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EPILOGUE-II
-I-
Tetsuyama Fortress
Planet Angbad, Melkor System
The League of Five Nails
4 March 3026
"Hikaru Gosunkugi, First Lord of the Star League."
The title would take some getting used to, Hikaru decided. Still,
it had a delicious feel to it as he said the words aloud once more. He
was going to be the First Lord of Akane's new Star League.
The suspicious part of him warned that it was just a sop to garner
the support of the League of Five Nails for the new order Akane had in
mind for the Inner Sphere. He supposed that it could be true, for the
position of First Lord did not carry with it the power it had once held
in the grip of the Camerons' hereditary dynasty. The stranglehold on the
Inner Sphere the Camerons and their Terran Hegemony had enjoyed ended with
the assassin, Stephan Amaris, and even General Kerensky himself could not
restore it when the Usurper was overthrown and put to death.
Now he was to be First Lord, but his powers were largely ornamental
in function. He technically had political control over the new Star League
Defense Force - once everyone got around to actually raising it, of course
- but with the provision that for at least the first twenty years, it would
be directly commanded by one of the Tendo line. Otherwise, his powers
extended only as far as setting Star League policy, overseeing the eventual
bureacracy that would spring up to administer the League, convening and
adjourning the High Council, and casting the tie-breaking vote, if the
need should arise. There was some power there, he supposed, but not much.
On the other hand, the decision to make him the premier First Lord
had carried with it real power over his meddlesome parents. Popular support
for him had never been high, being the recluse that he was, but now, he
was actually cheered by the people upon his return to Angbad. The Furinkan
Combine was retreating to its own systems, and the Third Succession War
seemed to be at an end. Hikaru was quick to capitalize on that, and with
his elevation to First Lord in a new Star League, he had managed to check-
mate his parents into abdicating.
The removal of so burdensome a yoke had done wonders for him. He felt
reborn. His only regrets now were the unavenged death of Tetsuo, and that
he had been unable to remove Ranma Saotome from the equation involving
himself and Akane Tendo.
That Nabiki had a hand in Tetsuo's death, Hikaru was now quite sure.
How he could obtain revenge for the loss of his cousin and best friend, he
was less certain. She was well guarded by her family, and her isolation was
believed to be almost total. That she had not been executed for her treason
came as a surprise to Hikaru, but as plans for the new Star League began to
unfold, he understood her true value to the Tendos.
As for Ranma Saotome, he did not know. The impossible fool had been
remarkably resilient to the assassination attempts Hikaru had quietly
- very quietly! - ordered against him. It was also maddeningly clear that
Akane was hopelessly in love with Ranma. That fact alone was enough to make
Hikaru wish that Tatewaki Kuno had been correct in assuming that Ranma had
some sorcerous hold over her. He knew better, but he still found himself
wishing that it were so.
In the stillness of his chambers the sound of an ancient book creaking
open was loud enough to make him wince. His slender, spidery fingers traced
along the lines of text, absently searching for an unconventional solution
to his problems. He predicted that many an hour would be spent under the
flickering light of votive candles as he continued his occult studies with
a renewed vigor. There was no viable military answer to the issue of Ranma
and Akane. The political arena created by the new Star League was yet to be
established, and so he could not seek for answers there, even if he had the
time and the free hand with which to act against an undesired marriage.
That left only one option to him: he would pursue those avenues of
occult power that he had wisely avoided in the past. He understood the
risks, or at least thought he did, and had come to the conclusion that
without Akane Tendo by his side, being the First Lord of the Star League
was empty and devoid of real meaning. His lips trembled as he chanced
across a relevant passage, and he had to look away for fear of
unintentionally mumbling aloud something dreadful. Yes, more study
- careful study - was required before he was ready to take that step.
He could wait. Being the prisoner of Tatewaki Kuno had taught him a
measure of patience that would serve him well in his plans. He would not
give up on his dreams of making Akane Tendo his bride.
-II-
The South Tower of Azure Cloud Castle
Planet Nerima, Capella System
The Nerima Confederation
28 December 3025
Kasumi Tendo paused at the top of the stone steps to rest, as she had
done every day for the last five months. Four heavily armed Marines from the
5th Brigade remained at silent attention behind the aligned-crystal steel
and superhard transparent polycarbonate walls of the security lobby. The
lobby cordoned the tower from the winding stairwell that was the only direct
connection with the rest of the world. She presented her pass from Grand
Duke Tendo to them through a security drawer, which ensured that no human
contact ever passed through the barrier without strict controls.
