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 please direct any commentary
to my personal e-mail address.  Comments are welcomed,
appreciated and very helpful to the continued betterment of this
series.  

I have also set up a page for this series.  If you've missed
previous chapters, you'll be able to find them at the Waters
Under Earth page at http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/9758/

Chapter 6 : Stained Be My Soul (2/4)

     The bird laughed, croakingly.  "Raven.  Big difference
between crows and ravens.  Crows are carrion scavengers, filthy
vermin.  Little more than country pigeons.  We ravens..."

     Ranma groaned.  "I shoulda known you were going to talk."

     "I talk to those who will listen," the raven said, shrugging
his wings as if they were shoulders.  "Few know how to listen to
me, though."

     "I'm hallucinating, aren't I?" Ranma said.

     The bird snickered, a remarkably human sound.  "Far from it.
I am real, and you are real.  What else is there?"

     "I think I'd like to go to sleep now," Ranma murmured.  His
body ached with weariness.

     "Sleep brings dreams," the bird said.  "To rest is to step
beyond the threshold of ourselves."

     "What are you?"

     "The name I bear at this time and place is Shiso."

     "You have other names?"

     "Don't we all?"

     "I'm Ranma.  Just Ranma."

     "Are you?"

     "Who else am I?"

     Laughter again.  "Would you like to know?"

     He hesitated.  The pain was very bad now.  "Yes," he
finally said.

     "Then close your eyes," the raven said.  "This will only
take a moment.  Soon, you will have to give aid; though her
spirit is dauntless, this one she faces goes beyond her."

     "You mean Kima?"

     "That is her name at this time and place."

     "Do you always talk like that?" Ranma asked softly as he
closed his eyes.

     "Sometimes," the bird said, and though his eyes were closed,
Ranma knew beyond any doubt that the bird had shrugged again.

     "In this time and place, you talk like that?"

     "You're starting to catch on, child."

     Two light touches of a beak, softer than the touch of a
feather, upon each eyelid.  "You will not remember this.  Not
yet."

     He knew he wouldn't.

     "You do not go deep enough to remember yet.  Not yet.  But I
shall tell you all the same.  Listen, now, and hear the first of
your names..."

     Night-black feathers brushed against his face, and the raven
began to whisper softly into his ear.

**********

     The woman spun away from Shampoo's left-hand blow and ducked
under the right one, turning to sweep Ryoga's legs out from under
him and then lashing out with razored fingernails that caught
nothing but air as Shampoo stepped away.

     "Ryoga?  You okay?" Shampoo asked worriedly.  The boy
staggered to his feet; his lack of speed was telling in a fight
with a foe this fast and carrying razors in her very hands.  The
wounds on his arms were the worst, but he had another on his
side, and a rake across his face where Yamiko had almost taken an
eye.

     "I'm alright," he said groggily, stepping back into the
complex dance of combat the three of them had been engaging in.
Ukyou and Mousse had shown no sign of movement; Akane was still
hanging back with Ranma's mother.

     Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her great-grandmother
get to her feet and walk to Happosai's side; but there was no
time for distractions, no time, because Yamiko was coming at her
and she was so fast, so very fast...

     Her dodge half-worked this time; a blow that would have
opened her face down the side slashed through one white-clad
shoulder and ripped down her upper arm.  Blood stained the white
as she bit back a scream and launched a vicious overhand sweep of
the bonbori in her right hand.

     Yamiko blocked with her left forearm; there was metallic
clang.  The woman had some kind of parrying devices inserted
under her robes.

     The worst thing about fighting her was the silence.  She
didn't talk, or make any noises anymore beyond gurgling sounds of
pleasure or a low hiss of pain.

     And the two on one advantage Shampoo and Ryoga had wasn't
doing them much good; half the time they had to pull blows to
avoid hitting each other.  The woman was very good, better than
either one of them alone.  Together, they could barely keep her
at bay.

     "You know, you look very pretty.  But there's something
about that aura of yours that turns even me off."

     And then Happosai stepped forward, and it was three on one.

**********

     The trees were very dense on this side of the river.  Tall
willows, bent nearly double by the weight of their branches, wept
a continual stream of leaves into the water, coloured a blue so
dark it was almost black.

