Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ The Butterfly Effect ❯ f.ight or flight ( Chapter 5 )

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[1.5]

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The koi pond rippled in rings of agitation as a smooth, round rock skipped in quadruple succession over the surface of the water before plunking heavily into its depths. It bristled in wavy hiccups for several moments before the shattered diamonds of setting sunlight slowly reassembled themselves into the flickering reflection of a pigtailed boy crouched at the rock-rimmed edge.

He huddled there, silently waiting, watching the fish sliding silkily through the mossy water. One orange-and-white spotted koi dashed away as the reverse image of Nodoka loomed over the surface behind him.

"What's wrong, son?"

A long gap of silence passed before he muttered, "Nuthin'."

"Something is disturbing you. If you can't talk to your mother, who can you talk to?"

A light breeze lapped across the water, shimmering the dual images of the boy and the woman into obscurity, before clarifying. Nodoka knelt by her son, patiently waiting. After a few more moments, he finally spoke.

"I lost it today," the pigtailed boy said dully. "I coulda really hurt someone." He took a long, shaking breath. "I almost killed Kuno, mom. I mighta if--if--" fragments of syllables stuttered back into silence.

"You father has taught you the craft well, and for that, I can truly call you manly. But being a man is not only just about the art. It is also about responsibility and accountability, for which, I am afraid he has woefully neglected your education in."

"Huh?" The boy elaborated.

"What does being a martial artist mean to you?"

"Being the best!"

"And when a student wishes to learn from you so he can become a thug with his skill, will you teach him how to be the best?"

"Hell no! That ain't what the art's about."

"Then what is it about?"

"It--it--," he struggled. "Well it ain't beating other people up for no reason."

"Why not?"

"Cause it ain't honorable."

"Are you a better martial artist than this Kuno?"

"Hell yeah! Bokken-brain can't touch me on his best day."

"Then why did you attack him?"

"I don't know. I saw him and I got so mad. I mean, Akane's standing there with glue holding her together and he's yelling about that stupid, freaking sword and I just went off. And--and then I was hitting him. I was just hitting him and hitting him-- I kept on hitting and I couldn't stop-- I just wanted to keep pounding, pounding on Kuno until--."

Silence captured his throat again, suffocating the rest of his words.

Nodoka put a hand to her son's cheek. "Until you stopped. You were angry, that's all. You were angry and you lost control for little while, but then you stopped."

He stared down at his knuckles, "But I almost did. I wanted to, I wanted so badly to--god!"

Cupping Ranma's face in both of her hands, she tilted his head up, to her. "You didn't kill Kuno. The only thing that makes you a killer is killing, and you didn't kill anyone, my son."

The boy unfolded himself from the bank and abruptly stood, turning away from his mother.

"I gotta take a walk," was all he said before disappearing over the Tendo gates.

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Fight or flight.

An instinct inherent in all creatures. In terms of Darwinism, elemental to the matter of survival.

Adrenline pumped into one pigtailed boy's legs like high-octane gasoline as he hopped off signs, rooftops, fences and tree branches in a directionless trek across Nerima. Wasn't it always like that? When the chips were down, Ranma Saotome could always be counted on to do what he did best: fold like a bad hand of cards and run.

Just like pops.

'The only thing that makes you a killer is killing.' mom had tried to reassure him. Of course she'd think that. She hadn't known about Jusendo. Even his stupid oyaji had been circumspect about the whole thing when they'd returned. No one knew what had happened up in China except for the ones who had been there.

Killing made you a killer.

Was that why it had been so easy this morning?

Because he'd already killed?

The landscape whizzed by faster as he stepped up the pace in his flight.

He'd torn apart Saffron because Akane was dying.

He almost took off Kuno's head because Akane'd gotten injured.

It didn't matter what he did or didn't do --she always, inevitably, got hurt in the process.

Nabiki was right. It was his fault. Everything was his fault.

Fight or flight.

