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 Shogakugan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.

I am not subscribed to the FFML, so if all comments could be
directed straight to my e-mail address, I'd be very grateful.
C&C is not only welcomed but very much appreciated.  Thank you.

Chapter 5 : Best-Laid Plans (3/3)

     "It wasn't fair of me to stop like that," Ranma said.  "You
weren't expecting me to do that."

     Ryoga shook his head.  "I guess I wasn't."

     "It was my fault."

     "Maybe it was both our faults."

     "Maybe it's always been."

     A look between the two of them, something read into the
depths of each other's eyes that plunged them into silence which
Ranma finally broke.  "You think... you think it's always gonna
be this way?"

     Ryoga smiled, a bit ruefully.  "It's like I said before.
Perhaps it's never really been about anything beyond you and I.
About seeing who's better."

     "Does it matter?"

     Pain there, in Ryoga's eyes, for just a second.  "Yes."

     Ranma slowly nodded, a part of him understanding.  "Ryoga,
there's more.  I gotta tell you this because I can't tell Akane
or Ucchan or anybody else.  You're the only one I can really..."

     Strange, how one word could be so awkward.  "Trust."

     A smile grew on Ryoga's face, a different one than before.
"What is it?"

     "This whole thing ain't right," Ranma said.  "Cologne... it
doesn't add up."

     Ryoga nodded.  "I know... that old woman's a lot of things,
but I never thought she'd go crazy."

     Ranma touched his fingers to his chin.  "Yeah.  And... she
didn't actually hurt anyone.  Mr. Tendo got a little bruised, but
Kasumi and my dad were basically untouched... it doesn't add up.
I... don't know what she's up to.  But I don't like it."

     Ryoga cocked his head and looked at him.  "Is that it?"

     Ranma shook his head.  "I've got a bad feeling about today,"
he said.

     "Hmm?"

     There was so much he could have said.  The half-remembered
fragments of his dreams; the cold fires inside him when he
fought; that last vision, upon the train, a waking dream, or
something more.  "Just a feeling," he said at last.  "But..."

     He sighed, trailing off, and Ryoga laid a hand on his
shoulder.  "Ranma..."

     "Look, whatever happens," Ranma said finally.  "Whatever
happens... If I... Look, just promise me you'll look out for
Akane, okay?  If I'm not..."

     He could say nothing more, for Ryoga's eyes said all that
was needed.  "I promise," Ryoga said after a long second.
"I'll..."

     "Don't get any ideas," Ranma growled, and flicked Ryoga's
hand from his shoulder, giving him a light punch in the arm.
"Come on.  Let's get everyone together.  We gotta get moving
again."

     Overhead, the sun had swung to its highest point in the sky,
and as the six rose and headed up the mountain again, it began
that slow descent across the horizon that leads, inevitably,
towards night and the dark.

**********

     A few minutes after the six young men and women had left the
clearing, there was a rustling in the bushes around them, and a
seventh figure, having watched with unusual patience, stepped out
and followed their trail as stealthily as a shadow, forcing
himself, for once, to delay indulgence in the hope of greater
rewards.

     A few minutes after that, two figures appeared in the
clearing.  One knelt and touched fingers to the ground, very
lightly.

     "Anything?" the standing one said.

     The kneeling one answered her in a voice like a drawn-out
death rattle, and what she said was in no language beyond her
own.

     The standing one laughed.  It was not a pleasant sound.  She
toyed with the chain of what she held in her left hand.  The
right one was hidden from sight beneath the folds of her garment.

     The kneeling one asked something in that sepulchre voice.
Around her, the shadows cast by the trees seemed to gather
tighter and darker, children to a mother.

     "Soon," the standing one said with a smile.  "Oh, soon.  Let
us go, my sister.  There is work to be done."

     Then she laughed again, and, after a moment, the woman she
had called her sister joined her, and it was a hard thing to say
whose laughter was the more terrible.  They laughed together, and
then when their laughter was done, they left the clearing
together and walked also up the mountainside on the trail of
those come before them.

**********

     The first thing Ranma saw as he stepped from the surrounding
forest onto the rocky plain was his mother tied to the trunk of
the same tree Akane had been hanging from all those months ago.

     There was no sight of Cologne, though.  He looked around, at
the sloping cliff on one side of the plain, at the hilly forests
on all the others, and saw no sign of her.

