Nabiki stared up at the beautiful naked body that had become so familiar over the last weeks, illuminated in the dimming light of dusk, as an oblivious Ranma continued to spin and tumble in the air over the koi pond, surrounded by a loose cloud of sprites spinning in orbit around her. As she watched, the middle Tendo could feel herself relaxing under the soothing wave of serene, happy peace radiating from her lover and, to a lesser extent, her diminutive dance partners. Glancing over at the slim, brown-haired sprite hovering in the air by her shoulder, she asked, “You’re sure there’s no danger?”
“No, no danger,” Peach Fuzz assured her, smiling up at the scene. “So long as we are with her, she won’t get lost in the Voice — we’ll make sure she finds her way back.”
Nabiki frowned slightly. “But the ... the vision Ranma had, when she first discovered the Voice ... some newborn succubae get lost,” she said questioningly.
“True, but Nabs, they’re born alone — nobody around to help them. Even just one may not be enough. But this? No worries at all.”
Nabiki shot the sprite a stern look. “Nabiki-kun, not ‘Nabs’,” she said firmly.
“Why? Ranma calls you that.”
“Yes, he does, but he’s permitted. He’s ... special,” Nabiki replied, her gaze softening as it returned to the busty redhead.
Peach Fuzz followed her gaze, and the two simply watched together for a few minutes. Finally, the sprite murmured, “You know, I think I envy you this.”
“ ‘Envy me’ what?”
“Envy you your love for each other,” Peach Fuzz replied. “We sprites form close friendships, have ... what was that phrase I heard recently? ... ‘friends with benefits’, from what I’ve seen I think the sex is as good for us as it is for you, but no sprite has ever fallen in love. We don’t really need it, of course, if we did we’d have it. But sometimes I wonder.”
Unsure what to say, Nabiki was silent for a minute. Still watching her fiancé, she finally murmured, “As a little girl, what I wanted for my birthday more than anything was a pair of wings — hawk wings, not the flimsy bug-type pair you have,” she added, flashing a grin at the sprite. “I would dream about being a bird, soaring over the city, dancing on the wind....” Her voice trailed off, and Peach Fuzz chuckled.
“I guess it’s what we don’t have that we want.” Abruptly perking up, the sprite whipped around to hover in front of Nabiki, a happy smile spread across her tiny face. “Enough of this maudlinity! Now, you just go ahead and do what you need to, we’ll keep an eye on your lover girl.” And with that, she spiraled up to join the others around Ranma, trilling laughter as she went.
Nabiki watched Peach Fuzz join the festivities, a thoughtful frown on her face — the sprite had been a bit too serious and, well ... deep for what were supposed to be flighty, live-for-the-day types. Finally, she shrugged. Think about it later, you have more important things to worry about right now, she told herself, and turned to head toward the house. It was getting too late to start strengthening her wards and protections yet again, that would have to wait until tomorrow after school, but she could begin researching ways to protect her fiancé from summoning. Both of the two alternatives she knew of at the moment, the link for a familiar and a binding for a particular purpose, had serious problems — at least when one considered their target (not to say victim) as a person rather than a tool. (She did her best to suppress thoughts of Mara’s offer, as it once again played back in the back of her mind.)
She stepped through the panels that opened on the corridor, scowled as she glanced into the family room at the two fathers playing yet another game of shogi, then shrugged wryly and went in search of her sisters, especially Kasumi. People are what they are, and the sisters needed to discuss plans and schedules for the rest of the week. They were probably going to have to put off their first attempt to break the curse on her older sister and wanna-be lover, Nabiki reluctantly decided. She would have to stop by on the way to school and give the good doctor the bad news.
Nodoka gripped the hilt of her katana tightly as she stepped through the door into the bedroom of the newlyweds whose plight had been passed on to her. The couple had been almost pathetically happy to see her — they had already signed all the paperwork for buying the apartment and didn’t think ‘we’re afraid of the ghosts’ would be an acceptable reason for voiding the contract — and were waiting down the short hall in the main room, ready to run at a moment’s notice.
For a moment the Scout couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the light from the streetlights outside the window, then a barely visible, translucent young woman holding an infant in her lap slowly appeared. The two were by the window, apparently sitting on empty air, the woman gazing fondly down at the smiling girl she was bouncing her on her knee. The woman looked up, a smile of welcome on her face that suddenly transformed into an expression of sheer horror. She shot to her feet, baby in her arms and mouth opening in a silent scream, only to have her head rock back and bounce off the wall. She crumpled, child falling with her, but the two vanished from sight before they could hit the floor. For a few minutes the room was empty, then the woman and little girl reappeared, again sitting on empty air.
