Waters Under Earth

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum - harnums@hotmail.com

All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakugan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.

I am not subscribed to the FFML, so please direct any commentary
to my personal e-mail address.  Comments are welcomed,
appreciated and very helpful to the continued betterment of this
series.  

I have also set up a page for this series.  If you've missed
previous chapters, you'll be able to find them at the Waters
Under Earth page at http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/9758/

Chapter 6 : Stained Be My Soul (1/4)

Dewdrop, let me cleanse
In your brief, sweet waters...
These dark hands of life
-Basho

     It was a slow numbing this time.  Ranma could feel a cold
sensation start to flow from somewhere in his centre to all parts
of his body, as if his blood had turned to icy water.  The tall,
slim woman in the blue-white robes standing before him seemed to
be moving disjointedly, like a bad stop-motion animation, as she
stepped forward past the fallen form of Happosai.  She raised her
strange weapon and pointed at him.  It was a black wooden rod, a
little over two feet long, tipped at the far end by two curving,
blunt-ended blades and attached to her wrist by a silver chain
that led to a bracelet around her black-gauntleted wrist.

     "So you don't fight girls, do you?" she said in her grating
voice.  She'd given her name as Denkoko, he vaguely remembered.
It didn't really seem important.

     "Don't like to," a part of him said from very far away,
behind the spreading ice.  He shifted and prepared himself for
any of a dozen different approaches the woman might take; the
still bodies of Happosai and Cologne gave testament to the fact
that this woman and her companion, the black-clad Yamiko, were
not to be taken lightly.  A hundred feet away, he could see Ryoga
and the others beginning to circle the shadowy form of the other
woman.

     "What a foolish boy," Denkoko said.  "Little foolish boy."

     <She's trying to distract you,> an inner voice said.  <Keep
you talking.  You've done it yourself.  Pay attention.  Look at
what's going on.  Take in the situation.>

     He did, slowly.  Cologne was starting to move, just a
little; the strange, living shadow that had revealed Yamiko had
apparently been powerful enough to hurt even the ancient Amazon,
although she didn't look so ancient anymore.

     <She's not with them,> the voice said.  <But still a
possible foe.  Keep your eye on her.>

     Happosai was very still, with smoke still rising from his
body.  Denkoko's weapon was obviously dangerous.  <Reach
advantage, and powerful too.  Remove it from her as soon as
possible.>

     Akane was hanging back with his still unconscious mother and
the paralyzed Shampoo, as Ryoga, Ukyou, and Mousse approached
Yamiko.  A part of him wanted to go to her, but that part was
diminishing very rapidly beneath the slow but inexorable tides of
ice washing through him.  <They are far away.  No matter.  Let
them handle the other woman.  This one before you is your foe.>

     All that taken in in a second, but still too much time,
still too much time, because Denkoko was moving, and she was
fast, very fast, faster than she'd been when she'd attacked
Happosai.  Three quick steps forward, long strides, right arm
still tucked inside her robes, left arm with the rod raised.
Even amidst the half-frozen time of the ice, she was almost
blindingly quick.

     He sidestepped her charge, threw a punch, missed as she
whirled and stabbed the rod at him in a straight-armed blow, one
that forced him to step back, put him on the defensive.  Even the
touch of the thing would probably be deadly.

     Forward she came, and she was fast, she was so very fast,
even here, even with the ice upon his senses and his body, she
was fast.

     And not just fast.  Skilled, very skilled.  She moved with
deadly grace, like a dancer, making short, quick jabs at him with
her weapon, the tip of which was now humming and crackling,
filling the air with the stink of ozone as blue sparks slashed
between the blades.  She was leaving no openings for him, none at
all, because he couldn't risk the touch of that weapon.

     He continued backstepping, a momentary glance risked behind
him showing that one side of the forest was approaching rapidly.
A few more seconds and they'd be among the trees, where there'd
be less room for her to use her weapon and more things for him to
hide behind.

     He heard someone scream in pain, from far away.  Ukyou, it
sounded like.  But there was so much ice, and beyond the ice was
fire, and within the ice was something else, some hidden core he
could not yet see, and Ukyou and Shampoo and Mousse and Ryoga and
even Akane were beyond all those things now.

