Hours after Urd’s mocking farewell, Mara sighed and leaned back in her seat in front of a Nidhogg terminal, rubbing her eyes. This is a colossal waste of time, she thought as she again focused on the monitor. Kason’s older reports are out-of-date, his later ones can’t be trusted — and since we don’t know just when he was turned, who knows where the dividing line is?
Straightening again, she nodded decisively. All right, forget about trying to sift the wheat from the chaff in the later reports, let’s go back to the earliest ones and work forward, looking for any nuggets that might still be useful, after two hundred years.
Typing furiously, the blonde demon quickly brought up Kason’s very first report and started scrolling through page after page, skimming for any least hint of useful information, only to suddenly stiffen. The Amazons started using Alanya’s pool for a coming of age ceremony? Not very smart of them, that would almost guarantee that it would never work, not enough experience on the part of the testers. But perhaps that’s what they wanted — honor Alanya’s memory and keeping someone else like her from popping up at the same time. Still ...
Opening up another window, Mara set up a search for any further reports on the ceremony and breezed through the results, nodding at what she found. So, they used it for initiating people into the tribe as well as turning trainees into warriors. That might work eventually, if a new member has what Alanya was looking for. There’s no way Kason would have reported it if that is what happened, so ...
Saving her search parameters and results, she toggled the communications icon, selected Personnel, and leaned back again as a screen opened. “Personnel, Kerlon speaking,” the male dark-haired demon in the new window said.
“This is Mara, assigned to the Alanya/Jusenkyo case,” Mara responded. “I need some people for a surveillance mission.”
Ku Lon sat at the prow of the small, sleek ship cutting through the waters of the Sea of Japan and gazed out across the night-darkened waves. Not bad, she thought luxuriating in her self-satisfaction. Less than a day, and I’m already almost to China. I knew keeping that fixer on retainer would be useful, he really came through. Who cares if those idiots started back hours before I did, there’s no way they’re going to be able to match this!
Leaning back and gazing up at the stars, she spent a few delightful moments reflecting on how best to phrase her report to the Council in such a way as to make clear the stupidity of the faction that had decided to dis the God Killer, and the qualified alliance with Ranma and his — her — allies that had resulted.
But thoughts of the Council sobered the ancient Elder, and with a sigh she straightened. Please, let this fiasco shake those blinkered, parochial old sticks from the ruts they’ve been stuck in for the last couple of centuries! Internal competition is fine, keeps people on their toes when things are quiet, but not when the importance of everything that happens is measured by how it affects the domestic infighting. If only Ranma has chosen Xian Pu, just think what that chaos magnet would have done to life in the village ...
But after a moment’s blissful consideration she shook her head. No, it’s probably best as it turned out. As much as Ranma would have shaken things up, he’d probably have been dead within a year — use the right poison, and it doesn’t matter how in shape a man is, and there’s more than one of the most blinkered that would have been perfectly happy to use it to preserve their power and influence. Whatever the cost. Keeping him alive would have been very difficult.
Mood now totally spoiled, Ku Lon rose and headed for the tiny cabin she had been given when she added herself to the smuggling run. She needed to be fully rested when they reached whatever out-of-the-way cove the smugglers would use to drop off whatever they were smuggling (she had carefully not asked), just in case the crew decided that, already having her money, their secrets would be safer if she just disappeared. She didn’t know just how the fixer she had retained had convinced them to add her to their run, but they had been distinctly unhappy to see her.
As she settled down for sleep, she found herself hoping they would try something — she had some deep-seated frustration to work off.
Nabiki watched from the dark second-story window of the room that Genma and Ranma, and recently Genma and Nodoka, had used as by the koi pond a Ranma in demon form broke her embrace of her lover and stepped back. The red-haired/furred girl’s wings spring from her back, and she sprang into the air and soared off into the night sky.
The mercenary Tendo watched with a sigh as she vanished into the darkness above the street lamps. What would it be to fly like that? Nabiki wondered for a moment, before turning her attention back to her younger sister. Akane, too, had been watching Ranma fly away, and at last she dropped her eyes and headed toward the house, quickly vanishing from sight. Nabiki listened intently, but when after a few minutes there was no sound of Akane coming up the stairs she turned around to face the room’s other two occupants. “Hit the lights, big sis,” she said, and the room’s light came on to reveal Kasumi by the door and Xian Pu leaning against the wall.
