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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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Revision Introduction:
Minor revisions throughout (mostly to make Cologne nastier).  Also,
since this is the "Cologne-explains-everything" chapter, I've inserted
a passage to cover the question that EVERYBODY asked -- namely, "What
about Herb?"

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- 10 -

"It's been a long time, son-in-law," said Cologne.

She looked just the same as when Ranma had seen her last: a tiny,
wizened figure in a green robe, holding a long wooden staff.  Almost
comforting in her familiarity.  Except --

There was something else there, just below the surface.  Something that,
sixty-five years ago, had hidden beneath a mask of humanity; but which
now needed to hide no longer.  Something inhuman, staring out at him
from those ancient eyes.  Something hungry.

"Don't give me that," Ranma spat.  "I know what you are!"

"Do you indeed?" she said, unperturbed.  But there was a glint in her
eye, a flash of mockery.  Glee.

"Now what might you be here for?" she mused.  "To fight me?  But if I am
what you think I am, then what makes you think you can possibly win?  On
the other hand, if I am simply what I appear to be, then why are you
here at all?"

"Are you sure I can't win?" he snarled.  "I beat you once before."

"Beat me?"  She cackled.  It sounded like a buzz-saw.  "Well, perhaps.
But there are no cats here to trigger your neko-ken.  How do you propose
to do it again?"

"Any way I have to," he retorted.  "What have you done with Ukyou?"

"Oh, your chef sweetheart.  She's here, of course.  Odd that she looks
so young ... but let that pass."  She smiled.  Long ago, Ranma had
thought that smile the most horrible thing he'd ever seen.  It was no
prettier now.

And he thought to himself: [She doesn't know!  She doesn't know why
Ukyou is young!]

And, a moment later: [Did she have so many teeth, back then?]

"Oh, son-in-law, what a gift you sent me!" Cologne went on.  "She was
even easier than Shampoo was ... and her taste is so sweet!"

[_Taste_?]  Ranma stared at her in horror.  "You ... you haven't --"

Again he had to listen to her high-pitched laugh.  "Come with me," she
invited him at last.  "See for yourself."

His legs started to move again without his volition.  He tried to fight
the will that bound him, but could find nothing to set himself against.
His legs were simply moving, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He marched deeper into the cave.  Cologne hopped along beside him on her
ever-present staff.

"Why are you bothering with this charade?" he demanded.  "Why not show
me your real self?"

"Don't worry," she said.  She licked her lips.  "You'll see me soon
enough ..."  But the hungry look faded a little.  "For now, I have
little choice.  This body was Shampoo's creation, and I am bound to it.
Not that I mind!  After all, it's quite a formidable shape ... as
perhaps you've noticed before."

He bristled, longing to strike at her now, while she was talking.  But
the force that held him would not let him deviate from his path.  He
wondered for a moment how far they had come.  How deep the cave could
be.  If it was a natural cave at all.  Or had it been shaped, centuries
before, by something ... less natural than water?

"Shampoo's creation?" he prompted her.  [Encourage her to keep talking!]

She shot him a glance.  "Patience, son-in-law.  I'll explain everything.
As you'll see, talking serves me better than it does you ...

"Shampoo?  Ah, yes.  Now, she was a catch!  The first one in centuries
to radiate strongly enough to wake me.  She came stumbling down the
road, crying, half out of her mind, fairly reeking of it ... ahh!"  She
_hissed_ -- a drawn-out, sibilant sigh of pleasure; eerie, disturbing,
utterly inhuman.

Ranma's gorge rose.  He tried to swallow; his throat was dry, though his
forehead was beaded with sweat.  "Reeking of what?" he managed to say at
last.

"_Despair_," she said.  For an instant her face was a mask of greed:
avid, hungry.  Gloating.  He had to look away.

"And I have you to thank for that, too, son-in-law!" she crowed.

He looked up in shock.  "Me --"

"You!" she mocked.  "You rejected her.  You gave her a choice of killing
you or marrying you ... and then made both choices impossible.  You made
her an oathbreaker.  You made it impossible for her to ever regain her
position in the tribe -- and then left her with nowhere to go but home.
Home, where her failure condemned her to a lifetime as the lowest of the
low.  A servant to the other Amazons.  A virtual slave.

"And to cap it all off, she lost her way and ended up falling into one
of the springs at Jyusenkyo.  Oh, she _reeked_ of despair, son-in-law!
And I was so hungry ..."