Nodoka sighed with relief, releasing the grip on her katana, and stepped out of the bedroom. Closing the door behind her, she walked down the short hall to the front room to join the waiting couple.
The two young people sitting on a couch (not all that much older than Ranma and Nabiki, she thought wistfully) rose to their feet at her approach, Eriko clutching her husband Keiji’s arm. “Well? What do you think?” he asked eagerly.
“You can relax, Sasaki-san,” Nodoka reassured him, “you aren’t being haunted by an actual ghost. Instead, what you have is an echo.”
“Would you like that drink now?” Eriko asked, releasing her husband and turning toward the open kitchen area. “And what do you mean, ‘an echo’?”
“Yes, thank you, I will have that drink,” Nodoka agreed.
A few minutes later, the couple back on the couch and Nodoka in a chair, all with drinks in hand, she continued, “Sometimes an event will be powerful enough that the people involved will actually leave an imprint of what happened ... a ‘recording’, you could say ... that constantly repeats the event over and over when in the presence of the living. Usually it is much too faint for most people to see, but occasionally, during the right time of year — often the anniversary of the event, but sometimes other times — it’ll strengthen enough to become visible to everyone. On rare occasions, even sounds can be heard. Echoes can be frightening, but they aren’t dangerous unless you have a weak heart.
“Now for what that means for you, in a day or so the echo should again weaken to the point that you can’t see it. You could simply spend a few nights at a love hotel, and everything will be fine when you come back — until the next time that it strengthens. And no, I can’t say when that will be. I can give you some likely dates, but some times will be unique to the people that made the echo. Or, for a small fee you can arrange for a priest to come and bless the room. If he is a true priest, the power of that blessing should wash away the imprint left behind.
“And now,” she continued, rising to her feet, “it is late, and I have an early morning to look forward to.”
The relieved newlyweds hastily rose to their feet, expressing their heartfelt thanks for the older woman’s help and promising to make a sizeable donation to the nearest shrine at the earliest opportunity. A few minutes later, Nodoka was smiling happily at the night around a yawn as she walked towards the train station. It was always a joy to be able to help the young ones, and this had been an easy one. Then her smile disappeared as she thought of the echo she had seen. One thing she hadn’t mentioned to the couple and doubted they’d realized, seeing how from what they’d said neither had stayed in the room long enough to see the full cycle, was that echoes most often involved violent deaths — and that looked to be the case this time. She was going to need to do some research about that apartment, find out who the woman and child had been and what had happened to them.
Gosunkugi tried not to move his torso as he closed the heavy tome on his bedroom desk, but despite his best efforts a stab of pain from his cracked ribs shot through him, and he drew a shuddering breath as he reminded himself that he had been very, very lucky. For some unknown reason, perhaps out of instinct because he was a human that turned into a succubus, Ranma had stayed within the confines of the shed as she maneuvered for the strikes against him — if she had treated the wall and roof as ghosts instead of obstacles and gone for more distance, the doctor would have probably been extracting broken ribs from the young Initiate’s lungs. If you lived long enough to make it to the hospital, that is, he thought grimly. Fortunately, his father had apparently bought his story about a pack of bullies and had agreed to leave retribution in his son’s hands as practice in what he’d officially learned so far of the Art. And yes, there was going to be retribution, indeed!
And you’re thinking about this to avoid your other problem, aren’t you? The pasty-faced underclassman glanced again at the book on summoning his father didn’t know he’d ‘borrowed’ from the family library, and fought to keep from shuddering. He could not believe how badly he had misunderstood what he had read — how his belief in the superiority of his blood had blinded him to what that superiority meant. He had completely missed the fact that the quality of his descent was in the gifts and opportunities it gave him, and come to believe that it was a power in itself. Now, his idiocy had resulted in debts owed to the demons he had summoned that would sooner or later come due — though the fact that he’d only dealt with imps for spying and petty harassment should keep the damage from being too bad, and his young age meant he should have a few years before anything was called due.
Which meant that, for now at least, he could he could concentrate on Nabiki ... and Ranma.
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(Posted Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:31)
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