[Episode 254391] [Episode 254391]“So you’re really leaving.”
Urd, unusually dressed for once in simple (if tight) jeans and a T-shirt, looked from where she and a similarly dressed Mara were packing the last of her potions supplies to find her apparently early-teenaged, raven-haired sister standing in the doorway. (Not being exhausted the previous day, the Norn of the Past’s childhood friend had already moved into their new home in a pocket dimension attached to both Asgard and Midgard. She had volunteered to help Urd pack, muttering something about avoiding babysitting duty as long as possible.)
“Yeah, duty calls,” Urd replied nonchalantly. “Looks like you’ll get the TV to yourself instead of always losing it to me.”
“As if,” Skuld retorted, smirking ... though her chin was trembling suspiciously.
Urd glanced over at the tanned, blonde demon, and decided she could trust Mara to handle the last few bottles without breaking them; she’d already taken care of the really important items herself, anyway. Walking past her sister, she ordered, “Come here, Squirt.” She suppressed a sigh when Skuld just followed along without yelling at her for the disparaging label — Skuld really was taking her leaving badly.
The platinum blonde goddess led her younger sister into her own room, then turned to face her. “Okay, Skuld, I know just what your second thought was when you heard I was leaving,” she said, and Skuld stiffened at her older sister’s serious tone. “With me out of the way, you’ll have a clear shot at breaking up Bell and Keiichi.” The young goddess scowled even as she blushed, but before she could say anything Urd overrode her. “It’s not happening. First, I’ve already had a talk with Keiichi and if anything will finally get that boy — that young man — to get off his butt and set a date it’s the possible end of the world.
“Second,” she continued over Skuld’s angry growl, “I’ve also had a talk with Peorth, and she’s promised to keep an eye on you. She may not be around as much as I was, but I suspect her response to any stunts you pull will be even more embarrassing than mine.”
“But that’s not fair!” Skuld burst out, pouting.
Urd laughed. “ ‘Fair’ has nothing to do with it, kiddo,” she retorted. “That pair belongs together for as long as Keiichi’s lifespan allows, and by now you’re the only one that doesn’t accept it.”
“Thank you for your concern, but I believe Keiichi and I can take care of our own relationship.”
The two goddesses whirled to find their smiling sister standing in the doorway, the gray-skinned, raven-haired form of little Raven in her arms. She continued, “Besides, I already spoke with him about it before you two got up this morning, and he said he’d find out what days next month would be best for his family and friends to attend our wedding.”
The other two Norns stared, gaping. Finally, Urd burst out, “Then why didn’t he say anything when I talked to him? !”
“Did you give him a chance? Or did you simply give him thinly veiled orders?” Belldandy shook her head disapprovingly when her older sister blushed, then started gently bouncing Raven when the baby started to fuss. “Come along, sisters, it’s time to go. Mara is finished packing, and we need to take the limiters off Raven as soon as possible.”
“Right,” Urd agreed. She glanced down to find her little sister trying to put on a nonchalant expression ... but the chin quiver was back. “Hey, kiddo, remember how I said breaking up Bell and Keiichi was the second thought you had?” When Skuld nodded suspiciously, she ruffled the young goddess’s hair. “I’m going to miss having you around, too.”
“Yeah, right, like I’m gonna ... gonna m-m-miss ...” The raven-haired child-goddess threw her arms around her eldest sister and buried her face against Urd’s T-shirt.
Urd sighed and circled her arms around her sister’s shoulder. Sorry, kid, but life is change, as much for us as for mortals. “Of course you won’t,” she murmured. The two stood there for several minutes before Urd reluctantly broke the embrace. “Come on, Sprout, we’re keeping Belldandy waiting.” Skuld’s older sisters carefully ignored as she scrubbed at wet cheeks and the two joined their sister, Urd glancing around pensively as Belldandy led them toward the gate.
