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"Autumn and Spring"
by Angus MacSpon

Based on "Ranma 1/2" created by Rumiko Takahashi.

C&C Welcome!

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- 9 -

The flitter's nav display showed him exactly where he was.  Ukyou's
house was in Qinghai, of course, in the Bayankalashanmai.  He had
guessed that much; but that covered a lot of territory.  He had assumed
that he was on the southern side of the range, somewhere near Yushu. But
it seemed he was considerably further north and east that he had
thought.

It hardly mattered, though.  [About twenty minute's flight from
Jyusenkyo,] he thought. [That's what counts.]

The flitter's nav computer did not have a reference for Jyusenkyo. Ranma
was not surprised.  He had it link to Ukyou's house computer and
download the reference.  As an afterthought he had it copy a reference
for Joketsuzoku as well.

[About thirty kilometres apart.  Quite a lot of ground to search.  If
I'm lucky Ukyou won't have found anything yet ...]

He knew she would have.  It was a trap.  Somehow, it was a trap.

He considered landing in Jyusenkyo to ask the Guide if he'd seen Ukyou,
but rejected the idea.  There was only one easy route from Jyusenkyo to
Joketsuzoku; he should be able to spot her flitter with one sweep.

Besides, he did not want to return to Jyusenkyo.  There was no cure
there for his curse.  He knew from experience.

He punched the new course into the automatic pilot, setting up a slow-
speed pass along the route.  The flitter banked, coming onto its new
heading; and for one, brief second he saw the ground, a hundred metres
below, dotted with pools of water.  His lips tightened and he looked
away.

It took half an hour to reach Joketsuzoku.  He spent the time glued to
the window, watching for a familiar, metallic shape.  He saw nothing.

He sat, frowning in thought, for some minutes.  [How did I miss her?
Could she have gone somewhere else?]  If she had, he stood no chance of
finding her at all.

[Wait a minute, though ... this is a police flitter ...]

He tapped at the computer panel, hoping that Seiji had had to 'borrow'
the flitter in a hurry.  Sure enough, the restricted functions had not
been locked off.  He breathed a sigh of relief, and started asking the
computer questions.

He had to link through Ukyou's house computer again to get enough
transmission range to query the vehicle registry centre in Xining, but
eventually he managed to pull up her flitter's transponder code.  He fed
that into the police flitter's traffic-control Detection & Tracking
system.  A bare instant later, a tracking map popped up on the screen.
The direction and range of Ukyou's flitter were clearly shown.

[What?  I flew right over it!  How did I miss it?]

He headed back toward Jyusenkyo, watching the tracking map as he flew.
He slowed as he approached the spot indicated, watching carefully out
the window.

Nothing.

After a minute or two he checked the screen.  He'd passed Ukyou's
flitter again.

[What, is she invisible or something?]

Then it hit him.  _Invisible._  The demon had made Shampoo invisible
before.  Could it do the same to Ukyou?  To an entire flitter?

He turned back once more and told his flitter to land right beside
Ukyou's.  [What I should have done in the first place,] he thought
sourly.  Two minutes later he was touching down.  In an apparently
unremarkable spot on a rough track.  With no other vehicle in sight.

                **********

He got out, looking around warily.  It was only mid-afternoon, but
the sun had moved behind the mountains; the track was in shadow, and
a cold wind was blowing.

He took a deep breath.  "Ucchan!" he shouted.

Silence.

Again: "Ucchan!"  But the wind was his only reply.

Impatiently, he turned back to his flitter.  There was nothing here.
The tracking system must have a fault.  That wasn't surprising; Seiji
probably got the flitter out of the repair pool at the police station.
He started the engine once more and started to punch in a course back to
Ukyou's house --

[Seiji wouldn't send me a faulty flitter.]

The thought bothered him for a moment; but then he shook his head and
dismissed it.  Seiji had probably been in a hurry and didn't realise
what he was doing.  He reached for the autopilot to start it and --

[He wouldn't.  He's careful.  Always.]

He hesitated, frowning.  What was the matter with him?  Going senile?
Hearing voices?  He ought to have his ears checked.  Maybe see a
psychiatrist.  Even have himself committed.  He reached out to program
in a course to the nearest hospital --

[No, dammit!  I'm not mad!  And there's nothing wrong with this flitter!]

His hand froze in mid-motion.  He stared at it, fascinated, terrified.
It was as if he had split in two: part of him, the rational part, could
see that there was nothing here, and was simply trying to leave; but
some other force, a wild, rogue part of him, was trying to make him
stay, make him waste time when Ukyou might be in trouble, and if he
could only move his arm he'd be able to get out of here and silence that
maddening voice for good --

And caught in between, some calm, detached fragment of him watched, and
wondered which of the two would win.  And at that moment one of the
forces seemed to give up, because his hand was snatched back.  But then,
as he watched, still transfixed, it started to move again, upward,
uptoward his face, and two of the fingers were stuck out, just the right
distance apart, and they were coming toward his eyes, and they

[no]

were coming closer, and he could feel them now, a faint pressure on his
eyelids, and something inside him was fighting but it wasn't strong
enough, and he

[No!]

could feel the pressure increasing now, the fingers digging deeper, and
it was starting to hurt but the pain was good, yes the pain was
excellent and in a moment everything would be wonderful and he'd never
have to worry about anything again

[NOOOOOOO!]

And he wrenched his head away, screaming, his eyes burning, and through
a mist of tears he saw it.  He saw it.  The flitter, Ukyou's flitter,
parked right next to his own.  And, just a few metres away, the cave
entrance.

A voice spoke in his head.

* COME IN. *

He climbed out of the police flitter, rubbing his eyes, weeping
helplessly at the pain.  He wanted to go to Ukyou's flitter and look
inside, but his legs did not seem to want to obey him.  He found himself
walking, willy-nilly, to the cave.  And inside.  And he saw his enemy at
last.

- End of Part 9 -

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Angus MacSpon                                                Allen Gainsford
http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon            http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon