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

Any commentary, public or private, is very appreciated.

Chapter 28 : Judgements (1 of 3)

     Konatsu woke up to soft, weary darkness.  Someone was
holding his head in their lap, and there was a pain behind his
eyes, a throbbing ache that splintered through his skull like 
shards of glass.  He remembered shards; mirror glass, falling as 
he'd been hurled into the mirror by the great, invisible hand 
that had picked him up in mid-leap.  

     "Hey."  Ukyou smiled down at him from where she sat up
against the headboard of the bed, her hair hanging loose and 
damp, glistening richly in the light from the lamp on the bedside
table, the only light in the room.  She had dressed in one of the
kimonos Hako had given him, a rich dark red with white birds in
flight across it.

     "Hey," he replied weakly.  He didn't feel as bad as he
should have, considering how hard he'd hit.  "How long have I
been out, Ukyou?"

     Ukyou ran her fingers through his hair lightly.  "A few
hours."

     "What happened?" 
     
     A troubled expression vanquished her smile.  "Fuhaiko did
something to you when you went after Nenreiko.  Threw you into
the mirror.  Hako wasn't happy.  Nenreiko patched you up a 
little, and then they left."

     "What did they do to you?" Konatsu asked, feeling a
now-familiar surge of anger.  He had always considered himself a
peaceful person before, but all that had been done to Ukyou since
she'd arrived left him raw with rage at times.

     Ukyou shook her head.  "Nothing.  They just left.  
Nenreiko..."  She drew a long, sighing breath.  "I don't know
what she did.  It felt like having my mind torn open, all my
deepest secrets, my thoughts..."  She trailed away and fell 
silent.  Her hands continued to cradle his aching head in her 
lap.  

     Konatsu reached up and, almost hesitantly, touched his 
fingertips to hers.  "Are you alright now?"

     She nodded.  "As much as I can be.  Had a bath while you
slept.  That made me feel a bit better.  And whatever she did to
me afterwards, she did fix me up before.  My knee's still 
twisted, but other than that, I feel fine."

     "Are you sure?"
     
     There was a haunted look in her lovely eyes for a moment,
and then it was hidden again.  "Yeah.  I'm okay."

     In spite of whatever pleasure he might have derived from 
staying as he was, Konatsu sat up, putting his feet on the floor 
and resting his hands back on the sheets of the bed that Ukyou 
sat on.  "What about Hako?"

     To his shock, Ukyou laughed, not with much humour, but
laughter all the same.  "She looked like she was ready to cut
Fuhaiko's throat.  I think she would have if you'd been hurt much
worse than you were.  I don't know why, but she's awfully
protective of you."

     "She needs me," Konatsu murmured darkly, standing up and
glancing to where the broken mirror of the dressing table cast a
fragmented image of the room.  The air smelt faintly of a dozen
different perfumes, and he could see shattered glass from the
mirror and the bottles of perfume and makeup sprayed across the 
carpet before the vanity.

     "Why?" Ukyou asked.
     
     He took a moment before answering, standing with his back to
her, staring around the room.  "I... don't know."

     "She really thinks you're a girl, doesn't she?" 
     
     He glanced back, shrugged.  "I guess so."
     
     "What do you think?" Ukyou asked.  There was a slight
tremble to the words.     

     "I don't know what I think," he answered, smiling thinly.  
"I'll think as I'm told to, I guess."

     "Konatsu," she said softly, "don't talk like that.  It's not
important what other people want you to be.  Who do you want to
be?"

     He turned his head away from her again, crossed the room to
the dressing table.  Kneeling down, he picked up a long, jagged
shard of mirror glass and looked at his face in it.  "I want to
be Konatsu.  That's all."

     "And is Konatsu a man or a woman?"
     
     He drew a long sigh at the question, stared at his dim
reflection in the fragment of mirror.  "What about you, Ukyou?
Don't you dress as a man sometimes?  Are you a man or a woman?"

     There was a long pause behind him, and when Ukyou finally
spoke, there was a great deal of pain in her voice.  "I'm a 
woman, Konatsu.  I used to think I could stop being that, because
it hurt so much to be a woman.  And I tried, and tried, but I
couldn't.  I still dress like a man sometimes... I don't even 
know why.  It makes me feel better, I guess.  It helps keep the
hurt away."

