Thyself Known
Ch.8: Stuck
A
Ranma 1/2 fanfiction by Zorknot
DISCLAIMER: PSSSHHHT! This is officer 542
we have an unauthorized use of an artist’s characters, please advise, over.
PSHHHT! Does the author
have a disclaimer? Over.
PSHHHT! That’s an affirmative on the presence of a disclaimer, Over.
PSHHHT! Does it try to be
funny or otherwise downplay the fact that what the author is doing is
essentially illegal? Over.
PSHHHT! Afirmative. Over.
PSHHHT! Book the bastard, over.
PSHHHT! Youkai, Over and out.
PSHHHT! Be advised this is a Ranma fanfic and not an Inuyasha fanfic, though both were
created by Rumiko Takahashi. Over and out.
WHAT
HAS COME BEFORE:
Ranma and Nabiki were arrested for having sex in public. While in jail,
Ranma had an encounter with a trans-dimensional demon calling itself Iron Man.
Nabiki saved him by promising to cause him more pain than he could possibly
imagine. Meanwhile Copycat, having disguised himself as officer Kawagami Hiro
and having disguised officer Kawagami Hiro as a dead eighteen-year-old girl,
now prepares to make his entrance to the police station, having worked a deal
with Nabiki to get close to Ranma so he can kill him. Nabiki expects she’ll be
able to control the situation and get the serial killer doppelganger
arrested. This isn’t going to go how anyone expects.
Reviewers whose
advice I've taken (I think):
Abdiel (http://www.florestica.com/abdiel/index.htm)
Innortal (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/681915/)
~~~~~ch.8:
Stuck~~~~~
"He longed to forget himself altogether, to
forget everything and then to wake up and begin life anew…"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and
Punishment
~~~~~11
years ago~~~~~
She
walked through the twilight, a terrible beast that left homes broken and ragged
in her wake. She was many stories tall with bloody obsidian spikes that jutted
out two or three feet from her knees and elbows. Her skin was pus colored, her
eyes pure black, her hair made up of maggots. Smoke curled from her mouth and
nostrils. Acid dripped from her vagina.
“Get
inside.” Tofu’s father told him and his mother. The hair of the man, already
graying at 45, blew in an unnatural wind as he stood on the porch of their
home. “Did you hear me? I said get inside! Now!”
“I
have to perform the ritual!” Tofu’s mother cried in protest amid the increasing
rush of wind. At forty, she still retained much of her beauty. She was tall and
graceful as the wind whipped her hair and the folds of her dress. She cradled a
great grimoire against her chest. “It’s our only
hope!”
“No.
That’s a last resort. I can see its ki patterns. If I can get close enough, I
should be able to disable it.”
“Get
close to it? She’ll rip you to shreds!”
“It
wants me,” Tofu said, his young, timid voice almost too quiet to hear over the
rush of wind. “This is my fight.” Before his parents could protest, he
let his thoughts turn black. He raised his hand, palm outstretched, as even now
he was cloaked in a dark aura. He was too late to save his friends, but if he
had the power to give life, then he had the power to take it away.
“NO,
Son! That’s what she wants! She…”
But
Tofu didn’t hear the rest of his father’s words. Everything became a blur.
There
was movement, cries of surprise, of pain. He felt something snap. He heard his
mother say the words of a prayer: “Oh goddess Amateresu,
of both unearthly beauty and unparalleled strength. Hear my cry. You have
granted me beauty and I am grateful, but, please, take it away. Take it away
and replace it with the strength to defeat my enemy.”
There
was a tingle of magic, like static electricity across the skin. A scream. Words
of anger, words of hate. And finally another, more terrible scream, of
something inhuman. A loud crash. Then the words: “I am defeated, widow, but
know that the same curse that has slain me, has also slain your son.” The
words were raspy and had a feminine tone. They came though, from Tofu’s throat.
~~~~~the
present~~~~~
“Ono-sensei?’
Tofu
jerked awake from the makeshift desk he had made in one of the spare examination
rooms of the hospital. He was often called upon for special cases, having
developed something of a reputation. The hospital paid him discreetly for his
services, but could not officially hire him for political reasons. Tofu
accepted this and had even enjoyed his “office away from his office” on the
occasions when he worked for the main hospital. He hadn’t gotten much sleep
last night however and the lull while he waited for the results of Ranma’s
tests proved too much for him.
He
had nodded off. Tofu recovered as best he could. “Yes? Oh. You have the x-rays ready?”
The
young woman nodded. She was only a year younger than Tofu, but still only a med
student. “There seems to be some form of metal melted in an asymmetric ring
around the ninth thoracic vertebra. I don’t suppose you could tell me how that
happened?”
“Not
without severely damaging your understanding of the laws of physics, I’m
afraid,” Tofu smiled tiredly, “At this point in your education it’s best just
to assume the universe behaves like it’s supposed to. After you get your PhD,
if they haven’t drained you of all curiosity, you can look me up and I’ll tell
you all about it.”
“I’ll
have to take you up on that, Doctor. Anyway, here you go.” She handed him the
manila envelope with the x-rays. “The blood work will be a little longer.”
“Thanks…”
Tofu read the girl’s nametag, “Yamaguchi-san, this should be fine for now. The
blood work was just an extra precaution.”
The
girl smiled, bowed slightly, said “Well then! I’ll leave you to your work,” and
left the doorway rather quickly.
As
Tofu studied the x-rays, it slowly dawned on him that the girl was probably
flirting with him. He tried to recall if she was attractive and found he
couldn’t remember what she looked like. He shook his head free of it. He was
committed to Kasumi, and that meant he was effectively celibate until…
Another
realization rose slowly out of the murky waters of his thoughts. His dream…was
no dream. Eleven years ago, he had killed his father, forced his mother to sacrifice
her beauty, and had been cursed to die a slow and painful death. Only
Kasumi…she was only nine years old but she came to him on his death bead, laid
her hands on his chest and somehow filled the cold emptiness that had been
inside him with something warm and bright.
He
wasn’t supposed to remember this. The memories were supposed to be sealed off
until…
Until
Tofu had need of them again. Until he began the Migration anew. Tofu could now
count himself, as well as Kasumi if his suspicions were correct, among those
Ranma’s Ijuu had taken. Where would Ranma lead them?