     "Everyone keep an eye out," he said from his place in the
lead of the group.  "She's around here somewhere."

     He heard Shampoo make a long exhalation of breath from
behind him, a drawn-out sigh, but he ignored it.  The time was
come to end this.

     They walked across the rough ground towards the tree, and
Ranma saw with growing concern that his mother's head was slumped
down and she wasn't moving.  The ropes bound her to the tree, not
so tightly that it looked as if it were hurting, at least.  Her
face was smudged with dirt, and her hair dishevelled, although
still pinned back into a bun.  There were a few tears in the
fringe of her kimono.

     He broke into a run, leaving the others a few steps behind,
and only slowed when he got close enough to see that she was
breathing.

     "Mom?" he said from a few feet away.  He took a step
forward, raised his hand towards her...

     Yanked it back as Cologne seemed to come into being from the
air between him and his mother, dark eyes hard and flat, the rake
resting on one shoulder.  "No closer."

     "Cologne," he said, stepping back instinctively towards the
other five behind him.

     "Great-grandmother?" Shampoo said, a question in it.  He
could see Ryoga, Ukyou and even Mousse had expressions of
surprise nearly equal to Shampoo's, and remembered that they'd
all only heard of Cologne's new youth, never seen it themselves.

     "Yes, child?" Cologne said, looking at Ranma and not at
Shampoo.

     "I no want you to do this, great-grandmother," Shampoo said
softly.  "Give Ranma mother back.  We go back to China together.
What council do to me not be worse than what you do to him."

     Cologne giggled softly.  It was not a good sound.  "Oh,
child, child, you have no idea what the council can do to you."

     "Exile not worse," Shampoo said in a strained voice.  "Not
worse than this.  Ranma mother..."

     She bowed her head, unable to meet the familiar eyes in the
unfamiliar face.  "Is wrong, great-grandmother."

     "A far lesser wrong than that which he has done against
you," Cologne said.  "I will not have it, Shampoo.  Exile is the
least of what they shall do to you."

     "Great-grandmother, you say-"

     "What I said was one thing.  What they will do is another.
They may execute you.  Or they may take you back to Jusenkyou and
throw you in the pools, meld your cat form with something else,
make your cursed form some awful hybrid.  Perhaps they will even
use some of the water we've saved from the Musk dynasty to lock
your permanently in your cursed form."

     Shampoo was unable to say anything to that.  Her eyes
closed, and a long shudder wracked her body before she buried her
face in her hands.  Mousse took a step towards her, but she held
up a hand and for once he stayed away.

     "Cologne," Ranma said.  "I didn't-"

     "You never bothered to find out, did you?" Cologne snapped.
"If the penalty for the first failure is a trip to Jusenkyou, how
could the penalty of a second failure not be worse?  I will not
have this, son-in-law."

     Ranma sighed.  He glanced to Akane.  "Akane, I'm sorry."

     "Ranma, what-"

     "This is my fault.  I can't allow her to be killed, or
exiled, or anything.  I'm not gonna do it.  Maybe... maybe..."

     Not knowing why, he knelt before Cologne, one knee on the
ground.  "Cologne, you win.  I'll go back with you to China.
I'll... I'll marry Shampoo.  For now.  We'll... maybe we'll try
to work something out.  I... I can't fight you for it, Cologne.
Not with her life on my hands if I win.  I won't have it."

     He looked up, afraid to meet Cologne's eyes but knowing he
had to all the same, terrified as he was by his own words.
Behind him, he heard Akane make a long sound that tore at his
heart, heard Mousse make a low growl of rage from deep in his
throat.

     He met Cologne's eyes.  Her head was tilted down to look at
him, so that only he saw them.  They were so old, and so sad, so
out of place amongst that smooth young beauty and the silky dark
hair that fell about her shoulders.

     "Oh, child," he saw her lips say, and there was no doubt in
his mind that it was him she addressed.  "Oh, forgive me this
thing I do."

     Mousse was still growling behind him, and he heard that
Akane had begun to cry, very softly.  Ukyou and Ryoga's utter
silence filled the air just as much.

     And then Shampoo's voice was there as well, flat and drained
of anything at all.  "No."

     He turned his head back to look at her.  "Huh?"

