[FFML] [fanfic][rerepost][Ranma]Thyself Known Ch.9: Second Chances

Why is it every time I post to the ffml I feel like an idiot? Maybe if I posted more frequently than once or twice a year I'd know better. Or maybe I'm just an idiot-_-
Probably both. Anyway, if anyone's still interested...

Thyself Known

A Ranma 1/2 fanfic by Zorknot

Ch.9: Second Chances

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PREREADERS:
Robert (http://members.aol.com/fanfic28/cwishmain.html)
Aondehafka
(http://www.florestica.com/aondehafka/index.htm)
Edward (http://www.concentric.net/~Easimons/)
Nemesis Zero

WHAT HAS COME BEFORE: A whole bunch o' stuff. Here's
the current situation: Nabiki is currently a male version of
herself and has been infected with a highly exaggerated
form of Ranma's masculine identity. Ranma has reverted to
a highly exaggerated form of his feminine identity. They are
trying to catch a doppelganger who killed four people,
including Gosunkugi, and Nabiki's best friend Hoko.

Hiro Kawagami is a police officer who recently saved
Nabiki's life. Copycat used his blanket to turn Hiro into a
physical copy of Hoko, but Hiro has latent magical abilities
which kept the eyes from changing color and which allow
Hiro to talk with Hoko. Detective Inamura is Hiro's boss and
friend, and also the father of Nabiki and Hoko's friend Ami.
Nabiki and Hoko both think of Inamura as a kooky uncle.

~~~~~Ch. 9: Second Chances~~~~~

"But I cannot grow
till you eat the last of me
oh when will I be free
and you, a parasite
just find another host
just another stool to post
cause you, my tapeworm tells me what to do
you!
my tapeworm tells me where to go

Pull the tapeworm out of your ass..."
-System of a Down- Needles

~~~~~an alley in nerima~~~~~

Ranko tried to stop the tears, but they kept flowing hot, wet,
and slow, like blood from a newly opened wound. The
recently male Nabiki was driving the police motorcycle at
unreal speeds, and Ranko sat behind him embracing her
fiance's stomach as tightly as she comfortably could. She
couldn't help noticing how little muscle he had. He was pretty
well toned, but Nabiki wouldn't be able to take a well-placed
hit from Akane, much less someone like Ryoga. The
doppelganger they were chasing looked to be at Ryoga's
level or greater based on how it moved. She couldn't let
Nabiki face that much danger. Ranko would have to fight it.
Alone.

The trouble was, she didn't want to fight anybody. She was
sick of all the fighting. The fianc�es, Ryoga, Akane, her
father... she cared for them all and yet all she had ever done
was fight them. It was stupid and she had known it for some
time, even when she had been a boy. All she wanted to do
now was stop all the pointless violence and start living life
instead of attacking it. But now Nabiki was going after this
murderer, this demon, and Ranko was the only one who
could protect him.

Nabiki was acting just like Ranma would have. Charging into
battle, thinking, KNOWING he would win. Ranko knew this,
but all she could think of just then was that if she didn't do
something, there was a very good chance Nabiki would die.

Ranko jerked forward into Nabiki's back as the motorcycle
skidded to a halt in the alleyway. "FUCK!" Nabiki said.

"What?" Ranko asked, her voice wavering a little from the
crying.

"I made a deal with him. Why the hell did I have to make a
deal with him?"

"You're not making any sense." Ranko put her chin on
Nabiki's shoulder, hugging him closer to her.

Nabiki glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "You're
crying." It was almost an accusation.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. I'll be okay once we get there. I
just..."

Nabiki's hands left the handlebars and held Ranko's arms
across his waist. His hands were warm. Warm, but too soft.
"We can't fight him. Not now. Later when we both aren't so
screwed up, we'll kill the bastard, but not now."

"What is it?"

Nabiki closed his eyes, "When you were in prison and I was
trying to get to you, I made a deal with the doppelganger to
have him help me get away. It was stupid. Stupid and
completely useless because Inamura-sensei let me go
anyway after I explained to him what was going on. But I still
made the deal. And now I can't break it."

Ranko was about to ask "Why not?" but then she felt what
Nabiki was going through. All of the masculine pride that
Ranma had unconsciously forced into Nabiki a couple hours
ago was now screaming at Nabiki to follow his word, to
uphold his honor. Ranko knew that sort of thinking was
stupid. Even when she was Ranma she had been able to
sacrifice honor to keep himself or someone else out of
danger, but Nabiki no longer had a sense of prudence to
combat his sense of honor. That had all been forced into
Ranko.

Ranko took a shuddering breath and let it out. "What was the
deal?" she asked.

"That I would at some time give him a chance to kill you
without obstructing him in any way. It made sense at the
time because I knew he had pretended to be Hoko and they
were questioning me about her murder. If she came in,
apparently alive, I could have left to save you and I would
have found a way around the deal later. But then Inamura-
sensei let me go before the doppelganger came in and it all
got mixed up after that."

"Then we have to keep going."

Nabiki opened his eyes. "What?"

"I'm at my weakest right now. If there's any chance of you
keeping your word it's now."

"Are you crazy? He'll kill you!"

Ranko snorted some mucus back up her nose and wiped the
rest off with her sleeve. "Maybe..." her mouthed curved into
a shadow of her usual smirk, "but if you don't give him his
chance my stupid sense of honor will keep screwing with
you, and you won't be able to fight him at all."

"I don't like it. You're not trying to sacrifice yourself to protect
me or anything like that are you?"

"I just want you to be able to fight him...if you have to. I
mean...if I can't defeat him..." Ranko knew Nabiki stood no
chance of beating the doppelganger, she also knew that
letting him think he could was the only way to win this
argument. Ranko wasn't sure if she stood a chance either. It
was simply not in her to fight right now. Maybe the
doppelganger could be reasoned with...

Nabiki slumped for a moment, thinking. "It doesn't matter
anyway," he said finally. "I've lost him by now."

Ranma heard a clang of metal. She whipped her head up
toward the fire escape above them and saw the cold glint of
a gun barrel. "Nabiki! DUCK!" Ranko shoved the cycle
toward the the shooter, hoping that Nabiki would follow the
movement.

A bullet sped through the air above them as Nabiki and
Ranko fell with the motorcycle. The bullet would have killed
at least one of them if they hadn't moved. If they moved
away from the shooter, the bullet would have likely killed
them both. Now, just as long as they stayed low, the fire
escape would offer some cover.

"I don't know who you are," Nabiki said as he got up and ran
to the bottom of the fire escape. "But no one shoots at my
fianc�e!"

"Nabiki, no!" Ranko yelled and tried to catch him

"You're not exactly honoring our agreement, are you Nabiki?
Protecting her like this?" a voice called from the fire escape
as Ranko followed Nabiki up the stairs but just as Nabiki was
getting up, another shot rang out. The bullet slammed into
his chest, knocking him down into Ranko's arms.

Ranko screamed. In the next moment, moving frantically,
she grabbed Nabiki and jumped down the stairs and below
the first landing of the fire escape. She was only marginally
safer here, but she paused a moment to look at Nabiki's
wound. Blood was gurgling out of it.

