---
The Zu presents

black wind

a many-things-x-over (mostly Ranma/NGE/Nausicaa) by Rain Man:

authorschtuppff:  This took a lot of time and work.  And missing classes.  
You have no idea.  Really.  Apologies to all the folks who own these 
series.  And to Stephen King, who is the source of a couple of the nifty 
lines in this.  Frank Herbert too of course.


Chapter 2:  pictures of me
---

      She was lovely, though of an age difficult to describe, sometimes 
appearing as though she were just a teenager, sometimes seeming like a 
woman well into her late twenties.  She wore a short, sleeveless black 
dress, a red bomber jacket tied about her waist, the leather draped close 
over her hips.  There was a silver crucifix hanging from her neck, and 
the high roman collar accentuated the slenderness of her neck.  Her arms, 
graceful and slender though they rippled with muscle, were crossed below 
her breasts as the fingers of her right hand tapped idly at her left 
elbow.  Her lips had a tendency to pout and, when they did, they looked 
rather soft and perhaps a little too mesmerizing.  She had chocolate 
brown eyes (a dark, bitter chocolate rather than the lighter, sweeter 
sort), sometimes expressive, sometimes closed and murky.  Framing her 
face was hair of a violet so deep it was nearly black, darker close to 
the ends that hung below her shoulders.

      She was watching him train.  In those days of waiting, there was 
little for her to do but watch him.  And teach him.

      "Too slow.  Do it again," she said.

      "Yes," said a young man with skin of an unearthly pallor, and deep 
red eyes.  White hands darted out as two coins flipped through the air.  
Four thundercrack sounds almost merged into one.  But one coin fell, and 
spun, whirring on the concrete floor.  The sound of swinging chains was 
loud in the vast empty space of the chamber where they kept him.

      "You failed to catch.  Again!" the woman barked out.  "Do it slow 
if you don't think you can catch!  Call out the steps!"

      A closer look, and the young man appeared more like a boy instead.  
Fourteen years old perhaps.  But there was nothing natural about the 
almost translucent white of his skin, or the long, silky braid of silver 
strands that was his hair, swaying as it hung down to his waist with a 
life of its own.

      His arms ached.  How long had it been since dawn?  But he only 
said, "Yes," before stooping to regain the metal disc.  He stepped before 
another body hanging from a hook and placed the coins on the backs of his 
hands.  Stretched his arms straight out in front of him parallel to the 
ground, and set his feet two shoulder-widths apart, legs bent at the 
knees in a low riding stance.

      She had been training him in this lesson for a week by then, and 
already he knew better than to look into the dead eyes of the corpses, 
knew better than to watch his pale, silver head reflected by glassy 
death.  And he knew better than to examine their faces, the vacant 
emptiness of them profoundly disturbing to him.  Their legs were always 
dark, swollen with settled blood, and on their backs were more dark marks 

and yellow bruises, which showed how they were stored on their backs for 
a time.  Before they were brought to him, hanging by their ribs on gray 
iron hooks.  The smell did not matter, nor did the uncomfortable chill, 
which was necessary for these exercises.

      This was just meat in front of him.  The light above him was hot.  
His face was stone.

      And time slowed down for his senses once more.

      "One."  His left hand slid out smoothly under the coin, stretched 
fingers slamming deep into the pit of the stomach up to the second 
knuckle.

      "Two."  The right hand slid out from beneath its coin as well, 
wrist locked back as the impact from his palm shattered two ribs on the 
body's left side, and drove the sharp ends into its lungs.

      The left coin had fallen half an inch, stopped as his palm appeared 
beneath it momentarily, started to fall again as his left hand darted 
once more at the target.  "Three."  The right collar bone broke inwards, 
shards cutting into the right brachial artery.  In a live target, blood 
would fountain out from the driving pressure of the victim's heart.

      "Four."  His right forearm flickered beneath the right coin for 
just an instant before the nose was broken and then the plate of bone 
just in front of and below the brain collapsed, the sliver-shaped 
fragments driven back into the soft, mushy tissue.

      Despite the speed and power of the blows, his feet were stationary 
and his balance perfect, the force from the impacts travelling from his 
shoulders to his back, finally absorbed by his bent, slightly crouched 
legs.

      The blurred outlines of his arms resolved, stilled before him, and 
this time, both coins were resting on the backs of his hands.  

      Once again, there was only the sound of the chains on which the 
body hung, swinging.

      "Better," the woman said.  "Move on to the next body and do it 
again.  But quietly this time."

      "Yes," nodded the student.

      She licked her lips briefly.  "And if you're hungry, Ranma, if you 
like, well, you could eat with me when you're done.  Then we can work on 
your other lessons together."

      He regarded her for a time, with those intense unblinking eyes.

      "Yes, I would like that, Katsuragi-san," the boy said carefully.  
His lips curved just so, a wan, sad smile.

      A smile.  She did not know if she felt cheered by it or if it made 
her want to weep.  Perhaps both.  He was coming along quite well, and she 
felt a hundred years older with each one.  But somehow, she felt that 
this one was special amongst all of them.

      As she resumed watching his long routine of exercises, she 
remembered how this had come to be, wondered why she went on with the 
Program.  But it had seemed so straightforward.  In the beginning.

      How had it all begun?  Ah yes, she had said something, a long time 
ago, when she was someone else.

---

      "He's not as cute as I thought he'd be.  He looked better when I 
found the first one in the Crypts of Ix."

      The other woman next to her was slightly older, and though not so 
tall or so athletic of figure, equally beautiful, but a stern and 

forbidding, cold sort of beautiful.  The almost golden hair was pulled 
into a severe braid, containing the fieriness of it and killing the 
warmth of its color.  Her eyes were blue, pale, icy shards, and those 
dominated her face enough so as to render the rest of her features murky 
in memory.  A narrow nose set in along face, small rosy quartz jewels for 
lips, noble cheekbones and a strong-ish jaw.  "Cute-ness, Captain 
Katsuragi, was not in the design specifications."

      "Well, he is supposed to be the synthesis of the very best genetic 
traits of humanity, so..." she shrugged.

      The subject was sitting before the viewport on a stool, in darkness 
except for the single spotlight focused on him.  He was dressed all in 
white, loose drawstring pants and a tank top.  Perhaps twelve or thirteen 
years old, he had a wiry build that hinted at strength out of proportion 
to his size.  His waist-length hair was a silky, intense black that 
seemed deeper than the darkness around him, sucking up the light in the 
room.  His eyes were blank, a deep blue that focused someplace far off, 
and he was completely motionless, neither blinking nor twitching.  He 
could have been a mannequin.

      She cleared her throat.  "That's a healthy bronze skin tone.  I 
thought they were not to be exposed to the outside until they were fully 
functional?"

      "Sun lamps.  He has to look as normal as possible while he can."

      "... Why me, Doctor?  After all this time?  And you telling me to 
put him out of my mind."

      The gemstone hardness of her eyes softened only slightly when she 
turned away from the Major to look at the teenager in the shadows.  
"Haven't read the briefings yet, Captain?  What were you doing last 
night?"

      The disapproval in her voice would have been disturbing had the 
Captain not known that it was the Doctor's way of joking with her.  
Still, she blushed a little at the suggestion.  "Ritsuko!  You know that 
the files were only delivered to my office this morning - give me a 
break.  Ah, you're just jealous that I got Kaji first."

      Ritsuko sniffed in dismissal.

      "About the assignment..."

      Ritsuko took a large binder off of one of the shelves in the 
observation room, opened it in front of Misato.  "You were selected based 
on the projections of ORACLE.  You do not know yet what happened to the 
otherNexus-5 subjects.

      "The first three Ranmas were completely non-viable.  One failed to 
initiate the development of a functioning nervous system, another fetus 
did not get past the stage of endochondral bone formation because it was 
terminated after tests showed that it was developing only one leg, one 
arm and one eye.  The third one's brain developed too rapidly, too 
quickly, grew too fast like a cancer - it was dead halfway through the 
last trimester.  The next six lived for a while, but they possessed 
various congenital defects, both mental and physical."

      Misato purposely looked away from the grotesque pictures of half-
formed things.  They were not the same as the beautiful child she had 
rescued from the darkness; in her mind they had nothing to do with him.