He had taken that most basic instinct and carved it into an artform.

Really, he only one choice.

He had to leave.

Leave and never return.

He could go off somewhere to train. Somewhere where he would never be found. China was a nice, big place you could get lost in forever. And she-- she would eventually forget him.

Fight or flight.

He chose flight.

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The Matriarch of the Joketsuzoku thoughtfully stirred the contents of soup stock over the stove in preparation for the next morning's rush, internally wrestling with a dilemma that took the shape of a certain pigtailed martial artist.

Though Cologne was not opposed to having Ranma's powerful genes father future generations of Amazons, the old warrior was not particulary enamored of his propensity towards attracting wanton property destruction as the Tendos evidently were. An involuntary shudder ran through her as she imagined the Musk, the Phoenix, Happosai and Taro simultaneously converging upon the Joketsuzoku. Bloodline be damned, there was a reason why property values in Nerima were at the bottom of the scale.

She also knew the Saotome child would not make a good husband for Shampoo. He was too strong, too brash, willful and independent. Which, unfortunately, was precisely the thing her great-granddaughter found so attractive about the boy. And what Shampoo wanted, kiss of death or kiss of marriage, she always, inevitably, got.

Problem was, Ranma was a regular prude. He'd managed to resist several millenia of carefully honed Amazon persuasion with unprecedented, shocking success. If the old bag didn't know better she'd have sworn the boy had somewhere along the way fallen into the Taijianniichuan as well.

Cologne had to admit, though, teaching him was a joy. He reveled in the art like no other, gloried in the pursuit of mastering a new form. He lived, breathed, slept and thought the art. He cared for little else.

Except for the girl.

The girl, the girl, the girl was a puzzle. She wasn't the most beautiful, the most fit, or the most talented. Though the matriarch would admit the child was a good notch beyond 'average,' her own great granddaughter and even the okonomiyaki chef were most certainly not lacking by comparison.

And then came the group's return from Jusendo.

"Pervert Girl very strong," were the only words her great granddaughter uttered. She'd been in a funk ever since.

But if what Mousse said were true, it would be simple to let Jusenkyo complete its natural course and have it take Akane Tendo. The path to the Joketsuzoku would then lay open to them.

Yes. To let the girl die in this manner would have been simple, with no one the wiser.

Then she saw him enter the Nekohanten.

And for the first time, she didn't see her Mukodono, future contribution to the Amazon gene pool; didn't see the arrogant, brash young warrior who didn't just survive the fury of a god but managed to kill him as well.

She only saw a boy.

A scared, seventeen year old boy.

Dropping the ladle in the pot, the Matriarch switched off the stove and bounded on her staff to the vacant dining area. She threw a sideways glance at the figure of Shampoo silently sweeping the floor who, deep in her preoccupation, hadn't even bothered to look up.

"Are you forgetting something, great-granddaughter?"

The lavender-locked Amazon blinked and snapped her gaze towards her hibachan, whose grizzled chin twitched towards the entrance. Blinking again, purple eyes flickered in the direction of the nod towards Ranma. Then back at her hibachan. Then back at--

Oh yeah.

"Airen come date Shampoo!"

*GLOMP*

"DIE SAOTOME!"

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"Now that we've gotten the preliminaries out of the way," Cologne motioned as Ranma seated himself at a table, absently picking throwing knives out of his hair.

Shampoo felt much more relaxed now, even to the point of humming to herself as she cheerfully swept the main area, piling up the dust and trash around the crumpled and battered form of Mousse cold-stamped into the floor.

"What brings you here this time of evening, Mukodono?"

The pigtailed boy pressed a tired palm against his forehead, then shook the chain from his wrist. "Just been walkin' around a bit."

"Oh? I thought you came to ask me about Jusenkyo." The hand against his brow paused as his eyes flickered up at the old crone. "Has the girl started having nightmares yet? Seizures?"

