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.  

Homepage at:  http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/9758

Chapter 7 : Revelations in Grey (1/3)

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but
The truth in masquerade.
-Lord Byron, "Don Juan"

     The oyabun tapped his fingers in a nervous rhthym on the
glass table-top next to him.  His fingernails clicked on the
surface, seeming a very loud sound in the silence of the waiting
room.

     He was the only one in the waiting room beyond the pretty
but unremarkable secretary behind the large oak desk.  The chair
he sat in was covered in glossy black leather, and had a certain
kind of streamlined, hideous beauty, like a dark-skinned shark.

     He was nervous, and he was not a man used to being nervous.
For over thirty years now he'd been oyabun of Zensha-yumi, the
head of a criminal organization with ties to all parts of the
world, and probably the most powerful yakuza group in Japan.
He'd been careful; he liked to control from behind the scenes.
He didn't let his enemies know who he was.  He didn't meet his
subordinates at his home.  He'd thought he was untouchable.

     Twelve years ago, everything had changed.

     Twelve years ago, he'd met Yoko.

     And now he was oyabun in name only.  He took his orders from
her, or occasionally other women who indicated by certain means
that they represented her.  It was his understanding that the
same was true for the heads of yakuza criminal syndicates all
over Japan.  Those who hadn't been willing to take their orders
from Yoko or her subordinates were all dead now.

     That was not entirely true, actually.  Three of them were
hopelessly and incurably insane.  One was on life support, his
hospital bills payed for by a string of half-a-dozen shell
companies that the oyabun had discovered led back to the company
housed in this building, Sen-Atama, a profitable but little-known
software company of which Yoko was the CEO.  She'd explained to
him once, in one of her rare talkative periods, that they kept
him alive as a reminder; he had no arms or legs or eyes or
tongue.

     Two of them had just disappeared altogether, with no bodies
ever being found.  One had vanished from the back of his car
while his chaffeur was driving in the front behind a smoked-glass
barrier.  He and the bodyguard in the front had heard nothing.
The bodyguard who'd been in the back seat had been dead.  An
autopsy report he'd gotten through connections had indicated all
the man's internal organs had been removed somehow, without a
mark upon the body.

     Business actually proceeded much as it always had; Yoko left
the running of various organizations in the yakuza power
structure up to the individual oyabun and their sub-bosses.  It
was just when she told you to do something, you did it.  You
killed certain people, you watched certain others, you stole
certain things and delivered them, you bought certain buildings
and handed the deeds over to her shell companies.

     The arrangement was very simple.  You did exactly as she
wanted.  In return, you got to live.  

     Many of the oyabun hadn't learned the arrangement right
away.  They had said they were not afraid to die; many of them
had been old men, concerned with their honour, unwilling to
relinquish control and believing the threats to be empty.

     It was when their wives, children and grandchildren started
to die that they'd realized what wasn't threatened was worse than
what was.  Nothing could be done to protect their families, it
seemed. No matter how many guards, how many precautions, somehow,
they got through.  Whoever they truly were.

     One of the oyabun who'd gone insane had been found alive
amidst the carnage of his house.  The remains of his wife, his
two daughters, their husbands and his six grandchildren had been
spread all over different parts of it, along with the bodies of a
half-dozen bodyguards.  The handguns of all the bodyguards had
been empty; bullet holes scored the walls and furniture in the
hundreds.

     Autopsy reports from that had shown that they'd all been
literally torn apart by something incredibly strong.  The oyabun
had been left alive, uninjured, and soaked in blood from head to
toe.  In the twelve years of his institutionalization, he'd only
stopped screaming when he was sedated.  That was most of the
time.

     A simple arrangement.  If you didn't follow it, you ended up
dead.  Or even worse than that, you ended up alive with all you
loved dead.

     The oyabun glanced around the waiting room, and continued to
tap his fingers on the table-top.  There were more black leather
chairs, a black leather sofa.  Potted plants dotted the room in
occasional places, green breaking the monotony of the black.

