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

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

Gosh.  Twenty-five chapters.  How did this story ever end up getting
so big, anyway?

As usual, any commentary is very much welcomed.

Chapter 25 : What Rose in Darkness [3 of 3]

     The plane should have hit the peak dead on, but it did not.
At the last moment, it flew upwards, as if some great hand had
lifted it and flung it away.

     The tip of the mountain spire scraped like a finger across
the belly of the aircraft, nearly tearing through the metal 
shell.  No one aboard the plane realized it, but they had been
only a few miles from Jusenkyou when the disaster had hit.

     And now, like a wounded thing, the plane soared without any
guidance towards the north.

**********

     Somewhere amidst the pain of being bounced around the 
interior of the plane like a rag doll, Mousse heard a shrieking
sound of tortured metal, and the plane shook as if it might break
into fragments.

     As he reached desperately for some purchase, his left elbow
slammed into the edge of something hard, and a numb shock coursed
up his arm and shoulder.  

     Somehow, he managed to grab a seat arm with his right hand,
and hang on as the plane tilted almost vertically upwards, and he 
dangled like a man on a precipice.  

     There was a scream, and he saw Kodachi come tumbling down
towards him, arms flailing.  He swung himself out and held out
his still numb left hand; the jolt as she grabbed onto it nearly 
broke him free from his hold on the seat arm.

     "Hold on," he said through clenched teeth.  The world rolled
drunkenly to the side, and he clung desperately to her hand and 
to the seat arm.

     And then, impossibly, the plane began to dip back towards
normal orientation.  He only realized after a few seconds that 
his feet were on the floor again, his white-knuckled hand 
gripping the plastic arm of the seat hard enough to hurt.

     He listened, anticipating some announcement from the pilot,
telling him that everything was fine now.  There was nothing.

     "You can let go of my hand now," Kodachi said shakily.  He
did so absently, adrenaline and fear still coursing through him.

     "Something's gone wrong," he said, and began to run up the
swaying aisle towards the cockpit, pushing past the curtain and
banging on the thick door.  

     "Why aren't they opening?" Kodachi said from behind him.  He
banged again, called out for them to answer.     

     There was no answer.  He grabbed the handle, found it
locked, and began to draw a weapon to break it down.  Then the
world broke apart, with a sound of tearing so great it drowned
out every sense beneath it.

**********

     The left wing of the plane clipped the top of a high 
mountain in a way that would have looked almost gentle to an 
outside observer.  It snapped off like a twig broken by a man's 
hand, the impact ripping open the metal shell and sending 
hydraulic fluid and fuel spraying out from the wound.  With a 
muffled boom, the engine on the wing caught fire and exploded, 
flaring into the night.     

**********

     The chamber shook, and the water twisting in waves from the
pool shook in time, but did not fall.  The other women were 
fallen all around Tanzei, only the novice who had questioned the
interruption of the ceremony still on her feet, hands raised and
flaring almost blindingly as she continued to chant.  There were
tears streaming from her eyes, and Tanzei could see that the
girl's nails had dug into her hands hard enough to draw blood,
which ran in a thin stream down the inside of each wrist.

     *Lift,* the Lady said, but her voice was a bare whisper,
dying wind through dying grass.

     Tanzei was on her knees, struggling to rise to her feet, to
even remain conscious.  "I'm sorry, Lady," she whispered, grief
in her voice.

     And the Lady said nothing, but the grief was there as well,
so deep, so impossibly deep.  The Lady did not question, did not
ask for it, but Tanzei staggered to her feet, understanding
without having to be told.

     She pulled dagger in its sheath from her belt, a curving
blade, the pommel topped by an egg-sized oval moonstone, and
dropped it to the stone floor, knowing that it would be taken up
by the one required.

     Stepping forward, feeling as if she bore all the weight of
the world upon her back, she knelt by the pool and bowed her 
head.  Her hands gripped the lip of it, and she felt the cool,
damp stone.

     "I am ready if it is necessary, Lady," she said quietly.  "I
am not afraid."