Six years later:
Urd paused momentarily at the sound of someone clearing her throat, then resumed carefully pouring the last of the powdered asphrodel into the cauldron. She was at the final stage, and this rush order had jumped to the head of the list for her home business. She carefully stirred the mixture six times counterclockwise, then stepped back as a puff of smoke burst up to form a tiny mushroom-shaped cloud. Hastily grabbing up a pair of hot pads, she removed the cauldron from its burner and set it on a stand to cool, then finally turned to the door to find Mara leaning against the frame. The platinum blonde demon/goddess lifted one eyebrow. “You’re back early,” she said in the English they had decided would be their ‘home’ language. It was currently the unofficial world language of Earth, and Raven had been picking up Japanese a bit from the dreams reliving her earliest memories as Ranma.
Mara grimaced, unconsciously hugging herself. “That particular parliamentarian proved to be unusually corruptible. It didn’t take anything more than a little push.”
Urd kept her own expression of distaste off her face, as she thought of just what that ‘little push’ entailed — she knew which bed she was going to be spending the night in, that of her ‘friend with benefits’. At least Mother seems to be easing Mara out of the really ugly stuff, Urd thought. How did she put it? ‘A happy temptress is a productive temptress’, and Mara hasn’t been enjoying her work for a while, now. It still felt odd for the demon/goddess hybrid to acknowledge her relationship to Hild, but after one of ‘Grandma’s’ infrequent visits Raven had asked why Urd didn’t call her ‘Mom’. The little half-demon had been cutely serious when she had ordered her Mama Urd to start when she didn’t have a reason she was willing to share, though the little girl had been willing to settle for ‘Mother’ instead.
“Anyway,” Mara continued, straightening, “Raven’s meditation time with Lind is almost over, and I wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten that it’s your turn to take her to the park.”
“I only did that the once,” Urd groused as she put a lid on the cauldron.
Mara smirked. “Right, and at least three times that was because I reminded you.”
“Well, this isn’t one of them. See? Potion preparation complete, all that’s needed is for it to cool off and settle for the rest of the afternoon, and I still have ... five minutes.” She glanced over at the diamond-tattooed demon and suppressed a frown — Mara was still looking a little haunted, that assignment must have been worse than usual. But the last time she had mentioned anything about her friend’s work out loud, Mara had gotten all huffy.... “Would you care to join us?” she asked nonchalantly.
Mara brightened at the unexpected offer — the weekly park time, watching Raven play with the littlest gods and goddesses followed by eating out together, had come to be treasured by all three of her adopted mothers as alone time with their joint ward. “I suppose I can work it into my busy schedule,” she replied, shrugging. “Are you going to ask Lind as well?”
“No point, she has patrol duty as soon as she’s finished with Raven.” Mara’s question had not been a surprise, not anymore — though in the early days of clashing egos and worldviews in enforced company, the fact that the demon had turned out to be the compromiser that kept Lind and Urd balanced had been a surprise.
Urd set a countdown timer and ushered Mara out of her laboratory before turning to lock the heavily reinforced door. Having Raven’s out-of-control power knock in the previous more normal door — and devastate pretty much everything inside the room — once had been enough. “Let’s collect the limiters and Raven and be on our way.”
That evening:
Raven hugged her little stuffed angel Shadowlight, with one white wing and one black like Mama Urd’s angel (a gift from Auntie Bell and Uncle Keiichi). She smiled as Mama Mara turned out the light and closed the door behind her, leaving only a dim nightlight bobbing above the small demon/human hybrid’s bed. The day had been one of the bestest ever! Mama Lind had actually said she was getting pretty good at keeping herself calm and controlling her powers, and her best friend Glaedir had been at the park when she’d arrived with both Mama Urd and Mama Mara (she ignored how much she hated how the limiters made her feel sluggish and heavy, at least she got to play with other kids), and the dinner afterward had been her favorite meal at her favorite eatery.
And now she would get to go to sleep and dream about being the little boy that her mothers insisted was actually her. Not that she was sure she believed it, however much the dreams felt like memories — she was a girl after all, and Ranma seemed a little stupid and didn’t read books at all. Ranma couldn’t feel people the same way she could, either.
And the funny man that was the boy’s father would be in the dreams, too. Raven frowned — her mothers didn’t like that man at all, she could feel it whenever she mentioned him to them, but she thought he was funny anyway.
Yawning, she watched the bobbing and weaving nightlight as her eyelids grew heavy. As she drifted off to sleep, she wondered what weird game Genma would come up with tonight.