      "Ranma10, we thought, was the breakthrough.  Fully functional, with 
all the specified desired traits - increased intelligence, psionic 
potential, physical strength, hand-to-eye coordination, reflexes - in 
every way superior to normal man.  Within two weeks of Impression, he had 
picked up two languages.  Learned the old sciences, algebra, calculus, 
physics.  It took a week for him to learn perfect marksmanship.  Two more 
for his psionic potential to reach the critical activation minimum.  All 
this, and he was just a newborn."

      Misato fingered the small picture on the page.  "Cute, too."  She 
smirked at the brief flicker of annoyance in the Doctor's eyes.  "A girl 
can change her mind.  I'm sure it's the lighting - he'd be beautiful if 
we could teach him to smile.  So what happened to Ranma10?"  It was easy 
to ignore the horror of all this if she could focus on the details she 
liked...

      The other pursed her lips, as though recalling a personal offense.  
"He had yet to learn certain basic conventions in interpersonal 
relations, being exposed to just one researcher and a selected volume of 
books and data files and films.  He did not even know that people say 
'Hello' to each other.  So, of course it surprised the instructors when, 
on the morning of the fiftieth day of Ranma's consciousness, the day the 
subject was to be introduced to the rest of his tutors, Ranma10 smiled 
and said, 'Hi!' to them.  Shook their hands."

      Misato mused, "Doesn't sound bad..."

      Ritsuko turned to a large photograph in the binder, stark in black 
and white, taken through the observation window.  There were dark stains 
visible, flecks of something on the window.  Something the consistency of 
oatmeal was smeared onto the glass.  There were pale feet at the edge of 
the photo.  "After greeting the instructors politely and perhaps even 
with something like charm, Ranma10 killed them all.  He broke their arms, 
then their legs.  And their ribs.  Moved onto the smaller bones.  One 
bone at a time, he broke them, saving the bones of the skull for last.  
Then he slammed his head into the armored glass until he broke his skull 
and drove the bone fragments into his brain."

      The darker-haired woman lit a cigarette.  Took a long, slow puff as 
she listened.  She did not tremble - this was not the child she had 
rescued from the darkness, and that made it bearable.

      "Ranmas10 through 17 have all died the same way, regardless of how 
we told the personnel to act, or what information to expose them to.  
Always at the beginning of the fiftieth day.  If there was no instructor 
that morning, he would kill himself anyway, the same way.  Headfirst into 
the armored glass."

      Out of habit, Misato avoided looking at the pictures of the 
personnel when they were still alive.  Absently, she noted that two of 
them had children and were the best in their fields, one a linguist, the 
other a priest, a third was a psychologist.  "So why now?"

      "ORACLE has theorized that the Nexus-5 series has a flaw in the 
wiring for its thought flow, due to the cerebral re-wiring required to 

increase the psionic potential and super-intelligence."

      Slowly, Misato said, "and it does not help that, processing 
information as quickly as a Nexus does, learning to communicate at the 
slow pace of other humans must be agonizing."

      "Yes.  Also, there is the question of its aethermetric balance..."

      Misato snorted.  "That hokey priesthood nonsense.  How can machines 
measure souls?"

      "Regardless, ORACLE has determined that the Ranma series must 
develop," an expression of acute distaste appeared in Ritsuko's eyes, 
"human-ness.  In its soul.  The alien component is conflicting with his 
stability."

      "And lucky me," Misato's lips twisted.  "I got picked."

      "You have the highest empathic scores in the entire Corps.  You 
also are the only survivor of the earlier Nexus experiments... and the 
first synchronization with the Dragon.  And, too, you were the one who 
found the Nexus-5 technology.  You were the one to find the Child 
himself."

      "And you think that the... Hell... those experiences were... will 
give me some connection to these poor kids?"  Her fists clenched tightly.  
"I lost all my Gift because of those experiments - "

      "ORACLE, the high priest himself, states that it is the only 
option.  You have the highest probability of success with the Ranmas.  
And the next of the German war-machines will be appearing soon.  
Intelligence reports suggest that they will attack the Doroks within the 
next year, and drop a God-Soldier on the province of Gransheikh.  Many of 
your friends, your retired troops, your teachers, still live there, do 
they not, Captain Katsuragi?  You are probably the only one who can 
establish a meaningful rapport with a Ranma.  Soon the Nazi Empire will 
feel strong enough to break their truce with us, and what then, Captain 
Katsuragi?"