     *Truly?*
     
     "No," she said, closing her eyes.  "No, I am very, very
frightened, Lady."

     There was silence for a moment, seeming to hang heavy in the 
chamber.  Still standing, the young girl gave a soft cry of pain
from behind where Tanzei knelt.

     "I love you, Lady," Tanzei said finally, and she did, oh,
she did, so much, so much that it overcame all the fear.

     *I love you, child,* the Lady whispered, and there was
sadness in her voice.  *Now come.*
     
     There was a glorious sense of freedom in her, as if she were
turning from flesh to light, weightless, beautiful.  It didn't
matter if she was afraid, because she loved, was loved, and that
made it alright.  She had given all of her life to the Lady, and
this was only the culmination, only the final step.

     She dipped her hands into the cool water that lay between 
the two rising waves, raised them cupped to her mouth, and drank.

     *Rest, daughter,* the Lady said gently, and Tanzei felt
fingers brush gently against her face.  *I shall do what must be
done now.*

     And she was drifting, gloriously free, into a lapping,
gentle darkness, oceanic and vast, free of pain, free of desire,
free of suffering, free of fear.

**********
     
     Mousse heard the explosion, felt the plane rock, heard the
shriek as the wing was torn away, felt a booming pain inside him
as the pressure in the plane dropped.  
     
     Things seemed to slow, the rushing stream of time become a
gentle trickle.  He turned in time to see the curtain flapping
madly, ripped away by the howling wind tearing out through the
jagged rent in the side of the plane.  

     Kodachi opened her mouth, but no words came out.  
     
     The door that they had entered onto the plane from opened.
He heard the bolts click back, saw the handle turn.  The plane
rocked nauseatingly, and he smelled the smoke of the burning
engine.

     Outside the open door was darkness and mountains, a range of
them, so close it seemed he could reach out and touch them with
his hand.  

     Like a great hand, the wind picked him up and flung him out
through the door, into the night, tumbling madly, towards the
jagged mountains a thousand feet below.  Despite the slowness of
everything, he could not seem to move his limbs.

     He saw Kodachi for a moment, a spinning shape nearly a
hundred feet away, flung clear from the plane like he had been.  
Then the wind tore his glasses away and sent them off into the
darkness, and everything was a blur, the flare of light as the
plane smashed into the side of a mountain and exploded in a
fireball, the wave of heat and shock that sent him into a mad
somersault through the empty air.

     As he plunged, the wind grabbing at his body like a claw, 
his vision seemed to clear for a moment, and he saw, as if it had
been granted to him before he died, a sight of such beauty that 
it somehow made the hurting less, a lake as clear as the purest
crystal, nestled between the curve of two peaks in the mountain
that was rushing up towards him.

     "Lady..." he whispered softly, feeling tears in his eyes, 
and then there was only the darkness and the pain and the end of
remembrance and the end of pain.

**********

     Kodachi felt the wind pluck at her body like a harpstring,
blow the strands of her ponytail across her face, obscuring all 
sight.  But she was not afraid, somehow, because the wind was 
gentle, for all that it sent her flying to and fro.

     The land was so beautiful.  Mousse had spoken true; there
were so many mountains.  She saw them below her, the edge of a
long chain of them that bordered a flat expanse of rolling dunes,
the sand painted in the dark colours of the night and the stars.

     She felt as if she were floating, flying, realized that she
might die at any second, still not feeling any terror.  There
seemed no room for it.

     *You have come,* a voice said, and it was Tatewaki's voice,
her mother's voice, her father's voice, Ranma's voice, the voice
of everything she had loved, had ever wanted to love her, and it
spoke from within her and without her.

     "Brother," she said, gently and sadly, and then there was
nothing left to say.

**********

     He woke in the night to a long and terrible silence.
     
     Tatewaki Kuno lay there, gazing up into the darkness, and
listened to that silence, as if it should be filled with
something.

     Then he sat up, and reached over, and turned on the light by
the futon.  He walked to the bookshelf and grabbed a volume at
random without looking at the spine, sat down crosslegged on his 
disarrayed blanket, and turned to a random page, and read.

