Subject: [FFML] [Ranma] THE CLAN - Chapter 9 [draft]
From: Chris Jones
Date: 5/1/1999, 1:31 AM
To: ffml@fanfic.com

This is it for tonight. Next time, we all get to see a chapter that only my 
prereaders have seen yet.

Before we get into Ch. 9, I'd like to take a few seconds to thank them all. 
David, Bob, Vincent, Theimo and anyone else I may have failed to mention. 
You won't see a lot of their influence yet, but they've provided me with 
invaluable commentary that will make the next version even better.

And now,

Ch 9 - Rationale - DARK

	It was a little after four in the morning and Ranma was
alone in the guest room with the door open, staring out over
the koi pond when a rather pale looking Ryouga happened by.

	"Get lost, Pig-boy?" Ranma asked mercilessly.

	"I'm... looking for the bathroom."

	"'S downstairs." Ranma got a closer look at Ryouga. There
were black marks on both his arms. "Ah man, Nabiki really got
you, huh?"

	Ryouga's only answer was to blush again. His expression,
however, was rather vacant.

	Ranma hopped up out of his sitting position and grabbed
Ryouga by the shoulder.

	"Ranma?"

	"C'mon man. I'll show you the way."

	Ranma pulled Ryouga down the stairs and led him down into
the bathroom.

	Still strangely absent, Ryouga turned on the shower
nozzle and began to strip.

	Ranma, not sure what had gotten into the lost boy,
averted his eyes.

	"So... Nabiki's pretty thirsty, huh?" Ranma asked dumbly.

	Ryouga nodded, still staring absently at the wall. He
began to soap up. Ranma noted, out of the corner of his eye,
that Ryouga still wore his headband.

	Ranma gritted his teeth in suspicion and frustration.

	"What'd she do to you, man?" he asked seriously. "You
were in there two hours!"

	Ryouga turned slowly to look at him, the absent haunted
expression still covering his face.

	"She... She knows about P-chan." Ryouga stated. "She
could *smell* it on me."

	Ranma blinked, but then he nodded. "Kasumi and my Mom
prob'ly does too."

	"She told me that if I ever tried to sleep in Akane's bed
again, she'd kill me."

	Ranma nodded. If Nabiki knew, then death would be the
easiest out for Ryouga. With Nabiki, a lifetime of financial
ruin was always an option.

	"I think I... I have to... marry... Nabiki now," Ryouga
mumbled.

	Ranma's eyes widened in surprise. "You sly dog! Switching
girls just like that! Can't be in Akane's bed, so you just had
to seduce her sister. All-right, man!"

	Finally enraged, Ryouga took a swipe at Ranma. "IT'S NOT
LIKE THAT!!!!"

	"Then what's it like, pig-boy?" Ranma teased.

	"I still love Akane!"

	"So..."

	"Well... Nabiki did... She made me... do... *things* to
um..."

	Ranma noted that Ryouga's face was growing redder by the
second, and that the lost boy looked about ready for another
nose bleed.

	Ranma didn't really think that his rival could afford to
lose anymore blood.

	"C'mon, Ryouga. Don't puss out on me here. What did
Nabiki make you do that you have to marry her now?"

	"She... um... I had to... um... *lick*... her... umm.."

	Ranma held his hands up. "Never mind. I don't wanna
know." He shook his head in shock. "Man, I didn't think she had
it in her. Listen, man. I know you think you gotta marry the
first girl who shows you her goodies, but you're kiddin'
yourself. If I married the first girl I had seen naked, I'd
probably be married to Akane now. If you wanna go after a girl
then--"

	Ryouga looked seriously at Ranma, with that same haunted
look. Ranma's speech faltered at the intense gaze. He thought
it looked vaguely familiar, somehow.	

	Ryouga continued to scrub, and hosed himself off with the
nozzle. Finally, he seemed to come to a conclusion.

	"I still love Akane... but I think I love Nabiki more,"
he said, simply. "I... can't be forgiven for how I've lied to
Akane."

	Ranma raised his eyebrows in surprise. This was Ryouga he
was talking to?!?!

	Clean and rinsed, Ryouga forwent the obligatory soak in
the furo, and began to towel himself off. He shook his clothes
out and began to put them back on.

	There was a knock at the door to the bathroom.

	Both the stunned Ranma and Ryouga looked up as the door
opened.

