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 [2 of 3]

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

**********

     "I think you've had enough to drink, don't you?" Ukyou said,
softly reaching out and taking the bottle away from his 
unresisting fingers.

     "He certainly has," a dulcet voice said from behind her.
     
     Ukyou glanced back to see a young woman, a few years older
than she was at most.  She wore loose jeans and a sleeveless 
white blouse, but the way she stood and the hard muscles of her
bare arms showed a lot of exercise.  Her dark hair was cut very
short.

     "And you would be?" Ukyou asked frostily.
     
     "I would be Kako," the woman said.  "That's Sae and Yui."
     
     Ukyou looked back to Shinzo to see two other women, about 
the same age and dressed almost identically to Kako.  One had her
hair up in a high ponytail, and the other's spilled down her back
nearly to her waist.  Both had a hand on Shinzo's shoulder; the
yakuza looked pale and frightened.

     "We hear that you are interested in Clan Kenzan," Kako said.
"We are most able to help you."

     Ukyou silently weighed her options; if she raised a fuss in
the crowded restaurant, she might get away, but other people 
might get hurt.  And despite whatever danger this presented, it
looked to be the best chance she'd have to find Konatsu.
     
     "Okay," Ukyou said, standing up.
     
     "Stay with Morimoto, Sae," Kako said.  The ponytailed woman
nodded, and the long-haired one moved away to stand near Ukyou,
the two older women flanking her on each side.

     The last thing Ukyou saw as the three of them left the
restaurant was Shinzo Morimoto's pale and terrified face, and the
small smile of Sae as she gently traced his throat with slender
fingers, as all around him the other customers ate, oblivious to
all but their food.

**********

     The two of them made their move in an alley, after ten or so
minutes of walking had led Ukyou and her two escorts down into an
almost deserted area of the city near the docks, with the smell 
of sea and rotted garbage in the air.

     Fortunately, Ukyou had been expecting something like this,
and, as soon as she heard the soft hiss of the knives being drawn
from their concealed sheaths, she was in motion.  Her heel 
slammed down as hard as she could on the instep of Yui's foot,
and the woman gave a satisfying shriek of pain, high and loud.

     At the same time, she drove her elbow into Kako's stomach
and pushed forward, spinning and drawing her spatula from her
back in a smooth motion, metal cool and comforting in her hands.

     She realized, on the edge of her mind, that the two had been
intending to kill her and dump her in the alley all along, but
she was running on adrenaline and anger and a little fear, and
there wasn't much room for anything else.

     Yui came forward first, long hair flowing behind her in the
swiftness of her motion.  Hobbled as she was by the pain of her
foot, she was still quick and agile, a long blade flashing in her
hand as she rushed Ukyou.

     Ukyou sidestepped and whirled, and the flat of her spatula
bounced off one side of Yui's head; a second later, the other
side of her head bounced off the alley wall, and she collapsed 
unmoving to the ground.

     Kako had recovered her breath by then, and her own knife
angled itself at Ukyou's heart.  There was a cold anger in her
eyes, and her lip curled back into a sneer.

     Ukyou remembered what the blind old woman had told her.
Kenzan did something to their members at a certain age, something
to their minds.  She found that easy to believe; Kako's eyes were
terrifying in their coldness, in their lack of emotion.

     She feinted high with the knife, then slashed at Ukyou's
stomach; Ukyou backstepped, swinging out with her spatula at head
height.

     Kako ducked under, and then Ukyou moved in, shifting her 
grip slightly, moving with the momentum of her weapon, and 
smashing Kako across the jaw with the heavy ring at the opposite
end at the end of her swing.  

     The knife clattered to the alley floor, and Ukyou let her
spatula go, hearing it bounce of the wall.  As Kako staggered,
Ukyou grabbed her by the collar of her blouse and slammed her
back against the alley well, placing the razored edge of one of
her throwing spatulas against the older woman's throat as she
did; Yui was an unconscious heap on the alley floor behind them.

     "Talk," she said, glaring into Kako's cold dark eyes.
     
     "You won't kill me," Kako said.  "You're not the type."
     
     "Don't try me," Ukyou said, and pushed forward with the
spatula slightly.  A thin line of blood well across Kako's
throat; Ukyou was astonished at her own ruthlessness, but there
was a dark core of anger that had lain festering inside her for
many days now, and it was finally having a chance to come forth.
"Where is Clan Kenzan's headquarters?"

     Kako was silent, looking at Ukyou with the purest hatred she
had ever witnessed.  

