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Thyself Known

A Ranma 1/2 fanfic by Zorknot

Ch.9: Second Chances

DISCLAIMER: DISCLAIMER: (sung to "the brady bunch")
Here's the story of Rumiko Takahashi,
Who liked to write about aquatransexuals
As well as Kitty and Shogokukan
Who made anime serials.
They got together, birds of a feather
And made a show and it did really well
So if it could be, brought to America
Maybe it'd really sell
And so Viz video met with Rumiko & Co.
And bought the distribution rights on a hunch
That the group could somehow form a family
That's the way they became the Ranma Bunch!
(Characters and some situations property of the Ranma Bunch and not the author)

Prereaders:

Robert (http://members.aol.com/fanfic28/cwishmain.html)

Aondehafka (http://www.florestica.com/aondehafka/index.htm)

Edward (http://www.concentric.net/~Easimons/)

Nemesis Zero
And a thanks is due to Gary Kleppe and Eternal Lost Lurker, who pointed out the suckiness of the previous disclaimer.

WHAT HAS COME BEFORE: A whole bunch o' stuff. Here's the current situation: Nabiki is currently a male version of herself and has been infected with a highly exaggerated form of Ranma's masculine identity. Ranma has reverted to a highly exaggerated form of his feminine identity. They are trying to catch a doppelganger who killed four people, including Gosunkugi, and Nabiki's best friend Hoko.

Hiro Kawagami is a police officer who recently saved Nabiki's life. Copycat used his blanket to turn Hiro into a physical copy of Hoko, but Hiro has latent magical abilities which kept the eyes from changing color and which allow Hiro to talk with Hoko. Detective Inamura is Hiro's boss and friend, and also the father of Nabiki and Hoko's friend Ami. Nabiki and Hoko both think of Inamura as a kooky uncle.

~~~~~Ch. 9: Second Chances~~~~~

"But I cannot grow
till you eat the last of me
oh when will I be free
and you, a parasite
just find another host
just another stool to post
cause you, my tapeworm tells me what to do
you!
my tapeworm tells me where to go

Pull the tapeworm out of your ass…"

-System of a Down- Needles

~~~~~an alley in nerima~~~~~

Ranko tried to stop the tears, but they kept flowing hot, wet, and slow, like blood from a newly opened wound. The recently male Nabiki was driving the police motorcycle at unreal speeds, and Ranko sat behind him embracing her fiance's stomach as tightly as she comfortably could. She couldn't help noticing how little muscle he had. He was pretty well toned, but Nabiki wouldn't be able to take a well-placed hit from Akane, much less someone like Ryoga. The doppelganger they were chasing looked to be at Ryoga's level or greater based on how it moved. She couldn't let Nabiki face that much danger. Ranko would have to fight it. Alone.

The trouble was, she didn't want to fight anybody. She was sick of all the fighting. The fiancées, Ryoga, Akane, her father... she cared for them all and yet all she had ever done was fight them. It was stupid and she had known it for some time, even when she had been a boy. All she wanted to do now was stop all the pointless violence and start living life instead of attacking it. But now Nabiki was going after this murderer, this demon, and Ranko was the only one who could protect him.

Nabiki was acting just like Ranma would have. Charging into battle, thinking, KNOWING he would win. Ranko knew this, but all she could think of just then was that if she didn't do something, there was a very good chance Nabiki would die.

Ranko jerked forward into Nabiki's back as the motorcycle skidded to a halt in the alleyway. "FUCK!" Nabiki said.

"What?" Ranko asked, her voice wavering a little from the crying.

"I made a deal with him. Why the hell did I have to make a deal with him?"

"You're not making any sense." Ranko put her chin on Nabiki's shoulder, hugging him closer to her.

Nabiki glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "You're crying." It was almost an accusation.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. I'll be okay once we get there. I just..."

Nabiki's hands left the handlebars and held Ranko's arms across his waist. His hands were warm. Warm, but too soft. "We can't fight him. Not now. Later when we both aren't so screwed up, we'll kill the bastard, but not now."

"What is it?"

Nabiki closed his eyes, "When you were in prison and I was trying to get to you, I made a deal with the doppelganger to have him help me get away. It was stupid. Stupid and completely useless because Inamura-sensei let me go anyway after I explained to him what was going on. But I still made the deal. And now I can't break it."

Ranko was about to ask "Why not?" but then she felt what Nabiki was going through. All of the masculine pride that Ranma had unconsciously forced into Nabiki a couple hours ago was now screaming at Nabiki to follow his word, to uphold his honor. Ranko knew that sort of thinking was stupid. Even when she was Ranma she had been able to sacrifice honor to keep himself or someone else out of danger, but Nabiki no longer had a sense of prudence to combat his sense of honor. That had all been forced into Ranko.

Ranko took a shuddering breath and let it out. "What was the deal?" she asked.

"That I would at some time give him a chance to kill you without obstructing him in any way. It made sense at the time because I knew he had pretended to be Hoko and they were questioning me about her murder. If she came in, apparently alive, I could have left to save you and I would have found a way around the deal later. But then Inamura-sensei let me go before the doppelganger came in and it all got mixed up after that."

"Then we have to keep going."

Nabiki opened his eyes. "What?"

"I'm at my weakest right now. If there's any chance of you keeping your word it's now."

"Are you crazy? He'll kill you!"

Ranko snorted some mucus back up her nose and wiped the rest off with her sleeve. "Maybe…" her mouthed curved into a shadow of her usual smirk, "but if you don't give him his chance my stupid sense of honor will keep screwing with you, and you won't be able to fight him at all."

"I don't like it. You're not trying to sacrifice yourself to protect me or anything like that are you?"

"I just want you to be able to fight him...if you have to. I mean…if I can't defeat him…" Ranko knew Nabiki stood no chance of beating the doppelganger, she also knew that letting him think he could was the only way to win this argument. Ranko wasn't sure if she stood a chance either. It was simply not in her to fight right now. Maybe the doppelganger could be reasoned with…

Nabiki slumped for a moment, thinking. "It doesn't matter anyway," he said finally. "I've lost him by now."

Ranma heard a clang of metal. She whipped her head up toward the fire escape above them and saw the cold glint of a gun barrel. "Nabiki! DUCK!" Ranko shoved the cycle toward the the shooter, hoping that Nabiki would follow the movement.

A bullet sped through the air above them as Nabiki and Ranko fell with the motorcycle. The bullet would have killed at least one of them if they hadn't moved. If they moved away from the shooter, the bullet would have likely killed them both. Now, just as long as they stayed low, the fire escape would offer some cover.

"I don't know who you are," Nabiki said as he got up and ran to the bottom of the fire escape. "But no one shoots at my fiancée!"

"Nabiki, no!" Ranko yelled and tried to catch him

"You're not exactly honoring our agreement, are you Nabiki? Protecting her like this?" a voice called from the fire escape as Ranko followed Nabiki up the stairs but just as Nabiki was getting up, another shot rang out. The bullet slammed into his chest, knocking him down into Ranko's arms.

Ranko screamed. In the next moment, moving frantically, she grabbed Nabiki and jumped down the stairs and below the first landing of the fire escape. She was only marginally safer here, but she paused a moment to look at Nabiki's wound. Blood was gurgling out of it.