The first shriek yanked Urd out of a satiated doze and had her rolling out of Mara’s bed before she was really aware of what she’d heard. She was fully awake for the second shriek, though — Raven, heard through the spell that performed the same function as mortal baby monitors. Ignoring her robe, she rushed out the door and down the hall, an equally naked Mara right behind her even as a nightgowned Lind joined them from her own bedroom.
Urd threw open the door to their daughter’s bedroom and stepped into complete chaos. Raven was writhing on her bed, tangling herself up in her sheets while the room tore itself apart around — tiny chairs and table, toy chest, clothes drawer, all hammered apart and toys, clothes and pieces of the shattered furniture hurling around the room. Even the bed glowed with Raven’s signature black light as it lifted off the ground and began to shake, and their little girl was bleeding from where chunks of wood had hit her.
Even as Urd waved a hand to deflect several more chunks away from a still-shrieking Raven, Mara stepped around her and reached toward the girl only to be jerked to a halt by Lind grabbing her arm. She whirled on the Valkyrie to find her watching the toys and furniture shards whirling about the room.
“No, this has to be the Cat Fist training — memory, not dream,” Lind said as she knocked another piece of debris away from the bed. “If you wake her up early, she’ll be right back in that pit the next time she goes to sleep. Keep the bed stable, protect her from what she’s throwing around, keep her asleep, and wait it out.”
Mara froze for a split-second, then snarled in frustration as she turned back around to Raven. She placed her hands on the still-shaking bed now at waist level, and a glow spread from her palms to spread out and around the bed, chasing away the blackness. The bed slowing sank, the shaking easing off. Once it was back on the floor she sat down on it and gently pulled the rhythmically shrieking child into her lap, pinning her arms to her side. Urd and Lind stepped over beside them, one on each side facing outward as Lind’s two one-winged angels, Spear Mint and Cool Mint, and Urd’s black- and-white-winged World of Elegance manifested, the angels’ faces grim as they also began to fend off debris.
“That monster threw Ranma into the pit eight times, right?” Lind asked as she grabbed Shadowlight out of the air and tucked the stuffed angel down the front of her nightgown before knocking away a piece of dresser.
“Right,” Urd replied, voice shaking.
Long hours later, the breathy hiss that was all that was left of Raven’s screaming eased away and Urd and Lind slumped in relief as the shattered and torn furniture, toys and clothes settled to the floor for the last time. If they had been human, they would have been literally soaked in sweat. As it was, Urd felt the thirst for sake — lots of sake — like a near-overwhelming need burning at her core. And it was going to be long hours before she got enough to matter.
She and Lind turned to face the bed, to find an equally weary Mara still holding their little girl. Raven had relaxed from her taut-muscled writhing and was now shifting and making a sound that would probably be catlike if her throat hadn’t been long stripped raw. The two goddesses sat on the bed, each taking one of Raven’s hands as their angels leaned over the dusky child and began singing a soft, wordless lullaby. Raven finally went limp.
Urd whispered, “Keep her asleep a little longer. I’ll be right back.” She withdrew a reluctant World of Elegance back into her core, and rose to hurry from the room as fast as her exhaustion allowed.
A few minutes later she was back, now wearing her robe, with Mara’s robe over one shoulder and a bottle and a cup in her hands.
Glancing around the trashed room, she opened the bottle and poured half a glass of a purplish, smoky liquid before setting the bottle on the floor. “Here,” she said, sitting on the bed and handing the cup to Mara as World of Elegance again sprang out from her back and rejoined the other angels’ lullaby. “Wake up Raven and get her to drink this. Lind, grab a shoulder.”
“What is it?” Mara asked, holding the cup gingerly — not that she thought Urd would give their child anything harmful, but she’d been on the receiving end of a number of Urd’s potions over the years, with not always predictable results.
“Muscle relaxant and a painkiller, a powerful one,” Urd replied. “After all that, every muscle Raven has is going to hurt, and I don’t want to think what her throat is going to feel like. By the time this wears off, we’ll have had time to get her to a healer.”
Mara jerked a nod, and as Lind and Urd gripped Raven’s shoulders and upper arms, the diamond-tattooed demon sent a tiny pulse of power washing through the girl. The angels shifted their song to one of comfort, helpless concern on their faces.
