Thyself Known
Ch.7: I, Ranma
By Zorknot
Disclaimer:
Ranma1/2 belongs to Rumiko Takahashi and her cohorts.
What
Has Come Before: Ranma and Nabiki’s mind meld caused them to exchange weaknesses as well
as strengths, as evidenced by the fact that they were recently featured on the
~~~~~Ch.7~~~~~
“Has he lost his mind?
Can he see or is he blind?
Can he walk at all,
Or if he moves will he fall?
Is he alive or dead?
Has he thoughts within his head?
We'll just pass him there
why should we even care?”
-Black Sabbath
~~~~~dream~~~~~
Ranma
is a cat. A leopard or panther or something equally fierce.
He paces back and forth behind the bars of his cage as people pass by. His
mate, Nabiki is watching with a bored
expression. She begins to lick herself. Shampoo, the other female is in the other
corner of the cage. She will not attempt to mate again for some time.
There is a noise. The door to the cage is
opening. There in the entryway stands a human female. She laughs covering her
mouth with the back of her hand “OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!”
She flings out a ribbon. It wraps around
Shampoo’s throat. “This one will look good on my wall!” She pulls and the head
comes off.
Ranma
lunges at the girl but a smaller cage comes down around him from the ceiling
and he bangs against the bars brutally but to no avail. “You’re mine, Ranma-sama,” the girl says. “Mine and no one else’s”
“No one’s” She wraps her ribbon around Nabiki’s throat. She laughs.
~~~~~reality~~~~~
Ranma woke up in a
cold sweat. He had that feeling again that his dream meant something. That it
foretold the future somehow. It was different this time, but most of it was the
same. Kodachi killing someone he loved, and him
powerless to stop it.
Someone he loved. He had loved Akane, he
still did a little, but now, he was madly in love with Nabiki.
I’m such a hypocrite, Ranma thought
as he lay on the top bunk of his prison cell, staring at the dim fluorescent
light of the ceiling. Until yesterday, he hadn’t had any feelings at all for Nabiki, and now...He wanted to spend the rest of his life
with her. He had spent a year saying that he didn’t want a fiancée...that he wasn’t
ready. But after she intercepted him yesterday in that intersection, and kept
him from going after Shampoo... He wanted to marry her right now, ready or not.
It wasn’t just
the sex, though that had been awesome; it was...well, she was literally a part of him, and he of her, but that didn’t
describe it well enough somehow. At any rate, he was now sure that at least two
parts of the legion of personalities he carried with him were in love with Nabiki: the Nekoken and his
“base” personality, the one he seemed to come back to all the time.
Ranma
sat up and gazed at the white metal bars of his cell. They had kept him here an
awfully long time. The guy with the sunglasses said it would only be for a few
hours, but that was yesterday afternoon. Ranma really
didn’t mind too much. He kind of enjoyed the peace and quiet, and had used the
time for training and meditation.
He stretched his
legs idly on the bunk. He was wearing gray prison clothes now, as his Chinese
shirt and pants weren’t functional as clothing when he was arrested. The
material was kind of scratchy and stiff. Okay for now, but he would be changing
back into his silk Chinese outfit as soon as possible.
It was strange,
though... He would have thought that a prison would be noisier. And weren’t
they supposed to serve food? Ranma’s stomach growled
in agreement. Still, Ranma had been in far worse
places than this. It was wondering what
had happened to Nabiki that really made him want out
of here.
Looking at the
bars and remembering the level of security in the hallways, he had already come
up with seven different ways of escaping, two of which would only take some
five minutes, and one of which could be accomplished without much effort at
all, and that wouldn’t even really be illegal.
Nodding to
himself, Ranma decided to go for this last one. He
closed his eyes and thought of buying ice cream, of beating up Happosai, of cooking, of... being pretty. He thought of
little things...the way people looked at her, the way people did things for
her...the way she could do things for other people...if only they weren’t so
violent...
Ranma
felt her body change from male to female as she thought of feminine things…
She went a
little too far.
“Oh
dear!” Ranma exclaimed out loud as she was filled with revulsion
at the memories she now had. “Nabiki’s just a good
friend! I would never...” But she
did, or rather he did.
It helped to
make the distinction. That crass boy was not
her. If it hadn’t been for Genma, none of that would
have happened.
Ranma blushed a little, realizing that she couldn’t bring herself
to regret the memory, and now all of a sudden she felt like thanking her
father. She shook her head. She was not a lesbian. It was a valuable
experience, and she would be able to use it when it came time for her to please
her husband maybe, but she wanted a family with children and neighbors and
afternoon tea, just like when she was young and she and Akane
would play in the yard, and Mom and Dad were still together...
She’d never have
that if she were a lesbian. Besides, there were plenty of handsome men around. Ranma wondered idly if she’d be able to tear their clothes
off with as much vigor as Nabiki had shown with her
male counterpart... She blushed a little deeper at that.
It was really a
revelation to her though...apparently some men were actually attracted to strong women. She had
thought for so long that a woman had to be quiet and submissive in order to
attract a man. “Maybe I should be more like Nabiki,” Ranma considered aloud. In truth, she was a little jealous
of Nabiki, so powerful and yet so undeniably
feminine...
What was she
doing? Ranma wanted to know. She was suddenly
worried. What if something happened to her?
“I gotta get out of here.” Ranma
murmured to herself and stopped her line of thought as she noticed the
changeover of her personalities from uber femme hit
on the head Ranma to normal everyday female Ranma.