     On the walls hung nineteenth century ink prints from Kyoto,
the suggestion of bridges and trees and cranes in the subtle
brush-strokes.  They were all extremely valuable.

     The oyabun understood business.  He had not become oyabun
because he was a fool, or because he was weak, or because he was
soft.  He'd killed men, and though he'd never enjoyed it, he'd
understood the necessity of it.  If he was not oyabun, then
someone else was, and it was better him than some men he knew.
Crime was a reality, and it was better it be run like a business
than like a war.

     Yes, he understood business.  He understood killing.  That
was a part of the business his family had been in for nearly
three centuries now.

     He did not truly understand evil.  And that was what Yoko
was, he'd always dimly realized in the core of his being.  There
was something about her that was simply wrong, a feeling he got
whenever he looked at her wrinkled, vein-mapped hands, or at the
dark glasses she always wore, or at the smooth, young features
that contrasted the withered, parchmentlike flesh of her hands.

     He realized he'd never seen her eyes.  He didn't think he
wanted to.  They were the windows to the soul, and he had no
desire to gaze upon Yoko's soul.

     "She will see you now," the secretary said from where she
stood at his left side.  He hadn't even heard her approach.

     "Thank you," the oyabun said, standing up.  He'd turned
sixty last winter, but he was still fit, still handsome after all
the years.  He smiled at the pretty secretary; she did not smile
back, but walked ahead of him to the large oaken doors that led
into the hallway to Yoko's office.  She turned one gold-plated
handle and swung the door wide without even a creak.  The oyabun
stepped by her and took the familiar walk down the hallway, his
Italian leather shoes making a soft whisper across the fine
fibres of a blue carpet.

     He'd always hated the hallway.  The ceiling seemed too high,
the spaces between the walls too narrow.  Everything seemed to
loom, and he always had the impression unseen eyes were watching
him.  It made the twenty feet seem like twenty miles.

     There would not be anyone in the office besides Yoko.  There
never was.  She was one of the few people he'd ever met who had
an utter confidence in their own ability to protect themselves.

     Ten years ago, at a meeting between her and a dozen of the
highest-ranking oyabun in the country, there'd been an attempt on
her life.  Two men had leapt up from concealment as the meeting
had started and opened up on her with automatic pistols at a
distance of less than ten feet.

     They'd missed.  Both of them.  The consensus afterwards had
been that Yoko had been carrying some kind of small but very
powerful gun.

     But he'd been close, and he'd seen she had nothing in her
hand when she raised it and pointed it at the men.  He'd been
close, and he'd seen how there was no way the men could have
missed.  Looking around the conference room later, he'd seen that
there were bullet holes in the floor and ceiling below and above
where Yoko had been sitting, but none in the wall behind her.

     She'd pointed her hand and two men had died, blood exploding
from their mouths, their bodies smashed back against the walls
hard enough to leave an impression in the wood by some impact
that everyone else had always assumed to be a gunshot.  Then
she'd turned in her chair to the pale-faced oyabun three chairs
down, and even with the glasses on all at the table knew she was
looking at him.

     "Hidekazu," she'd said in a disappointed voice, steepling
long, aged fingers under her chin and resting her elbows on the
table.  "That was a very stupid thing you did.  Don't you
remember what happened to your son and his family?"

     "That was to be for my son and his family," Hidekazu had
said, no tremble in his voice though fear was written all over
him.  "Now I must do it myself."

     He'd been very fast.

     Yoko had been faster.  The gun had clattered to the table,
and the handle of a slender throwing knife had somehow just
seemed to emerge from the centre of Hidekazu's forehead, with the
tip of the blade protuding slightly out of the back of his skull.

     She hadn't even stopped the meeting to drag the bodies out.

     And now the oyabun put his hand on the doorknob and swung
open the door to Yoko's office, taking in the familiar sights.
The tall bookshelves, leather-bound volumes neatly organized, the
large window covered with Venetian blinds that to his memory he'd
never seen not covered, the dim light from the overhead bulb,
muted and filtered and leaving the corners of the room in shadow.

