Cause: 11

Ranma on Togetherness
---------

I know the rules.

Once you mate with the black widow, your life is over.

She eats you whole.

Having sex with Kodachi. Thinking about Akane all along. This must be what cheating is like. This isn't just Shampoo curled up next to me without my noticing, or spending the night at Ukyo's because Happosai is on a rampage, this is it. I've actually fucked Kodachi Kuno. I did it. Where's the achievement? Where's the glow? What's going on here? What is this?

The steam is rising around my head, and my body is immersed. I'm looking up at the ceiling in Kodachi's bath. She's right next to me, and her pony-tail is damp, so it's slender, and singular like a snake above the water's surface, but underwater, it splashes off her shoulder and the black strands seem to go everywhere like spilled coffee. Some of her hair is lying over my chest, as I hold her to me and look up at the ceiling, into the flashing blue burns.

It's easy to deal with because it's quiet. I hear water dripping into the bath, I hear Kodachi's breath coming in and going out. Faintly I hear the distant hum of the lightbulb filaments above me. It's so calm right here. The water is just a little warmer than body temperature, so you really can hardly feel a thing. When Kodachi moves her leg againt mine, that's all I can feel. The sensory deprivation is so bad, that when she rolls over, so she's lying next to me it feels like a giant glove just got pulled off my whole body.

Akane. If you could only see me now. You tried so hard Akane, to make me see you as a woman. You did your best to keep me from walking away. Look where it got you. Look where it got me. Us.

If cause and effect is the way the world works, then this was already destined to happen. Cause and effect, therefore cause is effect. Hand in hand. From the moment we met, this is how we were supposed to be. Divided and miserable. I can't believe that even being born is cause enough for this. The blue burns and the lights are fighting each-other for control of the visual center of my mind. This way, sometimes I see blue, sometimes white, sometimes both. It gets easy to confuse the lights with the burns.

I feel a pinch on my shoulder and I look over. She bit me, and she growls. Then she pulls her teeth off, and smiles so smoothly that I couldn't say when her snarl face ended and her smile face began.

"You did wonderfully Ranma, darling."

When I said I just had sex with her, perhaps it was a slight understatement.

"I didn't know I could come that hard."

Definately a noticable understatement.

"Third time's the charm, right?"

Huge understatement.

She casts-off me and rolls her body over. Her nipples stick up like gum-drops. They're different than Akane's, which aren't as perky. She floats away from me for a while, and I get to watch her sink a little, then float a little every time she breathes.

"Want to do it some more?"

For this whole time, I've known that what I've been doing was in poor taste, but this is the first moment when I realized it was actually wrong. Another round with the black rose is not what I had in mind. I'm tired. It's late. What time is it?

"Don't know Ranma, dear, but what's the rush?"

I stand up and sheets of steaming water pour off me. I turn and pick up Kodachi's bath towel. Does she mind if I use it?

"Feel free, darling."

I try to dry off quickly. My boxers are the first to go on, and they cling to every slightly damp part of me as I rush to assemble my stuff.

"Really, darling you're in an awful hurry."

Half thinking of the consequences when I say it, I tell her I have to go back.

She strokes her way to the side of the bath, brings her front half over and crosses her arms, so that she can prop herself up on them.

"Fine, darling but what is it you're going back to?"

I stopped, and I couldn't think of anything. My mind was a blank. Whether I couldn't imagine what would happen if I went back, or just didn't want to, I don't know. I just said, again, that I have to go back.

"I think you should go back and tell them the truth." She stands up, dripping wet and walks over to me. "Tell them that it's all over."

My shirt is on, but the buttons are all undone. Nothing is over, look, I say. I say that things are just getting out of hand right now, with Dr. Strangelouvre, and all that. I just have to straighten a few things out with Mr. Tendo, and everything will be fine soon enough.

"Fine, then go, darling." She gives me a smile that I swear was creepy. You'd think that getting what she was after since the day we met would satiate her. Not a prayer. "You're always welcome here." She picks up the towel, and starts to dry her hair.

"It's your fault I'm all wet, darling."

No it's not.

"Yes it is, it's all your fault."

She was in the bath before I even got in this room. Time to leave. My shirt is buttoned up and I'm ready to go.

"All your fault."

She looks up at me, towel over her hair, and squints her eyes, and I don't answer. She drops the towel. With her next move, she's got my right hand, and started running it on the beaded water all over her skin, as my hand went across her shoulder.

"You were the one that made me get wet."

She moves my hand over her breasts.

"All your fault..."

Over her belly button. Now lower.

"...That I'm so wet."

Then-

Then I-

Moving on.