“Woah. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get used to that....kind of
hope I don’t really...”
She jumped off
the bunk, her bare feet landing on the cold concrete. Shoes were always a
problem. The moment someone invented truly adjustable footwear, Ranma planned on buying it in bulk. Again she stopped
herself. She would only need to do that if she planned on keeping her girl form.
Do I really want to get rid of the curse?
she asked herself, as she had in the past. And now it
seemed stupid. It wasn’t even a curse really anymore. The only reason she was a
girl at all was so she could see Nabiki again.
Ranma
reflected on recent events while she rolled up the sleeves of her prison shirt
and made cuffs in her pants. Really, ever since she did that mind merge with Nabiki things had been going so much better. She hadn’t
even had to use those earrings...
The earrings
that were now somewhere in the streets of Nerima, getting run over by countless
vehicles and pedestrians...
Ranma
slapped her forehead chuckling, “Dammit why didn’t I
think of that when I was having hot sex in the middle of the city?” She wasn’t
really concerned. Still, she’d ask Tofu about it when she got out. First things
first...
“Excuse me… Mr.
Warden sir?” she called out sweetly to the somewhat
gaunt looking man in uniform down the hall.
The hall, Ranma realized with a start, seemed quite a bit longer than
she remembered. Idly looking up, she couldn’t find the ceiling. Just pale
green, flickering fluorescent lights that seemed to float above the floor. She
blinked, shook her head and tried to look again, but there was no change. Probably just a weird optical illusion, Ranma told herself, not quite believing it.
The warden
sauntered lazily toward Ranma’s cell. He had a
strange gait, keeping his left leg completely straight and swinging it around
his other foot to progress a step. His face reminded Ranma
of Gosunkugi, only with a rakish, toothless grin
added to the already sickening countenance. “What can I help you with?” he
asked with a good helping of sarcasm.
This was giving Ranma the creeps but she stuck to her plan, “As you can
see, there’s been some kind of mistake. This is a prison for guys, and I’m a
girl. Could you please let me out?”
The warden
smiled. “So...you’re a girl now, are you, Ranma?
That’s nice. I wonder what your pussy tastes like?”
“Excuse me?” Ranma backed away. This guy knew her? And apparently he had
a perversion that didn’t just end with inanimate objects. “Who are you?”
The warden
laughed and it sounded like the engine of an antiquated diesel trying to start.
Then he shove a spindly arm through the bars of the
cell snatching at Ranma, “I feel you. Feel you come
undone. Like a present. Like string. You flow. Flow
into different molds, different worlds You burn white
hot liquid fire!”
Ranma
backed farther away, her back touching the bowl of the sink behind her. She
wished she could use the Tobu Sennuki she came up
with yesterday on the creep but she didn’t have the soul of ice going, and
after what it did to Happosai, what if it killed the
guy? She looked around for things she
could use to attack the man through the bars. She swallowed and tried to calm
herself. It was just an old guy with a limp. She could take him no
problem...but he gave her the creeps. “Listen, man, I don’t know what your
problem is. I just...I haven’t had my phone call yet. Can I get my phone call?”
“No phones in
Hell! No phones in Hell!” he screeched. Then he grabbed the bars with his hands
and laughed his carburetor laugh. “I’ve been here so long waiting for a way
out. Waiting for you! And here you are all wrapped in a pretty package. I am
the master of this space. I am...Iron man.”
Ranma
guffawed before she could stop herself. “Iron man? What kind of name is that?
You play too many videogames or something?”
The bars that
the warden held started to glow. Ranma felt intense heat
wash over her, and she had to shield her eyes against the light. Suddenly she
felt a terrible pain in her gut, a pain that increased exponentially as she
felt herself lifted up and pinned to the glass of the mirror above the sink.
She smelled something burning. Flesh. Cloth. Her eyes adjusted to the brightness enough to see the
cackling face of the warden, his arm now ending in long sharp spear that
impaled her stomach.
Smoke curled
around her head and the weight of her body pushed her down, the hot metal
cutting up her torso like butter melting on a knife. She
couldn’t scream, it was too painful. Too much.
She saw spots in her vision...the room grew darker.
“That’s it,
pretty one. Pass out. Let me inside that body of yours. Let me escape into the
world of men...”
Ranma
snapped her eyes open. If she passed out this bastard would kill her. She was
probably dead anyway but...she had to keep going... if only just to see Nabiki one last time. “Nabiki...”
Ranma wheezed out, a wisp of smoke coming out of her
mouth.
~~~~~*~~~~~
Nabiki
was startled into a standing position out of her chair in the interrogation
room, jingling the links of her handcuffs.
“Sit back down, Tendo. You aren’t leaving here until I get some answers,”
Detective Inamura ordered. His eyes burned with a
fire Nabiki had never seen before in the man’s eyes.
His aura, Nabiki noted, was a deep purple. It
darkened and brightened in flashes, like a bladed weapon wielded in the light.
One of Nabiki’s closest contacts was Inamura’s
daughter Yuki, and so Nabiki had met the man a few
times before. He had seemed positively silly then, although he had a rather
macabre sense of humor. Now though...She almost
sat down again without thinking, compelled by the intense glare of the goateed
man’s eyes.
It was however Nabiki’s custom to resist another’s strength when she
encountered it, and remained standing, defiantly. “Ranma...where
is he?”
“I told you
already, he ran off. He wasn’t in his cell this morning and he hasn’t contacted
your family. Now please, Tendo, sit and explain to me
again how it is that your fingerprints are all over what’s left of Tomo Hoko.”
