     "Came close sometimes," Shampoo said, running her fingers
over the marks the woman's razors had left in her breastplate.

     "Enough talk," Happosai said.  "Let's get moving.  I'll
carry Ranma's dear mother."

     Ryoga looked at him flatly.  "No.  I think I'll do that."

     "You're injured, Ryoga," Happosai said pleadingly.  "Come
on, let me carry her.... Please?"

     "I'll carry her," Ryoga said firmly, standing up and taking
a few steps towards where Nodoka lay.  "I promised Ranma I'd
watch her, and..."

     He trailed off, face going slightly red.  Bending down at
the knees, he gathered up Nodoka in his arms, draping one of her
arms around his neck.  "Come on.  Let's go look for them."

     Slowly, they all nodded and began to move out together in a
single long line.

**********

     "What the hell did you think you were doing?"

     Shampoo glanced to her side, where Mousse walked.  There was
a rare note of genuine anger in his voice, something seldom heard
when he spoke to her.

     "What it matter to you?" she sniffed, silently cursing the
fact that she'd been paying so little attention as to allow him
to get near her with no one else around.  They were ranging out
through the forest, all keeping within a few dozen feet of each,
close enough to always hear a call for help, and to see the
others most of the time as well.

     "Damn it!  Why do you think it matters?" Mousse hissed.  "I
love you, Shampoo.  Does it even occur to you what you were
trying to do back there?"

     Shampoo silently stalked away from him and paid rigid
attention to a shattered tree, the scraps of bark still clinging
to the ruined trunk blackened as if by fire.

     His hand grabbed her shoulder and forcefully spun her
around.  "I'll tell you what you were trying to do back there!
If Ranma hadn't stopped you, you'd be dead!  Dead, Shampoo!"

     "What does it matter?" Shampoo whispered quietly, not even
having enough anger to hit him.  "Rather it be by my hand than by
Council's.  Less humiliation for family."

     "What about you?" Mousse said softly.  "What about you,
Shampoo?  Don't you care what happens to you?"

     "I lie," Shampoo suddenly blurted.  "I lie to Ranma.
Great-grandmother... great-grandmother, I think I know why she do
this."

     "What?" Mousse said.  "You..."

     "After she came out of her room," Shampoo said haltingly.
"We talk.  About laws.  There is... there is small loophole.
Very... very hard."

     "What is it?  Why would you-"

     Mousse trailed off, putting it together in his head.  "Of
course.  If he dies, you don't have to marry him."

     Shampoo slowly nodded and closed her eyes, leaning back
against a tree with a soft sigh.  The wind played with her hair
for a moment.  "Yes."

     "But he said he'd go back to China with you," Mousse said
after a moment, agony laid bare in his voice.  "He said he'd go
and you still..."

     "Used to think it would be enough," Shampoo said quietly.
"Used to think it would be enough if he just marry me.  That I
somehow able to make him start loving me if he just marry me."

     She clenched her hand into a fist and abruptly punched the
trunk of the tree she leaned against hard, scraping her knuckles
open and further cracking it.  "Not enough."

     Mousse's silence seemed to fill the air more than words
could ever have.  Far off, very far off, there came the cry of
some bird, long and sad.

     "I not care if he marry me," Shampoo said.  "Only... all I
ever want was for him to love me."

     Mousse made a small sound, as if something had broken deep
inside him.  Then he whirled, white robe flying about him for a
moment.  A low growl rose from his throat, and sunlight flashed
through the leaves upon something shining and steel-sharp in his
hands.

     "Damn it all," he said harshly, his voice angry and raw.  
There was the sound of a heavy impact, and Shampoo saw him sink 
slowly to his knees, his hands still on the hilt of the 
straight, short sword he held, driven up to the hilt into the 
trunk of the tree.  It was trembling from the force used to 
plunge it in; his body was trembling in tune with it.

     "Damn it all to hell," he said, this time in a whisper so
soft it was almost beyond hearing.  "Damn."

     "Mousse..."

     "He holds the only thing I want in the palm of his hand and
discards it like so much garbage," Mousse said.  "Can I be blamed
for hating him?  I know he's stronger than me, I know he's better
than me, I know that he is more than I can ever be.  How can I
help but hate him?"

     "Mousse, please..."

     "I always told myself it was because of the laws," he said,
knuckles white on the handle of the sword as he crouched before
the impaled tree.  "I always told myself..."