     "Where?" Ukyou said, putting as much menace into her voice
as possible.     
     
     "Two miles due north of a village on the coast down south," 
Kako said.  "It's called Dasumura.  There's a bus that goes down 
there from Naha; it takes about two hours.  Follow the coastline
north and you'll find it."

     "Thanks," Ukyou said, not meaning it in the least.
     
     "You'd be better to let me kill you, though," Kako said,
smiling thinly, the hate caustic in her tone.  "I'll do it much
quicker than Lady Hako will."

     "At what age exactly do they put you girls under mind 
control, anyway?" Ukyou asked.

     "Mind control?" Kako said, looking almost surprised.
     
     "Never mind," Ukyou said, taking the spatula away from 
Kako's throat and hitting her across the jaw with a hard punch.
That was enough, combined with the earlier blow, to put the woman
under.

     Ukyou shook her stinging hand and tried to think of what she
was going to do next.  She had to move fast; she couldn't have
these two following her, or anyone else.  
     
     She tied the hands of the two unconscious kunoichi, then 
tied them together, back to back.  Thankfully, she'd thought to 
carry some strong cord; you never knew when it might come in 
handy.

     Mentally, she took a quick inventory; she had her weapons,
and she had the three objects that had been given to her before
she'd left Nerima, Shampoo's ring on the little finger of her
left hand, the box and the carved bamboo stick tucked into a hip 
pack at her waist.

     And right now, she also had a bus to catch, so she ran out 
of the alleyway as fast as she could.

**********

     Kako came awake roughly ten minutes after Ukyou left the
alley.  Yui was a dead weight against her back, still out from
the double blow she'd received from the girl's weapon and the
alley wall.

     She had been faster than Kako had been expecting, and she'd
obviously been prepared for them.  She silently cursed her own
lack of care; it would have done well for her advancement in Clan
Kenzan if she'd been able to deliver the girl's body to Lady 
Hako.  Those were the orders given to all members who lived near
the clan compound; kill anyone who looks for information and
bring the body to Hako.

     No one actually lived on the compound but Hako, and anyone
she might be training.  Kako flexed her hands, and began to work
at the ropes.  There was still time to catch the girl before she
got on her way.

     She would kill her slowly.
     
     A dry hiss, like old leaves rubbing together, made her raise
her head.  Her eye followed the source of the sound to an empty
patch of shadow cast by the walls of the alley.

     Mentally shrugging the distraction off, she managed to get
her hands free in a few minutes, and the other ropes followed
soon after.  She stood up, Yui's unconscious form slumping over
to the ground as she did.

     Rubbing the tender bruise on her jaw, she knelt down by her 
comrade and turned her over onto her back, checking her injuries. 
There were already swelling lumps on either side of her head, and
it was possible Yui might have a concussion; the girl had hit her
very hard.

     "Yui?" Kako said, lightly slapping the face of her comrade.
She was not particularly concerned one way or the other; there
was hardly anything that could be called friendship among the
kunoichi of Clan Kenzan.  Loyalty, perhaps, but no more than
that.

     There was another hiss, but louder, deeper pitched.  Like
laughter, almost, though inhuman.  Kako turned away from Yui; a
quick flick of her wrist sent a knife, smaller than the one she'd
wielded before, into her hand.

     "Who's there?"
     
     The noise continued, but it could not be described as a 
hiss anymore.  A wet gurgle, a manic titter shaped from the 
sound of  something vast moving through dank places.  

     Fear was not a common emotion to Kako.  Few emotions ever
had been to her, to tell the truth.  But the sound filled her 
with a vague unease, a chill creeping up and down her spine.

     And then someone stepped out of the shadows, emerging from
them like from behind a curtain.  She flipped the long braid of
dark hair behind her back with one black-nailed hand, and looked
at Kako with disdain, dark eyes staring over a black mask that
covered her mouth and nose.  A black robe hugged the curves of
her body, cinched tight at the waist and flowing down over the
long definitions of her legs.

     The woman in black laughed, and it was the scrape of a knife
on flesh and bone.

     Kako sent the blade speeding at her left eye without a
moment's hesitation.     
     
     The woman reached up, blindingly quick, and snatched it from
the air, pinching the flat of the blade between two fingers.  She
dropped it to the alley floor with a clang, startingly loud in
the silence.  

     Kako turned to run.
     