Tofu
rubbed his eyes. One crisis at a time, he counseled himself. Right now
he had to figure out how to tell Ranma this new bit of bad news without him
inadvertently blowing away a wing of the hospital in a blind rage. After he did
that, THEN he could start to worry about whether the boy was leading everyone
he knew into certain doom.
~~~~~waiting
room~~~~~
Everyone
except Akane and Genma was sitting in the waiting room when Tofu entered. His
eyes fell on Kasumi, and he paused. So beautiful. She had saved his life that
day eleven years ago. He remembered now and wished he didn’t. “The two shall
become one” That was the wording. What did that mean? Would he or Kasumi die?
Would they merge somehow? Would that be different from death?
Tofu
shook his head. There was still time for him and Kasumi. What he had to tell
Ranma was more urgent. “Ranma?” He called from the doorway.
The
redhead looked up, “Yeah?”
“Could
I talk to you alone for a second?”
“Sure.”
Ranma got up and was halfway to the door when she stopped and glanced back “Hey
Firefly, you coming or what?”
Nabiki
snapped back from some reverie she was in, and Tofu saw the reason for Ranma’s
nickname. Her aura went from nothing to bright green and then back again. She
stifles her ki. Doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. When they both got
through the door Tofu smiled, “I did say that I wanted to talk to you alone,
Ranma, but this is probably better.”
“Yeah,
well what is it?”
“I talked
with the doctor here and I had a good look at your X-ray. By all accounts you
should be dead.”
“Huh?”
“You
say molten iron shot from this demon into your chest?”
“That’s
what happened, I was there too,” Nabiki confirmed.
"Yet
you seem to be fine. Not even a scar or burn mark."
“Detective
Inamura said that Airanman could only be defeated by
force of will. I think the molten iron was just an illusion,” Nabiki pointed
out.
“Yeah,”
Ranma agreed, “It’s extremely painful, but once you realize it doesn’t exist
you can fight through it.”
Tofu
grimaced. “I’m afraid the molten iron is going to have a good TRY at existing.”
“What
do you mean?” Nabiki asked.
Tofu
pulled a transparency out of a manila folder. “This is Ranma’s X-ray.” He held
it up to the light so they could both see. “Look here, about the second
vertebra down from the rib cage.” Where Tofu pointed, there was an uneven ring
of pure white. Something the X-rays couldn’t pass through at all.
“That’s
iron, isn’t it,” Ranma said flatly.
“Not
quite. I agree with you and Nabiki that it couldn’t just be iron. The way it’s
shaped is wrong for molten metal flowing around an obstruction for one thing.
Nevertheless, while whatever this Airanman did to you
may have had an illusory characteristic, it was at least partially real.”
“That
would explain why my balance has been off since I woke up.”
“Yes,
but there are some other things you might not have considered, Ranma. If an
enemy of yours gets a hold of a high powered magnet you could be in serious
trouble. You won’t be able to pass through metal detectors if you need to go
through an airport or high security area. But these are minor compared to what
I’m about to tell you.”
"What is it, doc? I’m getting sick of this."
“Ranma…women’s
vertebrae are on average twenty to twenty-five percent smaller than men’s after
taking differences in size into account. It’s one of the reasons why women are
more at risk for osteoporosis. This metal is wrapped tightly around your
vertebra now when you are female. What happens if you turn male?”
“Wait
a minute, this isn’t a normal metal. Maybe if he turns male again it will just
grow to fit the new body.”
Ranma
shook her head. “No, Nabiki, the bastard wanted me female. He got off on it, he
wanted me to be his ‘death doll’. If you hadn’t shown up…” Ranma’s fists
clenched.
Tofu
sucked in a breath. The aura wasn’t too excited or dark; Ranma was taking the
news surprisingly well…but he could still be very close to dying horribly right
now. “It’s possible there wouldn’t be a problem, it’s true,” Tofu allowed, “But
if I’m right about this, and what Ranma has just said makes me think that I am,
then turning male could paralyze him for life. I’ve treated him enough to know
his injuries carry over when he changes forms.”
This
wasn’t exactly true, Tofu reflected. In fact most minor injuries seemed to heal
as soon as Ranma changed forms, but Tofu decided against mentioning this. Major
injuries did carry over, and if Ranma became paralyzed it might push him over
the edge. And if Ranma went over the edge he’d drag everyone else with him.
“Fine,”
Nabiki said, “So how do we remove it?”
Tofu
had no response for that. He could feel Ranma’s aura changing, becoming darker.
“It’s
metal melted around my spinal chord. They’re not going to be able to fix that.
You’re the one who said I should get used to being a girl, Nabiki. Guess now I
don’t have a choice.” Ranma turned and started walking away.
Something
was odd here, Tofu realized. Ranma was too quick to accept this. Almost as if
he knew ahead of time. Come to think of it, why hadn’t he tried to change
earlier? One problem at a time, Tofu reminded himself. As long as Ranma
didn’t change, he should be okay at least from a physical standpoint. Tofu
thought of something though, just as he was about to turn around. “Ranma!” Tofu
called out, “Your curse has changed. All you have to do is change your mood and
you’re male again. It’s a miracle you haven’t turned back already. How can you
be sure that that won’t happen now?”
Ranma
stopped and faced Tofu from down the long hallway “Mom’s coming to visit this
week.” Her eyes somehow intense and dead at the same time. “I’m not going to be
feeling ‘manly’ for a while.” Then she turned and ran down the hall.
“Idiot,”
Nabiki said and started to rush toward Ranma.
Tofu
stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Remember, Nabiki, Ranma has to remain
female, or he…”
“Tofu-sensei,”
Nabiki interrupted, pulling his hand off her shoulder, “I understand you are
trying to help. But if you ever keep me from my fiance
again, you will regret it.”
Tofu
let her go and she ran off down the hall. He could have sworn Nabiki’s eyes
flashed bright green for a split second before returning to their usual brown. She
is part of the migration now too. It made perfect sense that she would be,
after she and Ranma’s mind melding and all. Still, the idea that Nabiki might
eventually become one of the most powerful martial artists in the world and
possibly play a key role in halting the spread of Armageddon was a bit hard to
take.