     The ground was damp and spongy under his feet; he looked
down and saw a bed of broken rushes by the river bank, with other
rushes growing from between them.

     The river was very, very wide, and swiftly flowing.  Mist
shrouded the area, clinging to his hands and face and obscuring
vision.  Across the river, he could barely see other shapes
moving, other people.

     He wanted to go them, but the water was wide, so very wide.
Depthless and black, too deep to wade, too wide to jump, too
fast-flowing to swim.

     He ran along the banks, rushes crushing under his feet with
dull snapping sounds, seeking a shallow spot, a narrow spot,
rocks that he might use to get across.  But the river only became
wider, and the shapes across from him more and more indistinct.

     And then the river forked into a perfect Y, still far too
wide too cross, but following this river now would not lead him
the same way as those he wanted to go to.

     But there was no way back, he saw, for the mists had closed
behind him into a solid wall, and to run back into them was to
risk a long fall into those depthless rushing waters.

     "No," he said, sinking to his knees on the damp rushes and
stretching out a plaintive, desperate hand to those dim shapes
across the river.  "No, wait.  I'm still here.  I'm still here."

     "It's alright," someone said from behind him, a voice that
made the whisper of velvet across skin sound harsh and grating.
"Fear not.  All rivers lead, in the end, to the same place.  All
rivers lead back to here.  Fear not, my child, for there is
nothing more to fear here.  This is a place beyond many things,
and fear is one of them."

     He turned, and saw a very beautiful woman, all in black,
with her hair falling all about her in a dark waterfall.  Her
face was young, but her eyes were impossibly old, as dark as the
sight of the blind, as deep as an ocean trench.

     "Who are you?"

     "I am what you see," she said.  "The question is, who are
you?"

     "I'm..."

     He didn't know.

     His eyes fell to the waters, to the face in them.

     Whose face was it?  Whose eyes, whose lips, whose nose?
What colour were his eyes?  What was the shape of his face?

     No reflection.

     "I don't know what I am."

     And with that revelation, he put a face he did not know into
hands he knew neither, and wept.

     Soft arms gathered him as if he were a child, and let him
weep upon a black-clad shoulder that smelled of old rooms and
lilies kept in cracked china vases.  She spoke no words, only
held him, gathered him to her, and a memory rose from him, a
memory that nearly all of us bear, the memory of when we were
small, and we were held and made to feel safe."

     "I'm tired," he said.  "I'm so tired."

     "Shh... sleep.  Sleep, child, and awaken again.  We shall
not meet for a time yet."

     "Who are you?  What's your name?"

     The woman did not answer, but she began to sing, very
softly, like a lullaby, and she cradled him in her arms as if he
weighed nothing at all.

     *All things to me are gathered*
     *The shattered, lost and torn*
     *To wait beyond the waters*
     *For the coming of the morn*

     The voice was so beautiful, he felt as if his heart might
break.  Her arms were holding him so tightly, and he felt so
very, very small and safe that he did not want to lose that
feeling and fall asleep.

     *I wait for all that sorrows*
     *All children ever born*
     *To wait beyond the waters*
     *For the coming of the morn*

     He could feel himself fading, though, and the last thing he
remembered was that voice, so very beautiful, carrying him away
to sleep upon itself.

     *For endless are the oceans*
     *But my river bears them on*
     *To wait beyond the waters*
     *For the coming of the dawn*

**********

     Kima decided perhaps this had not been the best idea in the
world after the second lightning bolt.  The first had left her
with a few scorched pinions on her left wing from a desperate
dive to the side; the second blew a tree behind her into little
more than a shattered stump and left the ground littered with
splinters.

     "...and after that's done, I think I shall nail your wings
to the door of my chamber, as a reminder of the first time I ever
dissected a person with wings.  Tell me, are you born from eggs?"

     "Do you always talk this much?" Kima said with a sigh,
brandishing her sword and taking two quick steps in.  "I mean,
empty threats are bad enough, but you keep on repeating
yourself."

     "Who are you to be so arrogant?" the woman said in her
gravelly voice, parrying a sword slash with the rod and striking
back snake-quick in a blow that caught nothing but air.