      Misato swallowed, closed her eyes as memories tore through her.  
�Fuck you, Ritsuko."

      The Doctor handed her a thick sheaf of papers bound with black 
leather.

      So it was that she had walked alone, later that day, into the 
featureless white room with the metal bench and the single steel chair.  
And carefully, tentatively, she said to him, "Hello, Ranma.  I am Captain 
Katsuragi � your new teacher."

      He simply looked at her, eyes open, taking in as much as they could 
without revealing anything, in a manner that was nothing less than 
mechanical.

      "Katsuragi-san," he said, the syllables rattled off, quick and 
monotonous and efficient.

      But when she smiled at him, his brow twitched in something faintly 
like surprise, and she started by gently placing her hands on his 
shoulders and pulling him to his feet.  At first he had resisted, and 
Misato wondered if he would try to strike her, but slowly, he let her 
guide him.

      The days passed so smoothly and soon it was already day fifty.  He 
seemed to be opening up to her by then.  He especially liked to see 
pictures of the outside.  He was the first Ranma who smiled regularly.  
She had taught him how.  She liked to watch him draw.  The week before, 
he had painted a portrait of her � he had managed to find out that it was 

her birthday.  She almost cried at that, hugged him instead.  He was very 
sweet.  It was only that day when she had noticed that his eyes were not 
the same shade of blue.  The left was darker than the right, which had a 
slight tinge of green.

      She had heard of the things that were being said about her then, 
but it did not matter.  For she found herself being absorbed by this 
task, and by this child that was not.  She tried other things, other ways 
of teaching him, pictures, songs, dances.  Ancient machines that played 
moving pictures on the wall, with sounds in a language that was long 
forgotten.

      A year after, Ritsuko had told her about a discussion she had 
engaged their superior in, and apologized for the necessity of it.

---

      "This is unexpected," Ritsuko said to the man behind the desk.

      Cigarette smoke drifted upward lazily, sucked up by a vent high 
above.  The white leather of his gloves squeaked as he flexed his 
fingers.  "The Nexus subject is progressing faster with the Captain's 
intervention.  That was predicted."

      Ritsuko raised her voice, "She's not supposed to be showing the 
specimen all that classified data!  The specimen is not prepared to 
assimilate some of the information about itself and its predecessors, and 
the ancient vidfilms, the archives she has shown - the wave patterns as 
he sleeps are becoming unpredictable, I object to - "

      "Doctor, ORACLE has made its recommendation.  Your team has not 
been able to solve the problem, and we are running out of time.  The 
Captain has free reign in this, she is now responsible for the late-phase 
development of the Nexus-5 specimens.  She is not going to be taken off 
simply because she is trying to teach them how to dream."

      She scowled.  "She has already lost three of the specimens.  How 
many failures are we permitting her?"

      "Until she has stopped making progress with them."

      "Progress," Ritsuko spat, "she showed the specimen pornography the 
other day!  How is that supposed to be progress?"

      "Ah, that.  That is her safety precaution."

      "What?  How is such a vile - ?"

      He cut her off.  "Have you not seen the recorded session with 
Ranma18 yet?"

---

      And Ritsuko had hesitated, a little flicker of fear in her eyes as 
she had told Misato about what she had seen.  Sometimes she forgot how 
dangerous Misato was herself.

---

      Today was the dangerous day.  She tried not to think about that 
but...

      "Why so nervous today, Major?"

      Her alertness only increased when he asked about what he could do 
when he got out.

      "When your training is done, you will probably be sent on various 
missions.  A couple of easy ones to get your feet wet.  Yes, some would 
be dangerous.  Many.  Most.  But I think I should show you around soon � 
get you an ice cream to eat in the sunlight.  Get you some real sun," she 
smiled at him, the calculated smile that had won her through tight 
situations before.  And hoping that he was curious enough to be 
distracted by it, she hitched up her skirt to test a part of the model 
she had started to develop for his psyche.

      "Would they send me with you on your missions, Major?"

      That was the first warning.  Watching the recordings over and over, 
Misato had caught a warning twitch, a feeling from them just before they 
lost control.  A malevolent light in the eyes.  She was suddenly certain.  
Perhaps it had to do with the fragments of ESP she still possessed, 
perhaps it was just a knack, but...