“Okay, Ranma’s gone off to visit her mother, and it looks like Akane’s headed either to the furo or the dojo, so we should be clear for a bit,” Nabiki reported. “So — the big question. When Ranma gets back she’s going to need to feed. Who goes first?”
Xian Pu and Kasumi exchanged glances, then the Amazon shrugged. “Ranma battle sister to Shampoo, so that — my — duty. Shampoo handle.” Nabiki carefully kept her relief off her face. Good, that was just what I was hoping you’d say. And tomorrow I can see if Akane’s friends would be willing to help out, get Ukyo involved and keep Kasumi out —
But Kasumi was shaking her head. “No, Shampoo, I should go first,” she said firmly.
Nabiki felt her smile congeal. “Why not Shampoo?” she quickly asked. “I’m sure it happens all the time back at the village, right Shampoo?”
Xian Pu nodded. “Is true. All women know must marry, produce babies for next generation of warriors, but women sleep with women all the time. Sometimes form lifetime couples.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kasumi replied. “The problem is Akane, and her jealousy. Shampoo’s been her rival for years, and the fact that you’re a better fighter doesn’t help,” she added to the purple-haired girl. “But there’s no way she’ll think for a moment that I’m trying to take Ranma away from her. If I go first, it should make it easier for her to accept Shampoo or Ukyo, if Ranma takes her up on her offer, as a food source.”
Nabiki felt her heart sink at the stern expression on Kasumi’s face. Her older sister didn’t often exert herself, preferring to stay in the background and watch the show, but when she did she could quietly and calmly out-stubborn everyone else in the household. Nabiki desperately wracked her brain for counter-arguments as she settled in for a long argument.
Ranma grinned fiercely as she spiraled down toward the hotel her mother had been living in for the past three weeks, the singing tension she felt as she approached a meeting she’d been dreading since learning her mother had moved out of the Tendo home reduced to background noise at the thrill of her first flight. The redheaded earth demon had managed to keep Nabiki’s suggestion that she stay fairly close to the ground, but it had been hard — the urge to just head for the moon shining in the light/dark night sky had been nearly irresistible. (No need to start any UFO scares by popping up on someone’s radar, had been the middle Tendo’s comment in her usual snarky tone, and one of the first things Ranma was going to do when she had more energy to play with was learn how to use it to power the Umisenken.)
The winged girl changed her angle to aim for an empty alley a few buildings down from her destination, one that thanks to a broken street light would be in deep shadows. (And the odd way she could tell it was dark but still see clearly was something she still wasn’t used to.) Flipping around at the last moment and withdrawing her wings, Ranma’s feet hit the concrete and she immediately found herself rolling head over heels toward the alley entrance, stopping herself just before she erupted into the street, red-furred, back strip, tail, tiny horns and all.
Okay, that’s gonna take a little practice, she thought as she lay there listening for the approach of anyone that might have heard her arrival. No sounds came except the usual distant noise of a nighttime city, and finally she rose to her feet, checked to make sure her spaghetti-string camisole had survived the rough landing. A moment’s concentration had her looking her previously normal human self, and she strode out of the alley and down the street toward the hotel entrance.
Saotome Nodoka sat at her rented room’s desk, staring out the window at the night-dimmed brick wall of the building next door, anchored in place by the lethargy she had found herself sunk in ever since the evening that her son had proven himself as honorless as his father. Since that day she had occasionally tried to consider what to do about Ranma, balance maintaining the family honor he had abandoned against the horror of facing life as alone as the long years of the training trip with no hope of a reunion at the end. (She had had such hopes for her husband when she had found out who “Panda-san” was, but the man had proven to be as much a failure as a husband as he was as a father — or for that matter as a man, considering how he had ignored her insinuations at what a proper reunion called for, however broadly she had hinted.)
But every movement had seemed as if she were pushing through air as thick as jello, every thought slowly meandering through a cotton shroud, and she had found it easier to simply sit and gaze unthinking at what little of the world could be viewed from her room.