     Yoko sat behind a monolithic desk of grey marble that must
have weighed at least a ton.  Papers were neatly stacked on
either side; there was a phone in the middle, and next to it a
compact and extremely expensive computer.  She was typing as he
came in, long fingers clacking softly on the keyboard.  As
always, her dark hair was held back into a bun by a long silver
pin, the point glimmering sharply.

     A slow smile lit her young face as she looked up, eyes
hidden behind black-lensed, round-framed glasses.  "Ah.
Welcome."

     "Hello, Yoko," he said, bowing.  He'd referred to her by her
last name once, and been told never to do it again.  She still
referred to him by his last name, though, when she acknowledged
he had a name at all.

     "Don't sit down yet," Yoko said.  "There's someone you need
to meet.  An associate of mine."

     And suddenly there was an impression of a looming presence
on his left side.  He turned, a little too quickly, and looked
into the coldest eyes he'd ever seen.  They were sky-blue, and as
chill as arctic ice.  There was no emotion in them, or in the
man's face.  He was a westerner, with short-cut blond hair and a
face that looked as if it had been carved entirely out of sharp
angles and flat, hard plains.  He was taller than the oyabun by
several inches, and the oyabun was not a short man.  A well-cut
charcoal-grey suit draped snugly around broad shoulders and
powerful arms.

     There was a feel to certain people the oyabun had met, an
aura of violence barely held in check.  The man radiated that
sense of violence like a cologne.  He was a tightly coiled
spring, moments away from release.

     "I am called Ritter," he said.  His Japanese had a mild,
unplacable accent that sounded vaguely European.  His voice was
as flat as his eyes.  

     With all other people like that, they'd had tempers to
match.  And yet the oyabun got the impression that Ritter had
absolute and rigid control over himself, and that exterior of ice
covered only more ice.  That store of violence would come out
exactly when he wanted it to, and at no other time.
     
     He extended a hand, and the oyabun took it.  His grip was
firm, and his fingers were slender and powerful, very long and
fine like a musician's, but with a wiry strength in them.  "I am
a business associate of Yoko's."

     "A pleasure, Mr. Ritter," the oyabun said.  

     "Ritter is very interested in hearing what you have to tell
me," Yoko said from behind her desk, a slight edge to her voice.
The oyabun was very good at reading people.  Never before had he
been able to read Yoko.

     He could now.  She was frightened, and there was nothing
unfamiliar here except Ritter.  

     "The boy is gone," the oyabun said, turning to look at Yoko,
because even her black-glass gaze was better than Ritter's eyes.

     "More detail, please," Yoko said wearily.

     "We have two observers," the oyabun said carefully.  "One of
them lives in the household where he was staying, and was
indebted to us for certain services.  The other is a man who
occasionally does freelance work for us.  Both report that the
boy disappeared from a group of his friends yesterday and has not
been seen since.  I would have to have my go-betweens ask them
for further details, but that is what they report."

     "Are they reliable?" Yoko asked.

     The oyabun nodded.  "Both of them."

     "Ask for more details," Yoko said.  "I will contact you
soon.  You may go now."

     Trying to keep relief from his face, the oyabun bowed to
Yoko, and then to the silent, towering form of Ritter.
"Thank you."

     As he turned to leave, Ritter reached out and caught him by
the shoulder in a grip that felt like some kind of industrial
press.  "Perhaps I will contact you as well.  I am sure we will
become as close and friendly as you and Yoko."

     The oyabun nodded slowly and didn't realize he'd been
holding his breath until Ritter released his shoulder and he let
it out.  "As you wish, Mr. Ritter."

     The big man nodded silently, and the oyabun stepped quickly
out the door, closing it behind him, and resisted the urge to run
all the way out of the building.  What kind of person was Ritter,
the oyabun wondered, if he could frighten a woman who had most of
the entirety of Japan's underworld under her thumb?

     He decided that he really did not want to find out.

**********

     The man called Ritter watched the door close behind the
oyabun, and then turned to look at Yoko where she sat behind the
black marble desk.  His face slowly went from carefully
controlled neutrality to cold rage.