"I can't…" Nabiki wheezed

The bullet went through his right lung. Nabiki couldn't breathe. Ranko had to think of something. Fast.

~~~~~furinkan high school, assistant principal's office~~~~~

Akane couldn't be happier. The assistant principal had finally returned with the permission form after only an hour and a half of waiting. He looked just as relieved as Akane when they were done signing. He had actually told Akane thank you.

"Why are you thanking me?" Akane had asked.

"Usually someone will try to help and I'll have to keep them away from the booby traps or help them out of piles of fruit. I'm a little addle-brained anyway, trying to help someone else really increases the time." The assistant principle was about forty years old, but had a mussed up schoolboy haircut. He had dark circles under his eyes and coffee stains on his shirt and tie.

"Thank you, Hitomagi-san," Cologne said, breaking Akane's stunned silence.

"Ah, yes, thank you, sensei." Akane bowed.

"You're welcome, Akage-chan."

"Oh, my name is Akane," Akane corrected with a smile.

"Nice to meet you, Akane, how may I help?" the assistant principal asked.

The guy was almost as bad as Nabiki's history teacher! Honestly, Akane thought, couldn't he remember my name for just five seconds? But then she took a breath, let it out, and said "Just introducing myself, Hitomagi-sensei. I hope you have a nice day." She bowed and left the office with Cologne hopping behind her on her gnarled wooden staff.

When they were outside the school grounds Cologne stopped and turned to Akane. "You did well, girl. For all your squirming, you still managed to compose yourself. Patience is not a skill you can learn in one sitting however." Cologne stepped down from her staff, and started walking slowly. It was difficult for Akane to match her speed. She kept wanting to rush ahead of the old woman. "Patience is an art form in itself," Cologne continued, "It is not simply about not moving when one is not supposed to move, it is about knowing when to move, and how. You must know as much as possible about your situation."

Akane was only half paying attention as she was still trying to match the Amazon elder's pace. Cologne halted suddenly causing her to stumble a little as she tried to stop.

"Did you meet with your assistant principal before today?"

"Huh? No. Well, I've seen him in the hall before once or twice but he's pretty reclusive most of the time." Akane answered.

"I have tea with him and his wife sometimes. I get much of my information on what happens in the school from him. Also, that is how I knew how trying he can be."

"Oh." Akane said.

Cologne started walking down the street again. Akane followed, paying more attention to her now. "Your sisters know a great deal about patience: Kasumi shows it in caring for your family like she does, and for so many years; Nabiki in maintaining the finances for her exploits, and gathering information. They are both very powerful women, even at such a young age and with only minimal training in the martial arts."

"Yeah. Nabiki's real patient. She certainly took her time tearing off Ranma's clothes so she could fuck him in the middle of the street!" Akane regretted the words as soon as she said them. But seeing that on television hurt and the wounds were still too fresh.

"You're jealous of her."

"No I'm not." Akane argued, "If I were jealous I'd want something she had. I don't want Ranma. She can have the jerk!" Taking a breath she said with more calmness. "Maybe Ranma and I had something once, but it was gone long before Nabiki did what she did."

"You're jealous of Nabiki, and you're also jealous of Kasumi."

"Huh? I'm not jealous of Kasumi, what would make you think that?"

"I seem to recall a story about how you used to have long hair because you wanted to be like her. I also seem to recall something to the effect that you once had a crush on the boy doctor."

"Who told you that?" Akane yelled stepping in front of the Amazon elder.

Cologne looked up and away from Akane nonchalantly, her staff in her folded arms. "I overheard your friends Yuka and Sayuri talking about you in the Nekohanten."

"Oh." Akane said, deflated. "But I'm over that now. I mean...well, okay, sometimes I wonder just how it is that Kasumi gets treated like a saint when all she does is cook and clean and act like a ditz."

"Tell me, girl" Cologne looked Akane in the eyes. "What have YOU done?"

Akane tried to think of some response as the little old woman walked past her. "I helped Ranma!" she remembered, "I've helped him out plenty of times."

Cologne turned and climbed on her staff. "You have a good heart, child, but it gets clouded by your quick temper. You did well today, but only because I was there to guide you. You must use this vacation to improve on this weakness of yours."

"I will," Akane promised.

"The reason you're jealous of your sisters, is that they have patience while you do not. You're jealous of Ranma for the same reason."

"Ranma is NOT patient."

"I agree. He is not. Compared to you though, he's a stone. And you never denied that you were jealous of him." Cologne gave Akane a wicked smile.

Akane furrowed her brow, "I don't get it. How could I be jealous of their patience?"

"Child, remember that when I speak of patience I speak not only of the ability to wait, but of the ability to act when it is required…to do what is prudent at a given time even when you are not inclined to. In order to possess this ability you must first know what must be done, which requires that you know as much as possible about your surroundings…and yourself. Ranma is conflicted over many things, and because of this, he sometimes acts irrationally. But Ranma knows one thing about himself for certain, and that has seen him through many hardships. Ranma knows he is a martial artist. He knows how to think as a martial artist. He knows how to act as a martial artist. He knows when, as a martial artist, he must stand down."

"I'm a martial artist too, you know." Akane snapped back.

"No, child, you are not. You sometimes wish you were, just as you sometimes wish you could cook and be as equanimous as Kasumi, or even manipulate people the way that Nabiki can, but the truth is you can do none of these things. You lack the patience that is required.

"You practice martial arts, and you have a proficiency, true, but you are not a martial artist until the Art has become a part of your soul, until it becomes an integral part of everything you think and do. I have seen you mock Ranma's code. I have seen you intrude on the battles of others, and I have only seen you train seriously when you were forced by circumstance to do so. You are not a martial artist." Cologne turned away from Akane, craning her head back, she said one last thing before bounding off across the rooftops: "Not yet."

Akane stood on the sidewalk for several moments, thinking. She wanted to protest what Cologne had said, but the words kept sticking to her and she couldn't shake them off. Maybe she wasn't really a martial artist. But then what was she? Answers kept floating to the surface of her brain, but there was nothing she could hold on to, nothing she could grab hold of and say "This is me." And then slowly something new came to her.

"I'm an Amazon warrior now," Akane remembered. She didn't know how to coerce people into doing what she wanted, all she knew was how to hit them, but she would learn. Cologne was an expert. She didn't know how to cook or hold her temper, but if she worked long enough at the Nekohanten, she would learn that too. And if she took this opportunity to train, to hone her skills and attempt to learn new ones, she'd be on her way to being a true martial artist, maybe eventually even better than Ranma.

Akane raise her head up higher. She wasn't out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. Still, she felt she had a way out now. She had been confused about Ranma for the longest time. She loved him, she hated him. She was his friend, his fiancée. Now it was clear to her. Ranma was her rival.

Akane rushed to her house to shove her gi and a set of weights into her duffle bag, putting them with the other things she had already packed. Then, she changed clothes and jogged, the heavy duffle bag jostling around her, seven blocks to Yuka's house. She was breathless, but smiling as she knocked and waited at the door. She would wait as long as necessary.

After about a minute, Akane heard Sayuri call from behind her. "Hey, Akane! What are you doing?"

"I'm…er…waiting."

"Um…okay. Don't pop your lid or anything, but we're supposed to meet Yuka and her Dad in their garage, something about a new invention her uncle came up with. Oh, and her uncle's coming too, I hope that's okay."

Akane's eyebrow twitched just a little. For a brief moment she almost got just the tiniest bit angry at having to wait so long by the door when Yuka had TOLD her that she'd be in the house…But she took a deep breath and let it pass. It was okay. She was going to have a fun time at the beach with her friends and get some training in while she was at it. Even Yuka's STUPID Uncle with his BRAIN DEAD inventions wasn't going to ruin that.

"That's…fine." Akane said. "I'll meet you back there in just a bit. I've got to take care of something."

"Okey dokey, Annie Oakley. I'll let them know you’re here."

After Sayuri left. Akane opened her duffle bag. Then she stuck her head in the bag and screamed into the cloth of her gi.

Composing herself, Akane took a breath. She would learn patience on this trip. She would train, hone her skills, and learn patience. She was an Amazon after all. She wasn't out of the woods yet, but now at least, she had a path.