**********

     "We don't want to hurt you," Ryoga said as he stepped
lightly forward, balancing on the balls of his feet with every
muscle loose and ready.

     "Unless we have to," Mousse said from beside him, his hands
tucked into the sleeves of his robe.  Ryoga glanced at him
worriedly; the other boy's voice sounded very cold.  Of course,
seeing Shampoo nearly kill herself to stop Ranma from having to
fight Cologne would surely have affected him deeply.  Ryoga
himself was still half in denial of what had happened.  It had
only been Ranma's quick intervention, moving so quickly that
Ryoga hadn't even seen him move, that had stopped the Amazon from
plunging the knife into her heart.

     "So take your friend and back off," Ukyou said.  She was
advancing behind the two boys, her big spatula gripped in one
hand at the hilt and resting on her shoulder, her other hand
holding a fistful of razor-edged throwing spatulas.  "I don't
know if you two are with Cologne or what, but I've had a really
bad last couple of days and I'm not in the best of moods.  So if
you don't wanna get hurt, just get out of here."

     The woman in front of them made an unpleasant gurgling sound
deep in her throat and half-crouched, empty hands out to her
sides with the fingers curving slightly.  Her long braid of dark
hair swung over one shoulder as she jerked her head abruptly to
one side and hissed at them from behind the black leather mask
that covered everything below her eyes.

     The shadow she cast was too large, not even human in shape,
looking more like a pool of night-black water, rippling and
twisting in front of her, in defiance of the position of the sun.
Ryoga wished she would speak, make some kind of sound beyond
those damp noises emanating from behind her mask.

     "Well?" Ryoga asked cautiously.  "What's it gonna be?"

     In response, the woman sprang, an impossibly long leap
taking her through twenty feet of intervening space to land a
half-dozen steps away from the three who faced.  Behind her, her
shadow bent and twisted, whipping along the ground beneath her as
she leapt.

     Mousse yelled and cast his arms out.  Chains, shuriken and
knives exploded from his sleeves, half-a-hundred flashes of
gleaming steel filling the air.

     The woman howled in a voice like a rotten thing bursting and
threw her arms wide.  Her shadow exploded from the ground in
loops and whirls of darkness that twisted around her limbs like
serpents for a moment before they wove themselves into a
shimmering velvet curtain in front of her.

     Mousse's weapons plunged into that two-dimensional curtain
and vanished utterly, as if that hanging, flapping weave of
darkness were a bottomless pit.

     "What the-" he said, eyes widening behind his glasses for
just a moment before the woman threw her arms forward, fingers
outstretched, and the shadow-curtain leapt forward, an arrow of
dark, and smashed Mousse in the chest like a great fist.  The boy
was sent tumbling heels over head backwards, a low cry of pain
bursting from his lips as he bounced across the rocky plain to
lie motionless on his back.

     As Ryoga and Ukyou stepped forward to engage her, they saw
that she cast no shadow upon the ground.  The solid thing that
had struck Mousse was gone; now Yamiko's robe swam with ripples
of darkness, black water that some invisible hand continually
dropped pebbles into.

     Ukyou cast her throwing spatulas at the woman; Yamiko
sidestepped with graceful ease and spun backwards, her left leg
coming around in a kick that Ukyou barely avoided.  The dark-clad
woman could have pressed the attack, but now she had to deal with
Ryoga, and he was much more than Ukyou was.

     "Can't throw those shadows around all the time, can you?" he
asked as he came at her, suppressing whatever dislike he had of
fighting a woman beneath images of her striking down Cologne and
Mousse; she was obviously extremely dangerous.

     Yamiko gurgled wetly, her eyes narrowing, and then sprang at
him, fingers spread wide like claws.  But she had no weapon, and
it was almost as if...

     He saw the glint of metal on her black-lacquered nails just
in time, and that saved him from far worse than what he got.  A
desperate backstep meant that the razor-edged blades inserted
under her fingernails caught cloth and a little skin, instead of
opening his jugular as she'd intended.  Four long parallel
scratches welled with blood down his chest.  They hurt, but just
a little.  No time for worrying about anything beyond her,
because she was coming at him again, shadows rippling and flowing
in her eyes and the depths of her robes.