     "Explain this to me again," he said.  "What happened?"

     "Denkoko and Yamiko..."

     "I know.  I want to know why.  They understood the orders,
did they not?"

     "I thought they did."

     A slow sneer blossomed on Ritter's face like a chasm opening
in the earth.  "You need to keep tighter leashes on your dogs,
Yoko."

     "They are my sisters," Yoko said in a controlled voice,
looking at him from behind black lenses.  "Not my dogs.  I am
most senior, and thus I hold a position of honour among us.  No
more than that, Ritter."

     "You lead them in all but name," Ritter said.  "And I hold
you responsible for their actions.  I want to know why you can no
longer sense him."

     "They're broken," Yoko said.  "All the threads I tied to him
were weakened and then broken.  I don't know how.  Even when he
went to China I was able to sense he was alive, at least.  But
now..."

     "And Denkoko and Yamiko, where are they?"

     "Denkoko is gone," Yoko said, licking her lips slightly and
glancing at the desktop.  "Yamiko returned with her body.  We
will consign Denkoko to the dead in the next few days."

     "Yamiko was ever Denkoko's lapdog," Ritter said.  "And
Denkoko was always too impulsive, too quick to disobey.  You
should have killed her years ago."

     "We do not kill among ourselves," Yoko said.  "We are an
unbroken circle, and we do not kill among ourselves."

     Ritter threw back his head and laughed.  "Never say that
there is anything you will not kill, Yoko.  If a hound does not
do as you wish, you beat it.  If it continues to disobey, you
drown it."

     "I am not you, Ritter," Yoko said.  "And my sisters are not
hounds.  Take care how you speak to me.  You are only one man."

     Ritter stepped forward and brought his closed fist down on
the marble desktop, very gently.  There was a cracking sound, and
a spiderweb of dark veins laced the area he'd hit.  "I can kill
you, Yoko," he snarled.  "More easily than I lift my smallest
finger.  I can kill any one of you, and it would be like stepping
on bugs."

     Yoko nodded.  "I know, Ritter.  But another will take my
place.  The circle is eternal.  We are a serpent with a thousand
heads."

     She leaned slightly forward, looking at him across the desk,
and took off her dark glasses, gazing at him for a moment with an
intensity only she was capable of.  When he did not even flinch,
she put them back on.  "I know what it is you desire, Ritter.  I
know it is denied to you.  We should not fight among ourselves,
Ritter.  You are our master's most beloved child, and our
brother.  Siblings should not fight."

     She put the glasses back on.  "Jusenkyou will be ours, old
friend.  Fear not."

     Ritter slowly smiled, very coldly.  "Jusenkyou will be the
master's, and no one else's.  Take care you remember that.  We
are his hands and nothing more."

     "Of course," Yoko said amiably, in an off-hand tone, waving
one hand dismissively at Ritter and turning her eyes back to her
computer screen.

     Ritter never even seemed to move.  There was no interval
between the time he was standing across the desk from her, fist
still resting in the centre of the spread of cracks on the top of
the desk, and the time he had stretched out and grabbed her by
the throat.  Yoko let out a long, surprised squawk and brought up
her hands to grab his wrist.  He hefted her effortlessly out of
the chair, legs kicking and knocking the carved wooden seat over
with a clatter.  He hauled her over the desk, whirled, and
slammed her back against the thick wooden door of the office so
hard it rattled in the frame, holding her up to gaze directly
into her eyes, his hand a vice on her throat.

     "Now you listen and mark my words, old friend," he said very
quietly, the last word filled with mocking sarcasm.  "It has been
too many years since you dealt with me, Yoko.  You forget what
you are compared to what I am.  All you and your sisters together
cannot hope to challenge me.  I go deeper than you all can ever
hope to go."

     He loosened his one-handed grip enough to let her take a
gasping breath, then tightened it again.  Holding her up to his
eye level put her close to a foot off the ground, her feet trying
for purchase where there was none.

