;[fanfic][ranma][alt]ranma.ranmei.2

Disclaimer: All Ranma-1/2 characters and plot elements used
here are in fact the property of Rumiko Takahashi and her
assigns, and are used without their knowledge or permission. This
is fan-fiction: an open fan letter in prose.

Precedence: This story is preceded by events in "Two Sides of
the Coin" by Benares and "Misuteru" by Jason Drozd, and proceeds
along lines other than those of David Johnson's "Dare Mo" and
JPBuckner's "The Ghost of Curses Past", though much inspiration
was lifted from Johnson's work.

Credits: Tom Ladegard vetted the fight in chapter 2 and made
suggestions. Ginrai preread these first two chapters. Thanks,
guys, this story is better for your help.

----------------------------------------------------------------

                             Ranmei

                    --siaru 22may01/14jun02

      _Who you are depends on who you want to have been._

Chapter 2


She hadn't meant to spend this much time anywhere near Nerima,
but the whole business of dealing with other people was just too
frustratingly slow. Ranmei felt like she had somehow become the
guy in the invisible-woman suit.

She'd noticed it the night before, in the convenience store near
the university high school. She'd stopped in there for a few
supplies and a cheap snack. Dead-tired after a day's walk on top
of staying up all night for the stealthy escape from Tendo-ke,
and edgy after staying alert all day to avoid encounters with
former friends, she'd resorted to shouting after standing for
twenty minutes at the counter. The clerk had started, mouth
agape, asked her, "Where'd _you_ come from?", then apologized
profusely for the comment and the startlement and the
inattention.

Today it had taken most of a half hour just for her to gain the
attention of a woman selling bento, despite the lack of other
customers, and the woman had been distracted by a passing truck
before making change. If the food had already been in her hand,
Ranmei would have left the change behind rather than wait the
ten minutes or so it took to get the woman's attention again.

That vendor hadn't been the only one, either. The only time
Ranmei had been promptly seen was when she was occupying a place
in line, and probably only because there was no way for the line
to move forward until her purchase was made.

It wasn't just her former friends and relations after all. Shop
clerks, people on the street, all seemed to blithely ignore her
unless she set her mind to being noticed. Somehow she had gone
from being the kind of person who commanded attention, welcome
or not, to the kind of person who had to try twice to get
noticed. It was unnerving. 

It's like I'm some kind of ghost, she thought, but I have feet,
and the sun feels good, and people can see me once they take the
trouble to look. It's gotta have something to do with this
Jusenkyo body of mine. Is it because of my ki? Is it because I
can't raise an aura anymore?

Thinking it over, she could only find one way in which it was
anything other than just another curse she couldn't shake, a
Umisen-ken she couldn't break.

She'd long been expert at finding out-of-the-way places to camp
out in the less populated areas, or in vacant lots in Nerima
where the koban gave martial artists a wide berth as long as
they weren't actively making trouble at the moment. She hadn't
expected to find the urban texture so unfamiliar, so hard to
read, so close to her former home.

Finally, exhausted, she'd spent the night curled up in a small
copse of trees and bushes in a park in the next ward south of
Nerima, with dead leaves piled up on her sleeping bag and
getting into her mouth every time she rolled over. She'd
awakened to the sun in her eyes, ants crawling across her hand,
and the realization that, as visible as everything around her
was by day, the only thing that had kept her red hair from
getting her badly-needed sleep disrupted by the police was that
involuntary invisibility thing.

She was mulling all of this over, standing in front of a post
office and idly looking at all the displayed printed materials
while she made short work of a riceball, when lengths of
weighted chain descended without warning onto the mailbox next
to her. From the roof of the post office came indistinct
shouting, too blurred by reverberation to make out words, but it
was clear enough who was doing the shouting. She winced and
dodged. Mousse. And where he went, others would likely follow.

She was eyeing likely hiding places for her pack, already
scanning the street as a battle environment and mapping
resources, when the mailbox sprouted legs and stalked off,
stepping delicately over the rounds of chain with sturdy legs in
colorful nylons and satin pumps, and the shouting tracked the
mailbox as it fled.

She relaxed marginally as she realized who the mailbox was,
though why Mousse would target Tsubasa was a mystery, and then
tensed anew as she realized who was probably still in the post
office. She stepped deeper under the overhang just as Ukyo
emerged, looked around without noticing her, and walked off
in the direction of Nerima.

