Waters Under Earth

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum 
-harnums@thekeep.org
-harnums@hotmail.com (old/backup)

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

Waters Under Earth at Transpacific Fanfiction:  
http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html
http://users.ev1.net/~adina/shrines2/fanfics.html

Chapter 28 : Judgements

     Konatsu woke up to soft, weary darkness.  Someone was
holding his head in her lap, and there was a pain behind his
eyes, a throbbing ache that splintered through his skull like 
shards of glass.  He remembered shards; mirror glass, falling as 
he'd been hurled into the mirror by the great, invisible hand 
that had picked him up in mid-leap.  

     "Hey."  Ukyou smiled down at him from where she sat up
against the headboard of the bed, her hair hanging loose and 
damp, glistening richly in the light from the lamp on the bedside
table, the only light in the room.  She had dressed in one of the
kimonos Hako had given him, a rich dark red with white birds in
flight across it.

     "Hey," he replied weakly.  He didn't feel as bad as he
should have, considering how hard he'd hit.  "How long have I
been out, Ukyou?"

     Ukyou ran her fingers through his hair lightly.  "A few
hours."

     "What happened?" 
     
     A troubled expression vanquished her smile.  "Fuhaiko did
something to you when you went after Nenreiko.  Threw you into
the mirror.  Hako wasn't happy.  Nenreiko patched you up a 
little, and then they left."

     "What did they do to you?" Konatsu asked, feeling a
now-familiar surge of anger.  He had always considered himself a
peaceful person before, but all that had been done to Ukyou since
she'd arrived left him raw with rage at times.

     Ukyou shook her head.  "Nothing.  They just left.  
Nenreiko..."  She drew a long, sighing breath.  "I don't know
what she did.  It felt like having my mind torn open, all my
deepest secrets, my thoughts..."  She trailed away and fell 
silent.  Her hands continued to cradle his aching head in her 
lap.  

     Konatsu reached up and, almost hesitantly, touched his 
fingertips to hers.  "Are you alright now?"

     She nodded.  "As much as I can be.  Had a bath while you
slept.  That made me feel a bit better.  And whatever she did to
me afterwards, she did fix me up before.  My knee's still 
twisted, but other than that, I feel fine."

     "Are you sure?"
     
     There was a haunted look in her lovely eyes for a moment,
and then it was hidden again.  "Yeah.  I'm okay."

     In spite of whatever pleasure he might have derived from 
staying as he was, Konatsu sat up, putting his feet on the floor 
and resting his hands back on the sheets of the bed that Ukyou 
sat on.  "What about Hako?"

     To his shock, Ukyou laughed, not with much humour, but
laughter all the same.  "She looked like she was ready to cut
Fuhaiko's throat.  I think she would have if you'd been hurt much
worse than you were.  I don't know why, but she's awfully
protective of you."

     "She needs me," Konatsu murmured darkly, standing up and
glancing to where the broken mirror of the dressing table cast a
fragmented image of the room.  The air smelt faintly of a dozen
different perfumes, and he could see shattered glass from the
mirror and the bottles of perfume and makeup sprayed across the 
carpet before the vanity.

     "Why?" Ukyou asked.
     
     He took a moment before answering, standing with his back to
her, staring around the room.  "I... don't know."

     "She really thinks you're a girl, doesn't she?" 
     
     He glanced back, shrugged.  "I guess so."
     
     "What do you think?" Ukyou asked.  There was a slight
tremble to the words.     

     "I don't know what I think," he answered, smiling thinly.  
"I'll think as I'm told to, I guess."

     "Konatsu," she said softly, "don't talk like that.  It's not
important what other people want you to be.  Who do you want to
be?"

     He turned his head away from her again, crossed the room to
the dressing table.  Kneeling down, he picked up a long, jagged
shard of mirror glass and looked at his face in it.  "I want to
be Konatsu.  That's all."

     "And is Konatsu a man or a woman?"
     
     He drew a long sigh at the question, stared at his dim
reflection in the fragment of mirror.  "What about you, Ukyou?
Don't you dress as a man sometimes?  Are you a man or a woman?"

     There was a long pause behind him, and when Ukyou finally
spoke, there was a great deal of pain in her voice.  "I'm a 
woman, Konatsu.  I used to think I could stop being that, because
it hurt so much to be a woman.  And I tried, and tried, but I
couldn't.  I still dress like a man sometimes... I don't even 
know why.  It makes me feel better, I guess.  It helps keep the
hurt away."

     He heard her feet touch the floor, the rustle of silk from
the kimono as she walked.  Still, he did not look back.  "I was
told by my father after my mother died that if I acted like a
girl, things would be alright.  But they weren't, and he died
too.  And then I only had my step-mother."

     She was right behind him now, her voice soft in the dim
light.  "That's not what you told us before."

     "No," Konatsu acknowledged, "it wasn't."  In the shard of 
mirror, he could see her face behind his shoulder.  Her eyes were 
sad.  "I liked being a girl, Ukyou.  I liked being beautiful.  I
liked wearing pretty clothes.  Maybe I even came to think that I
was a girl.  I'm not, though.  But if I'm a man, does that mean I
have to stop being who I was before?"

     He saw her close her eyes, and then she took a step forward
and embraced him from behind, linking her hands over his chest
and pressing herself against his back.  The mirror shard dropped
from his suddenly limp fingers and bounced once to lie glittering
on the carpet.

     "No," she whispered softly, leaning her chin against his
shoulder, the sweet, damp fall of her hair brushing against his
face and tickling his nose with the scent of flowered shampoo.
"It doesn't mean that at all.  You are who you are, Konatsu."

     He felt her body beneath the silk of the kimono, soft and 
warm against his back.  Her breath was light against his face, 
like the wind's kiss as he ran.  "Ukyou..." 

     "Don't say anything," she whispered.  "Please, don't say
anything more.  Just let me have this for a little while.  
Please."

     He opened his mouth to speak, and then simply closed it.
With a soft sigh, and a longing so deep it transcended all else,
he simply placed his hands over hers as she held herself against
him, and stared at the glinting shard of their jagged reflection 
upon the ground at his feet.

**********

     Konatsu stared out the glass-fronted doors that led out from
the hallway to the serene, lovely garden beyond, where 
night-blooming flowers grew pale in the darkness, and moonlight
reflected on still ponds; it was one of the four that lay within
the spaces defined by the halls and buildings of the Kenzan
compound.  Eventually, he turned and walked away, sighing deeply.

     The Kenzan compound was laid out with a single large
three-story building in the centre, and four smaller buildings
placed equidistantly at diagonals from the centre one.  Eight
long hallways connected them to the centre building and each
other.  The smaller buildings were living quarters and kitchens,
all of them seemingly deserted except for the room he stayed in.
He had not questioned that; one did not ask questions of Hako.

     He moved down the hallway towards one of those kitchens now.
Ukyou had been unconscious for almost two days, rising fitfully
out of her sleep to murmur words he did not understand before
falling unconscious again.  Hours ago, she had awakened, and had
not fallen again to sleep.  
     
     They had soon been interrupted in that short, delicious
embrace they had shared by Ukyou's stomach growling.  She had
laughed off his offers of food at first, but he knew she would be
starved after all her time asleep.

     He had been responsible for his own meals since he had
arrived.  Hako woke him in the mornings to train, allowed him a
half-hour for lunch, another for dinner, and then let him slump
into bed a few hours later, bone-weary and sore.  Hako had not
trained with him since Ukyou had come; he had spent all his time
caring for her.

     The door that led into the kitchen lay next to the one that
led into the long hallway connecting this smaller building to the 
central building of the compound.  Konatsu wondered what lay 
beyond all the closed doors he'd seen, led through empty
hallways by Hako before they'd climbed the stairs that led to
the training hall that took up all of the third floor.  

     Impulsively, he turned away from the kitchen door and
stepped through.  The emptiness of the Kenzan compound had 
always been oddly peaceful for him when he was alone, walking in 
those gardens that never needed tending, or staring out onto the
white beach while sitting on the edge of the cliff.

     As he stepped into the inner building, though, he felt an
oppressive weight settle over him, and though he told himself 
that the long banks of soft fluorescent lights in the ceiling
that lit the hallways night and day were as bright here as they
were elsewhere, somehow, it seemed darker.

     No peace here.  Desolation, perhaps.  The boards of the
wooden floor creaked alarmingly beneath his feet at times as he
walked.  He shouldn't be here.  He should be in the kitchen, 
getting food for Ukyou and then returning to her.

     Yet he walked on.  He turned a corner, and again saw one of
the gardens through a glass-fronted sliding door.  A tall willow
bent down with grief over a dark pond of water; paths of 
flat-topped stones wound amidst beds of pale, raked gravel and
flowers bright in the moonlight and the glow of lights from 
inside.

     He would take Ukyou out into one of the gardens, he decided
then.  There was pain here, but there was also beauty.  With that
thought and the possibilities it might entail running through his
head, he turned away and walked on.  Voices paused him after a
few steps, coming from behind a wooden door.

     He should turn back, he realized, as he walked softly to the
door and knelt, pressing his ear to it.  

     "...saw her in the girl's memories.  Very fresh."  
Nenreiko's voice.
     
     "Are you sure it was her?" That was Hako.
     