Nabiki
gritted her teeth and sat. “Detective, you know I wouldn’t hurt Hoko. We’ve
been to your house. Your daughter is a friend of mine and so was Hoko. Ranma isn’t the kind of person who would run away from
something like this. I’ve got to see him. You can tail me if you want, but I
have to get out of here or...”
“You aren’t
leaving this room, Tendo. I know you didn’t do it.
But you know something you’re not telling me, and that makes me wonder.”
Nabiki
had known as soon as she had seen Hoko at Tofu’s that something had gone
terribly wrong. Hoko’s aura had been normal on the surface, but underneath
it...almost imperceptible was this terrible flickering blackness. Nabiki thought at first that maybe Hoko was having problems
at home or that maybe her sickness earlier that morning was some kind of curse,
and if it hadn’t been for Shampoo showing up and chasing after Ranma she might have looked into it. But now, after
Detective Inamura showed her the gruesome pictures of
Hoko’s body parts, she knew exactly what happened.
It was then that
Nabiki first found that Ranma
was missing. She had wanted to talk with him about it, wanted to see what he
would say, needed to really. But he had apparently escaped his cell and was no
where to be found. It just didn’t make sense...
Something had
killed Hoko and was now pretending to be her. Nabiki
wanted to grieve. She wanted to cry, but it was too much to take in. The cold
darkness overtook her. It was worse than ever. She didn’t just want death, she
wanted to crush throats, to expose entrails, to tear apart bones and suck the
marrow. She bit her hand, trying to stop having the images parade through her
head.
Her teeth drew
blood before she could regain composure. So ironic.
Thinking of death used to give her
composure...
She came to some
rather unpleasant conclusions as she gathered her thoughts in the restroom of
the police station. First, by announcing that Hoko was dead, the police had
probably lost their best chance of finding the killer. The bastard would surely
change bodies and then there’d be no way of knowing who he, she or it would show up as.
Second, Nabiki would have to be extremely careful what information
she gave to the police. The killer could be one of them, and if she revealed
that she could detect who it was, then it would only be a matter of time before
she was the next victim.
The police would
not be able to solve this. It was up to her.
Which
brought her to her present predicament. She was holding
back something. And while she had an excellent poker face, there was no getting
past Detective Inamura.
Normally she’d
suffer through the interrogation, and manage to provide an alibi and a viable
reason for her apparent lack of cooperation, but now she had a terrible
feeling...a certainty really. Ranma was in danger. Ranma was dying.
Even though she
knew the fastest way out of the room was to calm down and give the detective
some semblance of what he wanted, she couldn’t do that now. She was thinking
through desperate escape plans...maybe she could throw a chair through the
silvered observation window on the wall, jump through...
An officer came
in with a cup of coffee. It was officer 542, Kawagami
Hiro. The man who had helped save
her life.
She still
couldn’t quite get over that one. She had
died, and any doubt about that fact was countered by bright patterns of energy
she could now see around every living thing around her. Kawagami’s
eyes were blue, she noticed. His sunglasses were in his breast pocket of his
white uniform shirt. There was nothing abnormal about the aura at first, but Nabiki looked closer...and there it was.
A
dark flickering, behind the visible pattern.
Inamura
accepted the coffee with a grumbled out “thanks,” took a sip without letting it
cool at all, and set it down on the table.
“Is there
anything else I can help with?” Kawagami asked.
“Just let me
know if anything new turns up in the investigation,” Inamura
said gruffly.
“Of
course. Sorry to
disturb you,” the blue-eyed man smiled and turned to leave.
After Kawagami shut the door, Inamura’s
brow furrowed as he noted Nabiki’s expression. “You
look like you’ve seen a ghost, Tendo. What’s wrong
with you?”
Nabiki
got a hold of herself. She was finding it harder to keep her emotions from
showing since the mind meld with Ranma. She really
wasn’t sure if that was really a bad thing or not, but she couldn’t afford to
be read so easily in these circumstances. “I need to make my phone call,” she
said. “Now.”
Inamura
nodded slowly. “I suppose that’d be a good idea.”
~~~~~*~~~~~
The real Kawagami Hiro was, of course,
tied up in Hoko’s closet, catatonic from the sleeping pills Copycat had found
in Tomo-san’s medicine cabinet, and would stay that
way until he was sure that Nabiki was in jail and
hopefully Ranma along with her as an accomplice. He
chuckled as he returned to his desk in the precinct and organized some papers
to make it look like he was working. Soon it would be a simple matter of taking
a prisoner’s body and organizing a trap for the hapless pigtailed boy and then
he’d finally have his vengeance.
And then what?
Once he’s dead...what will I do?
Copycat shook
his head free of the thought. Killing Ranma was all
that mattered. After that, he’d be free.
This was the
first time he had ever incapacitated a real police officer for a disguise. He
did it in desperation when he saw the cop come to the door of the Tomo residence yesterday. He surmised immediately why the
cop was there and as soon as Copycat, in the guise of Hoko Tomo,
opened the door and the cop entered the house, he struck a pressure point at
the base of the cop’s skull and the man collapsed predictably to the floor.
Force feeding
him sleeping pills while he was unconscious was more difficult, but Copycat
wasn’t the squeamish sort and so he had just opened Hiro’s
mouth and used his finger to shove them down the throat. Tomo-san
was in the backyard attending her flowers while Copycat dragged the tall
muscular body into Hoko’s room and shoved him into the closet. Then, after
telling Tomo-san that he was going to go see Nabiki and might be staying over, he took a picture of Hiro with his cursed camera to get his personality and
appearance down, tied him, gagged him, used the blanket to change into him and
left.
