At 12:46 AM 12/6/98 EST, Alan Harnum wrote:

    Genma made his way down the mountain trail, thinking as he 
went.  Not thinking entirely - memories came as well, the 
fragments of the past flowing up for some reason to his mind, 
remembrances unthought of for years.

    Meeting Nodoka.  How beautiful she had been; the taste of
her lips on his, the fragrance of her hair, the curve and arch of
her body under his hands.

    The slow swell of her belly as the life within her grew.
Feeling his son kick against his hand, callused palm laid across
her stomach.  His son; tiny, red-faced, screaming, swaddled in
blankets and cradled to his mother's breast.

    Ranma and Nodoka - images intertwined, memories 
interlocking - together, apart.  The child's first steps, the
first clumsy imitations of his father's Art.  

    Making the engagement pact with Soun; they hadn't been
drinking that much, really, and were still quite sober.  It had
been a good idea.  

    Leaving his wife behind.  His son waving goodbye.  Nodoka
with tears in her eyes.  A man among men; he would make his son
great, greater than he.

    All the wrongs; the Neko-ken, the engagement to Ukyou, the
other sins he had commited upon his son, laying the foundations
for the young man Ranma had become.

    So much guilt, so much regret.  His son going up the
mountain, and leaving him behind, the disgust on his face livid.  
The last time he'd seen him.  

    Nodoka, rain spattering her shoulders, glistening in her
hair.  His hand; rough, callused, touching her cheek in the
kitchen of her new house hours before he'd left for China.

    Two themes, intertwined - images of wife and son.  
    
    Happosai's words:  Find your son.  Get your wife back.  
    
    The synthesis - change what you are before it's too late.
    
    There would never be a chance to fulfill it, because about 
then, as Genma Saotome stepped around a curve in the trail, he 
saw that a single figure was blocking the path.  The blue eyes,
even from here, were sharp as blades, steel-hard.  Genma edged 
back into a defensive position, eyeing the old man warily.  
"You..."

    "I am afraid," the old man said, "that I cannot allow
anything to interfere at this time.  Even a small disruption
might be too much."

    With a sudden burst of speed, Genma rushed the old man, his
left foot flying out in a high, sweeping arc, point first.  He 
saw the cold blue eyes widen slightly - as if he had surprised 
one not easily surprised.

    It connected with a sickening crack.  The old man staggered
to the side, teetering upon the edge of the narrow pathway along
the mountainside for a moment.  Beyond him, a drop of a hundred
feet onto sharp rocks awaited.

    Genma considered his options for a split second, and then
remembered what the master had said.  He kicked out again, and
knocked the blue-eyed old man off the edge with a solid blow to
the chest.

    He turned away.  He did not want to see the fall, or the
results.  It had happened very quickly.  He was only just
beginning to fully realize all that he'd done when the pain of
the first arrow tore through his shoulder.

    He opened his mouth to scream, and a second took him through
the back of the neck.  The third pierced his heart from behind,
and he collapsed facefirst onto the trail.

    As all sense of consciousness and self began to fade, he
discovered that along with it went all the sorrow and guilt.  A
kind of peace at the end, then, and two voices, speaking.

    "You are supposed to be somewhere else, are you not?"  The
old man.  The world seemed to be moving with incredibly slowness.  
There was surprisingly little pain; a throbbing in his neck and 
shoulder and chest, and a cold seeping through him like frost.

    "I was hungry."  The voice was like a death-rattle, a hollow
whisper from a ruined throat.  He heard a flapping, as of great
wings.

    "There is no time for your hunger right now."
    
    "I am hungry."
    
    "You and your kin will feed soon, fear not."
    
    "My kin are hungry."
    
    "Discipline is of the utmost."
    
    "Why?"
    
    "We are going to start a war."
    
    Laughter, hideous, bemused.  "A war?"
    
    "Have you never done it before?  It's surprisingly easy."
    
    "I am hungry."
    
    "Take him, then.  What's left of him."
    
    A hand, not entirely human, caressed his head almost 
tenderly.  "He'll do."

    O my wife - the first thought.
    
    O my son - the second.
    
    Forgive me - the third.
    
    Then darkness, falling, sweeping down over him, numbing and
welcoming, taking away everything, covering it all.

-End of Chapter 30

Heheheheheh. Genma's redemption. Happousai's too, earlier on in the
chapter, really, but Happi's was more of an ongoing process, started
earlier; Genma's, while it may have began earlier, only really came
about now. An epiphany. 
	Even though he had his conversion, even though he was firmly
on his way down the path of redemption, that did not save him. Reminds
me of the book 1984, in a way-- it was mentioned that they kill you
not before they convert you, but after. The same thing basically happened
to Genma here.
	I liked it, I really liked this chapter-- especially Genma. You
made him more than someone to be hated, something more than the
one-dimensional waste of flesh which seems to be rather popular of late
amongst serious fics. Genma is a man, and one who may have made mistakes
in the past, but he is not at heart evil, or villainous. Foolish? cowardly?
weak? I can give you those, but not, at heart, evil. I especially liked
his little confrontation with Akane there, his little rebuke. People who
live in glass houses should not throw stones (and, just to mix metaphors,
even if they haven't sinned), don't you know. Pointing out that Genma is
not the only one who may have done wrong by Ranma, that, in effect, none
of them are innocent or blameless.

	So, in other words, good work!


Matthew "Maybeso" Lewis is:
InDefinitelyso on IRC
See him on FFIRC [bachman.newberry.edu fanfic]
Sojiro_Seta on Kawaiimuck
	maybeso@ican.net
Playing the fool in a foolish world
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Evil: adjective. wicked or bad; mischievous; very 
disagreeable or angry; unfortunate (rare or archaic)....
			-The Chambers Dictionary, 1993 ed.

(So yes, I really AM evil!)
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