"I can't..." Nabiki wheezed

The bullet went through his right lung. Nabiki couldn't
breathe. Ranko had to think of something. Fast.

~~~~~furinkan high school, assistant principal's office~~~~~

Akane couldn't be happier. The assistant principal had finally
returned with the permission form after only an hour and a
half of waiting. He looked just as relieved as Akane when
they were done signing. He had actually told Akane thank
you.

"Why are you thanking me?" Akane had asked.

"Usually someone will try to help and I'll have to keep them
away from the booby traps or help them out of piles of fruit.
I'm a little addle-brained anyway, trying to help someone
else really increases the time." The assistant principle was
about forty years old, but had a mussed up schoolboy
haircut. He had dark circles under his eyes and coffee stains
on his shirt and tie.

"Thank you, Hitomagi-san," Cologne said, breaking Akane's
stunned silence.

"Ah, yes, thank you, sensei." Akane bowed.

"You're welcome, Akage-chan."

"Oh, my name is Akane," Akane corrected with a smile.

"Nice to meet you, Akane, how may I help?" the assistant
principal asked.

The guy was almost as bad as Nabiki's history teacher!
Honestly, Akane thought, couldn't he remember my name for
just five seconds? But then she took a breath, let it out, and
said "Just introducing myself, Hitomagi-sensei. I hope you
have a nice day." She bowed and left the office with Cologne
hopping behind her on her gnarled wooden staff.

When they were outside the school grounds Cologne
stopped and turned to Akane. "You did well, girl. For all your
squirming, you still managed to compose yourself. Patience
is not a skill you can learn in one sitting however." Cologne
stepped down from her staff, and started walking slowly. It
was difficult for Akane to match her speed. She kept wanting
to rush ahead of the old woman. "Patience is an art form in
itself," Cologne continued, "It is not simply about not moving
when one is not supposed to move, it is about knowing when
to move, and how. You must know as much as possible
about your situation."

Akane was only half paying attention as she was still trying
to match the Amazon elder's pace. Cologne halted suddenly
causing her to stumble a little as she tried to stop.

"Did you meet with your assistant principal before today?"

"Huh? No. Well, I've seen him in the hall before once or
twice but he's pretty reclusive most of the time." Akane
answered.

"I have tea with him and his wife sometimes. I get much of
my information on what happens in the school from him.
Also, that is how I knew how trying he can be."

"Oh." Akane said.

Cologne started walking down the street again. Akane
followed, paying more attention to her now. "Your sisters
know a great deal about patience: Kasumi shows it in caring
for your family like she does, and for so many years; Nabiki
in maintaining the finances for her exploits, and gathering
information. They are both very powerful women, even at
such a young age and with only minimal training in the
martial arts."

"Yeah. Nabiki's real patient. She certainly took her time
tearing off Ranma's clothes so she could fuck him in the
middle of the street!" Akane regretted the words as soon as
she said them. But seeing that on television hurt and the
wounds were still too fresh.

"You're jealous of her."

"No I'm not." Akane argued, "If I were jealous I'd want
something she had. I don't want Ranma. She can have the
jerk!" Taking a breath she said with more calmness. "Maybe
Ranma and I had something once, but it was gone long
before Nabiki did what she did."

"You're jealous of Nabiki, and you're also jealous of Kasumi."

"Huh? I'm not jealous of Kasumi, what would make you think
that?"

"I seem to recall a story about how you used to have long
hair because you wanted to be like her. I also seem to recall
something to the effect that you once had a crush on the boy
doctor."

"Who told you that?" Akane yelled stepping in front of the
Amazon elder.

Cologne looked up and away from Akane nonchalantly, her
staff in her folded arms. "I overheard your friends Yuka and
Sayuri talking about you in the Nekohanten."

"Oh." Akane said, deflated. "But I'm over that now. I
mean...well, okay, sometimes I wonder just how it is that
Kasumi gets treated like a saint when all she does is cook
and clean and act like a ditz."

"Tell me, girl" Cologne looked Akane in the eyes. "What
have YOU done?"

Akane tried to think of some response as the little old woman
walked past her. "I helped Ranma!" she remembered, "I've
helped him out plenty of times."

Cologne turned and climbed on her staff. "You have a good
heart, child, but it gets clouded by your quick temper. You
did well today, but only because I was there to guide you.
You must use this vacation to improve on this weakness of
yours."

"I will," Akane promised.

"The reason you're jealous of your sisters, is that they have
patience while you do not. You're jealous of Ranma for the
same reason."

"Ranma is NOT patient."

"I agree. He is not. Compared to you though, he's a stone.
And you never denied that you were jealous of him."
Cologne gave Akane a wicked smile.

Akane furrowed her brow, "I don't get it. How could I be
jealous of their patience?"

"Child, remember that when I speak of patience I speak not
only of the ability to wait, but of the ability to act when it is
required...to do what is prudent at a given time even when
you are not inclined to. In order to possess this ability you
must first know what must be done, which requires that you
know as much as possible about your surroundings...and
yourself. Ranma is conflicted over many things, and
because of this, he sometimes acts irrationally. But Ranma
knows one thing about himself for certain, and that has seen
him through many hardships. Ranma knows he is a martial
artist. He knows how to think as a martial artist. He knows
how to act as a martial artist. He knows when, as a martial
artist, he must stand down."

"I'm a martial artist too, you know." Akane snapped back.

"No, child, you are not. You sometimes wish you were, just
as you sometimes wish you could cook and be as
equanimous as Kasumi, or even manipulate people the way
that Nabiki can, but the truth is you can do none of these
things. You lack the patience that is required.

"You practice martial arts, and you have a proficiency, true,
but you are not a martial artist until the Art has become a
part of your soul, until it becomes an integral part of
everything you think and do. I have seen you mock Ranma's
code. I have seen you intrude on the battles of others, and I
have only seen you train seriously when you were forced by
circumstance to do so. You are not a martial artist." Cologne
turned away from Akane, craning her head back, she said
one last thing before bounding off across the rooftops: "Not
yet."

Akane stood on the sidewalk for several moments, thinking.
She wanted to protest what Cologne had said, but the words
kept sticking to her and she couldn't shake them off. Maybe
she wasn't really a martial artist. But then what was she?
Answers kept floating to the surface of her brain, but there
was nothing she could hold on to, nothing she could grab
hold of and say "This is me." And then slowly something new
came to her.

"I'm an Amazon warrior now," Akane remembered. She
didn't know how to coerce people into doing what she
wanted, all she knew was how to hit them, but she would
learn. Cologne was an expert. She didn't know how to cook
or hold her temper, but if she worked long enough at the
Nekohanten, she would learn that too. And if she took this
opportunity to train, to hone her skills and attempt to learn
new ones, she'd be on her way to being a true martial artist,
maybe eventually even better than Ranma.

Akane raise her head up higher. She wasn't out of the woods
yet. Not by a long shot. Still, she felt she had a way out now.
She had been confused about Ranma for the longest time.
She loved him, she hated him. She was his friend, his
fianc�e. Now it was clear to her. Ranma was her rival.

Akane rushed to her house to shove her gi and a set of
weights into her duffle bag, putting them with the other things
she had already packed. Then, she changed clothes and
jogged, the heavy duffle bag jostling around her, seven
blocks to Yuka's house. She was breathless, but smiling as
she knocked and waited at the door. She would wait as long
as necessary.

After about a minute, Akane heard Sayuri call from behind
her. "Hey, Akane! What are you doing?"

"I'm...er...waiting."

"Um...okay. Don't pop your lid or anything, but we're
supposed to meet Yuka and her Dad in their garage,
something about a new invention her uncle came up with.
Oh, and her uncle's coming too, I hope that's okay."

Akane's eyebrow twitched just a little. For a brief moment
she almost got just the tiniest bit angry at having to wait so
long by the door when Yuka had TOLD her that she'd be in
the house...But she took a deep breath and let it pass. It
was okay. She was going to have a fun time at the beach
with her friends and get some training in while she was at it.
Even Yuka's STUPID Uncle with his BRAIN DEAD
inventions wasn't going to ruin that.

"That's...fine." Akane said. "I'll meet you back there in just a
bit. I've got to take care of something."

"Okey dokey, Annie Oakley. I'll let them know you�re here."

After Sayuri left. Akane opened her duffle bag. Then she
stuck her head in the bag and screamed into the cloth of her
gi.

Composing herself, Akane took a breath. She would learn
patience on this trip. She would train, hone her skills, and
learn patience. She was an Amazon after all. She wasn't out
of the woods yet, but now at least, she had a path.