The stark contrast couldn't be worse. It is nothing but cold and dark outside. I could feel the temperature clinging to me like cellophane as I left the Kuno residence. It's 2:00 AM, too late for anything, and I have to get home, or somewhere. The sky is cloudy, even though it was clear before, so no moonlight. To me it seems every couple or so lamp-post has a bulb that is shorting out and flashes on-off-on-off. Reliable enough to see at least.

So, I walk my way back to the Tendo Dojo, and wouldn't you know it, right inside the Gate, I am greeted by a most unpleasent portrait. On the porch I see, basically the whole household: two dads, Two sisters, P-chan and the old freak. Nabiki and P-brain are both awake, so they turn, and wake up the others.

"He's back. He came back. Wake up" and "Oink, oink, oink." All eyes turn to me.

I look down near my feet and there, wrapped in a thick blanket, my fiance is bunched up and asleep, parked in the same spot by the gate that I last left her in. I wonder if I should wake her? I bet reality has to be worse than any dream she could be having right now.

I won't tell you what happens next until I've told you this. I won't tell you about tomorrow until I tell you of now, at this moment, on this line, in this time, from my mind.

Cause and effect.

The way the world works.

Cause and effect.

One damn thing after another.

Cause and effect.

Trapped in our dreams.

And now-

I kneel down next to her. Her head is turned slightly to the side. She's looking away from me. Last time we were like this, I told her about that I knew she had TFM. Only I was on the ground, and she was knelt above me. The situations are reversed now, but it still sucks to be me. It still sucks to be her. The truth still sucks.

Her eyes are closed, she's not looking at me when I start to talk to her. I look down at her, and I say this;

And I quote,

"Akane, I've done something so horrible to you tonight, that I hope you never wake up. If you could sleep, be like Urashima Taro or Rip Van Winkle, just sleep me by. I'm not worth getting up for at this point. You tried to show me what you wanted me to see, show me the way I should see it. To make me know that I knew you? Some plan. The problem was me, the problem is still me. I'm not sorry that we met, I don't hate you, and I can't. I hated Strangelouvre. I hate him for so many reasons but mainly because of you. Because you knew him first, you knew him least, and he did so much after you barely met him. He's an arrogant ass, who has done nothing but scorn me since I first met the bastard. It was too easy. Hatred is just an emotion, when you feel it, it can control you as much as joy, fear or love. Over all the emotions I've been feeling these past weeks, I chose to hate someone. To hate him at the expense of everything. When all this is over, I'll only have my hate left, and I'll have lost you...fuck...forever. I'm not sorry. If I ever feel sorry it'll only be feeling sorry for myself, in weakness. I'll wake you up now, and get you to bed, maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about what just happened."

End quote.

I reach my hand out and start to shake her shoulder a little.

"What do you mean? What just happened?" Her voice is groggy, just out of dreamland.

Akane? She hasn't moved. How much did she? She hasn't opened her eyes. What did she?

What just happened?

She's waiting for an answer. Oh my God, no.

"You went to Kuno's, right? French bread Fuu, right? What just happened?"

She's not looking at me when my breath starts to get sporadic. She's not looking at me, when my eyes shut and I see myself banging Kodachi over and over in the huge steamy tub.

On the floor.

Up against the wall.

In her bedroom.

She doesn't turn. She doesn't move.

"You were with Kodachi, right? You left hours ago, right? What just happened?"

Will she look at me? Will she hear me out?

"Shut the fuck up."

She's not looking at me when my throught tightens, when my stomach turns.

"She loves you, right? She wants you, right?"

Akane.

"What just happened?"

Now she's looking at me. Now I'm not looking at her. I'm not looking at her when her arm wraps around my neck, and starts to clamp up on my windpipe. Her skin is as soft as I remember it. She's as naked as I left her, and just as passionate as ever. I cannot breathe.

"She was good, right, Ranma? She's more a woman than I'll ever be, right?"

I rotate, giving my whole neck a rope-burn against Akane's arm as I contort to take in a breath of air.

Feel my pain.

This is how I learned to relate to women the hard way.

I read in the paper about how so and so commited suicide by hanging. People actually hang themselves. No quick poison, no gun to the head, no car crash, or dive off a high rise, nothing quick. You'd have to be pretty bad off to want to put yourself through two minutes of this. What if you're dangling there, and you change your mind? You can spit out a pill, put the gun down, turn the car to safety, or step back from the ledge. Saving yourself is just a choice away. But what if, hanging there, you decided the one thing you want more in this world is that next free-breath of fresh air? What then? How could anyone ever want to die like this? I don't. It's a lousy way to go.

One breath. That's it. I get one breath and she closed her arm back tight on my jugular.

Does she hate me?

