"I ain't gonna back down," she muttered, standing up. She walked up to the bar and looked hesitantly.
"It's not a challenge, lass," Mike said. "You lose nothing by sitting, except perhaps a good cry."
"Uh..." Ranma, I believe her name was, the one who'd killed this Kasumi, shuffled her feet a bit. Then she leaned forward and whispered something. She leaned back looking brilliantly red in comparison to her dark hair and wings, which wrapped about her comfortingly.
Evidently it was a drink order of some kind, because Mike smiled and poured a draft of something amber colored under the bar and handed it to her, respecting her desire not to make it known what she had ordered.
She stood there staring into the cup long and hard, obviously trying to craft a toast of some kind. Tradition held that she wouldn't back down now. She'd make a toast eventually. That was part of the magic that was here and full with Mike and Sally.
"To stupidity," she finally said with a deal of restrained anger.
She downed the contents of the mug and then. I was expecting another bit of damage to the fireplace. Ranma had apparently taken this as a sort of challenge and perhaps that would include the manner in which she disposed of the mug.
The girl was holding the mug level with her head, seeming to plan something. Then she simply let it go. I was confused for a moment as the mug simply began to fall. This wasn't the normal tradition.
Ranma moved when the mug was perfectly horizontal. And in the space of brief blur, several splinters of shattered glass mug imbedded themselves in my fireplace. The girl hadn't wound up for a punch, she'd simply been watching the mug fall one moment, and the next there was the cracking sound of shattering glass.
She looked at her hand in consideration, as if measuring the capability she had. A thoughtful expression was on her face for a long time.
"I shoulda known something was up," Ranma said quietly. "Pop was getting shifty. He always got shifty when he got an idea. An that ain't a good thing."
"What kind of ideas?" someone asked. Ranma shrugged at that.
"Stupid stuff," Ranma said. "Like the...N..nekoken..." Her demeanor shifted visibly as she tried to name the "idea" the blood drained from her face. Her raven eyes' pupils shrunk to pin pricks and she shivered, wrapping her wings around her.
That was mentioned before, and I couldn't hold back from asking, though I wanted to.
"What's that?" I asked.
"It's..." Ranma's voice faltered behind her wings.
"A martial art technique," my daughter answered for her. "Banned as causing isanity. It involves putting the trainee, covered in food, into a pit of starving cats."
"Yeah," Ranma said. "Pop didn't get as far as the banned part. All he saw was unbeatable technique and he jumped for it. That was the first one. And even Pop thought that was a bad idea, though he claimed that the bool tricked him!" That was said through gritted teeth, an expression of intense frustration. "An' then he figgered, if I could survive that, then maybe some harsher training than the norm was called for."
"Sometimes, I think he just came up with a new idea and tested it out on me," Ranma said. "Like tying me to those busses and things. Sure it made my speed great, but I don't know if he thought it through or not. And it hurt hitting those busses when they stopped. And then there was the Ja Jinku no Apache. Supposedly some long lost, Apache technique. All he did was throw a bunch of rattlesnakes around me and shouted 'go Ranma.' And I could never get food without fighting him for it first. He said it was to train and improve my speed and reflexes. That's annoying, spend ten years fighting for your food against a bottomless pit."
She was saying these things with a sort of blase acceptance and analysis that it was hideously obvious that she figured these things to be not so bad. They weren't abuse to his mind. No, everything he mentioned his father subjecting him to was taken as idiotic, not because of the pain, but because his father hadn't thought it through and had no idea whether it would be beneficial or not.
At least at one time, this girl would probably have willing stuck her hand in an open blaze if she thought it would improve her skills. Judging from her expression as she had studied her hand in the wake of her punching the mug, she still considered her skills very important.
"And then came jusenkyo," Ranma said. "And I became this. A girl. Pop was dancing and celebrating. And I flipped out. I wasn't paying too much attention, because even distracted he got me, and was in another pool, and I got wings. I got him the second time, well I would have. But girl's are too weak normally, I guess. All that happened was my arm broke."