~~~~~ fire escape ~~~~

Copycat stood on the fire escape looking down at the scene
below him in astonishment. He had shot Nabiki. Just...shot
her, or him, or whatever. It had been so easy. A pull of the
trigger and Nabiki, male for some reason Copycat hadn't
quite figured out yet, was on his back writhing and holding
his chest, dark red blood already staining his fingers. ...still
alive...not for long though.

Ranma was crying over him like, well like a girl. Something
had certainly happened between the two. Copycat wasn't
sure what. Ranma's open now, he realized, I could run down
the steps and shoot her in the head no problem.

Killing Ranma would be easy as bleeding right now. And
while Nabiki might not be dead just yet, that bullet had to
have at least punctured a lung. Death would come in a few
hours if there wasn't any medical attention. He had
practically killed Nabiki already.

Why was he having trouble with that?

Why couldn't he move now, after killing so many people to
get to this moment?

Maybe it was too easy? Copycat sighed. Yes, that could be
it. It was such a letdown after all the buildup. But if that was
it, what exactly did he want? He knew he'd lose in a fight
with Ranma. He could only hope to outwit the pigtailed prick,
the only thing blocking that for the longest time had been
Nabiki. Whom he had just killed...basically. Now was his
chance, he had to take it. He rushed to the steps and almost
ran down them, but still he held back.

Ranma was saying something into Nabiki's ear now,
apparently oblivious to the threat above her. Go! Go down
there and shoot the bastard, damn it! But he couldn't. He
wanted Ranma to suffer as he had suffered. He wanted
Ranma to understand what had happened to him. He
wanted the bitch to feel it. He didn't want to kill Ranma, he
wanted Ranma to beg for death.

But...he wanted Nabiki alive too. Nabiki had been the great
obstacle blocking him for so long. He wanted to conquer her,
to let her know he was better than her. For her to die like this
was just...well...it sucked.

It's too late now. Just finish it. Copycat nodded solemnly. He
walked slowly down the steps to the ground behind his prey.
He would finish it. He would kill Ranma, and then, he would
kill himself.

Ranma was just standing up. Copycat would wait for her to
face him, and then he would shoot her between her eyes. It
would be over then. It would all be over.

Ranma turned. Her eyes seemed to burn with cold, blue fire.
Copycat smiled, Probably going to use some new technique.
Let's see if it can stop bullets. He fired the pistol and jumped
to the left to avoid whatever Ranma hoped to throw at him.

The sound of the retort came a fraction of a second after
Ranma yelled, "Tobu Sennuki!"

Flying corkscrew.

As Copycat tucked and rolled away from Ranma's attack,
there was a crashing sound coupled with the sound of
squealing metal on metal. It took Copycat a moment to
realize that the fire escape was falling toward him, along with
quite a few bricks and pieces of mortar.. He scrambled
desperately out of the way of the rapidly deteriorating
structure, narrowly missing a skewering by one of the pieces
of twisted metal.

When the dust cleared, Ranma was standing beside a
massive pile of debris, her eyes burning into him. She was
so short she almost had the look of a petulant child, but her
aura was frightening. It grew blacker and blacker, stealing
energy from the air until it grew so cold Copycat could see
his breath.

Ranma was alive. Copycat didn't have time to figure out why
he was happy about that. He had just enough time to change
his form to male Ranma, extend ki claws from his hands and
swipe.

~~~~~~alley~~~~~~

The tears came gushing out of Ranko's eyes and she
couldn't make them stop. This was not the time for crying.
This was the time for getting the hell away from the serial
killer and getting Nabiki to a hospital. But she couldn't stop.
It's too much. I'm too much of a girl now. But what can I do?

An image of Happosai sitting with a broken leg beside a
felled tree in the Tendo yard floated up into her
consciousness. "You're feeling pretty feminine right now,
aren't you?" he had asked her that morning only yesterday.
Feminine ki...

Wiping the tears from her eyes, Ranko embraced Nabiki.
She spoke into his ear. "You're probably feeling pretty manly
right now. You want to get up and keep fighting right?"

Nabiki tried to speak, but blood gurgled in his wound when
he breathed in.

"Don't do that!" Ranko cried. "Just listen for a second. I want
you to try to focus all your manliness into your right hand.
You hear me? Just push it all into that one place."

Ranko closed her eyes and tried to imagine a completely
female apple. It would have all the nutrients and life force of
an apple, but it wouldn't have any rigidity. It wouldn't have
any clear boundaries either. It would be substance
completely devoid of form.

Ranko put all her feelings of acceptance, of caring, of
weakness, of fear, into creating the completely female apple
in her hand. She held her hand over Nabiki's and took in the
denial, the harshness, the strength and the bravery that she
found there.

She envisioned the apple gaining structure, becoming real.
There was a weight now in her hand. Ranko let it drop.

"Eat that," she told Nabiki, "It will heal you. I saw Happosai
do it."

Ranko got to her feet. She felt weak now, light-headed. It
didn't matter. A shot had been fired. Eyes squeezed shut,
Ranko stood before Akane holding the pistol. It was her
memory as much as it had ever been Nabiki's. She felt her
trigger finger tighten. She wanted to kill. Ranko's eyes
opened once more. If she killed this nameless shapeshifter
would it be any different from killing Akane? Or Nabiki?

Her ki was dark. The air grew cold around her as her body
desperately tried to fill the void in her soul with warmth and
prana from her environment. There are some voids that
cannot be filled, however. Some problems that keep
returning after they're solved. Second chances to make a
bad decision.

She didn't have to do this. She could get away now. She
could run off with Nabiki, give herself enough time to find a
better way out of this. But she knew that wasn't going to
happen. The trigger had already been pulled. As soon as
that bullet hit Nabiki's chest, this became a battle to the
death.

Ranko glared at the fake policeman just coming down from
fire escape. She moved her arms in a circle, mixing her cold
ki with the relatively hot ki of the air around her. The figure
raised the pistol toward her. A bullet fired from the barrel a
fraction of a second after the words "Tobu Sennuki!" fired out
of Ranko's lips. A horizontal tornado of ki-strengthened wind
ripped and twisted through the metal fire escape, making a
horrible screeching and moaning sound. The bullet
ricocheted off a manhole cover farther down the alley.

The shapeshifter jumped away from Ranko's first attack and
was almost covered in the debris from the building. He
landed next to Ranko. She turned to face him, planning her
attack.

Grabbing a blanket, seemingly from nowhere, Ranko's
enemy changed, in an instant, into a copy of male Ranma.
The changeover was somehow familiar, but Ranko couldn't
quite put her finger on it.

There was Ranko's male self, confident, smirking, male, but
her expression did not change. It would go against the Art. It
would go against her honor. She didn't care. This thing, in
whatever form it took, was going to die.

Strong, sharp lines of ki descended slightly from the
shapeshifter's fists. Nekoken, Ranko registered, but she took
no time to wonder at how the monster knew the technique.
She jumped above the shapeshifter's slash and threw
another Tobu Sennuki down at him. The move tore the
asphalt from the ground below her, but the doppelganger
managed to escape everything but a few blows from the
debris.

Then he started convulsing. He threw his head back and his
body forward, then his body went the opposite way. He
shook violently. His fists opened and closed. He screamed.

This made Ranko pause for a moment, but at this point, she
really didn't give a fuck if the bastard was epileptic.
Gathering ki, she prepared to release another Tobu Sennuki.
Before she could finish it, however, the shapeshifter lunged
at her in an unmistakable nekoken move.

Ranko barely managed to dodge in time. She jumped to the
wall of the closest building, narrowly avoiding another attack.
She launched off the wall onto the roof of the building with
the ruined fire escape to gain some distance. The
shapeshifter started convulsing again, this time collapsing to
the pavement and scratching deep gouges with the ki claws,
the asphalt curling away like it were chiseled wood, then
crumbling into piles of black after breaking contact with the
ki.

She wouldn't be able to match the speed of a full-fledged
nekoken. If she got off a lucky shot with the Tobu Sennuki
she might be able to end it, but it would take too long to set it
up, and it was getting harder and harder to maintain her
heart of ice in the pressure of the battle. She could feel her
cat self ready to take over, she knew it was the only way to
beat the shapeshifter now, but she hesitated.

This would be only the second time in eleven years she ever
purposely let the cat take over. Her fear of cats could bring it
out of her, and yesterday Shampoo and Nabiki, two other
people with the nekoken, caused her to switch over without
even realizing it. But there had only been one other time
she'd ever switched over on purpose, without the fear.

The day Ranma had almost killed his father.