"What?"

I can breath out, not in. Lungs push better than pull I suppose. Diaphragm, whatever. With your head in the crotch of a womans elbow, and her joint pinching in on your larynx, your voice has a whisping sound to it, like air let out of a tire. Hence the term wheezing. People have died in this position and anything you say just wastes precious air.

Does she hate me? Another bit of air I can't get back.

My diaghram pumps up and down, wanting to breathe agian, all it can do is pressurize my chest. I have to know.

Does she hate me? My lungs go dry.

Think stretched, empty baloon. Think plastic bag stuck in a vacuum cleaner hose.

Think how I must have felt walking home tonight.

Her grip goes loose, I drop to the ground and gasp in air and sand that sticks in my mouth and throught. I'm coughing. Akane gets up, and collects her blanket. She didn't answer me.

"Yes I did."

I don't remember hearing it. She looks down on me, in the dirt.

"I want you to die. I hate you so much that it makes me hate myself. I hate you more than Kodachi. I hate you more than Dr. Strangelouvre."

I look up. She looks down. Her blanket over her shoulder like a robe. She looks lke a queen.

"But I don't really hate them that much, so let me say...I hate you more than you could ever hate him."

My view is skewed, because I'm on my side. She walks away, with her blanket brushing the ground, her majsety walks to the porch, and the peasants part the way, and hold the door open for her. One at a time, everyone goes inside, Nabiki, Mr. Tendo, pop, Happosai, P-chan. Kasumi alone stood.

"Ranma, could you lock the door when you come in?"

I don't want to speak, so I just give her the thumbs up. She steps inside, and the door, silently, is closed shut.

I wake up, and there are only clouds. No rain and no sun, just a big grey blanket from east to west. This is the last day before I fight Strangelouvre, this is my first day after Akane has told me she truly hates me, my first day as Kodachi's sex-partner. This is my gray little day. I look over to where I expected I'd either see an endangered creature indigenous to secluded sections of China, or my father. What I see is a letter addressed to me.

I pick it up and open it, not even half wondering why pop's stuff is all gone.

"Ranma,

        By the time you read this I will have embarked for a journey"

Journey has a line through it.

"pilgrimage of the highest order, to seek a martial arts master that lives high on a mountain"

Mountain has a line through it.

"In a deep valley, a village some distance from here. He has a technique involving sound, to focus attacks. I'm sorry I didn't tell you this sooner, I only found out about it yesterday after dinner. I saw it on TV,"

No he didn't.

"I received a letter, shortly after you left, from a school that I had once practiced with to depart when it suited my"

Line.

"immediately. I had planned to tell you, but you just came home too late, that's all. I may not be leaving you in the best situation, but this ordeal"

He's exed out ordeal.

"present moment is something that you as a man and martial artist should be able to handle. I don't know what made Akane so angry, son but whatever the reason, I want you to know that I'll always believe in"

Line through that.

"Love you, son.

        -Pop."

The moral of the story, if you have no idea what you are going to write, just don't use a pen. I hear the door open and shut.

"Going somewhere, Mr. Saotome?"

"Kasumi?" My dad says. "Just planning on taking a hike today."

He must have wrote this letter up in five minutes, and he's only now leaving. Something I should have seen coming. This may be the worst getaway in history. He's far enough away that I won't stop him, though. A getaway is a getaway is gone.

"Would you like some breakfast first?"

"Breakfast?"

You've got to be kidding me.

"Well, I guess I shouldn't leave on an empty stomach."

Dammit. I head for the bathroom, fill a bucket with cold water, and head downstairs. Oh, father. Your getaway is a getaway is done for. I splash the big guy. The now-panda turns and his eyes get so huge inside the black-spots of his fur.

Doesn't he have a quest to go on? Isn't there someplace he should go? Shouldn't he be running scared by now?

The panda lunges for its backpack, and heads out the door as if he was running from sure extinction.

"Ranma? Are you alright?"

Kasumi's looking up at me from the table. Already clearing Pop's dishes off. I tell her that I could be better, and I sit down to eat a little steamed rice.

"Something happened between you and Akane last night didn't it?"

Looking down into the bowl that has its rim shoved into my mouth, I nod. For a while, I think Kasumi was at a loss for words, then she spoke up to me again.

"Well, I can only say that what I saw was shameful, it was odd, and I must confess, it made me somewhat bewildered."

I put the bowl down. The sound it made when it hit the table sounded empty.

I know, Kasumi. It was really all my fault. I need to see her. I need to talk to Akane.

"I brought her a blanket, and when I did she said you hit her, she said you hate her."

