Part 11 was originally posted with a bad subject line, which caused a
number of people to skip it.  Sorry.  Here it is again.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Autumn and Spring"
by Angus MacSpon

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

C&C Welcome!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

- 11 -

Ranma backed away slowly from the look in those eyes.  He saw the light
of recognition in them dull; he saw the momentary look of hope on
Shampoo's wizened face fade to a vacant imbecility.

"How long?" he asked softly.

"You know that already, son-in-law," Cologne answered.

He knew.  Sixty-six years, Shampoo had lain there, her body wasting
away, her anguish and despair feeding the monster that controlled her
mind.  Sixty-six years.

It was queer, the way he felt.  He had passed beyond anger, beyond rage.
Far beyond hatred.

He was ice.

"Is there anything more that we have to say to one another?" he said.
His voice was quiet, almost gentle.

"I think not," said Cologne.

He nodded.  His heart was pounding.

Oh.  One more thing.

"If you don't mind," he said diffidently, "one thing I've learned over
the years is never to fight with a full bladder ..."

She snorted, but nodded assent.  He did his business against a wall of
the cavern.  It only took a few moments.

"Very well, then," he said when he was done.  "Shall we begin?"

                **********

At first he had thought that fighting her would be a waste of time.
What good did it do to strike at an illusion?  What was the point in
trying to defeat a phantom?  As Cologne had said, the struggle was
pointless.

Now, he was not so sure.  The creature itself -- the centre of the evil
-- was not here facing him, he was certain of that.  Possibly it was
with Shampoo, mounted on her spine.  He knew he'd never get a chance to
check.

But Cologne herself had to be more than an illusion.  He'd seen her
apart from Shampoo too many times in the past to have any doubt about
that.  He could not believe that the demon (call it that) could control
minds at such a distance.  If it could, he had no hope at all.

What was she, then?  Some kind of golem?  Or an extension of the demon's
own chi?  He suspected the latter.  A shape formed only when needed; it
would explain why it had not been present on the video clips Ukyou had
found.

And if Cologne was formed out of the demon's chi, then maybe striking at
her would affect the demon itself.

Maybe.

It was all he had to pin his hopes on.

                **********

And so, finally, they came down to it.

It was a pity they were fighting underground.  It ruled out so many of
Ranma's best tricks; an explosion here could bring down the roof on the
lot of them.  But there were still alternatives --

Cologne's body began to glow.  To burn.  To expand.  She raised her
battle aura, and it was immense.  Daunting.  In moments she loomed above
him, and still she grew.  Her head passed through the roof of the cavern
as if it were not there; but somehow he found he could still see her, as
if the rock were transparent.

And then she came to a halt: a vast figure, dozens of metres high,
sneering down at him.  She glowed a cherry-red.  She was sheathed in a
web of pale red flame, flickering about her, casting an eerie dancing
light through the chamber.

* SUBMIT. *

He felt the pressure of her will beating against his mind.  The demand
to surrender.  A cold, remorseless force, dwarfing him, like a tsunami
about to break.

* YOU WILL SUBMIT. *

He closed his eyes.  [My turn ...]

He reached inside himself, felt the strength there.  The reservoir of
determination, of will, of _self_.  Of chi.  He allowed it to expand, to
fill him to the bursting point.  And then further, pushing it outward,
calling it forth, summoning, evoking ...

He swelled.  Gradually, hesitantly, his body filled out, inflated.  It
burned a dull, coppery red, barely visible.  Then the expension slowed,
faltered ... and stopped.  He was no more than a few centimetres taller
than his normal height.

* IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO? *

He sensed mockery.  Contempt.

And he smiled.  [That's all I need ...]

And then he drove his will outward again.  Focussing it to a hard edge,
increasing the pressure.  Pouring all of his strength into his aura.
Driving the energies higher.

The light in the cavern changed.  The shadows receded.  Ranma's aura
brightened.  He glowed a fiery orange.

He thrust again, beginning to strain now.  Narrowing the focus.
Tightening his will.  Higher.

The cavern was ablaze with light.  Ranma was a brilliant yellow.  He
burned like a star.

Higher.

Green.  Blue.

Higher.  Distantly, he was aware of Cologne, her eyes screwed almost
shut, one hand raised against the blinding light.  She was not sneering
now.

Higher.

He burned violet.

He was drawing the energy around now, channeling it, directing it all
toward Cologne.  It would not do to subject Ukyou and Shampoo to this.

_Higher_.

For a few moments longer the light continued, almost too pale to see.
Then it seemed to fade.  About Cologne, the shadows seemed to gather
together.

Ranma burned ultra-violet.

And higher.  And higher.  And higher.

The energies grew.  The frequency soared.  He was shaking, fighting to
control it now.  Higher.

And then: the ultimate test.  He drove his will as never before.
Focussing down to a pinprick.  Driving the energies down to a single
point.  Aligning them.  Aiming.  And releasing.

Letting it all drive outward, in a single burst.  A single pulse of a
beam of coherent radiation.

An x-ray laser.

                **********

The beam was completely invisible.  But his inner sight saw it burn like
the spear of God.  It shot forth and struck home.  And, too late, he saw
what Cologne had been doing.

She glowed no longer.  She looked like a photographic negative.  Her
aura was a cloak of night.  It faded from dim and murky shadows at the
edge, to a clot of blackness at the centre, so deep and intense that the
darkness itself seemed alive.  Like a hole in space.  A black hole.

His beam struck her and vanished.  Silenced.  Absorbed.  Consumed.

Darkness filled the cavern.  There was a sharp smell of ozone.  Ranma's
aura was gone, utterly drained in the production of that levinbolt.  He
could not see.  He could barely stand.  He waited for the blow that
would end it all.

It never came.  Slowly, haltingly, light returned to the chamber.  It
was dimmer than before, but there was enought for him to see Cologne, a
little distance away.  She was leaning on her staff; she looked dazed.
[One blow would end it,] he thought; but right now he was not sure he
could walk, let alone strike a blow.

"Son-in-law," Cologne began, and then broke off to cough.  At length she
continued, "You never cease to amaze me.  I have absolutely no idea what
that was you just hit me with."  Her eyes narrowed.  "Happosai never
taught you that."

Ranma snorted, then regretted it.  His nose was bleeding.  "Happosai was
more than two hundred years old," he mumbled.  "He was using most of his
chi just to keep his body going.  He still had some good moves, but most
of what he had left was tricks, like those happo-daikarins."

"Yet he was still able to show an astonishing battle aura," murmured
Cologne.  "His strength must have been incredible when he was young ...
a pity I didn't find him then."

"I agree," said Ranma blandly.  He added, "Even he couldn't keep it up
forever.  About forty years ago he finally gave out."

Cologne nodded.  "So you developed your party trick on your own.  It's
most impressive, son-in-law.  Another one of those would seriously
inconvenience me.  But then ..." she grinned maliciously "... you can't
_do_ it again, can you?"

Ranma sighed.  She was perfectly correct.  He could not have dredged up
enough aura to light a match.

So it would be the traditional way, after all.

Ranma attacked first.  He leaped: not directly toward Cologne, but
angling slightly past her, his hands arcing out to strike, his feet
flicking toward her head.

She _moved_, almost too fast for him to follow.  A sudden hop, a twist
in mid-air, her staff lashing out -- and then she stood motionless once
more, and he was rolling across the floor.  He came to his feet
immediately, rubbing his arm.  The pain was astonishing.  With one blow,
she had hurt him worse than anyone had hurt him in years.

"Pretty solid for an illusion," she commented.

He did not bother to reply.  He leaped again, coming in low this time.
Again she blurred into motion: one arm flashing up to strike him in the
face, a leg catching him in the belly, and a smooth pivot, spinning him
away, out of control.  He hit the ground, rolled, and was back on his
feet in an instant, already launching a new assault.

She dodged smoothly, and her staff shot out to strike him in the ribs.
He had expected the move this time and deflected it, using the same move
to launch a kick to her head.  Somehow she arranged to be somewhere
else.  The momentum of his kick sent Ranma stumbling, and an instant
later he saw her staff blurring toward his face.

It was the move he'd been waiting for.  He brought his hand around in
one quick chop.  There was a splintering sound, and then a clatter as
the upper two-thirds of the staff hit the ground and rolled to a halt.