     He gave a soft, bitter laugh.  "No one lies as well to you
as you yourself do, eh Shampoo?  I've loved you since I saw you,
and I've always dreamed... I've always dreamed..."

     Shampoo said nothing; there was nothing she could ever say
that would take away but a fraction of the hurt of this, this
final realization come upon him at last.

     "All dreams are born only to be broken," Mousse whispered.
"I would die for you, Shampoo.  And I see now that you would die
for him.  What greater love is there than that?"

     "Mousse, I'm..."

     He stood slowly to his feet, a grin on his face that looked
like it belonged on a skull.  "Sorry, Shampoo?  What do you have
to be sorry for?  It's my own fault.  Blind, stupid, weak Mousse.
It's always been my fault."

     "I should have tried to..."

     "You always did," Mousse said softly.  "You always told me.
Every time you stared at him with that look in your eyes I always
wanted to see when you looked at me, every time you ran to his
side, every time..."

     "Never wanted to hurt you like this," Shampoo said softly.
"Never wanted that.  You were friend, Mousse, before time come
when you really start thinking about getting me for your wife.
Never wanted it to end like this; I tried to tell you, but...
I not good at things like that.  I not know how to..."

     "I know," Mousse said.  "I know."

     "Wish it didn't have to be this way."

     A soft sigh escaped Mousse, and the frightening smile on his
face slowly faded.  "There's a big difference, I've found,
between the way we wish things would turn out and the way they
actually do turn out."

     Such true words, they both realized.  So very agonizingly
true.

**********

     Ryoga felt Nodoka stir in his arms as he walked through the
forest, Akane and Ukyou silently accompanying him on either side.
Shampoo and Mousse were a few dozen feet back; Happosai was
ranging ahead, his small, darting shape occasionally visible
through the thickness of the trees.

     He paused and looked down at her peacefully sleeping face.
It struck him just how much she looked like Ranma when he was
transformed; the face was matured, but it was much the same.

     Her eyes blinked open.  "Who-"

     "I'm Ryoga, Mrs. Saotome," he said a bit haltingly.  "I'm
Ranma's friend."

     Strange, how easily a single word comes after so long a
time denied.  A strange friendship it had been, but it had been
the closest he'd had, in its own way.

     "I know," Nodoka said.  "Could you put me down, dear?"

     He flushed terribly and carefully set her down on her feet.
She stumbled slightly, putting a hand on his arm to steady
herself.

     "I'm glad to see you're awake, Mrs. Saotome," Akane said.

     "My son?" Nodoka said, making the words a question.

     "We don't know, Mrs. Saotome," Ukyou said.  "We're looking
for him now."

     "What about that girl's grandmother?"

     "Great-grandmother," Ryoga said.  "We... we're looking for
her too.  Something happened right before she and Ranma were
going to fight."

     They stood there for a few minutes, Nodoka leaning on Ryoga
for support, and the three of them explained everything from this
morning onwards.

     "So my husband is here?" Nodoka said at the end.

     "He tried to be," Akane said.  "He kind of got caught up in
the village down the mountain because of..."

     "I think I'd really rather not know," Nodoka said with a
sigh.  "Let's just look for my son."

     "Don't worry, Mrs. Saotome," Ukyou said.  "We'll find him."

     Nodoka said nothing, looking off into something only she
could see.  "I should be able to walk on my own.  Thank you for
carrying me, Ryoga."

     Ryoga coughed and blushed to the tips of his ears.  "No
problem, Mrs. Saotome."

     The four of them headed slowly off in search of Ranma.

**********

     Happosai frowned as he glanced around at the area near the
river.  There was blood on the ground, and scorched grass and
plants.  This was where the subtle trail had ended, at the edge
of the riverbank.

     He closed his eyes and concentrated, opening his senses to
the flows of energy in the air, the lingering aftereffects of
whatever might have been done here.

     The first jolt hit him like a physical blow; he staggered to
the side, gasping for air and falling to one knee.  There had
been something done here, something of monumental importance.  He
caught dim flashes; pain, fear, confusion, a lot of those.

     And power.  Incredible power, like he'd never sensed before.
He tried to cling to it, learn more, put together some picture of
what had gone on from the fragmented jigsaw puzzle the events had
left on the area, but it was like trying to grab greased rungs.