That's not the point, I say. I say that the real important matter is not what I did, what am I supposed to do about it? Appologize? I already did that. I can't fix any of it. I would If I could, but I have to move forward on this if it's going to be better. Is she coming to breakfast?

"Ranma, Akane needs some time to herself right now, so this morning she left."

I feel a shock over my whole body. I gasp in a deep breath, mouthing the word what. Then I breathe out.

What?

"She left this morning. Poor girl, didn't get much sleep. I came down the stairs, and there she was in the living room with her things all packed. She said she was just going to a friend's house for the day."

Did she say who?

"No, Ranma, just that she'll be back tomorrow."

She left me.

This was not how it was supposed to happen. This is not what I want. I don't want Akane hating me the rest of her life. Today I was going to set everything right. Today, I was ready to do anything. Whatever it would take to bring her back. Today, she was going to stop hating me.

I had it all planned. When I got up, when I walked to the door last night. When I went up the stairs. I was going to spend the whole day getting it right. Making up. If that's what you want to call it.

I fucked up.

Kodachi means nothing to me.

Don't hate me.

I had it all planned, as I walked to my room, collapsed on the floor, and knew I could make it alright again.

Tomorrow I fight Strangelouvre.

Tomorrow I was supposed to fight for her.

Today was supposed to be special.

"She told me to tell you not to look for her. She also said you should leave."

I'm not leaving, not until I can talk with her. I look down into the empty bowl.

"Well, alright, Ranma. I don't know exactly what's going on between you two, but you've both fought alot before, so maybe you can fight this one out too. Do your best OK?"

There was rice here once. It's gone now, but I don't feel hungry or filled.

"Ranma?"

I look up. I'll do my best, Kasumi.

"That's good." She smiles, just as a voice snaps out from behind me.

"Ranma."

I turn and Mr. Tendo walks by heading for the porch.

"Come with me son."

I stand up slowly, and head out with him to the deck, where he closes the door.

"Lets have a seat."

So we sit.

The goldfish stirring.

Knock of the empty bamboo.

A scary silence.

"I always wanted a son, you know."

I turn to him.

"A son, boy. When my wife was first pregnant, I thought for sure, I would have a son."

I take in an uneasy breath. It's always hard to listen to the lecture before we get to the meat of the matter.

"Ryuichi. I told her. That would be the name of my son. My son was on the way. I was so certain. To myself, and sometimes aloud I would call the child Ryu, before it ever came. My wife took it in stride, and warned me not to be all too certain. She said if it was a girl we should name her Kasumi, kind of rubbing it in my face that I couldn't see anything but a son. Kasumi was born, and I never once regreted having a daughter."

I feel like I stepped out onto the porch, and found myself in an insurance company commercial.

"Then the second came. This time he would be named Yohei. Yohei if it was a boy, and then I told her, Nabiki if it's a girl. Nabiki because not everything goes quite as you planned, the road may wind, as long as you have a starting point and a destination, you have things to do."

Right now my biological level is probably working on the rice I apparently ate, altering the chemical composition of my cerebro-spinal fluid to deal with the grey, bla, dirty-cotton sky, breaking ATP down so I can breathe again.

Fuck my biological level. I'm thinking of one thing.

"When my third came along. My wife told me in bed on a nothing-out-of-the-ordinary autumn night. For a while, I did as I have done, laughed a little, held back tears, told her I loved her. Then I did something I hadn't done for either of my other two daughters. I put my hand on my wife's belly, and proclaimed 'Akane.' No boys names. I wouldn't even consider them. I knew what was coming."

He shifts his weight and scooches slightly on the porch. I sense a punchline coming.

"Nine years later, do you know what happened?"

I've been set up. Mr. Tendo appearently thinks this is the moment when he 'informs' me of the vital facts. The TFM. Whether he knows that I know I'm not sure, but there was one way to be done with it. Silence. After a while I asked if he was going to tell me or was he waiting for me to say something?

"Put it in your own words."

So he knows I know.

"I know you haven't got a clue about it. You may have heard it from Dr. Strangelouvre, you may have talked about it with Akane, but you have never seen what I have seen. So put it in your own words, son."

I say to Mr. Tendo that Akane turned out to be his long awaited 'son' if you will. Imagine waiting years for something. So long you end up giving up on it. Then you find out you had it all along in a form you could never deal with.

How did that make you feel?

How do you feel?

Talk about that.

Mr. Tendo turned to me and said,

"Wrong boy. Akane is my daughter. Akane will always be my daughter. She is my little girl, and you could never understand that. I don't care what Dr. Strangelouvre says. I don't care what her case may be. She is my little girl, who is taking long strides to becoming a woman. Indeed, I have never seen a woman's spirit like hers. From where I sit, boy, all I can see is someone who has crushed that spirit. What have you done, Ranma?"