Tofu’s
stomach gurgled wretchedly. He walked hurriedly down the hall, praying to the
gods he had enough money to get an antacid from the snack machine. He grit his
teeth. One crisis at a time. First keep my stomach acid from digesting me
from the inside, THEN worry about the fate of the world resting in the hands of
a few impetuous teenagers.
~~~~~women's
restroom~~~~~
Nabiki
opened the door. Ranma was sitting on the tiled floor, her back against the
wall next to the sink, her head was between her knees. Nabiki heard a sob.
It’s not fair.
Nabiki
sat down next to the redhead. She looked up at the fluorescent lights in the
ceiling and sighed. “It’s not supposed to be fair, Ranchan.
It’s like a poker game with the odds stacked against you. Sometimes you have to
play dirty. Sometimes you have to know when to fold.”
“I
suck at poker.”
Nabiki
smiled slightly. "Don't sell yourself short, Ranma-baby. You got me in
there with you now."
"Heh. Yeah, I suppose." Ranma looked
away brushing moisture from her eyes.
Nabiki frowned. She didn't like this side of Ranma. Ranma never cried
unless he was under some sort of magic compulsion.
"Don't worry, Fly, I'll probably be insanely happy in a couple
minutes," Ranma said dryly. "I don't like this either, you
know."
Nabiki paused. She was sure she hadn't said anything. "You're not the
only one having a bad day, Ranchan." Nabiki
“I
found out earlier today that my best friend Hoko died. A doppelganger took her
body and killed her. We saw the killer yesterday at Tofu’s. I thought something
was odd about her but…” Nabiki sucked in air. Great, now I feel like
crying.
“Why
don’t you?” Ranma asked.
“What?”
“Cry.
I mean, you’re a girl, you don’t need to hold yourself back or anything. I
haven’t even seen you really upset. I know you get depressed sometimes. I
remember the…the gun. I just don’t get why you hide it.”
“Daddy
cries all the time, and he’s a man. He wasn’t worth much after Mom died. I had
to find ways to pay the bills, to keep us from starving. There was a time I
really hated him. I didn’t want to be anything like him. I still don’t. Now
that I don’t have to rely on him, I don’t hate him anymore, but every time I
think of breaking down and crying, I think of him sitting alone in his room all
day, doing just that while the food and money ran out and everything was
falling apart.” Nabiki leaned back against the cold tile of the bathroom wall.
“Crying doesn’t solve anything. It just makes things worse.”
Nabiki
looked at Ranma, tears drying on the shorter girl’s face. I don’t deserve to
be a man. “The only thing worse than crying is self pity,” Nabiki
said sharply and looked away.
“Hoko wanted to be a reporter, you know. That was her dream. She was head
of the school paper. I read it every once in a while. Some of the articles were
really good. There was one she wrote about a possible match up between Ms Satori and Mr. Otonabe. It was
all very innocent, but she made it sound scandalous, like they were doing
something naughty. Well of course I wanted her in charge of information
retrieval.
“I
had the inside scoop on what Akane, Kuno, and later
on, you were up to, and that’s what everyone was interested in. But Hoko, she
knew everything about everybody. She
was my edge in the betting pools. With her and Yuki, I could do almost
anything. And at first, yes, I was just using them, but then I found myself
doing things for them, things that weren’t financially lucrative, and they
would help me out if one of my nastier schemes ever surfaced. I think one day
Hoko said something like ‘We’re your friends, you can tell us,’ and that’s
really when it dawned on me. Yuki and I drifted somewhat since she became
popular, but Hoko and I stayed close. She was my best friend.”
Nabiki
turned to Ranma, who was listening intently. “She was my best friend, and this
bastard killed her.”
“I
had no idea. I didn’t even think you had friends before we…”
“That’s
not all. There was this quiet kid in school, maybe you ran into him, Buntaro?”
Ranma
shook her head.
“Probably
did and didn’t even realize it; He was so withdrawn. Then one day he starts
asking people questions and taking pictures. That’s when I first noticed him,
really. I asked him what was going on, and he said ‘family trouble.’ I don’t
know why, but I asked if he wanted to do some work for me. He declined, which
is already a little odd, but then he had this strange look of surprise and
guilt on his face, and then he ran off. I did some more investigation and there
was really nothing remarkable about him except his parents were getting a
divorce. They seemed like nice people when I talked to them, though. A week
later I was the only high school student at his funeral. It was just me, his
parents and this weird police officer who asked how I knew Buntaro.
I said something, I forget what, and the cop gave me the same look Buntaro gave. He didn’t run away like Buntaro
did, but it seemed like he wanted to. He just turned and walked off.
“Today
I found out Buntaro was killed exactly the same way
as Hoko. I’m positive the killer was the same person. And then there’s
Tanaka-sensei. About a month ago she disappeared. Just drove off without
explanation.”
“You
think she was killed.”
Nabiki
nodded, “I’m almost sure of it.”
“Gosunkugi!
He disappeared just last week!”
“It
could be unrelated, but…”
“Like
hell it’s unrelated. Damn it, Gos was a freaky guy
but he didn’t deserve that.”
“Careful,
Ranma.”
“Huh?”
“You
were about to change into a boy.”
“Shit.
I was, wasn’t I?”
“Look,
Ranchan, we’ve got different priorities now. Yes,
you’re stuck as a girl. Big deal, so am I. We have a killer to catch and we
don’t need a penis to do that.”
Ranma’s
expression darkened. “You don’t understand, do you? You’ve never had my curse,
you don’t have any memory that fits the feeling. This is not me, Nabiki. I am
not a girl. I can’t just give up and start wearing dresses and watching soap
operas.”
There
was silence for a good while, and then Nabiki stood. “Okay. As much as I’d like
to discuss this, we don’t exactly have time to separate your ingrained
chauvinism from your actual sexual identity. I think that would take years. The
important thing right now is that for a while at least you have to give
up.”
Ranma
looked up sharply at her.
“Look,
it won’t be permanent. I know you’re really a man, whatever that means, but
you’re a girl for now. So…be a girl.”
“I
don’t think I can do that. Being a man is a part of me. I can’t change that
even if I wanted to.”
“I
know, Ranchan,” Nabiki hugged Ranma awkwardly on the
floor of restroom, “But just let it go. You have to let it go.”