Ranma rubbed the knuckle of one finger against the corner of his left eye. "Yeah. I guess."

"You guess?"

Hackles raised. "It's not like she ever tells me anything."

"When did they start?" pressed Cologne.

The pigtailed boy scratched his head. "Not sure. But she was starting to look kinda haggard a day or so before the weddin'."

Finishing with her rounds, the purple-haired girl pondered the pile of waste lumped around the unconscious Amazon. Then, inspiration struck and she lifted the sleeve of Mousse's robe, carefully swept the trash inside, and dropped the limp limb back to the floor.

"And the waters had receded by then for that cask of Nannichuan to be flown in. I gather the brief respite has something to do with the disruption in the water's mainflow. Now that it's stabilized, it's taking care of unfinished business."

"Unfinished business," he echoed.

"The girl belongs to Jusenkyo now. It may have let her go earlier, not by choice, but now that things are functioning again, it wants her back."

"She mentioned dreams, and she was choking and actin' like she was--" Ranma studied the tablecloth with dull intent as comprehension slowly trickled in. "She's been having nightmares about drowning." Raising his eyes, he fixed them on Cologne. "Well, there's a way to fix it right? So whaddo I hafta do?"

"There's not much you *can* do, Son-in-Law. It's the way the Drowning Springs work."

Ranma hopped out of his seat and and onto the table. "You said nothing happened at that time because Jusenkyo was all messed up, right?"

"I assume that was the cause of the delay."

"Then that means all I have to do is mess it up again. Or make it so it don't exist no more. Wouldn't that do the same thing?"

"You may be on to something there, mukodono, but how do you plan to find 'it' in time?"

He shrugged. "I don't need to find nuthin' if I wipe 'em all out."

Shampoo snapped her head towards the conversing pair.

"Airen, what about--?" A barely perceptible shake of her hibachan's head silenced her.

"Even the nannichuan?" the matriarch challenged.

". . . If I gotta do it, I gotta do it."

"There are over three hundred springs, boy."

Ranma leapt off the table and landed in front of the door. "Then I'd better get a move on."

Cologne lifted her hand. "I may have a better alternative. Bring the girl here tomorrow and I'll see what I can do."

The pigtailed boy nodded curtly and left as abruptly as he'd entered.

"Why are you helping him?" Mousse queried, gingerly prying his face from the linoleum after Ranma had vacated the premises.

"What? Can't I do something nice for someone else?"

"Someone else, maybe. You usually have an agenda." He blinked, suddenly noticing odd bulge in his right sleeve and shook it with some trepidation. A giant dustbunny rolled out onto the floor.

The bespectacled boy cast a suspicious glance at Shampoo, whose only rejoinder was an innocent whistle as she casually slinked upstairs.

"You would have probably told the boy anyway, am I right? Let's just call this a bit of strategic preemption." Cologne watched the form of her great-granddaughter vanish into the darkened recesses of the stairwell, before turning to the Amazon male. "I helped Ranma because he's going to fail. And when he fails, he's going to need someone to turn to."

Mousse limped over to a nearby dustbin and carefully shook the remaining trash from his sleeve into it.

"You don't understand. You weren't there. Jusendo changed everybody. Saotome's going to come back with her or he won't come back at all."

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Jusenkyo.

Of course it had to be Jusenkyo. It was always that damned Jusenkyo.

Ranma had never hated anything more. That cursed valley had ruined his life. Ryoga's. Shampoo's. Mousse's. And now it slowly killing Akane.

From the roof above his fiance's room, Ranma lay back against the shingles, watching the waning crescent of light in the sky. No sound came from the room below save the deep, steady breaths of fourth-stage sleep. That was good. Maybe it wouldn't happen. Maybe tonight she wouldn't dream.

As his eyes began to slowly drift shut, he heard it.

Instantly snapping awake, he swung over the edge, dangling by his feet from the roof's gutter as he peered in through the window.