Raven jerked as her eyes flew open, every muscle tightened, and her mouth fell open in an almost silent shriek.
“Easy Kitling, we have you,” Lind assured her as she and Urd tightened their grip on the writhing girl.
“Hurts!” Raven hissed.
“We know,” Mara said as she held the cup to Raven’s lips. “Here, drink this, it’ll make the pain go away.”
Raven eagerly gulped down the cup’s contents, and within minutes went limp as her eyes sagged mostly closed.
Her three mothers sighed in relief. Urd used the hem of her robe to wipe away the spillage from each corner of Raven’s mouth as she clasped one open hand. Lind pulled Shadowlight out from between her breasts and tucked it under Raven’s other arm then stroked her raven-dark hair with a hand that shook slightly.
“All right, plans for the rest of the day,” Urd finally said. “Neither of you are going to work, I already called those that need to know. Belldandy will be here as soon Peorth gets to the temple to babysit, and while she takes Raven to Brynhildr to check for any problems beyond sore muscles, some scrapes and a stripped throat, we are going to get some rest. Once Belldandy brings Raven home and my potion wears off, we’ll spend the rest of the day — and however many more days it takes — with Raven until she’s recovered.” The chime signaling an arrival at the front gate sounded. “That would be Belldandy.” Urd reached up to pull Mara’s robe off her shoulder and held it out to her occasional lover. “Here, give Raven to Lind and put on your robe.”
half an hour later:
Hild sighed with relief when a stud on her desk started flashing, indicating her latest secretary wanted to talk to her (needed to talk to her, rather — none of them ever wanted to talk to her, even when they started to guess the truth just before she reassigned them). While the penalties for mistreatment of damned souls beyond their allotted sentence were severe, demons were mostly a rather sadistic lot. And while there was some (fading) entertainment value in catching them in their conspiracies to both hide their excesses and to replace her, the hunt for those inevitable conspiracies was unremitting; she could use a break. Besides, thinking about Urd’s call that morning reporting that Mara wouldn’t be reporting for her latest assignment was making concentration difficult.
She assumed her usual slightly disturbing cheerful smile and pressed the ‘accept’ button. A view window opened in the air over her desk in front of the ones she’d been using to review the various department performance figures, showing the face of her current secretary (this one male, and didn’t she have fun flirting with them — it added a whole new level of torment to their punishment). “Yes?” she asked, in her perky voice with an undertone that promised pain if the interruption wasn’t important.
“Hild-sama, Urd is here,” he said quickly. “She says it has to do with your granddaughter.”
Hild had no problem controlling her expression, she’d already been prepared by Mara’s emergency rescheduling. “Send her in, send her in! I always have time for family,” she bubbled. Maybe she would be lucky and the next time Urd dropped by he would send her daughter straight through. Though that wasn’t likely — whatever issues sent souls to Niflheim, incompetence wasn’t one of them, not for those she picked as her secretaries. It was supposed to be their Hell, not hers.
The door to her mother’s office swung open, and Urd strode through. The young-seeming perky, tanned platinum blonde glanced over as the door closed behind her, her eyes widening slightly. “You look like hell,” she said.
“Ha ha.” Urd dropped into one of the seats in front of the desk.
“The Cat Fist?”
“Yes.”
Hild waited for a moment, then sighed. “Raven?” she asked in a weary tone.
Urd blushed. She knew Hild acted differently when she visited, the Daimakaicho actually seemed to care for her adopted daughter, but ... “I don’t know. She’s drugged for pain and Belldandy’s taken her to a healer while Lind and Mara rest. Physically, she should be fine, sore muscles and a stripped throat, a few scrapes, but nothing that can’t be healed easily enough. Mentally ... don’t expect Mara to be showing up for work for a few weeks, our daughter needs her.”
“Not a problem,” Hild said airily. “Certainly Raven is more important than the scutwork she’s been doing.”
Silence fell again, Hild contemplating her daughter as Urd looked down at her hands. Finally, Hild asked, “Urd, why are you here?” When her daughter looked up, she continued, “You could have told me the little you have with a simple call, you look like you should be resting with Lind and Mara, and you hate my little visits. So why did you come to tell me in person?”