Now Copycat
wondered why he hadn’t taken over a cop’s life before. He was learning so much
about police procedure. He had made so many stupid mistakes; he would have
never made it without the cursed blanket. But he was still in a dangerous
situation until he was sure the search for Hoko’s killer was over. Sure he
could escape if he absolutely had to, but then he’d have to find another way to
get close to Ranma and that could take months, and
they might be watching for him.
He was a little
worried about Tomo-san finding the cop. It’d been a
day now, and while Copycat had checked on him in his Hoko disguise, a lot of
things could have happened while he was away.
Copycat actually
jumped when the phone on Hiro’s desk rang. He smiled
at his own nervousness. It had been a long time since he was this excited. He
was so close! But he had to be careful.
On the third
ring he picked up the receiver. “
The voice on the
other end was strong, clear, and yet unmistakably feminine. It was Tendo Nabiki. “What do you want?”
she asked. It seemed emotionless... almost robotic, but Copycat fancied he
heard a trace of desperation all the same.
After a pause he
answered, “I want what every cop wants, lady. Justice” Copycat smiled. He
should have been upset that Nabiki found him out, but
for some reason he was actually glad.
“Justice? Against whom? For what?” Copycat closed his eyes, imagining Nabiki’s face as she asked the questions...so calm...so
composed. If he could see her, would there be the slightest twitch of an
eyebrow? A small disgusted sneer to the lips? Or would
she just show her anger in her fierce burnt sienna eyes? Those
pools of emotion that even her great control could never quite hide.
“He’s gotten you
too now hasn’t he? All this time you’ve stood back, amused at all the girls who
threw themselves at him, and now you’re just another flunkie,
no different from your homicidal sister, or the airheaded
Amazon, or that pathetic codependent crossdressing
caterer.”
“This is about Ranma,” Nabiki said simply.
“Yes, I gather
you know the perpetrator then? The identity thief? The soul stealer?”
“That sounds
more like your department.” There was a definite tone of acidity in her
response.
“Hoko knew
exactly who she was when she died. When you killed her.
You know what she said when she looked up from her stabbed stomach and saw your
face looking down at her?” Copycat was speaking in hushed tones now, his voice
barely above a murmur, “She said she understood. She understood, Tendo. Will you be able to say that if you died right now?”
“You want to
kill Ranma.”
“Don’t you? You used
to be so sure of yourself. Now you don’t even know what you want anymore, do
you?”
“You won’t be
able to kill him in prison. He’ll just escape and leave the country, and then
you won’t be able to get near him.”
Copycat winced.
She was right.- Hadn’t he already done just that? In a day no less. “True, that is a setback, but I’ll find a
way.”
“I can help you.
I can give you the chance you need to kill him.”
“What?” he
almost yelled out the question.
“You heard me. I
just want a few things in return...”
“No. You can’t
fool me, Tendo. You love him. This is some sort of
trick.”
“No trick. I can
supply all the resources you need and can get you closer to him than anyone
else. Of course I can’t do that if I’m in prison.”
“What is your
proposal?”
“The police are
looking for Hoko’s killer. Right now all the signs point to me and I’ll likely
be stuck in jail at least until there can be a trial. But Hoko isn’t
necessarily dead, is she? If she were to show up, then the arm and torso would
have to be an elaborate fake. The police would spin their wheels for a little
while trying to find out what happened, but in that time you could have your
chance with Ranma.”
Copycat forced
himself to be cautious. “How can I be sure you won’t just point me out as the
killer as soon as I show up as Hoko?”
“You could
always say the dead Hoko was trying to kill YOU. Tofu will confirm that you are
the real thing and at that point no one would believe me even if I did say
something.”
“This
chance...you’ll let me have any means at your disposal? You won’t obstruct me
in any way?”
“Not
at all. You have my
word.”
“And the moment
I get the slightest idea that your word is worthless, that is the moment you
die. You understand that, right?”
“Of
course.”
Copycat stood up
behind Kawagami’s desk with the receiver to his ear,
not bothering to hide the wide grin that plastered his face. “Then, Tendo, I believe we have a deal.”
~~~~~*~~~~~
Nabiki
put the receiver of the pay phone back onto its cradle and shuddered. She was
not the religious sort, still she prayed to the gods
that she was doing the right thing. All she knew was that Ranma
was in trouble NOW...that she had to get to him NOW and that an unsure danger
later was at best a secondary concern. Not only that, but this way she would
know exactly who the doppelganger was. Still, she had just agreed to become
pals with Hoko’s killer, and while there was something to be said for keeping
enemies close, this seemed to be taking it a bit too far.
Was there any
other option? Maybe. But she couldn’t see it now.
Every other thought was a voice screaming at her to move, to run. She had to
struggle not to knock down the officer that watched her and make a break for
it, even knowing that unless she had the power to bend metal and burst through
concrete, which she didn’t, she wouldn’t get far before they managed to detain
her. It was so frustrating knowing so many of Ranma’s
moves, but lacking the strength and poise to make them effective.
The conversation
on the phone had exhausted her, but still her heart raced. Hardly realizing she
had entered again, Nabiki found herself in the
interrogation room once more.
Inamura’s
dark brow furrowed. “I’ve never seen you this nervous, Tendo.
I’ve never seen you nervous at all. What’s bothering you?”