     He heard her feet touch the floor, the rustle of silk from
the kimono as she walked.  Still, he did not look back.  "I was
told by my father after my mother died that if I acted like a
girl, things would be alright.  But they weren't, and he died
too.  And then I only had my step-mother."

     She was right behind him now, her voice soft in the dim
light.  "That's not what you told us before."

     "No," Konatsu acknowledged, "it wasn't."  In the shard of 
mirror, he could see her face behind his shoulder.  Her eyes were 
sad.  "I liked being a girl, Ukyou.  I liked being beautiful.  I
liked wearing pretty clothes.  Maybe I even came to think that I
was a girl.  I'm not, though.  But if I'm a man, does that mean I
have to stop being who I was before?"

     He saw her close her eyes, and then she took a step forward
and embraced him from behind, linking her hands over his chest
and pressing herself against his back.  The mirror shard dropped
from his suddenly limp fingers and bounced once to lie glittering
on the carpet.

     "No," she whispered softly, leaning her chin against his
shoulder, the sweet, damp fall of her hair brushing against his
face and tickling his nose with the scent of flowered shampoo.
"It doesn't mean that at all.  You are who you are, Konatsu."

     He felt her body beneath the silk of the kimono, soft and 
warm against his back.  Her breath was light against his face, 
like the wind's kiss as he ran.  "Ukyou..." 

     "Don't say anything," she whispered.  "Please, don't say
anything more.  Just let me have this for a little while.  
Please."

     He opened his mouth to speak, and then simply closed it.
With a soft sigh, and a longing so deep it transcended all else,
he simply placed his hands over hers as she held herself against
him, and stared at the glinting shard of their jagged reflection 
upon the ground at his feet.

**********

     Konatsu stared out the glass-fronted doors that led out from
the hallway to the serene, lovely garden beyond, where 
night-blooming flowers grew pale in the darkness, and moonlight
reflected on still ponds; it was one of the four that lay within
the spaces defined by the halls and buildings of the Kenzan
compound.  Eventually, he turned and walked away, sighing deeply.

     The Kenzan compound was laid out with a single large
three-story building in the centre, and four smaller buildings
placed equidistantly at diagonals from the centre one.  Eight
long hallways connected them to the centre building and each
other.  The smaller buildings were living quarters and kitchens,
all of them seemingly deserted except for the room he stayed in.
He had not questioned that; one did not ask questions of Hako.

     He moved down the hallway towards one of those kitchens now.
Ukyou had been unconscious for almost two days, rising fitfully
out of her sleep to murmur words he did not understand before
falling unconscious again.  Hours ago, she had awakened, and had
not fallen again to sleep.  
     
     They had soon been interrupted in that short, delicious
embrace they had shared by Ukyou's stomach growling.  She had
laughed off his offers of food at first, but he knew she would be
starved after all her time asleep.

     He had been responsible for his own meals since he had
arrived.  Hako woke him in the mornings to train, allowed him a
half-hour for lunch, another for dinner, and then let him slump
into bed a few hours later, bone-weary and sore.  Hako had not
trained with him since Ukyou had come; he had spent all his time
caring for her.

     The door that led into the kitchen lay next to the one that
led into the long hallway connecting this smaller building to the 
central building of the compound.  Konatsu wondered what lay 
beyond all the closed doors he'd seen, led through empty
hallways by Hako before they'd climbed the stairs that led to
the training hall that took up all of the third floor.  

     Impulsively, he turned away from the kitchen door and
stepped through.  The emptiness of the Kenzan compound had 
always been oddly peaceful for him when he was alone, walking in 
those gardens that never needed tending, or staring out onto the
white beach while sitting on the edge of the cliff.

     As he stepped into the inner building, though, he felt an
oppressive weight settle over him, and though he told himself 
that the long banks of soft fluorescent lights in the ceiling
that lit the hallways night and day were as bright here as they
were elsewhere, somehow, it seemed darker.

     No peace here.  Desolation, perhaps.  The boards of the
wooden floor creaked alarmingly beneath his feet at times as he
walked.  He shouldn't have been here.  He should have been in the
kitchen, getting food for Ukyou and then returning to her.

     Yet he walked on.  He turned a corner, and again saw one of
the gardens through a glass-fronted sliding door.  A tall willow
bent down with grief over a dark pond of water; paths of 
flat-topped stones wound amidst beds of pale, raked gravel and
flowers bright in the moonlight and the glow of lights from 
inside.