~~~~~ fire escape ~~~~

Copycat stood on the fire escape looking down at the scene below him in astonishment. He had shot Nabiki. Just...shot her, or him, or whatever. It had been so easy. A pull of the trigger and Nabiki, male for some reason Copycat hadn't quite figured out yet, was on his back writhing and holding his chest, dark red blood already staining his fingers. …still alive…not for long though.

Ranma was crying over him like, well like a girl. Something had certainly happened between the two. Copycat wasn't sure what. Ranma's open now, he realized, I could run down the steps and shoot her in the head no problem.

Killing Ranma would be easy as bleeding right now. And while Nabiki might not be dead just yet, that bullet had to have at least punctured a lung. Death would come in a few hours if there wasn't any medical attention. He had practically killed Nabiki already.

Why was he having trouble with that?

Why couldn't he move now, after killing so many people to get to this moment?

Maybe it was too easy? Copycat sighed. Yes, that could be it. It was such a letdown after all the buildup. But if that was it, what exactly did he want? He knew he'd lose in a fight with Ranma. He could only hope to outwit the pigtailed prick, the only thing blocking that for the longest time had been Nabiki. Whom he had just killed...basically. Now was his chance, he had to take it. He rushed to the steps and almost ran down them, but still he held back.

Ranma was saying something into Nabiki's ear now, apparently oblivious to the threat above her. Go! Go down there and shoot the bastard, damn it! But he couldn't. He wanted Ranma to suffer as he had suffered. He wanted Ranma to understand what had happened to him. He wanted the bitch to feel it. He didn't want to kill Ranma, he wanted Ranma to beg for death.

But...he wanted Nabiki alive too. Nabiki had been the great obstacle blocking him for so long. He wanted to conquer her, to let her know he was better than her. For her to die like this was just...well...it sucked.

It's too late now. Just finish it. Copycat nodded solemnly. He walked slowly down the steps to the ground behind his prey. He would finish it. He would kill Ranma, and then, he would kill himself.

Ranma was just standing up. Copycat would wait for her to face him, and then he would shoot her between her eyes. It would be over then. It would all be over.

Ranma turned. Her eyes seemed to burn with cold, blue fire. Copycat smiled, Probably going to use some new technique. Let's see if it can stop bullets. He fired the pistol and jumped to the left to avoid whatever Ranma hoped to throw at him.

The sound of the retort came a fraction of a second after Ranma yelled, "Tobu Sennuki!"

Flying corkscrew.

As Copycat tucked and rolled away from Ranma's attack, there was a crashing sound coupled with the sound of squealing metal on metal. It took Copycat a moment to realize that the fire escape was falling toward him, along with quite a few bricks and pieces of mortar.. He scrambled desperately out of the way of the rapidly deteriorating structure, narrowly missing a skewering by one of the pieces of twisted metal.

When the dust cleared, Ranma was standing beside a massive pile of debris, her eyes burning into him. She was so short she almost had the look of a petulant child, but her aura was frightening. It grew blacker and blacker, stealing energy from the air until it grew so cold Copycat could see his breath.

Ranma was alive. Copycat didn't have time to figure out why he was happy about that. He had just enough time to change his form to male Ranma, extend ki claws from his hands and swipe.

~~~~~~alley~~~~~~

The tears came gushing out of Ranko's eyes and she couldn't make them stop. This was not the time for crying. This was the time for getting the hell away from the serial killer and getting Nabiki to a hospital. But she couldn't stop. It's too much. I'm too much of a girl now. But what can I do?

An image of Happosai sitting with a broken leg beside a felled tree in the Tendo yard floated up into her consciousness. "You're feeling pretty feminine right now, aren't you?" he had asked her that morning only yesterday. Feminine ki...

Wiping the tears from her eyes, Ranko embraced Nabiki. She spoke into his ear. "You're probably feeling pretty manly right now. You want to get up and keep fighting right?"

Nabiki tried to speak, but blood gurgled in his wound when he breathed in.

"Don't do that!" Ranko cried. "Just listen for a second. I want you to try to focus all your manliness into your right hand. You hear me? Just push it all into that one place."

Ranko closed her eyes and tried to imagine a completely female apple. It would have all the nutrients and life force of an apple, but it wouldn't have any rigidity. It wouldn't have any clear boundaries either. It would be substance completely devoid of form.

Ranko put all her feelings of acceptance, of caring, of weakness, of fear, into creating the completely female apple in her hand. She held her hand over Nabiki's and took in the denial, the harshness, the strength and the bravery that she found there.

She envisioned the apple gaining structure, becoming real. There was a weight now in her hand. Ranko let it drop.

"Eat that," she told Nabiki, "It will heal you. I saw Happosai do it."

Ranko got to her feet. She felt weak now, light-headed. It didn't matter. A shot had been fired. Eyes squeezed shut, Ranko stood before Akane holding the pistol. It was her memory as much as it had ever been Nabiki's. She felt her trigger finger tighten. She wanted to kill. Ranko's eyes opened once more. If she killed this nameless shapeshifter would it be any different from killing Akane? Or Nabiki?

Her ki was dark. The air grew cold around her as her body desperately tried to fill the void in her soul with warmth and prana from her environment. There are some voids that cannot be filled, however. Some problems that keep returning after they're solved. Second chances to make a bad decision.

She didn't have to do this. She could get away now. She could run off with Nabiki, give herself enough time to find a better way out of this. But she knew that wasn't going to happen. The trigger had already been pulled. As soon as that bullet hit Nabiki's chest, this became a battle to the death.

Ranko glared at the fake policeman just coming down from fire escape. She moved her arms in a circle, mixing her cold ki with the relatively hot ki of the air around her. The figure raised the pistol toward her. A bullet fired from the barrel a fraction of a second after the words "Tobu Sennuki!" fired out of Ranko's lips. A horizontal tornado of ki-strengthened wind ripped and twisted through the metal fire escape, making a horrible screeching and moaning sound. The bullet ricocheted off a manhole cover farther down the alley.

The shapeshifter jumped away from Ranko's first attack and was almost covered in the debris from the building. He landed next to Ranko. She turned to face him, planning her attack.

Grabbing a blanket, seemingly from nowhere, Ranko's enemy changed, in an instant, into a copy of male Ranma. The changeover was somehow familiar, but Ranko couldn't quite put her finger on it.

There was Ranko's male self, confident, smirking, male, but her expression did not change. It would go against the Art. It would go against her honor. She didn't care. This thing, in whatever form it took, was going to die.

Strong, sharp lines of ki descended slightly from the shapeshifter's fists. Nekoken, Ranko registered, but she took no time to wonder at how the monster knew the technique. She jumped above the shapeshifter's slash and threw another Tobu Sennuki down at him. The move tore the asphalt from the ground below her, but the doppelganger managed to escape everything but a few blows from the debris.

Then he started convulsing. He threw his head back and his body forward, then his body went the opposite way. He shook violently. His fists opened and closed. He screamed.

This made Ranko pause for a moment, but at this point, she really didn't give a fuck if the bastard was epileptic. Gathering ki, she prepared to release another Tobu Sennuki. Before she could finish it, however, the shapeshifter lunged at her in an unmistakable nekoken move.

Ranko barely managed to dodge in time. She jumped to the wall of the closest building, narrowly avoiding another attack. She launched off the wall onto the roof of the building with the ruined fire escape to gain some distance. The shapeshifter started convulsing again, this time collapsing to the pavement and scratching deep gouges with the ki claws, the asphalt curling away like it were chiseled wood, then crumbling into piles of black after breaking contact with the ki.

She wouldn't be able to match the speed of a full-fledged nekoken. If she got off a lucky shot with the Tobu Sennuki she might be able to end it, but it would take too long to set it up, and it was getting harder and harder to maintain her heart of ice in the pressure of the battle. She could feel her cat self ready to take over, she knew it was the only way to beat the shapeshifter now, but she hesitated.

This would be only the second time in eleven years she ever purposely let the cat take over. Her fear of cats could bring it out of her, and yesterday Shampoo and Nabiki, two other people with the nekoken, caused her to switch over without even realizing it. But there had only been one other time she'd ever switched over on purpose, without the fear.

The day Ranma had almost killed his father.