     He deflected one hand, smacking her wrist aside with his
forearm, and tilted his head to the side, letting her other blow
fly past, nicking his ear slightly.

     Then he struck back.  Not as hard as he would have against a
man, but still a strong blow, under the ribs to drive the air out
of her.  Her robes were icy cold; touching them was like plunging
his hand into a half-frozen lake.

     He'd expected the blow to take her out immediately, but she
was tougher than she looked.  A hissing cry of pain escaped her,
but then her hands came up, blades glinting beneath the nails,
and went for his eyes.

     He barely got his arms up in time to block, one arm for each
hand, and got his forearms nearly shredded down to the bone for
the trouble.  He shrieked in pain, and it finally dawned on him
in that moment that she really was trying to kill him, like the
other woman had told her to.  Before that revelation could lead
him to do anything, one knee lifted into his stomach and an elbow
slammed into the side of his head, knocking him sprawling to the
side.

     He probably would have died except for Ukyou, who stepped
in and swung her spatula in a blow against the other woman's
head.  It didn't connect, but it forced Yamiko to step away from
him for a moment.

     He was hurt badly, blood soaking the strips of cloth that
remained of his heavy shirt on his arms.  Feeling a little woozy,
he turned to see Yamiko raise a hand to smash down Ukyou with
another shadowy blast like she'd used on Mousse.  The girl
crumpled to the ground without a sound.

     And like that first revelation that she was really trying to
kill them, there came now a second that she might actually
succeed.

**********

     Akane felt numb, mostly.  Everything had happened so fast;
Ranma had said he'd go back to China with Cologne and Shampoo,
because without a marriage to him Shampoo would likely be killed.

     Then Shampoo had tried to kill herself.  Ranma had stopped
her.  For some reason, he and Cologne were still going to fight.
Ryoga had made her come away from them.

     And then these two women had appeared.  One in blue-white,
one in black.  Ranma was fighting the one in the blue-white
robes, the one who'd struck down Happosai; Ryoga, Mousse and
Ukyou were fighting the one in black.

     And what was she doing?  Sitting with Ranma's mother and
Shampoo, both of whom were out cold.  There were lots of reasons
for it; they couldn't be left alone, someone needed to watch over
them.

     She knew the real one was because she'd just have gotten in
the way.  These two women were good; she could see Ranma in the
distance dodging frantically as the one he was fighting stabbed
at him with her rod so quickly her arm was just a blur.  It was
hard to follow the two of them, they were moving so unbelievably
fast.

     "Oh, Ranma..." she whispered.  There had been a change in
him, so quickly, when he heard what Cologne said about the
Joketsuzoku Council and what they would do to Shampoo, after he'd
stopped Shampoo from stabbing herself.  He'd gone... cold.  There
was no other way to describe it.  It was as if he was no longer
who he had been.

     She saw the woman in black raise her hand and hit Mousse
with some kind of attack, a solid bolt of shadow that knocked him
senseless to the ground.  She saw Ryoga come forward and engage
the woman, and felt her heart leap into her mouth as he staggered
back moments later, the blood streaming down his arms visible
even at this distance.

     A weak groan tore her attention away from the fight for a
moment.  Shampoo was coming around.  Akane watched her carefully,
wincing as she heard Ukyou scream.

     "Shampoo?"

     "Uhh..."

     The Chinese girl blinked her eyes a few times and sat up.
"Ranma?" she asked.

     "Two women showed up after you got... knocked out."

     Cologne had done that, hitting one of the girl's sleep spots
moments after Ranma had stopped her from driving the knife into
her heart.  Even now, the event didn't seem to have really
happened.

     Akane licked her lips and tried not to look into Shampoo's
eyes.  "They're fighting now.  Your great-grandmother's down;
so's Happosai.  I think he followed us up here looking for
Cologne."

     Shampoo's eyes were very, very cold.  She stood up and
pulled twin bonbori from her belt, knuckles white on the handles.

     "Stay with Ranma mother, Akane."

     "Shampoo-"

     "Stay."

