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.

All commentary, public or private, is welcomed.

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

Chapter 30 : The Figure In the Shadows [1 of 4]

     Fang Shi of the Joketsuzoku walked heavily up the rough dirt
road that led to her home on the outskirts of the village,
supporting herself with her huge polearm as she walked.  Right
now, she felt very old and tired.  The arts of the Joketsuzoku 
preserved the vitality of the body, if not the appearance, but 
sometimes even the arts of the Joketsuzoku could not counter the 
weight of more than a century lived.

     Her great-granddaughter walked beside her, skipping back and 
forth nervously from one side to another of her older relative, 
occasionally trying to make small talk in the native tongue, and 
ultimately failing to raise Fang Shi out of her black mood.

     "<It's rather funny when you think about it, isn't it
great-grandmother?>" she said, rubbing her hands together and
licking her lips.  "<I mean, what were the odds that it would be
that pool she fell into?>"  She gave a nervous little laugh.
     
     Fang Shi snarled and lashed out with the haft of her weapon,
knocking Bai Ling tumbling to the ground to the dusty ground with
a startled cry.  "<Would you shut up for a few minutes?>"

     Bai Ling rolled with the blow as she'd been taught and came
smoothly to her feet.  "<Forgive me, honoured ancestor," she 
murmured, casting her eyes to the ground.  "I was impertinent.>"

     "<Yes you were,>" Fang Shi chided.  They stood outside the
house now, an aged but sturdy two-story structure.  Fang Shi 
shoved the door open and stepped inside into the front hall, Bai 
Ling following.

     Feeling every ache and pain of her ancient joints, the
Matriarch leaned her weapon against the wall, and turned to look 
up at her great-granddaughter.  "<Go and see what the village is 
saying of this.  We must salvage what we can.>"

     Bai Ling nodded and left without a word.  Fang Shi shuffled
wearily into the richly-decorated living room and opened the
doors of the small, ornately-carved cabinet in one corner.

     She blinked, and searched through the bottles.  It should
have been right near the front.  She was interrupted by an
unfamiliar voice.  "<Care to join me for a drink?>"

     With a start, she turned towards the source of the voice.  A
tall man sat in one of the room's straight-backed chairs, sipping 
from a glass.  On the table beside her, the translucent green 
shape of the bottle Fang Shi had been searching for glistened.

     Fang Shi narrowed her eyes.  "<Who are you?>"
     
     "<Sit down, old one, before you give yourself a heart 
attack.>"

     Her lip curled in a sneer.  Impudent male; she would teach
him respect.  With an almost blinding burst of speed, she darted
across the room, arm curled back to deliver a blow.

     The tall man rose with flowing grace and kicked her solidly 
in the stomach, knocking her flying across the room to crash into 
another chair.  It, and she, tumbled over in a heap.  A moment 
later, a hand seized her throat and dangled her off the ground.

     Helplessly, she stared into the sky-blue eyes, chillingly
cold and dead of any emotion.  The man was huge; sitting in the
chair, he'd seemed only tall, but now she saw that he was 
massively built and powerfully muscled as well.  His short hair 
was a pale golden.  A foreigner, hard-faced and brutally 
countenanced.

     "<Have you forgotten your friends across the sea, Fang 
Shi?>" he asked with a sneer, shaking her once.  He had an 
accent, unplaceable, that lent a harsh, mechanical quality to his 
speech.

     Eyes wide, half-choking, she tried to give reply.  It came
out as a thin, strangled whimper.     

     He shook her again.  "<Have you?>"
     
     "<No,>" she managed to croak at last.  "<I have not 
forgotten the dream of the Circle.>"

     He dropped her then, and walked away, his back turned
contemptuously.  Despite the urge, Fang Shi was not stupid enough
to attempt retaliation.  She picked herself up off the carpeted
floor, and followed shakily behind him.
     
     The man sat back down in a chair, and bid her to do the 
same.  He poured a second glass from the green flask, and walked
over to hand it to her solicitously.  Fang Shi drank, and let the
soothing fire of the liquor spread through her ancient body.

     In his chair again, the man steepled his hands and looked at
her intently.  "<You seem surprised, old one.  Did you not expect
that your friends might send one among you?>"

     She drained her glass, and stared at the man through
narrowed eyes.  "<I have always communicated with them through
other means.  They told me they were kept out.>"

     He smiled.  "<I am different.>"
     
     "<You are a male.>"
     
     The powerful shoulders shrugged.  "<To my detriment, I 
suppose.  My dream is the same, however.  Would you have your
tribe glorious again, Fang Shi, as you were promised?>"

     Slowly, she nodded.
     