Nabiki
hugged Ranma tightly for almost a minute. She felt as if she was being filled
by something. Something warm and painful. It was almost like sex, but not
quite. Something was off. She began to feel odd. Ranma seemed to shrink
slightly in her arms. She opened her eyes saw the way Ranma’s aura was behaving
and realized what was happening after it was too late to do anything about it.
Nabiki
released Ranma and stood up. She looked at herself in the mirror. She touched
her face, felt her chest. It was no longer her face though, no longer her
chest. She didn’t look like Ranma. She could recognize her own features, but
they were more squared off, masculine. There was no getting around it. Nabiki
was now male. “Damn it, Ranma,” Nabiki said in her…in his now tenor
voice. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
~~~~~ucchan's~~~~~
“That’s
not what I meant!” Ukyo exclaimed exasperated, “Just because I hate them doesn’t
mean I want to kill them!”
“Why
not?” Shampoo asked. “Nabiki is obstacle, she is for killing then, yes? If
Ranma no want to be Airen, he for killing too.”
Everyone
was gone from the restaurant and Shampoo and she were sitting on Ukyo’s sofa
upstairs. It was a bit threadbare, she had found it in a dump and never got
around to replacing it, but it was homey in a way. Comfortable. Entirely not
the place to be conspiring to murder anyone. “Shampoo, I can’t believe you. You
would actually take a human life, not just human life, but RANMA life over
this?”
“You
say hate, but you protect… Why?”
“I
don’t know! I do hate him. I hate him because I can’t love him. I hate him
because I can’t really hate him either. But I don’t want to kill him. Or Nabiki
for that matter.”
“Amazon
law very clear on this subject,” Shampoo noted.
“You’re
not an Amazon anymore, Shampoo. And anyway if you’re so keen on killing them
why don’t you try it then?”
Shampoo
slumped in her seat. “Is true. Amazon law very clear but Shampoo…my feeling not
so clear. One reason why I not Amazon anymore. But maybe we could almost kill?
Send to hospital for couple days? I feel much better then.”
“THAT sounds tempting,” Ukyo considered. She could understand where Shampoo was
coming from. Shampoo had been unable to control herself as soon as she saw
Ranma. She was angry at him for taking away her control, but then Nabiki comes
in out of the blue and screws the only human she had any sexual attraction to.
She had good reason to feel like killing them. Ukyo herself was angry for much
more banal reasons. It wasn't fair for Nabiki to do what she did. Unlike
Shampoo she knew exactly what she was doing. And Ranma….Ukyo felt betrayed.
Again. “I don’t know about almost
killing them but I think we need to do something. Something violent,
just to get it out of our systems.”
“I
no want get violence out of system. I like violence. I want get mercenary girl
out of system.”
“No,
that’s not what I mean. It’s an expression. To get something out of your system
means to satisfy your need for that something.”
Shampoo
frowned. “That no make sense. If I hungry and I eat, I no get food out of
system, I put food in.”
Ukyo
thought about that for a moment. “I think in that situation, it’s a little odd,
but I think you would say ‘I need to get this hunger out of my system.’ It’s
only supposed to last a little while in most cases when you use the expression.
Like when I exercise sometimes it’s to get the stiffness out of my system.”
Ukyo frowned herself. None of the examples she could think of really fit.
“I
think I see. It like you get rid of need but it come back. I get leaving Ranma
out of system, but it no last. I get leaving old hag out of system but now I
miss. I get leaving Amazons out of system but I still feel like Amazon inside.
I feel good for while and then bad feelings come. It probably be same with
almost killing Ranma and mercenary girl.”
Ukyo
nodded dumbly, wondering again at what kind of person Shampoo would have been
if it hadn’t been for her overbearing great grandmother. Shaking her head free
of the re-appraisal of her one time foe, she said, “We should do this the right
way. We’ll issue a challenge. Ranma will probably win but we’ll feel better for
a while. Maybe.”
Shampoo
shook her head. “You challenge Ranma. I challenge mercenary girl.”
“Huh?
But she doesn’t know martial arts.”
“She
know nekoken. She probably know other moves too, just not show all this time. I
think she ten times better than Akane even if she not as strong.”
Ukyo
remembered running with Nabiki, how out of breath she was, but how determined.
“She’s out of shape, but you’re right. How could she learn the nekoken and not
be a martial artist?”
“She
hide for many year, stay in background, but she just get abandoning Art out of
system. She come back to it now.”
Ukyo
had never really thought about Nabiki before, the few times she had really
interacted with her had been over Ranma or money. Usually both at the same
time. Amidst all the craziness of Nerima, Nabiki seemed to be one of the few
people really in control of the situation. But maybe that was because she was
never really in the situation. She was
~~~~~~tomo residence~~~~~~
Hiro
couldn’t help staring at his now smaller, feminine arms and hands. There were
other, more dramatic changes, but that was too much to handle right now. He
felt out of synch with this body. It wasn’t his, it didn’t move like it was
supposed to. He was still a man just some how forced to take on the form of
this poor seventeen year old girl that got killed.
“Yeah.
You’re a teenage cunt now. Get over it. We’ve got to
go.” The imposter sneered in Hiro’s stolen body.
You
have to stop him.
But
how was he going to stop him? Take his blanket and camera away and capture
him. Either that or kill him. Hiro blinked, what camera? He didn’t know
anything about a camera.
“Hoko-chan?” Mrs. Tomo called out. “Is
that you? I was about to call the police…” Tomo-san
entered the room to find what looked like a young cop in police blues in her
daughter’s room with someone who looked like her daughter dressed in designer
jeans and a red short sleeved blouse. “Oh,” she said, completely unaware that
the “cop” was a shape shifting serial killer and her “daughter” was in fact a
traffic cop who had moved to Nerima because of its low (reported) crime rate
and reputation for quirkiness.
Yeah,
quirky. You try watching from a spiritual limbo while your lifeless body is
hacked apart by a deranged lunatic and see how quirky it seems then.
Hiro
closed his eyes and took a breath. He was not hearing voices. It was just nerves.
Being transmogrified probably did a lot to a man’s system.
“I’m
very sorry, Tomo-san,” the freak in cop’s clothing
bowed to Hoko’s mother, “I should have called. Hoko here was a witness to a
very serious crime. She’s a bit shaken up. I thought I’d bring her here before
I took her to the police department for questioning. Maybe you’d like to come
with us?”