     Pain flared blindingly across her lower back, arced through 
every nerve of her body.  She tasted blood in her mouth as her 
legs collapsed of their own accord.  Her cheek scraped against
the alley floor; darkness edged the corners of her vision.

     A hand lifted her by the hair and raised her head, and she
looked into the cold, horribly dark eyes of the woman in black.
Another hand was raised for her to see, and she saw crimson
dripping in streaks down ebony nails and alabaster skin, glinting
wetly on the razors beneath the black-laquered fingernails.
     
     The hand slowly pulled down the mask, leaving a trail of
blood down the black silk, but, in one small mercy, Kako passed
out from blood loss before she was forced to see the reason why
Yamiko wore a mask.
          
**********

     Hako picked up the phone on the second ring.
     
     "Hello?"
     
     "Lady Hako, we have a problem."
     
     She recognized Sae's voice.  It was slightly shaky; the girl
had never truly acquired the ability to entirely suppress the
emotions that was needed.  "What is it?"

     "A girl was in the city earlier today, asking about the 
clan.  She managed to talk to Morimoto while he was drunk; we're
not sure how much she got out of him before we intervened, 
but..."

     "Just kill her," Hako said tiredly.  "You know that."
     
     "That's the problem," Sae said on the other end of the line.
"Yui and Kako took her while I dealt with Morimoto, but now 
they're gone, missing.  We think she may know the location of the 
compound."

     "So have the Dasamura branch assemble a team and watch for 
her," Hako wearily replied.  "If she manages to actually get into 
the compound, I'll deal with her.  I'd rather not, and I'll be 
very disappointed in all of you, but..."

     "Oh, no, Lady Hako," Sae interrupted.  "We will find her."
     
     A thought suddenly struck Hako.  "What did she look like?"
     
     A quick description of the girl followed.  When Sae told her
about the weapon the girl had carried, Hako's grip tightened on
the phone.

     "Tell them to watch for her in Dasumura," she said slowly.  
"When she arrives, have them contact me.  Do no more than that."

     She could tell by the pause on the line that the girl was on
the verge of asking a question, but all the members of the clan
who had ever met the head knew better than to question her.  
"Yes, Lady Hako," the girl said finally.  "Goodbye."

     There was a click on the other end.  Hako hung up, and
sighed as she saw that, in a moment of distraction, her right
hand had been busily gouging chunks of wood out of the desk with
a knife.

     "Stop that," she snarled, grabbing the wrist her left hand.
There was a moment of resistance, and then the hand went
momentarily limp before the feeling returned to it.

     Hako stood up, flexing her fingers and scowling.  The girl
had come after all; she had expected that her concern would be
for her vanished fiancee.  Then again, her understanding of the
tangled situation that Yoko had been watching in Tokyo was 
fairly sparse; Yoko had never been forward with information, only 
with demands.

     It was almost a blessing that Yoko had moved against her
first.  It had been a minor transgression, the killing of a
single servant, and a man at that.  But it had been a first move,
and that had given Hako the excuse to retaliate.  

     To her surprise, she had discovered that there had been a
number of minor slights like hers against the other senior 
members of the Circle Eternal as well, bearing Yoko's mark.  None
had directly confronted her, of course; things did not work that
way.  

     She supposed it was Yoko's way of testing to see how far she 
could go; if she was not checked, she would go further, until she 
had the Circle under her thumb, as if they were not all equals.

     Hako shrugged.  Not that she particularly believed in that
kind of thing anyway, but it had always been the foolishness
spouted by the other members.  She considered the elaborate
rituals and worship rather silly herself, but the allegiance
between the Circle and Clan Kenzan was old.  She knew that well
enough.  

     She would do more than check Yoko.  The power struggle
between the thirteen senior members scattered throughout Japan
had always been going on, but it had been purely political 
before, shadow plays within a shadow world.  Now, it looked as 
if things might have finally come to the surface.

     Like a dam bursting, Hako thought silently.  Everything
looks fine, until those few cracks explode, and then the carnage
is beyond imagining.

     Hako smiled.  She enjoyed carnage.  She was very good at it,
and usually came out on top.  It appeared that the time had come
for a shift in power.  

     She plucked up the knife from the desk in her right hand and
threw, burying it up to the hilt in the thick oak door of the
study, then picked up the phone again.  She had some time to
waste before the girl arrived, and she might as well waste it
constructively.

**********

     Ukyou realized there was something wrong with the town as
soon as she arrived.  She'd caught the bus from Naha just as it
was leaving the station, but she'd noticed none of the other
tourists had gotten off at this stop.  