     "<I have taken the liberty of moving my things into one of
your spare rooms.  The one next to the painting of the river in
the second floor hallway.>"

     Fang Shi scowled, and bit back her wrath.  "<That room
belonged to my daughter.>"

     "<Oh?>"
     
     "<She passed away some time ago.>"
     
     "<How unfortunate,>" the man commented without a trace of
sympathy.  "<Convenient, however, in that she has no further need
of it, is it not?>"

     The only thing that kept her from striking him down was the
knowledge that she would fail.  Clenching one withered fist, she
glared at him fiercely.  "<You should not speak so callously of
the dead.>"

     He shrugged nonchalantly.  "<Why?  They cannot hear me.>"
     
     Fang Shi was silent.  She wished she had more to drink.  
"<What do you wish me to do?>"

     "<I wish you to lead the Joketsuzoku into a new era of 
glory,>" the man said.  "<Does that satisfy you?>"

     "<Not entirely,>" the elder murmured.  "<But it will do for
now.>"  She stared into the bottom of her empty glass, at the few
drops of dark liquor that still clung to it.  "<I take it there 
is a plan, of course.  They are great planners, these friends of
mine.>"
     
     There was a plan, of course.  He didn't tell her all of it
that first time, though.  Doing that would have ruined the plan
in its entirety.  Fang Shi had decades of experience in deception
and subtlety, but the one to whom she spoke was something else 
altogether.  

**********

     Akane carefully folded the final dress, smoothed it out, and
tucked it into the drawer.  "Well," she commented to the empty
room, "unpacked at last."

     The guest room she was sharing with Rouge was 
well-appointed, and not at all cramped.  Beams of light from the
recently-risen sun poured in through a wide rectangular window
opposite the door, and some of it sprayed across the room in a 
broad fan of colours where it passed through a carefully-worked
panel of geometrical stained glass hung above the window.  A 
souvenir from one of Cologne's travels, Shampoo had said, though 
only after Akane had asked.

     There had not been time to unpack before now.  Not time to
do anything.  Now her clothing was put away, and there was
nothing left to do but wait.  Akane was not very good at waiting;
patience was a virtue she had never mastered, or even really
approached.

     She sat down in a light wooden chair by the window; crossing
her legs at the ankles, she intersected the sunlight, and the
stained glass cast a jagged rainbow across her blue skirt.

     Carefully, she shifted the cardboard box on her lap, and
then opened it, dropping the lid casually to the floor.  Photos
lay inside, all of Ranma, sometimes alone, sometimes with others.

     She brought one forth, a shot taken at the beach, Ranma in
his female body in a yellow one-piece.  Haltingly, she traced the
photo with her fingers, and slowly closed her eyes.

     Promises, half-made, before this nightmare had begun.  There
had been a change in him, and in her, and a change in what lay
between the two of them.  And then another change; gone, gone, 
gone.

     And now she was thousands of miles away from home, following
the vaguest clues.  Nothing else to do; no other hope.

     Mechanically, she put the photo back, closed the box, and
hid it in the dresser under some clothing.  A knock on the door
made her jump, and she quickly closed the drawer and turned.
"Come in."

     The door opened, and Genma stepped through, his expression
calculatedly neutral.  "A moment, Akane?"

     She slowly nodded and folded her arms.  "What do you want,
Mr. Saotome?"

     "Just to talk," Genma answered, coming to stand in front of 
her.  "I know that things have never been particularly close
between us, Akane--"

     "Really?" Akane replied sarcastically.  "Whatever makes you
say that?"

     Genma's shoulders slumped.  "You know that I care for my 
son, Akane."  Almost, but not quite a question.

     She snorted.  "You've never shown much sign of it, then."
     
     "Ahh, yes," Genma said with surprising bitterness.  "And you
have always been completely open with your feelings towards
Ranma."

     Despite the speaker, the words still stung.  Akane winced.
"Ranma and I had a lot of things to work out still.  That's 
why--"

     "That's why we have to find him," Genma interrupted.  "So
that the families can be united."

     "Now hold on a minute!" Akane snapped.  "I never said..."
     
     "Hear me out, Akane," he said, holding up his hands in a
peacemaking gesture.  "Right before this started, Soun and Nodoka 
and I asked Ranma and you to come to a decision about your
engagement."  He paused.  "I don't know what you and Ranma
decided, but I think I can guess.  You were willing to marry my
son."

     What, she realized, was the point of lying anymore, even to
Genma.  "Yes," she said quietly and sincerely.  "I was."