     *The powers whose name and shape no living creature knows*
     *Have pulled the Immortal Rose;*
     *And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,*
     *The Polar Dragon slept,*
     *His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:*
     *When will he wake from sleep?*
     
     A great sorrow fell over him.  Wind from the cracked window
fluttered the pages of the book.

     *Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,*
     *With your harmonious choir*
     *Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,*
     *That my old care may cease;*
     *Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight*
     *The nets of day and night.*
     
     The tears gathered in his eyes, and he let them come now,
splashing down upon his hands, upon the blanket, upon the pages 
of the book.

     *Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be*
     *Like the pale cup of the sea,*
     *When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim*
     *Above its cloudy rim;*
     *But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow*
     *Whither her footsteps go.*
     
     The book dropped limply from his hands and settled on the
crumpled blanket.  Even before the phone rang a few moments 
later, he knew that his sister was gone.

**********

     Nodoka was never sure what woke her that night.  If it had
been dreams, she could not remember them.  But something made her
rise out of the too-large bed, the one that she had intended for
Genma and herself.

     She got up, clutching the thin sheet to herself, and walked
to the sliding doors that led out onto a tiny balcony.  It looked
down across the yard and at the houses and streets beyond, and as
she stepped out onto it, she saw a single figure walking out of
the front gate of her neighbour's house.

     For a moment, she thought it was a prowler, and then he
walked under a patch of light cast by a streetlamp, and she saw 
it was Taikazu.  His shoulders looked slumped, his gray hair that
had seemed so dignified before thinning and old.  

     He turned his head, looked up to where she was, and though
she was sure he could not see her, she felt a moment of 
connection as she watched him turn and walk to the edge of the
sidewalk.

     The night was still, without any sound, not even cicadas, no
far-off noises in the darkness.  The click as her neighbour
opened the door of a car and stepped inside was loud in the
silence, the bang as he closed it almost shocking.

     A moment after he'd entered the car, the headlights 
flickered on, and he drove off smoothly down the empty street.

     Nodoka shivered slightly, wrapped the sheet tighter around
herself, and stared off after him long after the car had turned 
the corner and disappeared.

**********

     When Kuno stepped into the training hall, the lights were
out.  He closed the door behind him, stood in the darkness for a
moment, and then his hand found the lightswitch.

     The banks of lights in the ceiling came on all at once,
taking the darkness from the expansive training hall.  Light
gleamed across polished wooden floors, across vases and the suit
of ancient samurai armour kept in a wall niche, across the length
of the blade in his left hand.

     He strode to the northern wall, his footsteps echoing, and
stood before it.  He did not bother with the switches.  A few
strokes of the blade demolished the hidden doorway he had built,
and he stepped inside, as light flooded from the dojo outside
into the secret hallway.  

     He stepped into the hallway, strode down it to the small
door at the end, and pushed it open.  He could feel the tracks of
his dried tears on his cheeks, feel the threat of more that he
savagely forced down.

     As he stepped inside his sanctuary, he turned on the
flashlight he held in his right hand, and cast the powerful beam
about the tiny room.  In the candlelight, the place had seemed
comforting before, but now the smile of the stone Buddha was
mocking, and the eyes of the wooden Christ upon his wooden cross
held no compassion, and the face of his mother in the photograph
was the face of a woman ten years dead.

     "Why?" he said, glancing from wall to wall.  "I believed.  I
was faithful.  Why?  I kept my promises."

     He felt a thin, keen smile, a razor's smile, grow on his
face.  "Why?"

     He looked around, at Buddha, at Christ, at the kamidana.
There was no answer, nothing.  

     There was a moment of long, heavy silence for him.
     