     He would take Ukyou out into one of the gardens, he decided
then.  There was pain here, but there was also beauty.  With that
thought and the possibilities it might entail running through his
head, he turned away and walked on.  Voices paused him after a
few steps, coming from behind a wooden door.

     He should turn back, he realized, as he walked softly to the
door and knelt, pressing his ear to it.  

     "...saw her in the girl's memories.  Very fresh."  
Nenreiko's voice.
     
     "Are you sure it was her?" That was Hako.
     
     "All her marks.  An old blind woman who speaks of the 
future.  She gave her the box."  

     "Damn her.  This goes no further.  I will kill her myself."
     
     "And risk breaking the Circle asunder?"  Fuhaiko's voice was
sardonic, only slightly muffled by the door.  "Do not be a fool, 
Hako."

     "Do not mock me, Fuhaiko," Hako answered.  "I still have
half a mind to cut your throat."

     "If I'd wanted to hurt your little pet, Hako, I would have."
     
     "Not a scratch," Hako snarled.  "There can be not even a
mark upon her."

     Nenreiko spoke then.  "Are you sure leaving her with the
other girl is a good idea, then?  Not all marks need lie upon the
flesh."

     Hako only laughed.  "I know Konatsu.  The child is an
innocent.  That makes it easier."     
     
     "We diverge," Fuhaiko interjected.  "That matter is beside
the point.  We cannot be seen in open rebellion.  But if evidence
can be brought forth that she attempted to move secretly against
another member of the Circle..."

     As she trailed off, there was long silence in the room 
beyond.  Konatsu strained to hear anything, his fingers resting
lightly against the door as he knelt.

     "Yes," Hako said finally.  "That would be useful."
     
     "Not time yet," Nenreiko said, her whispery voice carrying
through the door to Konatsu's ear.  "But soon."

     "Always soon," Hako said with a trace of bitterness in her
voice.  "Always soon."

     Konatsu realized suddenly that someone was watching him.  He
turned away from listening at the door and stared down the
corridor.  At the junction of this hallway and another, the old
man who had been with the three women stood, his wrinkled hands
gripping his walking stick heavily.  As before, the tattered
black shape of the crow perched on his shoulder.

     He said nothing, but slowly raised a withered finger to his
lips in a gesture of silencing, smiled coldly, and walked away
down the other hallway.
     
**********

     Konatsu swept the last shards of mirror glass and broken
perfumes bottles into the dustpan, and emptied them into the
wastebasket by the dressing table with a soft rattle.

     He looked up from his completed work to where Ukyou sat on
the bed, sipping a cup of jasmine tea.  A delicate china teapot
rested on a tray on the bedside table, a wispy tendril of steam
rising from the spout in a lazy twist.  An empty bowl, chopsticks 
leaning wearily askew within it, lay beside the pot.  Ukyou had 
been very hungry.

     She nodded at him, saying nothing, and drank her tea, both
hands lifting the cup to her mouth.  Her legs lay under the 
covers of the bed, the toes of one foot poking almost teasingly
out from beneath.

     "Are you tired, Ukyou?" he asked as he rose, the small lump
on his head throbbing slightly with the motion.

     "A little," she said, and punctuated that with a yawn.  She
drained her cup and laid it down on the saucer with a clink.  
"What time is it?"
     
     Konatsu thought for a moment.  There was no clock in his
room.  He walked over to the small window that looked out towards
the huge double gate of the Kenzan compound's walls.  "From the
moon, I'd say about midnight."

     Ukyou yawned again, and he turned his head back to look at
her, to see her yawn transform for him into a soft smile.  "I
think I'm going to try and get some sleep.  We'll just see what
happens, right?  Not much else to do."

     Konatsu nodded, staring out the window into the night.  
"We'll see."

     He crossed the room to the lightswitch by the door, and
flicked it off, again leaving the room only with the light of the
lamp by the bed.

     As he turned back towards Ukyou, he heard the sound of the
covers slipping to the floor.  She had risen out of bed, and was
reaching her hands behind her back to undo the bow of the light
kimono she'd been wearing.  There was a slight smile on her face.

     "Ukyou!" he gasped, bringing a hand up to his mouth.
     
     A shrug of her shoulders, and the kimono dropped from her
body to pool in silky folds upon the carpet at her feet.  He
should have turned away, but something in her eyes would not let
him.  She wore a red chemise, another of the innumerable items of
women's clothing Hako had given him.  Long-sleeved, rather sheer
in places.  Slightly too large for her.