     Something had been done here, afterwards, to mask whatever
had gone on to anyone trying the technique he was using.  The
technique to block what he was doing was difficult and virtually
unknown.  He personally knew of four martial artists in the world
who knew the technique, although he was sure there were many more
who had the potential for it.

     One of those four was him.  Another was Cologne.

     "No fair, woman," he huffed, letting his senses recede back
to normal.  "You promised me an explanation."

     He looked around at all the blood staining the ground, the
scuffed dirt and broken tree limbs.  "You should have learned a
hundred years ago that I don't give up very easily, Cologne.  If
I have to follow you to the ends of the earth to find out what
the heck's going on, I will."

     A slow smile curved onto his face.  "Besides.  I never got a
really good feel in on you.  Memory doesn't live up to the truth,
Cologne.  You're even cuter then I remembered."

     He looked around again and sighed.  "I'll find out what
you're up to Cologne.  I just hope I'm not too late."

     Too late for what, he did not know.  But over a century of
life had given him a certain ability to see things, to look
farther ahead than most people could ever hope to.  Not really
seeing of the future so much as looking at the past and the
present, looking at the patterns woven in them, because it was in
those that the future was shaped.

     And the shape the future was taking was not a particularly
optimistic one at this moment.

**********

     (...oh, foolish," said the man.  "We have waited since the
dawn of time."...)     
     
     A slow stirring was the way Ranma awoke, balancing for long
seconds upon the brink of waking and sleeping.  His eyes opened,
and were greeted only with the dark.  He was lying on his back on
rough, dry stone.  Slowly he sat up, his body aching.

     "Hello?" he said tremulously.  His throat hurt.  "Is anyone
there?"

     It came back to him with sickening clarity, the last few
moments before he'd passed out.  The raw detachment, the furious
power, the pure speed.  He'd never imagined he could move so
fast.

     The almost gentle wheeze of final breath as his fist crushed
Denkoko's windpipe a moment before it snapped her neck.

     Oh, the sound of it.

     He drew a long, heaving breath, there in the darkness.  It
went beyond terrible; it went beyond anything he could have ever
imagined himself doing.

     He'd killed a human being.

     And worse, he'd killed a woman.

     But it was even worse than that.  He'd enjoyed it, while he
was doing it.  Or perhaps enjoyment was the wrong word.  He'd
felt something, at least.  Something beyond the cold detachment.
Triumph, perhaps.  The exaltation in the defeat of a foe.

     He wanted to weep, but he knew if he let himself do that, he
might never stop.  He wanted it to be a dream, for the whole past
day to be a dream.

     "You're awake now," a vaguely familiar voice said from
somewhere to his left.  "How are you feeling?"

     "Who's that?" he asked.

     There were no words in response, only a click that sounded
like someone opening a box.  A dim, pale light appeared to his
left, from a small container held in the cupped palms of two
hands that were a mix between human hands and the talons of a
bird.  Within the container a stone glowed dimly, the source of
the light.

     The eyes that looked at him from under the white hair were a
very pale blue.  One of them had a large bruise over it that
looked as if it were fairly recent.

     "Kima," Ranma said with little enthusiasm.

     The winged woman did not look in very good shape; there was
another bruise on her right cheek, and her lower lip was swelled
as if she'd been hit there.  One wing was drooping oddly to one
side, while the other was furled and held against her back.

     "You've gotten better," Kima said quietly.  "I don't know
how, but you never moved that fast, even against Lord Saffron.
From the state you were in when I left you, I didn't think you'd
be moving for days."

     He shuddered slightly at the memory.  She was talking about
when-

     When-

     When he'd killed the woman.

     "That was you, wasn't it?" he asked.  "Wasn't Akane at all."

     Kima nodded her head slowly and held the glowing object in
one hand, reaching up with her other to minutely adjust the
positioning of the white feather tucked behind one slightly
pointed ear.  "Yes."

     "Oh."

     He shuddered again, although he tried to hide it, and held a
hand to his forehead.  "I... oh god.  I..."

     "Sometimes you must kill," someone said to his right.  "It
should never be an easy thing, but it is sometimes a necessary
thing."

     He turned his head, neck and shoulder muscles protesting at
the movement, and looked at Cologne.  The revitalized Amazon was
sitting in the lotus position a few feet away from him, eyes
closed, a slim hand on each knee.