Mrs.
Tomo nodded. “Let me just call my husband. He’s
coming home early tonight and he’ll be worried if Hoko and I aren’t here.”
NO!
Mom can’t come with us, he’ll kill her!
Hiro
was still not hearing voices, but the voice he wasn’t hearing seemed to have a
point. “Um…Mom?” Hiro tried, “maybe you should stay home? This should ah…only
take a moment, and then I’ll be back.”
Mrs.
Tomo paused in mid-dial. “It would be better if I
could get some food in him when he comes in. Kenta’s
a real bear when he hasn’t eaten,” she explained to the imposter officer. “Are
you sure you’re okay?” She asked Hiro.
“Yes
ma’am” he responded, and it was odd that this standard cop’s response worked
just as well for a teenaged daughter. Same polite form, different levels of
social class. Then again maybe there was something more to it. Maybe every time
a cop arrests a perp, he’s really arresting his own
father or mother. Yeah, or maybe you’re just retarded.
“Okay,
honey. I’ll let you go by yourself. But I want to hear everything when you get
back, okay?”
“Okay.”
Hiro
felt some indescribable area of his consciousness relax slightly, and suddenly
he knew the voice he had been hearing was Hoko. ~A brilliant deduction,
Inspector Obvious.~
Now
that he had made the connection, the voice was more distinct and separate from
his own thoughts. He could catch more of the sound of it and even a vague sense
of the gestures that Hoko would use if she were physically present. It was a
little like talking to a good friend on the phone, except he had never met
Hoko.
“I’ll
have her back in a jiffy, Tomo-san” the imposter said
and let Hiro out with a firm grip on Hoko’s thin shoulder. Hiro gained some
solace from that. It was Hoko’s shoulder, not his. He felt deflated, weak.
Where he was supposed to have muscle was just skin and bone. His voice had none
of the rumbling cadence it once carried. His body was stolen, but he would get
it back. Hiro glared up at the…creature wearing his face. He’d get his body
back, and then he’d take great pleasure in making sure this thing was dead.
~I
guess we’re on the same page there at least. But it’s not just you and me.
Copycat, that’s what this freak calls himself, has killed four people including
me and he’ll keep killing until he gets his revenge on Ranma.~ Hiro and
Copycat were in the garage now. Copycat was opening the garage door.
~What
did Ranma do to him?~ Hiro thought back at Hoko’s voice.
~This
guy used to be called Copycat Ken. He used to have a normal form that he would
always go back to, but then in a fight with Ranma he overused that cloth of his
and lost track of…well… himself. Now he wants to get back at Ranma for making
him lose his identity. That’s about all I know. I remember Nabiki mentioned him
a couple months ago, but at the time she seemed to think it was just a harmless
challenger~.
The garage
door was raised almost to the roof, revealing the mid-afternoon sun. Hiro
shielded his eyes against the glare. Copycat, for his part, didn’t seem to mind
the sun at all. “You don’t need to worry about your eyes anymore, dumbass. They’re different…now?”
Copycat
grabbed Hiro’s teenage girl chin and looked at his eyes. “What the fuck? You’re
eyes are blue! They’re supposed to be brown. How the hell…It doesn’t matter.
Get on the bike I’ll think of something on the way…”
Hiro
stood defiantly.
“Or
maybe you’d like to stay in that body forever? Get a move on, bitch, I want
this thing over with.”
“Wouldn’t
it be better to take the police bike?”
“Well, gee, I would but you said that your bike would be
faster and you could get home quicker, didn’t you, Hoko?”
~The
creep just wants to try out my wheels.~ Hoko’s voice grumbled.
Hiro
got on the bike and Copycat sat in front of him. After a few revs of the
engine, a slyly smiling Copycat wearing Hiro’s body sped out of the Tomo family garage. Hiro had to squint his eyes almost shut
against the brightness of the day.
~~~~~hospital~~~~~
Ranma
giggled.
This
was so great! “Never gonna be a boy again! Never gonna be a boy again!” she
sing-songed softly to herself as she followed Nabiki
back to the waiting room. Poor Nabiki though, he’d have to deal with being a
boy now. He was handsome enough that the girls would start fighting over him
soon if they didn’t get married right away.
All
her life this was what she longed for. Not to be a girl exactly but to be free
of having to be a man. Of having to be manly all the time. It was all so stupid
she realized now, the things she did. Rising to her father’s taunts when she
could have just called him an idiot and ignored him. The nekoken training would
have never happened if she hadn’t been trying to be so manly. But then again
neither would Jusenkyo, and then she’d still be a
stupid boy.
The
itch, that terrible feeling of wrongness she usually felt when she was a girl,
wasn’t there now. If anything she felt more in tune with her body than ever.
She could only hope she could stay like this forever. She could even deal with
Mom now, she thought. As long as there wasn’t any chance of her being a boy
again she could be her niece, maybe even her daughter eventually if Ranma ever
found a way to reveal the truth to her.
She’d
have to go as Ranko from now on, she realized. She still didn’t care for the
name. She was still a boy before when she first used it, and did a lot of
stupid boy things under that alias. Maybe she could get a middle name.
Something sweet and graceful like Yuki or Tomie. In
the meantime though she’d be Ranko. Maybe she would learn to like it.
Ranko
wondered which personality she was at the moment. She wasn’t quite the girl she
first became when she hit her head, and she certainly wasn’t her original self.
Some combination maybe? It didn’t really matter.
Detective
Inamura intercepted Ranko in the hall. He was standing with a short,
flabby, uniformed man with a patch over the left eye. Nabiki stopped and turned
around to see what was up. “Hello, Ranma is it?”
Ranko
nodded.
“Could
you tell me where to find Nabiki? We need her back at the station.”
Ranko
pointed at Nabiki. “He’s right there, detective,” she said brightly.
“Huh?”
the goateed man said intelligently.
“I’m
Nabiki Tendo,” Nabiki said, “Sorry about this.”
Ranko
couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing.
“That’s
what you said, isn’t it?” Nabiki’s eyes widened, “When you first came…”
But
she was still laughing.
“Ranko,
it wasn’t that funny.” Nabiki growled.