      "I'd like to help you, Major," he leered.  "I'd like to show you 
what they're teaching me how to do..."  He was suddenly too close and 
behind her, breathing down her neck, one hand clawing down the front of 
her skirt.

      There was no time to be unsure.  There was only time to survive.  
Against such speed, striking first was the only way - so she did.  It was 
fortunate, really, that this Ranma had tried to rape her first - it 
slowed his response, as his hand was partly caught by the waistband of 
her skirt.  Showing off her legs had slowed him down just enough...  By 
reaching into her jacket (fortunate that she never buckled the holster 
tightly!), she twisted the gun, and fired through, barely missing her own 
ribs but catching him in the center of the chest.  She was still turning, 
as he was falling, and knowing the things he could do, she felt remorse 
only afterwards, for shooting him again, the last time between those 
mismatch-shaded blue eyes.

      More than remorse, afterwards.  She was just starting to like him 
and...  But she swallowed, ignoring the taste of vomit at the back of her 
throat.

      Another failure.  There were reports to fill out.  What could she 
have done?  No one else knew how he screamed at night, sometimes.

---

      "You'd never seen him in action before, Ritsuko?"

      "I've never seen anything move so fast," she paused.  "Misato, I'm 
sorry I asked you to do this.  You've lost your Corsairs to another 
commander, and.  You were the best military commander anyone had ever 
seen for fifty years -you could have made General.  The first woman 
general in a very, very longtime in Vai history.  I know this," she 
gestured at the laboratories and rooms where she had been almost confined 
to for some three years, "is not what you wanted."

      Misato shrugged.  "You were right.  It is necessary.  And if it 
were not me, someone else would have to kill or be killed by the Nexus-5 
specimens.  I am still the Red Cross of Torumekia, one of the three 
deadliest swords in these lands, and Ranma could have no better teacher, 
for what we need him to do."

      The Doctor looked away.  "I could have let the priests have him - 
you would have never known.  This... this is hurting you, Misato."

      The younger woman smiled ruefully.  "The priests would destroy the 
Nexus-5completely with their mystical incompetence.  They would make him 
useless with scripture and philosophy and the loss of feeling.  And... 
and really, this is not so terrible."

      It was not terrible, really.  For by then she had found a way, away 
to keep her Ranma from falling.

      And so Ranma21 had been the first, the first to be human.  And then 
he was taken from her.  And she raised another.  And that one was taken 

from her also.  Five more she raised and trained, for a brief sixty days, 
and they all were taken, for reasons she was not told.

      Misato did not ask what was done with Ranmas21-27.  She did her 
duty... but yes, it did pain her when they were taken, and taken from her 
so soon.

      She had vowed that Ranma28 would be the last one she would train.  
It was too much.  At night, she dreamed and she knew where the dreams 
came from, and she would wake with her hands clutching painfully at 
nothing.

      Exhausted, soon it had been the eighth week for Ranma28.  And she 
did what she had to do.  They never asked how it was that she had 
achieved her breakthrough, and she would not tell.

      It was a fine, glorious summer day, without a cloud in the azure 
sky.  A warm breeze swept along the hillside, and tall grass in the 
distance shimmered and bent in waves like an emerald sea.  He lay on a 
white sheet, dressed in loose black slacks and a white shirt.  His feet 
were bare, and he was deciding if the sensation of the grass against his 
heels was pleasant or not.  Beside his head was a large wicker basket, 
from which a woman in a yellow sundress drew a sandwich.

    If he tried not to see them, he could even ignore the black walls in 
the distance fencing in this secret garden, could even ignore the dome of 
shimmering force enclosing this place.

      "Ranma?  Do you feel like a sandwich?  I may not be able to cook 
much but I make a mean pastrami."

      He sniffed curiously.  "I think you cook fine."

      "Ah, that's just because you've never actually eaten anyone else's 
cooking yet!" but she was smiling as she sat back beside him and bit 
deeply into her own sandwich.  Chewed and swallowed.  She sighed as she 
glanced at his face, its usual tense expressionless unmoving.  "You 
should remember to blink, you know."

      "Katsuragi-san - "

      "Misato.  Call me Misato."

      "Misato.  Why I am I here?"

      She mumbled as she took another bite, chewing, "to see the sun, 
dummy.  To maybe find for yourself a reason.  To find out what it is you 
are to fight for."