     "Cologne."

     He glanced from Kima to Cologne and sighed softly.  "Can
someone please tell me what's going on?  Cologne, I wanna know
what this is all about.  My mother, those two women..."

     He jerked a thumb at Kima.  "What the hell she's doing
here."

     Kima sniffed slightly and looked down her nose at him.
"You're as insolent as I remember, at least.  That hasn't 
changed."

     "Sorry if I'm not overjoyed to see you," Ranma said
sarcastically.  "It's just the last time I saw ya, your king was
trying to flambe me."

     Kima sniffed again and turned her head away.  Ranma turned
his attention back to Cologne.

     "Cologne?"

     "You've been having dreams, have you not?" she asked
quietly, her eyes still closed.  "Fragments of a whole,
reflections on people you have never known or been?"

     Ranma was silent for a moment before answering.  "Yeah."

     "And more than dreams," Cologne continued.  "Intrusions upon
the waking world.  The feeling that you are someone else.  A
different part of you, a change in who you are."

     The sound of the woman's neck breaking.

     "Yes."

     He unconsciously wiped his right hand on his shirt, noting
it was tattered and bloodstained.  "Cologne... do you know what's
happening to me?  Does it have something to do with why you did
all this?"

     "Somewhat."

     "Cologne," Ranma sighed.  "The only thing that's stopping me
from trying to get the hell outta here and back to everyone else
is I don't think you've gone crazy.  I ain't too good at thinking
things through, but there's a lot more going on than I know.
And..."

     The next part came out more softly than he'd wanted it to,
almost like a plea for help.  "And I just killed a woman as
easily as if I were stepping on a bug, and I wanna know why."

     His jaw tightened and he glared at her fiercely, even though
her eyes weren't open to see.  "But don't play your goddamn
inscrutable mind games with me, or I'm outta here."

     He glanced around.  "Where are we, anyway?"

     "Still on the mountain," Kima answered, not looking at him.
"In a small cave.  Cologne sealed off the entrance."

     "Why?" Ranma asked.  "Akane and everyone else is probably
tryin' to find us right now..."

     He trailed off.  "But you don't want them to, do you?"

     Cologne said nothing.

     "Answer me," Ranma said, a little too loudly.  "Dammit,
Cologne, answer me."

     "What question?" Cologne said.  "Do you want to know why it
was so easy for you to kill, or why I am currently working at
blocking whoever may be making attempts to find us?"

     "Both," Ranma sighed.  "Tell me why you don't want them to
find us first."

     "They may not be the only ones looking," Cologne said.
"Those two women who followed us up here, whoever they were..."

     "The one Ranma killed was called Denkoko," Kima said softly.

     Ranma closed his eyes against the memories.  "The one in
black was called Yamiko.  What about her?  What happened to her?"

     Cologne shook her head.  "I don't know.  I told Happosai to
help them out; together, they likely managed to defeat her."

     "You just left them?" Ranma said in a strangled voice.  "You
just left them?  Your own-"

     "Shut up, boy," Cologne said wearily.  "I know what I did.
It was not easy.  But I had reasons for it."

     "Well, I wanna know them."

     "All in time," Cologne breathed softly.  "All in time."

     "Well hurry it up," Ranma said.  "I've got to know... I've
got to know what I can do to stop this thing from happening ever
again."

     A soft chuckle emerged from Cologne.  "Might you be able to
drain the ocean with a tablespoon at the same time, Ranma?"

     "Enough," Kima said quietly.  "Cologne, if you won't give 
him an explanation, let me."

     Ranma looked at her, surprised, and gave her a silent nod of
thanks that received no acknowledgement on her face.

     "Let us start with your dreams," Cologne said.  "And the
change that has recently come over you in battle.  They both
spring from the same source."

     She fell silent suddenly, body trembling slightly.

     "Which would be?" Ranma prompted after a moment.

     "It's back," she said, an edge of pain to her voice.  "It's
trying to find him again.  I can feel it..."

     "What's goin' on?" Ranma said, turning and addressing Kima.

     "I'm not sure," the winged woman said with a frown.  "I only
awoke a half-hour before you did.  Cologne tells me we've been in
here perhaps five hours."

     Five hours.  Five hours in which anything could have
happened to Akane and the others.

     Cologne moaned softly.  "How can it be so strong..."