~~~~~eleven years ago~~~~~

Ranma lay down in the pit, unable to move. It was too dark
to see anything. He could only...hear...feel...smell.

It wasn't the cats at first. The only time they scratched or bit
was when they fought each other. They never attacked him.
There was no reason to. They nibbled the fish off of him.
They rubbed against him. They purred.

Initially, it was the dark, the not being able to move. His mind
would conjure up images to fill the blankness of his vision.
Hallucinations that blew every touch of fur, every purring
sound out of proportion until it was something
else...something more powerful and sinister.

The first two times Ranma was all for the training. The third
was when he first asked his father to stop. Usually Genma
would taunt Ranma a little if he didn't want to do a training
technique but eventually let it go. Not this time. He threw
Ranma in the third time. And Ranma cried.

He didn't understand.

While in the pit, his mind went everywhere. He felt at times
like he was covered in a giant, vibrating blanket. Then,
sometimes he felt like he could catch words or phrases in
the sounds he heard. A touch of fur and he would wonder for
a moment whether it was his skin touching the fur or his fur
touching the skin. He pondered this for a minute or so and
then when he finally remembered why the idea was
ridiculous he found the thought so disturbing he moaned.

He begged Genma not to put him back in the pit the fourth
time. Genma just got angrier, he called him a girl, he said he
was going to disown him. Ranma at that point was so
frightened of the pit that he ran away, rather than go back
there again. But Genma caught him, tied him up and threw
him in again. He said it was the only way for him to get over
his phobia.

Back in the darkness Ranma became convinced that Genma
was not his father anymore. Somehing had possessed his
father, eaten his soul. It was a large, female, humanoid cat
figure. Her name was Ba Shiteto. She nibbled at Genma's
soul, like the cats nibbled at the fish tied to Ranma's body.
Or were they nibbling his body? Ba Shiteto batted at the soul
from time to time with a hand with silver claws. Ranma
wondered then whether it was really Genma's soul or his
own. Sometimes the soul took the form of a tanto held by the
unsheathed metal tip. Other times it was a daikatana. Still
others, Ba Shiteto held the soul by a tail and the soul would
bat back with little claws, like a kitten.

This time, when Genma took him out again, Ranma didn't
even try to reason with him, he just bolted. It took Genma
longer this time, but once again he caught Ranma. Once
again he yelled at him, called him names, tied him up tight
and threw him in the pit.

In the black, Ranma could see that Genma wasn't his father
anymore. He was a zombie. A flesh golem. A monster. If he
wanted to escape he had to defeat him. But he couldn't. He
was just a boy. A normal man he might have managed
maybe, but not a martial arts master like his father. Even if it
wasn't really his father. Ba Shiteto rubbed in between his
ears and said that there was a way but that Ranma would
have to let go of his humanity and become what he was
meant to be. "I don't understand," Ranma responded, "I'm
not human, I'm a cat."
Only this came out as a terrible yowl/scream. "That's very
good," Ba Shiteto said, "Just remember that, and you'll be
fine."

Genma pulled him out again and this time Ranma didn't
move. Genma gave him food and water. Ranma chased
after a grasshopper. Genma asked if Ranma was okay.
Ranma said nothing. Genma asked if he really didn't want to
go through with the training. Ranma was distracted by a
butterfly. Everything was okay until Genma tied him up
again. Ranma started struggling. "You had your chance,
boy," Genma said and threw him back in the pit.

Ranma yowled. Ranma spat. Ranma ripped through his
bonds and leapt to the edge of the pit. Ba Shiteto was right.
He had to get rid of the human. He could find food
somewhere else. Ranma knocked his father down. Genma
was saying something with a happy voice, but Ranma didn't
understand it. Ranma picked Genma up with his mouth and
flung him in the air. He batted him with his paws. This was
easy!

He soon grew tired of playing with the human though, who
by that time had fallen unconscious. He was about to slice
his head off when he paused. There was a remnant of his
humanity whispering to him. "What if this is the real Pops?"
He couldn't break out of the cat mentality, but he couldn't
finish the blow either. Something was scaring him, creating
an emotion so deep it affected him even through the
nekoken. It was the real fear behind every fear he felt in the
pit. A fear of losing...something. He couldn't make sense of
it. All he knew was that something was scaring him.

Ranma did what most animals do when frightened. He froze.
Then he ran.

After he recovered, he didn't remember anything. A vague
sense of the pit, nothing else. That's what he told himself at
night, when the nightmares came. Because if he
remembered it...if he accepted what he had almost done...

~~~~~present~~~~~

Things were different now. Genma was no longer the center
of Ranko's life. Nabiki was. They were both under the
nekoken when they made love in the middle of the city. She
remembered being a cat. She remembered enjoying it. Now
her cat side was inextricably entwined with who she was.

But there was still a boundary Ranko still hadn't quite
crossed. And now, in the seconds as she contemplated how
she would attack this monster before her that wore her face,
even as her own ki claws slid slowly from her knuckles and
she lowered into a more feral stance, she felt the fear. If she
continued, she would lose something precious to her. She
paused for a moment. But the situation was different. If
killing the monster meant losing something... then it was lost
the moment Nabiki was shot.

The monster screamed again from the rooftop across the
alley, contorting itself into a new position. Ranko suddenly
knew what was wrong with it. It tried somehow to steal the
nekoken. It had tried to take the power without knowing its
true nature. It was like one of those dogs that do tricks for
the human folk. It did not know what it was.

Ranko crouched low. Her soul of ice evaporated. Her ki
claws were now fully extended from her hands as she
watched the wretched thing writhe. This was the creature
that had attacked her mate? She would kill it, and because
she was feeling a little hungry, perhaps she'd eat a little off
its flesh.

She lunged toward the shapeshifter, eagerly anticipating an
easy kill.

~~~~~nerima prefecture police department~~~~~

Hiro didn't seem to have anything else to do. Copycat was
long gone, and he wasn't sure what he'd do if he could reach
him anyway. How could he even tell him from anybody else?
So he followed Inamura to the morgue. He hated corpses.
He hated death of any kind really, but at the moment he
NEEDED to do something he hated... just to reconnect with
the world. He felt more like stabbing himself repeatedly with
a rusty blade, but going to a morgue would do in pinch. Less
messy anyway.

~You still there?~ he thought out to Hoko.

~Yeah. I'm feeling a little stupid right now. Should have
remembered he could heal with that blanket of his. I could
have warned you.~

~You're just a girl. You didn't know any better,~ Hiro
consoled.

~Yeah, well, you're just a girl now too. Besides, you're what,
7 years older than me? I guess that makes you a wise old
man.~ Hiro could sense Hoko rolling her non-existent eyes.