Ranma closed his eyes.  [Did I do that?  Was it my fault?]  But he
hadn't known!  It was Shampoo's own fault!  If she hadn't wanted to kill
him or marry him ... if she hadn't followed him ... [If she hadn't given
me the kiss of death in the first place ...]

But no, he was avoiding the issue.  Shampoo had simply been following
Amazon law.  Perhaps it was a stupid law, but that was almost
irrelevant.  ["Ignorance of the law is no excuse."]  If he hadn't
defeated her in combat, none of this would have happened.

And why had he fought her in the first place?  To save his own neck,
because of a stupid mistake he and his father had made.  Eating the
first prize in that contest, of all things.  It had been an innocent
mistake.  He could have accepted punishment, or simply run.

But that wasn't all, was it?

No.  He had to admit it.  He'd fought Shampoo because he'd seen she was
good, and he wanted to prove he was better.

Arrogance and pride.  That was the root of it.

[It is.  It's all my fault.]

Despair.

And the shadows in the cave seemed to deepen, and twist, and surge
around him, and Cologne moved closer ...

[No!]

He raised his head.  "No, dammit!" he rasped.  "No!  It wasn't all me!
Shampoo was part of it too!  We could have found another way, if she'd
been prepared to bend a little.  But she wouldn't!  She had to have it
all!  I may share some of the responsibility, but _I am not to blame_!"

He looked Cologne in the eye.

She grinned, and said, "Come on.  We've a long way to go yet."

They moved deeper into the cave.

                **********

"I made a mistake when I bound Shampoo to me," Cologne said.  "Perhaps I
was over-eager.  It had been a long time, after all.  I was careless.  I
bound us a little too closely.

"Can you imagine what it's like to be utterly subject to the will of
another?"  She glanced at Ranma.  "Well, perhaps you can.  Shampoo took
hope again, and it weakened me.  I was driven to fulfil her dreams.
And ..."  She shrugged.  "What she dreamed of was you.  So she went back
to Japan, and I went with her."

"I saw," he muttered.

She paid no attention.  "You know what happened.  I constructed a memory
for her, a great-grandmother: the embodiment of her idea of the ultimate
Amazon.  The illusions I had to spin!  Concealing myself from her, as
well as the rest of you.  She never suspected I was there."  She frowned
for a moment.  "I think that old fool Happosai knew.  I gave him false
memories, but I was never sure if he believed them.  He had a one-track
mind, but his will was very strong.  But he didn't care about me.  He
knew I wasn't going to interfere with his ... habits ... so he simply
ignored me.

"Ah, but Shampoo!  She was persistent, that girl!  Really quite
remarkable.  After that time on the beach I could see that you'd never
marry her.  But she wouldn't give in."

Ranma blinked.  _Cologne_ had wanted to give in but _Shampoo_ wouldn't
agree?  That was a switch.

She must have sensed his surprise.  "Don't think I'm saying that I
couldn't have beaten you," she cautioned.  "But marry Shampoo?  That, I
could see you'd never do.

"In the end, of course, she failed.  I got the upper hand again, and
we came back home.  Here."

She _hissed_ again.  "And here I have fed well, Ranma.  Very well
indeed.  And now, just when Shampoo is beginning to fade at last, you
send me another gift!"

He understood immediately.  "Not Ukyou," he rasped.  "You're not taking
Ukyou."

She grinned.  There were _definitely_ more teeth in that mouth than she
had had before ...

"I already have her," she said mockingly.  "Eighty years she's loved
you, boy!  And again and again, you reject her.  For most of that time
she's tried to pretend she hated you, or tried to forget you.  And what
do you do when she finally thinks that at last, she might have a chance?
You do it again!  And send her straight to me, brimming over with
despair!  Son-in-law, you couldn't serve me better if I were paying
you!"

"No!" he shouted.  "It wasn't like that!"

"Oh?"  She cackled.  "You'll never get a chance to tell her.  She's mine
now.  And to make it all sweeter, I've got a bonus extra ...

"I've got you.

"I would have passed you up, son-in-law.  I would have let you go.  But
you forced yourself on me.  You rejected my illusions, you bulled your
way through -- and now, well ... why should I look a gift horse in the
mouth?

"And what a gift horse, son-in-law!  You're _much_ stronger than she is.
Or than Shampoo is, for that matter.  You've never been defeated in
your life.  Oh, you've lost battles ... but you've always won the war.
Your spirit has never been broken.  Oh, it will be _so_ good when you
shatter at last!  You won't last half as long as Ukyou, of course ...
but while you do -- Ukyou will be a meal ... but you'll be a feast!"