     A tremor ran through her body again; droplets of
perspiration beaded her face, glistening in the pale light of
whatever it was Kima held.  "So strong..."

     Her body stopped trembling and went rigid, as if steel bars
had been driven through her limbs.  "Ahh... no, no, no."

     Not quite knowing why, he scrambled across the rough stone
floor towards Cologne, grabbed her one of her hands in both of
his and trapped it between them in a tight grip.  Her hands were
so small, and he realized in that moment that she herself was a
very small woman.  Her bearing had made her seem much larger,
more powerful, before.

     "Cologne?"

     A silent question, silently answered, not even quite
realizing he had given an answer.     

     He felt something rise within him, that inexplicable feeling
that arose whenever he channeled his ki into a technique.  It was
impossible to describe; a loss, a gain, an opening and a closing.

     Something passed between them, and Cologne's hand contorted
in his, nails digging into his palm hard enough to draw blood.
She groaned softly, and then slumped forward.  He caught her by
the shoulders.

     "Cologne?"

     Her eyes slowly opened.  "Thank you.  I'm not quite sure
what you did, but it worked.  A ki transfer, I suppose.  But it
was enough; it won't be back."

     "It?" Ranma asked.  "What are you talking about?"

     "Someone was seeking you," Cologne sighed.  "Through magic.
They had many weaves tied to you; I was breaking them one by one,
but then they realized it.  I managed to shatter the last few
with your help."

     "Who?"

     "I don't know," Cologne said edgily.  "Whoever sent those
two women, perhaps."

     "You okay now?" Ranma said.  Cologne nodded and he released
her shoulders; she settled back into sitting down with her legs
stretched out and looked at him evenly.

     "About the dreams, then," Cologne said.  "Do you know what
reincarnation is?"

     "Yeah, sure," Ranma said, although his voice sounded
uncertain.  "Karma an' stuff."

     "By strict definition, it is the idea that while the body is
mortal, the soul is eternal," Cologne said softly.  "And that
when the body dies, the soul enters into a new body.  Usually you
are unaware of any past lives you may have lived, but certain
people, under certain conditions, can begin to remember.  It
begins with dreams.  It can lead to drastic changes in
personality, in the way we behave towards other people.  It can
make us ice where once we were fire."

     Ranma sucked in a breath.  "So... I'm remembering past
lives?"

     "It is perhaps the easiest way to think of it," Cologne
said.  "But it goes deeper than that.  Far deeper."

     She looked at him for a moment.  "You have been having other
dreams, have you not?  Different ones.  Not memories of what has
been, but dreams that seem real."

     Ranma looked uncomfortable.  "I don't know..."

     "Ryugenzawa."

     He looked back at Kima.  "What?"

     "You have dreamed of Ryugenzawa, have you not?" Kima asked
quietly.  "I think that is what it is called.  The forest."

     He slowly nodded.  "I think."

     He turned back to Cologne.  "But it still doesn't add up,
Cologne.  Whatever's goin' on in my head, it doesn't add up to
you kidnappin' my mother.  It doesn't add up to you tryin' to get
me to fight you.  None of this adds up."

     Cologne sighed.  "We have many reasons for what we do,
Ranma.  I had... planned to make it appear in the fight that you
had been killed.  That we both had."

     "WHAT?" Ranma shouted.  "I take it back.  You are crazy!"

     "They will kill her," Cologne said.  "They will kill her and
call it justice.  They will kill my great-grandaughter, or
worse."

     "But I said I'd go back," Ranma said.  "I don't want
anything to happen to Shampoo.  I don't... I don't feel that way
about her, but she's my friend, Cologne.  You have to know that!
I know... I know I haven't handled things as well as I could
have, but I said I'd go back to China with you guys.  I..."

     "It would destroy her," Cologne said.  "As surely as not
having you as her husband would make the Council destroy her.
You saw what she tried to do."

     Ranma nodded.  "I'm sorry."

     "It's not entirely your fault," Cologne grudgingly admitted.
"Some of what I said to you when I took your mother was to make
you angry."

     "But a lot of it was true," Ranma interjected.  "A lot of
it."

     Cologne looked at, mild surprise written on her face, then
shook her head slightly without saying anything more.  She
reached behind her back and tossed something onto the floor
between them.