     "All her marks.  An old blind woman who speaks of the 
future.  She gave her the box."  

     "Damn her.  This goes no further.  I will kill her myself."
     
     "And risk breaking the Circle asunder?"  Fuhaiko's voice was
sardonic, only slightly muffled by the door.  "Do not be a fool, 
Hako."

     "Do not mock me, Fuhaiko," Hako answered.  "I still have
half a mind to cut your throat."

     "If I'd wanted to hurt your little pet, Hako, I would have."
     
     "Not a scratch," Hako snarled.  "There can be not even a
mark upon her."

     Nenreiko spoke then.  "Are you sure leaving her with the
other girl is a good idea, then?  Not all marks need lie upon the
flesh."

     Hako only laughed.  "I know Konatsu.  The child is an
innocent.  That makes it easier."     
     
     "We diverge," Fuhaiko interjected.  "That matter is beside
the point.  We cannot be seen in open rebellion.  But if evidence
can be brought forth that she attempted to move secretly against
another member of the Circle..."

     As she trailed off, there was long silence in the room 
beyond.  Konatsu strained to hear anything, his fingers resting
lightly against the door as he knelt.

     "Yes," Hako said finally.  "That would be useful."
     
     "Not time yet," Nenreiko said, her whispery voice carrying
through the door to Konatsu's ear.  "But soon."

     "Always soon," Hako said with a trace of bitterness in her
voice.  "Always soon."

     Konatsu realized suddenly that someone was watching him.  He
turned away from listening at the door and stared down the
corridor.  At the junction of this hallway and another, the old
man who had been with the three women stood, his wrinkled hands
gripping his walking stick heavily.  As before, the tattered
black shape of the crow perched on his shoulder.

     He said nothing, but slowly raised a withered finger to his
lips in a gesture of silencing, smiled coldly, and walked away
down the other hallway.
     
**********

     Konatsu swept the last shards of mirror glass and broken
perfume bottles into the dustpan, and emptied them into the
wastebasket by the dressing table with a soft rattle.

     He looked up from his completed work to where Ukyou sat on
the bed, sipping a cup of jasmine tea.  A delicate china teapot
rested on a tray on the bedside table, a wispy tendril of steam
rising from the spout in a lazy twist.  An empty bowl, chopsticks 
leaning wearily askew within it, lay beside the pot.  Ukyou had 
been very hungry.

     She nodded at him, saying nothing, and drank her tea, both
hands lifting the cup to her mouth.  Her legs lay under the 
covers of the bed, the toes of one foot poking almost teasingly
out from beneath.

     "Are you tired, Ukyou?" he asked as he rose, the small lump
on his head throbbing slightly with the motion.

     "A little," she said, and punctuated that with a yawn.  She
drained her cup and laid it down on the saucer with a clink.  
"What time is it?"
     
     Konatsu thought for a moment.  There was no clock in his
room.  He walked over to the small window that looked out towards
the huge double gate of the Kenzan compound's walls.  "From the
moon, I'd say about midnight."

     Ukyou yawned again, and he turned his head back to look at
her, to see her yawn transform for him into a soft smile.  "I
think I'm going to try and get some sleep.  We'll just see what
happens, right?  Not much else to do."

     Konatsu nodded, staring out the window into the night.  
"We'll see."

     He crossed the room to the light switch by the door, and
flicked it off, again leaving the room only with the light of the
lamp by the bed.

     As he turned back towards Ukyou, he heard the sound of the
covers slipping to the floor.  She had risen out of bed, and was
reaching her hands behind her back to undo the bow of the light
kimono she'd been wearing.  There was a slight smile on her face.

     "Ukyou!" he gasped, bringing a hand up to his mouth.
     
     A shrug of her shoulders, and the kimono dropped from her
body to pool in silky folds upon the carpet at her feet.  He
should have turned away, but something in her eyes would not let
him.  She wore a red chemise, another of the innumerable items of
women's clothing Hako had given him.  Long-sleeved, rather sheer
in places.  Slightly too large for her.

     "It's okay," she said quietly.  "I mean, someone undressed
me after I was unconscious, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't Hako."

     Konatsu felt his face turn crimson at the memory.  "I 
didn't..."

     "Konatsu," Ukyou interrupted, "what happened to my spatula?"
     
     He tried desperately to make his embarrassment fade.  "Hako
cut it in half.  I'm not sure what she did with the pieces after
I left..."

     She shook her head.  "It doesn't matter.  Not now."
     
     She picked the covers up in one hand and slipped back into
bed, pulling them up past her shoulders.  Her back was turned to
him; the fall of her rich hair lay spilling out across the pillow 
and the sheets.  "Goodnight."

     Konatsu walked over to stand by the bed and stared down at
her for a moment, at the shine of light in her hair, studying her
profile.  Then he turned off the lamp, and lay down on the 
hardwood floor beside the bed in the darkness.  He found then 
that sleep came far easier than he had expected it to.
     
     Some time later, he was not sure when, he woke to that
momentary absolute confusion of self and circumstance that
sometimes occurs when sleepers awake.  It passed in an instant,
and he realized he had not woken this time to a nightmare, as he
had in the time here before Ukyou had come, but to the sound of
another weeping in the dark nearby.

     He stood up.  "Ukyou?" he asked, staring at the dim bed.  
Beneath the sheets, he could see her shoulders shaking as she
heaved with quiet sobs.

     "Just go back to sleep, Konatsu," she whispered, haltingly
and through tears.  "It's alright."

     "What's wrong?"
     
     "Thinking," she said softly.  
     
     He ached to comfort her.  "Thinking?"
     
     "About Ranma," she said.  "About my life.  About things that
I've done, things that have happened to me.  Just thinking too
much."

     Hesitantly, he touched her shoulder through the sheets.
"What can I do to help?"

     She turned her head to look at him, tears glittering in her
eyes and on her cheeks, catching what little light entered the
room through the window and the crack beneath the door.  "I..."

     Now she seemed to hesitate.
     
     "What?" he asked.
     
     "Could you just hold me?" she whispered finally, closing her
eyes as if in shame.  There was a painful sadness in her voice, a
very great loneliness that hurt for him to hear.

     He smiled in the darkness.  "Is that all you would ask of 
me, Ukyou?"
     
     Ukyou said nothing.  She drew the covers down to her waist,
and shifted over in the bed.  Disbelieving at first, feeling
almost unable to control his body, he slid in next to her and she
rolled over to face him.

     "Thank you," she said simply, and reached her arms around 
his waist, laid her head against his chest.  The glossy darkness
of her hair spread out across the red silk of his tunic.  His eye
was drawn to individual strands, held like a caged thing by the
beauty of her.  After a moment, she spoke again.  "You're 
supposed to hold me back, you know."

     He put his hands on her shoulders, incapable of speech, and
then cradled her against him.  She shifted slightly, bringing her
body closer to his.  

     "Ranchan and I used to sleep like this when we were just
little kids," she murmured softly, as if speaking from a dream.
"Even though he thought I was another guy, it was still okay
then, because we were just kids..."

     A heavy wave of longing, almost a grief, washed over him.
He understood so little of all this, of what had been between
Ranma and Ukyou, what might still be between, though Ranma had
vanished.  Ten years of desire, ten years of denial of herself,
and then a new hope that would only be shattered anew.

     "But I wouldn't sleep most nights," she went on.  Her body 
was warm against his, soft flesh and hard muscle beneath the 
shift she wore.  "I'd just lie there next to him, listening to 
his heart beat, thinking about how he was mine, how he would be 
mine, and staring up at all the stars..."

     Long was the silence.  He heard her sigh, felt the warmth of
her breath against his chest.  One of her fingers traced a tiny
circle on the small of his back.  "He told me the day before he
vanished that he didn't love me.  I still wasn't really speaking 
to him when he disappeared.  And I... I didn't..."

     And now the tears came again from her, wracking sobs that
seemed to tear free from somewhere deep within her, some dark and
hidden place of the heart.  A purging, of sorts, a cleansing of
all last traces of desire and guilt and regret from her soul.

     Konatsu simply held her.  A human touch, most ancient and
instinctual of comforts.  Eventually, she stopped, and it was, in
a way, an ending.  Perhaps a beginning.

     She raised her lovely, tear-stained face to gaze into his
eyes.  He had always seen well in the darkness, but he wished he
could see what was in her gaze at that moment more than nearly
anything.

     "Thank you," she said again, the second time that night,
with an entirely different edge to the words now.  She released
her arms from around him, and propped herself up on one elbow,
raising her head from his chest.  Dishevelled, her hair clung to
her neck and back.  Sweat glistened on her skin in the thin light
coming through the window.

     "Ukyou..."
     
     "Shh..."
     
     He felt the warmth of her body against him as she moved her
face closer to his; a tracery of softness against his ribcage, an
ankle brushing his for only a second.

     Almost by instinct, he took one of his hands from off her
back and gently cupped her cheek.  He felt the dampness of the
tears she had shed upon it as he did.

     "Konatsu," she whispered.
     
     There came a heavy rapping on the glass of the window.  The 
moment broke instantly.  Konatsu was on his feet and out of bed
before he even realized it.

     He went to the window, sparing a single, regretful glance
back to Ukyou where she sat up in bed, the sheets clutched to her
chest, staring at him with a mixture of hurt and confusion.  The
rapping continued, incessant and ceaseless.