Before Hiro could think of a response, he was interrupted by
the blast of cold air as he entered the morgue.

Immediately he regretted coming.

All the bodies were locked into silver drawers in the wall, out
of sight. But Hiro could feel them like a worm sliding through
his intestines. He could hear them in the back of his mind
like a musical ensemble comprised of dentists' drills and
nails on chalkboard.

"Be quick about this, Inamura," Hiro half-shouted against the
din, the high pitch of his voice making it sound almost like a
scream, "I'm really not good around dead bodies."

"On the contrary, Kawagami-kun." Inamura turned back
slightly, looking down at him out of the corner of his eye,
"Your problem is that you ARE good around dead bodies. A
little too good. You're in that body, but I knew who you were
as soon as you and the doppelganger entered the precinct.
You know why?"

Hiro shook his head.

"Your eyes. Light blue, the irises almost white themselves.
They're sensitive. They see things that others do not." He
took a puff from his cigarette, almost completely covering his
goateed mouth with his hand in the movement. He let out the
smoke. "I know why you left your old precinct, Kawagami."
He turned back around and walked to one of the drawers.
"'Arasu, poru Yoriku!'" Inamura said, seeming to quote
something as he rolled out the cadaver. "Ah nu hin,
Horasho.'"

"What?" Hiro asked.

"It's English. Shakespeare actually," Inamura informed.

Hiro shook his head. "I've only ever read Romeo and Juliet.
And that was a Japanese translation."

"There's a scene where Hamlet, a young prince, finds the
grave of a fool that once played with him when he was a
child, and laments the passing of happier times." Inamura
pulled back the cloth covering the corpse. "This fool... was
my brother."

The corpse was hardly anything more than a skeleton. The
bones were held together by dark brown and gray leathery
skin, the whole pitiful sight looking like an unwrapped
mummy long forgotten, like a picture Hiro had seen of a man
that had been frozen in ice for thousands of years. The chill
of the morgue seemed to intensify at the thought. Hiro
wondered just how long the man before him had been dead.

The corpse sat up.

It lifted an arm, pointed a bony finger toward Hiro. ~YOU!~
Hiro heard in his mind. ~YOU DID THIS TO ME!~

Also in his mind, Hoko started screaming.

Hiro himself only stood in shock.

~FIX ME, YOU BASTARD! PUT ME BACK THE WAY I
WAS!~ the corpse was slowly getting to its feet.

~Why the hell aren't you running?~ Hoko demanded, ~That
zombie is gonna kill us!~

Hiro was beginning to put the pieces together. The man he
punched out---no, not a man, a quivering mass of sewer
sludge masquerading as one, a boil on the ass of the
lowliest devil in seven hells fashioned somehow into the
basic shape of humanity, the rapist and murderer of fourteen
teenaged girls who had gotten off scott free--- this thing was
what now staggered before him, shorn of its flesh as if no
longer capable of pulling off a full disguise. "THIS, is your
brother?" Hiro's tone was deeply accusatory. Even through
the higher pitch of Hoko's vocal chords the words seemed
cloaked in ominous darkness.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. This corpse, which until recently had the
good sense to remain still," Inamura raised his hand in a
"stop" gesture which seemed to cause the zombie to flinch in
apprehension, "Was once my elder brother, Inamura
Yusuke. When we were kids he used to give me piggy back
rides. He used to walk with me to school. I used to look up to
him. I'm afraid though, that he stopped being my elder
brother long before he died. And he died long before you
killed him."

~What is he talking about?~ Hoko was asking in his brain.

Hiro paid no attention. "That wasn't his name. It was-"

"Changed after the first rape charge. My father disowned him
and I swore to make it my life's work to put scum like him
behind bars."

~DAD NEVER GAVE ME ANYTHING! NONE OF YOU
EVER GAVE ME ANYTHING!~ the thing screamed at
Inamura, but Inamura didn't seem to hear as he took a
casual pull off his cigarette.

"Thirty-five years I spent chasing after my brother and his
kind, and then one day his decomposing corpse comes
sauntering into the precinct like the prodigal son returned. I
think he even expected a fatted calf."

"Fatted calf?" Hiro didn't catch the connotation. He shook his
head, "How did he wind up here? Why is he still alive?"

"The answer to both questions, my friend, is that this,"
Inamura gestured with the hand that held his cigarette to
indicate his surroundings, "is Nerima."

"Yeah, okay, I know weird stuff happens around here for
some reason, but he lived on the other side of Tokyo. What
is he doing here?"

"Trying to stay alive. Like all magical beings he needs a
source of energy. Nerima is one such source. There are
others. I'd bet the place Ranma and his friends got their
curses is another example. Usually a source is one or more
of three things. Either its an opening in the ground, such as a
spring or volcano, a site of extreme evil, or of extreme
tectonic pressure."

"Tectonic pressure... Right." Hiro was a little lost.

"Tokyo is only a short distance from an intersection of three
tectonic plates, a prime location for sources."

~EXCUSE ME, BUT I'M STILL HERE, HELLO?~

"Hey, guess what, asshole, I don't care," Kawagami spat out
at the undead rapist.

"That's uncalled for," Inamura pointed angrily, "Just because
I like to be dramatic and mysterious about things when I
explain them doesn't make me a..." He straightened. "Oh.
You were talking to my brother."

"Yeah. I guess you can't hear him then?"

"Only in my dreams. I'd like you to tell him something before
you kill him. Or maybe he can understand me already. I can't
tell. I'd like you to tell him that I still miss him, and I always
will. Just as I'll always love that part of him that was kind to
me all those years ago. He deserves every pain he has
received and more for what he did. But with luck perhaps
he'll get his shit together in the next life and we can be
brothers again sometime down the road. He's already
wasted this life."

~YOU ALWAYS WERE WEAK, LITTLE BROTHER.~

"You know that part about him getting his shit together in
another life?" Hiro said.

"Yeah?"

"Not likely." Hiro looked over the undead elephant sphincter,
grimacing at how he had to look up at the murderer now.
"How am I supposed to kill him?"

"Just stop keeping him alive," Inamura answered.

"Huh?"

"Until you have better control of your powers, they are more
or less attached to your subconscious. You hate my brother
for what he did, what he almost got away with. But Hate is
an attractive emotion, like Love. You don't really want him
dead any more than I do. So your curse was incomplete. It
only half killed him. You want to see him suffer, you want to
defeat him somehow, so you've unconsciously been keeping
him alive. But there's no way you can make him suffer
enough for it to matter, no way to conquer his wretchedness
to make him see the horror of what he has done. You have
to let go. Just as I have had to let go."

~YEAH JUST GIVE UP, PANSY ASS. YOU GOT A LUCKY
SHOT WITH THAT PUNCH. YOU'D NEVER BE ABLE TO
DO THAT AGAIN. YOU DESERVE THAT BODY YOU'RE IN
NOW. HEH I CAN JUST FEEL THAT VIRGIN PUSSY
SLIDING OVER MY COCK. MMM MMM MMM!~

Hiro fought the rush of anger that washed over him, his fists
clenched and tight against his sides. He could feel all too
well the differences between this body and his usual one.
Even without Inamura's advice, he knew that he could not
allow himself to be goaded. With a shaking, disturbingly
feminine sounding voice, Hiro asked, "How did he get this
way? You say he was a good person once? How is that
possible?"

Inamura took in some smoke from his cigarette and let it out
in a drawn out sigh. "I've seen it happen to other people. It's
different every time, but in all cases there's a point where in
order to survive, or to get something they feel they need, the
person has to sacrifice something precious to them.
Sometimes they can get it back. Sometimes," Inamura
nodded at his brother, "It's lost forever."

"What is it?" Hiro asked, "What do they sacrifice?"

"Again it takes a different form for every person, but if you
ask me, what it amounts to is...humanity."

