Let me first point out that this is a scene.  I decided to post it
because one of my pre-readers gave me such a positive response.  I'd
like to give it one more go through the ringer, so any C&C you have will
be welcome.
	Because it is a scene, and Alana is an original character, I need to
explain some things.  Alana is "the Bearer", meaning she has this
all-powerful spirit talking to her in her head (she bears this spirit,
hence the title), called the Lady.  As the Bearer, she has certain
duties.  The Defenders are a group of guys, the Handmaidens are girls,
both groups sworn to protect the Lady, and consequently, Alana.
	Max is Alana's _friend_, and her banker...but that's another story. ^.^
His mother practiced black magic, and died horribly, most likely. 
Haven't decided.  He's loaded.  On with the scene!  Warning, rather gory
imagery!  At least, _I_ think so, but I may be a prude.

********************************************************************************

			The Last Battle (Version 2.0):

			A Scene from Heaven and Earth

		      By Alandra (mystavash@geocities.com)

Ryouga and other Ranma � characters are copyrighted by Takahashi Rumiko,
and other related companies.  He is used here without permission of
aforesaid entities for entertainment purposes only.

Alana, Max Corinthian, the Lady, the Defenders, and the Handmaidens are
all original characters created and owned by me; you are free to use any
characters except Alana and the Lady in which ever manner you choose,
allowing due credit to myself.  For the two exceptions, please ask
before using.  Darien, although he bears the same personal name as
Darien Chiba, is not in anyway related to Sailor Moon, copyrighted by
Takeuchi Naoko and applicable companies.

<> indicate thought, or dream-like sequences.
** indicate an emphasized word, or an action
<<>> indicate the Lady's thought
__ indicate word emphasis
*****************************************************************************

It was a full moon, silvery rays casting sparkles upon the gentle
ripples of the ocean.  The wind, when it blew, was but a soft breath,
barely stirring even the tiniest creature.  It smelled of the sea, with
its salty water and aquatic creatures.   Farolitos, little lanterns,
twinkled above, promising and distant.  The only sounds were the quiet
lapping of the waves, and the *squish**squish* of human feet treading
wet sand.  Two figures were traversing the beach; one, a short girl with
long black hair, the other, a taller boy with a yellow bandana.

	Alana walked along the shore, bare footed, toes digging in the sand.
*squish**squish*  Next to her walked Ryouga; for now, both were silent. 
She had suggested they go on a trip- *poof* and they were there.  It was
a private beach owned by the Corinthian family; in her pocket was the
pass card that proved to the curious their right to be there.   She
needed someone to talk to; Ryouga seemed the best choice.  It couldn't
be someone from her own world, nor any of Ranma's fiancees, nor Ranma
himself (he was a jerk, a sweet jerk, but a jerk nonetheless.)  Ryouga
was different; his world had been harsher.  He understood loneliness,
though his was of longer duration.  He understood what it was like to be
forced to rely only on yourself, when the option of friends or
confidantes was taken away.

	"Ryouga," she said suddenly, stopping and staring down at her toes,
"have you ever wished you could go away?  Start over?"

	Ryouga glanced at her, startled, but her long hair hid her face from
where he stood.  "I've never thought about it that way," he said slowly,
"I think I've always wondered what if something in my past never
happened."  He usually blamed Ranma, he recalled with some anger, and it
was usually Ranma's fault.  

	She nodded, and lapsed into a momentary silence.  She started speaking
again, never looking at him, and twisting her ring around her finger
nervously.  She seemed focused on making patterns in the sand with her
feet.  "When Max found out, that is, when I told him about some of my
powers, he totally freaked out.  Something about an aversion to magic,
because of his mo..." She interrupted herself.  No need to spill others'
secrets.  "...bad experiences.  I told him that I did abuse my power,
but that I deserv...earned the right to use it.  I guess...I suppose
it's not the same for the others, especially the guys, the Defenders. 
They've paid their price, each lifetime...a repetitive pattern, a
repeating cycle.  They don't remember anything from before." 

	Ryouga was confused by references he could not understand, but he
didn't interrupt.  She turned to him, face uplifted, and for the first
time he could see it clearly.  There was more than a hint of wildness in
her dark brown eyes, born of desperation and the need to explain, to
justify.  She tried to put into words what she was just beginning to
understand, her expressive face earnest.  Her hands moved fluidly to
emphasize her words.  "Souls are reborn, you see, and they retain
certain characteristics.  Not enough to determine totally who you are,
and stuff, but, like," she struggled for a moment, but gave up,
"enough.  I think of it like...we have another chance, you know?  It's
like that karma thing, you keep getting reborn, and learning new things,
until you finally get it right, you know?  It's just that...most people
don't remember their past lives."  She shrugged and said derisively,
"Oh, sure, there's deja vu, spooky coincidences, soul mates, but most
don't truly remember, like they remember this life."  She still never
looked directly at him, her eyes darted from the stars to her feet to
some point over and beyond his shoulders.  