	Sliding into the room, through the darkness outside,
Nabiki flashed a sleepy, seductive grin at the lost boy. Her
naughty demeanor was rather intensified by the fact that she
was still wearing only Ryouga's worn yellow tunic.

	"Ryouga-kun... come back to bed..." she pleaded in a
purring tone, her fangs clearly visible to both the boys.

	Ranma looked on in wonderment.

	"Hee..." Ryouga sighed.


* * *
	
	Morning came, and it was obvious that Nabiki and Ryouga
had spent the night together. Kasumi had lectured them at
length, but Nabiki assured her that she simply didn't feel safe
without someone in the room to watch over her.

	Ryouga was blushing quite a bit too much for just
'watching over' Nabiki, and he had a distracted, haunted look
on his face.

	Akane recognized it as the same look that Uncle Saotome
got when ever he was with Auntie Nodoka.

	"So this ravener," Nodoka asked. "It looked like a man?"

	Nabiki nodded, munching her breakfast rice. "Yeah. Right
up until it attacked me. Even then, he still had normal skin in
places."

	Nodoka put a finger to her lips in thought. "This may be
serious. It's something that I've never dealt with. It spoke
you say?"

	Nabiki nodded.

	"Raveners just don't speak," Nodoka marveled aloud.

	"Maybe it's some sort of general," Kasumi ventured. "Or a
spy of some sort. The raveners' leader perhaps."

	"I just don't know. We know so little about their
structure," Nodoka fretted.

	"We should call the police," Akane suggested.

	"In a case like this," Nodoka explained, "I would report
it as an assault, with Ryouga-kun having saved her just before
he killed her. It fits my mother's formula rather nicely."

	"The police already know," Genma stated coldly, as he
walked into the room. He dropped a news paper on the table. The
women froze at the sight.

	"A NEW TOKYO SLASHER? POLICE BAFFLED BY MURDER"

	Ryouga grimaced and clenched his fists in anger.

	Ranma picked up the paper, and began to read the story
aloud.

	"'Nerima ward police are baffled by a new murder
committed in the style of the 'Tokyo Slasher' who killed
himself last week when the students of a local dojo confronted
him at a potential victim's apartment.

	"'While the police have not released the new victim's
name, they have confirmed that she was a young woman in the
same age range as the other slasher victims. Her body was found
in an alley just inside Nerima ward near the popular 'Rose
Garden' night club. Police Sergeant Kenji Matanna would not
comment on the girl's wound's, but a source inside the
forensics division reported that the girl was not sexually
assaulted, like the other victims, but that the pattern of stab
wounds matched the other victims almost exactly.

	"'On the condition on anonymity, the same source informed
this reporter that police have yet to find a murder weapon,
fingerprints or DNA evidence.

	"It goes on and talks about that maybe that the guy is a
part of some cult or somethin'," Ranma continued, summarizing
the article. "Basically, a girl got stabbed last night, about
an hour or two after Nabiki got into trouble."

	"At least she wasn't raped," Akane said quietly. "Nabiki
made sure that that monster won't be able to do that again.

	"Oh yeah, I'm sure that's a big help." Ranma sniped. "Not
that it makes her any less dead."

	Akane winced at Ranma's rebuke.

	Nodoka took a deep breath and wrung her hands. "Ranma...
does it say what time the girl died?"

	Ranma scanned the article, looking for the information.
"Yeah... a little before midnight, they're guessin'."

	Nodoka clenched her eyes shut and slapped her hands down
on the table.

	"What is it, Auntie?"

	"They're worse than cockroaches," she muttered. "It's
opening a gateway," she announced. "Or it has already opened
one. If the monster is as intelligent as Nabiki says, then it
almost certainly would have waited to kill again after Nabiki
escaped him. The only thing that would have made him bring so
much attention to himself like that was if it was risking
losing a gateway already in progress."

	"So we got one freak, and another already here, or on the
way," Ranma paraphrased. "What do we gotta do?"

	"Kasumi and Nabiki will watch the dojo," Nodoka
commanded. "While I will contact the police. They may listen to
me this time. We really have no way of knowing where the
monster will strike again until we find out if he has killed
before.

	"Soun and I will take shifts monitoring the police bands,
then," Genma volunteered.

	Ranma rolled his eyes. Instead of getting drunk and
playing shogi, Soun and his father would get drunk, play shogi,
and listen to the radio.