“I
thought her name was Ranma, “ Inamura said.
Nabiki
frowned. Why did I call her Ranko? “That’s the name she uses when she’s
a girl.” Nabiki explained to Inamura.
Why did
Nabiki call her Ranko, Ranko wondered. Ranko also wondered how it was that she
knew that Nabiki wondered why she called Ranko Ranko.
She had to swallow and count to ten to stifle the new urge to giggle at the
absurdity of it all.
“Listen,
we kind of need to reveal our…predicament to our family, and I’m not sure how
long that will take. I should be there in maybe half an hour?”
Inamura
shook his head. “The doppelganger and Hiro are on their way right now.”
“How
do you know that?” Nabiki asked.
Inamura
gestured to the short, flabby, uniformed man with the patch. “Sergeant Suzuki
here is keeping an eye on them.”
Sergeant
Suzuki tapped the edge of his eye patch.
Nabiki
grimaced. “I still have to let them know what’s happened. I’ll get out of there
as soon as possible though.”
Inamura
nodded.
***
When
they got back to the waiting room everyone was there, except Genma and Akane.
Ranko realized she missed them. Akane’s insults yesterday hadn’t really been
all that bad. In fact they had been accurate. Ranko was a girlie girl.
It was still a little mean, because of course at the time she had been
sensitive about that, but really it was no worse than the terrible things Ranma
had said to Akane. Uncute. Tomboy. Unsexy. It’s a wonder Akane had taken it as long as she
had.
Ranko
made a mental note to be sure and apologize to Akane as soon as possible,
before the poor girl did something stupid like pick a fight with the other fiancees or try to join the Amazons to improve her self
esteem.
~~~~~furinkan high school, vice principal's office~~~~~
Akane
heard a loud crash come from the hallway, followed by what sounded like an
avalanche of pineapples. Either that or coconuts. Then again bananas were in
season right now…
“Couldn’t
we just-“ Akane started.
“No,
child,”
said,
“let the man do his job”
“But
if he’s hurt…”
“He’ll
survive.”
Akane
was beginning to go insane.
“Patience,
child,”
Akane
groaned. This had to be some adaptation of Chinese water torture. Only without
the water.
There
was another sound of heavy blunt objects falling.
Maybe
this was Chinese pineapple torture.
~~~~~parking
lot~~~~~
Copycat
dismounted from Hoko’s bike. He was having second and third thoughts about this
plan. He should just find someone else to copy and escape while he still could.
But he had worked so hard finding Hoko and preparing to strike with her. If it
wasn’t for the damn ijuu taking Ranma when it did…
But
there was nothing he could do about it now. Besides, he got a new technique out
of the deal. Copycat smiled, thinking of the surprise that would be on his arch
nemesis’s face when he used the nekoken against him. First thing’s first
though. He had to get himself out of this mess.
Hiro
got off Hoko’s bike slowly, sullenly. The cop in Hoko’s body seemed resigned to
HER fate. That was good. But why hadn’t the eyes changed? Was the demon
blanket losing some of its power? Or was there something special about Hiro
that Copycat hadn’t picked up on?
“Get
moving, bitch, the show’s about to start,” Copycat said, dismissing his
misgivings and shoving Hiro in the back toward the station with his foot,
almost knocking the neo-girl over. Whatever was going to happen, it would
happen soon.
~~~~~nerima pd~~~~~
In
the police department, Nabiki was feeling out of sorts He had told his father
what happened with him and Ranko in the bathroom. When the inevitable wailing ensued,
he had been prepared to completely ignore it and leave the room, but Ranko…she
sat next to him, put an arm around him and said that she and Nabiki would
figure it all out. He thought it was completely stupid at the time. Didn’t she
know his father was just going to blubber on no matter what? But then Nabiki
had stopped his train of thought and wondered: When did I stop loving my
father?
He
didn’t care about his father at all anymore. Before, even though he hadn’t
respected the man much, he still felt something for him, but now…It was Ranma’s
twisted sense of manhood, Nabiki realized. When Ranma hoisted it onto him, he
lost all ability to empathize with anyone. Even Ranko seemed alien now to him.
He couldn’t figure her out, why she was so forgiving of everyone, so
accommodating. Didn’t she have an opinion? Wasn’t she angry she had to be a
girl?
The
funny thing was Ranma had been like that before to a degree. Ranma had never
held a grudge, had always made friends out of his enemies, but he had never
been as pure about it as Ranko was now.
Nabiki
felt sadness over his inability to feel, turn almost instantly into anger. He
had to hit a wall with his fist to expel the emotion. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel,
he realized. Somewhere inside him, he still loved his father, but he simply
wasn’t allowed to even admit it. Emotions were forbidden territory now. All of
Nabiki’s machinations, which as a girl had seemed mostly innocent, now were
unforgivable. The joy he had experienced in seeing the conflicts within
people sorting themselves out in a wash of fear had no analogue in his new
worldview.
Nabiki
knew now why Ranma was so depressed. Inextricably attached to his idea of
manhood was this necessity to adhere to a sort of chronic stoicism. Emotion
equals bad. And so no parfaits, no crying…no sex. There was only the Art.
Nabiki realized he was going to have to start training seriously if he was
going to survive. As it was, he was trying not to think of how worthless he
felt with a body so out of shape. He felt this even when he knew the whole idea
was complete baloney. Ranma had actually believed it.
Now
Ranma, as Ranko, was free, and Nabiki was stuck.
Inamura
led Nabiki and Ranko into his office. The police department was on the same
block as the hospital so the trip from one to the other was faster than Nabiki
would have liked. “They should be here any minute,” Inamura warned. “Remember.
I’m still holding you as a suspect in Hoko’s murder. When the doppelganger
comes in, you’ll be exonerated but you’ll have to pretend to be friends with it
for who knows how long. Got it?”
Nabiki
nodded.
“Okay
then, turn back into a girl and we can get ready.” Inamura began rummaging
through his desk for a form.
“Uh…Detective?”
Nabiki raised a finger.
“Yeah?”
Inamura said bent over behind the desk.
“That’s
going to be a problem.”
Inamura
stood up. His eyes shifted from Nabiki to Ranko.