     The town was pleasant looking, admittedly, a rustic little
place that she'd seen variations on a hundred times while
travelling with her father.  She'd put the number of people at 
around a thousand, given the size and number of buildings.  But 
there was something hanging over it, a feeling of wrongness, 
like a haze of smoke.  Sunlight seemed muted, and the normally
pleasant sea-smell of the Pacific was tinged vaguely with an 
acrid scent like something burning.

     There didn't seem to be enough people on the streets.  It
only took her a few minutes to realize that most of the people
she did see were women, all looking very similiar to the three
Kenzan members she'd left behind in Naha.  

     She remembered vaguely the conversation she'd had with
Happosai in the backyard of the Tendo house.  He'd talked about
power wielded from the shadows, from behind the scenes.

     Thinking about that kind of thing frightened Ukyou slightly;
how much power, she wondered, was actually wielded by those in
the shadows?  The street vendors, the kind of people who had been 
disdainful about a yakuza boss had been afraid to give her 
information on Clan Kenzan.  The yakuza boss himself had been 
afraid of them.  

     She realized then that Dasumura was likely thick with Kenzan
members.  She had to get out here and heading north up the
coastline; she had no idea how fast information might travel
between the clan members, but Kako and Yui would probably have
escaped by now.  And unless kunoichi had some aversion to using
phones, she was likely being watched.

     She had to get out of here, and fast.  She made her way
through the centre of the small town as quickly as possible, 
trying to blend in, as well as someone carrying a spatula the
size of a halberd on her back can blend in.

     She gradually made her way to the outskirts of town, out
past a picturesque little harbour that was almost deserted,
except for a few hard-eyed women who watched her without looking
as if they did.  
     
     The whole place was creepy, and would have been even if
Ukyou hadn't been sure it was just a cover for Kenzan activities.     
Walking down past the docks to the sandy beach, Ukyou gazed up to
the north along the coastline, waves lapping softly at her
sandalled feet.  At the ultimate edge of her vision, she saw a 
cliff face beginning to rise from the beach.  

     Perched upon a cliff that overlooks a beach of white sand.
Where Kenzan lairs in their darkness.  Ukyou clenched a fist
tightly and scowled.  She realized vaguely that she should have
been afraid, that she was in enemy territory, and was about to
walk deeper into it.  

     But there wasn't room for fear.  There was only anger, that
anyone would dare to hurt Konatsu further.  All his life had had
been beaten down, whipped into submission by his family.  And now
it seemed as if Clan Kenzan was going to go even further than
that.  

     Not if she had anything to say about it, though.  Perhaps 
all this, this cold determination, perhaps it was only a way of
distracting herself from other things.  But that didn't matter.

     Konatsu was what mattered.
     
     Ukyou walked back into town, and followed a winding path
throughout the streets, feeling invisible eyes watching her from
windows, from doorways open only a crack, from places she could
not see.  Finally, she took the path that led a few hundred feet
back to the place the bus had dropped her off.  It probably
wouldn't do much good to deter really determined watchers, but
she didn't have the time for anything more.  

     She walked north for ten minutes, taking it slowly, taking
in the scenery of the flat plains and sparsely scattered trees.
Then she walked west, until she reached the beach again.  She
stared out across the vastness of the ocean, to the west.  

     Somewhere across those rolling waves, she knew that Akane
and the others were headed for Jusenkyou, for Shampoo's village.
They were going to look for Ranma.  

     Sometimes, it seemed to her that too much time was spent in
looking for what you'd lost.  Ukyou sat down on the beach and
sighed, hugging her knees to her chest.  Thinking like this only
made her depressed.  

     She traced a meaningless pattern in the white sand with her
finger, and that made her think of making hearts in sauce, and-
     
     And now she was crying, damn it all.
     
     Wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, Ukyou stood 
up, sand shifting beneath her sandals, grains tickling the soles
of her feet as it slipped in.  

     Ranma had been such a jerk, such a completely inconsiderate,
insensitive, ungrateful jerk.  

     But she still missed him, and she still loved him a little,
and she still wanted, just a little, to imagine that he could
love her back.

     She gathered the grief and forced it down, piled anger and
determination atop it.     
     
     The tears stopped as quickly as they had begun, and Ukyou
took a deep breath and began to walk north along the narrowing
beach, towards the cliffs rising in the distance.

     In the air above, a white sea-bird wheeled once, softly 
calling, lost, lost, lost.