     Whatever desire the girl had held for her own death was
apparently gone now, transferred into some rage long-hidden
within her.  Not even looking to see if Akane was staying, she
stalked off towards the battling figures of Ryoga and the
black-clad woman, moving lightly and swiftly across the rocky,
barren ground.

     Akane glanced nervously behind her at the cliff-face that
she was next to, and then to where Ranma was heading further and
further away from her with the other woman, towards the forest.

     Each stop took him away from her, bit by bit.

**********

     "Hold still.  This won't hurt much," Denkoko said cheerfully
as she struck at him.

     The impact of the weapon blew a jagged hole in the trunk of
the tree Ranma had been in front of moment's before.  "Actually,
that's a lie.  It will hurt quite a lot."

     Deeper and deeper they went into the forest, and denser and
denser grew the trees.  Denkoko could not hit him, but she was
too careful, too cautious a fighter to leave any opening he could
exploit, and he couldn't risk even a touch of her rod.

     He could see it was growing harder for her, though.  Tree
branches were getting in her way much of the time, although she
showed no sign of growing tired.

     And then, she made a mistake.  Just a small one, a minute
over-extension of her arm on one thrust, but it was enough.  He
stepped by, grabbing the rod behind the bladed head and wrenching
it to the side with one hand, his other hand coming by to slam
into her chin in a flat blow.  A part of him quailed at the ease
with which he hit her; another part of him said, woman or not,
this was a foe, and a dangerous one.

     The fury of the ice was upon him in full now, burning cold
throughout his body and mind.  Her head snapped back, and he
heard her teeth click together.  He whirled around her, still
keeping his grip on the weapon, wondering off-hand why she was
keeping her other hand inside her robes.  Spinning behind her,
he planted the point of an elbow into the small of her back and
felt her arch backwards involuntary.  He released his grip on the
weapon, turned again, and kicked her in the side of the head with
the side of his foot, knocking her to the ground.

     She felt, blood trailing from one corner of her mouth, and
rolled backwards away from him in a graceful somersault as he
rushed at her.

     Her right hand came out of her robes, and he saw why she'd
hidden it.  It was little more than a twisted, withered claw,
looking like it belonged on a dessicated corpse.  The brown,
wrinkled skin was blackened by weeping sores and blisters.  The
hand pointed at him, and the fingers painfully spread open to
present a flat palm.

     He almost made it in time.  He was about to level a kick at
her when the first bolt of white-hot lightning exploded from the
twisted right hand.  That one struck him in the chest and sent
him staggering backwards with pain burning through every nerve of
his body; the second laid him flat on his back with blood
streaming from his nose, mouth and ears.  He coughed, and found
he was having trouble breathing.

     "You must be alive," he heard Denkoko say in her rasping
voice; there was the sound of dry twigs cracking under her feet
as she got back up.  A shuffling, soft shoes coming across the
dirt floor of the forest towards him.  "It does not mean you do
not have to be in pain."

     He already was.  Quite a lot of it.  It was as if the ice
had half-melted, burned away by the fury of the lighting that had
exploded from her hand.  He realized with a sick feeling that the
kick he'd been going to give her would have broken her neck.

     And then he forgot all about that, because when Denkoko
slammed the rod into his chest and twisted it he began to
discover that the pain he was currently in was not very much at
all, as pain went.

**********

     Cologne came awake abruptly, throwing herself to her feet at
the memory of what had happened before.  She looked around; Ranma
was nowhere in sight, and neither was the woman who'd appeared.
There was a second one, far away, fighting with Shampoo and
Ryoga; the two children appeared to be barely holding their own
against her.  The fallen forms of Mousse and Ukyou made the
situation look even worse; had the odds been four to one at the
start?

     She took a step towards them, leaning on her rake for
balance, and feeling weak and sick as if she'd just awakened from
a long illness.  Her eyesight was superb now that she was young
again; even at this distance she could see the blood soaking
Ryoga's clothing.

     The plan was all falling apart, and if she didn't act
quickly, someone was going to die.  A fool she'd been; she should
have spoken to Ranma from the start.  The boy's true heart had
shown itself when he'd stated his willingness to go to China lest
Shampoo suffer for not marrying him.  She hadn't expected that.