     Ranma shrank back involuntarily at the unpleasant memories
the object conjured.  A rod with two blunt-toothed blades at one
end, a silver chain leading to a silver bracelet on the other.
Denkoko's weapon.

     "That's another reason," Cologne said softly.  "I'd
suspected it for a long time, but this is my first real proof.
This weapon is an artifact of my tribe, the only one of its kind.  
I last saw it in the village treasure room three years ago.  
There are traitors in the village, somehow connected to those two
women."

     "But what does that have to do with me?  Why were those two
women after me?"

     "I'm not sure," Cologne admitted.  "Did they give any hint
to either of you?"

     "The Circle Eternal," Kima said from where she sat.  "The
one who I fought said she was a member of something called the
Circle Eternal."

     "That mean anything to you?" Ranma asked Cologne.

     Cologne shook her head.  "No."

     "She said she was from the Circle when she was fighting me,"
Ranma said.  "They wanted something from me.  I don't know what."

     "Until the Phoenix falls, his fires dimmed by the one from
across the sea, never shall be the valley be open to the Dark.
By this sign shall we know his coming, by this sign we shall know
the end of what has been and the beginning of what is to be.
The circle unbroken shall cast its shadows across the east, the
wolf shall gnash bloody jaws at the sun, and only by his coming
shall the valley be saved."

     Cologne and Ranma turned their heads to look at Kima.  "What
was that?" Ranma asked quizzically.

     "You're right," Cologne said over Ranma's head to Kima.  "It
does sound similar.  The circle unbroken..."

     "I don't know any other passages by heart," Kima said.
"That's just one that stuck in my head."

     "I'll have to look for other references later," Cologne
said.

     "Can you please tell me what you two are talking about?"
Ranma sighed.

     "The Book of Fire and Earth," Kima said.

     "And that would be?"

     "A book of prophecy, I suppose," Cologne said.  "One of
many, but among the oldest."

     "The original was written over three thousand years ago,"
Kima said.  "Early in the history of Phoenix Mountain as things
go."

     "The Joketsuzoku have them as well," Cologne said.  "Our
primary one is the Treatise of the Forgotten Elders; it's not
nearly as old as the Book of Fire and Earth, but, then again,
even the Joketsuzoku do not have a continuing line of history as
far back as Phoenix Mountain."

     "But what does any of this have to do with me?" Ranma said,
frustration in his voice.  "All I asked was for you to tell me
what the hell's going on, and I'm just more confused.  Give me an
answer, Cologne!  What's going on with my mind?  Why were you
gonna try to make it look like the two of us were dead?"

     He clenched his right hand into a fist and knuckled it
against his forehead.  "Dammit, what's WRONG with me!"

     "The books concern you because they are about you," Kima
said.  "They told of your coming to Jusenkyou and your curse
thousands of years before you were born.  They told of your
battle with Lord Saffron."

     "What is going on with your mind I will shortly explain as
best I can," Cologne said.  "Right now, you need to understand my
behaviour."

     She leaned forward slightly, one hand cupping her chin, and
looked at him.  "By the old made young shall his thread seem
torn, his fire made ash, and the eyes and hands of the Dark
turned away from him as surely as the hearts and minds of those
who know him.  A darkness done in the name of light, a means
towards an end, a lesser evil."

     "That's from those books as well, isn't it?" Ranma said.

     Cologne nodded.  "From the Treatise."

     Ranma sighed and shook his head.  "I dunno..."

     "Ranma," Cologne said.  "I had to do this.  For many, many
reasons.  At the core was the need to remove you from the
observations of whatever it was that those two women came from.
It had to be done in such a way that it would look as if your
family and friends had no knowledge of it."

     "Why?" Ranma said.  "My mother, Akane...  How can you just
expect me to... you expect me to just leave them with no
explanation?"

     "Ranma, what that woman did to you," Cologne said slowly.
"Is nothing compared to what they would do to anyone they thought
had knowledge of where you'd gone."

     "Then how can I just go?" Ranma demanded.  "How can I just
go?  If this Circle, whatever it is, if they're all like those
two women, how can I leave them unprotected?"

     "Because it is only in absence that you can protect them,"
Cologne insisted.  "They do not care about them.  They care about
you."

     "And it is only if he seems to be gone completely that your
great-grandaughter will be protected," Kima interjected in a
quiet voice.  "That is a part of it as well, I do not doubt."