	"The handmaidens, they're not really supposed to remember, it's not
like part of the job, but because our past life is so linked to this
one, they remember that, with proper stimulation." she sneered, with
particular bitterness at the last word, and, he saw, some fear.   "I'm
reminded more of the electric chair they have in America.  Legend even
has a special word for it, this process.  Activation.  Standard
operating procedure to get the Defenders miles away so they won't come
breaking down the doors to the chamber when the screams start.  The
Defenders are rather overprotective, you see, they have to be.  They
might not understand that the handmaidens chose to do it."  Though she
jeered harshly, there was a wistfulness in her voice.

	"It's painful?" he asked carefully, trying, but not succeeding very
well, to understand what he had just heard.

	"Damn straight." Alana said savagely, her fists clenching, her eyes
flashing and meeting his for the first time.  "Try feeling like your
mind, body, and soul are being rendered from limb from limb, then put
back haphazardly."  She paused, the anger flickering out, and turned
away, dropping her eyes again.  She crossed her arms, hugging her body
tightly, and started walking again before she continued, in a far less
resolute tone.  "Not that I've ever done it.  It's different for me, it
doesn't help...make me remember, it...it's difficult to say..." her step
faltered with her voice, then strengthened into a stride as she went
on.  

	"But supposedly, according to legend, it's the point where the Bearer,
that's me, becomes the �true vessel' for the Lady, providing a physical
form for her spirit.  Not that legend has ever been that accurate
anyway.  The truth is somewhere in between."  Her voice quivered. 
"It's...it's a hard truth, not one I have to face yet..." Alana shook
her head, thick black hair reflecting the moonlight, as if to clear her
head of this thought.  Her step weakened dramatically as she remembered
*it*.  She ignored Ryouga for a moment, stopping and facing the waves,
arms crossed again.  She said softly, almost to herself, "Activation
doesn't bring the memories...because they're already there."  Her breath
caught in a pitiful sob.  

	Alarmed at this turn of events, Ryouga looked at her again, pulling
back her hair to see her eyes, trying to see what she was feeling. 
Sorrow.  Like the time he, as P-chan, had found her sobbing by the
window, Alana's eyes were twin pits of anguish and agony, her warm brown
eyes sparkling with tears.  One rolled down her face, hanging for a
moment on the tip of her nose, then falling like a diamond to the sand. 
She rubbed the trail the tear left violently, but others followed it. 
He offered one of his bandanas.

	"What is it?" he asked gently, knowing, with an unusual amount of
common sense, that she needed to talk about it.

	She took a shuddering breath.  Could she tell him what she told no
other?  Should she?  But it felt so right to tell him, and did it even
matter that she did?  "We call it...the Last Battle...I...she...that
is..."  She seemed confused for a moment, but then shook her head.  "I
don't think it matters, we're all the same, us Bearers.  I remember it
like I was her, so I guess..." She stopped, re- gathering her thoughts,
and continuing with her tale.  

	"It was a horrible war.  The Enemy had summoned up nearly every dark
warrior that ever existed to fight in the battle; they wanted our
country, willing to destroy it just to say they have it." <The blood
poured like wine into a simple herb garden, the source not yet dead.>  
"It was...our cup of tea, as the Americans say it.  But the shadow
forces were strong, taking all the attention of the Defenders that
fought," <Grey, insubstantial shadow men mocked the young warrior's
attempts to protect a pregnant farmwife.  They slit her belly, then her
throat, and left him to watch...> "and there would be assassination
attempts on me," <I knelt, willing to let them behead me...> "so one
always stayed with me." <...but a Defender rushed into the room, killing
the grey man.  They will not let me die.>  "They started with rotating
it, but as they wandered farther to battle, they kept to one: their best
fighter, reborn on this Earth as Darien." her voice was distant, like a
page in history...but her eyes, they were frightening.  "I always found
that rather ironic that they focused so much on killing me when I
already knew I wasn't going to help this war."  

	"Have you ever made a choice that you knew was going to hurt some
people but it was right and you had to do it?" she asked him, the
madness fading into embers.