Voice almost a whisper, Urd asked, “Do you still have the ones that were on Raven’s little list?”
Hild’s eyes widened, then she leaned back in her seat and contemplated the bronzed platinum blonde with a sardonic smile. “Ah. So that’s what this is all about. Xian Pu and Mu Tse have received their punishments and accepted their lessons and moved on, though that cute little piglet’s still around somewhere. He still gets lost, but his wanderings are restricted to Niflheim now, with its wide variety of punishments — the added random element is a nice touch. But they aren’t the ones you are really interested in, are they?”
Urd shook her head, still looking down at her hands.
Hild chuckled. “So ... yes, Genma is still here. In fact, it seems he’s going to be here for a long time; he simply will not accept responsibility for what he did to his son.”
“Good,” Urd ground out. Hild waited again, until finally Urd asked, “What did you do to him?”
Hild’s grin was much harsher than her usual cheerful smile. “I hung him up on a wall and made him available to anyone that wanted to ... make use of him.”
“ ‘Make use of him’? How?”
Hild shrugged. “Punching bag, sex toy, hare for their hounds, appetizer, whatever. He was quite popular in the beginning, but he’s been spending most of his time hanging in his niche lately.” She paused a long moment, then asked, “Would you like to see him?”
After a moment, Urd straightened in her seat and took a deep breath. “Yes. Yes, I would.”
“You had but to ask.” Straightening in her own seat, Hild brought up her virtual keyboard and her fingers flew across its surface for a few moments. Her light smile turned impish. “It looks like you’re in for a treat, Guzroth has decided his pets haven’t been getting enough action lately. How appropriate, considering what Raven just went through. Guzroth is my Master of Hounds,” she added, swiveling her seat to the side to look up toward a wall.
Her daughter swiveled her own seat to follow her mother’s gaze, and her eyes widened as a large virtual screen sprang into existence to show the stocky, muscular form that Genma had had when his ‘daughter’ had beheaded him with his own Family blade. He was running through a dank, dark, mist-shrouded forest — the trees deciduous, but ... ragged-looking, dark green leaves dripping with condensation. Tendrils of mist twisted through the vegetation, and all around were loud, eager howls of pursuing canines. Urd smiled — Genma’s desperation was almost tangible.
Then from between two trees a dark form flowed out in front of him, a waist-high wolf-shape so black it seemed to be a hole in the world that swallowed what light there was, except for two eyes that glowed a fiery red. The former martial artist leaped over the sudden obstruction, tucked into a roll, killed his forward momentum and kicked up to catch the hell hound he’d just avoided as its leap carried it over him. It slammed up and sideways into a tree trunk with an impact that shook down leaves. Leaping to his feet, Genma spun to kick away a second hound that bounded out of the mist, caught a third by the throat to smash it to the ground — and the fourth slammed into his side, knocking him off his feet. A moment later, he was buried under more hell hounds coming from all sides. For a moment his screams could be heard ripping out from the pile, and then that pile came apart — each hound tearing free its own piece of its prey to carry away with it.
As the screen blanked Hild glanced sideways out of the corner of her eye at her daughter just in time to catch sight of a grin before Urd’s face shifted into a more neutral expression. The demon/goddess swiveled back around to face her mother and asked, “What happens to him now?”
Hild shrugged. “He can’t die ... again ... so eventually he’ll reconstitute back in his niche until someone else wants to play — and he’ll continue to feel what happened to him until he reforms.” She paused for a moment — her daughter was enjoying the news a little too much. Don’t let it go to your head, Little One, a steady diet isn’t good for you at all. “You’d better get home and get some rest, Raven’s going to need you when your sister brings her home.”
Urd shook herself free from her happy thoughts and nodded. “You’re right.” She rose to her feet and strode toward the door, then paused. Without turning around, she said, “You know, it isn’t going to be all that many years before Raven remembers the Wall — and that you left her to hang there for a year before taking her down and offering her a job.”
“I know.” Hild’s voice was flat, her usual air of insouciance absent.
“Come visit this afternoon. Raven needs all her favorite people around her right now.”
“I will.”
Urd silently nodded, then strode through the door and was gone.
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(Posted Wed, 25 Apr 2012 06:04)
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