Disclaimer: The playground is by Rumiko Takahashi, I'm only swinging on the monkey bars. Remember to leave the grounds cleaner than you found them and please don't feed the Trolls. This story is archived at http://www.kawaiikunee.com/slp/ Release 1.2 (Dec. 04, 2000) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ranma & Akane: A Love Story. Chapter 2: The Second Day Part A: Duel of Engines; A dream of blood and wolves. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is Tokyo, Nerima ward in the darkest early morning, the time when old men die. Focus in: to a large maison in the newer, outer part of the ward; where the transients go, and where those who can't afford a _real_ Nerima address find space to live. It's been here for 40 years. It's been dying, slowly, for 35. Focus in: to the eighth floor, on the corner, in the back. There's no elevator to this floor, (the shaft is boarded shut, there's no money in elevators) only rickety stairs. There's no hallway light, but then no one here should be going in or out when it's dark, anyway (there's no _stairway_ light either). Focus in. The apartment has one main room, one bathroom with a small shower but no furo, one room that combines kitchen and breakfast nook, and one closet. Most of it was furnished by the building owner in a style that can be described as 'severely minimal' and the current occupant hasn't added much. Take a look at the main room. Perhaps twelve feet on a side, floored in a dingy parquet linoleum, it holds two pieces of furniture. Against one wall, underneath the only window, sits a footlocker. The door in the wall to the left leads to the kitchen, the door to the right, to the bathroom. In the corner formed by the back wall and the left is the other piece of furniture, a futon. Look a bit longer. To two pieces of furniture, add three other items of interest. The first, placed just in front of the leather bound chest, is a sword stand. On its upper tier, edge upward, as is proper, rests a sword. A blade about three feet long, of the ancient pattern called /tachi/, chisel pointed, strait backed, uncurved. Its hilt is of wood, covered with ray-skin and wound with silken cords; its tsuba is of plain, unmarked brass. Its scabbard, resting beneath it on the stand, is of plain, black-lacquered, common pine. A more commonplace, workaday weapon would be difficult to imagine. No flamboyant artwork on _this_ blade, no feeling of legendary glory waiting to be won. The only feeling an observer receives from this blade is: 'Gee, that looks really sharp'. Look behind it. On the chest, precisely in the center of its top, and precisely in the center of the moonlight streaming through the window, is a small bowl made of silver. In it floats a pool of softly luminescent liquid, reminiscent of quicksilver, but more fluid. Look deeper. See the small assemblage suspended slightly above the surface of the liquid: two pieces of carven ivory flanking a ring of palest jade. See how the ivory pieces, if fitted together, would also form a ring, fitted tightly around the jade core. See the sandalwood cover waiting patiently to the side of the chest lid; if it was placed over the bowl it would fit perfectly around its rim, and cover the whole without disturbing it in any way. Wait! Look. Did you see? Did you see the bead of soft light that fell from just above the bowl? Look above the rings above the bowl, about six inches, do you see? A pale circle of light hangs almost invisibly in midair, a slight thickening of the flowing moonlight. Now watch the two small beads of light at the top of the circle; see them travel slowly around its circumference to the bottom. See them gain in brightness, so slowly, ever so slowly, as they flow. See them gleam as they pass, one by one, the geometric lines that cross and re- cross the design. Watch their color change, ever so faintly, as they pass each of the tracings of ancient Chinese ideograms that form an inner ring of pale, translucent, radiance. Watch them meet at the very bottom of the circle, meet and join. Watch the newly formed bead of luminescent liquid hang breathlessly a moment, then fall *blip* the six inches to the rings above the bowl. Watch it seem to pass through the jade ring, then watch the jade, and then the ivory, glow. Ever so faintly, ever so briefly. Watch the cycle begin again. Now turn to the futon. See the masculine figure sprawled in sleep. So inelegant for one who, awake, is so graceful. Look closer again. See the scars on face and arms. Trace the blow that must have fallen to lay that path across larynx and shoulder. Contemplate the tracery of past violence across his bare chest and the portions of his legs that lie beyond his boxer shorts. Scars like wide, raised, ridges six inches long; scars like nearly invisible threads, white against the tanned skin; scars of all dimensions in between. Marvel, lastly, at the tattoo. A dragon, marked with the symbols of yang power. Sprawled across chest and stomach, winding around his left shoulder and across his back to flirt with his right scapula with its tail. Every scale and claw perfect, detailed in line, marvelous in color, drawn by a master's hand. So perfect that the simple act of the man's normal breathing seems to make it live and breathe alike. Observe. See its fierce whiskers, its masculine lines. See the eye closed in sleep, the coiled body peaceful and still. It is fortunate, no doubt, that it sleeps so peacefully - were it to awaken, its wrath would surely be terrible. No doubt. No doubt at all. Fortunate, then, that the sleep of its bearer is likewise deep, and peaceful. Fortunate that he is locked, deeply and thoroughly, in dreams. Fortunate for the dreamer, and also, perhaps, for the observer. Look deeper, you can see into the dream itself. But be cautious, as you do: it is all too easy to become lost in dreams, all too easy to give them too much credence. In the end, remember this: however exact the remembrance, however complete the illusion seems, you, yourselves, are also but dreaming. Indulging in a metaphor, so to speak, for a somewhat more ... complex ... reality. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Impressions of gentle sunlight first, midmorning in the middle of spring: perhaps late April, or early May. Look around to see an open field, uncultivated; spring grass as tall as your horse's knees, spotted with wildflowers, strewn with butterflies. A hundred yard away to left and right the forest rises, dark with many pines, but drifted gold with their pollen. See the horse beneath you: coat black as night, mane and tail twin charcoal sprays. Hear the birdsong like a many-voiced silver cataract, staccato tattoo of several horses cantering, gentle rustle of the wind. Usagi rides his roan ten yards to your left, his straw hat thrown back off his head, his ears streaming back in the breeze of your passage. Noriyuki-sama sits his bay five yards behind and between you, his plump, cheerful, panda face popping up above the head of his warhorse with the enthusiasm of the twelve-year-old boy he is. Tomoe-san rides her dappled gelding five yards behind her lord, her cat-ears pricked forward, face earnest and alert. Always devoted to her lord's safety, no matter her delight in the sunlit day, no matter her discomfort in the storming, bitter night. Odd how her cat's face causes no fear in your dream, odd how a cat grown man-tall and stood upright is, somehow, not the kind of cat your subconscious so reviles. Poetry from Usagi, chuckles from Tomoe and yourself, delighted laughter from Noriyuki-sama, each close enough to speak, close enough to laugh, but far enough away that danger cannot take two at once. Next the fresh dew-smell, overlying the faint bruised grass, delicate scent of wildflowers, honest smell of horse, and leather, sharp tang of steel and lacquer from the light breastplate hidden beneath your outer shirt. Smells of spring, overlaid by smells of travel, sadly intermixed with smells of danger, and of threatening war. Last the sun's gentle warmth, slanting from above. Caressing breeze across your face, gentler than the wind of your passage. Rythmic pounding of hooves, the saddle's steady rise and fall. Thump of braid to your back, followed by the click as the ring at its end slaps home. Creak of saddle-leather, slap of stirrups, *tick* and *clink* of breastplate, thump of sword. Just beside your track a wolf cub starts a mouse, pounces, grips his prey and kills. Pounding hooves disturb his meal, his jaws drip blood, his eyes glow green, but his pounce is intercepted by your sandal, he sprawls before your progress. As the hoof comes down, a viper takes his place. Too late: crunch under hoof, writhing rope behind. Tomoe's naginata snaps downward, rises coiled by serpent, snaps to throw the corpse away. Suddenly pounding down a steep slope towards a lonely road. Dark pines grow close on either side, black clouds, bitter wind, sharp and biting scent of storm. Before you a party of horsemen turns toward you from their place along the road. The war mask of the leader makes their identity unmistakable - Hijiki, and a dozen of his guard. Closed view from helm, O-yori heavy on your limbs. No daikyu, so a charge will have to do - Yari straight before you, parallel with Usagi's charge, behind you, Tomoe's naginata spins in a blurring circle as she gallops past Noriyuki to shield him from his enemies. First contact, and your enemy's throat sprays blood, a brief side-rein as you break your foe's wall, rip open the side of another. Iron tang of blood, sewer reek of sudden death, background flash of lightning as the storm grows, and threatens now in earnest. Tomoe's naginata takes the heads of the two guards in her path; Usagi has collapsed the other corner of their formation, and converges on Hijiki, two bodies left sprawling behind him in pools of sudden scarlet. Rein left and launch your yari at Hijiki, he dodges but the guard behind him does not. Tenchuu flashes from its scabbard in an arc that takes it through two enemies' necks - stronger tang of iron now, sticky crimson mist sprays face and helm, blood-drops *tac* *tac* *tac* off armor as you spin and drive towards the center of the now encarmined battleground. Usagi has downed his foe, throwing him into another: thunder of hooves as he follows up the advantage, crimson rivers as he passes the still struggling tangle. Tomoe overmasters her last opponent, beating down his guard; scarlet clots the blade of her naginata as it punches, once, twice, thrice through his backplate. Three warriors form an arc, centered where Hijiki waits: unbowed, but now alone. Move to meet him, Tenchuu held low beside you. Then the wolf