     Out in the night, beyond the glass, a winged shape perched
upon the sill, glaring inside the room with baleful yellow eyes.
It clutched something in its beak.

     Konatsu opened the window inwards, feeling a rush of cool
night air enter into the hot room, and stared at the bird.  He 
raised a hand to shoo it away, and then it spoke.

     "Use it well," the crow whispered, only to him, a sweet,
clear woman's voice that he vaguely recognized but could not
place.  "When the time is right."

     It had dropped whatever it had held onto the sill when it
spoke.  A pale, slender thing, gleaming in the moonlight.  
Konatsu picked it up and stared at it.  

     "When the time is right," the bird said again, and the eyes
seemed as if they might swallow him up.  He could smell the
carrion scent of the thing now, entering the room on the wings of
the night breeze.  He stared at the bird, said nothing.

     It launched itself into the air, flying out of his sight in
seconds.  Konatsu stood by the open window, across the room from
the bed, and let night air play across his face.

     "What was that?"
     
     He glanced back at Ukyou.  "Just a bird at the window," he
said softly, slipping the object surreptitiously into his pocket
and letting no trouble show upon his face.

     Ukyou nodded.  Konatsu did the same.  A silent realization
passed between them; the moment had been broken.  It could not be
reforged, not yet.

     He lay down on the floor beside the bed again, and, to his
great surprise, found sleep as easily as he had before.     
     
**********     

     "I'll wait..."
     
     Akari stood before him, hands clasped demurely in front of
her, a wide-brimmed hat shading her face atop her hair.  Her
smile was beautiful, her eyes, so much love in them, so much
longing.  Her eyes mirrored his own eyes, his own desires.

     "I'll wait for you..."
     
     He tried to take step forward.  But something pulled him
back, and into the shadows he went, away into a darkened sprawl
of city streets, and her image followed him.  He glimpsed her in
the back of alleys, around the corners of buildings, standing
across the street with her hand shading her eyes.  The crowds
passed them by, and every one of them had a face he knew.

     "I'll wait for you.  For as long..."
     
     And the shadows grew, as if the sun were going down, and he
saw Akari fall back into them, smiling still, longing in her 
eyes, whispering devotion.

     Ryoga woke up screaming her name, sweating and gasping out
heaving breaths.  Happosai looked up from where he sat 
cross-legged beneath the window of the guest room in Shampoo's
house, pipe in hand.  "Pleasant dreams?"

     Sunlight and shadow banded Ryoga's chest as he stood up from
the bed laid out on the floor.  "Nope."

     Happosai smiled slightly and blew a ring of smoke into the
air.  "Sunrise.  We need to go downstairs and see Shampoo off."

     Ryoga nodded, stepping over the snoring form of Genma as he
went to where his pack lay in the corner of the room, next to a
beautifully-carved oaken table.  He rummaged through it for a
change of clothing, trying to brush aside the feelings that the
dream had arisen in him.  He missed Akari, certainly, wanted to
see her again, but he had to put other things above that.

     Behind him as he dressed, he heard Genma's snoring cut off,
and the loud thump of a kick.  "Get up, you lazy fool.  It's
sunrise."  Ryoga smiled briefly as Happosai woke Genma up with a
combination of verbal berating and physical abuse, tugged a shirt
on, ran his hands through his hair once, and then turned around.

     Genma was yawning and scratching himself as he sat up on his
blankets, not a pleasant sight early in the morning.  Ryoga
stepped out the door and into the second-floor hallway of
Shampoo's house, a high-ceilinged two-story dwelling that was at
least a century old, but still stood sturdy and strong.  It was
built to last, with thick wooden beams criss-crossing the 
ceiling above his head, and floors of polished oak.

     He walked down a long, narrow flight of stairs into the
large kitchen of the place.  Shampoo's father turned around from
where he stood at the stove, stirring a large pot.  "Good 
morning," he greeted cheerfully.  "The women are at the table
already."

     Ryoga nodded his head.  "Good morning."
     
     The slim, small man smiled at him and turned silently back
to his cooking.  He didn't speak much, from what Ryoga could
tell, and didn't seem particularly concerned about his daughter's
impending return to Jusenkyou.  That kind of man seemed the rule
rather than the exception among the Joketsuzoku, from what 
little Ryoga had seen.

     He walked into the living room, where Akane, Rouge and
Shampoo sat on the floor at a large round table.  In the centre
of the table, a teapot wafted thin clouds of steam into the air.
Akane looked up and nodded a greeting at him as he entered, and
Rouge gave him a bright smile.  Shampoo only stared glumly at the
table, hair hiding her face.

     Ryoga settled down beside her, resting his forearm on the
table edge and leaning over.  "Good morning, Shampoo."

     She favoured him with a brief glance.  "Morning.  Is not
good by any means."     
     
     He winced.  "Sorry."
     
     "Is alright," she said, turning back to staring at the 
table.  "Nothing you do."

     "Would you like some tea, Ryoga?" he heard Rouge ask.
Looking to her for a moment, he shook his head, and saw an odd,
disappointed look pass across her face for a moment as she 
lowered the teapot.

     Happosai and Genma came in then, settled down at the table
and poured themselves tea.  Happosai gave Rouge a quick glance
and grinned at her, eyes twinkling, and she blushed demurely and
looked away.  Ryoga sighed inwardly, trying not to let anything
show on his face.  

     "So..." Akane said, breaking the silence.  "When is Lang Bei
coming?"

     "Soon," Shampoo said with a grimace.
     
     The six of them stared rather uncomfortably around the table
at each other.  At that point, Shampoo's father entered with a
tray full of bowls.  "Breakfast," he said cheerfully.

     Shampoo looked up at her father, almost a glare.  "Is too
early for breakfast."

     "I'll have some," Genma said.  Happosai added his voice to
that.  Ryoga declined, as did Akane and Rouge.  Whistling,
Shampoo's father returned to the kitchen with most of the food
still on the tray.

     Ryoga tapped his fingers on the table and watched Genma and
Happosai consume their breakfast with startling speed.  He looked
from Akane to Rouge to Shampoo, and back again.  He glanced to
the cold fireplace.
     
     "So..." Ryoga began.  "Did everyone sleep well?"
     
     Rouge nodded.  "Very well."
     
     "Like a log," Genma said, looking over the food bowl he was
holding up near his mouth as his chopsticks moved in a blur.     
     
     The sound of someone knocking on the door in the front hall
broke the tension finally, and it was almost with relief that
Ryoga greeted the tall, grey-haired woman who stepped into the
room.  

     "Ready?" Lang Bei asked, dark blue-grey eyes sweeping around 
the room as she held her staff loosely in one hand.  

     Shampoo nodded and stood up, her hands hanging loosely at
her sides, head bowed.  She walked stiffly over to stand before
Lang Bei.

     "Hold your head up, girl," Lang Bei said, though not
unkindly.  "Does a warrior go to face the judgement she has been
given like a child who is to be punished for stealing sweets?"
     
     Ryoga saw a mild tremble run through Shampoo's back and
shoulders, and she lifted her head to look straight at Lang Bei.
"No, honoured elder."

     Lang Bei nodded briefly.  "Who's coming with us?  Have you
chosen your two witnesses?"

     Shampoo glanced back.  "Ryoga, you witness my judgement?"
     
     Ryoga blinked, then nodded.  Reflecting back on things, he
wasn't all that surprised.

     Shampoo turned her gaze away from him.  "Rouge, you witness
my judgement?"

     That was a surprise, though.  Rouge looked shocked for a
moment, then nodded vigorously.  "I'd be honoured."

     Happening to glance to Akane, Ryoga was surprised to see an
almost hurt expression on her face that she quickly hid.  He
stood up from the table, and joined Rouge in walking to stand
with Shampoo before Lang Bei.

     "Come on, children," the elder said, turning with her grey
braid sweeping about her shoulders and walking towards the door.

     Outside, Ryoga stood in the wide streets of the village,
looking up at the sun rising in the distance.  Shampoo stood on
the short flight of steps leading up to the door of her house,
closing the door behind her.

     She turned away and walked down, glanced back once at her
home, and then walked off behind the striding figure of Lang Bei.
Ryoga glanced over to Rouge, nodded silently, and the two of them 
began to follow, as they all went walking towards Jusenkyou.     

**********

     "I can understand me.  But why her?"
     
     Shampoo glanced back.  "What?"
     
     Ryoga pointed up ahead, to where Rouge was talking 
animatedly to Lang Bei as the four of them walked to the west
towards Jusenkyou.  The land was rocky, cast in shadow by the
mountains that loomed all around.  "Why'd you ask Rouge to be a
witness?  Why not Akane?"

     "Not your business," Shampoo said shortly, and kept on
walking.  

     Ryoga quickened his pace to catch up with her.  "Shampoo..."
     
     "Rouge need to get rid of curse, right?" she said.  "This
easiest way to go to Jusenkyou.  You get cured as well, Ryoga."

     He was so stunned, he couldn't even speak for a long moment.
He hadn't even considered this; hadn't even given it a thought
when they'd planned to come to China.  But he could be cured.
Easily.  No more P-chan.  No more guilt, no more temptation.  No 
more lies.  They were a few miles from Jusenkyou.  He was with
people who could guide him to the right pool.
     