Electromagnetically-driven bolts threw themselves open with loud
*clunks* as her pass was approved and a phone call made to the main
security station within the castle proper to report the entry. Kasumi
stood patiently while the heavy door swung open towards her, and a Marine
beckoned her into the mantrap beyond. The eldest Tendo daughter did so
quietly, knowing that both doors to the mantrap could not physically be
open at the same time, and waited for the first door to close before the
second one opened.
Once she was scanned for weapons and tools, the second door slid open
and the Marine escorted her through. Once she was safely on the other side
of the barrier, her noble status and privelege was re-established. There
would be no further escort for her unless she requested it, and she never
requested it. The Marine passed her through with a salute.
The South Tower had once been a terrifying prison, a place of torture
and murder where Confederation nobles and even quite a few Tendos from the
Civil War in the late 29th Century had been taken to keep them out of the
way - usually to await execution, although a few had spent the rest of
their lives imprisoned here when it was not politically prudent to do away
with them in an official capacity. Kasumi knew of several Tendos from the
Civil War period who had been quietly murdered during their exile in the
South Tower for that very reason.
Despite the fresh paint, the fine wallpaper, the plush carpeting, and
the exquisite wood paneling, Kasumi could almost see the blood on the walls,
and could almost smell the madness and decay from decades of imprisonment.
Far worse than any treason she had commited against her father and her
country, Nabiki's actions had forced Kasumi to face the darkest aspects of
her family's history, the ugly times during the First Succession War when
she would have been ashamed to call herself a Tendo. Nabiki had reminded
them all that the difference between treason and legitimacy was merely a
matter of who won out in the end, and that within the warmth and love of
family, even vipers could make their nests.
She knocked gently on the door to the sitting room and opened it.
Nabiki was there: in the same chair and in the same pose as she had every
single time Kasumi had come to visit. Kasumi sighed quietly to herself at
the sight of her middle sister. She sighed because she would not permit
herself to scream - in rage or in anguish, though she wanted to do both.
Nabiki, for her part, remained silent and stoic at the table. Coffee
steamed from a silver pot. The aroma had the rich fragrance of beans grown
on New Hawaii, and Kasumi wondered briefly if they had been given as a
gift to Nabiki by Tatewaki Kuno when he had come to Nerima to sign the
instrument of surrender.
Nabiki followed her with her eyes as she approached the table to sit.
A slight nod of her head was all the assent she would give. As Kasumi took
a chair across the table, Nabiki's eyes flicked to the blue sky beyond the
window.
"Why do you keep coming here?" she asked finally. Her voice was filled
with a scorn that had become tired with frequent use. Her question was the
same question she asked Kasumi every day.
Kasumi replied with the same answer she gave every day.
"It's my duty as your sister," she said quietly.
Nabiki's eyes never left the window. She sipped at her coffee for a
moment, then set her cup down before her.
"That is so much bullshit, sis," she spat. The scorn in her voice had
returned with a vengeance. "You walk up six hundred meters of stone steps
every day because it's the only way you can think of to assuage your guilt."
Kasumi blinked at this. She did not reply.
"Your silence speaks volumes," Nabiki added after a satisfied moment
of quiet.
"What exactly do I have to feel guilty about?" Kasumi replied, her
voice taking on a hard edge of its own that gave Nabiki momentary pause.
"You are here for reasons entirely of your own doing, Nabiki."
Nabiki took another sip of coffee. The bitterness of the brew was
reflected in her voice as she spoke. "You feel guilty, dear sister,
because you continue to believe that if only you had stayed on Nerima
instead of going off to fight the Combine on Oni, you could have done more
to keep me out of trouble, so that none of this would have happened."
Nabiki's words hurt, if only because there was so much truth behind
them.
"Save yourself the grief and stop believing that," she added. "You
were never going to stop me with tough love." Only then did she finally
turn to look at her older sister. "Stop coming here, Kasumi. You're just
wasting your time and mine."
Kasumi poured herself a cup of coffee from the silver pot. She then
took a cube of sugar from the bowl with deliberate care and sweetened her
cup. Nabiki glared at her in silence as she next stirred in a measure of
cream.
"The day I stop coming to visit you, Nabiki, is the day that Akane
changes her mind about your sentence," Kasumi said to her as she sipped
gently at her cup.
