Ranma slashed through the rainy night, wings tucked in close for speed, quickly leaving the low, translucent houses of Nerima behind along with the faintly glowing naked people that occupied them. That bitch! How dare she offer ... offer ... and try ta get me ta be her enforcer! I’d be no better than those thugs that were always with the guys that would try ta get Pop ta work for ‘em. Ranma reluctantly chuckled as she remembered one time several years before when a crime boss had tried kidnapping him for leverage against his father. That day had been one of the more fun ones of her life, as he’d led hopelessly outclassed thugs and punks on an impromptu game of hide, seek and ambush. Though Genma had decided to move on rather abruptly after he’d learned about it.
Whoa! Ranma’s wings snapped open as she hastily rolled to avoid the skyscraper that suddenly loomed up in front of her. Even as the building flashed past her, Ranma was shaking her head. Idiot! You’re a succubus — you’d have gone right through. Solid isn’t solid to ya anymore, remember? Though that one wasn’t as see-through as the buildings in Nerima, must be the concrete an’ steel.
Threading her way among the other tall translucent buildings abruptly surrounding her (a quick experiment showed they were no more solid to her than dead wood and plaster board, but it still didn’t feel right to just blow through them), Ranma steered wide of the occasional glowing wards indicating someone that knew something of magic — none of them felt ... uninviting, but the last thing she wanted right now was to deal with people that might be able to see her nude body, however cute Nabiki might tell her she looked. Especially considering how cute Nabiki told her she looked. Especially since the people she could see told her that at least some of the buildings, almost all the ones that were occupied, were apartments.
With the need to do something besides fly in a straight line combined with the shock of her near non-collision having interrupt her seething inward rant, Ranma found her anger fading — Mara was a demon, after all, Ranma was supposed to be upset that she acted like one? And with her anger fading, the melancholy from earlier came rushing back. With a sigh, she found an empty apartment far from any of the wards. It was several stories up with a small tree on the balcony and a wonderful view of the city. Pulling in her wings, Ranma settled down on the branches to contemplate her bleak future.
“Wow, now that was a ride!”
Ranma was out of the tree and five feet away floating over the drop to the street, facing the apartment and in a defensive stance that would have been effective, if she’d been on the ground multiple stories below, if she’d actually been able to touch the ground, or had any weight when she did.
Sitting on a branch of the tree was the nature spirit that had interrupted Mara’s attempt to recruit her, a broad smile across her face. The tiny nude blonde slipped off the branch, holding on with one hand, and flipped back up and around so that she was dangling below the branch with her legs across the top, again facing Ranma with the smile still firmly in place. “You can really pile on the speed when you want,” she enthused. “And the way you flipped around when you almost hit the building, wheeeeeee! Good thing you did, too — you might have gone right through, I wouldn’t have. Perhaps hitching a ride wasn’t the smartest thing, after all,” she finished, her smile slipping into a thoughtful look.
“You ... you said Mom and Nabs sent ya,” Ranma managed to get out. Noticing her stance, and how much it revealed, she blushed and nonchalantly shifted to one she thought would work with her succubus body. “Who are you?”
“Oh, I didn’t introduce myself, bad girl! I’m Cherry Blossom. Want to be friends?” Dropping free of the branch without waiting for an answer, the sprite flew over to circle around Ranma, then settled on her shoulder. “You know, any empath worthy of the name that met you just now would have doubts about your nature spiritness — at least, any that knew nature spirits. I’ve never known one to be as depressed as you were, or depressed at all — humans, gods, demons, sure, but not nature spirits. So tell Auntie Cherry all about it, maybe she can help!”
Even through the grey despond settling on her yet again now that she was over her shock, Ranma couldn’t help chuckling at the sheer bubbly cheerfulness Cherry Blossom brought to everything she said. Drifting back over to the tree she had just vacated, the succubus once again settled on her earlier branch and looked out across the lights of the nighttime city. Why not? She was a friend of her mother and lover so she probably knew a lot of it already, it couldn’t hurt. “Well, I guess it started when my idiot of a father decided to take a training trip through China with a guidebook over a century old....”
Jalok desperately scanned the wet steel and concrete jungle that surrounded it as it slowly flew down the street through the steady rain several stories about the ground. Not a hint, not a sign. When the imp had flown off after the angry succubus that had blown off Mara, Jalok had quickly found that it wasn’t as fast as Ranma at full speed. Still, it had been pretty close and had been losing ground slowly while keeping her in sight — until she reached the taller buildings of downtown Tokyo. It had lost sight of her immediately, and almost worse the way that it had to slow down to search meant its pursuers —
Sensing the next attack run coming in, Jalok desperately spread its wings, braking hard, and a sprite flashed across in front of it, slightly below where it would have been. Then Jalok was desperately rolling to the side and dropping and a split second later the second one streaked through where it had stopped, missing it by a hair. That was close! Jalok thought even as it plastered itself against the side of a skyscraper, eyes trying to follow two circling sprites at once. He wasn’t trying to hit me so it probably wouldn’t have been a violation of the treaty if he had, but still ...
