Waters Under Earth

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum - harnums@hotmail.com

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

Homepage at:  http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/9758

Chapter 22 : And One to Walk Alone [1 of 3]

Comments welcomed.  I'm not on the list, though, so send 'em privately
if you please.  

Now in sad autumn
As I take my darkening path...
A solitary bird
-Basho

     The light caressed the blade hungrily, glimmering along the
edges, turning the flat surfaces into perfect mirrors.  It slowly
rotated as she moved her hand.

     So beautiful, so utterly and totally pure.  Sharp enough to
split hairs, plain and unadorned.  It would cut easily, cut right
down to the bone, the beautiful purity of bone, as layer of layer
of weak flesh, soft flesh, bloody flesh was stripped away.

     Flesh was sweet and blood was sweet, but bone was sweeter,
sweetest of them all.     
     
**********

     Konatsu woke up screaming again.
     
     He couldn't remember how many days it had been.  Four, 
perhaps five.  Every night since he had come to the Clan Kenzan
compound, he had woke once like this every night, terrified and
unknowing of the terror's source.

     As his eyes came into focus with the darkness, he saw the
shadowy hulk of the dresser in one corner of the room, and the
dressing table with its dim array of pots and bottles.  He had
never imagined there were so many different kinds of makeup.

     Taking deep breaths, he brushed hair out of his eyes and sat
up in the large bed, resting back against the pillows and letting
the fear flow away from him.  His near-naked body was sheathed in
sweat like a second skin, and his heart pounded in his chest like
a drum.

     He pushed down the clinging sheet and swung his feet onto 
the floor, hearing the old wooden boards creak softly in the
darkness as he did.  Walking across the room to the sliding door
that led into the bathroom, he slid it open and stepped from the
wood onto the cool tile, closing the door behind him as he went.

     In the darkness, his hand absently found the switch on the
wall, flooding the bathroom with light.  He turned the tap on the
sink, and cool water began to splash into the basin, gurgling
down the drain.  He splashed a handful across his face, then
another.  

     Straightening up, he looked at himself in the mirror.  
Almost involuntarily, he raised a hand and traced the flatness of
his chest.  A man's chest.  A man's body.

     He was, despite how his stepmother had raised him, despite
how his father had told him to act, despite how Hako referred to
him, a man.  

     With a sigh, he leaned against the sink, resting his 
forehead against the coolness of the mirror's face, closing his
eyes against the sight of his mirror self.  He was so tired; his
body ached.  
     
     Since he had come, he had done nothing but train, by himself
or with Hako.  Despite the large size of Kenzan's compound, he
and the leader of Clan Kenzan appeared to be the only ones here.
He spent the days training, and the nights in his room.  There
were no locks upon his door, but there might as well have been.

     He wondered if Hako ever slept.  She was still awake when he
went to bed, and was always awake when he got up.  The training
they did was not like anything he had done before; before, it had
been easy, so easy he had barely even had to try.

     When he sparred with Hako, it was as if she truly were
trying to kill him.  He bore no small number of cuts and bruises
from narrow escapes, from killing blows pulled at the last minute
by Hako.  

     But he had to be trained.  He was going to be the leader of
Clan Kenzan; that was what Hako had decided.  What he wanted was
of no consequence.

     It seemed that little of what he had ever wanted had ever 
been of any consequence to anyone.
     
     Pushing himself away from the sink, Konatsu walked out of
the bathroom, leaving the door open and the light on.  He went to
the closet door in the wall and opened it, gazing at the racks of
clothing dimly illuminated by the light spilling from the open
bathroom door.  

     Silk kimonos, nearly a dozen, of the finest workmanship, all
in shades of red.  There was a kunoichi outfit as well, not the
ragged one that he had worn before, but a beautiful suit of 
crimson silk that fit him like a glove.  

     But what he wanted was at the back, tucked away into a 
corner in a folded heap.  He pulled it out and walked over to sit
on the edge of his bed, unwrapping the stiff paper that he'd
packed it in when he left Ukyou's restaurant.

     He let the slightly-worn cloth of the kimono she'd given him
fall in folds about his hands as he pulled it out.  With a long
sigh, and a hard pain like a stone in his heart, he lifted it 
free of the wrappings and held it in his lap, letting the paper
that had held it fall to the floor with a soft sound.