     "If you ever speak to me in such a disrespectful manner
again, I'll cut out your entrails and read the future in them
across your desk," Ritter said as if they were discussing the
weather.  There was a terrible, absolute conviction to his words.
"Maybe one of your sisters will take your place, but you will be
dead.  You do not want that, Yoko.  I do not want it either; you
are a smart woman, and useful to our lord.  Part of being smart
is knowing your place.  I know mine; you would do well to learn
yours before it costs you your life."

     "Ritter, please," Yoko said weakly.  "I can't breathe..."

     "Do not ever make the mistake of thinking that I need you,"
Ritter said.  "I walked alone before your birth was a sparkle in
your mother's eye.  I walked alone before your sisterhood was a
dream in the minds of those who came before you.  If I must, I
shall walk alone after you are all come to dust.  I need no one."

     He turned again and threw her into a heap on the floor in
front of her desk, quite gently for all his strength.  She
groaned and tried to stand, but was unable to.

     Ritter made no sound as he crossed the floor of the office
towards her; all she could see of him were his black boots and
the hem of the pants of his expensive charcoal suit.  "Watch
them, Yoko, but do not touch them yet.  If the boy is truly gone,
it is him we must concern ourselves with.  Keep a close eye in
particular on his mother; if there is anyone he would go to, it
would be most likely her.  There is a strange desire in many men
for the womb even after they are torn from it."

     "Yes, Ritter," Yoko said, casting her eyes to the floor,
because even with the glasses on Ritter would have been able to
read the intermingled hatred and fear on her face.  "If there is
anything else I can do, anything that the Circle can..."

     "I will tell you when there are things you can do for me,"
Ritter said coldly.  "I want all the information you have on the
three from China, particularly the younger girl."

     "If I may ask why?" Yoko risked.

     Ritter's voice had a smile in it when he next spoke.  "I
think I will be taking a trip there in the near future."

     She slowly nodded, still not standing.  Ritter's feet and
legs moved silently out of her sight, walking past her to stand
near her desk.

     "The files on your computer, they are backed up, are they
not?" he inquired in a conscientous voice.

     "Of course.  That's the first law of..."

     "There is no such thing as law."

     There was a few seconds silence, and then an enormous crash
that shook the floor and made her ears ring.  There was the sound
of stone breaking and glass shattering.

     "A reminder, Yoko."

     A momentary flicker of black boots and charcoal suit slid
past her vision.  The door opened, then closed, and Ritter was
gone.

     Yoko stood slowly up, face twisting with hatred, long,
elderly fingers shaking, looking out of place amidst the rest of
her youth.  She glanced back at the overturned, shattered
remnants of the marble desk, and remembered vaguely it had taken
eight men, struggling, to bring it in here. 

     The door swung open.  "Honoured mother of the night, are you
alright?  I heard a crash... what in the name of-"

     Yoko slapped the younger woman hard, snapping her head back
and turning her eyes away from staring at the destruction of the
room.  "You are never to refer to me by that title here, Miyoko.
Never.  Here I am Yoko Kontongara."

     "Yes, Miss Kontongara," her secretary said, paying no
attention to the red mark on her face.  "Forgive me.  What
happened?"

     "Did you see anyone go past your desk recently?"

     "A few minutes ago, Mr..."

     Yoko nodded, cutting the woman off with a wave of her hand.
"Get someone in to clean this up.  I have business to attend to."

     She swept by Miyoko, leaving the other woman to deal with
the ruin of her office.  She had more important things to do.

     Much more important things.

**********

     "There now, father.  It's alright."

     Soun looked up at Kasumi from where he lay on his futon, the
blanket pulled up to his chin and a damp cloth on his forehead.
"It's not alright."

     "Well, it will be," Kasumi said soothingly, minutely
adjusting the positioning of her father's blankets.  "You just
rest, father.  You get yourself into such a state over these
things."

     "My future son-in-law vanished?" Soun said.  "You think
that... that's not something to..."

     "You have to be calm about these things, father.  It won't
do anyone any good to panic.  Now I want you to stay in bed and
relax.  It's not good for your blood pressure to get so upset."