     "Ryoga?"
     
     He looked at Shampoo, his feet kicking up puffs of dust on
the trail as they walked.  "Yeah?"

     "You want to get cured, right?"
     
     He slowly nodded.  "But..."
     
     "Akane not yours, Ryoga," Shampoo said.  There was a touch
of something almost like regret in her voice.

     Again, he nodded.  "I know.  But..."
     
     What a relief it would be.  No more terror of cold water.
No more fear that Akane would discover his secret and despise 
him.  And yet...

     "I'm just being stupid," he murmured.
     
     Shampoo sniffed.  "No big change."
     
     He laughed.  They had left the village behind ten minutes
ago, following the trail through the hilly, craggy land that lay
nestled in the mountains.  Jusenkyou was not far from the village
of the Joketsuzoku, but it was avoided.  It was no legend among
them; it was a fact, dangerous and real.

     "I've always hated this curse," he said after a few seconds
of silence.  "Always.  I could pretend I didn't sometimes, but 
I've always wanted to be free of it."

     And now, finally, it seemed he would be, and he did not
understand why he felt so strange.  As if a part of him did not
desire to lose the curse.
     
     And about then, they crested the slow rise of the hill that
they had been walking on, and joined Rouge and Lang Bei as they
looked down upon Jusenkyou spreading out below them.  The rising 
sun spilled down across the dip in the land, cradled in the arms
of the mountains, and the pools shone like mirrors in the light.  
There was mist rising off them, hanging low about the water and 
the land, and twining about the bamboo poles as they rose up into 
the air, obscuring some of the finer detail.

     Jusenkyou had recovered well from the flooding of weeks
before.  The pools were as Ryoga remembered them, so many of 
them, glittering in the sun like jewels.  Jusenkyou in the early
morning would have been a beautiful place to someone who did not
know the terrible history of it, and the horrors it could inflict
upon those who were touched by it.

     To one who did know, like him, it was beautiful still, 
beautiful in the way a blade might be, or a woman you knew could
not ever be yours.  The four of them stood looking upon it for a
few moments, taking in the sight.  Much later, after many things
had happened, Ryoga would summon that memory of Jusenkyou to his 
mind, the morning beauty of the place as he had first come to it
that day.  It would give him a certain comfort.

     They were torn from their staring by the sound of a voice.
"Elder Lang Bei."

     Bai Ling, who had challenged Shampoo's strength when the
other Joketsuzoku had returned, stood a dozen feet away, her arms 
folded across her chest.  Behind her, the small hut of the
Jusenkyou Guide stood, the door open.

     "Good morning, Bai Ling," Lang Bei said, turning away from
the sight of Jusenkyou.  "Where is your great-grandmother?"

     Bai Ling smiled slightly.  Her dark eyes flashed.  "Inside.
You need see what there as well."  Then she turned away and 
walked into the hut.

     "Insolent girl," Lang Bei muttered, walking towards the hut.
Ryoga followed, leaving Shampoo and Rouge looking down at 
Jusenkyou, where it lay a hundred feet down the gentle slope of
the hill the Guide's hut was built upon.

     As Lang Bei walked through the open door of the hut, Ryoga
saw her stiffen and stop; her hand tightened on the staff she
bore.  Moving up behind her, Ryoga looked by into the cramped
confines of the hut.  Fang Shi, Bai Ling and the Guide stood
around a small bed in the corner; Plum sat in one corner of the
hut, bouncing a ball against the dirt floor; a middle-aged woman
in Chinese robes that Ryoga vaguely recognized as part of the
Joketsuzoku Council leaned against the wall near the door, 
trimming her nails with a knife.  On the bed, covers pulled up to
his neck, was Mousse.    

     The woman near the door put her knife away and said 
something to Lang Bei in a snide tone, speaking in Chinese.  
Lang Bei stepped by her without a word and stood by the bed,
beginning a rapid conversation in Chinese with the Guide and Fang
Shi.

     The woman turned her attention to Ryoga.  She had a hard,
unfriendly face, in which youthful beauty could still be traced 
though it had begun to fade some time ago.  "Outsider."

     She spat into the dust near Ryoga's feet and pushed by him,
as she left the hut, muttering under her breath in Chinese.

     "Ignore her," Shampoo said quietly, standing behind him.
"Bi Shou.  Not surprised Fang Shi choose her as other witness."

     Ryoga glanced to the gathering around the bed for a moment,
then turned away and went to kneel down by Plum.  "Hey Plum."

     The young girl looked up, letting her ball stop bouncing to
roll away into another corner of the hut.  "Hello, Ryoga."
     
     She held out her arms to him, and he gave her a quick
embrace, smiling as she wrapped her small arms around his neck.  
He liked the independent child who'd come all the way to Japan 
by herself, seeking to save Jusenkyou from destruction.

     Shampoo's voice was in the conversation taking place behind
them now.  No one sounded happy, particularly Lang Bei.

     "How did Mousse come here?" he asked, settling back to sit
on the floor.

     Sitting against the wall, Plum tugged on one of her pigtails
in a nervous gesture.  "We found him late last night.  By the
pools.  Father was going to go into the Joketsuzoku village later
this morning, but then the two elders arrived at sunrise and told
him to wait."

     She stood up and offered her hand.  "I'll show you."
     
     Ryoga followed her out of the crowded hut, her hand in his,
and let her lead him down the slope towards Jusenkyou.  Glancing
back, he saw Bi Shou looking at him balefully from under the
shadow of a copse of trees, her arms crossed.

     Plum took him along the winding, spongy earthen pathways
that led amidst the pools, and finally paused by one near the
centre, indicating it with a finger.  "Here."

     Ryoga looked around.  Off to the north, he saw a trail
leading along the high slope of one of the mountains, overhanging
some of the further pools.

     Some time ago, he had been an angry young man, wandering
along that trail, almost ready to give up his pursuit of 
vengeance and try to find his way home.  Jusenkyou had changed 
all that.  Had changed everything.  Somehow, it all came back to
here, back to this place.  Jusenkyou.

     He stared at the mist rising from the pools and thinning out
as the sun rose higher.  It clung damply to his hands and face,
made the Guide's house a dim and obscured shape and the mountains
looming and dark.

     "Which pool is this?" he asked quietly.
     
     "Nannichuan," Plum answered.
     
     Ryoga fell to his knees beside the pool, staring at the
reflection of his face.  It seemed impossibly deep; he could not
see the bottom.  The earth was damp, vital and fresh beneath his
hands as he pressed them to it.

     "Nannichuan," he said dully.
     
     Plum took a few steps back.  She looked worried.  "I 
shouldn't be out here by myself.  Father says..."

     Ryoga sighed.  "Go back to the others, Plum.  I've got to...
think for a little."

     Plum nodded and scampered away down the twisting paths of
Jusenkyou.  Ryoga gazed into the pool, looking for answers.

     "What are you waiting for?" he asked himself softly, 
watching as the reflection opened his mouth and spoke.  "This is
what you've always wanted."
     
     It lay in front of him, not fake or impermanent or drained.
A few steps, an immersion, and he would be rid of his curse.  
Why could he not take them, then?  Does the prisoner, on the day
of freedom, long for the walls of stone and bars of iron, and 
fear the brightness of the sun?
     
     "Ryoga?" 
     
     He gazed at himself in the pool.  "Just give me a minute,
Shampoo."

     "Don't be idiot, for once."
     
     Someone grabbed him firmly by the belt and tossed him
headfirst into the pool.  He gave a strangled yell, cut off by
the water closing over his head and entering his mouth.  He 
rose, feet finding purchase on the muddy bottom, soaking wet,
human, and vaguely astonished.

     Shampoo stood a few steps back, the closest thing she'd had
to a smile all morning on her face.  "Men always so indecisive."

     Ryoga hauled himself out of the pool, dripping wet, and
glared at her.  "I would have done that eventually."

     "Not have time," Shampoo said shortly.  "Judgement is
starting.  You come now."

     Cold and damp in the morning air, wet clothes clinging to
his body, Ryoga followed her as she walked off through the
slowly-vanishing mists of Jusenkyou.  They met the others at the
edge, where the pools began.  The two groups were quite clearly
split; Lang Bei, Rouge, the Guide and Plum on one side, Fang Shi,
Bai Ling and Bi Shou on the other.  Fang Shi and Lang Bei were
staring intently at each other; the hostility between the two
elders was an almost physical presence in the air.

     Fang Shi flicked a glance to Shampoo and Ryoga as they
approached, and shifted the long polearm leaning against her
shoulder.  "Shall we get this over with?"

     Bi Shou leaned over and said something quietly to the older
woman, too softly for Ryoga to hear.  But he saw her gesture at
him, and Fang Shi gave a single, sharp burst of laughter.

     "Yes," she said, staring at Ryoga.  "He does rather look 
like one in that wet clothing, doesn't he?"

     "If you are done amusing yourselves," Lang Bei said tightly.
"I would have thought it beneath the elders of the Council to
mock those who come among us as welcomed guests, but, as has
occurred before, you have proven me wrong."

     Fang Shi turned in silence, ancient body moving with 
scuttling grace beneath the shapeless blue robes she wore, and 
leapt with astonishing ease to stand atop one of the poles, her 
great weapon held easily and loosely in both hands.  She 
shouted something to Shampoo in Chinese.