Nabiki flinched ever so slightly at that. It was infuriating to spend
empty days and intolerable nights thinking about how her life was solely in
the hands of her baby sister. That Daddy wanted to have her executed for
treason was no surprise - since the day Mother had died of a disease that
a doctor two centuries earlier would have laughed at, he had always been
the most reserved, even cold, towards her. Akane had become the darling in
Daddy's eye, the one most like Mom. Now she was damn near ruling the
Confederation herself!
"I wouldn't mind," she said finally to Kasumi. "Death would be a
break from the monotony of imprisonment in this gilded cage."
"There are times that I think that death would be too easy for you,"
Kasumi retorted. The riposte was so unlike her that Nabiki found herself
doing a mental double-take. "Can't you even once imagine the harm you
caused us? Or the damage you did to the Confederation?"
Nabiki shored up her position with an arrogant laugh. Kasumi was
never one for intricate head games, since she always wore her heart on
her sleeve. "Please," she snorted. "Whatever harm I may have caused was
nothing to the ten years Daddy sat on his ass while the Confederation
crumbled around him. What was I supposed to do, sit there and watch
everything we had go up in flames?"
"It's always about money with you," Kasumi returned coolly. "You
could never see past the price tag of anything - not even family."
Nabiki had listened to that tired old saw from her older sister
enough times to let it slide past without effect. "We've been through this
a thousand times, sis. I fail to see the point in arguing it again. I may
have the next forty or fifty years to spend in this awful place - unless
of course whoever is sitting the throne some day decides he needs to make
room for someone more important..." She drew her finger across her throat
with the appropriate sound effects. "In which case I can only hope that
they decide to do me quick. But until then, stop boring me with your
tired old platitudes and your meaningless values."
Her eyes bored into Kasumi.
"Face it, sis; we stopped being a family when Mom died, and you
know it."
Kasumi looked away. "There are times when I feel that Mother is
still with us," she replied in a hushed voice. "And that you're the one
who died."
Nabiki's coffee soured in her mouth at that. She swallowed it down
with a grimace and looked out the window to hide her reaction from Kasumi.
"Yeah, well, that would have made things better for everyone now,
wouldn't it?" she managed.
"Stop it, Nabiki," Kasumi snapped. "If you really *do* wish to die
so badly, then do something about it. There hasn't been a suicide watch
on you in months."
Nabiki was surprised by Kasumi's frank invitation to kill herself,
and decided that their conversation might prove to be interesting after
all.
"Oh no," she replied with a crooked grin. There was mirth there in
her expression, but it was the malicious kind; the kind of grin a sadist
wears when he pulls the legs off of an insect before burning it down
with a magnifying glass. "I wouldn't give you or the others the
satisfaction. If you want me dead, you'll have to kill me yourselves.
I want to see if you have the guts to do it. In the meantime, I'll
content myself with the notion that every day I'm alive is a day you'll
be quietly worrying about some plot I may be hatching to escape and
overthrow you again."
"You can't do anything here," Kasumi replied. Nevertheless, the
fear of just such a thing happening was the reason why Father had wanted
to execute Nabiki.
Nabiki shrugged. "You're probably right," she conceded. Her
expression suggested otherwise, but how much of it was concocted on
the spot to sow the seeds of doubt and how much of it was genuine,
Kasumi could only guess.
Kasumi wanted to reach across the table and shake some sense into
Nabiki, but she remained calm and cool as she always did. How could
anyone grow so far apart from everyone that mattered to her? It was
the question she had been asking of Nabiki for years - ever since
Mother had passed away, although the signs were perhaps there long
before then, she realized. How could Nabiki stand to be so dead inside?
A look at Nabiki as she poured herself a fresh cup of coffee
gave her a glimpse at the answer. She knew she was dead inside, and
the tiny smears of mascara at the corners of her eyes, the way her
lips seemed to hang with a sullen heaviness for just a moment before
she licked them self-consciously and took a shallow breath to cover
it up, and the ancient weariness behind her scornful expressions were
her way of letting it show.
Nabiki hated herself, Kasumi realized. She hated what she had
become. Perhaps she even hated what she had done. It was more than
just the burden of living in such an oppressive exile, it was something
she had been carrying around inside her for over a decade. All she had
left was her own pride, and those little weapons of spite and malice
she could muster to turn aside the probing gaze of anyone who might
guess the truth about her.
It was heartbreaking to Kasumi, who wanted nothing more than to
take her little sister into a hug and love her until the hate and the
self-loathing were abjured forever. She wanted to execute the cold and
cruel manipulator that Nabiki had become, and spare the little girl with
the mahogany-colored bob of hair and the playful nature that she had
once been.