“Sorry,
Inamura-sensei,” Ranko bowed, “but Nabiki hasn’t figured out how to change with
his mind yet. Do you have any hot or cold water? That might help.”
Inamura
let out something between a sigh and a grumble. “We don’t have time. We’re just
going to have to play it by ear.”
“Is
Kawagami-san going to be okay? The doppelganger copied his body last. He might
be in danger.”
“Don’t
worry about that,” Inamura assured, “There’s something special about officer
Kawagami that I’m almost certain the doppelganger hasn’t picked up on.”
“What’s
that?” Nabiki asked.
“Before
he came here, Hiro used to work homicide at a different precinct. He was young.
The youngest cop working at homicide, but he was good. Perhaps a little too
good…”
~~~~~one
year ago~~~~~
“Fine.”
Detective Satou snapped, “Let wonderboy
take a look at it. Might as well offer him my job while you’re at it.” Satou stormed off hand in the pockets of his trench coat,
his balding head gleaming in the light from the single dangling incandescent
bulb.
Kawagami
grimaced. It wasn’t fair. Satou had been at this for
20 years. Kawagami had only joined homicide last year. He shouldn’t be this
good. He didn’t want to be this good. The old apartment complex, a slum really,
was dark even with the bulb. The city was going to tear it down in a few weeks
but the homeless had already found it in the time since it had been condemned
and everywhere were signs of human life. Spray painted in black on one wall was
“The world is dead” written in Chinese kanji. Kawagami had to remove his
sunglasses to read this. He approached the yellow police tape where forensics
experts were gathering evidence.
It
was a teenage girl. A high school student. Her uniform in tatters around her
bloody corpse. Her hands had been nailed into the wooden floorboards. Her feet
as well, spread out so that the legs were almost in splits. This was the
position she had been in when the killer raped her.
Kawagami
was already about to excuse himself, to leave the room so he could vomit, but
he saw the eyes. Unnaturally wide. The eyelids had been cut off. They shifted.
The eyes shifted, so that they looked straight at him.
Suddenly
he was in the ceiling looking down at the man who kidnapped the girl, brought
her here. He wore a black rain slicker, latex gloves used for washing dishes.
black rubber boots.
Kawagami
could see every act the man performed. He heard every scream. Try as he might,
he could not turn away. Finally he saw the man walk out of the room. Out of the
building. Three blocks away to a dumpster where he threw away the gloves, the
slicker, the boots. The man wore a business suit underneath. Just your average
Japanese salaryman. He got in his car and drove off.
Kawagami memorized the license plate.
Suddenly
Kawagami was back in his body. Swallowing his gorge, he quietly asked a member
of the forensics team to follow him. He put on his sunglasses and slowly walked
out of the building to the dumpster. “The killer’s rain coat, gloves and boots
are in here.” He said.
“How
do you know that?”
Kawagami
didn’t have an answer for that. Thankfully the garbage truck hadn’t come to the
dumpster yet. The perpetrator was caught with the combination of the raingear
with the girl’s blood that fit him, the description that Kawagami gave based on
his “analysis of the crime scene” and eyewitness accounts that put the man and
the girl in the same general location at the right time. It wasn’t really
enough for a conviction, but the man confessed. He said he couldn’t help it.
That it was something inside him, that he couldn’t control. He was glad he was
finally caught so that it would never happen again.
Kawagami
didn’t believe a word of it.
The
man had approached Kawagami in the hallway of the station supposedly to thank
Kawagami for finding him. Kawagami threw a right cross into the man’s eye.
Kawagami
asked to be transferred that day.
~~~~~the
present~~~~~
“The
man’s eye never healed,” Inamura said. “It got worse and worse. The whole left
side of his face rotted and fell off. A few weeks after Kawagami punched him,
the killer was dead.”
“Whoah.” Ranma said, eyes wide, “I mean…Hiro’s a good
guy… right?”
Inamura
nodded. “Officer Kawagami doesn’t know it, but he is what we here in the Nerima
precinct call a nekuromansa. An English word meaning
death mage.”
“What
do people outside of the precinct call him?”
Inamura
took a pull from his cigarette. “An urban legend.”
~~~~~nerima pd~~~~~
This
shouldn’t be happening, Kawagami Hiro thought, I’m just a normal guy.
A traffic cop, for crying out loud!
~Welcome
to Nerima,~ Hoko’s voice deadpanned.
The
precinct was the same as ever. There were cops carrying in suspects,
questioning suspects, rushing from one end of the building to another to get
paperwork sent in, to get coffee. It wasn’t all that different from a business
office, except many of the people wore handcuffs and cursed a lot.
There
in the back stood Inamura. His arms were crossed. A cigarette butt hanging out
from the fingers of his hand. Next to him stood a red-headed girl in an orange
shirt with the shoulders cut out and white shorts. Ranma. On the other side, a
somewhat gangly young man with an odd helmet shaped haircut. He wore a black
t-shirt and brown dogi pants. Nabiki?
~Nabiki’s
pretty hot as a guy!~ Hoko enthused.
~I
liked her better as a girl.~ Hiro might have been more freaked out at his
love interests sudden sex change, but given his current predicament he was
fresh out of surprise.
~You
would have never had a chance with her. You’re too old. She’d use you for a few
free dinners and gifts, but Nabiki likes boys who are younger than her. ‘Naive,
yet intelligent, and he has to be cute.’ That’s her idea of the perfect man.~
Manbiki said something to Inamura. Inamura
nodded. Hiro felt a hand grip his now thin and weak shoulder forcibly. He
wondered when exactly he had lost control over his life. Maybe he had never
been in control.
“Hey,
Inamura!” Copycat pushed Hiro toward the detective, “Look who I found. Turns
out that arm was from some sort of clone that attacked Tomo-chan
here. Really weird stuff.”
“That’s
great.” Inamura smiled
~You
know you’ll probably never get your body back no matter what happens, right?~ Hoko’s
voice asked.
Hiro
nodded.
“She’s
a real hellion, this one,” Copycat kept talking, “You know she knocked me out and
tied me up in her closet? Said she thought I was another clone.”
“That
so?” Inamura raised an eyebrow.
~You
know he’ll kill again if he isn’t stopped soon, right?~
Hiro
nodded again.