      A bird perched on a tree branch above them.  A little brown 
sparrow.  Its chirping was not unpleasant to Ranma's ears.

      "How did Ranma21 die?"

      She swallowed, lips drawn into a thin line.  She put the sandwich 
down on a plate off to one side.  It was always dangerous when a Ranma 
asked about a predecessor.  "He died in," unobtrusively, her left hand 
drifted to her knee, left bare by the sundress.  Those fingers slid up 
slowly.  "He died in honorable combat.  The first of the Ranmas to 
fulfill his purpose."

      "You don't have to reach for your knife."

      Misato blinked.  That had been completely out of his line of sight.  
His brow twitched, and she was suddenly struck by the vague impression 
that Ranma was laughing.  Even though his expression was the same.  'You 
are laughing at me, aren't you, Ranma?' she thought.

      "A little," he said.

      "Don't intrude into my thoughts uninvited.  It's not polite."  She 
watched him as she said this, felt a stuttering, almost stung withdrawal.

      "I did not mean to."

      "Sorry.  I know that."  She looked away, tried to relax.  That was 
true -it was probably a by-product of the link.  "So how do you feel, 
Ranma?  What do the sun and the breeze make you feel?"

      "I smell seawater in the distance.  The colors are much more vivid 
out here, I - I'm sorry."

      "Why?"

      His hands opened, clenched.  With an oddly delicate touch, he 
pulled up some grass in those hands.  "I do not know the words, Major."

      "Do you feel good out here?  Is it too hot?"

      The sharp scent of the grass crushed between his fingers, it did 
not quite sting his eyes but.

      "Here," Misato said as she offered him a square of linen.

      Ranma took it, said, "what is this for?"

      She shook her head as she placed her hand over his, and gently 
wiped away those tears on his cheeks.  He did not seem so strange or 
alien, really, she thought.  Not yet.  "It's for wiping your face.  When 
you cry, or sneeze, or cough.  Things like that."  It was easy to forget 
about how much warmer his skin was than hers, from the accelerated 
metabolism.  "I hope you're not developing an allergy.  No, I guess 
that's not really possible, you haven't been exposed yet."

      "Not an allergic response."  He dabbed at his eyes.  "I don't know 
why."

      She brought a metal canister out of the basket.  "Would you like 
some water?"

      He shook his head and lay back down.  Was he hesitating?  "Do you 
want to tell me something, Ranma?"

      "The link, Major, ah."  He closed his eyes, reached out with his 
hand, fumbling.  How else was she to understand what it was like for him?

      Misato sighed as she took it in hers.

      It was just darkness at first, and then flickers of color started 
to move across the murky shadows between them.  Lights.  Numbers.  
Sounds.  Feelings, sensations, a huge range of them, and she felt his 
fear at the unfamiliar taste to most of them.  He opened his eyes and she 
saw through them so many leaves in the branches above - and in that 
glance he had counted about half of them.  The sensation of grass against 
his skin.  The sun above, the way the air moved here, the tinges in the 
scents, the way they mixed.  The way her own scent blended with 
everything else.  The sight of the slender muscles in her legs.  The awe 
he had felt as they had watched the sun rise earlier that morning.

      And the feeling that he should know this, that he was somehow 
running away from it.  Heart beating faster as the fear grew.  So she 
hummed something to him, through the tingling something otherness of the 
link, soft, soothing murmuring without words, images, soft colors, no 
edges as she slowed down for him the input of stimuli, helped him focus 
on one thing, one memory at a time.  Unable to help herself, she showed a 
little bit of herself as well, how she felt at - the sharpness of the 
grass, the distant sound of water on the shore, the sight of the endless 
blue above.  The aftertaste of the pastrami in her mouth.  The tingle in 
the way his skin felt against her fingertips.  To her vision, there was 
only openness in him, a large emptiness still being filled as it drew 

more lights and colors and feelings to itself; what did she look like to 
him, with those looming black walls behind which she kept herself hidden?

      As his breathing eased, they both withdrew.  Misato was flushed, a 
vague feeling of embarrassment, or shyness keeping her from looking at 
his eyes.  The link always made her feel this way, as if he had seen 
something of her that he should not have.  She wondered what he would do 
when he realized that he had a strength to tear down the barriers in her 
thoughts, to see the terrible fullness of her soul.  The possibility, it 
frightened her, but she had a duty.  And she could admit to herself that 
the intimacy of this contact was addictive, and that the way he hid 
nothing was beyond simply trusting her.