Hiro looked again at the zombie he had unwittingly made
with a blow from his fist. Inamura said his brother died long
before Hiro ever met him. Maybe that was just a
rationalization. But it felt good. It made sense. Thinking that
a human being could be capable of doing what he had
done...that was just too difficult to fathom.

There was nothing Hiro could do to restore the zombie's
humanity. That very thought caused the wretched undead
thing to fall apart where it stood into a loose pile of rotten
flesh and dry bones.

Inside his mind, Hoko seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and
relax a little.

Hiro felt the opposite. He was starting to get the willies.
When he first moved to Nerima, he thought that the
craziness was kind of quaint. Now though, stuck in the body
of a seventeen-year-old girl and having just disintegrated a
zombie he had unwittingly created, he found he was neck
deep in the craziness, and "quaint" was NOT the word to
describe it.

~~~~~alley~~~~~

Copycat would never have been able to break out of his
struggle with the nekoken if it hadn't been for the terrible pain
he felt as Ranma's ki claws sliced through his arm and torso.
Ranma's claws were almost three feet long, at least ten
times longer than his own had been. Clothing, skin, muscle,
bone, the claws zipped through them all in an instant as if
they were nothing but a cloud of smoke. The claws entered
at Copycat's left shoulder and exited out his right lower torso,
leaving Copycat on his back, separated from his left arm and
his legs. He only had just enough time to use the blanket
with his right arm before Ranma came after him again.

Healed in an instant from the blanket, Copycat still only
barely dodged Ranma's next attack. Another one came right
after it and then another. Needing more space to maneuver,
Copycat jumped, as Ranma had earlier, first to the wall of
the undamaged building and then to the roof of the one
whose fire escape Ranma had destroyed.

Ranma was there a fraction of a second later.

All Copycat could do was dodge blow after blow. His body
fell into an odd sort of autopilot as he tried to figure some
way out of the situation. The extra space he had afforded
from jumping to the roof was rapidly diminishing as Ranma
drove him toward the roof of the next building. He tried to
jump, but lost his legs again in the attempt. He landed hard
on the severed end of his spinal chord which shattered on
impact and forced him to cry out even as he managed to use
the blanket again.

When he had found out he could hurt himself and heal
instantly with the blanket he had become an avid masochist.
At first he hurt himself out of a sort of training regimen so
that he would be able to continue to fight while injured. Soon
though, he began to enjoy it. Each slice of blade or searing
of flesh connected him with the world, allowed him to feel
something other than the emptiness of being alone. Of not
having an identity.

Even before that previous fight with Ranma he had felt apart
from society. An orphan without even foster parents or
school to give him some semblance of a normal life, all he
could do was go from town to town copying martial arts
techniques and challenging the masters. Fighting was the
only thing that gave him purpose. A purpose that Ranma had
taken away, simply by being better.

How do you defeat someone whose abilities go beyond skill?
How do you train for a battle you are sure to fail...when
you've never really trained before...when you have no
teacher to guide you? Copycat attacked himself, learned not
to feel pity or pain, dove into the darkness of his soul.

Still, even this sacrifice had not prepared him for this battle.
Ranma was relentless, inhuman with human intelligence. A
force of nature without nature's equanimity. Copycat
dodged, healed injuries as fast of possible and tried in vain
to find an opening, but it was no use. He was starting to get
tired.

The power of the blanket was not infinite, it could only pull so
much mass from nullspace before it needed replenishing.
Copycat's various severed limbs were turning into a thick
smoke and being sucked back into nullspace, but the
process was slow, and Ranma was very very fast.

Operating on pure instinct, Copycat jumped away from
where he was standing as Ranma's claws gouged deep
crevasses into the roof with a sound that scraped across
Copycat's back molars like an electric sander. The
resistance from the roof made Ranma slow long enough for
Copycat to see her face. She was smiling widely, completely
relaxed, enjoying herself. A kitten, playing with a wounded
bird.

The nekoken wasn't a mere technique. Of that Copycat was
certain. Trying to control it was like trying to tame a tiger by
letting it consume your flesh. Even the small amount of time
Copycat let it out was agonizing. The thing was like a
demon, or at best, a parasite. And yet Ranma seemed
merged with it now. She moved not only with the movements
of a cat, but with the precision of all her martial arts training.
Her eyes burned not only with feral hunger, but with cold
intelligence. Even her grin, wider and more menacing though
it was, was eerily similar to Ranma's usual smirk.

Copycat realized in that precious moment as Ranma
dragged her claws out of the roof, that he was actually
afraid.

He could not run away. Ranma was too fast. He could not try
to counter attack. Ranma would rip him to shreds. Thinking
fast, he used the blanket to turn into the Kawagami body,
pulled out the pistol from its holster, and started firing rounds
at the red-headed demon creature. He emptied an entire
magazine, but not one of the bullets found their mark, and in
the end, the only thing Copycat managed to accomplish was
to make himself a steady target for Ranma's claws.

This time, there was no escape. Copycat didn't even see the
attack. He just felt searing pain in his shoulders and then
both his arms fell to the ground with a thud. Warm blood
gushed down his sides through the fabric of his uniform shirt.
Another swipe from out of nowhere took his legs from him
and he was on his back, writhing in agony and no longer
capable of doing anything about it.

"It's not supposed to be like this!" Copycat cried. The pain
washed over him in waves with every beat of his heart, his
life's blood pooling onto the ground around him. The
sensation that connected him to the world now betraying
him, taking him further away from it. He had thought he
would never be this weak again. He had accepted the oni's
gift of the blanket and camera at the orphanage. He had
found out the secret of the two items. He had escaped. He
had copied every technique he could for years. He had
learned to welcome pain. He was stronger now, ruthless. He
didn't have to be helpless. Not again.

Ranma stood over him. Standing like a human, but
somehow the cat was still there in her expression. She went
out of his frame of vision for a moment as she bent down to
pick something up. Then she was there again, framed by the
electric blue of the darkening sky, and holding a pistol
pointed straight at his skull. Glancing at it she bent down
again, this time getting something from Copycat's waist. A
spare magazine. She clicked it into the pistol and aimed
again.

None of it seemed to matter. It had all been for nothing.
There would be no third chance at this. He had lost, and
whether Ranma shot him or he bled to death from his
wounds, he would die shortly. "It isn't fair!" Copycat yelled,
crazily, "I've learned more, seen more, done more...Why am
I-?"

But his words were cut off by the retort from the pistol in
Ranma's hand--- that and the bullet that coursed through his
cerebral cortex, subsequently exploding out of his occipital
lobe and embedding itself a full two centimeters into the
concrete of the roof below.

The words he was about to say were "still" and "empty."

~~~~~alley~~~~~

Nabiki hated having to stay down on the street while Ranko
fought on the roof. After eating the apple, he felt a little
groggy but otherwise fine. While this was odd, considering
the fact that only ten minutes ago he was dying of a bullet
wound to the chest, it didn't change the fact that now he was
fine and perfectly capable of climbing another building's fire
escape to see what's going on. But if he did that, sure he
might be able to see how the fight was going, but he was
also just as likely to get another bullet wound, or worse, get
caught in one of those new Tobu Sennuki things of Ranko's.

All he could do was listen to the sounds of battle overhead
and wonder.

Ranma's residual male ego had gotten to him more than he
would have thought. The complete stupidity he had exhibited
in following the killer... It made so much sense at the time.
Heck, even now he halfway wanted to get on the roof to
"protect" Ranko, even though he knew he'd just get in her
way. The other half of him just wanted to watch.

She had always enjoyed watching Ranma fight, even when
she thought of him as just a freeloader.

Nabiki looked quizzically down at her breasts, which had
suddenly been restored to her. Oh, she realized, I was
lusting after male Ranma. Too much for the male side to
cope with I guess.