Maybe I could have been more angry than I was, but all I was really thinking was that Mr. Tendo just couldn't see things the way I had seen them. He had 9 years to get to know, and be with Akane before he found out, and she and I have known each other just a fraction of the time. The way I saw it, the problem was simply in timing.

Sorry, Mr. Tendo. The shock was just too much for me at the time. It totally caught me off guard. I'm sorry it happened that I hurt her, but it could have been avoided, if you had told me earlier.

"Earlier?" He asks. I finally think I got him on a thought path he hasn't considered. This whole thing may have turned out differently if he'd have told me before it came to this. Cause and effect, right?

"How much earlier, son? When would have been the best time?"

I half smile and say that since I turned out to be boy and girl on the day we first met, I think that would have been the best time to tell me. He smiles.

"Oh, I see. Good point. I could have introduced my daughters, and said this is Kasumi, my oldest, Nabiki my second, and Akane my youngest. Then I could have told you, that there was something different about Akane. Am I right? Akane, she's my daughter, and I love her as much as the others, but there is something different about her you should know. You should know she has a flaw, you should know things aren't what they seem. You're right, of course, you should know because there is something wrong with her isn't there? Something you could never get your head around. I should have said here are my three daughters, but don't pick Akane, She's not good enough for you. Am I right?"

By the time he was done Mr. Tendo was just about barking in my face like a chained rotweiller. I sit there, not planing to go anywhere, when he stands up.

"You have tonight, Ranma. Sleep well. After that, wherever you go, I don't care."

Mr. Tendo leaves. I don't feel angry. I don't feel sad. I don't feel anything. I don't feel hungry.

Rice is nothing except light and white the way clouds aren't even worth noticing until they cover everything.

Next thing I know, I wander into the dojo. It all started here. This is where I first really met Akane. Thinking back, I can only say, we liked each other best in that one moment when we knew nothing at all about each other.

The problem was the getting to know you part.

I pick up the bread I left in the dojo overnight, and it's as tough on the outside as a tree-limb. The moisture's all gone out of it, and trying to eat it now would be like biting into a dry sponge, but it's still worthwhile to me. Even without Akane or anyone else behind me, I can still take down Dr. Strangelouvre.

I leave the dojo, and to my left I hear a voice.

"Hello, Ranma."

I turn and before I can even look him in the eye, from behind me, my arms are drawn back and locked, with fists pushing into my shoulderblades. I try to lunge my legs out to escape, but a foot slams down on my toes, locking me in place. Ryoga caught me off-guard.

"You weren't at the session yesterday, Ranma" I hear Noitaru say from behind. "Personally I would have let it slide, but Ryoga got in contact with me earlier this morning and said we all needed to talk about it."

I don't say anything, Ryoga smiles, or sneers. I couln't really tell, it was a little of both.

"I never knew you could hurt Akane as badly as I saw last night."

I try to muscle-out my arms, but they are cranked back, and the fists dig harder into me.

"Did you see her, Ranma? She looked like angel. The way she followed you, and called to you. All you did was keep walking. I saw you leave, I saw you hit her. We all did."

Suddenly, I'm forced to recall how very visible and unignorable I was yesterday. All the eyes looking, looking. They followed me all the way out the door, all the way to the gate. Maybe even further, for all I know there are a pair of eyes that saw me all the way into Kodachi's house.

Eyes that saw everything. Looking, looking, looking.

They're in my own head. Ryoga holds up a stone between his fingers that's small and smooth from lifetimes of sitting at the bottom of a river, somewhere. He holds the stone up to my forehead.

"It feels so good, and hurts so bad at the same time, Ranma. I know that she'll never come back to you again. She's finally free. Now that she's left you, she and I can finally be what we were meant to be. For that, I am nearly tempted to thank you. But as for everything else that I saw, there ignites in me such hatred. That I must give you your final punishment."

He raises up his pointer-finger, and starts to move it slowly, slowly towards the rock held against my skull.

"Ryoga, this may be counter-productive."

Ryoga pulls both his hands away, then puts one on the top of my head, and forces it down. He has to point my face at the floor, if he wants to talk to Dr. Noitaru, because I'm about his height.

"Dr. Noitaru, You completely underestimate this asshole's treachery. Last night, he treated his fiance so awfully that I can barely even mention it without feeling my heart break."

From here I can see nothing that really matters. Dr. Noitaru wears black-top basketball Nikes.

"I'm not saying that he hasn't wronged you and many people, but we were making headway on the new angle of non-aggressive compromise, and fear management."

"Fear?" The hand goes off my head, and I look up, only to look back down again, as my body cringes. I look down and Ryoga's punching my stomach over and over.

