Yeah, yeah, I know I posted this already, but it was a while back when the 
list was on the blink, so I'm just putting this up for those of you who might 
have not received it or want to refresh their memories.
-Med



-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: incubus1txt.txt

Incubus
By Sumi Seto (AKA Medina)

Part One


	He sat.  Cross-legged, atop the building that he called
school, he sat.  Watching.  The clouds in the midday Nerima
sky looked as if they reached up into the never ending
heavens as long as they could, leaving this plane of
misery, of torture.  He sighed.

	He knew he would never make it there, where the sky met
eternity.

	A bell rang, and he was suddenly on his feet, leaping from
pole to tree to fence to ground with an uncanny sense of
balance and equally uncanny constitution; a normal man
would have broken his ankles with such a leap.  But not
him, no, he had never even experienced a mere hairline
fracture of his fine frame, rather amazingly.  In fact,
most things about him were just as amazing; he was an
unequaled fighter and martial artist in general at the
tender age of seventeen, he had partaken in some of the
most awesome adventures that a person could experience, he
even endured women throwing themselves at him to be his
wife.  On top of all this, he was living with one of the
horrible Jusenkyoissue.  Yet somehow, all these things seemed as nothing to
him.

	He walked up the stairs casually, his hands clutched in
his pockets, and he heard the footsteps beginning to run
behind him.  He knew who it was.  His emotionless eyes were
instantly covered by a mask of even amiability; the way most
people were accustomed to seeing him.  He didn't act like he
knew she was there, for it would startle her if he did, as
she was still far across the yard from him.  He almost
smiled genuinely.
He knew him, and at that moment, he casually glanced back over his
shoulder.
"Aw..." she moaned, bringing her bladed hand down to her
side, "why don't you ever let me surprise you?"  Smiling
now, she gazed up into his eyes lovingly.  Inwardly, he
wondered if this truly was the same girl who had smashed
him with a table on the first day they met, this playful,
cheerful, loving woman beside him.  He wasn't the same
either, and a flash of sorrow swept through him when he
considered her enduring what he had to live with every day
of his life.  It wasn't possible.  Only distracted by
thought for a split second, he put down the thought and
returned her gaze.
"Because, I just can't let a klutz like you sneak up on
me," he stuck lightly.
"C'mon, let's go to class, dummy," she grabbed his hand,
and led him inside the building.

	Feeling the grip of her small, soft hand upon his, knowing
the love that was there for him, his mask was betrayed for
another moment, his face revealed to the look of utter
anguish at what he knew awaited him... and her... not far
in the future.  A tear nearly escaped him, but didn't.  It
couldn't.  Not anymore.


who are you?
come with me.
love me.
I need it.
her soul...
more... I need love
so beautiful
can't die
thank you... thank you...
not another one
never again
I'll pay the price
no, no, no...
the only way
the
only
way




	"A challenge?" Ranma looked at the parchment on his desk,
obviously written by the same person who always brought a
challenge to him written in calligraphy.   
	"'During lunch.  The far trees.  Come alone.  
		--Kuno Tatewaki	He sighed as he slipped the paper into his pocket and
gazed out the window listlessly;  he knew it was going to
have to do with the wedding that was coming up the day
after school let out -- his own wedding with Akane.  This
time, he knew that nothing was going to get in the way, for
it had taken them the entirety of the last year, but he and
Akane knew the feelings that they had for each other were
real.  Part of it had to do with his own calming down from
the unruly boy that he used to be, but she seemed to have
matured as well.  Again, he smiled lightly when he thought
about Akane... but it quickly faded.  He frowned and closed
his eyes, waiting for class to end.


	He sauntered down the grass towards a more hidden part of
the schoolyard, where the trees grew and the toolshed
sat.  He knew that Kuno would be waiting as always, and he
even sensed him, the one-track mind of the school's top
kendoist.  He left his guard at a minimum; it was all he
needed.

	"Saotome, prepare to meet your match!  For I, Kuno
Tatewaki shall strike you down and free the fair Tendo
Akane from the clutches of this upcoming nuptial!  And
then, she shall find her true love with he who challenges
you!"  he spoke, his deep voice sounding almost heroic if
it weren't for the fact that he was speaking about
something that he just couldn't grasp.

	Ranma stood and stared at the ground, kicked at the grass,
the lifted his eyes to Kuno and left them upon him; they
smoldered with a darkness that made the kendoist blink at
seeing.  He hadn't seen that look in his nemesis before.

	"Kuno... Akane loves me, and I love her.  Why don't you
just see that and leave me alone?  I'll be outta your way
soon," Ranma said to him cryptically, his voice unusually
monotone.  "After all, you don't wanna get your ass kicked
again, do you?"

	Kuno frowned.  "How dare you?  I shall defeat you before
she is tied to you, such a foul incubus!  Have at you!" 
Kuno began to advance.

	Ranma looked up and his eyes flashed widely and his heart
sank.  "How... how do you know that?" he said, shocked,
then his eyes darkened to a deep black and a red light
shone from his pupils, "What are you, a yokai, an oni
working for the Dark One? Come to kill this body and make
me return to my duties?  Well, I'm going to have to
disappoint you today!"  