	Ryouga nodded.  "One still looms in front of me," he admitted, "If
Akane finds out...should I tell her first..."

	"Tough call," she said, amused at the vast differences between the two
situations, the darkness flickering out temporarily, "I dare say," she
stopped, considering.  Perhaps they weren't so different after all.  She
shrugged. "...but I won't.

	"The more power you have over Destiny, the more power it has on you. 
The ultimate balance, good and evil, and all that jazz.  The greater
your power, the more you have to control it; pull your punches, so to
speak.  Like your depression chi blast, the Shi Shi Hokkodon.  Highly
destructive.  You lack a certain finesse, but at least you know enough
to get away from people."

	Not liking this subject, he changed it.  "What happened?" he asked. 
"On the Last Battle?"  She stiffened, her eyes flaring with the wildness
once again, as his words brought back the memories.  She closed them.

	"The Enemy won." she said simply.  "They were supposed to win.  We were
supposed to fight.  I sat in my room," <red and gold and verdant green
tapestries, torn to be used as bandages, some rags left on the floor,
soaked in lifeblood, an elegant canopied, four postered bed, fit for a
princess, unused, and untouched.  I slept on the cold floor..>."every
scream coming to my ears;"<...the walls vibrated with the death screams
of my people, my beloveds...> "these were my people, their deaths
were..." <agony ripped through my body silently, wave after wave of
mortal pain...>"I felt it when any one of them died"<...today, the
fishmongers died, their guts spilled from their fragile container, their
wives raped, and left for dead.  Seppukku, the dagger stabs the bruised
breast again, again, again...>"thousands, millions at a time..." <so
many, so many! > "I just sat there,"<...there are four thousand bricks
on the north wall, the ant took five hours to cross the floor on its six
legs, the seven are gone, gone, gone...> "knowing that I could not
interfere, that the future relied on my just sitting there."<...millions
now for billions later?  What faulty reasoning is that?  I must go, and
save them!  What am I for, if not for my people?  My people, it is for
all my people I sit here, I must remember them when they were happy, it
is for their little one's little one's I do this...> "I knew that they
would hate me, knew it and resigned myself to it long ago..." <they must
despise me, I I I, there is no I, I do not exist, they must hate me the
dream, me the princess, me me me...> "but I wasn't expecting..."
<merciless, vile creatures, Stop!> "they never stopped.." <no more,
please,> "...the screams still ring in my ears..."  

	Her hands went instinctively to her ears, as if to shut out those
screams of a people long dead and gone.  Her eyes had opened, and Ryouga
shivered at their expression.  He *saw* what she spoke of with a soft,
quivering, voice.  It tore at him, ripped him like a dragon's talon, and
his heart of glass cracked into a thousand fine, web-like lines.  Those
eyes, that pain, no one should have it.  It seemed to him to be beyond
human endurance.

	"The one who is Darien now," <beautiful noble mein, sapphire eyes, how
I love him...>"he did not understand when I said I couldn't interfere.  
He yelled at me, slapped me, shoved my face out the window so I could
see my people's suffering.  I couldn't make him understand, because he
had to hate me too." 

<He came one bloody dawn, heart enraged, eyes a-fire.  I say no, and
turned away to my counting...one thousand threads in this pillow...but
he grabs me harshly, slapping me, leaving a red handprint upon my pale
skin...I look out the window as I have never done because he will not
let me look away.  �Look!  Look!' he cries at me, and oh, I am torn
asunder.  My beautiful kingdom, blackened like a burnt pig, fires
claiming ancient libraries, oh, what have I done?  He thinks he has won,
pulls me from the window to fight for my kingdom.  We can rebuild it, he
says, yet still, I say no.  He looks to kill me, but he cannot, oaths of
bondage stay his dagger.  I loved him once, I love him still, but he
must not love me, no, it cannot be...>

	"I can deal with that...really...well, maybe not...but...it's like...I
couldn't *do* anything, Ryouga.  Totally helpless, no shoulder to lean
on, no one who understood, no one who would hold me back..." <if I could
only fight against something, blood, blood, when is harvest done?>  "I
don't know...so much will power...I shut down after a while.  They told
me that they found me just rocking back and forth."<... back and forth,
back and forth, nothing else but back and forth, I am nothing but back
and forth, back and forth... >"None of the Defenders or Handmaidens
died, of course, they had to stay and become heros and fugitives." < I
watch them sneak out, neither hindering nor aiding, leaving me without
reluctance, back and forth, back and forth...>