"You think I fear this wretch? All he's done is make my life more miserable every single day."

My whole stomach gets a through and through aching feeling, from the stinging spots on my skin where his fists impact, to the guts deep inside. It feels like he's pounding me into hamburger.

"I will not fear him, doctor. And by the way, the is the best therapy I've ever had."

He plants one final punch at the base of my ribcage, and I bite down on my cheek from the pain.

"You were right at the beginning." He hoist my head up, and with the same hand, puts the stone back on my forehead. His pointer finger is right next to it. "Let the rite of passage begin."

"Ranma!" I hear calling from inside the house. It's the old freak. Ryoga looks over at the house, then back at me, sneering.

"Then again, perhaps not." Ryoga touches his finger to the stone, and the smooth edges blast apart, and make jagged teeth that shoot in every direction from my forehead. It felt like a heavy punch, with a train behind it. My head flies back, then forward, and Noitaru lets me go, as I land in a heap at the dojo's entrance.

"See you later Ranma. Maybe tomorrow at your big fight."

Lying there with the wooden dojo porch pressed against my cheek, I shut my eyes as the blood begins to trickle sideways down my brow.

"Ranma, do you know what truly makes a martial artist?"

At that moment all I was really feeling were the cuts that were left on my forehead, from the exploding stone that Ryoga had pressed against me. All of them are sticky and bound to the white cotton square taped to my forehead. I'd just come in from getting jumped by Ryoga, and I could only have enough time to bandage up my head before Happosai corners me and brings me to his room, where he asks me about my conviction to martial arts. I don't answer him.

"What makes him a martial artist are good morals."

He looks down, lightly running the hot iron over the soft pink cloth of the panties he's pressing.

"Martial arts is not merely being the best, being the strongest, or being undefeated. All anyone can do in this world is fight for what they believe in. Therefore, if one has a corrupted morality, he fights for corruption, he ceases to be a worthy practitioner of martial arts."

He runs his fingers on the tiny bow on the front of the panties, straighting it before flipping the underwear over. Lightly depressing the steam button, he irons again, pressing the tiny cloth.

"A corrupted mind is the last thing that the school of anything-goes martial arts wishes to foster into a student."

For a while he doesn't say anything as he was focused on getting a good press. This is just a ritual for him, anyway. He doesn't need to press his confiscated underwear, because he only ends up throwing it into a big basket again, for him to caress. Jump on. Swim in. Sleep with.

He sets the pair he just finished ironing back into his pile of cleansed, ironed garments, and quickly picks up one that is fresh from the wash, quickly smelling the material before laying it flat.

"White satin, so sweet, so soft. Where was I?"

Bad morality.

"Ah, yes." He goes back to ironing "After your dispay last night I, the Grand-Master of the Anything-Goes School of martial arts, was given serious doubts as to your ability to uphold our tradition of pride, and honor. I'm telling you this, because the decision is in my hands. It's not a duty between you and me, but rather between ancestors and decendants."

He flips the soft, sweet white satin panties over and irons the back.

"You see, you yourself will become my age, Ranma, you may be able to teach others, the ways of our ancestors. We are but conduits for them, passing the torch from those who lit it to those who will be guided by its light. If you are morally corrupt, I cannot allow you the honor of passing on our tradition."

He sets the iron down. Steam rises from it for a moment with a slight hiss, then it goes silent and hot.

"So, you're out, kid. I'm not saying you can't be a martial artist anymore, but know this, your time under my dicipline is done for, got that?"

I roll my eyes.

Whatever, you old freak. If the underwear-stealing, grabby, lewd, boozing master of the anything-goes school says I'm morally bankrupt, then who am I to argue? I don't want this stupid school anyway.

"Hm, you also never learned any damn manners." He picks up another pair of panties. "What the?" He now examines them more closely. "I've never seen a fiber like this. What's with it?" He throws it at my face "What do you make of it, boy?"

My first thought is how angry I am.

My first thought is how insulted I am.

My next thought is that he's right. There is something different about these. They smell sweet, but the material doesn't feel strong enough at all to stay on a woman all day long. I pull it off me, and check the waistband, where the tag should be. The whole story is right there, two words written in rose letters on the cloth.

Edible.

Cherry.

"What did you say?" The freak moved so fast, I didn't even see a blur. Next thing I know, he's knocked me down, and he's on my belly, holding his new found treasure.

"Oh, my God. To think that something so sweet, so rare would find its way into my posession. To think I would soil it by having it touch the face of this swine."

I take a swing at him, but he jumps away before it could make contact. He's by the door of the room now.