	"What?"  Kuno said, seeing the change in Ranma, and then
froze in his tracks as he saw the pigtailed boy engulfed in
a black and red aura and raise up off of the ground, energy
gathering in his fists.  Then it occurred to him that he
intended to use that energy against him, so began to dodge
to the side.  Just in time, too, for the blasts created an
impressively deep crater where Kuno would have been.  He
looked up and saw Ranma charging up again.

	"Don't think you can get away!  I'll not let anyone get in
my way when I am so close!  Return to hell, bastard!"
"Have you gone mad, Saotome!"  Kuno shouted, scrambling
away from another shot.
	
	"Don't mock me!  I see through you!"  This time, Ranma
lowered nearly to the ground, and took on an attack
stance.  Kuno saw this, and looked about him, then took the
only logical course of action: he ran.

	Ranma was on his back at every turn, firing blasts of
energy just barely missing Kuno's heels.  Coming across the
toolshed, he ran inside, and whispering a prayer, braced
himself.
"I cannot get away from him!  What have I done to him that
he would turn... turn so deadly?  Tatewaki, face your death
like a man...  but at least try to talk to him..."

	Ranma slowed down for a moment and concentrated; he could
hear the babbling noise of Kuno's terrified mind from
within the shed.  He smiled malevolently and pretended to
look around.

	"So, you thought that you could fool me by taking on the
form of that moron, Kuno, didn't you?  Or have you always
been of Dark blood?  That Kodachi is more an evil spirit
than woman, so it would not surprise me if the clan Kuno is
part of the Dark," he paused; Kuno's mind sconfused but still in terror.  Time to strike.  "Evil
spirit, evil man, I shall send you to the other side; you
will NOT stop me from this!"

	With that, he fired an energy blast at the shed, knocking
out the wall opposite the one Kuno was leant against. 
Ranma raised to the air again, his dark aura stronger than
before, his eyes completely black, save a small point of
red light that pierced where his pupils should have been.  

	"Why are you not fighting back, fool!? Is this not what
you wanted?" he waiteman was sitting in a traditional pose, with a stern face
that trembled slightly; this angered Ranma all the more. 
"FIGHT ME, or I will kill you with one blow!"

	"Saotome Ranma," Kuno began, falling forward, his forehead
to the dirt floor, his palms supporting the rest of his
weight, "Forgive me."  Ranma was taken aback; what was this?
"Forgive me for how I have wronged you and Tendo Akane.  I
am not blind; I can see that you are in love together, and
I can see that my pigtfemale form.  I have only done these things in desperation
of love and for my own selfishness!  I beg you, if this is
my moment of death, I must have at least the smallest bit
of honor to take with me to the beyond.  If you must kill
me, at least grant me this..."  Kuno spoke with an uneven,
yet strong voice.  He remained there, prostrate, and waited
for Ranma to do as he wished.

	"He is not fighting back... and he is asking... Gods, what
have I done?  The confusion in his mind... that was because
he did not know what on Earth I was accusing him of!  And
now this... how could I?"  Ranma thought and immediately
dropped to the floor, his eyes reverting, his aura
dissipating.  Looking at his own hands in disbelief of what
he had almost done: he had nearly killed a simple man.

	"Kuno... get up, I'm not going to kill you..."  Ranma
muttered, crossing his legs and hunched over, poking the
other man's head.  Kuno lifted his head gingerly, and when
he saw Ranma reverted back to a normal, human looking Kuno wrapped his arms fast around one of his legs.

	"Thank you, thank you, thank you!  You are indeed merciful
towards my sins!" he sat up suddenly and tried to look
dignified again.  "That is... I shall spare you..."

	"Can it, Kuno," Ranma hissed.  He was, for the moment,
still disgusted with himself for acting so paranoid and
foolish: how could he have mistaken stupid old Kuno for a
real member of the Darkness?  Every eminence from the man's
mind had signaled that he was, indeed, only a man.  

	"Fine, then, I think I should go now..."

	"Wait a minute there," he glared at the Kendoist who was
beginning to get to his feet, "You're not leaving just
yet.  I can't let you go after all you've seen of me... and
what's this that you're not as thick as brick and know that
I'm your pigtailed girl?"  Ranma noticed more sweat
appearing on the man's forehead.

	"Sigh...  I suppose my act is up," he said, defeatedly. 
He sat back down, his back straight and his face once again.  "I have loved Tendo Akane since I was in grade
school; no other girl has ever possessed such a balance
between beauty and formidability.  It has been the Kuno way
for generations to win one's mate by treating the pursuit of
love as battle and strategy, and so it has been the only
path I knew to take in winning her affections.  

	"And then," he raised his lowered eyes to Ranma, "you
entered the picture.  A man, living with her, intended to
be her husband by her family, who is equally as
attrawatched, day by day, you treat her like dirt and fall into
the traps of the other 'fiancees' that you had, and it...
hurt me,"  he strained with the words, and Ranma continued
to listen, nearly shocked by Kuno's candidness and...
lucidity.