     Soun turned his head slightly and gazed at the shut and
covered window.  The cloth slipped slightly down his forehead;
Kasumi clucked like a mother hen and repositioned it.  

     "It was all going so well," he said after a moment.  "Damn
that old woman."

     He winced as Kasumi's adjustment of the cloth made her press
it against the swelling, lumpy bruise on his forehead; it looked
as if it wouldn't go down complete for a week.  He'd received it
after Cologne had hurled him into a wall a day and a half ago.

     "I'm sure things will be alright," Kasumi said, finally
finding a spot for the cloth that seemed to suit whatever
qualities she wanted.  "It's not like he hasn't been gone before.
Remember when he went with Ryoga and Mousse after those three
strange men from China?  A whole mountain came down, and they all
came back okay.  Ranma's very resourceful, father.  You know
that."

     "But I can't help but worry," Soun said.  "Is it day or
night?  I do not know, so sick am I with grief..."

     "It's day, father," Kasumi said gently, tucking the
blankets up around him a little tighter.  "But it's very early.
I want you to stay in bed, because I have to go shopping and I
don't want to worry about you.  If you need anything, call
Nabiki, alright?"

     Soun opened his mouth as if to protest, then slowly nodded.
His eldest daughter smiled and leaned down to kiss him on the
cheek lightly, then stood up and smoothed out her dress.  "Now
I'll be back soon.  You just rest."

     She stepped out the door, flicking out the light as she
went.  Gently, she eased it closed and headed down the hallway to
knock on the door of Nabiki's room.

     "Just a minute," Nabiki's voice said from behind the door
after a moment.  There was the sound of a drawer opening, the
shuffle of papers, and then the drawer sliding closed.  "Come
in."

     Kasumi opened the door and stepped inside.  Nabiki was
sitting at her chair, swivelled away from her desk to face the
door.  She had a pen in one hand, and was lightly chewing one end
of it.  The desk was a pile of open folders, envelopes and
papers.  "Yeah?"

     "I'm going out," Kasumi said.  "Father's lying in bed.  He's
ever so upset about everything that's happening.  While I'm
shopping, I need you to listen for him if he needs anything."

     Nabiki softly snorted.  "I'd forgotten he was still a
toddler."

     "Nabiki!" Kasumi said sharply.  "Father gets very emotional.
You need to..."

     Nabiki nodded curtly.  "Yeah, whatever sis.  I'll listen for
the old man.  You just go get your groceries.  I've got lots of
work to do."

     Kasumi took a step further in.  "School work?  What is all
that?"

     Nabiki moved in the chair slightly to block more of the
desk.  "Hey sis, your nose doesn't belong in here, okay?  Private
stuff."

     Kasumi frowned slightly and stepped out without saying a
word, closing the door behind her so that it shut with a sharp
click.  It was her equivalent of slamming it closed.

     "How rude," she said, flipping her ponytail over her
shoulder and behind her back.  "I guess she must be upset over
what's happened to Ranma."

     Humming softly, she glanced at Nabiki's closed door one last
time and walked down the stairs.  She went into the kitchen
first and pulled off the apron she always wore around the house;
it served as general guard to food, dust and anything else that
might stain her clothing during the day.  That done, she grabbed
her purse from where it rested on the kitchen table and headed to
the front door.

     She pushed off her slippers at the door and got into her
shoes, flat-soled, dark brown and sensible.  She paused for a
moment and checked her reflection in her compact.  Snapping it
closed, she tucked it back into the purse and stepped outside.

     Passing by the lines of shrubbery along the walkway, she
frowned slightly.  She'd never got around to finishing the
maintenance of them, because of what Cologne had done.  That had
annoyed her quite a lot.

     And Ranma's mother being kidnapped.  That wasn't very good
either, she realized.  And now that he'd vanished, that was even
worse.  But the shrubs still really irked her.

     Passing through the shadow of the peak-roofed gate, she
frowned slightly.  She'd have to be sure to work on the shrubs
when she got back from shopping.

-Continued in [Ranma][Fanfic] Waters Under Earth - Chapter 7 (2/3)


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