     She hadn't expected her great-grandaughter to try and kill
herself either.  Neither of those things had been figured into
the equation.

     Neither had the two women.

     And, she realized, glancing at the fallen old man a dozen
feet away, neither had Happosai.  But things were where they
were, and when the unexpected came along, you either removed it
or worked with it.

     She moved quickly to Happosai's side, as quickly as she
could manage in the state she was in.  That shadow attack had
somehow drained her energy; she couldn't have raised enough
battle aura to move a leaf.

     "Happy?" she said, crouching down by him.  The last memory
before she'd lost consciousness had been him calling her name.
He really did look younger, incredibly so.  She was almost sure
she saw a wrinkle in his face smooth out as she looked.  Slowly
but surely he was getting his youth back.  The Nannichuan water
he'd drank at the wedding must be somehow working on him from the
inside, incorporating itself slowly but surely into his internal
body, spreading throughout until it reached the outside.

     There a large burn across his side, and the cloth was
shredded.  The faint scent of an electrical discharge still hung
in the air, along with a rather sickening scent of scorched
flesh.

     "Happy?" she said again.

     "Dear Cologne..."

     Happosai reached up, his eyes still closed, and placed both
hands firmly on her breasts.  For the first time in many years,
Cologne had absolutely no idea what to do.

     His eyes snapped open, and he let out a long coughing fit,
letting his hands fall back to his sides to raise himself up.
"That's the stuff.  A female body, and quite a nice one."

     "I can't believe you just did that," Cologne muttered as she
stood up and adjusted her clothing in an attempt to get the feel
of his hands off her skin.

     "Oh, come now, Cologne, and you've known me how long?"
Happosai said as he stood up.  "You should have seen that coming
for miles.  After all, you're so much better looking now."

     "I cannot say the same for you," Cologne lied.  He did look
better, at least.  Taller, at least.

     "Be nice," Happosai said, brushing himself off.  "You want
to tell me what the hell's going on, Cologne?

     "I would," she said.  "But there's really not much time.
Those children need our help."

     He put his hand on her arm, very gently.  "Make time."

     "Happy..." she said in a soft voice.  "Please..."

     "I'm only a fool for a pretty face so far, Cologne," he said
softly.  "I could never see your reasons for doing a lot of
things, but I know you always had them.  Why'd you take his
mother?  Why?"

     "Because it had to be done," Cologne said.  "Those two...
they are only hands.  There are a hundred more, and they are all
grasping at him.  I had planned to remove him from it in such a
way that none would follow him."

     "Explain it later, then," Happosai said.  "They need our
help.  You're right about that."

     Cologne blinked.  "Just like that?"

     "If you believe it had to be done," Happosai said with a
gleam to his eye she recognized from when she'd known him a
century ago.  "Then it probably did.  You can tell me more
later.  And you will, won't you?"

     Cologne slowly nodded.  "Help my great-grandaughter and the
others against that one.  I'm going after Ranma."

     "You can sense him or something?"

     Cologne laughed.  "How can you not?"

     Happosai looked at her, confused, then wheeled and began to
run towards the fight a hundred feet away.

     Cologne stood still for a second and focused her senses.
She reached out, her ki mingling with the air around her, tasting
the scents of the late afternoon.

     And Ranma was a thread among it, burning bright as a sun to
her vision.  But she sensed something she had not expected; pain,
and quite a lot of it.

     She began to run.

**********

     Ranma slammed back against the trunk of the tree with a
pained groan.  He could taste blood in his nose and mouth, and
the wet dripping down the sides of his face certainly wasn't
water.

     And then Denkoko was there, as she had been every time, as
she was every time he'd tried to feebly fight back.  The rod came
up, smashed into his stomach.  Every bone in his body suddenly
had the marrow replaced by hot lead.

     He groaned again, because his throat hurt too much to
scream.  It couldn't have been more than a few minutes, but how
could so much pain be fitted into a few minutes?

     She slapped him, lightly, with the withered claw that was
her right hand.  "Oh, my little pet, we shall enjoy breaking you
to our demands.  Oh, the Circle shall have some fun with you.
Such a pretty young man."