There was a moment of bitter longing as she watched her former
best friend blend into the crowded sidewalk, head held high, and
vanish into the crowd. As few friends as she'd ever had, she had
been devastated by the loss of that friendship. She thought about
Ryoga's Shishi Hokodan, and shook her head. I sure have
the depression, she thought grimly, but even if I wanted to...

Why can't I raise my ki? I can't have changed that much. I used
to be able to put together a Mouko Takabisha when I was female.
What's different now?

She was just resuming her walk when a vague feeling of threat
registered, and she stepped to the edge of the sidewalk crowds
again, gently pushing her way through a stream of people who
gave way seemingly without ever really registering her presence.

Low ki or not, her danger sense seemed to be working.  Ryoga was
coming up the crowded sidewalk, heading away from Nerima,
bulldozing people aside with his pack, oblivious to their
annoyed stares. His gaze automatically scanned the crowd, yet it
somehow missed her entirely as he brusquely pushed past her,
shoving her a little off-balance. Amazed at that, she was
turning to follow, to see what it would take for him to
recognize her, when she heard him mumbling his current
catechism: "...making Akane cry. For that you will pay, Ranko!
Just as soon as I find you... and find you I will..."

She stopped trying to keep up with him then, she just stood and
watched his pack and umbrella recede into the sidewalk crowd,
watched numbly until even the turbulence of his passage through
the sunwashed waves of people was lost to view.

I'm out of their context now, she thought, and now they're as
blind to my presence as everyone else. This is what it's like to
be able to observe and see clearly, undistracted by being the
constant target. I really wanted this, back when there was one
of me and everyone wanted a piece of that... but how can I trust
it? There shouldn't be that many of them here, this far from the
neighborhood. Maybe they can't see me, but something still draws
them. I gotta get out of the area completely, _now_. I don't
have medical backup anymore; I can't afford a fight with them.

She thought about backtracking to the Seibu Shinjuku rail line,
then she thought about standing, vulnerably stationary, for the
hour or so that it would probably take for her to get her
ticket. She guessed that the highway was closer anyway, and
maybe she could hold onto her money.

Half an hour later, watching the expressway lights make streaks
of sparkles on the windows as they crawled past, she was
congratulating herself on a good guess.

The streetlights had been flickering on over a mounting rush
hour riptide when she had walked over to the southbound entrance
ramp, dropped her pack in front of her and looked around.

Martial artist or not, Genma had had a fine appreciation for the
value of a free ride. When Genma had been cold or tired, or just
in a hurry to get to the next free meal, and a likely highway
was handy, he and Ranma had hitched rides. As unprepossessing as
he knew he looked, he had always made certain that they stood at
the roadside just so, with Ranma in front of two packs side by
side, and Genma behind them with his hand casually on his son's
shoulder. A driver who would have cringed slightly and sped up
on seeing just Genma would pull over and ask Ranma where they
were headed, and often take them at least partway, affected by
the child's enthusiasm and his pride about the path to martial
arts mastery that he traveled. He got them rides because he
looked safe.

Now she looked over at the young couple holding a hastily
written sign that read "Kobe" under their thumbs, smiled and
nodded to them, and unzipped her jacket. The lights overhead
were throwing shadows she could see on her hands, so she stepped
back, dragging her pack, until she felt that her face was
clearly illuminated. She pulled her jacket back on her shoulders
as if to keep its heat off her neck, and adjusted it twice more
before she felt she had her breasts properly highlighted.

Fifteen minutes later, or about five minutes after the couple
were on their way at least in the direction of Kobe, she was
leaning down over an open window to explain to an older man that
she wanted to head south along the coast, and anywhere, in his
case outside Atami, was fine as long as it was well away from
Tokyo.  From there, she thought, she'd hitch rides if she could,
walk if she had to, and the only person she'd have to watch out
for was Ryoga. With luck, she could avoid being found by the
Lost Boy while she figured out her next move.

Now she sat back, her pack seated in the footwell before her,
and kept the driver's small talk conversation going, while she
idly thought back over the way she had overcome her apparent
invisibility while looking safe enough to be offered a ride.

This body... I'm stuck with it, but there are things I can do
with it that I never could with my other one. I might as well
make use of what I've got. That's Anything-Goes, isn't it?

Maybe it hadn't been such a great idea after all, she thought
glumly a couple of hours later as she hunkered down a bit
further in her seat, surreptitiously drawing her jacket a little
tighter closed about her too-evident chest and trying to
ignore his still stealthy appreciation for her face and figure
while keeping up her end of the conversation and keeping it
light. As far as she was concerned, that was her payment for the
ride, conversational company to keep the driver awake and and a
little less lonely, and that was all. She was less and less sure
that she wouldn't have to explicitly define the limits of that
job for him before the ride was over.