     "I miss you, Ukyou," he whispered softly.  "But please,
please stay away.  Please stay safe."
     
     And slowly, as he buried his face in the kimono, and began 
to weep, lonely and scared and frightened, he tried to tell
himself that she would.

**********

     With a bump, the plane touched down at the airport in the
early afternoon.  Ukyou stirred in her seat, half-asleep, then
yawned and stretched slightly, sitting up to look out the window
across the airport scenery.  

     Naha was the biggest city on the southern island of Okinawa,
which wasn't really saying much.  Its population was dwarfed by
that of the major mainland cities, but it was still very much a
modern city.

     Ukyou remembered what she'd learned about Okinawa in history
classes; about the Ryukyu kingdom that had been separate from
Japan for hundreds of years, about the role the islands had
played in the war.  There were lots of sights to see here if you
were a tourist; Shurijo Castle, the Gyokusendo caves, the
Cornerstone of Peace.  

     But she wasn't a tourist; she was here for a reason.  She
had to find Konatsu, and the only leads she had began here.  

     Ask in Naha, the old woman had said.  That was what Ukyou
intended to do.  

     The plane slowed to a gradual stop on the runway, and as the
voice of the pilot came crackling over the speakers, people began
to rise from their seats in preparation to leave.  Ukyou 
unbuckled her seatbelt and prepared to do so as well.

     Later, as she stepped outside the airport building and
looked around for a cab to take her to the hotel, she found
herself taking a deep breath of the air.  She was almost sure 
she could smell the sea, even from here.

     She spotted a cab and raised a hand, hefting her suitcase
and the long wrapped bundle that held her combat spatula.  Try as
she might, she'd been unable to convince the plane's crew to
allow her to take it as carry-on luggage, and it felt good to 
have it back in her hands again.

     The day was warm, far warmer than it would have been in
Tokyo right now.  Okinawa was subtropical, and she could feel all
the effects of that; as she put her luggage into the trunk of the
cab, she found herself already pushing away sweaty strands of
hair that clung to her forehead.

     She watched the buildings go by in silence as she sat in the
back of the cab, the wind from the open window fluttering her
hair about her face.  Music played tinnily from the radio, soft
and sad.  

     She tipped the driver generously when they reached the
hotel; this whole expedition was cutting deeply into all her
savings, but something in her simply didn't care.  The savings
had been for when she needed to start her own household, and 
hardly seemed necessary now.

     Checking in was easy enough; she'd made a reservation in
advance.  The hotel was small, moderately priced and pleasantly
decorated, located near the downtown area of the city.  The 
thin-featured young man behind the counter gave her a room key 
and wished her a pleasant stay, his voice tinged with the accent 
of the Okinawan dialect.

     In her room, she unpacked the week's worth of clothing she'd
brought into the dresser, after changing into shorts and t-shirt
that served as much wiser garb in the thick heat of Naha.  
Strands of paper fluttered like banners from the vents of the
air-conditioner placed in a window overlooking the streets below,
but even that did little to cool the room.  

     She sat down on the futon that lay near one wall of the 
room, beneath a coloured ink print depicting a white bird flying
over a calm ocean, unwrapping her spatula from the soft white
cloth and laying it across her knees.

     Picking up the remote from the floor nearby, she turned on
the television for background noise and began to oil and polish
her weapon.  The easy monotony and the soft hum of the voice from
the television news lulled her in the heat of the day, and she
found her head nodding more than once as she worked on caring for
her weapon.

     "...North Korea continues to deny it is in any way 
responsible for the deaths of six members of a Chinese army 
patrol killed on a beach in Shandong province four days ago.  
Tensions between the two countries have risen since the deaths, 
which the Chinese claim are the work of North Korean spies.  The 
exact circumstances of the deaths are being kept under wraps, but
sources say the manner in which the men were killed is..."

     Ukyou turned off the television, laying her spatula aside
and standing up to stretch with a yawn.  The heat was making her
tired, and she contemplated taking a nap.

     Going to the small bathroom attached to her room, she ran
water in the sink and washed her face and hands, revelling in the
coolness of it.  Returning to her room, she laid out on the futon
and gazed at the wall, thoughts of just how she was going to ask
around about Clan Kenzan running through her head.