**********

     Yamiko watched the girl stand up and move north up the beach 
from the cover of the shadows cast by a thin tree upon the 
stretch of hilly, grassy ground that lay on the other side of the
beach.  
     
     That was one of them.  One of the ones she'd fought on the
mountain, when Denkoko had been killed, when everything had gone
wrong in their plan.  

     Her dark eyes narrowed, and she growled, low and deep in her
throat.  The girl was responsible, in some small part, for 
Denkoko's death.  Under any other circumstance, the temptation 
would have been to rip her to shreds slowly, letting the pain 
linger.  

     But she had thrown her lot in with Yoko now, and Yoko had
told her to protect the girl.  She was going to Hako, and she was
going to help them bring Hako down.  

     Yamiko was not a good leader by nature.  She had arisen to a
senior position in the Circle simply because she was extremely
hard to kill, and had managed to outlive most of the others.  
Magic, particularly the sort of magic the Circle dealt in, was a
dangerous business; a mistake dealing with a power like Galm was
almost always fatal.

     She had always gone along with Denkoko because the other
woman had always seemed to have good ideas.  Now she went along
with Yoko because otherwise Yoko likely would have killed her.

     Hako had apparently slaughtered some of the Children that
owed allegiance to Yoko.  That could not be allowed.  Yoko said
so.  
     
     That sort of thing was too unsubtle for the Circle.  Hako
needed to be brought down, but in such a way that suspicion would
not fall on Yoko.  The girl was a pawn, though Yamiko did not
understand how a child like that could possibly bring down 
someone like Hako.

     Yamiko was incredibly dangerous in combat.  All the senior
members were, their abilities enchanced by spells and by the
gifts of the master.  
     
     Yamiko knew that Hako could, in simple hand-to-hand combat,
beat any one of them with ease.  But Yamiko knew that Yoko was
seldom wrong in things such as this; just as she had been granted
dominion over the shadows, over the darkness, so too had Yoko 
been given the gift of seeing deeper and further into the tangled
skein of reality than was normally possible.

     It was not that Yoko knew the future, because the future was
not fixed.  She simply understood much better the complex weave
of events that would lead to desired ends, and how a single act
could resonate, changing everything, spreading out and leaving
nothing intact.

     Yamiko buried her thoughts and stepped out of the shadows,
glancing around.  The girl was a speck in the distance, moving up
the beach.  
     
     Odd.  She'd been expecting some of the Kenzan members 
present in Dasumura to at least follow the girl; like the Circle,
they had not gotten where they were by being incautious.  Even if
her disposing of the two the girl had left tied in the alley had 
stopped the news reaching Dasumura, there still should have been
observers.

     Yamiko sighed, or her closest approximation of it, which was
rather like a piece of sheet metal being torn in half.  She had 
been hoping to do some more killing before the day was through.  

     Shrugging, she gathered the darkness around her like a 
cloak, and set off to follow the girl.  

**********

     It was slow going, walking on the sand, but Ukyou managed
well enough.  Twilight began to fall as she walked, the sky
turning ruddy, streaked with purple and crimson clouds, as the 
sun sank into the western ocean.  

     Twilight fell, and, as she continued to walk, night began to
come as well, an unravelling of the sky from sunset to darkness.

     One moment, there was light, as the last of the sun hung
above the rim of the horizon, and then it dipped below, and the
darkness came.  Ukyou stopped and looked up at the stars, at the
waning moon, still nearly full.  A wind blew from the west,
tasting of salt and sea, fluttering her hair about her face.  

     She felt a slight chill, and continued to walk.  She was
sure it had been more than two miles now.  Kako had almost
certainly lied; she'd been stupid to trust her at all.  The
Kenzan headquarters were likely nowhere near here.

     A dark movement out of the corner of her eye made her turn 
her head, but it was only the branches of a thin tree waving in
the wind, skeletal arms.  

     Shaking her head, Ukyou looked up at the twenty feet or so
of high, rocky cliffs that rose above her head.  The beach was a
narrow stretch now, perhaps twenty feet wide.  Lava formations
were scattered across the white sand, formed untold ages ago
when the fires of the volcanoes had spewn forth from the heart of
the earth.

     The waves rolled gently on the beach, as Ukyou turned and
began to walk back the way she'd came, berating herself for
foolishness in walking on the beach, letting herself get
distracted by the beauty of the scenery.  The compound was 
supposed to be up on the cliffs, after all.

-Continued in section 3


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