	"To work then, Saotome?" Soun asked.

	"To work!" Genma answered, leaping to his feet. "I have
some Sapporo chilling in a bucket by the porch."

* * *

	When Akane was seven years old, her best friend in the
world was Mika Takamoto.

	Mika was there for her the next day when her mother died.
Mika always knew what to say when Akane got mad. Mika loved
Akane, and Akane loved Mika. They were like sisters.

	Then, one day, Mika didn't come to school.

	Akane went to her house after school to play, but Mika's
family wasn't there.

	They weren't there the next day after school either.

	Mika's father was there the day after that, but he said
that Mika had been hurt, and couldn't play because she was
still in the hospital.

	Akane told her sisters and her father. Father contacted
Takamoto-san and asked what was wrong and if it would be
acceptable for Akane to bring Mika flowers.

	Then Father said, "Oh, I see. Yes, I quite understand."
That was when Daddy closed the door to his room, and talked to
Takamoto-san for almost an hour.

	Nabiki listened in on the phone in her room, but she
wouldn't tell Akane what Father and Takamoto-san talked about.

	Akane went over to the Takamoto's house every day for two
weeks to see if Mika could play yet, but every day, Mika was
still in the hospital.

	Then, one day, Mika was there when Akane came over. Mika
had several bandages, and one of her arms was in a cast, but
was able to play with Akane's action figures. But, when Akane's
Gatchaman action figure did the kenpo punch Father taught her
last week on one of Mika's Barbie dolls, Mika began to cry, and
ran away.

	Akane had to go home. Mika's mother drove Akane home, and
cried and hugged her before she got out of the car. Akane
didn't understand why she had to go home or why everyone was so
upset.

	Kasumi-oneechan didn't know. Nabiki knew but she wasn't
telling. Father had been very emotional since Mother had gone,
but Akane felt that she had to risk setting him off again to
find out what was wrong.

	Father told her.

	Mika had been... Father paused for a second, trying to
come up with the right word. Mika had been abducted by someone
the Takamoto's trusted. The man, Father did not say who, beat
Mika severely and did many other bad things to her. He had done
so many bad things that he was in jail now, and would probably
never get out.

	Akane didn't really understand. She sparred with father,
and got hurt on occasion. Father always helped her understand
why she had been hurt, and explained how to avoid the same hurt
in the future.

	Father explained that the man who had hurt Mika was not
trying to help her learn martial arts. His mind was sick, and
it made him angry at Mika.

	Then he made Akane promise that she would never *ever*
talk to strangers, and that she would never *ever* go anywhere
with *anyone* unless he said it was okay first.

	Akane promised, but she didn't understand.

	Desperate need called for desperate measure. She gave a
candy bar to Nabiki, so that Nabiki would tell her what
happened.

	Nabiki wouldn't take the candy bar. Nabiki was almost as
upset as Father.

	Akane thought that it was silly because Nabiki was a year
older, and just thought she knew everything.

	Nabiki took her into her room and closed the door. Then
she told Akane what Takamoto-san had told Father.

	The Takamotos had gone out for the weekend, leaving Mika
in the care of her uncle, Mika's mother's younger brother.

	When they came back, Mika and her Uncle were gone.

	There was a storage shed behind Mika's uncle's house.
That was where they found Mika.

	They arrested the uncle a day later for assault, battery
and rape.

	Akane had never heard that word before.

	Nabiki explained what Mika's uncle did to her. At length.

	After Mika moved away, Akane never quite trusted any man
besides Father or Doctor Tofuu ever again. She knew what they
wanted. She knew what they would do to her if they could.

	She would never give them that chance.

	It wasn't until eighth grade that Akane began to have
those feelings for the opposite sex that most girls who are
growing up have at that age. For a while, Akane forgot Mika.

	Then she met Tatewake Kunou.

	Nabiki liked Kunou, and told Akane so. She thought that
he was cute, if kinda dumb, and occasionally came to school
with a really bad haircut. She really liked that he had so much
money.

	It was after school one day that Akane decided to talk to
the older boy.

	He was very polite, and spoke very formally. He knew a
lot about martial arts and poetry. It really impressed Akane
that someone her age was so well versed in classic literature.

	Then Kunou told her that he loved her, and tried to hold
her hand and kiss her.

	All the old feelings, all the old fears came rushing
back. She beat Kunou within an inch of his life, and ran home
crying.