Not even Nabiki was as surprised as Kasumi was when she found
herself rising up out of her chair, pulling the middle Tendo daughter
from her own seat, and hugging her tight.
"Kasumi," Nabiki hissed uncomfortably in her ear. "What the hell
do you think you're doing?"
"Hush," Kasumi replied, her arms circling around Nabiki in an
embrace that was loving, and yet too tight for her sister to slip out
of easily in escape.
"Let go of me, goddammit!" Nabiki protested bitterly, and squirmed
to no effect in Kasumi's arms.
Kasumi remained silent, her eyes closed as she thought about much
happier days in their lives. She focused everything she had on the Nabiki
she once loved, and wanted to love again. It was foolish of her, and she
knew that one hug wasn't going to heal wounds that had been festering for
ten years and more inside her sister's soul, but perhaps there was
something to be said for tough love that Nabiki didn't bargain on.
She drew upon all of the love in her own life; love for Father;
love for Akane and her somewhat pig-headed but nonetheless-wonderful-for-
her-fiancee, Ranma; love for her dear friend in adversity, Mrs. Saotome;
and of course, love for a man she had often overlooked in the past as
little more than a sweet but bumbling mechwarrior turned family physician
- Doctor Tofu Ono. Nabiki squirmed less in her embrace now, as if resigned
to ride out the hug to its end. Kasumi gave her an extra-tight squeeze just
because she could.
"I think there's still hope for you," she whispered in Nabiki's ear.
"That's why I come here day after day."
"Don't waste your time," Nabiki growled in reply, though her
bitterness had lost most of its bite.
"I don't think you're a waste of time," Kasumi said to her. "And I
intend to continue proving that to you."
She felt Nabiki shudder in her embrace, and just briefly, felt her
sister's arms come up to return the hug. A single sob, felt more than heard,
escaped Nabiki's lips. Then she managed to throw herself off and spun around
in a huff.
"Get out," Nabiki barked. "Leave me the hell alone."
Kasumi nodded as her hands clasped at her waist. "Very well," she
replied. As she turned to go, she set a thick manila file on the table from
the satchel she carried with her during the day. "I brought something to help
keep you occupied," she said.
Nabiki eyed the file warily, her suspicions on full alert after the
surprise mugging she had received.
"What is it?"
Kasumi smiled gently at the door. "Some proposals of Akane's for a
new Star League. I thought you might appreciate a look."
"Ha," Nabiki snorted, getting back to her old grouchy self again.
"Akane and diplomacy? Please... It would be a wonder if her precious 'Star
League' lasted six months, let alone the ten years she supposedly won from
the Combine."
Kasumi arched an eyebrow at her. "Perhaps you have a few suggestions
then?" she asked sweetly.
Nabiki knew she had been taken for a sucker.
"This was your plan all along," she accused. "Butter me up with some
affection, then hire me on as slave labor to fix all the problems in your
pet political project!"
"The affection was genuine, Nabiki," Kasumi replied. "And your
assistance isn't demanded at all. I just thought you might like to read
something that wasn't restricted to romance novels and three-year old
gossip magazines."
Nabiki eyed the folder hungrily. There was bound to be current
events information in there - something she had been forbidden to access
from her South Tower library terminal. Cut off from the outside world
with only Kasumi for company, she had been starving for real news for
five months.
The underlying intent was clear. At the moment she had no value to
the family except a certain sentimental attachment. Doing the grunt work
for Akane's crazy Star League gave her a value beyond that. Nabiki read a
little closer between the lines. Could it have been a quiet signal from
Akane that, in time, all could be forgiven?
She wasn't sure she wanted all to be forgiven. It seemed as if,
except for remaining among the living, she would get very little out of
a deal that would probably entail years of grueling effort on her part.
Her pride stung at the thought of it.
"Real cute, sis. I underestimated you," she replied. "Both of you,"
she amended.
Kasumi smiled once more, then closed the door behind her.
Nabiki stared at the manila file and tried not to shake. She was
still feeling a little disoriented by Kasumi's impromptu embrace. The
more she thought about it, the more she realized that it hadn't been
some put-on to soften her up for the work. Kasumi just didn't operate
like that.
Kasumi wore her heart on her sleeve.
She caught herself in another sob as her throat began to sting.
The problem with love, she realized, was that you always got hurt by
it. Always.
She wiped away a drop of moisture from her eyes and opened the
file. There was work to be done - the first work she had done in months -
and perhaps, she allowed through her skepticism, the most important work
she had ever done in her life.
END OF EPILOGUE TWO
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