As grateful as she was for her return to femininity, she
couldn't quite shake the ominous feeling that she was out of
her depth. She usually would have worked out some angle
on this by now, figured out a way to come out on top. She
wasn't even sure what "on top" would mean now. Being able
to change into a man might help out in some of her business
dealings, but how could she maintain her public image? Did
she even have a public image anymore? Her televised urban
ailurophilic sexcapade with Ranma had to have shattered
any standing Nabiki had. It was at least a nasty mark on her
escutcheon. Did she care? She was supposed to control
things from afar, be the axis upon which the craziness of
Furinkan High School turned. Why the hell did she have to
go and fall in love with Ranma Saotome?

It was Ranko Saotome now though. Ranko was 100% girl
now, and Nabiki was still in love with her. On top of
everything, she was now technically a lesbian.

Nabiki let out a small explosive chuckle.

It would be okay. Sure she could get upset about it, bemoan
the loss of her "reputation", but really what sort of a
reputation was being an "Ice Queen" anyway? It was really
not any different from when people would try to blackmail
her. Like that one time, someone tried to get out of a debt
by threatening to spread pictures of Nabiki in her underwear.
Nabiki simply smiled and said the debt now had an added
charge for perversion. The next day, she started selling her
own pictures. She found it kind of fun actually. The
domination poses she did with the black leotard and whip
were particularly popular, though they led to some
unfortunate comparisons to Kodachi Kuno later on.

All she had to do was accept her situation, and then she
could manipulate it to her advantage.

Nabiki closed her eyes and breathed. Okay. She was now
an epistemotransexual in love with a former aquatransexual
martial artist who was borderline psychotic, which is what
attracted her to...her in the first place. She had saved her
fiance(e) from a sadistic geriatric manipulator of liquid metal
from an alternate universe almost directly after learning her
best friend had been murdered by a doppelganger. She
could see auras now, due to having had a near-death
experience, and could now apparently start the engines of
motorcycles with her mind. Furthermore, she now had an
alternate personality that was a cat, and while in that
personality she had had unprotected sex in the middle of a
city intersection.

Nabiki's eyes popped open "Oh gods, what if I'm pregnant?"

The sounds of several gunshots above her reminded her
that that was the least of her concerns at the moment. The
accepting thing was going to take some time, though. That
was for sure.

The fight above her seemed to quiet down, and Nabiki
watched the small, dark blue patch of twilight sky between
the buildings for some clue as to what was going on. There
was another last gunshot, which sent chills down Nabiki's
back, and then...

And then, something appeared in the patch of open sky that
Nabiki had not expected.

~~~~~roof~~~~~

Ranko stood over the monster's body, pistol still aimed at its
forehead, watching. Her thoughts hadn't come around to
forming complete sentences yet. She knew though, on some
level apart from coherent thought, that she could not trust
appearances. She had to be sure it was dead.

For a while everything was still. Only Ranko's breathing and
the sounds of the city around her prevented her from feeling
that somehow time had stopped and she would be stuck in
this position for eternity. During the fight, everything had
been easy. Fun, even. Only now in the stillness, did she
begin to feel a twinge of panic...a vague feeling of
something pressing in around her with increasing force.

Fading into view, like a picture on Polaroid film, so gradually
she almost missed them, a camera and a blanket appeared
next to the monster's torso. The camera was old and blocky,
but of good quality. The lens had the words "made in japan"
written around it in white, English characters. Fairly normal,
but there seemed something off about it. Ranko felt a
memory struggle to rise to the surface of the murky waters of
her mind, but she couldn't quite retrieve it. She was too
distracted by everything she was struggling to ignore. The
blanket was folded underneath the camera in a square, but
something about the way it appeared made it seem
somehow like the coiled body of a snake.

Then the camera and blanket moved.

One second the camera was on the middle of the dark
green, folded blanket. The next it was floating half a meter in
the air, the blanket hanging from its base.

Startled, Ranko shot squeezed the trigger of the pistol,
hitting a corner of the camera. A shrieking sound seemed to
issue from its lens.

It wasn't a lens.

The camera morphed and distorted until it was a circular
mouth with serrated teeth all along its edge, attached to what
was once the blanket. The blanket, too, changed, unfolding,
straightening, thickening, and growing more pale until it was
a greenish white, chitonous, square section of a much larger
creature. Another section like this one followed as the thing
that had been masquerading as a camera seemed to shoot
out of a hole in the doppelganger's side. In only seconds,
five more sections, each about half a meter long came out of
null space. The creature was already towering over Ranma
and it was still growing.

Ranko shot at it again, but the bullet had no effect as the
thing continued to fly out of null space. Extending her ki
claws from her left hand, Ranko swiped at the thing just as
the last sections left the dimensional hole they were coming
from. The chiton was denser than bone, but Ranko's swipe
still reduced the last three sections to ribbons. As the
remains fell to the ground, they crumbled and turned into a
blue mist that was quickly sucked away in three directions...

~~~~~~alley~~~~~~

Nabiki was busy trying to make sense of the creature that
rose up into the sky from the roof, when the blue mist came
after her. It was blue...but at the same time it was bright
green and flashing like a strobe. She felt it pulling her toward
it even as it homed in and darted toward her breast.

The mist diffused into her, became part of her, but somehow
it felt like it had always been a part of her, only it had gone
missing without her knowing. Pieces of her psyche that had
been missing ever since her accident yesterday now woke
up all at once, demanding to know how the hell she had
managed to screw things up so badly.

And then, as if getting a fragment of her former self slammed
into her wasn't enough torment, she started remembering
things she had never done.

She remembered killing Hoko. Cutting her body into pieces
and distributing them in dumpsters all around Tokyo. She
remembered killing her best friend. As if it had been her all
along and not some nameless monster. No it wasn't quite
her. Someone was wearing her like a costume, using her like
a puppet. Copycat Ken. The name came to her as her
insides screamed it into her heart. She watched the life drain
from her friend's eyes, felt her pulse weaken and die. Worst
of all, she felt some part of her, the same ugly, creeping part
of her that had one time almost shot her sister, that grew out
of her soul like a tumor, threatening to consume her, she felt
this part of her laugh in delight.

Some time during all this, Nabiki collapsed to the pavement.
She screamed, thrashed her head around, tore at the
concrete around her trying to get away from the memories,
but they wouldn't leave. They were already a part of her.

~~~~~morgue~~~~~

Hiro had no idea what it was when he saw it. He was helping
Inamura clean up his brother's remains. Hoko kept asking
him to stop looking at them as it grossed her out but she
couldn't control her eyes. And then, as Hiro tried to sweep
the remains into a dust bin while looking at the cinder block
wall in front of him, he saw the blue mist come through.
There were two clouds of it that appeared. They both
seemed to hesitate upon entering the room for half a
second. Then they both zoomed toward Hiro's heart.

In an instant, Hiro was in his own body. In uniform even, but
he didn't notice. He was remembering how he tied himself
up. How he looked at Hoko's body when they were about to
leave for the police department. How he shot Nabiki. How he
tried to shoot Ranma. All these things came at once, and
were disturbing enough in their own right, but what Hiro felt
more acutely in that moment were all the memories of pain.
Of being shot in the chest, of having his torso severed five or
six times. Of falling on his severed spinal chord from a height
of just under a meter and a half. Of getting shot in the head
while bleeding from the stumps of all his major appendages.
Of dying.

This was all more than a human being could possibly take.
Hiro passed out.