“I need to see Ranma. He’s in trouble,” Nabiki
said without thinking. It was only then that it occurred to her that it was odd
that she would be able to know that. And that made her wonder just how it was
she expected to help him.
“Do you think the
killer might be after him? Is that it?”
“Yes. No...” Nabiki mind needed to rest, to recuperate from that
conversation, “it’s a long story.”
“Why don’t you
tell it to me, Tendo. Is your lawyer coming?”
“Something like that. Ranma’s in trouble,
Detective. Isn’t there any way you can let me out?”
“I’m afraid not,
Tendo. But if you tell us where he is we’ll be happy
to...”
“You can’t do
anything! He hasn’t left his cell. He’s still there, only...Detective, believe
me, I respect your profession, but there are things in this world that are
completely beyond your jurisdiction and this is one of them.”
Inamura
leaned back in his chair. “So,” he pulled out a cigarette from his pack and lit
it. He took a puff and blew the smoke out of his nostrils before turning his
head once more to Nabiki. “You’re saying that Ranma is trapped in some sort of alternate reality and that
you’re the only one that can save him.”
Nabiki
squelched her urge to reach across the table and strangle the goateed man. She looked
into his eyes stonily and said, “Yes. That is exactly what I’m saying.”
Inamura
studied Nabiki’s expression for a good minute and
took another pull off his cigarette. He held it with all four fingers and his
thumb as if it were a joint. He looked up at the fluorescent light and blew out
the smoke. He lowered his gaze to Nabiki again. “And Hoko Tomo?”
“Killed
by a doppelganger that’s going to come into the police station in an hour or so
looking exactly like her.”
“So in other
words, the reason your fingerprints are on Hoko’s arm is that this...doppleganger...was using a perfect copy of your body while
disposing of her?”
“Yes.”
Another pull off
the cigarette, and Inamura asked, “You’re aware of
how inane this is right?”
“Regardless, it
is the truth.”
Inamura
stubbed the cigarette directly on the table, since there was no ashtray. “How
old do you think I am, Tendo?”
“I mean you no
disrespect, Detective I’m only...”
“How
old?” Inamura interrupted Nabiki.
“You’re at least
as old as my father. I don’t see...”
“I’m fifty-seven
years old, Tendo. And guess where I’ve been living
all this time.”
Nabiki
just remained silent.
“Nerima,
born and raised. And
yet you, a seventeen-year-old slip of a girl think that you know more about
what’s going on than I do.”
“You knew?”
“In the real
world, people don’t hit their heads and forget all about police procedure. And Kawagami would never be in here without his sunglasses on.
His eyes are sensitive to the light. Calling him was very dangerous, and now things
aren’t going to go as easy.”
“What do you
mean?”
“Well, of course
we had your conversation tapped. I have to say, Tendo
that was pretty stupid what you did. Extremely dangerous, lying outright to
someone like that. You could get killed. Of course we’ll be watching now, but
still. You’re walking a thin line. A real thin line.”
“Wait a minute. You’re
saying you knew it was a doppelganger all a long?”
“The M.O.
matched that of another body part found about a year ago. A
Tanaka Buntaro. If we went on fingerprints or
DNA we’d have had to conclude it was a suicide, but even if the kid was
talented enough to manage sawing his own arms and legs off, the wounds were
post mortem; so either Buntaro had an evil twin that
his mother didn’t know about, or there was some kind of doppelganger loose. We
had a similar incident back in ’75 when Dark Sombrero the Mexican mad scientist
created an android that could duplicate human forms. Thankfully we found some
pop idols and dressed them in sexy robot suits and were able to stop the
problem.”
“Why are you
joking around! Ranma’s in
danger!”
Inamura
shrugged “You have nothing to worry about. The only transdimensional
demon we have here is Airanman and someone has to
have a serious mental disorder in order for him to be any threat.”
Stifling her
throttle reflex, Nabiki said, “Ranma
is going through something called the Ijuu. He isn’t
the same person from one minute to the next. Does that count as a serious
mental disorder?”
“Crap.” Inamura hurried behind Nabiki and
unlocked her cuffs. They fell off her wrists and rattled to the floor. Then he unholstered his pistol, cocked it and pointed the barrel to
the ceiling. “We don’t have much time.”
Inamura
explained as he and Nabiki hurried through the
corridors of the police station. “The precinct exists in a quantum
irregularity. Time gets distorted more and more as you approach the jail and
often we get dimensional crossover. It can get pretty nasty, but if we take the
right path I can get you to Ranma before whatever’s
happening starts to happen.”
“Don’t you have
any larger weapons?” Nabiki asked.
“Just
‘ole reliable here.” Inamura waved his pistol, but Nabiki’s
growing sense of imminent doom made it seem terribly inadequate. “Won’t need anything else. The only way to beat Airanman is through force of will. Don’t think there’s a
weapon around that’ll dent that guy.”
“Then what’s the
gun for?”
“For your
boyfriend, in case Airanman takes control of him.”
“You can’t shoot
him! He didn’t do anything!”
“Look, Tendo, I’ll try to help out if I can, but I suggest you
think of some pretty words to say to your fiancé, cause this might be the last
time you see him alive.”
~~~~~*~~~~~
The pain
wouldn’t stop. It grew. It seemed to be trying to cover Ranma’s
entire body. Something else was happening too...something was telling Ranma who she was. She wanted to fight back to stop the
pain but...
You don’t want it to stop. You like pain.