     Genma nodded.  "One more reason to find him.  Right now, the
master is going through Cologne's things, the ones that she left
here when she came to Japan."  He looked suddenly contemplative,
not speaking for a few moments as he gathered his thoughts.  
"Akane, the master and I have talked about this at some length,
and we have come to a conclusion.  Wherever Ranma is, we think it
likely that he is not a prisoner.  My son is too resourceful, too 
good.  It is quite possible he is wherever he is because he wants
to be there."

     "No!" Akane said vehemently.  "He wouldn't just run away
like that.  Cologne--"

     "Cologne is the hinge in this," Genma said.  "I'll tell you
the truth, I never liked or trusted that old woman.  But the
master knew her a lot better than I did, and he doesn't think
that she would have done what she did without some hidden 
reason."

     "What?" Akane demanded.  "What reason?"
     
     Genma reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose, 
adjusting the position of his glasses.  "Protecting Shampoo,  for
one.  The master knows Joketsuzoku law fairly well; it is only
the exceptional circumstances of things that have let Shampoo off
as lightly as they have."

     "Lightly?" Akane said.  "Taken to..."  She trailed away,
shuddering.  Her own ordeal at Jusenkyou and Ranma's story of her
very body's shape stolen had taught her the true terror of the 
place.  

     "Lightly for the Joketsuzoku," Genma said.  "More than that,
though.  Those two women who were there are an unknown factor.  
We cannot but guess at their purposes."  He frowned.  "Happosai
believes there is some connection between them and the 
Joketsuzoku.  If there is, and Cologne was interested in keeping
Ranma out of their hands, she could not even trust all of her own
people entirely."

     "Than where?" Akane asked.  
     
     Genma shrugged.  "I have absolutely no idea.  It's mostly
the master's thinking, and he hasn't gone much further than 
that."     

     Akane growled.  "We have to find him."
     
     "Stating the obvious will do nothing," Genma pointed out.
"Once Shampoo and the others return we can figure out what to 
do."

     Grudgingly, Akane nodded.  "I guess you're right."
     
     Genma nodded in turn and moved to leave.  As he opened the
door, he paused and looked back.  "We're going to find him,
Akane."  There was no note of uncertainty in his voice, only a
fervent belief and hope.  

     Before she could respond, he had closed the door and left.
     
     Akane stood in thought for a moment.  She stared at the
sheet of colours cast across the floor.  She wanted to believe
Genma was right.  But somehow, inexplicably, she got the feeling 
that time was running out.

**********

     Cologne's library, while not huge, had still occupied a
single, medium-sized room in her house.  It had been quite dusty 
as well when Happosai had entered; it appeared that no one had
come in since she'd gone to Japan.

     Finding the most frequently perused books had been easy.  
The faint traces of Cologne's powerful and distinctive ki clung
to them still, like a faint mist; four of the books that he'd 
found had been very important to her.  They were all ancient, 
the youngest a good century old.  All of them were handwritten in 
the same neat, precise style.  They were in Chinese, of course, 
but he read the language almost as well as he spoke it.

     Sitting down at a small table that stood huddled in one
corner amidst the shelves, he carefully adjusted the shade of the
antique electric lamp and opened the smallest volume, a slim work 
of about fifty handwritten pages, bound in leather.

     He thumbed through it carelessly.  The first few pages
introduced it as a record of interviews with various members of 
the Musk Tribe; he vaguely remembered hearing of them before.  In 
the margins, there were notes in Cologne's crabbed, familiar 
script.  

     One page seemed particularly tattered, as if from very
frequent reading.  He coughed suddenly, silently cursing the dust
in the room, and read through it:

          When She Who Must not wake rises, the vault of the
     heavens will be given a second sun, and the mountain will be 
     consumed in fire.  The seas will swell, and vomit forth
     their ancient corruption.  And the Unmaker, the oldest one 
     of all, will come forth from the tomb where he lies dead but 
     undying, and the Awakener shall have brought the reign of
     Dark in the serving of the Light.
     
     Scattered notes in Cologne's hand dotted the margins.  
'Inevitability of awakening'; 'Necessity to control'; 'Dead but
undying: ressurection, rebirth, reincarnation?'.

     "What wondrous obliqueness," Happosai muttered.  "It's just
like having a conversation with you, Cologne."

     He moved to turn the page, and then the world exploded.  His
seated body convulsed; his hand lashed out, not under his control,
and sent the lamp tumbling to the floor.  The bulb shattered in a
tiny detonation of glass and light.