~~~~~eleven years ago~~~~~

Ranma lay down in the pit, unable to move. It was too dark to see anything. He could only...hear...feel...smell.

It wasn't the cats at first. The only time they scratched or bit was when they fought each other. They never attacked him. There was no reason to. They nibbled the fish off of him. They rubbed against him. They purred.

Initially, it was the dark, the not being able to move. His mind would conjure up images to fill the blankness of his vision. Hallucinations that blew every touch of fur, every purring sound out of proportion until it was something else…something more powerful and sinister.

The first two times Ranma was all for the training. The third was when he first asked his father to stop. Usually Genma would taunt Ranma a little if he didn't want to do a training technique but eventually let it go. Not this time. He threw Ranma in the third time. And Ranma cried.

He didn't understand.

While in the pit, his mind went everywhere. He felt at times like he was covered in a giant, vibrating blanket. Then, sometimes he felt like he could catch words or phrases in the sounds he heard. A touch of fur and he would wonder for a moment whether it was his skin touching the fur or his fur touching the skin. He pondered this for a minute or so and then when he finally remembered why the idea was ridiculous he found the thought so disturbing he moaned.

He begged Genma not to put him back in the pit the fourth time. Genma just got angrier, he called him a girl, he said he was going to disown him. Ranma at that point was so frightened of the pit that he ran away, rather than go back there again. But Genma caught him, tied him up and threw him in again. He said it was the only way for him to get over his phobia.

Back in the darkness Ranma became convinced that Genma was not his father anymore. Somehing had possessed his father, eaten his soul. It was a large, female, humanoid cat figure. Her name was Ba Shiteto. She nibbled at Genma's soul, like the cats nibbled at the fish tied to Ranma's body. Or were they nibbling his body? Ba Shiteto batted at the soul from time to time with a hand with silver claws. Ranma wondered then whether it was really Genma's soul or his own. Sometimes the soul took the form of a tanto held by the unsheathed metal tip. Other times it was a daikatana. Still others, Ba Shiteto held the soul by a tail and the soul would bat back with little claws, like a kitten.

This time, when Genma took him out again, Ranma didn't even try to reason with him, he just bolted. It took Genma longer this time, but once again he caught Ranma. Once again he yelled at him, called him names, tied him up tight and threw him in the pit.

In the black, Ranma could see that Genma wasn't his father anymore. He was a zombie. A flesh golem. A monster. If he wanted to escape he had to defeat him. But he couldn't. He was just a boy. A normal man he might have managed maybe, but not a martial arts master like his father. Even if it wasn't really his father. Ba Shiteto rubbed in between his ears and said that there was a way but that Ranma would have to let go of his humanity and become what he was meant to be. "I don't understand," Ranma responded, "I'm not human, I'm a cat."

Only this came out as a terrible yowl/scream. "That's very good," Ba Shiteto said, "Just remember that, and you'll be fine."

Genma pulled him out again and this time Ranma didn't move. Genma gave him food and water. Ranma chased after a grasshopper. Genma asked if Ranma was okay. Ranma said nothing. Genma asked if he really didn't want to go through with the training. Ranma was distracted by a butterfly. Everything was okay until Genma tied him up again. Ranma started struggling. "You had your chance, boy," Genma said and threw him back in the pit.

Ranma yowled. Ranma spat. Ranma ripped through his bonds and leapt to the edge of the pit. Ba Shiteto was right. He had to get rid of the human. He could find food somewhere else. Ranma knocked his father down. Genma was saying something with a happy voice, but Ranma didn't understand it. Ranma picked Genma up with his mouth and flung him in the air. He batted him with his paws. This was easy!

He soon grew tired of playing with the human though, who by that time had fallen unconscious. He was about to slice his head off when he paused. There was a remnant of his humanity whispering to him. "What if this is the real Pops?" He couldn't break out of the cat mentality, but he couldn't finish the blow either. Something was scaring him, creating an emotion so deep it affected him even through the nekoken. It was the real fear behind every fear he felt in the pit. A fear of losing...something. He couldn't make sense of it. All he knew was that something was scaring him.

Ranma did what most animals do when frightened. He froze. Then he ran.

After he recovered, he didn't remember anything. A vague sense of the pit, nothing else. That's what he told himself at night, when the nightmares came. Because if he remembered it…if he accepted what he had almost done...

~~~~~present~~~~~

Things were different now. Genma was no longer the center of Ranko's life. Nabiki was. They were both under the nekoken when they made love in the middle of the city. She remembered being a cat. She remembered enjoying it. Now her cat side was inextricably entwined with who she was.

But there was still a boundary Ranko still hadn't quite crossed. And now, in the seconds as she contemplated how she would attack this monster before her that wore her face, even as her own ki claws slid slowly from her knuckles and she lowered into a more feral stance, she felt the fear. If she continued, she would lose something precious to her. She paused for a moment. But the situation was different. If killing the monster meant losing something... then it was lost the moment Nabiki was shot.

The monster screamed again from the rooftop across the alley, contorting itself into a new position. Ranko suddenly knew what was wrong with it. It tried somehow to steal the nekoken. It had tried to take the power without knowing its true nature. It was like one of those dogs that do tricks for the human folk. It did not know what it was.

Ranko crouched low. Her soul of ice evaporated. Her ki claws were now fully extended from her hands as she watched the wretched thing writhe. This was the creature that had attacked her mate? She would kill it, and because she was feeling a little hungry, perhaps she'd eat a little off its flesh.

She lunged toward the shapeshifter, eagerly anticipating an easy kill.

~~~~~nerima prefecture police department~~~~~

Hiro didn't seem to have anything else to do. Copycat was long gone, and he wasn't sure what he'd do if he could reach him anyway. How could he even tell him from anybody else? So he followed Inamura to the morgue. He hated corpses. He hated death of any kind really, but at the moment he NEEDED to do something he hated... just to reconnect with the world. He felt more like stabbing himself repeatedly with a rusty blade, but going to a morgue would do in pinch. Less messy anyway.

~You still there?~ he thought out to Hoko.

~Yeah. I'm feeling a little stupid right now. Should have remembered he could heal with that blanket of his. I could have warned you.~

~You're just a girl. You didn't know any better,~ Hiro consoled.

