Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Chained World: The Fall of the House of Kuno ❯ Bitter Realizations ( Chapter 7 )

This was originally published by me under the name Anduril at Anime Addventures, with the only changes being a few corrections in spelling, punctuation and the occasional word choice. If you like the beginning of my story but think I've gone off the rails, or have your own ideas for a great branch-off, or think I'm taking too long to update and want to continue the story yourself, come to Anime Addventures and join in the fun!

This is the first of several chapters written by Tman, posted her without modification.

I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi, or Tman.

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by Tman

Her hands going through the motions of cleaning up her shop, Kounji Ukyo fought to make sense of how her world had just been torn apart....

Just a few hours ago, Ranma and Nabiki had quietly come in during a lull in business...She had greeted them both enthusiastically, the former because she hadn't seen him in a while, the latter because she was glad to see the middle Tendo sister finally out and about after the Tendo patriarch's death; she figured Ranchan had dragged Nabiki out for some much-needed relaxation...

One look at both their faces had told her otherwise; a bomb was about to be dropped...

She just didn't realize Ranma would be the main casualty....

She'd listened as he had quietly explained what had happened, and what woud happen, and she'd somehow managed to restrain her alternating shock, rage, and fear...He'd stood up finally, given her a hug, rejoined Nabiki, who'd remained silent throughout the entire exchange, and then stepped out of her business. She was too benumbed with shock to follow, to accoust him, to scream at him, slap him, demand he run with her for the hills...anything....all she could do was stand there, until the smell of burning okonomiyaki had forced her attention elsewhere, and by the time she'd looked up again, he was gone...

She had closed early today, and was now cleaning up the place, trying to make sense of what she'd learned, and coming to some frightening realizations....

For all the years that she had hunted Ranma, masqueraded as a boy, and worked along the edges of society, Ukyo had been aware of the Imperial slavery system, but it had been an abstract to her. It happened to other people, people who had made wrong choices, weren't lucky, weren't fast and smart enough, people who deserved it...never to her and those she associated with....

Now, it became all too real to her...All those years of being mostly on her own, she was now aware that she had been walking a razor's edge....It would have been all too easy to slip into debt, to annoy the wrong person, to fall into a position where it might have been her going on the auction block to pay off owed debts, her mind altered to make her less rebelllious and more pliable. She'd been unknowingly walking in crosshairs, and that frightened her...

And with that fear came the crushing knowledge that she had little if any safety net as an independent business person....

....And the even more devastating knowledge that Ranma wouldn't be there to save her if that happened...He had chosen to sacrifice his freedom for the Tendos...He had chosen Akane over her....

That thought had triggered another realization....Ranma might have chosen another over his `cute fiancee', but he wasn't riding off into a `happily ever after' of many a romantic daydream...He was giving up EVERYTHING, his freedom, his manhood, and the chance to be with those he loved, possibly forever, to be the slave and likely sextoy of one they'd all thought a blustering annoyance, a harmless obsessed fool who was no match for Ranchan's martial prowess....Only, now, the blustering fool had managed to outmaneuver him on a battlefield none of them had much experience on....A battlefield Ranchan couldn't study or train up on before......before....

Growing up as a boy, learning their ways, the better to fit in, Ukyo was aware of the hormonal currents that ran through them, the dawning lusts she'd observed....She'd seen even polite and well-mannered boys talk of their fantasies, of the things they'd do if they had a slave of their own, especially a full-use slave, to command....

...And Kuno was lust personified, wrapped in the trappings of privileged nobility and arrogant power...He spoke in the honeyed cultured words of aristocracy, but he was at heart, she now saw, a predator, obsessed with his own appetites.....and now there would be nothing between him and the satisfaction of his desires....

So even as she raged that Ranma had chosen another and the reclamation of her family honor had become that much more difficult, if not impossible, she also felt a growing cold fear for her childhood friend...what Ranchan would be sacrificing, what he...no, what SHE....what she'd be facing, and what she'd be forced to endure....

Wiping at her eyes became a futile exercise as the kitchen around her blurred in a fog of tears...Her cleaning forgotten, Ukyo fell to the floor, her arms wrapped around herself as she succumbed to her emotions....

It was much later that she managed to pull herself together, still trembling, but at least able to function. Her thoughts and emotions had gone through a hellride and she wasn't sure she would ever be totally okay ever again....

But one thought burned in her mind....

Just as she'd never given much thought to the institution of slavery, she'd never really paid much attention to the Underground Railroad save as a vague abstraction, an amusing myth like the Yeti, onis, the Loch Ness Monster, or the Japanese abolitionist movement...

As soon as she made sure she was reasonably finanicially secure, she was going to hunt up the Railroad...She'd join their ranks...she'd fight to make a difference....

Ranchan wasn't going to be fighting alone....