     Shampoo glanced at Ryoga for a quick second, a determined
look in her eyes.  Then, with a cry, she vaulted to balance on
one foot on a pole a dozen feet away from the elder, her other 
leg drawn up to her chest and arms raised in a combat position.

     "What are they doing?" Ryoga asked, moving to stand with
Lang Bei and the others.

     "They're going to fight," Lang Bei murmured distantly.  Her
eyes were on the hut on the hill.  "Fang Shi is going to try and
knock Shampoo into one of the pools, and Shampoo's going to try
not to get knocked off."

     "How long does that go on?"
     
     She spared him a brief glance.  "Until one of them gets
knocked off the poles."

     Fang Shi shifted her position slightly, pointed with her
crescent-bladed polearm at Shampoo.  The wicked edge glinted in
the sunlight.

     Ryoga stared, aghast.  "She's going to cut Shampoo to 
pieces."

     "No," Lang Bei said, her eyes returning to the hut that held
her grandson.  "She said she would not.  It is on her head if she
draws blood with that weapon."

     That did little to quell Ryoga's fear, but he fell into 
silence as he looked from Shampoo, poised and ready, to the old
woman perched across from her.

     "I hope she'll be okay," Rouge said, staring at the ground.
"What a horrible punishment..."

     "It has been one of our laws for thousands of years," Lang
Bei said quietly.  "We allow the waters their judgement at 
times."

     Fang Shi moved almost imperceptibly.  Shampoo gave a tiny
shift in response.  They stared at each other across the empty
space, and then Fang Shi darted forward, skipping from pole to
pole towards Shampoo.

     Shampoo leapt away, pursued by the elder, unable to even
attempt a counter-attack because of the length of Fang Shi's
weapon.  The ancient woman thrust and swung with almost blinding
speed, driving Shampoo further and further back into the centre
of Jusenkyou.

     A heavy silence hung over the watchers of the judgement on
either side.  Plum was clinging to her father's legs; the short
man rested a plump hand on her back, his expression grave.

     Whirling her blade overhead as she leapt, Fang Shi lashed
out yet again at Shampoo, a long, circular cut that carried the
weapon out in front of her in a wide arc.  It was slow and almost
comically easy for the agile girl to avoid, but the purpose 
became clear a moment later, as the bamboo poles for dozens of
feet beyond the arc of the elder's swing were chopped down as if
by invisible swords, some nearly to the base.

     "Some sort of air blade attack..." Ryoga murmured.  He began
to realize then that Shampoo had no chance here; Fang Shi was
very good.  All she was doing was delaying the inevitable.  The
knowledge of that left a sick feeling in his heart.
          
     Shampoo danced atop one of the cut poles for a moment, 
hovering less than a foot above the sparkling surface of a pool
before springing away to one that had been only half-cut.

     Fang Shi was close behind her.  Too close, Ryoga saw, and he
resisted the urge to shut his eyes as the elder swung at 
Shampoo's head with her weapon, seeming not to care for whatever
earlier promises she had made.

     The blade flashed, and one of the long tails of hair Shampoo
wore at the sides of her face fell away, splashing down into the
pool below.  Shampoo, off-balance, leapt to the side, twisting 
her body as she flew to present a harder target.
     
     It didn't matter.  Fang Shi followed up, reversing her 
swing, and cut off nearly half of Shampoo's hair at the back.
Ryoga heard Rouge gasp, but he could not look back, not turn his
eyes away from the scene being played out.

     Shampoo half-stumbled as she touched down on the next pole,
with Fang Shi right behind her.  The elder lashed out, a straight
thrust with the blunt end of her polearm.

     Shampoo leapt up and over the thrust, touching her feet down 
on the shaft of the weapon for a moment before she leapt for Fang 
Shi, her foot out for a kick.

     Against a foe less wily or skilled, it might have worked,
but Fang Shi was too fast and too good.  Angling her blow up, she 
tangled Shampoo's legs, hooked the shaft of her weapon behind one
of the girl's knees, and flung her away towards one of the pools.  
Ryoga heard her, faintly, laugh.

     Shampoo stretched out a desperate hand as she tumbled, and
snagged the upper part of a bamboo pole.  It swayed slightly, but
held as she clung to it, feet only inches above the pool it 
thrust out of.  Ryoga saw her begin to haul herself up with one 
arm, saw Fang Shi leaping from pole to pole towards her in a blur
of motion, and, seeing those two things, realized it was too 
late.

     Fang Shi swung her weapon.  The part of the pole Shampoo 
gripped was sliced away, and she plunged down into the pool, 
sinking below the surface with a strangled scream.

     Ryoga was running then, praying he wouldn't slip and fall
into a pool, praying he wouldn't lose his way in the mists and go
in the wrong direction.  The others were behind him; Fang Shi 
stood by the pool Shampoo had fallen into, resting the shaft of
her polearm on the soft earth nearby.
     
     "Judgement is passed," Fang Shi said quietly, and with a
great deal of cold triumph, as they approached.     
     
     "You should not have cut her hair," Lang Bei said just as
quietly.  "That is a form of public humiliation in the lawbooks, 
and was not required."

     "It was a battle," Fang Shi answered.  "These things 
happen."

     A few bubbles rose from the depths of the pool.  Below the
murky surface, Ryoga could see a dark shape, struggling.  It
seemed impossibly far down.
     
     He reached down and grabbed Fang Shi by the collar.  "Why
isn't she coming up?" he snarled.  The elder looked surprised for
a moment, and then slammed him crushingly to the ground with
ease.

     "In the old days, an outsider could have his hands cut off
for laying them upon a Council member," Bi Shou said from where
she stood behind them.  "It is unfortunate they are past."

     "Be quiet," Lang Bei snapped.  She turned to the Guide, as
Ryoga rose to his feet and dusted himself off.  "What pool is 
that?"

     The Guide opened his mouth to answer, but before he could,
Shampoo rose out of the water, gasping for breath.  What 
remained of her hair clung damply to her face and shoulders as 
she tread water in the pool.

     "Is Nyannichuan," she said wonderingly, holding up her hands 
in front of her and staring at them disbelievingly as she waded 
to shore.  "I... cured."

     Lang Bei looked at the shocked face of Fang Shi.  "It
appears indeed that judgement has been passed, elder Fang Shi.
Shall we return to the village and inform them of it?"

     Then, as if it had been ordained some time in the far, far
distant past, the last of the mists boiled away in the rising
heat of the day, and the light of the sun struck fully down upon
Jusenkyou for the first time that morning, and each pool gathered
the light unto itself, until each of them shone like a diamond,
like a crystal with a burning heart of flame.
     
**********     
     
     Nabiki surveyed the early-morning schoolyard, totally
deserted over an hour before classes started.  The sun was still 
rising, muted by grey clouds that streamed across the sky in a
long, dark cape.  

     A wind blew across her, and she shivered and hunched her
shoulders, gripping her bag tightly in both hands.  The morning
was cold; summer was fading to autumn, slowly, and the leaves of 
the trees near the gate of the school were turning with the 
passing of seasons, the transition of green to all the colours of 
flame, and eventually towards the fall, the drift from branch to 
ground, to be gathered then into pyres and burned.

     She never came so early.  But she knew that he did, some
days.  Not often, but often enough that she held some vague hope
he would be here, and she might surprise him.  That would give
her a slight advantage; better than arranging a meeting or 
showing up at his house.  

     She walked across the athletic field until she was behind
the school, out by the equipment sheds that stored yard tools and
sports equipment.  It was there she found him, a tall shape
standing on the grass nearby, defined in the light of the morning 
sun, blue and darker blue, and the wooden blade moving gracefully, 
and the shadow mirroring all motion on the ground.

     "Kuno," she called.  Not Kuno-baby, she wouldn't call him
that now.  Give him a bit of respect; find out what he actually
knew.  And don't let it show that she was scared.

     He turned and let his blade drop.  The point bounced once on
the grass and then came to rest, as he held the weapon loosely in
one hand.  "Nabiki Tendo."

     She willed herself to drop the bag she held across her body
like a shield and approached him, letting it swing casually in
one hand.  "Sorry I ran out on you last night."  Make a joke of
it, that was the way to go.  Don't show any fear.  

     "A certain modesty on your part is rather becoming," he
mused.  He smiled thinly.  The mask was down, like it had been in
the park.  "For once."

     She bit down whatever retort she might have had.  "Can we
talk?  I came early to talk to you."

     He nodded.  The wind gusted his hakama about his long legs
as he turned and walked to stand next to the wall of one of the
equipment sheds.  He sat down on the cold concrete as if it did
not bother him and laid his bokken over his crossed legs, resting
his back against the wall of the shed.

     Nabiki settled down across from him, trying to arrange her 
dress in such a way that it would protect her bare legs from the 
chill ground.  Kuno tracked her with his eyes as she sat.

     "So," she said, composing herself.  "What do you know?"  For
once, perhaps, the direct approach would work best.     
     
     He regarded her with a level gaze, the thin smile still on
his mouth.  "I know that you have been selling information on
Ranma and his friends to certain people that in hindsight, it was
probably best not to get involved with in the first place."

     "Do you think I had a choice?" Nabiki murmured, staring back
at him.

     He nodded once.  "There is always a choice."
     