     Slowly, her eyes began to drift closed, without her even
truly realizing it.  Hair spilled across her face like a cloak,
still in her clothing, lethargic from the heat, Ukyou slept, as
outside the life of the city went by.

**********

     Konatsu was sitting at the edge of the cliff that extended
out over the beach, gazing down at the white sand a hundred feet
below and watching the waves roll up onto the shore.  

     It was what Hako had suggested he do after the morning's
training.  Hako never really commanded that he do anything; she
simply suggested, in a way that made it perfectly clear that she
would be obeyed.  It was not as if he wasn't used to obeying,
after all.

     And despite everything, the beach was still almost 
heartbreakingly beautiful.  The sand was pure white, the tiny 
crystals shimmering in the sunlight.  Coiled rock formations of 
cooled and hardened lava lay like fat serpents, dotted upon the 
beach below.  Off to his right, a long natural stairway led down
to the beach, twisting along the cliffs.

     He dangled his legs over the edge, and watched the waves
rising and falling.  Far away, he could see a tiny flock of birds
flying to the west, white as the clouds that hung lazily against
the blue.  

     The moment of peace was shattered when Hako sat down beside
him.  He hadn't even heard her approach.

     "Lovely view, isn't it?" she said, brushing a strand of
stark white hair away from where it dangled over her dark eyes.  

     "Yes," Konatsu answered softly, looking away from her across
the clear blue ocean.

     "You don't need to look away from me, dear," Hako said.  
"I'm not going to hurt you."

     "Sorry," Konatsu said, still not looking at her.
     
     Hako reached out and took his chin in a gentle but firm 
grip, turning his head to look into her eyes.  "Do you like it
here, Konatsu?"

     "The sea is very beautiful," Konatsu said noncommitally,
wanting to look away.

     "You need to understand, Konatsu," Hako said softly, the
faintest undertone of menace in her voice.  "Happiness is a
luxury.  Whether you were happier working for that girl does not
matter in the least.  You are a member of the clan, and you will
be until you die.  You have a duty."

     "I know," Konatsu said, relieved as Hako finally released
him and he could look at the rocky ground of the cliff top
instead of into her eyes.  

     "You are good," Hako said.  "But you must be far better.
You lack the edge that is needed to be a true warrior, Konatsu.
You are an unsharpened blade."

     "Oh," Konatsu said, brushing a minute grain of sand from the
leg of his uniform.  The silk whispered softly beneath his
fingers.

     "Have you ever killed anyone?"
     
     Konatsu's head shot up and he shook it frantically.  "No,
never.  I couldn't-"

     Hako laughed.  "You have so much to learn, little girl."
     
     Konatsu shook his head again.  "I don't ever want to-"
     
     Hako's hands shot up and grabbed him by either side of the
head.  She leaned forward, putting her face within a few inches
of his.  The scars of her face seemed to burn against her tanned
skin.  "What you want means nothing, Konatsu.  Nothing."

     Her lips split in a thin rictus of a grin, twisted by the
scar at her mouth.  "Forget everything you have ever thought 
about life, about other people, about love or friendship or
desire.  Everything is lies but what I will tell you, and that is
that there are two ways to live your life, as ruler or ruled.  
People today live in their own nice little worlds, until they
fall through the cracks.  If the average person today realized 
one-hundredth of what goes on behind the scenes, below their 
feet, and what has gone before, their weak little minds would
snap like twigs trodden beneath the feet of the gods."

     The intensity in her gaze was terrifying.  "We are the
walkers in the shadows, Konatsu.  We are the ones who stand
behind the curtain and direct.  We are Kenzan, and we were here
before the current rulers arose, and we will be here after."

     "Let go of me," Konatsu said, half-pleading.
     
     "Make me," Hako snarled.  
     
     "Please," he whispered.
     
     "That girl you lived with in Tokyo," Hako said.  "Did you
ever touch her?"

     "What?"
     
     "Didn't you ever want to kiss her, even if she was another
girl, didn't you want to-"
     
     "Of course, but-"
     
     "You could have.  You were stronger than her.  You could 
have made her do whatever you wanted."

     "But I couldn't," Konatsu said, half-choked by fear and
confusion.  "I couldn't do that to Ukyou, ever."