~Yeah, well, you're just a girl now too. Besides, you're what, 7 years older than me? I guess that makes you a wise old man.~ Hiro could sense Hoko rolling her non-existent eyes.

Before Hiro could think of a response, he was interrupted by the blast of cold air as he entered the morgue.

Immediately he regretted coming.

All the bodies were locked into silver drawers in the wall, out of sight. But Hiro could feel them like a worm sliding through his intestines. He could hear them in the back of his mind like a musical ensemble comprised of dentists' drills and nails on chalkboard.

"Be quick about this, Inamura," Hiro half-shouted against the din, the high pitch of his voice making it sound almost like a scream, "I'm really not good around dead bodies."

"On the contrary, Kawagami-kun." Inamura turned back slightly, looking down at him out of the corner of his eye, "Your problem is that you ARE good around dead bodies. A little too good. You're in that body, but I knew who you were as soon as you and the doppelganger entered the precinct. You know why?"

Hiro shook his head.

"Your eyes. Light blue, the irises almost white themselves. They're sensitive. They see things that others do not." He took a puff from his cigarette, almost completely covering his goateed mouth with his hand in the movement. He let out the smoke. "I know why you left your old precinct, Kawagami." He turned back around and walked to one of the drawers. "'Arasu, poru Yoriku!'" Inamura said, seeming to quote something as he rolled out the cadaver. "Ah nu hin, Horasho.'"

"What?" Hiro asked.

"It's English. Shakespeare actually," Inamura informed.

Hiro shook his head. "I've only ever read Romeo and Juliet. And that was a Japanese translation."

"There's a scene where Hamlet, a young prince, finds the grave of a fool that once played with him when he was a child, and laments the passing of happier times." Inamura pulled back the cloth covering the corpse. "This fool… was my brother."

The corpse was hardly anything more than a skeleton. The bones were held together by dark brown and gray leathery skin, the whole pitiful sight looking like an unwrapped mummy long forgotten, like a picture Hiro had seen of a man that had been frozen in ice for thousands of years. The chill of the morgue seemed to intensify at the thought. Hiro wondered just how long the man before him had been dead.

The corpse sat up.

It lifted an arm, pointed a bony finger toward Hiro. ~YOU!~ Hiro heard in his mind. ~YOU DID THIS TO ME!~

Also in his mind, Hoko started screaming.

Hiro himself only stood in shock.

~FIX ME, YOU BASTARD! PUT ME BACK THE WAY I WAS!~ the corpse was slowly getting to its feet.

~Why the hell aren't you running?~ Hoko demanded, ~That zombie is gonna kill us!~

Hiro was beginning to put the pieces together. The man he punched out---no, not a man, a quivering mass of sewer sludge masquerading as one, a boil on the ass of the lowliest devil in seven hells fashioned somehow into the basic shape of humanity, the rapist and murderer of fourteen teenaged girls who had gotten off scott free--- this thing was what now staggered before him, shorn of its flesh as if no longer capable of pulling off a full disguise. "THIS, is your brother?" Hiro's tone was deeply accusatory. Even through the higher pitch of Hoko's vocal chords the words seemed cloaked in ominous darkness.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. This corpse, which until recently had the good sense to remain still," Inamura raised his hand in a "stop" gesture which seemed to cause the zombie to flinch in apprehension, "Was once my elder brother, Inamura Yusuke. When we were kids he used to give me piggy back rides. He used to walk with me to school. I used to look up to him. I'm afraid though, that he stopped being my elder brother long before he died. And he died long before you killed him."

~What is he talking about?~ Hoko was asking in his brain.

Hiro paid no attention. "That wasn't his name. It was-"

"Changed after the first rape charge. My father disowned him and I swore to make it my life's work to put scum like him behind bars."

~DAD NEVER GAVE ME ANYTHING! NONE OF YOU EVER GAVE ME ANYTHING!~ the thing screamed at Inamura, but Inamura didn't seem to hear as he took a casual pull off his cigarette.

"Thirty-five years I spent chasing after my brother and his kind, and then one day his decomposing corpse comes sauntering into the precinct like the prodigal son returned. I think he even expected a fatted calf."

"Fatted calf?" Hiro didn't catch the connotation. He shook his head, "How did he wind up here? Why is he still alive?"

"The answer to both questions, my friend, is that this," Inamura gestured with the hand that held his cigarette to indicate his surroundings, "is Nerima."

"Yeah, okay, I know weird stuff happens around here for some reason, but he lived on the other side of Tokyo. What is he doing here?"

"Trying to stay alive. Like all magical beings he needs a source of energy. Nerima is one such source. There are others. I'd bet the place Ranma and his friends got their curses is another example. Usually a source is one or more of three things. Either its an opening in the ground, such as a spring or volcano, a site of extreme evil, or of extreme tectonic pressure."

"Tectonic pressure… Right." Hiro was a little lost.

"Tokyo is only a short distance from an intersection of three tectonic plates, a prime location for sources."

~EXCUSE ME, BUT I'M STILL HERE, HELLO?~

"Hey, guess what, asshole, I don't care," Kawagami spat out at the undead rapist.

"That's uncalled for," Inamura pointed angrily, "Just because I like to be dramatic and mysterious about things when I explain them doesn't make me a…" He straightened. "Oh. You were talking to my brother."

"Yeah. I guess you can't hear him then?"

"Only in my dreams. I'd like you to tell him something before you kill him. Or maybe he can understand me already. I can't tell. I'd like you to tell him that I still miss him, and I always will. Just as I'll always love that part of him that was kind to me all those years ago. He deserves every pain he has received and more for what he did. But with luck perhaps he'll get his shit together in the next life and we can be brothers again sometime down the road. He's already wasted this life."

~YOU ALWAYS WERE WEAK, LITTLE BROTHER.~

"You know that part about him getting his shit together in another life?" Hiro said.

"Yeah?"

"Not likely." Hiro looked over the undead elephant sphincter, grimacing at how he had to look up at the murderer now. "How am I supposed to kill him?"

"Just stop keeping him alive," Inamura answered.

"Huh?"

"Until you have better control of your powers, they are more or less attached to your subconscious. You hate my brother for what he did, what he almost got away with. But Hate is an attractive emotion, like Love. You don't really want him dead any more than I do. So your curse was incomplete. It only half killed him. You want to see him suffer, you want to defeat him somehow, so you've unconsciously been keeping him alive. But there's no way you can make him suffer enough for it to matter, no way to conquer his wretchedness to make him see the horror of what he has done. You have to let go. Just as I have had to let go."

~YEAH JUST GIVE UP, PANSY ASS. YOU GOT A LUCKY SHOT WITH THAT PUNCH. YOU'D NEVER BE ABLE TO DO THAT AGAIN. YOU DESERVE THAT BODY YOU'RE IN NOW. HEH I CAN JUST FEEL THAT VIRGIN PUSSY SLIDING OVER MY COCK. MMM MMM MMM!~

Hiro fought the rush of anger that washed over him, his fists clenched and tight against his sides. He could feel all too well the differences between this body and his usual one. Even without Inamura's advice, he knew that he could not allow himself to be goaded. With a shaking, disturbingly feminine sounding voice, Hiro asked, "How did he get this way? You say he was a good person once? How is that possible?"

Inamura took in some smoke from his cigarette and let it out in a drawn out sigh. "I've seen it happen to other people. It's different every time, but in all cases there's a point where in order to survive, or to get something they feel they need, the person has to sacrifice something precious to them. Sometimes they can get it back. Sometimes," Inamura nodded at his brother, "It's lost forever."