springs, leaping from the trees. It is larger now, and crueler: already its jaws drip poison spittle and its eyes blaze hatred and rage. Tenchuu chops it from the air and it tumbles broken to the ground, but it rises to its feet, healed anew in an instant, and now it is to your off side. Armored in steel, your foot kicks free of its stirrup and meets it in midair. Flailing, it flips over your head, Tenchuu blurs through its diseased form a score of times at least. Scattered in many places, no healing will save it this time. Yet the delay is costly: Hijiki cuts through your defense, a stream of fire across your throat and shoulder, falling from your mount to roll frantically across the ground. Tomoe is down on one knee, injured, defending Lord Noriyuki from half-a-dozen foes. Usagi kills his opponent and you rise to your feet, Tenchuu hissing in the pattern called 'fire wheel', the three enemies about you falling back slain; horizontal fans of glistening crimson spray across the little inn's tables and tatami, coloring bowls of rice and clay mugs of beer now abandoned and overturned. You turn toward Hijiki, as Usagi turns to the window in alarm. A barrage of arrows thunks like hailstones into the thin, plaster wall, piercing it in places to a depth of three or four inches, embedding themselves in the beams and rafters. You turn away from the bodies piled in the center of the floor as you sniff the air in alarm: smoke! They're trying to burn you out! Quickly you string your daikyu, eight arrows in your fist: the most that you can put in the air at once. A burst of archery drives the encircling foes on one side of the inn into cover, cowering. Now, out the window, through their weakened line, run! Around the corner now, galloping over treacherous shale, flakes of rotten stone spraying back from your horses' hooves. Thunder of hooves, rolling back from a wall of living mountain to your right - an unpaved track too narrow for more than single file. Behind, a small army, but they are at least half-a-mile back and if you can get past the towering rock ahead they will never catch you. Rain-slick cobbles *rutch* beneath your flying, sandaled, feet, thunder crashes, loud as many dragons, ozone and sulfur, iron and hate. Around the outbuilding now, Tenchuu naked and rain-flecked in your hand. Straw rain cape flapping as you bring the wolf and Hijiki to bay before the tower looming black and monstrous in the storm. The wolf stands manlike and erect now - robed in black, carrying a spear. Your opponents are spread out too far for any gambit to succeed: dash between them, cutting at Hijiki as you pass, steel belling harshly against steel. Turn to face him and feint to his torso, waiting for the flow of ki from behind. Now, leap reversed over the wolf's head, thirty feet of backwards somersault. Feel the power flow through ground and storm, call it to your hand. Now! They are concentrated, pinned against the tower, their defenses momentarily down. Now hold the power within and weave a web of intent and iron control, now release the leash of will close-held and call the Dragon Wind. Storm erupts: sand caught by the wind and swept up as a thousand miniature knives, lightning riding the fist of wind like a corona of supernal fire. It washes over Hijiki and the wolf, overwhelms them, and blots them from view and debris sprays from the tower's base with the power of the storm. Rising from the wrack, the wolf's lifeless, skeletal jaws howl in futile rage in the moment they are given, before the fire consumes them, before the avalanche of stone from the falling tower buries them, before you turn and jump for distant safety, before the tons of gunpowder stored below Hijiki's fortress destroy themselves, and all around them, and the titanic explosion reaches out, gaining speed behind you... And the mass eruption of butterflies passes you by in a varicolored, softly scintillating cloud of fragrance and you ride up the last hill, amid a carpet of wildflowers. Usagi is beside you, Noriyuki-sama just behind, carrying the sword, and Tomoe-san brings up the rear. And you all laugh with joy, and awe, and delight as you top the rise to see before you the rice fields on the outskirts of the new capitol. This area is firmly under the Shogun's peace, patrols will escort you the rest of the way to his palace, the presentation will be performed without delay, and there remain before you no obstacles. No obstacles at all. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Bushiko Ranma, whose name had once been otherwise, awoke suddenly, and turned over muzzily on his futon. Looking across the darkened room, to the pale circle of magic dripping light into a silver bowl, he shook his head and sighed. "Man, I haven't dreamed about _him_ in a _long_ time," he yawned. "I've got to stop making myself those midnight haba¤ero-and-teriyaki beef snacks. That, and hope that wasn't an omen." And then he turned over, and went back to sleep. Warriors learn to prize the commodity because they know that morning will come soon enough. And there will always be something to do in that morning. And you'll always need your sleep. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Next: Ranma & Akane: A Love Story. Chapter 2: The Second Day Part B: Battering Pieces: Akane's Unusual Morning 'Til next chapter, Eric Hallstrom, 01/16/2001