"I've got better things to do with my time than waste it with you, boy. You've heard my verdict, now get out of my sight."

With that, he ran down the hall chanting what a score. What a score. What a score.

I had to find Akane. I was done with all the crap I had to put up with in this house. She has to be out there, somewhere. I know I can find her. I left the Dojo and headed for all her friends houses, all of them that I knew anyway.

My life is falling apart.

Everyone is leaving me behind.

Everyone is against me.

I need you now.

I didn't eat lunch; I didn't feel hungry. I couldn't tell what time it was because I didn't have a watch and the sun was covered up by this gigantic grey sheet of clouds.

I went to every house. Every store. Every place.

Haven't seen her.

Is she missing?

I saw her the day before yesterday.

Shouldn't you know?

I think...No wait, that wasn't her.

No idea.

Nothing.

Nowhere.

I go to Shampoo. The sun must be setting, because the sky is a dark grey. Had she seen her?

"Why you no look for Kodachi?"

What?

"She is say that Ranma and Akane is no longer together."

What does Kodachi have to do with this?

"She come here and say Shampoo give up for Ranma. Shampoo no be with Ranma as Kodachi has. She is also say so to Ukyo and Akane too."

Oh, fuck. I turn and run out the door, and Shampoo's voice gets smaller and smaller, and begins to be layered over by passing cars, as I run to the Kuno's house.

"Welcome back, darling."

She where been? Akane when here?

"Do catch your breath, dear."

I lay my back on the wall, and let myself slide all the way down to the pavement. Heaving for breath, starving and gazing into the grey sky.

Was she here?

"Akane? Well, I did get up rather late, being up till 2:00 and all. But as it happens, yes Ranma, dear I did see her."

When? What happened.

"Did he fuck me? What a rude way to ask. Did we make love? Yes, dear, over and over, my dear. Into the late hours. Ranma darling was inside me. Making me a woman."

I close my eyes. I can't believe she came here. Of all the places.

"What nerve, right?"

What nerve. She knelt down next to me and put her arms over my shoulder.

"Now I have you again, darling. It's time for you to admit it. Admit it to yourself. I'm all you have now. tomorrow you will defeat Dr. Strangelouvre for me, and our consummation will not have been in vain. tomorrow you will make everything right again. Now, come inside. I'll make you something to eat."

I stand up and she leads me inside the gate. Her soft hand on my shoulder.

I wanted so much to go inside. I wanted so much to be wanted. I was so hungry, and lonely, but I stopped. She stopped. I looked her right in the eyes, and I asked her.

You love me don't you?

"I do darling. Like I could love no other. Do you love me?"

I answered immediately, with a voice as dark and grey as the sky.

No.

Tears. Real earnest tears started to form in her eyes, and as they began to slide almost rollercoaster-style down her face, big and fast at first, but smaller and slower when they reached the bottom of her cheek.

"I don't care. My love for you will shine the brightest for us both. Be with me darling, and even if you never love me at all, I will always love you."

More than anything I wanted to go inside, more than anything I wanted to be wanted, I wanted to know someone and know that I knew them. But I left.

I hadn't found what I'd been seeking. There was only one place left to go. No lunch, no dinner, no welcome matt. I had tonight. After that, nobody would care.

I slide open the door, one question.

Did she come back yet?

The response was from everyone and almost musical.

Noooo-ooooo.

I give up. It's over. Nabiki comes running up to me, and holds out a piece of paper.

From Akane?

"It's for you."

I snag the paper quickly, and she smiles.

"There you go." She said, and turned around swiftly to go sit with the rest of the family, minus Akane.

Rent.

Goddamit.

Appearently I owe the Tendo family enough back rent to buy and furnish my own condominium. The fact that I had no money wasn't an issue, I could pay it back whenever, taking into account 10% monthly interest. I put the paper in my pocket and walk upstairs. Today was supposed to be special, it was anything but. At the top of the stiars, I see Kasumi right outside my door.

"Hello, Ranma."

I only nod.

"I put your french-bread in your room. You will be needing it, right?"

I only nod.

"Are you headed to bed already?"

I only nod.

"Well, did you have a good day?" She smiled, and tried to cheer me up. I looked her straight in the eye until she couldn't smile anymore. Hungry, exauhsted, alone. The pain of the scratches on my head still hadn't gone away. My guts still aching a little. I let her see it all, or at least I tried, until she could feel only akwardness. Her happy littlle world of a simple house, simple needs, simple life. Kasumi bleeds every day as if they were all the same, and what makes it worse is she's so happy with it all. She tried to shuffle by me and go downstairs, but I stopped her. I hadn't answered her question. Looking her straight in her eyes, which look more serious now than I ever thought they could be.