“Yeah,
and when I finally convinced her I wasn’t, did she go with me peacefully back
to the station? No siree. She wouldn’t hear anything
of it. I finally convinced her to come by saying she could ride her own bike if
she wanted.”
Inamura
smirked at Hiro, “I’m sorry you came here under duress. We just have to confirm
you’re still alive.”
~Where
do you keep your gun?~ Hoko asked.
Hiro
took a breath. He kept his gun on his belt in a holster. This was risky.
He
forced himself to smile with Hoko’s unfamiliar facial muscles. “Rumors of my
death were greatly exaggerated.”
~NOW!~
Hiro
turned in a whirl, unsnapped the holster on Copycat’s belt, removed the gun
while simultaneously disengaging the safety and blew a round into Copycat’s
chest.
Copycat
fell to the floor. “You bitch!” he screamed, grabbing his shirt where a red
stain was already growing large.
Someone
kicked the gun out of Hiro’s hand. Someone else pulled his arms behind him,
applied handcuffs. Hiro didn’t care just then. He was watching his body die. He
would never be his true self again, but at least he had stopped a serial killer
before he could kill again.
And
then there was a fuzziness around Copycat. He pulled a large blanket out of
thin air and covered himself.
“Release
her!” Nabiki’s male voice cried. “She’s not the killer!”
When
Copycat got up he looked as healthy as ever, and there was another gun in his
holster. “You should have shot me in the head, you dumb fuck,” he said and ran
off, knocking down several agitated police officers along the way to the door.
“He’s
getting away!” Nabiki yelled, “Hurry!”
Hiro
dimly noted that several people left in a rush. His hands were released from
the handcuffs. Inamura stood in front of him. “You’re too brave for your own
damn good, Kawagami. We had the situation under control, and then you fucked it
up.”
“I
didn’t know… I thought…”
“You
didn’t think. You acted. If you were still in your old precinct that would have
been fine, but you can’t rely on your instincts all the time out here.
Sometimes it’s your instincts that’ll get you killed.” Inamura took a pull off
his cigarette. “Sorry I wasn’t there to give you the speech, but I’ll give it
to you now. Magic is real. Especially around here. That doesn’t mean
everything’s rainbows and unicorns though. What that means is that evil doesn’t
always take a human form, and the human forms it does take have to be dealt
with very carefully. Case in point, this doppelganger we’re currently after.
There is simply no way we can get this guy through standard police work. We
have to make him think he’s getting exactly what he wants and then spring a
trap. Kind of hard to do if he’s on the run, but we’ll just have to change our
tactics now.”
“I
should have shot him in the head.”
“Yeah.
You should have. Can’t change the past though. At least not here. Have to go
through cell block 4 to do that.”
“What?”
“Nevermind. Let’s get going,” Inamura nodded his head to the
side and started walking.
“Where…?”
“To
the morgue. It’s about time you found out who you really are.”
~~~~~parking
lot~~~~~~
Nabiki
ran out of the door into the parking lot. The doppelganger was leaving on…on
Hoko’s bike! The bastard! He ran after him, but the freak was on the road,
already out of his grasp. He had to find a vehicle quick. He looked around.
There! A motorcycle. It didn’t look like much but it should do…
“Nabiki,
think this through, will ya?” Ranko stood in front of
him, blocking his way. “You aren’t a martial artist, you’ll only get yourself
killed!”
“Get
out of my way Ranko, we don’t have time for this.”
“This
isn’t just some random fighter, Fly. This is someone who wants you dead. Do you
hear me? Not beaten up a little, but dead.”
“You’re
the one he wants dead, Ran.”
“All
the more reason not to go, because I’m going to go with you if you do.”
Nabiki
sat on the seat of the bike. “Then get on. We’re losing time.”
“This
is crazy!”
“You
don’t understand. I have to do this”
“Why
don’t I understand? Because I’m a girl? You were a girl yourself just an hour
ago. Would you have gone after this guy then? Let me answer for you. No you
wouldn’t. You would make a plan first, find a way to trick him into making a
mistake, then truss him up like a Christmas turkey so the entire community can
take turns whacking him into a bloody pulp.”
“That
was an hour ago, this is now. Get on the bike and shut up.”
Ranko
sat behind Nabiki. “Don’t you need a key or something to turn this on?” she
asked.
Nabiki
stared at the empty ignition. No. There was a time to listen to reason. This
wasn’t it. He was not going to be stopped by this. He was leaving on this bike
and there was no way anything was going to stop him. No fucking way.
The
engine started.
Nabiki
pulled out of the parking space and headed toward the street. Stopped for a
moment waiting for traffic, Ranko spoke in his ear. “Nabiki? Just so you
know…you’re kind of glowing a little.”
“Hold
on,” Nabiki said, and he merged and started to speed up.
Ranko
held him closely about the waist, and he tried not notice her breasts against
his back, or the way she just sort of fit. He had a killer to track down
and he was determined not to fail in that. At the same time, he felt this
bizarre contentment.
There
just wasn’t anything like facing certain death with your best girl by your side
to make you feel like a man.
~~~~~AUTHOR’S
NOTE~~~~~
I changed a few things based on comments. And I made sure continuity was
preserved. The next chapter should be up now.
This
came out a little later than expected, due to some work that came up but still
earlier than I thought at the end of chapter 7. Thanks to everyone who gave
reviews and sent emails
The
characters have now become hopelessly ooc. But then
that’s sort of the point of the fic, so it’s not too bad. I should be able to
rein them in some in the next chapter, but for the moment since Ranma and
Nabiki have now changed mental genders as well as physical sex they’re going to
act a bit differently.
STRESS
and nervous TENSION have now become serious problems throughout the galaxy, and
it is order that this situation be in no way exacerbated that the following
facts will be revealed in advance:
First
Ranma and Nabiki will eventually be returned to the genders of their birth.
Second,
Nabiki and Ranma will catch Copycat and fight with him.
Third,
the fight will result in the exploding of a motorcycle, the bruising of
someone’s upper arm, and the spontaneous creation and subsequent demise of a
small, red delicious apple.
In
order that some mystery be retained, the identity of the person who sustains
the bruise to the upper arm will remain a secret, however the (relative) safety
of our heroes is absolutely assured. (apologies to the Douglas Adams estate:-))
Thanks
for reading.
It
gets weirder.