Keeping against the wall, Jalok resumed its flight along the block, eyes scanning the buildings on the opposite side of the street while simultaneously keeping an eye on the two sprites keeping pace with it.
“... and so that’s it — no kids, no future, just a parasite suckin’ off a’ people,” Ranma finished up.
Cherry Blossom, once again hovering in front of Ranma on the tree branch, shook her head, actually somewhat sober. “No kids, no future, a parasite? Wow, being ‘manly’ must be really important to you, if you can just ignore everything the Voice is telling you,” the sprite mused, one hand’s fingers tapping her lower lip.
“What voice?” Ranma asked.
Cherry Blossom froze, dropping when her wings stopped buzzing. Recovering within a few feet, she swooped back up to hover within a few inches of the succubus’s face. “You can’t hear the Voice?” she asked, suddenly dead serious.
Ranma shook her head.
“But that doesn’t make sense!” the sprite objected. “Every nature spirit hears the Voice, it’s the first thing we’re aware of when ... when we’re born. But you weren’t born as a nature spirit, were you?’
Ranma shook her head again.
“Wow .... oh, wow. No wonder ...” Cherry Blossom flew over and once again settled on Ranma’s shoulder, sliding an arm under the succubus’s loose hair. “All this time you’ve been dealing with a succubus’s needs and instincts and the wrong body, and you don’t even know what it’s all about ... no wonder you’re depressed, I’m surprised you’re still sane!” She leaned her head against Ranma’s ear, rubbing her hand up and down along her neck.
After a few minutes, the sprite bounced off the shoulder, flipping around to hover in front of Ranma’s face and trying to stretch the redhead’s mouth into a smile. “Well, it’s an easy enough problem to fix,” she cheerily asserted, “we just need to get you in contact with your outer self!”
“Okay, how? What’s the Voice?” Ranma asked.
“The Voice is ... well, it’s ... it’s ...” Cherry Blossom shrugged. “I really don’t know how to explain it — it’s everything. It’ll be easier to get you to hear it than for me to explain it. You’re a martial artist, aren’t you? Don’t martial artists go in for all that meditation stuff?”
“Well ... some, yeah, but Pop never ... well, why not?” Pulling her feet up into something resembling the lotus position and keeping just enough of a grip on the branch to hold herself in place, Ranma closed her eyes and tried to follow the instructions from the last sensei that had taught meditation techniques. At first, her worries consumed her, images of the dark future she had imagined playing across her mind’s eye. But the hope Cherry Blossom had offered gave the succubus strength, and eventually she managed to set them aside, to seek out the peace of no-thought. Slowly, the noises of the nighttime city faded and time seemed to fade with it.
“RANMA!”
The redhead jerked, losing her hold on the branch and drifting away. She shook her head a little. How could such a tiny ... person shout so loud? Sure, her mouth must have practically been in the redhead’s ear, but still — “What?!” Ranma asked, exasperated, turning to find the little nuisance recovering from where the succubus’s jerk had thrown her. “I was doin’ what ya suggested —”
“Yes, and quite nicely, too, Nabiki’s got you well trained,” Cherry Blossom replied with a saucy wink, then giggled when Ranma blushed. “But it wasn’t working.” Hastily, she asked, “Just what were you doing? Something was happening, I had to almost shout out a lung to get you to wake up!”
“The usual stuff,” Ranma replied, “not thinkin’ of anything, losing personal awareness, shutting out outside distractions —”
“That’s it!” the sprite enthused. “You were shutting out any chance of hearing the Voice — it isn’t inside you, it’s all around you! So what you need to do is lose that personal awareness, not think of anything, but embrace the outside world, not shut it out!”
Ranma moved back yet again to “sit” on “her” branch, and looked uncertainly at her self-appointed friend. “Okay ...” she said slowly. Once again pulling her feet up into a semi-lotus, she closed her eyes.
“Wait!” Cherry Blossom shouted.
A now increasingly frustrated Ranma opened her eyes and glared at her diminutive companion. “What?!” she half-snarled.