The other girls stirred and looked at Ranma cautiously as that small bit of sexism leaked out. I had no doubt that this, too, came from Ranma's father. Certainly he sounded like the kind of guy that would teach his son that girls were inferior. And despite the frustration and anger she expressed, there was an amount of affection in her voice as she spoke of her old man. She even with his last act, Ranma hadn't excised all trust of her father.
"Out of curiousity," Erin asked, a little tense herself at that. "Can you fly?"
"Err, yeah," Ranma said. "Why?"
"Then you probably have hollow bones," Erin said. Ranma looked blank. "Birds bone structures are very light so they can fly, but they break easy."
"Oh," Ranma said, embarrassed. "So that's why. Well, whatever. Anyway. I couldn't fight anymore. I could barely any practice any more. I tried to stretch the next day, and had to stop when I felt the bones start to give under the strain from the muscles. I don't know when he learned there was a way to temporarily change back to our birth forms. I found out by accident in Japan when I caught him as a human not a panda. And really, I shoulda asked him what was up then. Or flown the coop, literally, but Pop said he knew what he was doing an' I didn't believe him, but I had t' go you know? Then we come to this house, and this nice lady says she can make it so that my girl form can fight again."
Ranma's face twisted and her eyes squinted closed.
"I called my pop stupid," Ranma said. "He ain't...he's an idiot. He don't know better. I'm stupid. Stupid is when you know better, but still go through with it. An going with one of Pop's plans was stupid. I woke up, and...and...she made me start to, touch myself...and...and...and...I couldn't stop after that....she wouldn't let me finish it. Not until I...did what she wanted. An'..." Ranma started crying. "She WASN'T usin' that gaes to make me...I...I was doin' it...I woulda done anything...anything if she just finished me off...and...ohh..." she gasped and took a deep breath. "...it kept getting...more intense...I can't say better or worse! I can't! I wanted it to stop an' I was afraid she'd stop and leave me alone..." Ranma was on the edge of hysterical now, shivering as she leaned on something. "It was wonderful. I wanted...I don't know what I want. But...I know what I don't want...because of Mistress..." And she spoke in the hushed tones of someone speaking a blasphemy in a church. I noted the other three girls stare at Ranma in alarm when Ranma said "Mistress" as if that word were a deadlier serpent. And perhaps it was. "I...don't e...ever want to be a guy again. I...want her back." The last was said with such defeat.
"The first time," Nabiki said then vehemently. "After the first time, I was the same. We all were! Listen Ranma, she was a very skilled lover. But she was a demon!"
"Huh?" Ranma blinked, snapped out of her reveries and looked up.
"In four years, do you think we were the only three girls to come and go?" Nabiki demanded. "The ones that couldn't say her name after their first time with her never lasted more than a few months. Then there was nothing to them. Nothing at all. Couldn't do anything on their own. Say her name Ranma! Call her Kasumi."
"Yes," Akane affirmed. "You have to say her name. Kasumi! Her name was Kasumi! Not Mistress!"
"Please Ranma," Kodachi insisted. "Say Kasumi's name."
All three of them were leaning forward.
"But," Ranma said, hesitating.
"I'd take their advice, lass," Mike said gently.
"Just take a breath," Sally said leaning forward with a particularly intense look to her eyes for all the softness and encouragement to her voice. Perhaps there was some magic to the name that wasn't as easy to see. "And let it out."
Ranma looked scared as she nodded and did just that. She took a long breath and released.
I could see the three other girls mouthing the words, "say it" over and over again. Nabiki was determined, while Akane seemed to be ordering him to do it with her expression, and Kodachi was pleading.
"Ka...su...mi," Ranma said slowly. Mike, Sally and the three girls showed highly visible relief. As did the girls' mother. "Kasumi. Her name was Kasumi." And it seemed that had taken as much energy as she had left, because she collapsed down to the floor in great sobbing cries.
Her mother cautiously came to her side and gathered up the small winged girl in her arms.
"Shhh," the woman said, holding and rocking her. "Shh, your safe now."
Ranma whispered into her mother's ear as she grasped at her.
"She...hurt me," I heard drifting over the bar. "Her name was Kasumi, and she hurt me."
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(Posted Sun, 05 Jan 2003 03:36)
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