	"But what hurt me more is that I saw that she began to
love you from that first day.  But a Kuno never gives in...
even when he knows that all is lost.  So I kept trying, in
hopes that someday she would see me with the same eyethat she saw you with."

	"Well, Kuno... I'm sorry, I guess..." Ranma began, still
taken aback by Kuno's confession; then he remembered the
'pigtailed girl' part.  "But what the hell is up with you
trying to hook up with ME?  What kind of hentai-yaoi
bastard are you for that??"

	"That..." Kuno began silently, "Is the other half of my
treachery and my... my... desperation.  I do not think I
can tell you..." he said dramatically, yet sincerely
dramatic for once in his life.  Ranma's eye twitched.

	"Tell me or I *will* kill you."

	"Right... then I suppose that I must..." he gulped and
sweated more.  "For a few weeks, along with the rest of
Furinkan, I did not know that you and the pigtailed girl
were one and the same.  All that I knew was that a girl
equally as beautiful as Tendo Akane, but much stronger and
much more spirited had fallen into my life.  So I began my
pursuit of her with the hopes that I would win her, which
would save my hurting heart from the imminent loss of Tendo
Akane.  However, word was spreading of the 'oneness' of you
and my pigtailed goddess, and when I was watching the girl
and Tendo Akane walking home, I saw her pour hot water over
herself and change, before my eyes, into you.

	"The pain of the loss of both the women I loved to the
same man was something I could not bear.  And the
disgrace... loving a woman who would not love me back, and
the other, who was in reality a man... if people knew that
I was thinking clearly, they would have thought me to be
the saddest creature on the face of the planet, and... yaoi
for not giving up on the pigtailed girl.

	"I could not break my obsession with the pigtailed girl,
even knowing that it was you, Saotome, whom I hated.  So,
as the student body thought me to be as simple-minded and
insane as my father is, I used that.  I feigned ignorance
and I was accepted for it.  But deep within me, I hoped
that, somehow, your curse and misadventures would break you
and Akane apart, and she would be mine.... or one of those
misadventures would make you the pigtailed gito be mine."

	Ranma's mouth was nearly open with the thought of Kuno
knowing it was him all along...

	"Now you know, Saotome, that I am not a fool in mind...
only in the heart.  Now do you know why I hate you?  Why I
keep trying to best you, to break you?"  tears were welling
up in the man's eyes, tears that he had been fighting back
with all of his strength, but this... telling the only
person whom he never wished to admit defeat to every sordid
detail of his deviance.

	"I'm... I'm surprised, Kuno,Ranma began, surveying the broken man before him, and
feeling guilty for it.  Had he truly done all these things
to a man who's main fault was knowing nothing about
approaching women and never admitting defeat?  For the
first time since he had met Tatewaki Kuno, Ranma felt
respect for him.  "But it takes a real man... with honor...
to admit what he has done wrong... and to fight even without
hope of winning..."

	"I have no honor... I am a dog..."  Kuno spat, tears
streaming down his face, his back hunched forward. 
Suddenly, he felt soft, delicate hands rub his back and
shoulder; he recognized that touch.  

	"No, Kuno, I sense it now... you are a good man after
all..." she said to him, her bright blue eyes looking into
his sincerely.
""Shh...  Just for now, be quiet and let me be your
pigtailed goddess for the moment; wise and gentle," she
continued to rub his back, and pulled him forward to lean
on her shoulder; he resisted, but gave in shortly.  His
body shuddered with a sob, and felt him bury his face in
her soft, red hair.  

	"Your clan has made you what you are.  I can see it now, I
can see your honorable, good soul, and you do not deserve
what you have gotten out of love.  How could one so loyal
to his family's ways stray from a taught path, even when it
does not work, or there is no hope?  But do not worry,
Tatewaki, there is hope for you yet; as you have told me
your sad story, I shall tell you tell you mine.  

	"However, to hear mytake up the responsibility that comes with it..." she
whispered to him.

	"I want to hear... what do you require?"

	"Your family has dishonored you... and so horribly that by
leaving it you would not be dishonoring yourself, and you
cannot dishonor that that has none.  Change your ways; be
strong but kind, be persistent but sensitive.  And... you
must promise to be friend to Saotome Ranma and protector to
his children."

	"But... I--" Kuno began to protest, but the red haired
woman 
	"I will give you a day.  If you can make me that promise,
meet me," Kuno suddenly felt the size of the person he was
leaning on grow, the softness turn to hard muscle, and the
hair in his face turned from a fair red to a coarse black,
"Saotome Ranma," Kuno sat up and stared at him, who had
just been his girl a moment before, "in this spot after
school tomorrow.  Otherwise, speak nothing of what you have
seen here, and I will tell no one what you have told me."

	Ranma stood up and walked off without another look or word
to Kuno, who sat in disbelief of what had just transpired,
and mulling in his head the not unreasonable request of his
goddess.

*****

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