~~~~~hoko~~~~~

For her part, Hoko already knew the perversions Copycat
had committed with her body. While it wasn't pleasant to be
reminded of them, it was bearable. She was mostly relieved
when she found she was able to move on her own. Relief
grew to outright joy when she realized she was alive again.
Really and truly alive. She felt some concern for Hiro when
he fell over, but even as she caught him to keep him from
hitting his head on the hard tile floor, she was smiling. Just to
prove that she could she spoke "I'm alive!"

Inamura was the only other conscious person in the room,
so Hoko turned to him and repeated it, tears coming out of
her eyes. "I'm alive!"

Inamura had a wide smile on his face. He looked completely
goofy, just like when he'd do his lame magic tricks whenever
she and Nabiki stayed over at Ami's house. "Is it really you,
Hoko-chan?"

"As far as I know, I mean, I can't be the real thing, I saw that
bastard kill the real thing. I'm just a copy, but I feel like me. I
thought I'd never be able to talk again or move on my own.
Oh Uncle Inamura, I'm ALIVE!" Even though it was kind of
weird, Hoko hugged Inamura. He smelled like cigarettes. He
felt warm. Her tears were seeping into the rough fabric of his
suit jacket as she squeezed his thin, wiry frame as hard as
she could.

"Welcome back, Hoko-chan. I thought we'd lost you."
Inamura laughed in the way he always did when he was
about to tell a bad and vaguely disturbing joke. "You're much
better preserved than that other zombie."

~~~~~alley~~~~~

Nabiki took some long, deep, shuddering breaths. She had
heard terrible stories during her years as Furinkan High's
number one source of information, stories that were like slow
acting viruses, spread through whispers behind raised
hands. Girls did get raped at Furinkan. Nabiki knew she was
one of the lucky ones. It hadn't happened to her and as
much as she flirted with the boys, especially before Ranma
arrived, it very well could have. Right now, though, she
couldn't help feeling that maybe she had a good idea of what
it was like.

Copycat Ken hadn't just made her kill her best friend. He
made her enjoy it. As many times as she told herself that it
wasn't her, her memories, which supplied her with
excruciating detail, kept telling her it was. She felt like she
could have stopped it if she had only tried hard enough to
break through Copycat's control, but she couldn't have done
anything. She hadn't even thought of struggling. Even her
thoughts had been under Copycat's command. But they
were so close to her thoughts, his control was so subtle...It
wasn't her fault, but every time she told herself that, it felt like
a lie.

It was the feeling of moisture in her eyes that snapped her
out of it. Tears never solved anything. She couldn't lay on
the pavement feeling sorry for herself now. He had to be
there for Ranko.

Sitting up, Nabiki blinked at his sex change. He had just
gotten his boobs back. Why was he male again? Was it
Ranko? That was part of it, he realized, but also there was
the strong emotions, which he simply couldn't deal with right
now. Yet, Nabiki had always felt girls were better at dealing
with emotions then boys, it was one of the reasons why boys
could be manipulated so easily. So why the sex change?
Girls ARE better at dealing with emotions, Nabiki reaffirmed.
He sighed, Boys, however, are much better at NOT dealing
with them.

Right now, the horrible nature of his recently gained
memories was in a sort of translucent box that he would
have to open up later, but that he could almost forget about
now, even though he could see what was inside struggling to
get out. It was still there but now he felt he could ignore it.

He had to be careful, Nabiki cautioned himself. This lack of
estrogen was fast becoming a crutch. The brave thing would
be to change back to female, confront the memories and find
some way to accept them.

Nabiki got up. He was a coward. He felt a pang of guilt, and
quickly as he could, he relegated that too to a box in a
corner of his mind. He would deal with these things later.
Right now he had to find Ranko.

As if called by his thoughts, Ranko fell from the roof onto her
feet like...well...a cat. "It's over," she said. All Nabiki could
see was the top of her lowered head, "He's dead. I killed
him."

"Are you okay?" Nabiki asked, stepping closer. Ranma's
aura looked strange, almost alien, deep blues and dark reds
mixing to form roiling purples. The purple was similar in hue
to Inamura's aura, but there was no steadiness to it.
Only...chaos.

"There was something controlling him I think," Ranko
continued almost seeming to ignore Nabiki, "A demon.
Looked like a... I'm not even sure what it looked like. I tried
to kill it, but it got away."

"It doesn't matter, Ranko. At least you got the bastard,
right?"

"It was Copycat Ken, Fly. He was at least a year younger
than me." Ranko still wouldn't look up. Her aura however
seemed to be doing back flips.

"He killed my best friend, Ran. He could be six years old and
I'd still want his head on a stick."

Now Ranko looked up. "You don't get it! He was under that
demon's control the whole time! He probably didn't even
know it was there! He didn't kill those people, that fucking
demon did! He was just a kid, and I killed him and set that
demon free to torture more innocent people."

Nabiki's eyes widened as he saw Ranko's ki claws extend
and retract with the surge of emotion. Her eyes glowed a dull
purple, like the eye shine of a nocturnal beast. Ranko had
somehow merged with the nekoken. Nabiki felt himself oddly
aroused. He shook his head free of the thought. He had to
calm Ranko down. "You couldn't have known that would
happen." He tried to embrace her but she recoiled.

"Don't touch me!" She yelled. "You'll feel what I feel."

"You can't go through this alone, Ran." Nabiki said.

"There's nothing to go through anymore, Fly. It's over. I'm not
a martial artist. I don't think I'm even human anymore. We
can't be together. I'm a murderer, you understand? I killed
someone. Yes, he killed your best friend and Gosunkugi and
two other people that we know of, but he didn�t have a
choice. I did."

Nabiki lunged forward and locked both his arms around
Ranko. Ranko moved violently and was seconds away from
breaking Nabiki's grip, but then she relaxed, melting into
Nabiki's chest in a burst of tears. She felt so cold...

Nabiki had Ranma's memories then. They had gone through
another similar experience. They had both killed an innocent
person. Somehow it was better now. Somehow despite it all,
Ranko crying into his chest felt right to Nabiki. It was okay for
her to cry, because she was a girl. It was okay for him not to
cry, because he was a boy. And there was something wrong
with that rationale, but Nabiki just put it in another box and
hid it away for later.

"Firefly?" Ranko looked up at Nabiki. Her aura had calmed
into a pastel blue violet. It seemed soft now, like a cloud.

"Yes, Ran-chan?"

"I don't think I want to be a boy again, at least not for a while.
Is that okay?"

Nabiki didn't know what to say so he just nodded and patted
Ranko on the arm.

"Ow!" Ranko exclaimed, startling Nabiki.

"What is it?"

"It's nothing. Just a bruise." Ranko said and hugged Nabiki
tighter.

They stood like that for awhile before Ranko spoke again. "I
love you, Nabiki," she said, "It sounds weird to say it, but it's
true. I'd do anything for you."

"I love you too, Ranko." Nabiki said, filled with an emotion far
too big for any box.

"It's scary though." Ranma backed away a little, her arms
loosely hanging from Nabiki's neck.

"Why?" Nabiki asked.

"If someone hurts you again...I don't care who they are...I
am going to kill them."

~~~~~AUTHOR'S NOTE~~~~~~
8/30/06

Once again, I assure you Ranma will eventually be male
again. It's just that he has to go deep into his feminine side
for a while, much like how Dante has to go to the very
bottom of Hell, climbing down toward Satan's nether regions,
before emerging in Purgatory and then if he doesn't see his
dead girlfriend Beatrice, he climbs back up/down into Hell
and there are six more weeks of winter.

Perhaps next chapter will actually involve Nodoka, whom I've
been really meaning to make a central character.
Also next chapter will have an awful lot of Sayuri in it. Why?
Because she strikes me as being rather dull. We simply can't
have that can we? ::snickers evilly::

Currently my writing speed is about a chapter a year. Thanks
for being patient and for all your comments and hope you
continue to enjoy.
It get's weirder.
-Zorknot

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