     "Kima of Mount Phoenix," Kima said as she deflected another
swing of the rod by smacking it away behind the head; from the
sparks crackling between the blades, it was probably a bad idea
to bring her own weapon into contact with them.  "Seneschal to
Lord Saffron, the Phoenix King."

     A slow smile crept across the other woman's face amidst the
clash of weapons.  "Denkoko of the Circle Eternal.  Talk is done.
I think I will hurt you now."

     And then she stepped in, moving with speed Kima hadn't
thought she had, and drove the rod into her side as hard as she
could.  The air seemed to explode into sharp fragments around
her; she felt the charge rush through her body, sending nerves
and muscles into painful spasms.

     Denkoko took another step and had her by the throat with the
twisted, hideous right hand.  The weeping sores upon it stung
like fire on Kima's bare skin.

     Another charge, from the hand this time, not as strong as
the first, but still making her jerk convulsively.  Her sword was
flung away, and she heard herself scream from somewhere far from
here.

     And after that, it was very, very bad.

**********

     Cologne dashed through the forest, cursing every time
branches snagged her clothing, which was far too often for her
liking.  She was still weak, far slower and less agile than she
would have been at her peak.  Following Ranma's thread, she
marvelled at how far the boy had gone into the woods; his speed
must be incredible, under the right conditions.

     The pain was not quite so fierce anymore, and none of it
new.  Perhaps he'd defeated his foe, and was now lying injured.

     He was very close now.  In this deep, the trees were thick;
loose soil and pebbles skittered under her feet as she ran.  The
sun, just beginning to descend into the west, cast diffused light
through the branches and laid shadows on the path before her.

     She absently noted that many of the trees looked as if
they'd been struck by lightning, and very recently.  The air was
filled with the same kind of smell you got after a particularly
fierce thunderstorm.

     It was when she began to see spots of blood amidst the
blackened stumps of trees that she began to worry.

     And then she burst into the clearing and gasped in shock at
the sight of Ranma.

     His shirt was little more than tattered shreds, soaked with
blood and blackened as if by fire.  There looked to be hundreds
of small cuts, all over his body.  One leg was twisted at a
strange angle beneath the other.

     Shiso sat beside the fallen boy, black feathers gleaming
a dark purple in the sun.  "Took you long enough."

     "Oh, light, child, what did she do to you?" Cologne said,
falling to her knees at Ranma's side.  "Oh, by my ancestors..."

     His pulse was a weak, fluttering thing beneath her hand, and
her fingers came away sticky with blood.  His hair was matted and
tangled, his face covered in blood mixed with dirt.  His lower
lip was split at the side, puffy and swollen; a massive
yellow-black bruise blossomed over his right eye.

     But his pulse was steady, at least.  No danger of him
slipping away.  Cologne breathed a sigh of relief and pressed a
few strategic points on his body, ones that numbed pain and
helped to speed healing, and then turned her attention to Shiso.

     "Where is Kima?"

     "Fighting," Shiso said.

     Cologne frowned.  "Against the woman who did this to him?"

     The bird nodded.

     "She's not good enough, is she?"

     The bird nodded again.  "No."

     Cologne swore softly under her breath and stood up to begin
running again.

**********

     It was Happosai who turned the tide in the end.

     You always forgot, Ryoga would say much later.  Somewhere
amidst the lechery and groping, amidst the inane plotting and
scheming, amidst the panty raids, you forgot how good the old man
was.

     Yamiko blocked the first punch Ryoga threw.  The second she
missed completely; it smashed into her shoulder and spun her
around, right into an upswung bonbori from Shampoo that she
managed to catch on the side of her face rather than directly on
the chin, a glancing blow only that would have shattered her
cheekbone with an inch or two of difference.

     There might have been a chance to strike back, but then
Happosai was there, his hand sweeping across so fast it was a
blur, in an open-handed strike that knocked her flying to the
ground, barely managing a somersaulting fall that threw her.
staggering, to her feet.

     The three closed in on her.

     The time had come.