     The chair tipped over and he fell back, not even feeling the
pain as his head hit the ground.  Images flashed through his 
mind;  high cliffs, white sand like powdered bone, the yawning
maw of a cave beyond which blackness lay in almost physical
manifestation, gardens of surpassing beauty, long and empty 
hallways, a wooden gate, light flickering on stone faces.  
A face; hard and beautiful, scarred and cruel.  Something very 
terrible behind the dark eyes, a hunger.  Great fear.  A 
location; an absolute knowing of direction and distance.

     Happosai lay on his back.  He took a deep breath.  He took
another.  Then he opened his eyes; dark spots swam before his
vision for a time, and then slowly began to fade away, one by
one.

     The ceiling came into focus, the broad, cramped beams that
crisscrossed overhead.  His eyes traced the grain of the wood.
Everything seemed sharper, more details there than before.  That 
impression soon began to vanish as well, though, and he lay on
his back, breathing softly, too drained to move for nearly a
minute.
     
     At last, he sat up, drawing a knee up and resting his arms 
on it as he carefully took a breath.  He suddenly felt old again,
old and tired as he had ever been, in this young man's body.

     "I really did not need to have to deal with this on top of
everything else," he said softly to himself as he shakily stood 
to his feet.  He carefully pushed the larger pieces of the broken
lightbulb into a pile in the corner with his foot, and put the 
bulbless lamp up on the table again.  Then he knelt down and 
began to carefully pick up the stray shards that he'd missed.

     A knock on the door outside made him turn his head.  "Who's
there?"

     The soft voice of Shampoo's father echoed from beyond the
door.  Happosai realized he didn't even know the man's name.  
"The others have returned, honoured guest."

     As he rose to leave, a stab of pain lanced through his 
finger, and he stared with something almost like surprise at the
shard of glass that had cut him, and the blood slowly trickling
down his finger.  "Ouch."  Popping the cut finger into his mouth
and sucking on it, he walked towards the door.

**********
     
     The sun rose a few hours ago over the village of the
Joketsuzoku.  Now, it hangs at the mid-point of dawn and noon.
The sky is almost entirely blue, a few wispy strands of clouds
trailing like fingers across the curvature.  From the chimneys of
the houses, smoke rises in billowy wreaths, the mark of the 
cooking fires started for breakfast.

     In the centre of the village, the morning market is set up, 
an entirely self-contained thing amongst the Joketsuzoku, 
where the farmers sell their crops and the herders their meat and 
the artificers their creations.  The gossip is here too; the 
return of the village's finest young warrior in the company of 
outsiders precludes the discussion of anything else.  Theories 
are exchanged, the seeds of rumours are planted.  Bai Ling of the
Joketsuzoku walks there, trying to gauge the feeling.

     In one of the houses, there is a minor celebration going on.
Judgement was passed, and somehow, by some twist of chance or
fate or luck, the judgement was a blessing, of sorts.  They sit
around the table, sharing a meal.  There is a tempering of the
celebratory mood; an unexplained and unexpected arrival.
     
     That unexpected arrival lies still and asleep in the bed of
another house.  His eyes are closed.  He breathes once.  A span
of time that seems too long passes before he takes another
breath.  Lang Bei sighs.  She reaches out and touches her
grandson's face; once upon each closed eye, the brow, each cheek,
the curvature of nose, the turn of mouth.  Mousse breathes again.
He says something too quiet to be heard.  Lang Bei sighs again.

     In a third house, a discussion is finishing.  The two
speakers rise.  They go their separate ways.  Both have work to 
do.

     And finally, down to the south, past the invisible border
that protects Jusenkyou from almost all who might seek to harm it
or the people, a small hot spring facility stands, recently
repaired after an attack by what came to be called an onsen
devil.

     A few customers lounge in the bubbling spring, the steam
curling into the air.  Suddenly, an enormous shadow falls over
the pool.  The customers flee screaming.  A short while later, a
lone man walks out of the pool, his gait weary and slumped.  He
heads to the north.
    
     Moments of transition.  A pause between scenes.  The players
take their places on the darkness of the stage, and in the wings 
stand the figures in the shadows.  

     There is calm, for a brief time, before the storm.  The true
storm this time; all others have yet been preludes, distant rolls
of thunder.  Now the true storm is coming; silent, creeping, 
inexorable, it moves towards the Valley of the Waters, so long
building and soon to break.  Pulling the players slowly, one by 
one, gathering them in.
     
**********

      Shampoo hesitated for a moment, and then knocked on the
door of Lang Bei's house.  Akane stood a few steps behind her
with Ryoga, staring at the boards of the porch.  Lang Bei's home 
was a short distance beyond the sprawl of houses that packed the 
central areas of the village, standing alone on the upper slopes 
of a hill.  Thick risers of cut logs supported the wide porch 
that jutted out before the front door of the house, and a short 
flight of stairs led up to it.