     Her head was raised now, streaked with tears and with a
proud, defiant look.  "No.  I not want husband out of pity.  I...
I set you free, Ranma.  Maybe should have done long time ago.
Better by my hand than by council's."

     Something glinted in her hands.

     There was no fire this time, no burning interval between him
and the ice.  It engulfed him, rushed upon, glacial fury and
power speeded up a thousandfold.

     There was no time.  There could be no time.  The knife was
in her hands, and she was driving it at her heart, and there was
no time.

     He found it.  Somewhere, somehow, he found it.

     A flicker, his hands were, even in the slowed time.  A
flicker, one hand coming up to intercept the blade, deflect it on
the back of his hand, the other grabbing her wrist.

     There was a hot pain across his hand, and a cold one in his
heart.  A single drop of blood, like a glitter of rain on a leaf,
blossomed on the back of his hand, near his knuckles, where the
point of the knife had touched him before his hand on her wrist
had stopped the thrust.

     Shampoo didn't even struggle.  Cologne was forward a second
later, pressing a point on her neck, and the girl slumped
bonelessly.  Ranma caught her, handed her to Mousse, who'd stood
by in a kind of shocked silence, and turned back to Cologne.  He
only vaguely realized the presence of the others now; it seemed
only to be him and the Joketsuzoku matriarch.

     "Don't you see, Ranma?" Cologne said only to him, the first
time Ranma could recall in that moment her calling him by name.
"It has to be this way.  We've come too far to turn back.  A
husband gained by obligation is better, at least, than one gained
by pity.  And if her freedom must be bought, what price is too
great for the freedom of my great-grandchild?"

     There was such sorrow in her eyes, and they were so very,
very old.  She stepped back towards the tree upon which his
mother was bound; her hands blurred, and the ropes were gone, and
she was handing his mother's unconscious form to him.

     "She is only sleeping," she said soothingly.

     Ranma turned, his mother cradled in his arms, and looked at
the five behind him.  Mousse was looking at Shampoo.  Akane had
her back to him, her arms tightly around herself.  Ukyou was
staring off into nothing.

     Only Ryoga was looking at him.

     "Watch my mother, friend," he said, the first words he'd
spoken since he'd told Cologne he'd marry Shampoo.  His voice
sounded somehow different, even to himself.  "And her as well."

     No need to say who the second one was.  Never any need at
all.  He passed his mother to Ryoga, who held the kin of his
rival gently as if she were a child.

     "Watch over them," Ranma said, the sorrow in his heart
mirrored in Ryoga's eyes.

     "Always," Ryoga said.

     He looked to them again, his five companions.  "You'd best
move away.  We shall need space."

     "Ranma-" Ukyou began, before she saw his eyes and cut
herself off, impossibly deep hurt showing on her face at last,
long-hidden and finally rising to the surface now.  She whirled,
long hair swirling around her back, and strode away to stand by
the sloping face of bare rock that led further up the mountain.

     Mousse lifted Shampoo in his arms, brushed back her hair
from her face, and looked at Ranma once, letting his eyes fall to
the scratch, the long but shallow scratch, on the back of Ranma's
hand.  He inclined his head in the barest of nods, and began to
glide in the direction Ukyou had gone.

     Ryoga put his hand on Akane's shoulder.  "Come on, Akane."

     His voice was so tender, so sad.  Akane shook her head,
still not speaking, still not turning to look at either Ranma or
Ryoga.

     "Please," Ryoga said.  "I need some help carrying Ranma's
mother."

     A lie, for Ryoga had the strength to move mountains in him.
But it seemed to let Akane turn and glance once at Ranma, let him
catch her eyes with his, and say nothing.  It was as it had been
last night; nothing more that could be said, at this moment, at
this time, at this place.

     Then Ryoga gently guided her towards the others, cradling
Nodoka's limp form in the crook of one arm with astonishing ease.
Akane had her hand on the woman's elbow as they walked, as if she
too were helping to support her.

     And then it was only Ranma and Cologne, facing each other,
beneath a broad-branched tree spreading up from the barren land.
Those who had come with him were a hundred feet away, silently
watching the two who remained.

     This place was a natural battlefield, Ranma realized.
Bordered by the forest and the cliff face, the rocky plain with
the single tree rising from it in defiance of the unfertile
ground was like some ancient arena from a time long past.