He stared for a moment.  And then laughed.  "Me?  Good luck, old ghoul.
I'm not despairing.  Nothing for you to eat here."

"Not yet," she said.  "But consider --

"You cannot possibly beat me.  You must know that.  You couldn't match
my speed when you were young, and you certainly can't do it now.  And
you can't leave.  So ... how long will it take, I wonder?  Before you
begin to weaken.  Before thirst and starvation begin to bring you low.
How long will it take?

"And if that isn't enough ... there's always your sweetheart, isn't
there?  What will you do, I wonder, when you see what I do to her, right
before your eyes ... with you unable to do anything but watch?

"How long until you despair at last, Ranma?"

He looked into her wide grin -- into those bottomless eyes, full of
greed and malice and anticipation -- and shuddered.  Without his
volition, his legs continued to move.  They went deeper into the
mountain.

                **********

He had lost track of how long they had been walking, how long they had
gone.  The temperature had fallen; he found himself shivering.  There
was a puff of condensation each time he exhaled.  (But not for Cologne,
he couldn't help noticing.)

The air was still seemed clean and breathable.  But there was an odd
smell coming from somewhere.

"...Easier than you'd think to build an identity," Cologne was saying.
She seemed to have fallen into a boastful mood.  Perhaps it was intended
to impress upon him how impossible it was to resist her.  If so, he had
to admit that it was having an effect.

"Take Herb and his friends, for instance ... you do remember?  Of
course.  They'd never heard of me; they never intended to come anywhere
near Nerima when they visited Japan.  But I saw a chance to make you
permanently female, and break off Shampoo's affection for you, so I
intercepted them and ... influenced them a little.  There were a few
other similar cases ... but I think you get the idea."

Ranma gritted his teeth.

"Or there was the Nanban mirror episode ... but I'm sure you realise
that not everything you saw then was real."

One foot in front of the other.  Step.  Step.  Don't answer.  Anything
you could say would just make it worse.

That smell was closer now.  What was it?  Something familiar ... He
screwed up his nose.  It was the scent of decay.

"And you still think you can defeat me?  I could make you believe the
tunnel had collapsed on you ... and you'd stand here, unhurt, and starve
to death, thinking you were trapped by rubble."

Ranma was not so sure.  He'd broken her mental domination earlier, at
the cave mouth, when she'd tried to drive him off.

Perhaps she perceived his thought somehow.  She shot him an all-knowing
glance and said, "Oh, I am _so_ looking forward to tasting you ..."

And as she spoke, they finally reached the end of the tunnel.

                **********

The cave opened out into a low, round chamber, dozens of metres wide.
The light was dim, but clear -- the same light that had filled the
tunnel: pale, colourless, and with no apparent source.  The walls were
uneven, jagged; the roof, equally rough but mostly flat.  The floor was
bare stone.

Ukyou was there, lying flat on the floor, near the rear of the cavern.
He ran to her, realising only as he reached her side that his legs were
free again.  Her body was stiff, rigid, though her flesh seemed warm.
She did not appear to be breathing.  Her eyes stared fixedly upward.
For a moment he could not tell if she saw him; but then he saw her
pupils react to the change in light as he leaned over her.  He let out a
breath he had not realised he was holding.  She was alive.

The first glimmerings of a plan began to form in the back of his mind.

"Let her go!" he demanded, looking back at Cologne.

Her only reply was a smirk.

Something else caught his eye.  Near Ukyou, at the very rear of the
cave, there was a hollow in the wall.  And there was something inside --

He moved closer to take a better look, then recoiled.  It was humanoid
in shape, the thing that lay there, curled up into a foetal ball.  But
there seemed little human about it.  Its limbs were twisted, bony
things, shrunken and distorted; its hands (if they were hands), withered
claws.  Its flesh, where he could see it through the layers of almost
solid filth that covered it, was pallid, almost transparent.  Its head
was horribly misshapen.  He was glad he could not see its face.

It stank.  The whole cavern reeked of it: of years, decades, centuries
of corruption.  Ranma tried to breathe through his mouth, but it did not
help; the stench was so thick he could taste it, like a thick, slimy
layer coating his tongue, indescribably foul.  He almost gagged.

And then it moved.  Slowly, its head lifted, turned toward him.  Its
face came into view.  It spoke.

"Airen," it said.

His jaw hung open.  He wanted to rage, to shout, to weep.  He was too
shocked, too horrified to even move.

He had found Shampoo at last.

- End of Part 10 -

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