     "It's okay," she said quietly.  "I mean, someone undressed
me after I was unconscious, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't Hako."

     Konatsu felt his face turn crimson at the memory.  "I 
didn't..."

     "Konatsu," Ukyou interrupted, "what happened to my spatula?"
     
     He tried desperately to make his embarrassment fade.  "Hako
cut it in half.  I'm not sure what she did with the pieces after
I left..."

     She shook her head.  "It doesn't matter.  Not now."
     
     She picked the covers up in one hand and slipped back into
bed, pulling them up past her shoulders.  Her back was turned to
him; the fall of her rich hair lay spilling out across the pillow 
and the sheets.  "Goodnight."

     Konatsu walked over to stand by the bed and stared down at
her for a moment, at the shine of light in her hair, studying her
profile.  Then he turned off the lamp, and lay down on the 
hardwood floor beside the bed in the darkness.  He found then 
that sleep came far easier than he had expected it to.
     
     Some time later, he was not sure when, he woke to that
momentary absolute confusion of self and circumstance that
sometimes occurs when sleepers awake.  It passed in an instant,
and he realized he had not woken this time to a nightmare, as he
had in the time here before Ukyou had come, but to the sound of
another weeping in the dark nearby.

     He stood up.  "Ukyou?" he asked, staring at the dim bed.  
Beneath the sheets, he could see her shoulders shaking as she
heaved with quiet sobs.

     "Just go back to sleep, Konatsu," she whispered, haltingly
and through tears.  "It's alright."

     "What's wrong?"
     
     "Thinking," she said softly.  
     
     He ached to comfort her.  "Thinking?"
     
     "About Ranma," she said.  "About my life.  About things that
I've done, things that have happened to me.  Just thinking too
much."

     Hesitantly, he touched her shoulder through the sheets.
"What can I do to help?"

     She turned her head to look at him, tears glittering in her
eyes and on her cheeks, catching what little light entered the
room through the window and the crack beneath the door.  "I..."

     Now she seemed to hesitate.
     
     "What?" he asked.
     
     "Could you just hold me?" she whispered finally, closing her
eyes as if in shame.  There was a painful sadness in her voice, a
very great loneliness that hurt for him to hear.

     He smiled in the darkness.  "Is that all you would ask of 
me, Ukyou?"
     
     Ukyou said nothing.  She drew the covers down to her waist,
and shifted over in the bed.  Disbelieving at first, feeling
almost unable to control his body, he slid in next to her and she
rolled over to face him.

     "Thank you," she said simply, and reached her arms around 
his waist, laid her head against his chest.  The glossy darkness
of her hair spread out across the red silk of his tunic.  His eye
was drawn to individual strands, held like a caged thing by the
beauty of her.  After a moment, she spoke again.  "You're 
supposed to hold me back, you know."

     He put his hands on her shoulders, incapable of speech, and
then cradled her against him.  She shifted slightly, bringing her
body closer to his.  

     "Ranchan and I used to sleep like this when we were just
little kids," she murmured softly, as if speaking from a dream.
"Even though he thought I was another guy, it was still okay
then, because we were just kids..."

     A heavy wave of longing, almost a grief, washed over him.
He understood so little of all this, of what had been between
Ranma and Ukyou, what might still be between, though Ranma had
vanished.  Ten years of desire, ten years of denial of herself,
and then a new hope that would only be shattered anew.

     "But I wouldn't sleep most nights," she went on.  Her body 
was warm against his, soft flesh and hard muscle beneath the 
shift she wore.  "I'd just lie there next to him, listening to 
his heart beat, thinking about how he was mine, how he would be 
mine, and staring up at all the stars..."

     Long was the silence.  He heard her sigh, felt the warmth of
her breath against his chest.  One of her fingers traced a tiny
circle on the small of his back.  "He told me the day before he
vanished that he didn't love me.  I still wasn't really speaking 
to him when he disappeared.  And I... I didn't..."

     And now the tears came again from her, wracking sobs that
seemed to tear free from somewhere deep within her, some dark and
hidden place of the heart.  A purging, of sorts, a cleansing of
all last traces of desire and guilt and regret from her soul.

     Konatsu simply held her.  A human touch, most ancient and
instinctual of comforts.  Eventually, she stopped, and it was, in
a way, an ending.  Perhaps a beginning.