     And then he screamed, and the sword came up, and everything,     
all sense, spiralled down into a long dark abyss of pent-up rage
and pain, and when he dropped the sword from his white-knuckled
hand moments later, everything had been ruined, the statue of
Buddha sliced in half, the wooden cross lying broken into two
pieces on the floor, the contents of the kamidana scattered 
across the ground, chopped bits of greenery that had been plants,
broken containers spilling salt and water and rice, crinkled
rice-fibre ropes sliced into bits and scattered like snow, the
glass of the frame that held his mother's picture shattered.

     The sword clattered on the boards, and the flashlight fell
from his hands, the beam spinning madly through the darkness of
the room, across the gentle smile of Buddha where his upper body
lay upon the floor, upon the sad eyes of Christ where he lay
broken, upon the scattered shards of glass from the frame of his
mother's photograph.

     He fell to his knees, remorse and guilt almost overwhelming
him.  With shaking hands, he tried to fix things, to make them
right, but the salt had mingled with the water, and he could not
put the broken crucifix together again, and nothing was right,
nothing was good, and everything was broken.

     In the beam of the flashlight, he saw something sparkling on
the floor, and picked it up, a tiny golden crucifix on a golden
chain.  It had been on the kamidana altar, the altar now 
shattered and destroyed, had belonged to his mother.

     He moaned and clenched his fist around the shape of it until
it dug into his palm painfully, his eyes closed.  When he opened
them, he saw what he had done, and could not stand it, staggering
to his feet and running, down the hallway, down out into the
harsh and unforgiving light of the training hall that lashed down
upon him like a scourge, that would not let him hide his sin, his
wrongs, his lies.

     He fell to the floor, and wept, his face in his hands, wept
for his sister and himself and his mother and for everything
beautiful and broken.

     And that was how his grandfather found him, sobbing like a
child.  He did not even realize the man was there until he felt
arms enfold him, heard someone speaking softly.

     "Tatewaki, Tatewaki, it's alright..."
     
     And the voice, the voice he hated so much, was so gentle, 
and he clung to the old man, to his mother's father, as if he 
were the only thing keeping him from a long, long fall.  He 
clung and wept, and said things, swore vengeance for everything, 
and his grandfather held him, and when he was done, after what 
must have been hours, his grandfather let him go and held him by 
the shoulders, and looked into his eyes.

     "You can't fight her, Tatewaki," he said gently, his eyes
sad.  "You can't fight her.  I've talked to old men who knew
Kontongara in their youth, and she looks the same now as she did
then.  There's others like her, Tatewaki, all throughout Japan.
They control us.  They use us as their pawns.  They don't age,
and they don't die."

     He looked at the floor, and for a moment there was immense
guilt scrawled across his face.  "We were proud, Tatewaki.  We
were proud until our mothers and our fathers and our sons and
our daughters began to die.  And no matter how many of us there
were, or how strong we were, they were stronger, because we were
only yakuza, criminals, and they are beyond that."

     Kuno looked at his grandfather, and forced out the words.
"Why did you only try to tell me once?"

     The old man looked shamed, his still handsome face agonized.
"Because she only let me do it once," he whispered finally.

     "How would she have known?"
     
     His grandfather closed his eyes.  "She would have," he said
with absolute certainty.
     
     Kuno closed his eyes as well.  He had no strength left in
his body.  "Kodachi's dead, grandfather."

     "I know," his grandfather replied.  "She called me and told
me."

     "Why?"
     
     "Because I think it brings her pleasure to bring suffering."
     
     Kuno opened his eyes, felt a sudden surge of rage and
conviction.     
     
     "I'm going to kill her," he said, not even a whisper.

     His grandfather slapped him, hard.
     
     "Don't talk like that," he hissed.  "Don't even think of
that.  Have you listened to a word I said, Tatewaki?  You can't
fight them, Tatewaki.  In the end, you'll only lose everything
you've ever cared for."

     Face stinging, Kuno opened his hand and showed his
grandfather the tiny golden cross.  His grandfather picked it up
and dangled it by the chain, swinging it back and forth between
them as they knelt on the wooden floor of the training hall.

     "This was your mother's, wasn't it?" he asked softly.
     
     Kuno nodded silently.
     