"What is it?" Hiro asked, "What do they sacrifice?"

"Again it takes a different form for every person, but if you ask me, what it amounts to is…humanity."

Hiro looked again at the zombie he had unwittingly made with a blow from his fist. Inamura said his brother died long before Hiro ever met him. Maybe that was just a rationalization. But it felt good. It made sense. Thinking that a human being could be capable of doing what he had done…that was just too difficult to fathom.

There was nothing Hiro could do to restore the zombie's humanity. That very thought caused the wretched undead thing to fall apart where it stood into a loose pile of rotten flesh and dry bones.

Inside his mind, Hoko seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and relax a little.

Hiro felt the opposite. He was starting to get the willies. When he first moved to Nerima, he thought that the craziness was kind of quaint. Now though, stuck in the body of a seventeen-year-old girl and having just disintegrated a zombie he had unwittingly created, he found he was neck deep in the craziness, and "quaint" was NOT the word to describe it.

~~~~~alley~~~~~

Copycat would never have been able to break out of his struggle with the nekoken if it hadn't been for the terrible pain he felt as Ranma's ki claws sliced through his arm and torso. Ranma's claws were almost three feet long, at least ten times longer than his own had been. Clothing, skin, muscle, bone, the claws zipped through them all in an instant as if they were nothing but a cloud of smoke. The claws entered at Copycat's left shoulder and exited out his right lower torso, leaving Copycat on his back, separated from his left arm and his legs. He only had just enough time to use the blanket with his right arm before Ranma came after him again.

Healed in an instant from the blanket, Copycat still only barely dodged Ranma's next attack. Another one came right after it and then another. Needing more space to maneuver, Copycat jumped, as Ranma had earlier, first to the wall of the undamaged building and then to the roof of the one whose fire escape Ranma had destroyed.

Ranma was there a fraction of a second later.

All Copycat could do was dodge blow after blow. His body fell into an odd sort of autopilot as he tried to figure some way out of the situation. The extra space he had afforded from jumping to the roof was rapidly diminishing as Ranma drove him toward the roof of the next building. He tried to jump, but lost his legs again in the attempt. He landed hard on the severed end of his spinal chord which shattered on impact and forced him to cry out even as he managed to use the blanket again.

When he had found out he could hurt himself and heal instantly with the blanket he had become an avid masochist. At first he hurt himself out of a sort of training regimen so that he would be able to continue to fight while injured. Soon though, he began to enjoy it. Each slice of blade or searing of flesh connected him with the world, allowed him to feel something other than the emptiness of being alone. Of not having an identity.

Even before that previous fight with Ranma he had felt apart from society. An orphan without even foster parents or school to give him some semblance of a normal life, all he could do was go from town to town copying martial arts techniques and challenging the masters. Fighting was the only thing that gave him purpose. A purpose that Ranma had taken away, simply by being better.

How do you defeat someone whose abilities go beyond skill? How do you train for a battle you are sure to fail…when you've never really trained before…when you have no teacher to guide you? Copycat attacked himself, learned not to feel pity or pain, dove into the darkness of his soul.

Still, even this sacrifice had not prepared him for this battle. Ranma was relentless, inhuman with human intelligence. A force of nature without nature's equanimity. Copycat dodged, healed injuries as fast of possible and tried in vain to find an opening, but it was no use. He was starting to get tired.

The power of the blanket was not infinite, it could only pull so much mass from nullspace before it needed replenishing. Copycat's various severed limbs were turning into a thick smoke and being sucked back into nullspace, but the process was slow, and Ranma was very very fast.

Operating on pure instinct, Copycat jumped away from where he was standing as Ranma's claws gouged deep crevasses into the roof with a sound that scraped across Copycat's back molars like an electric sander. The resistance from the roof made Ranma slow long enough for Copycat to see her face. She was smiling widely, completely relaxed, enjoying herself. A kitten, playing with a wounded bird.

The nekoken wasn't a mere technique. Of that Copycat was certain. Trying to control it was like trying to tame a tiger by letting it consume your flesh. Even the small amount of time Copycat let it out was agonizing. The thing was like a demon, or at best, a parasite. And yet Ranma seemed merged with it now. She moved not only with the movements of a cat, but with the precision of all her martial arts training. Her eyes burned not only with feral hunger, but with cold intelligence. Even her grin, wider and more menacing though it was, was eerily similar to Ranma's usual smirk.

Copycat realized in that precious moment as Ranma dragged her claws out of the roof, that he was actually afraid.

He could not run away. Ranma was too fast. He could not try to counter attack. Ranma would rip him to shreds. Thinking fast, he used the blanket to turn into the Kawagami body, pulled out the pistol from its holster, and started firing rounds at the red-headed demon creature. He emptied an entire magazine, but not one of the bullets found their mark, and in the end, the only thing Copycat managed to accomplish was to make himself a steady target for Ranma's claws.

This time, there was no escape. Copycat didn't even see the attack. He just felt searing pain in his shoulders and then both his arms fell to the ground with a thud. Warm blood gushed down his sides through the fabric of his uniform shirt. Another swipe from out of nowhere took his legs from him and he was on his back, writhing in agony and no longer capable of doing anything about it.

"It's not supposed to be like this!" Copycat cried. The pain washed over him in waves with every beat of his heart, his life's blood pooling onto the ground around him. The sensation that connected him to the world now betraying him, taking him further away from it. He had thought he would never be this weak again. He had accepted the oni's gift of the blanket and camera at the orphanage. He had found out the secret of the two items. He had escaped. He had copied every technique he could for years. He had learned to welcome pain. He was stronger now, ruthless. He didn't have to be helpless. Not again.

Ranma stood over him. Standing like a human, but somehow the cat was still there in her expression. She went out of his frame of vision for a moment as she bent down to pick something up. Then she was there again, framed by the electric blue of the darkening sky, and holding a pistol pointed straight at his skull. Glancing at it she bent down again, this time getting something from Copycat's waist. A spare magazine. She clicked it into the pistol and aimed again.

None of it seemed to matter. It had all been for nothing. There would be no third chance at this. He had lost, and whether Ranma shot him or he bled to death from his wounds, he would die shortly. "It isn't fair!" Copycat yelled, crazily, "I've learned more, seen more, done more…Why am I-?"

But his words were cut off by the retort from the pistol in Ranma's hand--- that and the bullet that coursed through his cerebral cortex, subsequently exploding out of his occipital lobe and embedding itself a full two centimeters into the concrete of the roof below.

The words he was about to say were "still" and "empty."

~~~~~alley~~~~~

Nabiki hated having to stay down on the street while Ranko fought on the roof. After eating the apple, he felt a little groggy but otherwise fine. While this was odd, considering the fact that only ten minutes ago he was dying of a bullet wound to the chest, it didn't change the fact that now he was fine and perfectly capable of climbing another building's fire escape to see what's going on. But if he did that, sure he might be able to see how the fight was going, but he was also just as likely to get another bullet wound, or worse, get caught in one of those new Tobu Sennuki things of Ranko's.

All he could do was listen to the sounds of battle overhead and wonder.

Ranma's residual male ego had gotten to him more than he would have thought. The complete stupidity he had exhibited in following the killer… It made so much sense at the time. Heck, even now he halfway wanted to get on the roof to "protect" Ranko, even though he knew he'd just get in her way. The other half of him just wanted to watch.

She had always enjoyed watching Ranma fight, even when she thought of him as just a freeloader.