“Ranma, I really think you need to do this, but be careful,” an abruptly serious Cherry Blossom replied. “The Voice is really ... seductive. Remember how I said it’s the first thing every nature spirit is aware of?” Ranma nodded. “Well, a lot of newborn nature spirits get swept away and never break loose.”
“Uh ... what happens to those that can’t break loose?” Ranma asked hesitantly.
“They starve to death if something doesn’t eat them or a dark Initiate doesn’t grab them for potion components,” Cherry Blossom said, her suddenly grim face somehow out of place on a nude little package that Ranma was suddenly aware was very cute even as it shone with life. “Oooh, your aura just got some pink,” the sprite added with a giggle, then struck a very sensual pose, spoiled only slightly by the way she bobbled while hovering in place. “And now it’s red, how nice, you like me! Too bad you’re so big, and Nabiki would probably object. Ah, well ... now onward!”
Shaking her head in bemusement, Ranma closed her eyes. Okay, how do I do this? Gotta let go but stay aware ... Again, she released her worries — the original fears more easily this time, the newly acquired fears with more difficulty — and sought no-thought. But this time, instead of seeking to block out awareness of the outside world, she embraced it, melded with it, let each individual noise, moist scent and sensation mix together, until they merged into an indistinguishable chorus.
Suddenly, the chorus swelled, bursting, ballooning into incomprehensible complexity, and Ranma felt her awareness explode outward to become a part of all around her — the weeds springing up through cracked concrete reaching for the sun as they sank their roots into the earth, competing with the other plants for light, water and nutrients; the insects, arachnids, lizards, birds in a dance of predator and prey as they instinctively fought for life and continuance; the smaller mammals, rats, cats, dogs, pampered pets in warmth and comfort or ragged survivors of the streets finding shelter where they could; the larger animals in sea and on land, loving, hating, being born, competing, birthing, dying.
And the people, everywhere — angry, happy, sad, content, blissful, courageous, fearful, lustful, those drifting from day to day and those dream-driven, striving ever for more, driving up and out.
And through them all, the nature spirits moved, nurturing the growing things and nurtured in turn, delighting in the energy-filled life all around them and driving it on to greater heights even as they competed with each other for place and strength.
Even among the humans the spirits of life flourished, feeding on the power of intelligence-back dreams and passions and pushing them on in turn, thrusting humanity ever higher until even the stars were not too high a mark to reach for as the mingled chorus of all that lived drove them on and up, up and outward ...
... and Ranma slammed back into a body that suddenly felt much too limited, too constricting, too ... small. She opened her eyes to find herself with arms and legs wrapped around the branch she had been sitting on, desperately drawing in shuddering breaths she didn’t need. Slowly, she forced herself to relax and sat up. “Wow!” she gasped, “that was ... was ...”
“Indescribable?” the cute blonde sprite suddenly hovering in front of her again asked. For just a moment Ranma thought she caught a hint of relief before Cherry Blossom’s face lit up with its usual saucy cheerfulness.
“Yeah ... I mean, the whole world ...” Ranma fumbled for words, and the sprite’s face softened.
“Yes, I know ... I know,” she murmured. “And you can still hear it, can’t you? Like a constant echo in the back of your mind, a chorus that never ends and never repeats, and that will never leave you.” At Ranma’s slow nod, Cherry Blossom perked up. “Good, welcome to the World! And in all that, did you learn what you are, why you are?”
“No, I did —” The succubus broke off, gaping, as she realized she lied. Somehow, in the midst everything she had picked out her own kind, followed them, the tens of thousands born yearly only to flicker out like wind-blown candles, the very few that survived to flit about among the sea of people in Europe and wherever that continent’s children had settled, haunting dreams and making them wonderful, pushing people together, giving them courage to seek the companionship they thirsted after, holding them in ties of passion through good times and bad, occasionally through their borrowed seed infused with their nature giving humanity men and women of power and sometimes wisdom to provide leadership and guidance.
“Yes, I see you did, good,” Cherry Blossom murmured. “Whatever happens, that’ll never leave you. So, now that that’s settled ...” The sprite flew over to hover by the ear she’d blasted with a shout earlier. “Nabiki,” she whispered. “She’s back at home, and scared for you. Don’t you think it’s time you did something about that?”
“Nabiki! Oh damn, I didn’t even think ... the way I just blew out of there, I gotta get back! Um ...” Ranma looked around at the semi-translucent buildings surrounding them. “Where am I, exactly?”
Cherry Blossom giggled again. “Come on, I’ll take you home.” And with that, she buzzed up and away into the soft rain, with Ranma quickly following her unique life spark into the night.
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(Posted Fri, 03 Sep 2010 22:15)
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