     "Yeah," Nabiki said, and laughed ruefully.  "There was
another choice.  Not much of one, but I guess I could have made
it."

     For a moment, she saw a flicker of something in his eyes
that might have been compassion.  "Nabiki Tendo..."

     She changed the subject abruptly.  "How did you know?"
     
     His eyes went hard again.  "The man whom you report to 
reports to my grandfather."

     This time, her laughter was genuine, albeit tinged with
bitterness.  "It all makes sense.  That's why you can afford to
live the way you do.  You're yakuza."

     "No!" Kuno interjected sharply.  "I am not.  The business of
my father's companies are legitimate.  On my mother's side..."
His face darkened.  "I had not spoken to my grandfather 
willingly until recently."

     "What changed?"
     
     "My sister died," Kuno replied bluntly.  
     
     For a moment, Nabiki could not speak.  "I'm sorry," she
finally managed.  So many more question, but there was no way to
ask them of him.  The fact sunk in, was stored for future
reference, but made no impression at the time.  Too much else to
worry about.

     "Are you truly?" Kuno asked sardonically.  There was a very
vast grief behind his eyes.

     "Yes," Nabiki snapped.  "Do you think I've got no heart at
all?"

     A long silence.
     
     At last, he shook his head.  "You realize what danger you
have put yourself and your family in?"

     "Of course I do," Nabiki whispered.  "Bad enough I'm 
probably going to end up..."

     She trailed away, and fixed her eyes on the ground.  Tears
threatened to blur her vision.  "That's one of the reasons I came 
here," she said after a moment to regain control.  "I thought 
that if you knew about all that, you might know how I could..." A 
sudden hope filled her.  She looked up.  "Yoshiyuki reports to 
your grandfather, right?  Can't he..."

     And now Kuno laughed, and such an awful depth of bitterness
echoed in his laugh.  "Were it in his power, he would free you
from whatever debt his organization holds over you.  But it is
not.  He reports to another."

     "Shit," Nabiki said softly, closing her eyes.  The yakuza 
were as bad as the government for bureaucracy.

     Kuno seemed to sense her thoughts somehow.  "Not yakuza.  
Worse."

     Her head snapped up.  "What?"
     
     "You have so many questions, Nabiki Tendo," he said quietly.
"Answer one of mine.  How did you come to be involved with such
as them?  I would think you more intelligent than that."

     "I would have as well, once," Nabiki murmured.  "I'm 
starting to see that I'm not quite as smart as I used to think."
     
     "How?" Kuno prompted.
     
     She paused for a moment in thought, staring at him as she
did, studying the lines of his face and the cast of his eyes.
How much more damage could it really do, she realized finally.
He might even already know.  He might simply want to hear it from 
her mouth.

     "Mom died when I was ten," she began quietly, and was
surprised at how much buried pain the words brought forth.
"Everyone took it hard.  Dad cut back on his teaching, and 
finally stopped altogether.  He tried not to let it show, but I
knew enough about numbers to see that we were in trouble.  He
used to let me look at the bank statements; I guess he didn't
think I could understand them at that age.  We were going through 
our savings really fast.  There was the mortgage to pay off, and 
the hospital bills.  Too many debts, too little money."

     Always too little money.  "When I was twelve, a man came to 
visit Dad.  Dad told Kasumi and Akane and me to stay in our
rooms, but I snuck out and listened to them after a while.  The
man was offering to pay off all our debts, but Dad was angry at
him, yelled at him, threw him out of the house."

     She drew a shuddering breath.  Kuno was listening in total
silence.  "I didn't understand why.  I heard Dad crying in the
kitchen, and I snuck downstairs and went outside to follow the
man.  I caught up with him at the corner, and..."

     She paused and looked at Kuno.  "I think he must have been
your grandfather.  The age would be about right, and..."

     Now that she knew the connection, she was sure.  Kuno's eyes
were like the older man's had been on that day five years ago,
staring down at the girl who'd grabbed onto the sleeve of his
expensive suit at the corner.  The image of the man was still
firmly fixed in her mind after all the years; she compared him to
Kuno, found traces of the same features.  "I told him I'd do 
anything if he gave us the money, but he explained that dad 
didn't want to take money from him."

     She laughed, suddenly, because it was either that she laugh
or start crying.  "I told him I had a plan.  It was such a good
plan; Dad never suspected a thing."

     "What was the plan?" Kuno asked.
     
     Again, she laughed.  "He took me out for coffee.  He was so
nice; I didn't even realize what he was.  I made up a rich,
distant relative of my mother's who'd been the middle of three
daughters.  She would die and send me a lot of money in her 
will, because I was the middle child too."

     She shrugged.  "A kid's plan.  He made it work, though.  He
had the resources to do it, to make it all look legit, look real.  
And I gave the money to Daddy, and he was so grateful, I 
remember..."

     She remembered her father crying, sweeping her up into a hug 
as she showed him the fake letter and the cheque, and told him
about what she wanted to do with the money.  It had made her feel 
smarter than everyone else.  It had made her feel important, even 
though it was Kasumi who cooked all the meals and kept the house, 
even though it was Akane who was learning the Art in the dojo 
whenever their father was willing to teach her.

     "He was really happy," she said.  "God, I was so dumb then.
The man said he'd call me if he ever needed me to do something
for him.  When Ranma showed up, he did.  I understood by then
what I'd done, but a deal's a deal.  And it wasn't like I could
actually refuse.  And they said they would pay me."

     She smiled shakily.  "I guess you know the rest, huh?"
     
     Kuno tapped his fingers idly on the sun-scarred wood of his
bokken and said nothing.

     "What I want to know," she said musingly, "is how they knew
all those years back that Ranma would be showing up."

     "From what my grandfather has told me," Kuno said quietly,
"those to whom he reports to have been watching Ranma for a long,
long time."

     "So now that I've answered your question," Nabiki said,
"answer mine.  Who are they?"

     "Grandfather said little of them," he answered.  "They are
all women, I know that.  They don't age.  They are very hard to 
kill."

     His voice was very quiet, and his eyes were sad.  "And 
beginning twelve years ago, they systematically butchered the
families of key yakuza members until all the oyabuns and their
organizations submitted to their will."

     And now his voice dropped to a bare whisper, a vein of grief
running through it like gold through stone.  "And I defied one of
them, and for that she caused my sister's death.  She made it
appear an accident."

     Nabiki stared at him in silence for a moment.  She had
thought last night that he was mad; that who he had pretended to
be had only disguised a dark, dangerous core.

     And perhaps it did, she realized, looking at his eyes.  But
there was a dangerous sanity in how he spoke, a sense that he, at
least, had no doubts of what he said.  It sounded mad, of course;
women who did not age, who could bring the vast might of the
yakuza to heel, who could kill and not be detected.

     Any madder, some inner voice whispered, than people who
changed shape with water, or a land of cursed springs, or a
winged race whose king was a child with a god's power?  She had
seen the first, heard of the other two from her younger sister.

     And Akane had told her what had happened on the mountain.
Women who controlled shadows, who made lightning come from clear
sky.  They had wanted Ranma; they had been ready to kill all the
rest of them to get him.  

     Puzzle pieces began to fall into place, dozens of sections 
of disparate information connecting to each other in a few quick
seconds, as automatic to her as breathing.  

     "Oh god," she whispered heavily as she began to realize.
"Ranma.  It was always Ranma.  They wanted to know what he was
doing, where he had been, who he had fought, how it had
happened..."

     Fear was nothing.  Fear was a word for what she had felt
before, when she had been entrapped in something she could
understand, something she could reconcile with the world of
numbers and dealings that occupied most of her time.  Fear was
not adequate; terror, perhaps, as if she had lit a candle in some
deep, dark pit only to see that all around lay all the bones of 
all the dead.

     She was shaking.  One of Kuno's hands was on her shoulder, a
human touch, mildest of comforts.  She should have pushed it 
away, but did not.  A sick, numb ache was growing in the pit of
her stomach.

     "Ranma is the key," Kuno said quietly.  His hand squeezed
her shoulder gently.  "Everything centres upon him."

     "What?" Nabiki asked, confused, trying to stop shaking but
unable.       
     
     "I had a dream," he replied.  "A week before he came.  A
creature both male and female who burned as bright as the sun,
and the people gathered to his light.  And those who came too
close to him burned, as moths burn drawn to candles."

     "Why'd you do it, Tatewaki?" she asked, too conscious of his
hand upon her shoulder to be comfortable.  "Even before Ranma 
came, all those years... my sister..."

     There was a long silence between them.  He took his hand
from her shoulder, and in his eyes there was a very deep sadness,
one that she did not think she could ever understand.

     "I was an actor upon a stage, Nabiki Tendo," he said 
finally.  "I played my part, believing I did what was best for my 
ends."  Pausing, he lifted his bokken slightly in both hands, as 
if weighing it.  "I think now that I was wrong.  But what is done 
is done."
     
     Nabiki looked at him for a moment, aghast.  "What ends?  
What could possibly be worth pretending to be something you're
not?"

     He lowered his bokken to rest it upon his knees again, and
slowly met her eyes.  From beyond the shelter of the equipment
sheds, she could hear the sounds of other students arriving now, 
and realized she had been here, talking with him, for a very long 
time.