     She raised her lovely, tear-stained face to gaze into his
eyes.  He had always seen well in the darkness, but he wished he
could see what was in her gaze at that moment more than nearly
anything.

     "Thank you," she said again, the second time that night,
with an entirely different edge to the words now.  She released
her arms from around him, and propped herself up on one elbow,
raising her head from his chest.  Dishevelled, her hair clung to
her neck and back.  Sweat glistened on her skin in the thin light
coming through the window.

     "Ukyou..."
     
     "Shh..."
     
     He felt the warmth of her body against him as she moved her
face closer to his; a tracery of softness against his ribcage, an
ankle brushing his for only a second.

     Almost by instinct, he took one of his hands from off her
back and gently cupped her cheek.  He felt the dampness of the
tears she had shed upon it as he did.

     "Konatsu," she whispered.
     
     There came a heavy rapping on the glass of the window.  The 
moment broke instantly.  Konatsu was on his feet and out of bed
before he even realized it.

     He went to the window, sparing a single, regretful glance
back to Ukyou where she sat up in bed, the sheets clutched to her
chest, staring at him with a mixture of hurt and confusion.  The
rapping continued, incessant and ceaseless.

     Out in the night, beyond the glass, a winged shape perched
upon the sill, glaring inside the room with baleful yellow eyes.
It clutched something in its beak.

     Konatsu opened the window inwards, feeling a rush of cool
night air enter into the hot room, and stared at the bird.  He 
raised a hand to shoo it away, and then it spoke.

     "Use it well," the crow whispered, only to him, a sweet,
clear woman's voice that he vaguely recognized but could not
place.  "When the time is right."

     It had dropped whatever it had held onto the sill when it
spoke.  A pale, slender thing, gleaming in the moonlight.  
Konatsu picked it up and stared at it.  

     "When the time is right," the bird said again, and the eyes
seemed as if they might swallow him up.  He could smell the
carrion scent of the thing now, entering the room on the wings of
the night breeze.  He stared at the bird, said nothing.

     It launched itself into the air, flying out of his sight in
seconds.  Konatsu stood by the open window, across the room from
the bed, and let night air play across his face.

     "What was that?"
     
     He glanced back at Ukyou.  "Just a bird at the window," he
said softly, slipping the object surreptitiously into his pocket
and letting no trouble show upon his face.

     Ukyou nodded.  Konatsu did the same.  A silent realization
passed between them; the moment had been broken.  It could not be
reforged, not yet.

     He lay down on the floor beside the bed again, and, to his
great surprise, found sleep as easily as he had before.     
     
**********     

     "I'll wait..."
     
     Akari stood before him, hands clasped demurely in front of
her, a wide-brimmed hat shading her face atop her hair.  Her
smile was beautiful, her eyes, so much love in them, so much
longing.  Her eyes mirrored his own eyes, his own desires.

     "I'll wait for you..."
     
     He tried to take step forward.  But something pulled him
back, and into the shadows he went, away into a darkened sprawl
of city streets, and her image followed him.  He glimpsed her in
the back of alleys, around the corners of buildings, standing
across the street with her hand shading her eyes.  The crowds
passed them by, and every one of them had a face he knew.

     "I'll wait for you.  For as long..."
     
     And the shadows grew, as if the sun were going down, and he
saw Akari fall back into them, smiling still, longing in her 
eyes, whispering devotion.

     Ryoga woke up screaming her name, sweating and gasping out
heaving breaths.  Happosai looked up from where he sat 
cross-legged beneath the window of the guest room in Shampoo's
house, pipe in hand.  "Pleasant dreams?"

     Sunlight and shadow banded Ryoga's chest as he stood up from
the bed laid out on the floor.  "Nope."

     Happosai smiled slightly and blew a ring of smoke into the
air.  "Sunrise.  We need to go downstairs and see Shampoo off."

     Ryoga nodded, stepping over the snoring form of Genma as he
went to where his pack lay in the corner of the room, next to a
beautifully-carved oaken table.  He rummaged through it for a
change of clothing, trying to brush aside the feelings that the
dream had arisen in him.  He missed Akari, certainly, wanted to
see her again, but he had to put other things above that.