     "It was one of the reasons she left, you know," his
grandfather continued.  "When she started to believe, she...
could no longer stand to be in my house.  She thought she could
leave it behind."

     He shook his head.  "You can't leave what you are behind.
When... when I wouldn't give in to them right away, she paid the
price I should have paid."

     He handed the chain back to Kuno, and sighed.  "Why do you
have it?"

     "Because I thought I could believe it too," Kuno replied.
"If she could, then why not I?"

     His grandfather touched his face gently, where he'd slapped
him.  "Oh, Tatewaki.  It didn't save her here, and it can't save
you.  If there are gods, or a god, then a god is a crueler thing
than any of us can ever comprehend."

     Kuno nodded slowly.  "I will sell the land to her.  Pride
blinded me.  It cost Kodachi her life."

     He closed his eyes against tears, though he was sure he had
no tears left to shed.  "What does it matter in the end anyway?"

     "Yes," his grandfather said softly.  "What does any of it
matter?"

     His grandfather stood, and held out his hand.  After a 
moment, Kuno reached up and took it, and let the old man help him
to his feet.

**********

     Taikazu Ongaku, who was still oyabun of Zensha-yumi, who had
seen his wife die to illness and his daughter die because of his
pride, watched his sleeping grandson for a few long minutes.

     He felt very old, and very tired, moreso than he had ever 
been before.  He looked at Tatewaki, his face finally peaceful in
sleep, the chain dangling from his hand, spilling across the
blanket, the golden cross on the end a tiny, glinting shape.

     "Oh, grandson," he said softly, his heart aching with grief.
"I'm sorry."

     He walked to the door out of the room and paused, staring
back with his hand resting against the frame.  He would go home
now, and go to sleep, and in the morning he would continue as
Yoko's pawn, gathering the information that filtered to him and
passing it onto her, keeping an eye on the boy's mother, doing
whatever was asked of him.

     His eyes fell to the cross again, and he remembered his
daughter wearing it, trying to convince him that there was a
merciful god in the world, that there was some great master plan
that made all the suffering and pain and loss necessary.

     He shook his head, closed his eyes.
     
     "God forgive me," he whispered softly, and turned and began
to walk away.     

**********

     The girl sat on her bed and held the sheathed dagger in her
hands, resting them on her lap.  Her shoulders were bowed 
wearily, and her face was a mask, ready to crack at any moment.

     There was a knock at the door.  "Come in," the girl said
dully.

     It opened, admitting a tall girl with coppery hair, wearing
the black dress and shawl of those who served the Lady, a yellow
cord belt at her waist holding a straight dagger.  "The horses
are ready, Honourable Wiyeed."

     Wiyeed looked up.  It was Shiynju.  They had been friends as
long as she could remember.  "You don't have to call me that,
Shiynju."

     Shiynju looked uncomfortable for a moment.  "You are the
leader of the Daughters of the Night now, Wiyeed."

     Wiyeed nodded slowly, brushed a lock of pale hair away from
her face and struggled to maintain control.  She was still numb
over the loss of Tanzei, over the Lady's choice of her successor.  
"I know."

     "She was on the shore of the lake," Shiynju said.  "The Lady
brought her."

     Wiyeed nodded again.  "I think she was supposed to die.  
That was why the Lady took Tanzei instead."

     She stood up, tucking the curved dagger into her belt and
smoothing out her skirts.  Reaching up, she tugged up her shawl
to form a rudimentary hood over her hair.  "There was another as
well, but I do not know what the Lady intends for him.  I think
he should have died as well, and that is why she took..."

     And then grief overcame her, and she wept, and Shiynju held
her, the distance between them now narrowing, at least for a
little while, to what it had been before.  

     "You need to go now, Wiyeed," her friend said when she was
done.  "You have to reach the territory of the Musk by morning."

     "I'll save him," Wiyeed murmured as she opened the door and
stepped into the hall.  "If it can be done, I will."

     "And if it can't?"
     
     Wiyeed drew a shuddering breath.  "Then I will make sure he
at least dies quickly."

-End of Chapter 25

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