Nabiki looked quizzically down at her breasts, which had suddenly been restored to her. Oh, she realized, I was lusting after male Ranma. Too much for the male side to cope with I guess.

As grateful as she was for her return to femininity, she couldn't quite shake the ominous feeling that she was out of her depth. She usually would have worked out some angle on this by now, figured out a way to come out on top. She wasn't even sure what "on top" would mean now. Being able to change into a man might help out in some of her business dealings, but how could she maintain her public image? Did she even have a public image anymore? Her televised urban ailurophilic sexcapade with Ranma had to have shattered any standing Nabiki had. It was at least a nasty mark on her escutcheon. Did she care? She was supposed to control things from afar, be the axis upon which the craziness of Furinkan High School turned. Why the hell did she have to go and fall in love with Ranma Saotome?

It was Ranko Saotome now though. Ranko was 100% girl now, and Nabiki was still in love with her. On top of everything, she was now technically a lesbian.

Nabiki let out a small explosive chuckle.

It would be okay. Sure she could get upset about it, bemoan the loss of her "reputation", but really what sort of a reputation was being an "Ice Queen" anyway? It was really not any different from when people would try to blackmail her. Like that one time, someone tried to get out of a debt by threatening to spread pictures of Nabiki in her underwear. Nabiki simply smiled and said the debt now had an added charge for perversion. The next day, she started selling her own pictures. She found it kind of fun actually. The domination poses she did with the black leotard and whip were particularly popular, though they led to some unfortunate comparisons to Kodachi Kuno later on.

All she had to do was accept her situation, and then she could manipulate it to her advantage.

Nabiki closed her eyes and breathed. Okay. She was now an epistemotransexual in love with a former aquatransexual martial artist who was borderline psychotic, which is what attracted her to…her in the first place. She had saved her fiancé(e) from a sadistic geriatric manipulator of liquid metal from an alternate universe almost directly after learning her best friend had been murdered by a doppelganger. She could see auras now, due to having had a near-death experience, and could now apparently start the engines of motorcycles with her mind. Furthermore, she now had an alternate personality that was a cat, and while in that personality she had had unprotected sex in the middle of a city intersection.

Nabiki's eyes popped open "Oh gods, what if I'm pregnant?"

The sounds of several gunshots above her reminded her that that was the least of her concerns at the moment. The accepting thing was going to take some time, though. That was for sure.

The fight above her seemed to quiet down, and Nabiki watched the small, dark blue patch of twilight sky between the buildings for some clue as to what was going on. There was another last gunshot, which sent chills down Nabiki's back, and then…

And then, something appeared in the patch of open sky that Nabiki had not expected.

~~~~~roof~~~~~

Ranko stood over the monster's body, pistol still aimed at its forehead, watching. Her thoughts hadn't come around to forming complete sentences yet. She knew though, on some level apart from coherent thought, that she could not trust appearances. She had to be sure it was dead.

For a while everything was still. Only Ranko's breathing and the sounds of the city around her prevented her from feeling that somehow time had stopped and she would be stuck in this position for eternity. During the fight, everything had been easy. Fun, even. Only now in the stillness, did she begin to feel a twinge of panic…a vague feeling of something pressing in around her with increasing force.

Fading into view, like a picture on Polaroid film, so gradually she almost missed them, a camera and a blanket appeared next to the monster's torso. The camera was old and blocky, but of good quality. The lens had the words "made in japan" written around it in white, English characters. Fairly normal, but there seemed something off about it. Ranko felt a memory struggle to rise to the surface of the murky waters of her mind, but she couldn't quite retrieve it. She was too distracted by everything she was struggling to ignore. The blanket was folded underneath the camera in a square, but something about the way it appeared made it seem somehow like the coiled body of a snake.

Then the camera and blanket moved.

One second the camera was on the middle of the dark green, folded blanket. The next it was floating half a meter in the air, the blanket hanging from its base.

Startled, Ranko shot squeezed the trigger of the pistol, hitting a corner of the camera. A shrieking sound seemed to issue from its lens.

It wasn't a lens.

The camera morphed and distorted until it was a circular mouth with serrated teeth all along its edge, attached to what was once the blanket. The blanket, too, changed, unfolding, straightening, thickening, and growing more pale until it was a greenish white, chitonous, square section of a much larger creature. Another section like this one followed as the thing that had been masquerading as a camera seemed to shoot out of a hole in the doppelganger's side. In only seconds, five more sections, each about half a meter long came out of null space. The creature was already towering over Ranma and it was still growing.

Ranko shot at it again, but the bullet had no effect as the thing continued to fly out of null space. Extending her ki claws from her left hand, Ranko swiped at the thing just as the last sections left the dimensional hole they were coming from. The chiton was denser than bone, but Ranko's swipe still reduced the last three sections to ribbons. As the remains fell to the ground, they crumbled and turned into a blue mist that was quickly sucked away in three directions…

~~~~~~alley~~~~~~

Nabiki was busy trying to make sense of the creature that rose up into the sky from the roof, when the blue mist came after her. It was blue…but at the same time it was bright green and flashing like a strobe. She felt it pulling her toward it even as it homed in and darted toward her breast.

The mist diffused into her, became part of her, but somehow it felt like it had always been a part of her, only it had gone missing without her knowing. Pieces of her psyche that had been missing ever since her accident yesterday now woke up all at once, demanding to know how the hell she had managed to screw things up so badly.

And then, as if getting a fragment of her former self slammed into her wasn't enough torment, she started remembering things she had never done.

She remembered killing Hoko. Cutting her body into pieces and distributing them in dumpsters all around Tokyo. She remembered killing her best friend. As if it had been her all along and not some nameless monster. No it wasn't quite her. Someone was wearing her like a costume, using her like a puppet. Copycat Ken. The name came to her as her insides screamed it into her heart. She watched the life drain from her friend's eyes, felt her pulse weaken and die. Worst of all, she felt some part of her, the same ugly, creeping part of her that had one time almost shot her sister, that grew out of her soul like a tumor, threatening to consume her, she felt this part of her laugh in delight.

Some time during all this, Nabiki collapsed to the pavement. She screamed, thrashed her head around, tore at the concrete around her trying to get away from the memories, but they wouldn't leave. They were already a part of her.

~~~~~morgue~~~~~

Hiro had no idea what it was when he saw it. He was helping Inamura clean up his brother's remains. Hoko kept asking him to stop looking at them as it grossed her out but she couldn't control her eyes. And then, as Hiro tried to sweep the remains into a dust bin while looking at the cinder block wall in front of him, he saw the blue mist come through. There were two clouds of it that appeared. They both seemed to hesitate upon entering the room for half a second. Then they both zoomed toward Hiro's heart.

In an instant, Hiro was in his own body. In uniform even, but he didn't notice. He was remembering how he tied himself up. How he looked at Hoko's body when they were about to leave for the police department. How he shot Nabiki. How he tried to shoot Ranma. All these things came at once, and were disturbing enough in their own right, but what Hiro felt more acutely in that moment were all the memories of pain. Of being shot in the chest, of having his torso severed five or six times. Of falling on his severed spinal chord from a height of just under a meter and a half. Of getting shot in the head while bleeding from the stumps of all his major appendages. Of dying.

This was all more than a human being could possibly take. Hiro passed out.