      This was what kept her in the Nexus project, when it seemed that 
all hope for the Ranma series was lost.  She had found it first in a 
brief, accidental touching of thought with Ranma21, and knew she had 
found the way.

      "Are you my Mother, Misato?"

      Sometimes, he would ask these questions from nowhere, and it would 
partly delight, partly scare her.  "Ah.  Your guardian, certainly, but."  
Nervous, it was best to just laugh a little as she scratched the back of 
her head.  "I don't think I'd be a good mother to anyone, Ranma.  I don't 
know that I could be yours."

      "Why won't you let me see?"

      Behind the walls?  She hugged her legs to herself, rested her 
forehead on her knees.  "You don't want to see what's there, Ranma.  
There's a lot of... disgusting things... that people keep buried in their 
souls.  I looked too far once, when I still had the gift.  I won't do 
that again.  I don't think you should learn what's there..."

      "You look into mine."

      "... it's different for you, Ranma.  I can't explain it any better 
than that."

      They stayed to watch the sun set that day, his first.  And shared 
the link again, afterwards.  The fiftieth day was over.

      Then the sixtieth day was over, and still this Ranma had not been 
taken from her.

      And then it was the eightieth day, then the hundredth.  It grew 
harder to keep her distance.

      And soon, it was one year later and Misato had not been able to 
keep her distance and then she had discovered what this last Ranma was 
for.  And thus promoted, she was in command of the last hope of humanity.

      She laughed when she had discovered her title, and wept, too.  War 
General of a whole new army.  The army of the Dragon.

      Immediately, she had sent out nearly a legion of couriers.  To the 
officers formerly under her command who would be transferred to her 
secret army, currently scattered at different postings all throughout 
Torumekia and the periphery.  To equipment directors and engineers, for 
maintenance personnel, and the new prototype Melefs and Guy-Melefs with 
the Shinkarsky-rail-lances.  To the ones who were to rebuild the lost 
fortress in the Ocean of Sands, her new base of operations.  To the dozen 
remaining scholars who knew of the locations of the old temples of 
learning.  To Kaji and his spies who were now to cooperate with her, 

giving her access to their extensive intelligence nets.  To Ritsuko, 
whose laboratories and instrumentation would need to be transferred.  To 
the Princess Regent, thanking her for this new opportunity to better 
serve the Vai Empire and assuring her of her fervor to carry out these 
new duties.

      And the year after that, when the new base was ready, she had sent 
one last courier who would need to cross the Sea of Corruption.  To the 
Valley of the Wind, where she had known the last Gifted Ones to be.  She 
hoped that it was in time.  Already, the Sand Fortress had been attacked 
thrice in the past six months.

      At night, Misato wondered how much longer the "peace" with the 
Nazis would last.

      She would fall asleep, looking at the pictures that were all alike 
but different.  Arranged by number.

      Ranma18, laughing as he was painting something.

      Ranma19, brow furrowed in concentration as he concentrated, 
fiercely, on learning how to dance.

      Ranma20, sculpting the shape of a woman in clay, tongue extending 
just a little out of the corner of his mouth as he worked.

      The seven Ranmas that were taken from her, these pictures were the 
plain, clinical portraits of them taken from the medical files.  There 
had not been time for them to explore the depth of their personality... 
and by then, Misato had been trying to distance herself from the work.  
She regretted that now, and spent hours wondering what those pictures 
would be if she had decided differently.  If she had fought to keep them 
instead.

      For Ranma28, there was no picture.  There was the painting he had 
made, a simple white vase with flowers.  She knew better than to look 
into it too closely, but she loved the gift just the same.  It may not 
have been a face, but it was more like him, more like the first child she 
had saved from the darkness than any of the others.  There were other 
paintings, too, but those had been from Ranma18, and those she kept in 
the living room, so that her bedroom would be safe from nightmares.

      She wondered if she would have pictures of the two pilots yet to 
come.  Maybe she would.

      So she lay quietly, waiting for the dreams to come, with her arms 
wide open.

---


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