Thanks to the time spent in the stop-and-go creep of rush-hour
expressway travel, by now she knew or could infer a good deal
about the day-to-day life of Mr. Kazushi Takamura, including the
surplus electronics parts sales and distribution job which had
him driving to most anywhere within greater Tokyo six days a
week making emergency deliveries to keep production lines from
stopping, his wealth of knowledge about the American state of
California derived from frequent business trips there, his
onetime ambitions as a jazz trumpeter, and his gardening skills
with his secret blends of fertilizers. Nowhere within the
conversation had he hinted at a wife or significant other.

Now the car was part of a herd making its daily migration
southwards down the coastal highway, already within his home
city's limits according to signs, and he had yet to bring up
where to drop her off. She hoped he hadn't simply forgotten
about it. Not that it would be that hard to walk from wherever
he lived back to the main highway, but it was getting on towards
the hours when she'd have to expect unwanted attention,
including the official kind, on such a stroll through
residential areas, invisibility effect or not, and it didn't
feel like she was far enough away from Tokyo yet for relative
safety from discovery by Ryoga and others.

She'd managed to steer the conversation away from herself
several times, making light of how noteworthy it was to see a
teenage girl hitching alone with such a heavy backpack, passing
it off as shuttling from one set of relatives to another.
Fortunately, he hadn't known or hadn't thought to add that the
girl was out on the highways while the schools were in session.

Now the car slowed and left the main highway, its headlights
sweeping the steep embankments as it turned, and she started
looking around, paying attention to the placement of entrance
ramps and nearby landmarks, and stores, gas stations and other
likely resources. Preoccupied in re-engaging this hitchhiking
skill, she was surprised when he pulled over and parked. She
looked; they were in front of a seedy-looking tavern.

He smiled over at her as he unfastened his seatbelt. "We can get
supper here."

"I..." She tensed.

"I will of course pay for your meal." His eyes casually swept
her form, his gaze now tangible across her skin. Her blood went
cold; something about his manner was making her suddenly far
more aware of being female and small than of being a martial
artist.

She unlocked and opened the door on her side, put one leg out,
and hooked the other's toe into the pack's strap.

"I'm grateful, but... I really should be seeing about my next
ride while the traffic is heavy."

She gave him a smile that thanked him with her lips but fended
him off with her eyes, reached to the rim of the passenger-side
doorway and pulled herself out to stand facing him with one hand
on the open door, pulling her pack towards her with her foot,
close enough to grasp the frame without really leaning back into
the car. 

"Thank you very much for the ride, Mister Takamura; I really
appreciate it. And good luck with your garden." 

She bowed, lifted the pack free of his car in that motion, swung
it up to one shoulder, and gently but firmly closed the car door
and turned away, walking steadily towards where she remembered
seeing the southbound ramp, trying to shake the feeling of
vulnerability that had spooked her so in the car.

The mercury-vapor streetlamps gave a light that was almost as
cold as how she felt inside, painting the high roadside
shrubbery past the storefronts almost black, with deep-carven
shadows. The coastal air had turned chill and thickly damp with
night, reducing distant lights to hazes and halos. As she neared
the ramp entrance, her danger sense started pricking at her. She
looked around once, saw nothing to provoke it, but dove into the
bushes anyway, reaching around to push back into place the
branches which her pack tore awry.

Behind the first line of shrubbery, she dropped to her knees,
hunched over, and watched through the gaps in the leaves. Sure
enough, Takamura's car crept past twice within the next five
minutes; she felt his attention seeking her out and failing to
find her. She stilled her thoughts, pulling herself inward
behind whatever that invisibility effect might be. 

Still following hunches, she surveyed her surroundings, choosing
what might have been an animal track between bushes which led to
deeper darkness. Working at keeping silence as much as possible,
aided in that by the damp air that slicked the leaves, she
worked her pack sideways through the gaps, following that path.
It was only a meter or two, but covering that distance while
creeping in silence took a few minutes.

Meanwhile she was working at the roots of her fear, worrying at
its reasons and pulling them off one by one. She was stuck
female, but the automatic vulnerability of having such an
opening down there meant nothing if he couldn't get at it.
She was not a helpless little girl, she was a fighter, a damned
good one even if right now her ki was weak and her durability
was down. If she had to she could maim or kill this man with her
hands and feet.  What about this encounter was different from
one with Ryoga or Kuno or Mousse, to drive this mounting panic
into her?