	"I became the Enemy's show thing, they would put me in a cage and show
me all around the country.  I think...for a while...I just lost it.  A
part of me had died in that battle..." <I am nothing, nothing, nothing
is me...> "I couldn't...I wasn't even sure what would happen if I did
let them win.  I never let myself think that far, for fear of
overgeneralizing it. . I mean, who cares if you have to live a few more
lives, right?  So I would just sit in the cage, never looking at
anything but the floor." <...the wooden boards were a blood bought
golden brown...> "They treated me well, after they realized I wasn't
going to try to escape.  I don't think that at that point I could have. 
I think. ..I lost the part of me that was the Bearer, and I was,
instead, just a very frightened princess who had done a horrible thing
and couldn't handle it.  The Lady didn't talk to me anymore." <My Lady,
please, where are you?  I need you...> "I tried not to think at all. 
It's like brushing your teeth, only ...all the time, you know? 
Sometimes I would see the Defenders or the Handmaidens in the crowd,
staring at me.  Before the Battle, I had taught them how to hide
themselves from the Enemy's mages.  Only I could distinguish them.  They
would look at me in disgust...mostly I didn't think much about it, I was
too numb, but *he* saw me one day." <Beloved, my heart says, where've
you been?  It's cold here, I cannot feel anything.  Beloved, you're
hurting me!  I'll be free soon...>"It hurt.  A lot.  I started to wake
up, notice things around me.  And from then on..."

	Ryouga was beyond shock.  He had faced harder times than anyone in the
Ranmaverse, but this, this was past comparison.  "So you remember. .
.?"  Something pushed him to break the tension, those eyes, they weren't
human...

	She blinked slowly, feeling drained, and bearably sad.  "Everything.  I
remember my past lives better than I do yesterday."  She was herself
again.

	Ryouga knew he couldn't do much.  Her memories, if they were as she
said, were too clear and exact to fuzzed away.  He had not expected
this.  No one should suffer such pain; his own heart of glass vibrated
to a breaking point, and he felt tears come to his eyes.  Unmanly,
perhaps, but he either didn't notice them, or didn't care, for he did
not wipe them away.  He searched his mind desperately for something he
could do, but words seemed so _lame_.  He was too shy to do anything
more forward than take her hand and squeeze it.  She looked at him in
surprise, and smiled wanly.  Alana pulled his arm around her waist, and
leaned on him as they walked.  Ryouga turned beet red, but, to his
credit, his nose didn't bleed too much.

	Alana didn't think much of the implications of this; all she knew was
that she felt better.  Her mind was sluggish, drained after so much
emotional expenditure.  It seemed she could only think sad thoughts. 
More tears fell from her eyes as she looked back on the millenias that
were her life and realized how _lonely_ she truly was. Why was it that
everyone had soul mates but her?  Guaranteed lovers for all time, that's
what they were.  She leaned against Ryouga a little, allowing her mind
to go blank.  There were no such givens for her, duty left little over.

	Unbeknownst to her, as she and Ryouga walked along the beach, the
moolight silvering her hair, the Lady thought, sadly, <<It is not that
you do not have a soul mate, love, but that you have too many.>>

The moon glowed down on them in sympathy. 


*****************************************************************************
Author's Notes:

	1) After the previous Bearer describes the scene with "the one who was
Darien" (you can tell I'm   avoiding giving names here), she says, "no,
it cannot be."  Check back, if you want, to be sure.   This comes from a
poem I wrote, "The Meads", which is the faery's perspective on the
events described in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by John Keats.  It's
pretty good, if I do say so myself.  Others say so, too.  If you would
like a copy, I can e-mail it to you.  

	2) There is a line where the previous Bearer says/thinks "beloved,
where've you been?"  This comes from a country song (yes, country, don't
start on that, either).  The applicable lines are: "Where've you been? 
I'm just not myself when you're away."  The previous Bearer was a mess
before Darien took off, so don't assume he's a major factor.  

	3) As for Alana's eyes not being human, well gee, do you think the
universe is populated only by humans?  It may be a scary thought, but it
seems pretty logical to me that it isn't.  "There are others out there",
duh.  The probability of there being no one but us is slimmer than there
being a thousand other sentient races.  Then there's the more mundane
explanation that, assuming the previous Bearer *was* human, Alana's eyes
have become her eyes, and Ryouga just misinterpreted their strangeness. 
You choose.

	4) As for the multiple soulmates thing, I'd tell you why I did it, but
I'm afraid I'd loose all credibility. ^.^

Thanks to all my pre-readers!   

Alandra