Ranma straightened up and stood watching Cologne warily.  She seemed
surprised, staring at the wooden stump in her hand.  After a moment she
dropped it.

Then she laughed.

There was a flicker.  The strange, directionless light in the cavern
seemed to pulse for a moment.  And then Cologne was holding a fresh
staff.  And laughing at him.

"That's cheating," he accused.

"'Anything-goes martial arts.'  That's what you boast, isn't it?" she
cackled.

"That's not what --" he started to argue, then thought better of it.
All right.  No rules.  Anything can happen.  [And it probably will,] he
thought bitterly.

Then he remembered Ukyou and Shampoo.  This was no simple contest.  This
was for everything.

He stood facing Cologne and bowed once.  Silently.

"This is really all unnecessary," Cologne told him.  "Face it: this is a
fight you can't win.  Give it up now and save yourself a lot of pain,
Ranma."

"I never give up.  Ever."

They became whirlwinds of motion, bodies arcing and flying, striking,
blocking, counter-striking.  Feet and hands seemed interchangable.  All
the years of training, the skill, the strength, the effortless intuitive
flow of body in motion, came pouring forth.  Ranma had never fought
better.  Never.

He was losing badly.

Foot-strike.  Block; counter-strike.  Duck, leap.  Knee in face.  Dodge,
swing, kick.  Faster than the eye can follow, each move made purely on
instinct.  Jab, counter, twist, punch.  Dodge, dodge, dodge.

When he was young he might have had the speed to keep up with her.  But
no longer.  He was far more skilled than he had been then, and usually
that gave him the edge.  But Cologne had the skill _and_ the speed, and
she was killing him.

Her staff was everywhere.  He could not avoid it.  He was taking dozens
of hits, and landing almost none himself.  Each of her blows was light,
precise.  Painful, bruising, but not enought to break bone.  His skin
was slick with blood and sweat, but he still had no serious injuries.
She was playing with him.  Exhausting him.  Bringing him down by inches.

He tried an old trick -- the kachuu tenshin amaguriken -- and it didn't
work.  It was beyond him.  He was too tired, too drained, and too old
for it to be really effective anyway.  Not limber enough.  He was going
down.

[I never give up.  Ever.]

The staff clipped him on the forehead, hard.  He reeled; the world went
black for a moment.  When he came to he was lying on the floor; Cologne
was standing over him, her staff raised.

There was no pleasure in her eyes, no gleam of victory; just a
remorseless, implacable determination.  Another kind of battle aura, he
thought muzzily.

She struck him again in the belly.  He curled around it, moaning,
retching.  Another blow to the ribs.  The neck.  He writhed, twisted,
but the staff was everywhere.  His back.  His ribs again.  And flicking
toward his face --

He caught it, somehow.  They strained together for a moment; then he
twisted it, heaved, and Cologne flew across the cavern.  She spun in
mid-air and landed on her feet, facing him, ready to fight; but by then
he was standing again, hands ready.

Hands ... not ready.  Shaking.

"You can't win," she whispered.  Soft, but the words seemed to fill the
cavern.  "You can't win."

No.  He could not.

So.  The last, desperate gamble.

He judged the angles carefully.  Shifted, getting his balance -- and
attacked.  At the last moment his feet left the ground and he flew at
her, hands and feet flashing, roaring a kiai.

Her counterstrike was instant, devastating.  He did not try to block it
at all.  He moved _with_ it, taking momentum from it -- the pain, at
this point, was incidental -- and hurtled through the air, spinning.  On
a precisely-calculated trajectory.  Landing exactly where he'd wanted.

In the little pool of urine he'd left against the cavern wall earlier.
Urine that had had a chance to grow cold.

Urine is 98% water.

And Ranma-chan spun to her feet: dirty, reeking, bruised and bleeding.
But young again.  And fast.

And _that_ was a whole different ball game.

- End of Part 11 -



Author's Note:
The aura battle was inspired by comments from Matthew Campbell
<mgcampb@clemson.edu>.  Note that Ranma rules out using any of his more
explosive attacks so far underground, and then goes and fires off a
powerful energy weapon at Cologne.  This is fairly typical of Ranma.  It
was probably lucky for him that Cologne absorbed the attack.

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