	She avoided him until the end of the school year, when
the upperclassman moved on to the high-school.

	Akane spent a year in relative peace.

	The first week of her tenth-grade year, however, Kunou
came to her and made his intentions known.

	Angry, more than afraid, Akane beat him senseless and
told him to quit bothering her. A few weeks after that
incident, however, Kunou made a speech at the debate club
contest.

	Akane descended into hell.

	Everyday, Kunou, as well as some of the other boys
attacked her. It was only a few, at first, but they ganged up
on her.

	Akane had no doubt in her mind as to what would happen to
her if she lost those fights.

	The fights grew larger and larger and Akane's skill grew
stronger.

	Then, like a tornado, Ranma arrived.

	Ranma, who scared her so badly in the bathtub.

	Ranma, who was a complete pervert.

	Ranma, who fought brilliantly, and trashed Kunou with
little effort.

	Ranma, who was Akane's fiancee. She knew that if Ranma
decided to force her to carry through with her Father's idiot
promise, that there would be no beating him off. He could take
her body, no matter what she wanted.

	Ranma showed her, however, that he had little interest in
her body. When he wasn't being a jerk, he was actually kind of
fun to be around. Akane began to grow... attached to the
impetuous, impertinent boy.

	For the first time in almost ten years, Akane began to
see that not *everyone* was out to hurt her.

	She began to make other male friends, like Ryouga. Mousse
scared her badly by kidnapping her, but he was so pitifully in
love with Shampoo, that Akane couldn't help but befriending him
as well.

	Then came the day when she was actually left alone in the
house with Ranma for an entire night.

	He had been acting odd all day. She suspected that he was
flirting with Shampoo, and had actually seen him embrace her.
Everyone was sneezing quite a lot, but Akane didn't really
associate it with his behavior. Akane got mad at him, and was
having a generally rough day anyway, so it only made things
worse when she fell into a drainage manhole and caught a cold.

	Then Nabiki made a chance comment, teasing her that Ranma
might get out of hand since they were going to be left alone
all evening. As usual, Kasumi took it quite seriously, and
instructed Akane to take caution with a boy in the house. Akane
was shaken badly by the conversation. Ranma wouldn't do that to
her, would he?

	Then Ranma came home. Akane's nerves were on end, but
Ranma was trustworthy, right? He didn't' have any interest in
her body.

	Akane sneezed. Ranma grabbed her. It terrified her. She
was quite certain, for that one horrible moment, that Ranma was
going to attack her.

	And of course, it was a fluke. One of Shampoo's
grandmother's potions. A hypnotic mushroom of some sort.

	Akane was shaken but reassured. She gradually began to
loosen up around Ranma. By they time he rescued her from
Saffron at Phoenix Mountain, she was quite sure that she could
fall in love with him, if only he would admit it himself. She
had been ready to marry him.

	Then Nabiki had been attacked by a ravener. The same
raveners who cruelly raped and murdered girls simply because
they were virgins.

	Who would rape and murder *her* if they got the chance.

	Nabiki survived, though. She beat the ravener! It was
only because she had taken what Nodoka had offered her, though.
A normal girl wouldn't have been able to do it. A normal girl
would have been left violated and dead in the hotel room.

	Akane didn't want to be a normal girl anymore.

* * *

	Akane struggled with her problem for most of the day
before she came to a decision. Last period was home ec,
however, so Ranma wouldn't know if she left.

	She cut class, feigning an upset stomach, and rushed
home.

	She found Kasumi and Nodoka sipping tea in the front room
listening to the police radio with her father and Uncle
Saotome.

	"You're home early," Kasumi noted.

	"Did you find out anything?" Akane asked.

	Nodoka sighed sadly. "Nothing. We have little option but
to listen to the radio for trouble."

	Akane bit her lip. It only made her more sure of her
decision.

	"Can I talk to you in private, Auntie?" she asked.

	Nodoka nodded, allowing a slight smile to cross her face.
"Is it all right if Kasumi and Nabiki are there?" she asked,
already knowing what the girl wanted.

	Akane blushed and nodded her assent. "I... just don't
want Ranma to know yet."

- To be continued...
* * *
Chris Jones - guilty@arn.net
The Ranma 1/2 Gallery - http://cyberwheel.simplenet.com/ranma

It's 1999. Do you know what your children are?