**********

     They were near a river now, Kima thought.  She could hear
the sound of water over a rock; it seemed very, very loud.
Perhaps because she was trying, really trying, to listen to it.
It was better than listening to what Denkoko was saying, or the
noises she herself was making.

     She was flat on her back, staring at the sky with red-tinged
vision through eyes slitted closed because of the pain.  She'd
stopped counting individual blows a while ago, stopped being able
to tell whether they came from hands or feet or from Denkoko's
rod.  Some stood out, if only because they hurt the worst; a
particularly hard slap across the face that seemed to rattle her
teeth, a kick to a nerve in her leg that she didn't know she had,
but that hurt very much all the same.  A blunt-toothed rod driven
into her sternum that sent her entire body convulsing on the
ground, wings and arms and legs thrashing as electricity slashed
through her body.

     She tried to console herself by saying that she'd had worse
than this, but she knew in her heart she hadn't.  Then all
thoughts ended for a time, because Denkoko smashed her across the
face with the rod and everything went into a dark haze of pain.

     The river ran on in the background, a clear and beautiful
sound amidst all the pain, something to cling to, something that
was not pain.

     She felt a withered hand reach down and yank several long
feathers from her wings, but that hurt so little compared to
everything else that it didn't seem important, although before
her wings had always been her greatest pride.

     "Souvenirs," a grating voice said.

     She felt herself lifted roughly by the neck, and tossed
backwards.  She rolled on the ground, over sharp rocks and rough
dirt.

     Into cool, clear, cleansing water that washed over her,
washed away the dirt, washed away a little of the pain, washed
away the blood staining her skin and clothes and wings, washed
away the form she wore.

     And then she heard a soft gasp.

     "Well, this is even more interesting."

     And then someone drove a lance of fire into her stomach, and
she screamed as loud as she could in a voice that did not belong
to her.

**********

     Ranma snapped awake.  For a moment, there was a lingering
feeling of incredible peace, a sense of being utterly and
completely safe.

     And then that was shattered, because he heard Akane scream
as if she were being tortured.

     And then he realized she probably was.

     "Ranma, lie down!  You're hurt!"

     A voice.  Cologne's voice.  Lost amidst the fire, fire
rushing down on him in waves like a storm of it.  Burning,
burning away his pain with its own pain, burning away everything
beneath it.

     "Boy, how can you-"

     The voice didn't matter.  Nothing mattered, because Akane
screamed again.  Ice began to swim amidst the fire, glaciers
floating upon a burning lake, so vast and cold they could freeze
the fire, change those arcing prominences of flame into pillars
of ice dozens of feet high, jagged and sharp with frozen thorns.

     He stood up.  His body screamed in protest, and promptly
tried to fall back down.

     He willed it to stand.  There was no other word for what he
did.  He clawed his fingers into the rising spires of ice and
hauled himself up by sheer force of will, and he stood straight
and tall in the centre of the clearing.

     "Ranma, there's not much time.  You-"

     The voice was beginning to annoy him.  He could almost see
the ice now, a great sheet in front of him, vaster than a
mountain and rising still.  And through those translucent walls,
he saw something lurking within them, a dark shape curled upon
itself, the vague impression of arms wrapped around legs, a head
huddled tightly to a thin chest, knees drawn up beneath the chin.

     He pressed his face against the ice, embraced it, cooled his
senses and himself upon it.  He felt as if he were sinking into
it, as if his body were slowly melting a place within that vast
jagged wall, a place where he could stay forever, where he would
always be within that glacial palace and nothing could ever touch
him again.

     "RANMA!"

     He was almost entirely within the ice when Akane screamed
again, long and agonized, a wordless cry for aid.  Akane.  She
needed him.  He could not be entirely ice.  Not entirely.  Not
yet.

     The ice shattered around him like a tower collapsing, and as
things began to go dark, as jagged chunks rained down from the
frozen heavens upon the endless plains of his mind, he stretched
out and grasped the black core at the centre, and felt something
fall within his body like an inner skin.

     It was hotter than the fire.  It was colder than the ice.
It was everything and nothing, life and death, creation and
destruction, light and darkness.  It was all things and none.

     And it was within him.

     "Ranma, I'm sorry, but-"

     There was that voice again.