     Behind him as he dressed, he heard Genma's snoring cut off,
and the loud thump of a kick.  "Get up, you lazy fool.  It's
sunrise."  Ryoga smiled briefly as Happosai woke Genma up with a
combination of verbal berating and physical abuse, tugged a shirt
on, ran his hands through his hair once, and then turned around.

     Genma was yawning and scratching himself as he sat up on his
blankets, not a pleasant sight early in the morning.  Ryoga
stepped out the door and into the second-floor hallway of
Shampoo's house, a high-ceilinged two-story dwelling that was at
least a century old, but still stood sturdy and strong.  It was
built to last, with thick wooden beams criss-crossing the 
ceiling above his head, and floors of polished oak.

     He walked down a long, narrow flight of stairs into the
large kitchen of the place.  Shampoo's father turned around from
where he stood at the stove, stirring a large pot.  "Good 
morning," he greeted cheerfully.  "The women are at the table
already."

     Ryoga nodded his head.  "Good morning."
     
     The slim, small man smiled at him and turned silently back
to his cooking.  He didn't speak much, from what Ryoga could
tell, and didn't seem particularly concerned about his daughter's
impending return to Jusenkyou.  That kind of man seemed the rule
rather than the exception among the Joketsuzoku, from what 
little Ryoga had seen.

     He walked into the living room, where Akane, Rouge and
Shampoo sat on the floor at a large round table.  In the centre
of the table, a teapot wafted thin clouds of steam into the air.
Akane looked up and nodded a greeting at him as he entered, and
Rouge gave him a bright smile.  Shampoo only stared glumly at the
table, hair hiding her face.

     Ryoga settled down beside her, resting his forearm on the
table edge and leaning over.  "Good morning, Shampoo."

     She favoured him with a brief glance.  "Morning.  Is not
good by any means."     
     
     He winced.  "Sorry."
     
     "Is alright," she said, turning back to staring at the 
table.  "Nothing you do."

     "Would you like some tea, Ryoga?" he heard Rouge ask.
Looking to her for a moment, he shook his head, and saw an odd,
disappointed look pass across her face for a moment as she 
lowered the teapot.

     Happosai and Genma came in then, settled down at the table
and poured themselves tea.  Happosai gave Rouge a quick glance
and grinned at her, eyes twinkling, and she blushed demurely and
looked away.  Ryoga sighed inwardly, trying not to let anything
show on his face.  

     "So..." Akane said, breaking the silence.  "When is Lang Bei
coming?"

     "Soon," Shampoo said with a grimace.
     
     The six of them stared rather uncomfortably around the table
at each other.  At that point, Shampoo's father entered with a
tray full of bowls.  "Breakfast," he said cheerfully.

     Shampoo looked up at her father, almost a glare.  "Is too
early for breakfast."

     "I'll have some," Genma said.  Happosai added his voice to
that.  Ryoga declined, as did Akane and Rouge.  Whistling,
Shampoo's father returned to the kitchen with most of the food
still on the tray.

     Ryoga tapped his fingers on the table and watched Genma and
Happosai consume their breakfast with startling speed.  He looked
from Akane to Rouge to Shampoo, and back again.  He glanced to
the cold fireplace.
     
     "So..." Ryoga began.  "Did everyone sleep well?"
     
     Rouge nodded.  "Very well."
     
     "Like a log," Genma said, looking over the food bowl he was
holding up near his mouth as his chopsticks moved in a blur.     
     
     The sound of someone knocking on the door in the front hall
broke the tension finally, and it was almost with relief that
Ryoga greeted the tall, grey-haired woman who stepped into the
room.  

     "Ready?" Lang Bei asked, dark blue-grey eyes sweeping around 
the room as she held her staff loosely in one hand.  

     Shampoo nodded and stood up, her hands hanging loosely at
her sides, head bowed.  She walked stiffly over to stand before
Lang Bei.

     "Hold your head up, girl," Lang Bei said, though not
unkindly.  "Does a warrior go to face the judgement she has been
given like a child who is to be punished for stealing sweets?"
     
     Ryoga saw a mild tremble run through Shampoo's back and
shoulders, and she lifted her head to look straight at Lang Bei.
"No, honoured elder."

     Lang Bei nodded briefly.  "Who's coming with us?  Have you
chosen your two witnesses?"

     Shampoo glanced back.  "Ryoga, you witness my judgement?"
     
     Ryoga blinked, then nodded.  Reflecting back on things, he
wasn't all that surprised.

-Continued in section 2


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