     Cologne slowly nodded, although she shot the other woman a
glare that looked capable of melting stone.  "That is a part as
well."

     Ranma sighed and rubbed his temples with both hands.  "I
don't know what to think, Cologne.  I..."

     "Boy, if ever you have had reason to trust me, believe me in
this," Cologne said softly, with almost a note of pleading to her
voice.  "As long as you remain with them, all those that you care
for are in danger."

     "I've always kinda thought that," Ranma said quietly.  "Ever
since I showed up, Akane's life..."

     He shuddered slightly.  "This thing... this change in me.
It seems to come out in a fight, and it's worse and worse every
time.  What if the next time Akane gets mad and takes a swing at
me, it decides..."

     The sound of the woman's neck breaking.

     "Oh god..." he said, putting his face in his hands.  "How
can I go back?  How can I go back after what I did..."

     "You can't," Cologne said softly.  "You never can.  I have
with free will ended nine lives in my time.  Each time it never
becomes easier.  Killing should never become an easy thing."

     "Avoid rather than check," Ranma mumbled into his hands.
"Check rather than hurt.  Hurt rather than maim.  Maim rather
than kill."

     His shoulders shook, there in the dim light cast by the
object in the box Kima held.  The winged woman watched him, pale
blue eyes reflecting in the light of the box, watched him in
utter silence.

     "It didn't need to happen," he whispered mournfully.  "I
didn't need to kill her."

     "You can never answer that," Cologne said.  "Whether it was
necessary or not, it is done."

     "What have I become?" Ranma said in a voice so low it almost
could not be heard.  "What have I become?"

     "It can be controlled," Cologne said in a soft voice.  "You
can learn to control it, direct it.  It is a part of your soul,
Ranma, a warrior's instinct and skill bound up in your very
being, a thing deeper than flesh or blood or bone, as old as
battle itself.  You can never be rid of it.  But you can turn it
to your advantage."

     "I killed her," Ranma said, as if he had not heard.  "Oh,
god... I killed her."

     "She would have ended your life far far more easily," Kima
said, breaking her silence.  "She was a sadist and a killer to
her core."

     "But I killed her," Ranma said, looking up from his hands
with eyes scarred deep by remorse.  "She didn't kill me.  I
killed her.  What does that make me?"

     "No more than what you are," Cologne said.  "It has always
been a part of you.  But it can be controlled, and from the
seething rage of it you can forge a weapon that you can direct."

     "How?" Ranma said.  "Cologne, if what you say is true..."

     "I chose this spot for a reason," Cologne said quietly.
"Ryugenzawa is a day away, walking.  It begins there."

     "I thought it would," Ranma said.  "I dreamed of it.  I
think I did.  But..."

     "But what?" Cologne said.

     "What about Akane and everyone else?" Ranma asked.  "How do
we know they're okay?"

     "Did you meet Shiso?"

     (...the sound of the raven's cry...)

     "Huh?"

     (...whisper of night-black feathers against his face...)

     "Perhaps not."

     (...an endless stream of names flowing into his mind...)

     "Sounds kinda familiar.  Some friend of yours?"

     (...too many, an overflow, no more could be contained, but
they were still coming, still coming, splashing over the sides,
but they could not be contained and they slip away from him like
water through his fingers...)

     "A very old friend."

     (...he wants it to stop but he does not want it to, he wants
to know, he wants to know, for in those endless ageless infinite
dark eyes are answers to questions he does not know how to ask,
but the raven continues to speak, and in his eyes is something
deeper than oceans, deeper than chasms at the bottom of the sea,
deep beyond depth...)

     A crack of light appeared on one wall, and then the sound of
someone swearing through a mouthful of dirt.  Stones and pebbles
clattered on the ground, and then a large, dark-feathered shape
half-fell, half-fluttered to land on the ground in a shower of
dirt.

     "You could have left me a small opening," the bird said, his
beak occasionally adding a clicking sound to the words.  He
immediately began to shake his wings, throwing off the dirt of
his passage.

     "Sorry," Cologne said.  "Tell me, are they well?"

     The bird bobbed his head in a nod.  "They are well.  They
are looking for you."

     "They are?" Ranma said.  "I've gotta go see Akane."

     He pushed himself to his feet.  One leg promptly collapsed
under him and he fell to the floor, scraping his palm as he
absorbed his fall with one arm.