     "Why not?" Hako hissed.  "The weak must bow to the strong.
Wouldn't it have been wonderful to see her bend to your will, to
tear the clothes from her and-"

     "Don't talk that way about Ukyou," Konatsu said, the fear
giving way to an unfamiliar cold rage.

     "To see her naked flesh moving beneath you," Hako said, eyes
blazing.  "To hear her scream as you-"

     Konatsu moved, a thin cry of anger rising from his lips.  
His arms came up, swept wide, parting Hako's grip and pushing her
hands away from his face.  An instant later, he had wrapped his
hands around her throat.

     "If you ever talk like that about her again, I'll..."
     
     Hako laughed.
     
     Her hand flashed up and seized his wrist.  She gave a quick
twist as she rose to her knees, tearing his hands from her 
throat and slamming him crushingly to the ground.  

     She stood to her feet, looming over him as he tried to catch
his breath.  "Don't forget, Konatsu.  I'm stronger than you.  If
I want to talk that way about her, there's nothing you can do,
unless you can get strong enough to stop me."

     She knelt down and smiled at him.  "And you will never, ever
be strong enough to stop me unless you are willing to become like
me."

     And she rose back up, and just as Konatsu had managed to
recover his breath, it was driven from him by the kick of her
foot into his stomach.  

     As he heard her almost inaudible footsteps tracing away
across the stony ground, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain,
he wished desperately to be anywhere but here.  

     But Hako could find him wherever he went, and even if she
could not, his fear was not so much for what she would do to him
as it was for what she would do to those he cared for.

     Out in the ocean, a stray white bird lost from the flock
gave a solitary cry, echoing out across the waves like a mourning
song.

**********

     Ukyou walked the streets of Naha, combat spatula hung across
her shoulder and hair tied back to keep it cool and out of her
eyes; her bandolier was strapped across her chest, a dozen small
spatulas gleaming in the sun. 

     There were always places like this in the cities; crowded
streets where the cry of street vendors mingled with the 
footsteps of people passing by, where the scent of food cooking
at outdoor stalls drifted into the air like perfume.  

     Street vendors saw a lot of business, a lot of people come
and go.  They knew the cities they lived in as well as anyone.  
She'd met a lot of them, travelling with her father and the
yattai, and though they'd never gone as far as Okinawa, she knew
that things would be much the same here.

     There was something of an informal network that had built up
over time among the traditional travelling food sellers in Japan,
and it had also come to extend to the small open-air cooks in the
cities.  Nothing particularly complex; simply a way of looking 
out for common interests that had grown up centuries before the
unions had been formed, and that had never died away.

     "Afternoon," she said, approaching the old man behind the
grill at the tiny stand beneath a blue and white striped umbrella
that would serve to keep off both sun and rain from the 
propietor.  The smell of yakitori skewers frying filled the air,
fragrant and enticing.

     "Afternoon," the old man said, turning his cooking with a
long fork.  "What can I get you?"

     "One of those skewers would be good," she replied.
     
     The old man nodded and turned one over, his eyes falling for
a moment to the spatula across her back.  A moment later, he
handed her the skewer of grilled chicken, hot from the grill.

     Ukyou blew on it to cool it down, and then popped a chunk
into her mouth, chewing contentedly.  "That's good."

     "I make the best yakitori in the whole city," the old man
said, wrinkled face beaming with pride.

     "Best I ever tasted," Ukyou said.  "I was wondering if you
could help me out."

     "You're not from round here, I can tell that," the old man
said.

     "Yeah," Ukyou said.  "True enough, by the widow's son."
     
     The old man's face went serious immediately.  "I did not
think the widow had a son."

     "No," Ukyou said.  "But she does have a daughter."
     
     The old man nodded and leaned forward slightly.  "What can I
do for you?"

     "Clan Kenzan," Ukyou said.
     
     He went pale and shook his head.  "I am afraid that even the
widow's brother cannot help her daughter now."

     Ukyou felt an uneasiness fall over her.  That meant that the
information could put not only her life in danger, but also his.

     "The widow's daughter needs her dowry," she said, wincing
inwardly at the words.     
     
     The old man hesitated for a moment before speaking, barely a
whisper.  "Shinzo Morimoto."

     Ukyou nodded.  "The widow's daughter is grateful."
     
     "The widow's brother hopes that the dowry will be adequate,"
the old man said, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.  