     "If they cannot touch you, they cannot hurt you."  His voice
was very soft, and a gust of wind blew a few scattered leaves,
green and torn from the trees too early, by them across the cold 
concrete.  "If they do not know you, they cannot betray you."

     "Who can't betray you?"
     
     He smiled thinly.  "Everyone.  Everyone, Nabiki Tendo."
     
     She stared into his eyes.  "What about me?"
     
     He laughed, harshly.  "We are on equal footing now, Nabiki.
Each of us knows something of the other that we do not desire
others to know, yes?"
     
     She nodded, and said nothing.  Her legs had grown stiff with
pins and needles from having sat on the ground so long.  "Tell me
one more thing."

     "What?"
     
     "Why'd you go after my sister?"
     
     He ran a hand through his hair.  "Because I was sure that
she would reject me."

     Abruptly, he stood to his feet, stretching and rotating his
shoulders.  His bokken dangled loosely from one hand.  "We should
part, Nabiki Tendo.  Classes will begin soon."

     He leaned down and offered her his free hand.  To her own
surprise, perhaps to his, she took it and allowed him to pull her
to her feet.  "Thanks."

     She stood there for a moment, her hand in his, letting the
blood flow back into her cold, numb legs and looking at his stoic
face.  His eyes were bright and hard, intelligent.  He was an
actor, she realized, a superb one; he had fooled them all, even
her.  And he was quite possibly insane, though not in a way she
had ever imagined someone could be insane.

     "We are both in a great deal of danger," he said at last, as
if it were something they both did not already know.  "You even
more now because of what I have told you, and what you have told
me.  But hear me out, Nabiki Tendo."

     He let go of her hand and seemed to gather himself.  He was,
she realized, going to make a speech, of sorts, if she recognized
the signs correctly.

     "If I believed in any gods any more," he began, "I would
swear by them.  But now I can swear only by myself, and what
honour one whose existence has been for the most part a lie could
be said to possess.  I will do all that I can to help you and 
yours, Nabiki Tendo.  I swear it."

     "Thank you," Nabiki said, genuinely grateful to another
person for the first time she could remember in a very long time.
For the offer of help, the sharing of his own secrets, and also,
she realized, for listening to the sharing of hers.

     She was still terrified.  The guilt, however, at how far she
had allowed herself to fall, was less.  She felt cleansed, as if
washed in water, and felt a thin spar of hope for the first time.
Thin, insubstantial, but hope all the same.

     "We're in this together, then?" she asked quietly, holding
out her hand.  He took it in both of his and shook it formally.

     "It is a deal," he answered.  "Together."
     
     In the distance, all the bells of the school began to ring,
shattering the peace of the moment, summoning them away.
     
*********     
     
     The light went out.  A thin knife of laughter cut from the
darkness.  "Can you see in the dark, children?"

     "Stay together," Wiyeed's voice said, clearly and almost
frighteningly calm.  "Ranma, Herb, give me your hands."

     Ranma reached out and found her in the darkness, slipped his
hand into hers.  "What are you doing?"

     Out from somewhere in the dark, the World-Hater laughed
again.  There was a sound like a great wind howling down a
mountain pass, a roaring scream that seemed to build and build 
and build.

     "Get in close," Wiyeed said.  "Quickly, now."
     
     Footsteps.  Mint, Lime, Kima.  Herb had been next to Wiyeed
when the light had gone out.

     The piercing scream grew higher and sharper, until Ranma 
felt as if his ears would explode.  Wiyeed's hand gripped his
tightly.  Ranma felt a slight touch upon his mind, a 
feather-light probing.

     The screaming grew, as if all the winds of the world
gathered howling around them.  He heard laughter again, drowned
out by that vast screaming.

     Then it stopped.  Totally and completely.  Silence reigned, 
dead and heavy, over everything.
     
     "Now," Wiyeed said desperately.  "Let me use your power."
     
     It was easy enough.  He realized the touch upon his mind was
her, showing him how.  They had done something like this before,
the three of them in a circle, to make light in the darkness when
one alone had not been enough.

     Ranma opened himself, and let his ki flow out of him and
into her, through the contact of their hands.  Then there was a
screaming as of wind again, deafeningly loud, gigantic even
compared to the first howling.

     He felt the ground beneath his feet rock, and a dome of
light flared around them, centred on Wiyeed.  He saw, in the
brief second of illumination, the stone floor to either side of
them being furrowed and ripped away as if by some great plow, 
rock shattering as a scum of ice formed across it and it 
crystallized and exploded, debris pattering off the shield.  He 
heard the wind screaming past them, and saw frost crystals 
forming in the air as it went by and then falling to shatter on
the ground.
     
     Dozens of feet away, he saw the Ravager, left hand raised,
silver hair whipping around his face.  The ground before him was 
torn and rent like an arctic wound, a long swathe of icy 
destruction that split at the dome of light into two lines,
diverging around the barrier in a fork.

     Then the light went out again, and all was still; the air
was freezing cold around them, like the heart of winter.  
Wiyeed's grip was so tight as to be painful.  Ranma felt drained 
and tired; something was stirring wearily in the back of his 
mind, that vast and ancient force of ice and fire.  He forced it 
back down.
     
     "Very impressive," the Ravager said from the darkness.  
"How long can you keep that up, little one?"

     "As long as I must," Wiyeed answered.
     
     "Wiyeed--" Herb began.
     
     "Shut up, Herb," she hissed.  "Get in closer.  Close as
possible.  That makes it easier."
     
     "Master Herb--" two voices said in unison.
     
     "Mint, Lime, get over here and be quiet."
     
     Footsteps again.  Ranma felt a hand fall upon his shoulder.
"Ranma?" 
     
     He reached up with his free hand and laid it across the
almost-human talon of Kima's.  Said nothing.  Tried to ignore the
trembling in his legs, the great weariness.

     There was a roaring sound, and the air was filled with
flames.  The dome of light flared again, showing the six of them
huddled tightly together, showing the world consumed by fire.
Wiyeed's teeth were gritted, her eyes closed.  Sweat beaded her
face, making her hair cling damply to her forehead.

     "Lady protect us," she whispered softly.  "He's so strong."
     
     The inferno of heat rolled around them, red-orange tongues
of flame stroking across the barrier.  Ranma heard stone
exploding beyond the dome, detonating at the impossibly great 
heat.

     Then it stopped.  The flames died away, revealing for a
moment before Wiyeed let the dome of light fall a wasteland of
blackened and melted stone, filled with huge clouds of steam from
the ice that had boiled away.  Ranma saw no walls or ceiling in 
this place; only the endless floor, stretching out in all
directions, and then the light was gone.  The heat of the flames
had not died yet; he felt the heavy caress of heat across his
face.

     "Wiyeed," Ranma asked softly, "are you okay?"
     
     "I'm alright," she answered wearily back.  "I can't keep
this up for long, though.  We have to get out of here."

     "How, precisely?" Herb demanded.  "We don't even know how we
got here."

     There was a click, and a pale light shining from the carved
ivory box in Kima's hand.  It was almost shocking, to see that
tiny, bright light when before the only illumination had been the
flaring of Wiyeed's shield or the annihilating glow of the heat
of the flames.  "Ranma, remember when we came through from 
Ryugenzawa to Jusenkyou?"

     Ranma glanced back to her where she stood behind him, her
hand still on his shoulder.  "Yeah."

     She looked silently to where his hand covered hers, and he
took it away, embarrassed.  "Remember what it was like between?"

     (...vast darkness, all-consuming absence of light...)
     
     He nodded slowly.  "Dark."
     
     (...the invisible cold of the spaces between the stars,
places where the light has never reached...)

     "I think he was waiting there," Kima concluded.  She looked
to Wiyeed, as if for confirmation.  "Well, sorceress?  Does the
hypothesis hold?"

     "That is not a title I like," Wiyeed murmured, her eyes
half-closed, still holding hands with Herb and Ranma.  "But I
believe you are correct."

     "All well and good," Herb, his face harshly defined by the
light Kima held.  "But where is he now?"

     There was a light chuckle from somewhere high above them.
Wiyeed almost got the shield up again in time, but the
black-armoured shape, plunging like a stooping falcon, crashed 
into her with both feet, smashing her to the ground and ripping 
her hands free from Herb and Ranma.  Checked by the shield, the
Ravager had resorted to purely physical force.

     A blade of light rushed up Herb's arm, and he sliced
sideways at the Ravager's neck, as the silver-haired man landed
lightly on his feet near the fallen body of Wiyeed.

     The World-Hater dodged with ease, and casually backhanded
Herb across the face, snapping his head sideways and driving him
staggering back.  Lime swung at him, snarling ferally, and the
Ravager grabbed his wrist, spun, and tossed the huge boy
crushingly to the floor.

     He knelt and seized Wiyeed by the throat with a 
seven-fingered silver hand, the gems upon it sparkling in the
light; bright rubies, liquid emeralds, pearls like tears, a 
single triangular diamond on the back the size of a man's eye.  
"She dies if another of you makes a move towards me."

     Ranma backed away, and saw Mint, his curved sword drawn and 
held nervously in his hands, do the same.  

     "You'll kill her anyway," Herb said coldly, wiping a hand
across a lip split by the Ravager's blow.  "You're going to kill
all of us in the end."

     The Ravager lifted the weakly-struggling girl by the neck,
dangling her loosely off the ground.  "True enough."