You like the hot searing fleshiness of it. You’re a girl. A
little whore. Your name is Airanko. You like
it when people hit you. You like it when people hurt you. The more they hurt
you the more they love you. See how much I’m hurting you. You’re my little
bitch. My painsickle. My
vessel...
“No...” Ranma tried, “Nabiki...” the pain
subsided somewhat, but that was worse. Ranma wanted
it. It made her feel complete...the pain...
What you had with Nabiki
wasn’t real. It was a wet dream nothing more. You cannot expect Nabiki to drop everything to marry you. What have you to
offer her? Martial Arts? Please. She’s destined for
greatness while you’re destined for street fights. You’ll have your fling
maybe. She’ll use you for a while and then you’ll be discarded. Just like your
mother discarded you. Just like your father discarded you. Just like Akane...
She felt the
pain growing, filling her, flowing around her.
I’m going to surround you. I’m going to
make you impenetrable.. You’ll never feel the torture
of love again. You’ll have me, my little death doll, forever, and you will
never need anyone else again.
“Yes...” Airanko whispered and she felt the liquid metal encompass
her as it started to cool. The pain was positively sweet now. And it would all
be over soon.
“No!” A clear
alto voice rang out. It was familiar to Airanko
but... Oh no! The pain! The pain was leaving!
“Go away! Go
away whoever you are!” she screamed. She wanted the pain back. The beautiful
pain that made her numb...
“Ranma, it’s Nabiki.”
“My name’s not Ranma, it’s Airanko!”
“No. You are Saotome Ranma. You are the heir
to the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts. You saved my life and now you’re
my fiancé...the one I love. I name you. I claim you. You’re mine, Saotome, and I’m not letting you go. So hurry up and kick
this guy’s ass.”
A
flash. Airanko felt the metal recede further. “No! He gives me
pain. I need pain. Must have pain. I feel so numb...so
numb.”
“Ranma...if it’s pain you’re
looking for, wait till we’re married. I’ll make you’re life a living hell.”
“Promise?” Airanko asked.
There was a
pause.
See? She can’t give you what you need.
Only I can. She’ll throw you away like scrap. I will mold you into something
new and shiny and sharp. You’ll have more pain than all your little friends
could ever give. You’ll be immortal, my little injury queen, and your screams
will make the earth melt and the heavens burn away.
Nabiki’s
voice came through again though. It was dark and cold. “Ranma,
what the fuck does that thing know about pain?”
Airanko
frowned. The pain was ebbing, and this was a new exquisite pain. Airanman didn’t seem to understand. He was trying to get
her to take him back in but he didn’t understand. Nabiki...Nabiki could take everything Airanman
told her and multiply it by ten. Getting hurt by Nabiki
would be worse than any burn, any fracture, any
laceration. Because it would be from her.
Ranma
shook her head free of the smoke. She grimaced. “Get the fuck off of me, you
creep!” she yelled.
And confronted
with the force of Ranma’s new-found will Airanman nearly did exactly that. But he rallied forth one
last ditch effort and lunged, screaming like metal across metal, “NOOOO!”
Ranma’s
eyes widened as she felt the searing hot liquid metal pass once again into her
stomach... felt it somehow against her back. “I am not your BITCH!” Ranma screamed and Airanman was
blown away into the bars of the cell opposite Ranma’s.
Ranma
slid down the wall, and passed out.
~~~~~*~~~~~
Akane
sneezed.
“I guess,” She
was sitting with the Amazon elder in the office of the assistant principle, who
was fishing some papers out of Principle Kuno’s
office and so would probably be a while in coming back. She rubbed her nose and
moved to a different position in her seat. For some reason she thought of
waiting outside of the classroom with Ranma, holding
buckets of water, and she felt like crying again.
“Last night was
hard for you,”
“I just...” Akane tried, but there was no easy way to crystallize the
shame into words. Every time she thought she had finally reached emotional rock
bottom she thought of some other terrible thing she’d said or done to Ranma and it drove her deeper into the dirt. “We could
have...but the fiancée stuff and then Shampoo...”
she spoke the name with more venom then she intended. She wanted to blame her
for everything, but she resisted. Even if Shampoo was to blame for Akane being unable to learn how deal with Ranma, it was still Akane that
had mocked Ranma, jeered at him, attacked his
greatest weakness with a gusto that was sickening. And there was no way she
could make up for that now. She once... had something with Ranma.
There was... love there once, but now... Could they even be friends? How could
he ever trust her again? How could she trust herself?
The family was
getting ready to see Ranma and Nabiki
in jail when Akane left home with
Becoming Amazon
was the only thing that kept Akane from losing it all
together. She had a new chance now. A new code of honor she could adhere to
after she had shattered her old one. She would not let herself be weak. She
would not fuck this up.
Akane
closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. Patience.
That was why they were both in this office, waiting for the assistant principal
to return instead of helping him find the necessary forms so she could work at
the Nekohanten while attending school. Akane could only imagine what sort of booby traps the
Hawaiian madman might have set up, and it could very well be that the assistant
principal was unconscious underneath a pile of coconuts or something. She knew it would be faster to go herself
and get the papers, but she would stay. As maddening as it was, she would sit
and think. And she thought about all the times where sitting and thinking would
have done her so much good.
And she felt
like crying again.
~~~~~*~~~~~
Ukyo had never
seen so many customers. They just kept coming in! Ukyo was making three okonomiyaki at once and still she was working non stop. She
knew what it was of course, but she didn’t want to think about it too much. Her
new room mate was more than paying for herself already. In fact, Shampoo was
almost too good of a waitress.