     He looked at Cologne.  Her eyes held many things.  But no
madness.  No madness there.  She was less than a dozen feet from
him.

     "That's why, isn't it?" he said so softly that only she
might hear him.  "Because of Shampoo.  Cologne, I-"

     "It goes deeper," the youthful girl in front of him said.
"All things go deeper.  Deeper than you or I or her."

     "What's going on, Cologne?"

     A subtle shift in her body, visible to his trained eye.
"Boy, it is time to begin."

     And then something exploded from the branches of the tree, a
long, plaintive cry on its lips.

     "Sweet Cologne!"

     Happosai moved faster than Ranma had ever seen him as he
leapt from the branches.  His movements seemed more graceful and
agile than they had ever been before.

     But Cologne was still faster.  The rake came up, a blurred
circle of wood and steel, and Happosai was tumbling away, past
him and into the area between Ranma and Cologne, and the others.

     To rise to his feet, brushing himself off, standing still
this time so that Ranma could get a better look at him.

     "It's so strange, Cologne," Happosai said.  "I feel so very
young."

     And he looked young as well, Ranma slowly realized.  Not in
the way Cologne did, not the bloom of youth renewed, but no
longer the twisted dwarf shape he'd held before.  He looked like
an old, old man, an old man who'd never been tall even when he
was young, stooped slightly by age, but his hair was thick and
full, although still white, and there was a look to him, a look
of power that he had not held before, powerful as he had been.

     "By all that lives, what has happened to you, Happosai?"
Cologne said.

     The old man smiled.  "A funny question from you, Cologne."

     "The water," Cologne said softly.  "You drank it at the
wedding, didn't you?"

     "Eh?  I thought it was sake," Happosai said.  "What's a
little water going to..."

     He slowly trailed off.  He was lecherous, but not stupid.
"Oh.  Uh..."

     "Internal ingestion of Jusenkyou waters," Cologne said
softly.  "Never have I heard of such a thing."

     Ranma glanced, from the old man who'd been older to the
young woman who had been old, feeling as if Happosai's presence
had just ruined something very important.

     He saw Cologne begin to open her mouth to speak.

     And then something exploded in the sky.  A sourceless crack
of thunder, no rain, no accompanying lightning.  Again it
sounded, like an impossibly huge voice loud enough to bruise the
air, though the sky was clear and blue, and he almost fell to his
knees at the sheer force of that sound, because it was so loud it
became a physical thing.

     And then there was lightning, blue-white and blinding, but
it was coming not from the sky but from the ground, a single
stroke a dozen, two dozen feet high in an instant, arcing upwards
from the very stone, sizzling and scorching the air with a smell
of ozone, blackening the ground where it had surged from.

    When it faded, a woman stood there, silk robes the same
blue-white as the lightning stroke hugging tightly to her body.
She was very tall, and very slender, with an elegant, swanlike
curve to her neck.  She had a young face, a beautiful young face
framed by short dark hair, but it was a hard face, without
kindness to it. Her right hand was tucked inside her robes; her
left held a rod of thick black wood a little over two feet long.
At the end of the rod in her hand a small silver chain led to a
silver bracelet upon her wrist; at the end pointing towards the
ground, two small blades about three inches long sprouted,
curving outwards at first, but then in towards each other like
the mandibles of a beetle.  Her left hand, the one that was
visible and held the rod, was covered by a black leather
gauntlet that left only the tips of her fingers bare and
disappeared up into the sleeve of her robe.

     Behind him, Ranma heard Cologne say something in Chinese
that sounded by the tone like it was a curse, and by the length
that it was quite a complex one.

     "Foolish," the woman said.  Her voice had a harsh, rasping
sound to it which did not fit her appearance.  It grated on the
ears like a blade on stone.  "Old woman, such a foolish ploy.
Did you think that you yourself were not watched?  We see your
threads woven in this web, old one, and we know what it is you
do."

     Ranma felt very cold suddenly, although the day was warm.
It was dark as well, where he was.  He glanced back to Cologne,
where she stood in the shadow of the tree, a shadow that was now
across him as well.

     A shadow falling across him though he stood between the tree
and the sun, not behind the tree where the shadow should have
been.  A shadow far, far larger than it should have been, the
dark limbs of the tree too many, too twisted, too moving.