     "Don't you see, Ranma?" Cologne said softly.  "We can't go
back.  Not after what's happened."

     The sound of the woman's neck breaking.

     "You're right," Ranma said, with a slightly bitter laugh.
"You're right.  I can't go back.  Not now.  Not ever."

     "Only not yet," Cologne said quietly.  "I have told you what
I can, Ranma.  Now I ask you this; will you come with us to
Ryugenzawa?  For if you seek a cure for what you believe ails
you, it is there that you may find it.  Will you come?"

     The question is asked for the first time.

     Ranma looked around the small cave, illuminated in the dim
light of the artifact Kima held.  The light shone on bare, rough
stone walls.

     He looked from Kima to Cologne.  An enemy a week ago, not
even truly human, and an old woman two days ago now made young.

     He looked to the raven, inexplicably familiar.  The dark
eyes glittered back at him like pools of night, and from
somewhere he conjured a memory that the eyes of a bird are not
supposed to be a solid expanse of black.

     "Will you come to Ryugenzawa?" Cologne repeated, and asked
the question for the second time.  And for a second time, it was
answered by silence.

     There are certain points in our lives when we stand upon a
fork, a crossroads, and one small decision at one certain time
in one particular direction will cause a hundred thousand things
to happen that would not have otherwise.

     For wont of a nail, the kingdom was lost.  The flapping
wings of a butterfly cause hurricanes half a world away.

     Throw a pebble into a pond, and watch the ripples spread
themselves across the entire surface.  Moving, changing, leaving
nothing untouched.

     One small decision.

     A hundred reasons to go one way, a hundred reasons to go the
other.  A deep-held secret, a hidden heart that no one may ever
see.  The image of a girl smiling.  A spire of ice as jagged as
pain, as high as a mountain.  The eyes of a raven, depthless
beyond any human ability to measure depth.

     The sound of a woman's neck breaking.

     A question, asked a third time.  More often than not, these
things shall work by threes.

     "Yes.  I'll come."

     And now the answer was given.

     And here the river divides.

**********

     "Akane?"

     "Hmmm..."

     "Wake up, Akane," Ryoga said, kneeling down beside her where
she sat with her back against a tree.

     "I just sat down to rest for a minute," Akane yawned.
"I..."

     "I know," Ryoga said, stifling his own yawn.  "The sun's
gonna set soon.  We..."

     "We have to find him," Akane said.  She scrambled to her
feet; Mousse, Shampoo, Ukyou and Nodoka stood a dozen feet away,
quietly conversing.  Further away, Happosai stared off into the
setting sun, his arms folded over his chest.

     "We've been looking for hours, Akane," Ryoga said gently, as
he slowly got back up.  "If we can't find him in the daylight, we
won't be able to do it at night.  This mountain is too big for
seven people to search."

     "He could be lying somewhere hurt, or... or..."

     "Akane, you know Ranma," Ryoga said with a nervous smile.
"He'll come... he'll come back in a few hours, bragging about his
latest victory, some new technique he invented..."

     "But we have to find him..."

     "We're not having any luck doing it this way," Ryoga said.
"We'll go down to the village, call your father, tell him what's
happened.  We need to tell Ranma's father as well."

     "Like he cares," Akane said.  "Don't any of you care?  Are
you just going to leave?"

     Her voice rose as she spoke, a faint edge of panic to it.
"If you're not willing to stay and look for him, fine!  I'll look
by myself."

     "Akane..." Nodoka said as she approached.  "My son... I want
to find him as well.  But we've been looking for a long time with
no results.  We need to call the authorities, get organized..."

     Akane looked into Ranma's mother's eyes, at the hidden pain
there.  Anyone else she could have accused, could have yelled at.

     Not her.  The western horizon was aflame with colours, as
the last edge of the sun slipped below, preceding the dark that
follows always behind the light.

     "He'll be okay, Akane," Ukyou said with a weak smile.
"He's... he's..."

     She sighed and closed her eyes.  "He's Ranma."

     And that, in the end, was all that could be said, Akane
realized.  He was Ranma; he would be alright.

     "Let's get moving," Ryoga said.  "It's going to be dark
soon."

     Slowly, silently, Akane nodded and began to walk.  After a
hesitant moment, Ryoga followed her, and a moment after he began
to walk, so too did the others.

     And here the river divides.