Ukyo had evened
out Shampoo’s shortened hair for her and she looked cute in the Ucchan’s uniform. Ukyo herself didn’t swing that way, but
she had spent enough time in a boy’s school to know what guys liked, and
Shampoo was it. She could kid herself that she was cuter, but it was a conceit
that didn’t stand up to scrutiny. If it weren’t for the fact that Ranma liked tomboy types, Ukyo wouldn’t have a chance.
That sneaky
bitch Nabiki...
Ukyo flipped an okonomiyaki too soon and the batter spattered on her hand,
burning her skin. “Fuck.” Ukyo seethed, and she tried to get the image of Nabiki doing just that to poor innocent, defenseless Ranma in a city intersection while helicopters flew over
head... out of her troubled mind. They were still showing it on the news at
regular intervals with all the naughty bits blurred by computers.
But of course Ranma wasn’t innocent. Anybody could see he was
participating just as much as Nabiki. It just wasn’t
fair.
Ukyo focused on
the okonomiyaki. She envisioned pouring all of her
negative energy into the batter letting it all go into the mix. When she
finished her next okonomiyaki, she felt a lot better.
She wouldn’t want to serve it to anyone though. It simply wasn’t ethical to
serve an okonomiyaki that wasn’t made with love.
Taking a short break without letting Shampoo know, Ukyo took the okonomiyaki with her out the back door to the yard outside.
She threw it Frisbee-like into the thick trunk of a large deciduous tree. She
wasn’t exactly surprised when it exploded, but when the tree toppled over, Ukyo
knew it was time to close for the day.
She was getting
too many ideas.
~~~~~*~~~~~
“Unnnh...” Ranma moaned, holding a
hand to her head just above her right eye. “Did anyone get the number of that
…?”
“Over-used
cliché?” Nabiki finished for him. She sat crosslegged in a plastic chair in the recovery room. She
put down the latest issue of Forbes and tsked.
“You’re a bit high maintenance, aren’t you, Ranma?”
“Huh?”
“I mean I’m just
after free food and money, but you, you expect to be rescued from sado-masochistic demons from the fifth dimension, and on
the second date no less!” Ranma sat up and Nabiki helped her to her feet. “Daddy and Kasumi are here,
having a worrying contest. So far Daddy’s winning with his trademark waterfall
of tears, but Kasumi may be a dark horse candidate with her incessant hand wringing .”
“What about
Pops?”
“Oh he came by,
but then he said he had to leave. Family business, he said.”
“Well, sheesh, you’re family, why couldn’t he tell you?” Ranma felt odd. Her balance was a little off and she felt
strangely numb. She could feel things but she couldn’t really FEEL them.
Nabiki
kissed Ranma. She felt THAT.
“What was that
for? Not that I’m complaining.”
“I don’t know. I
haven’t been myself lately. So many things have happened I haven’t even really
assimilated and then you…It feels good to be part of your family, Ranma. I don’t know why, but it does.”
Ranma
found herself rising to meet Nabiki’s lips again.
When she was done she frowned, “Why are Daddy and... I
mean why are your father and Kasumi worried about me?”
Nabiki
smirked “They saw us having intimate sexual relations on live television while
we were both acting like cats. More recently they found out while in jail I was
six feet away from a raging demon that almost killed you. Daddy is beginning to
think I’m standing a little too close to the fire,” Nabiki
nudged Ranma. “Kasumi, well...she’s just Kasumi.”
Ranma nodded.
The next second a wooden door with a square window opened and Kasumi
came in. “Oh my,” she said.
Ranma and Nabiki gave themselves a quizzical look. “What’s up,
Kasumi?” Ranma asked.
“We don’t have much time. Father will be back soon. I need to talk to
you both.”
“Okaaay…what about?” Nabiki asked.
“It’s rather difficult to explain I’m afraid. Ranma-chan,
do you still have the Saiserefu Noon?”
“Ah…heh, heh,” Ranma scratched the back of her head, “I kind of lost it
when Nabiki and I were…”
“Hmm yes,” Kasumi interrupted, “Please, I want you to think. When
exactly was the last time you wore it?”
“The earrings kind of just fell out after I did that mind meld with Nabiki”
Kasumi nodded. She turned away from them and looked through the window
of the door, checking the hallway.
“What is it, Kasumi?” Nabiki asked.”
Turning to face them both again, Kasumi wrung her hands and said, “Ranma, Nabiki, I want you to
promise me something. Ranma you’re family now too and
I think you respect our family more than your original one. So I want both of
you to swear on the honor of our departed mother.”
Ranma and Nabiki swallowed. “Swear what exactly?” Nabiki
asked.
“Don’t ever leave each other’s side.”
“I swear,” Ranma said solemnly
“Nabiki?” Kasumi asked.
“Of course I swear, but why the theatrics, Kasumi? We weren’t planning
on being apart anyway.”
“I think something about the… mindmeld caused
the Saiserefu to move from Ranma’s
earrings to you. You are now Ranma’s Thyself Known.”
Nabiki nodded slowly.“That would explain how I
knew what to do when Ranma was fighting Airanman,”
“That’s not all I’m afraid. I think it goes both ways. Nabiki, Ranma is your Saiserefu just as much as you are Ranma’s.
As long as you two are together you’ll be perfectly fine. But if you’re apart
for very long, I’m afraid your personality may fracture just as badly as Ranma’s has.”