~~~~~hoko~~~~~

For her part, Hoko already knew the perversions Copycat had committed with her body. While it wasn't pleasant to be reminded of them, it was bearable. She was mostly relieved when she found she was able to move on her own. Relief grew to outright joy when she realized she was alive again. Really and truly alive. She felt some concern for Hiro when he fell over, but even as she caught him to keep him from hitting his head on the hard tile floor, she was smiling. Just to prove that she could she spoke "I'm alive!"

Inamura was the only other conscious person in the room, so Hoko turned to him and repeated it, tears coming out of her eyes. "I'm alive!"

Inamura had a wide smile on his face. He looked completely goofy, just like when he'd do his lame magic tricks whenever she and Nabiki stayed over at Ami's house. "Is it really you, Hoko-chan?"

"As far as I know, I mean, I can't be the real thing, I saw that bastard kill the real thing. I'm just a copy, but I feel like me. I thought I'd never be able to talk again or move on my own. Oh Uncle Inamura, I'm ALIVE!" Even though it was kind of weird, Hoko hugged Inamura. He smelled like cigarettes. He felt warm. Her tears were seeping into the rough fabric of his suit jacket as she squeezed his thin, wiry frame as hard as she could.

"Welcome back, Hoko-chan. I thought we'd lost you." Inamura laughed in the way he always did when he was about to tell a bad and vaguely disturbing joke. "You're much better preserved than that other zombie."

~~~~~alley~~~~~

Nabiki took some long, deep, shuddering breaths. She had heard terrible stories during her years as Furinkan High's number one source of information, stories that were like slow acting viruses, spread through whispers behind raised hands. Girls did get raped at Furinkan. Nabiki knew she was one of the lucky ones. It hadn't happened to her and as much as she flirted with the boys, especially before Ranma arrived, it very well could have. Right now, though, she couldn't help feeling that maybe she had a good idea of what it was like.

Copycat Ken hadn't just made her kill her best friend. He made her enjoy it. As many times as she told herself that it wasn't her, her memories, which supplied her with excruciating detail, kept telling her it was. She felt like she could have stopped it if she had only tried hard enough to break through Copycat's control, but she couldn't have done anything. She hadn't even thought of struggling. Even her thoughts had been under Copycat's command. But they were so close to her thoughts, his control was so subtle…It wasn't her fault, but every time she told herself that, it felt like a lie.

It was the feeling of moisture in her eyes that snapped her out of it. Tears never solved anything. She couldn't lay on the pavement feeling sorry for herself now. He had to be there for Ranko.

Sitting up, Nabiki blinked at his sex change. He had just gotten his boobs back. Why was he male again? Was it Ranko? That was part of it, he realized, but also there was the strong emotions, which he simply couldn't deal with right now. Yet, Nabiki had always felt girls were better at dealing with emotions then boys, it was one of the reasons why boys could be manipulated so easily. So why the sex change? Girls ARE better at dealing with emotions, Nabiki reaffirmed. He sighed, Boys, however, are much better at NOT dealing with them.

Right now, the horrible nature of his recently gained memories was in a sort of translucent box that he would have to open up later, but that he could almost forget about now, even though he could see what was inside struggling to get out. It was still there but now he felt he could ignore it.

He had to be careful, Nabiki cautioned himself. This lack of estrogen was fast becoming a crutch. The brave thing would be to change back to female, confront the memories and find some way to accept them.

Nabiki got up. He was a coward. He felt a pang of guilt, and quickly as he could, he relegated that too to a box in a corner of his mind. He would deal with these things later. Right now he had to find Ranko.

As if called by his thoughts, Ranko fell from the roof onto her feet like…well…a cat. "It's over," she said. All Nabiki could see was the top of her lowered head, "He's dead. I killed him."

"Are you okay?" Nabiki asked, stepping closer. Ranma's aura looked strange, almost alien, deep blues and dark reds mixing to form roiling purples. The purple was similar in hue to Inamura's aura, but there was no steadiness to it. Only…chaos.

"There was something controlling him I think," Ranko continued almost seeming to ignore Nabiki, "A demon. Looked like a… I'm not even sure what it looked like. I tried to kill it, but it got away."

"It doesn't matter, Ranko. At least you got the bastard, right?"

"It was Copycat Ken, Fly. He was at least a year younger than me." Ranko still wouldn't look up. Her aura however seemed to be doing back flips.

"He killed my best friend, Ran. He could be six years old and I'd still want his head on a stick."

Now Ranko looked up. "You don't get it! He was under that demon's control the whole time! He probably didn't even know it was there! He didn't kill those people, that fucking demon did! He was just a kid, and I killed him and set that demon free to torture more innocent people."

Nabiki's eyes widened as he saw Ranko's ki claws extend and retract with the surge of emotion. Her eyes glowed a dull purple, like the eye shine of a nocturnal beast. Ranko had somehow merged with the nekoken. Nabiki felt himself oddly aroused. He shook his head free of the thought. He had to calm Ranko down. "You couldn't have known that would happen." He tried to embrace her but she recoiled.

"Don't touch me!" She yelled. "You'll feel what I feel."

"You can't go through this alone, Ran." Nabiki said.

"There's nothing to go through anymore, Fly. It's over. I'm not a martial artist. I don't think I'm even human anymore. We can't be together. I'm a murderer, you understand? I killed someone. Yes, he killed your best friend and Gosunkugi and two other people that we know of, but he didn’t have a choice. I did."

Nabiki lunged forward and locked both his arms around Ranko. Ranko moved violently and was seconds away from breaking Nabiki's grip, but then she relaxed, melting into Nabiki's chest in a burst of tears. She felt so cold…

Nabiki had Ranma's memories then. They had gone through another similar experience. They had both killed an innocent person. Somehow it was better now. Somehow despite it all, Ranko crying into his chest felt right to Nabiki. It was okay for her to cry, because she was a girl. It was okay for him not to cry, because he was a boy. And there was something wrong with that rationale, but Nabiki just put it in another box and hid it away for later.

"Firefly?" Ranko looked up at Nabiki. Her aura had calmed into a pastel blue violet. It seemed soft now, like a cloud.

"Yes, Ran-chan?"

"I don't think I want to be a boy again, at least not for a while. Is that okay?"

Nabiki didn't know what to say so he just nodded and patted Ranko on the arm.

"Ow!" Ranko exclaimed, startling Nabiki.

"What is it?"

"It's nothing. Just a bruise." Ranko said and hugged Nabiki tighter.

They stood like that for awhile before Ranko spoke again. "I love you, Nabiki," she said, "It sounds weird to say it, but it's true. I'd do anything for you."

"I love you too, Ranko." Nabiki said, filled with an emotion far too big for any box.

"It's scary though." Ranma backed away a little, her arms loosely hanging from Nabiki's neck.

"Why?" Nabiki asked.

"If someone hurts you again…I don't care who they are…I am going to kill them."

~~~~~AUTHOR'S NOTE~~~~~~

Once again, I assure you Ranma will eventually be male again. It's just that he has to go deep into his feminine side for a while, much like how Dante has to go to the very bottom of Hell, climbing down toward Satan's nether regions, before emerging in Purgatory and then if he doesn't see his dead girlfriend Beatrice, he climbs back up/down into Hell and there are six more weeks of winter.

Perhaps next chapter will actually involve Nodoka, whom I've been really meaning to make a central character.

Also next chapter will have an awful lot of Sayuri in it. Why? Because she strikes me as being rather dull. We simply can't have that can we? ::snickers evilly:: 

Currently my writing speed is about a chapter a year. Thanks for being patient and for all your comments and hope you continue to enjoy.

It get's weirder.

-Zorknot

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