"Ranmei. Ranmei the runaway."

As she reached the sheltered clearing on hands and knees,
pushing her pack before her, she looked up, to see his face,
almost pure shadow, looming over her. The packing tape he held,
roll in one hand, unrolled clear tape in the other, was visible
enough.

He chuckled. "You should not be so rude; I was going to buy you
dinner first. But, since you're here already..."

Indistinct in the cloaking shadows, he shrugged. Her danger
sense was screaming at her, screaming that she was in the
presence of malice for its own sake.

He stepped forward and she exploded upward, dodging the tape,
drilling his middle with near-Amaguriken-speed punches. As he
folded, she jumped, slammed down on and then used his shoulders
for a leap upwards, hands high, into the dark closeness of
overhanging trees. Thin branches slapped her hands, then a large
limb.  She seized that, pivoting her grip to face him where he
hunched below, driven down by her leap, and pushed off, coming
down on his back with a foot at each kidney. She hopped sideways
off him as he crumpled, compensating for the bushes that crowded
her, and put a combat-force heel to his head, kicking him
through a meter or so of bushes.

She stood, controlling her breath to keep it silent, listening
for him but hearing nothing. Lightly stepping forward, willing
her eyes to finish adjusting to the darkness, she came upon him
suddenly, crumpled sideways, bleeding from the mouth and nose.
She listened; his breath, hard to hear beneath the sounds of
highway traffic and the distant surf, was slow and steady.

She quietly went back to her pack. The roll of tape was hanging
from it by its free end. She pulled that up, went back to
Takamura, and began using it. When he was bound hand and foot,
she dragged him to the middle of the dark little clearing. She
looked around briefly, her eyes now seeing what was about, but
she saw nothing but vegetation, nothing to indicate that he'd
had anything more in mind than her rape.

She glanced down at him. Even in the darkness she could see the
mottling of a bruise where her foot had caught him across the
cheek and ear. Still, he might not stay unconscious for long.

She knelt again and encased his hands in more packing tape, down
to his fingertips, taped his hands to his torso, then used the
rest of the roll to tape his feet to the base of an adjacent
bush.

Finally satisfied that he would not be coming after her before
she could catch a ride or decide to walk, she went back to her
pack, swung it up and belted in, and slithered out the way she
had come.

The highway entry ramp, when she got to it, was empty, but
Takamura's car was parked the wrong way on the other side of the
overpass, ten meters or so away, pulled to the side and left
dark. There was a police cruiser nose to nose with it, top
lights flashing, the spotlight shining into the empty passenger
compartment. One police officer, thin and ratlike, was leaning
over, visibly trying to work out with the aid of the spotlight
and a flashlight what might be in the back seat. Another officer
was indistinct, a mere uniformed shadow, at the wheel of the
cruiser.

Still on edge from the brief fight, Ranmei looked over at the
scene and thought about telling the police where they could find
Takamura and why. Then she considered how they were likely to
take anything she might say, and resolutely turned to take up a
position near the 'No Pedestrians" sign, her tightly-closed
jacket glistening in the overhead lights from the moisture
condensed onto it. From there she could watch the proceedings
unobtrusively. Eventually a tow truck arrived and took the car
away, followed by the police cruiser. No one seemed interested
in looking through the bushes, and Ranmei started to feel some 
concern for Takamura, despite his actions towards her. 

Thinking about that brought to mind the vibes she had gotten from
him, which were why she'd dealt with him so harshly, vibes which
suggested that rape was merely the first stop on the journey
into darkness which he intended for her. But where would he hide
the remains? Not in the clearing, from what she could see while
she was there, and, impelled by that feeling of danger, she had
looked around for such. 

Then she thought about the garden that he'd talked so much
about, and how he'd hinted at very special fertilizers for it,
which she now guessed might have included her if she'd been less
skilled. Now she started actively watching her surroundings
again, worried that he might somehow free himself and come at
her again.

Two very nervous hours later, she caught her ride, an
eighteen-wheeler bound for Kyoto with a burly middle-aged man at
the wheel, a man who said little, not even his name, and who
occasionally spared appreciative glances at her form and then
fidgeted with the plain gold band that he wore. The vibes she
got from him were that that was as far as things would go, and,
recalling her time as a guy to see it from the driver's
perspective, she viewed it as an acceptable tradeoff, but she 
struggled to stay awake nonetheless.

----------------------------------------------------------------

C&C welcome: ffml@anifics.com, siaru@stormbringer.org




             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'