     The interested crowd of villagers that had followed Shampoo,
asking questions that Akane couldn't understand, had gradually
dispersed as they'd approached Lang Bei's house.  There was, 
Akane noted, a rather solemn and depressing air about the place.

     Shampoo knocked again.  Akane looked at the thick wooden
door of the house; a half-dozen strange characters were lightly
carved into the wood.  They didn't look like Chinese or Japanese; 
too angular, not flowing enough.

     "I wonder how Mousse got here?" she asked Ryoga quietly
     
     Ryoga shrugged.  "I wish I knew.  It just doesn't make any
sense, but..."

     "Mousse hard to get rid of," Shampoo muttered, glancing over
her shoulder.  Her father had given her shorn hair a trim; it was
half the length it used to be, and lacked the tails of hair that
had hung in front over her ears before.  "Just when you think he 
finally gone, he back again."
     
     The words held no particular callousness in them; a sense of
sadness, even.  Shampoo turned her attentions back to the door,
and pounded on it hard.  "Lang Bei!"

     The door opened slowly.  Lang Bei looked down at the three
young people on her porch, blue-grey eyes hard and piercing.  
"Yes?"

     "How is Mousse?" Shampoo asked.  
     
     "He's asleep," Lang Bei answered shortly.  "It is probably
best not to disturb him."

     "Please," Shampoo said, casting her eyes to the ground.  It
was about the closest Akane had ever heard her come to actually
pleading.

     Lang Bei's expression softened.  "Just a short time."
     
     She stepped back from the door to allow them to enter.  They
passed through a small but well-appointed living room, dominated
by a large stone fireplace.  Over the blocky mantle, a long 
wood-shafted spear, the bladed head broad and viciously barbed, 
rested on a pair of hooks sunk into the timbers of the wall; the 
make was unfamiliar to Akane, and she liked to think she had a
good knowledge of weaponry.  "Where's that spear from?"

     Lang Bei stopped walking and looked back.  "I'm not sure.
It's been in the family for centuries.  European, I believe."

     "Funny," Ryoga commented, "it doesn't look that old."
     
     Lang Bei shrugged and herded them up a narrow, steep flight
of stairs that led to the second floor of her house.  She led 
them to a door at the end of the hallway, opened it, and stood by
to let them inside.

     Beyond the door, the only light was a small lamp burning on
the table, the flame of the wick sputtering and throwing 
flickering shadows across the room.  Mousse lay on his back in 
bed, his eyes closed, his long hair spread out evenly on the 
pillow.  

     "How is he?" Akane asked.  
     
     Lang Bei moved silently beside the bed and reached down to
touch her fingers to her grandson's forehead.  "He has not 
awoken.  He occasionally says things in his sleep.  I have seen
such a state after head injuries, but there is no such wound I 
can find on him."

     Ryoga sighed heavily.  "What I want to know is how he got
here in the first place.  He was behind in Japan when we left."

     Lang Bei glanced to Shampoo.  "I had wanted to ask you about
that, child.  Speak to me alone for a few moments, would you?"

     Shampoo nodded mutely.  She looked almost guilty as she
followed Lang Bei out of the room, closing the door behind her.

     Akane came to stand with Ryoga beside Mousse's bed, looking
down at him.  His breathing was slow, disturbingly so, his skin
unusually pallid.
     
     "Ryoga, do you know what happened between Mousse and 
Shampoo?" she asked.

     Ryoga looked uncomfortable, and spent a moment in thought
before answering.  "It's their business, not mine."

     He hadn't answered the question, really, but Akane let it
go.  She reached out and took one of Mousse's hands where it lay
upon the covers; his flesh was cold.  "Mousse, can you hear me?"

     To her shock and surprise, his eyes opened.  The shock grew
when she saw what lay beneath his eyelids.  His gaze was milky,
the formerly vibrant colour of his eyes clouded and obscured.  He 
was, Akane realized with a terrible sadness, truly blind now.

     "Oh, Mousse," she whispered quietly, taking his hand in both
of hers.  Behind her, Ryoga drew a deep inhalation of breath as
he realized what she had.

     Mousse raised his head, and half-sat up.  His eyes, blind as
they were now, seemed to focus upon her.  "He is close.  You will
see him again."  A long pause, as a heavy silence fell in the
small room.  "They are in danger.  Terrible danger.  The darkness
draws nearer to them, perhaps, than to any others."

     Akane could not speak.  Mousse's voice was calm and strong.
His blind eyes seemed to turn to Ryoga.  "The shadows will take
her."

-Continued in section 2

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