     "COLOGNE, MOVE!" he heard himself shout as he threw himself
out of the swelling shadow.  Cologne was nearly fast enough, but
his warning had come at the same time as his movement, and the
two seconds less she had than him were enough of a delay that she
was caught.  She was on the edge of the shadow when it rose up
from the ground, a solid thing like a serpent made of night and
lashed at her like a whip.

     The blow looked weak, gentle even, but Cologne screamed in
agony and was knocked flying a dozen feet away to lie unmoving on
the ground, arms and legs spasming convulsively.  The shadow
flowed again, coalesced and gathered upon itself until it was
only a single circle of dark upon the rock, a shadow blacker than
black like a pit into forever, and then it threw itself upward
into a towering pillar of solid shadow and vanished just as
quickly into nothing.

     The shadow of the tree was where it should have been, and a
woman stood where the pillar of darkness had been.  Shorter than
the first, not so slender, though still very beautiful, with long
dark hair in a braid to her waist and darker eyes.  That was all
he could see of her face; the rest was hidden by a black mask
that covered nose and mouth.  She wore a robe as well, of a
similiar cut to the other womans, although this one was black as
midnight without stars or moon where the other's had been the
blue-white of lightning in a dark sky.  Her hands were both
visible, ungloved, and empty.  

     "Forgive my companion if she does not speak," the other
woman said.  He whipped his head back to look at her; she was no
closer than she had been.  Happosai and the others stood as if
frozen behind her.  "But her tongue has forgotten the shape of
any language you might understand."

     Then Happosai moved.  "COLOGNE!"

     The woman in the blue-white robes was fast, though not so
fast he could not have avoided her had his eyes been on anything
but Cologne's crumpled form.  Her arm drew back, and as he rushed
past her, she rammed her rod into his side.

     The blades were blunt, not sharp.  They did not need to be
sharp, for the thing she wielded held its own powers.

     She spoke a word, softly, under her breath in her rasping
voice.  Her eyes flared for a moment with blue fire dancing along
the edges of black pupils, and then a surge of power exploded
from the blades of the rod, bathing Happosai in a crackling cage
of lightning for a few seconds that dropped him writhing to the
ground with smoke rising from him.

     The air smelt of ozone, and scorched hair and flesh.

     The others were moving now, coming forward with their
weapons drawn.  The woman in the blue-white robes spoke one word
to the woman in the dark robes.  "Yamiko."

     The woman raised her head slightly to look past Ranma to the
other woman, a sound rising from behind her black leather mask
like a wet thing sliding in a dark place.

     "Kill them all but the boy next to you," the first woman
said as if it were a routine thing to kill.  "I shall handle
him."

     Another sound from the woman, a gurgling purr of damp
pleasure.  The shadows gathered around her, moths to a flame, and
she vanished.  Ranma turned all his attention to the woman in the
blue-white robes.

     "Who are you?" he asked, and there was fire pounding in his
head in steady waves, rising and falling one after the other,
breaking upon the shores of his mind, washing away everything,
washing away everything but themselves in a pain so terrible it
was almost a pleasure.

     "Denkoko," the woman said, and she bowed slightly,
mockingly, and raised up her strange rod.  Ranma heard Mousse
yell a cry of challenge, heard a mewling hiss a second later, but
that was very far away.

     He glanced to the fallen Cologne.  To Happosai, from whose
still body smoke rose in thin plumes, twining around each other
like serpents.  To the woman before him, very beautiful and very,
very terrible.

     "I don't fight girls," he said to Denkoko from very far
away.  "But I'll make an exception for you."

     And he reached out past those curtains of fire for the ice
he knew lurked behind.

**********

     Kima was half a mile away, hidden carefully in a forest up
the slope of the mountain, but she too heard the two cracks of
thunder, and a moment later, the sound of Shiso's wings, nearly
as loud, as the raven took to the air.

     "COME!" he said, as if it were a command.  In a way, it was.

     Cursing the fact that the trees here were just a little too
dense in number for wings of her size to take to the air, she
began to run after him, Cologne's words echoing in her head.
Never think you are so smart that any plan will go off exactly
as expected.

     "Some plans, though," she added as she ran, sword bumping
against her hip.  "Go off a lot more unexpectedly than others."

End Part 5


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