     There was no ice, no fires burning in his head.  It was
gone, all gone, washed away beneath a pain that was less an
outside thing than a part of his being now.  He didn't think you
could hurt this much and still stay conscious.

     Her withered hand grabbed him by the chin and tilted his
head back.  "This hand is hideous, is it not?  We all bear marks,
all of us.  The price of what we are.  Why do you think Yamiko
wears a mask?  But you'll learn to love this hand, my pet."

     You really shouldn't be able to hurt this much and stay
conscious.  But apparently, you could.

     Apparently, you could hurt even worse.

     There was a terrible strength in that right hand of hers,
he'd learned.  She lifted him effortlessly by the collar, with
that single hand, and hurled him across the clearing they'd found
themselves in.  He landed, barely breaking his fall with one arm,
an arm that hurt so bad it felt as if he shouldn't be able to
feel it anymore.

     He tried to roll over into his back, get to his feet, but
then someone drove something that felt like a railroad spike
through his lower back.  The shock burst through his body, sent
his limbs spasming as crackles electricity crawled along his
skin.

     "And you'll be my special little pet," Denkoko grated from
above.  "Because I broke you first of all, my little pet.  We'll
all break you, but you'll break first to me.  We know what you
are, little boy, with your silly little honour games and all your
little fiancees.  We've watched you since before you were born;
Yoko's gift goes deep, my pet.  Would you like me to tell you how
many women your father had in his bed while you were on the road?
I can.  Would you like me to tell you the youngest was no older
than you are now?  Would you like me to tell you how he paid for
her with the money for your dinner and let you go hungry that
night?"

     "Shut up," Ranma said through the pain, because defiance was
all he had left at this point.  "You sadistic bitch, shut the
hell up.  Who are you, anyway?  What the hell are you after me
for?"

     "From this day forth, I shall be your new mistress," Denkoko
said, grinding her rod into his arm without using it as an
electrical conduit this time.  "The time shall come soon when you
bend on your knees before me and do whatever I ask."

     He could only see the dirt of the forest floor, lying with
his face pressed into the ground.  Denkoko had one foot on his
back; the pain was agonizing.  He tried to turn over again, but
could only manage to tilt his head slightly to the side.  Out of
the corner of his eye, he saw blue sky and little more.

     "My own special little toy," Denkoko crowed happily.

     He spat blood onto the dirt and wished with all his heart
for the ice, craving it with a thirst beyond anything he had ever
felt.  Even the cold, frightening detachment would have been a
hundred times better than this pitiful state.

     Everything seemed hypersensitive; the feel of the ground
beneath him, the pain throughout his entire body, the soft
shifting of the leaves in the wind.  The sound of water, cool
water, flowing nearby.  They must be near the stream that ran
from the top of this mountain to the bottom.  Cool water, cool
water to wash away the blood from his face, wash away the pain,
wash it all away...

     He fought to remain conscious, keep his final defiance here.
It was a losing battle.

     And then it all happened very quickly.  There was the cry of
a bird, high and piercing, and then a flurry of white flapping
wings and shining steel exploded into his vision and onto
Denkoko.  The foot was removed from his back, and he heard the
sounds of weapon clashing against weapon.

     "He's right.  You really are a sadistic bitch," a female
voice tinged with a strange accent to it said.  He recognized it;
it hadn't been too long since he'd last heard it, although he
hadn't expected to hear it again.

     "What a prize!  A woman with wings.  How can you fly?  You
shouldn't be able to bear your own weight.  A hollow bone
structure, perhaps?  Well, when I drag you back and we cut you
open while you still live, we'll find out, and you'll find out
just exactly the penalty for interfering with us."

     There was the sound of wings flapping, and a dark shape
landed next to him, drawing his eye to it.  A huge raven,
looking as if it were almost as big as an eagle.

     "Great," he croaked.  "I get saved by someone whose king was
trying to toast me a little over a week ago, and now I get to
have my eyes plucked out by the crows."

-Continued in [Ranma][Fanfic] Waters Under Earth - Chapter 6 (2/4)


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