     He turned his eyes to Ranma.  They were simply fire in the
sockets.  "A deal, perhaps, Lord of Waters?"

     Ranma glared back at him.  There was a pounding in the back
of his head, a rising and falling like the waves hitting the
cliffs.  "I won't make deals with you."
     
     "But we both have something to offer," the Ravager said
chidingly.  "I am forbidden to slay you, Lord of Waters.  And yet
you may oppose me, and make my vengeance difficult upon these
five."  

     He gestured with his free hand at the others.  "And I hold 
their lives in my hands.  Literally, in the case of this one."
He spared a glance to Wiyeed as he held her a foot off the floor
with one hand.  Her eyes were narrowed with hate as she looked at 
him, both hands gripping his arm to keep from being choked.

     "Cursed be your name till the end of time," she said.  
There was blood in her hair from where her head had struck the
floor as she fell.  "May the Lady never guide you down that last 
river, and may your dark soul find no peace anywhere in all the 
worlds."

     The Ravager struck her across the face with his free hand.
"Empty threats, little one.  What I serve is older than your Lady
by far, and the Dark loves those who do its will."

     "Do not touch her again," Herb said.  His voice was very
cold.  "Mark my words.  Mark them well."

     "The bloodline has not changed in all these years," the
Ravager said, turning blazing eyes to Herb.  "You are still
blindingly arrogant, all of you."

     He glanced to Wiyeed.  "And your whores are still most fair.
Would your body give me pleasure, I wonder, young one?  Would you 
learn to scream my name, in time?"

     Wiyeed glared coldly at him.  "I would sooner die."
     
     He grinned savagely.  "The choice is not yours to make."
     
     "Leave her alone," Ranma said, clenching his fists and
taking a step forward.  "I'll talk.  What do you want?"

     The Ravager lowered his arm slightly, almost letting 
Wiyeed's feet touch the floor.  "Choose two of them."

     "What?"
     
     "Choose two of them," the World-Hater repeated.  "I will let
them and yourself leave this place.  The other three will stay
with me."

     Herb turned his head to look at Ranma.  "Take the women and
go, Saotome.  We of the Musk shall deal with this."

     Standing behind Ranma, Kima made a disgusted sound.  "How
typical.  Let the poor, helpless females flee, while the men stay
here and get nobly torn limb from limb."

     Herb glanced at her dismissively.  "Would you stay in my 
place, then?" he asked.  "You can do nothing here.  You cannot 
even fly any longer."

     Stunned, Ranma watched as Kima stared at Herb, her face
blank, a mask.  "Stay here and die then, childkiller," she said
at last, a coldness like ice in her voice.  "I, for one, shall 
not mourn the loss."

     Ranma looked from one to the other, unable to speak.  There
had been no cruelty in Herb's voice.  He could read nothing in
the other man's eyes.  He looked to Kima, saw only a fierce, 
steady, wounded pain in hers.  She turned away, shoulders slumped 
and head bowed.  

     The Ravager laughed.  "Delightful.  Utterly delightful.  I
hope you let me keep those two, Lord of Waters.  I'll just force
the two of them to remain in each other's company."

     "Shut up," Ranma snarled, whirling and stabbing a finger
through the air.  "You're not keeping anyone."

     "Then we have no deal?" the silver-haired man asked with
mock sadness.  Ranma hesitated for a moment, and then saw 
Wiyeed's nod, almost unnoticeable.
     
     "I'll negotiate," he said quietly.  "Let me stay here.  Let
the rest of them go."

     The World-Hater shook his head.  "That I cannot do."
     
     "Let me stay, then," Herb said, the first words he had
spoken since that casual, impossibly cruel thing he had said to
Kima.  "Let the others go.  I am sure I will provide you with
amusement enough."

     A little of Ranma's rage at the Musk prince lessened at the
sincerity in those words.  A little, but not all.  Once they were
out of here, he decided, he and Herb were going to have a 
discussion.

     "Too little for me in that deal," the World-Hater said,
laughing.  "Too little, dear prince."     
     
     Ranma frowned.  "This is going nowhere."
     
     He glanced to Wiyeed.  She nodded again.  All the Ravager's
attention was on him and Herb now.  Mint and Lime stood in
silence, confused and not knowing what to do.  The thin circle of
light Kima held was barely enough to contain the scene playing
itself out upon the stone floor.
     
     "Let me take three," Ranma said.
     
     The Ravager paused to consider it.  "If I may choose one of
those who stays."

     "Who?"
     
     "Only if you agree first."
     
     Ranma shook his head.  "No can do."
     
     Wiyeed moved then, very quickly.  The hand she'd slowly
crept down while keeping a grip on the Ravager's arm with the
other seized the dagger from her belt, drew it forth, and 
stabbed it into the Ravager's eye.

     He screamed.  A blinding flare of light exploded from the
curved blade, buried to the hilt in his face, a shining, 
pulsating glow like a star.  He staggered back, dropping Wiyeed, 
and clutched both his hands to the slim dagger.

     Herb caught his sister as she nearly collapsed to the ground
and leapt back with her, as the Ravager pulled the blade free 
with a terrible wet sound and cast it to the ground.

     He looked at brother and sister.  His right eye blazed with
hate, the fire brighter than ever before, and his left was a 
ruined, gaping socket of blood and worse, dripping down the 
smooth, beautiful lines of his face.  A few weak tongues of fire 
licked about within the terrible wound, rimmed with black at 
their edges.
     
     "I owe a hand and an eye now to the cursed weapons of the
first ones," he hissed, holding up his flesh hand to cover the
ragged hole in his face.  "I have made my choice.  You two will 
stay.  I give you no choice in this, Lord of Waters.  Are we
agreed?"

     "No," Ranma said, and struck.  He remembered Galm, held in a
world he should never have existed in by those black chains that
he had unbound.  It was Kima who had given him the idea, the
understanding he had needed, and Wiyeed who had given him the
time.  That, and the Ravager's staggering arrogance, his childish
desire to play with what he had captured.

     This was the place between the waters, a place of the Dark,
obedient to the Ravager's will.  And they did not belong here; he
had trapped them and held them, against their desires, against 
the will of the waters.  He was Lord of Waters, then, and this
was against his will.

     He looked with his eyes - call them eyes, perhaps - at the
weave and flow of this place.  There was a vast darkness, and
something burning black at the centre, and six faint lights bound
to that black burning like moths to the flame, with chains forged
of hate and vengeance.

     It was astonishingly easy.  If the Ravager had been 
expecting it, it would not have been, but he was taken by
surprise as Ranma began slicing, with a bright blade of purest
will, at the weave and wind of his trap.  

     The World-Hater tried; he sent his own vast will lashing
back like the binding threads of a spider's web, seeking again to
trap, to pull them back.  Ranma fought back, unbinding his 
efforts, slowly pulling them free of the trap.

     A last cutting, a last act of will, and the darkness became 
as light, and the stone became as water.  Again, now, they were
falling, down into a depth of the ocean, with waters closing in
over their head, and a blinding, beautiful light at the end,
welcoming them home.  And in the darkness behind, a voice
shrieking hatred and vengeance denied.

**********

     The part of the Dark that had once been called the Ravager
screamed in fury as his prey escaped.  He raged in his lightless
dominion, like a spoiled child denied a toy.  As he had so many
times before, he hammered with his vast hate against the confines 
of this place, as he had for four thousand years, and as always
before, he could not break free from the mindless embrace of the
Dark that held and loved him, smothering him like an 
over-protective mother and keeping him away from the light and 
hope of the world he had been born into to destroy.  

     As he had so many times before, he gathered the tortured, 
fragmented soul of the woman who had sacrificed herself to send 
him here, and made it whole, and inflicted agonies upon her that
would have broken the strongest will.  She broke, of course.  She 
always did, in the end.  But such a thing gave him little 
pleasure after so much time confined, and he casually threw the
essence of her being into the lightless space, as he had so many
times before.  The Dark took her gladly; it was not often it 
could claim one such as her.

     He was patient, though.  He would wait.  It was hard - very
hard - for him to observe the world beyond his prison, but he
could sense the greatest disturbances in the weave and skein of
time.  The Serpent walked in the Valley of the Waters now, and
the Lord of Waters went now towards his final meeting with the
third and last.  Across the ocean, the forces of his servants
gathered, a vast and mighty corruption seething like a cancer
beneath the surface of the land.

     What remained of the Ravager - who could only recollect with
effort the name he had been given at his birth - sat and brooded
for a moment, his silver hand cupping his chin.  Even after four
millennia, the habits of physical existence had not disappeared
completely from him.  He crafted a replacement eye from the
malleable stuff of this place, of purest hammered gold and many
shining gems, and its beauty pleased him.  Beauty still could, 
if only because he could render it ugly so easily.

     In time, though, he heard the voice of his master calling -
like him, only a part of a part, though a far greater part than 
he - and he left, returning to mingle with the Dark like a river 
comes in time to merge with the sea.  His essence unbound from
the physical shape he had crafted, and what remained of him fell
into something like a sleep, again to wait.

     Soon, the true day of judgement would come, a final 
judgement for those who had defied he and his master's will...

     ...for the land that they lived in...
     
     ...for the powers that had cradled and protected them...
     
     ...for everything.