     The air of tension dissolved slightly with those words, as
Ukyou pulled another piece of hot chicken from the skewer between
her fingers and popped it into her mouth.  "What do I owe you?"

     "On the house," the old man said.  "Provided you never talk
to me again."

     Ukyou nodded and turned away without a word, so quickly she
flung her ponytail over one shoulder.  As she walked away, she
reached up with her hand and absently flipped it back.  She could
feel the old man's eyes watching her as she went.

     She made a point of stopping at a half-dozen other stalls,
buying something to snack on, talking for a moment or two to the
owners, asking about local sights.  If anyone was watching, it
would take the heat off.

     Finally, at a noodle stand squished against the corner of a
faded bookstore, she recited again the old code words, and asked
about someone named Shinzo Morimoto.

     The plump middle-aged woman behind the stand paused in her
stirring of a pot.  "Best you stay away from him, dear."

     "Who is he?" Ukyou asked, leaning her hand on the thin 
wooden counter of the stand.

     "One of the local crime bosses," the woman said with a sigh.
"Small fry as those things go, but big for Okinawa.  You know how 
it is."

     "Protection rackets?" 
     
     The woman nodded.  "And other sundries.  A nice young girl
like you doesn't want to be involved with that kind of thing, now
do you?"

     Ukyou frowned.  "Any idea where I can find him?"
     
     "There's a restaurant he frequents a few blocks down," the
woman said.  "The Aozora Cafe."

     A followed set of directions later, Ukyou found herself at
the restaurant, a pleasant-looking place serving traditional 
Japanese cuisine.  A table of three men in suits, dark jackets
draped over the back of their chairs and shirtsleeves rolled up, 
stood out amidst the chattering crowds of tourists, engaged in a 
quiet discussion; Ukyou was willing to bet one of them was was
Morimoto.

     Making her way to the table, Ukyou saw the gazes of the 
three men turn to her.  Two of them quite blatantly gave her the
standard male look; the third, slightly older, simply looked into 
her eyes, a slight smile on his face.

     "Shinzo Morimoto?" she asked, addressing the third man.
     
     "Yes?" he said.  "What may I do for a pretty girl such as
you today?"

     One of the other men grinned; Ukyou grinned back at him and
shifted her spatula slightly on her shoulder.  He stopped 
grinning.

     "Clan Kenzan," Ukyou said.
     
     Shinzo Morimoto glanced to either side of him.  "Hata, 
Nobuo, take a walk."

     The two men stood up and walked out of the restaurant 
without a backward glance.  

     "Please," Shinzo said, indicating the seats at the table.
"Sit."

     Ukyou pulled out the chair that had been unoccupied when she
arrived, and sat.

     "You old enough to drink?" the yakuza said, indicating the
half-full bottle of sake on the table and the small clay cups.

     "Nope," Ukyou said.
     
     "Good.  Neither was I when I started," he said cheerfully,
pouring a cup for her.  Ukyou got a good look into his eyes as he 
did so, and realized that the man was closer to drunk than he was 
to sober.

     Ukyou took the cup and gulped it down; the alchohol was warm
as it went down her throat.  "You want to know about Kenzan, 
then?" Shinzo said.

     Ukyou lowered the cup and nodded, face feeling slightly
flushed.  "Yup."

     "This won't take long," he said.  "Go home.  Forget about
Kenzan, whatever your reason.  Forget you ever heard of them."

     "That's what everyone keeps on telling me," Ukyou said.  
"And I haven't done it yet.  I'm not about to start."

     Shinzo poured himself a cup of sake, gulped it down, poured
another, gulped it down to.  He looked at her blearily; his face
was thin, but he had the flushed nose and cheeks of a heavy
drinker.  

     "You can't fight them," he said quietly, his dark eyes sad
beneath greying eyebrows.  Of all things, he looked frightened,
very frightened.  "Don't think we didn't try.  But we lost in the
end, and we lost so much."

     He took another drink and sagged back in his chair; in the
background, the other customers chattered on.  "I had a daughter.
She would have been about your age last month, I think.  It's
hard to remember these days."

     He couldn't be older than forty, Ukyou realized, but right
now he looked impossibly aged, impossibly tired.  "The yakuza are
old, but they're older.  And we're like children next to them."

-Continued in section 2


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