     And now a hand, slender, feminine, two fingers outstretched.
Going for a point on his neck.  Moving so impossibly slowly.  He
noted that the nails were in need of a manicure, and would have
found that amusing had he been what he was before.

     But he was not what he had been.

     Someone needed him.  He did not know quite who.

     But this person was trying to stop him from going to them.

     He grabbed the hand, twisted, and flung whoever the hand
belonged to behind his shoulder as if she were a rag doll.  He
heard a yell of pain, the impact of a body with something solid,
the cry of a raven.

     Running now.  So fast, everything was blurring by him.
Green leaves, brown trees, black dirt, blue sky, a whirl of
colours, a rainbow, refracted rainbow, broken rainbow, broken
light, fallen now into the dark.

     Sounds now.  His own feet running.  Soft whispers of wind.
The cry of a raven.  Water flowing.  A voice calling his name
from far away.

     Sound, smell, taste, sight, touch, they all blended, they
all came together, came together into one sense, one sense that
encompassed everything, that let him taste the wind and see the
colours within the sound of the raven's cry and smell the blue of
the sky and touch the tang of water in the air-
     
     The water.

     (...and the shining waters flowed and bore him on...)

     Oh, the water.

     (...and the waters flowed and carried him down, down,
down...)

     Into a sparser area of forest now, with water flowing.  A
river, a stream.  Water flowing, flowing on-

     The waters.

     A woman, blue-white robes and short dark hair, cruel and
beautiful face, a twisted claw for a right hand.  The left hand
holding a strange rod.

     A sadistic grin on her face as she drives the rod into the
arm of the younger woman in the stream.  Short dark hair, a
familiar face, an unfamiliar outfit that he realizes belongs to
someone else but it doesn't matter in that moment because there
is only her, the tall woman in the robe, and she is hurting...

     Someone.

     He does not know who.

     "You can still move?  What incredible endurance."

     He came forward.

     The rod came up.

     He reached out and twisted her wrist in such a way that her
arm broke there and at the elbow and shoulder.  The rod slipped
from her fingers and dangled by the chain from her wrist.

     The right hand came up, fingers spreading, and there was a
crackle in the air, a building storm-

     He laced his fingers between hers on the right hand and
broke them all like twigs.

     There was someone screaming.  It was very far away, and it
was right in front of him.

     *"My own special little toy."*

     He broke the right arm as he had the left.

     *"...you'll bend on your knees before me..."*

     He shattered her left knee with a swift kick.

     *"My own special little toy."*

     He caught her eyes with his.  They were very dark eyes, very
beautiful, and there was pain in them, and fear.  From the look,
both those things were unfamiliar to her.

     He said nothing.

     There was nothing to say.

     The black centre of his soul rose and turned everything to
nothing and nothing to everything, broke apart all that he was
and reformed it into something new, some true reflection with all
else stripped away.

     His hand came up.  It was a blur, a thing as unstoppable as
age, as merciless as death, a thousand thousand ages of power and
warrior's skill embodied in that moment in his fist.

     One punch.

     Straight to the throat.

     The sound of her neck breaking was the loudest thing he'd
ever heard in all his life.  It seemed to break throughout all of
him.  Whatever other sound she might have made was lost amidst
the damage of a crushed throat.  Her body flew back and slammed
into a tree, life already gone from it, and fell, limbs twisted
and eyes still open, to the ground with boneless grace.

     Everything fell away.  Colours, sounds, light, darkness, all
went away, and left him as he had been once before.

     And he realized, with that terrible realization that comes
upon you a moment after you do a terrible thing, the realization
that makes you plead with any powers that might be listening to
let you go back, to let you make a change, to make what has just
happened be a dream, just what he had done.

     And then, with the thing that had been driving him beyond
the point at which his body should have given up gone, he went
into a long, long fall from which there was no escape, and the
last sound he heard was the sound of a woman's neck breaking,
again and again and again.

     And the sound of a raven's cry amidst the flowings of a
river, mingling together into one mournful, worldess song.

-Continued in [Ranma][Fanfic] Waters Under Earth - Chapter 6 (3/4)


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