"No . . . " Akane mumbled "C-can't swim . . . .can't . . . " She begain to flail weakly, arms and legs twitching against some invisible tide, her breath shallowing, as she struggled with her sheets, grasping and twisting linen in helpless white-knuckled fists.

-Wake her. That's all he had to do.

He didn't move.

-Had to wake her.

Couldn't move.

-Just wake her up.

But they wouldn't move - his arms, his legs, his mouth - none of it budged. They'd been solidified as if someone had snuck in, opened his arteries and poured quick-drying cement in them. All he could do was stare into the room, his body achieving perfect petrification as he hung upside-down in the night air.

Akane suddenly snapped up in bed, hand covering her throat, greedily gulping for air as she struggled to regain the equilibrium of her waterlogged mind. For several minutes, she sat there, heavy breaths banging against a constricted chest.

After a moment, she stood and pulled open the top drawer of her dresser. Drawing out her gi, she pulled the top on over her pajamas, and shuffled out towards the dojo, never once spotting the unmoving figure outside her window.

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"HIYAAA!"

*THOCK*

"Ow . . . "

The girl dropped to her knees, staring disbelievingly at the slightly bloody knuckles on her right hand, the sting of a series of impending bruises already beginning swell at the joints of her fingers.

In the middle of the first concrete block lay the hint of a hairline fracture - the only evidence, along with a bit of scraped skin, of Akane Tendo's struggle against it.

"What the--?"

Disbelief took a swift left and careened into full-blown humiliation. This couldn't be happening. She might not have the greatest balance, or skill or speed, but she'd be damned if she could't break one lousy brick.

She was used to striking dense, immovable objects. She was really, really good at it. After all, she'd had a lot of practice with her fiance.

"That's 'cause your gorilla strength comes from your ki," came a drawl and she turned to the figure leaning casually against the shoji frame.

"Ranma? What are you doing up?"

He ignored her question, instead choosing to saunter towards her kneeling form. "Chicks have trouble externalizing chi. Somethin' to do with body chemistry and stuff."

"And you learned this in, what, Biology class? You can still do a Moko Takabisha in your other form."

"That's cause it's ME." Akane rolled her eyes. "And I'm still a guy. It's only half power that way though," he admitted.

With a sudden movement she couldn't have prevented even HAD she known, he grasped her hands and ran a thumb over the scraped knuckles of her right.

"You got some ki focused right about here. Not like a blast, but more glove-like," he murmured thoughtfully, looking at the pale skin that wound tightly around sinew and veins, before turning her right hand over. Akane silently noted the contrast of his rough, calloused hands against her palms.

"Hands of folks who've been beating blocks for ten years are rough and broken. Usually a big layer of scars an' blisters an' dead nerves from all the hittin'." Her arm shivered as he absently traced one finger down the center of her palm from wrist to middle finger. "Your hands should be like mine but they ain't nuthin' like that. They're--" He froze, as if realizing for the first time that the two of them were sitting on the floor of the dojo, in the middle of the night, holding hands. He dropped her like she'd suddenly developed some flesh-eating disease.

"Um, hahaha!" Ranma stupidly draped one hand behind his head. "I mean if you'd been breaking blocks with your head, then I'd believe it, hahah--"

He pretty much expected it. He'd always expected it in that split-nanosecond after the words inevitably exited his mouth from the speech center of his brain that Saotome genetics dictated would never connect to any real thought processes beforehand. Nevertheless, as the countless times before, he didn't see it coming until he found himself facedown in the broken remains of the cinderblock rubble.

"Huh. Obviously not all that macho chick's strength's gone," he mumbled into the shattered bits of concrete.

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"Jerk," Akane muttered, yanking the bedcovers up to her chin. She sank back against the pillows, and for the first time in so many days, passed the remainder of the waning night dreamless.

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Whaddaya know, some fluency in Mandarin does come in handy after all:

Taijianniichuan - Spring of Drowned Eunuch.