“How romantic,” Nabiki deadpanned.
“Hold on a second,” Ranma interjected, “How
do you know this, Kasumi?”
Kasumi’s brow furrowed. She checked the hallway again. “Father mustn’t
find out. It’s too dangerous to tell you everything. When Tofu was fifteen, he
lost something precious…a part of himself. I had to give him part of myself or
he would have died. I was nine then. You
were seven, Nabiki.”
“That was when mom…”
Kasumi nodded somberly. “Remember I had pneumonia that month?”
“It wasn’t pneumonia, was it.”
“No.” Kasumi checked the hallway again.
“So you and Tofu did a mind meld too?” Ranma
asked, “But I thought you had to be identical twins or something?”
“It wasn’t the same thing. It can last a decade, maybe fifteen years
and then…”
“Death?”
Kasumi nodded, “’The two will become one.’ Tofu and I had our own Ijuu. We too were our own Thyself Knowns,
but for us, in order to stay ourselves we had to stay apart. I’m just starting to
remember everything that happened. Tofu must be remembering too. We’re…we’re
running out of time…” she wiped a tear from her cheek.
Ranma found herself
standing up and putting an arm around Kasumi before she even realized it. She
sat Kasumi down in one of the chairs and sat next to her. “We’ll find a way to
fix this. There has to be something we can do.”
It was then she noticed that she was holding Nabiki’s
hand even as she was comforting Kasumi with the other. She realized she had
said “we” twice. Not “I” but “we”. And she knew then that whatever it was she
was going to do, she was going to do it with Nabiki.
~~~~~*~~~~~
When Hiro Kawagami
woke, his entire body felt like fruitcake. His eyelids were particularly heavy
fruitcakes, the kind passed around for generations. When he finally got them
open the sandpaper sensation the air from the dank closet provided made him
close them again promptly.
His stomach was angry at him
about something, it kept trying to throttle him, but thankfully all it succeeded
in doing was forcing the warm, chunky remains of the hot dog and coffee he had
some twenty hours ago at the Hot Dog and Coffee out of his burning esophagus
past his epiglottis and all over the hard wood floor by his head. The vomit
stank a great deal.
He managed to get into a sitting position, which seemed like a good
idea at the time, but his inner ear mistook this as an attempt to do a back
flip off world’s fastest rollercoaster right after the third loop. His stomach
tried to throttle him again, and in the midst of all this violence, he fell
over, his shoulder splatting in the puddle of vomit,
which had become cool but no less fragrant for the two or three minutes he had
spent trying to sit up.
A minute or so passed as Kawagami lay there
thinking of vomit flavored fruitcake. There were a lot of fruitcakes in Nerima
he mentally segued. Maybe getting tied up, shoved into a closet and drugged was
a normal thing. He wasn’t getting paid enough if that was the case.
He was just about to try sitting up again when the closet door opened
almost blinding him for a moment with the light from outside.
“Morning, sunshine,” his own voice taunted at him. “Well it’s
two in the afternoon actually, but who the fuck gives a shit.”
“What do you want?” Kawagami groaned.
“Revenge. No wait. That’s not it. Satisfaction. If it were just revenge, I’d just let the Ijuu take its toll on the bastard and watch him fall apart.
That’d be eye for an eye. No, I want the fucker dead. Him and
his bitch.”
“You mean Ranma and Nabiki?”
“No, I mean the Pope and the Queen of England. Of
course Ranma and Nabiki!”
Still recovering from his stupor, Kawagami
said “Come on, the Pope and the Queen of England have
nothing to do with each other.”
The figure seemed to ignore him. “They bought you some time. I was going to kill
you chop you into bits and spread your remains across the countryside, make a
day trip out of it, see the sights. Now that plan’s fucked. The bitch is giving
me a way to get close to her manwhore. Of course it’s
not going to go down like she thinks. She thinks I’m going to
go galavanting in there screaming ‘I’m alive! Please
arrest me!’ But I’ve got an idea.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell it to me, huh? I thought evil
masterminds only did that in movies.”
“Yes, I’m telling you the plan, because you’re going to make it work.”
“Yeah well I’m not going to help you so you might as well think up a
new one.”
Kawagami’s eyes had
adjusted enough to see the smirk on the doppelganger’s face. Then the fetch
waved some dark cloth across his field of vision. It was like his entire body were taffy being pulled and compressed and molded. He
felt extremely odd.
“You’re going to help me, or you’ll never be Kawagami
Hiro again.”
“ What do you—“ Kawagami
started, but then he stopped. That was not his voice. Much
too high. That was…that was…
“Get up, Tomo Hoko,
I’m taking you to the police station. Inamura’s going
to have a lot questions to ask, but I’m sure between the two of us we can set
him straight, don’t you think?”
~~~~~[Author’s Note]~~~~~
Okay. It’s been a long time since I did a chapter on this. I’m sorry to
have left you hanging with that last, but there were several problems I had
with the politics of the police station and such. I’m sure someone will catch
some glaring error and I’ll have to go back and change something, but for now
this is the chapter.
I suppose I have to face facts, the plot point that I’m planning
between Ranma and his mother has been irrevocably
sublimated by everything else. I’ll eventually get to it, but not before a
hundred other things happen, and that’s likely to take a very long time. I’m in
Anyway I do plan on continuing this, and I thank you for bearing with
me as time slogs forward like a forwardly slogging thing.
It gets weirder.
###
Thanks, Abdiel, for critiquing
And thanks as well to the reviewers of Fanfiction.net