A knock on the door shook the auburn-haired woman from her time-worn ruminations. She turned and stared at the door for a long moment, wondering idly who might be visiting — her husband would still be on his abrupt training trip; from Nabiki’s and Kasumi’s reactions to Ranma’s decision to abandon both honor and manhood she doubted that either of them would seek her out; and besides, she hadn’t informed anyone where she had moved to when her distress had driven her from the Tendo home.
A second knock came, and Nodoka finally forced herself up out of her seat and slowly made her way to the door, and unlocked it without bothering to look to see who was outside. The door swung open, and Nodoka’s comforting lassitude shattered and she stumbled back a step at the sight of her self-declared daughter standing there.
She stared in shock at the busty redhead, then demanded, “Ranma, what have you been doing, rolling in the dirt? And you aren’t wearing a bra, with your size! No proper young woman leaves the house dressed like that!”
Ranma’s jaw dropped. She stared at her fuming mother for a long moment, then unwilling giggles turned into chuckles, and she found herself on her knees clutching her sides as she shook with laughter.
After a moment, Nodoka began to chuckle as she watched Ranma fight to bring herself under control.
Finally, Ranma fought the laughter down. She rose to her feet and asked, “May I come in?”
Sobering, Nodoka hesitantly nodded, then closed the door behind Ranma and watched as her daughter walked over to stare out the same window her mother had earlier.
The two stood in silence for several minutes as the room filled with tension, the earlier shared humor a memory. Finally, Ranma asked, “So, have ya decided if you’re gonna kick me out of the family yet?”
Nodoka shook her head jerkily then, realizing that Ranma couldn’t see her, said in a shaky voice, “No ... no, I haven’t.”
Ranma turned to face her, face calm. “Then I’m gonna make it easy on ya, an’ ask ya ta remove my name,” she quietly said.
Nodoka paled. “Wh-wh-why?” she stammered. “Have you found Genma’s and my disagreement with your decision so detestable you no longer want the name?”
Ranma instantly shook her head. “No, nothin’ like that. I’d be happy ta stay a Saotome. But now that I’m no longer human, it’s better if I go ronin so that what people think a’ how I act doesn’t reflect on the family.”
“No ... no longer human?” Nodoka repeated.
Ranma sighed, and told her tale of the previous day.
“An’ so that’s where it stands,” the redhead finished. “What I’m gonna hafta do to stay alive ... it isn’t honorable by human standards. And ‘human’ is how I’m gonna want people ta think of me if I don’t want demon hunters swarmin’ around. So it’s best fer everyone if ya take my name off the family register.”
Nodoka simply sat for a few minutes on the bed where she’d collapsed under the weight of her daughter’s tale. Eventually, she sighed and rubbed her face. “Show me, please,” she requested.
Ranma gazed at her for a long moment, then shrugged and closed her eyes. Within seconds, her wings and horns sprouted out, and Nodoka saw red fur run along the top of her shoulders. A red-furred tail flicked into view from behind Ranma’s back.
Nodoka rose stiffly and walked over, then around the succubus, staring at her wide-eyed. Circle complete, she returned to the bed and sat back down. Slowly minute after minute passed as she stared into empty space, until at length she nodded and focused again on the demon that used to be her daughter. “You’re right, Ranma,” she said softly even as tears started to run down her cheeks. “From now on, you are no longer a Saotome.”
Ranma nodded abruptly in return, face stiff, eyes watery. “I’m sorry, Mom — Nodoka. Not for what I decided, it was the only way ta from killin’ Shampoo, but for how it turned out.”
When Nodoka nodded without saying anything, she hesitated, started for the door, only to pause and turn around. “There is one more thing, though — now that that’s settled, would ya consider moving back in with us? Akane’s pregnant and could probably use some help soon.”
Nodoka stiffened, eyes wide. “Akane? Pregnant?! But she said she’s a lesbian!”
“She is,” Ranma replied with a shrug. “But after we learned that I might turn inta a demon she suggested we not wait — not exactly safe to count on some deposits sittin’ in a freezer for years ta honor the fathers’ pact. So we tried, and it worked. Good thing, too, considerin’ how it worked out.” She paused, but Nodoka simply sat and stared at her. After a while, she shrugged again. “Well, think about it at least,” she said, and walked out, closing the door behind her.
(Posted Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:09)
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