Shitiest most fucking horrible day of my entire goddamn life.

"I know." She says, looking straight at me "The whole day the sun never came out did it?" As if she could actually feel something sometime. "I hate when the sun doesn't shine. It makes me wish I'd stayed in bed."

She walked slowly, individually, down each stair.

"Goodbye, Ranma."

The fire always starts out small. It catches the curtain. The fires creep along the floor, they disperse and catch all along the ceiling. The wall becomes dotted with flames, they wrinkle, discolor, blister, and then blacken, as they burn into light ash that gets blown away by the fire's up-draft. By the time the fire gets to the hallway, it looks like the entrance to hell. Small kinling fires near the entrance of the house, and looking down the hall the fires get bigger and bigger, and there is nothing but an inferno in the family-room, red and orange fire, churning, burning it's way out. Nothing can stop the fire, every room in the house flares up. The wooden structure goes charred and weak, whole rooms begin to collapse triggering a rainfall of ceramic tiles, that first bury little bits of the fire, then disappear in a plume of black smoke, only to end up burning again when the flames find more fresh wood.

In my dream, suddenly I can see the whole house, birds eye view. Billowing in fire, and sending a long stream of black smoke into the sky. But there at the gate is a white soft light. A light I am familiar with. In my dream I can see her.

Kasumi.

She stands at the gate, looking at it, hypnotized by it.

Thank God almighty. I'm free at last.

All she ever worked on, everything in her simple life is going up into the sky, burned and worthless, and she smiles.

There's something in her hand. Something red, something on fire. She lifts it up, to look at it, her smile widening a bit more still.

She holds the flame closer and closer to her. The reflections of dancing orange in her eyes gets bigger and bigger. Then my shirt, my flaming, burning red shirt, my favorite shirt, is close enough to her face for her to light her cigarette.

She takes in a breath of smoke, and without a second glance to the house, throws the shirt on the ground and walks away.

Kasumi.

Next thing I know, she's above me. On top of me, straddling me. Her nightgown is white, and she looks so dreamlike, so pure. So why is she massaging my chest?

"Are you comfortable, Ranma?"

I nod, glancing left to right. It's my room in the dark. All around is an orange light. Fire light. A candle.

"I not as naive as everyone thinks I am, you know. I have my desires, I have needs too."

She rubs her hips into mine, slowly. Slowly. Perfectly paced. She breathes more heavily.

"Even I want to feel this, every once in a while." She looks at me. "Sometimes, I just want to free myslef. Most nights, I'm thinking about how dinner went, or what I'll make for breakfast, or what I have to clean. Then, as quick as a bullet, it will occur to me. My whole life is going to be just menus and cleaning supplies. My life will be simple and empty if I go to sleep every night knowing what I've done and what I'm obligated to do. I'm doing the same things all the time and not imagining what I'm capable of. If I don't do something fast, I won't do anything at all."

She bends over, and puts her hand on my shoulder. I'm looking down, her nightgown straight into her cleavage. She's forcing me to look there, propping my head up. Then she planted my face back, and ran both her hands down my cheeks.

"That's when it hits me. My great option. I don't have to do this shit. I could go to town, and drink myself onto the curb. Or I could dance until only the pills could keep me on my feet. Then, I'd love to find some boy, either a virgin, or a bodybuilder, take him home, and strap him to the floor. My ultimate fantasy. Sexing all night long. Fucking until I'm crying. The whole night through I could have absolute freedom. That way, if the sun didn't come out the next day, I could just say hell with it. I'm just staying in bed. Cook your own damn breakfast."

I try to say something. MMMFMMFMFFMMFFMFFM. Ms and Fs, this time it's a gag, not cleavage. I try to move my arms. Handcuffs.

Kasumi. The kind of Kasumi that would burn a whole house down has me at her mercy.

I try squirming, then there's a knife in my face.

"I know you fucked Kodachi. I'm not blind. I'm observant, and nobody knows, because nobody sees what I see."

The blade of this kitchen knife is against my nose, it's a flaying knife, I can tell by it's triangular shape, and fuck-off razor edge.

"Whenever I get this urge, and it is heavy, I stop. I stop because I have a duty to my family, you understand? The second I leave, and be what I want to be, this place would fall apart. Cause and effect."

My eyes blink and for no more than a second I look confused. Not to waste any time Kasumi turns the blade sideways and presses it down on my nose.

"Cause and effect, you dumb shit. Don't you know anything? It's how the world works. There's no way around it. Let me give you an example. The second I'm about to leave, one night it was friday, 12:30. Everyone was asleep. I had perfume, money, a short skirt, I was right by the door, I see the effect in my mind. Everyone falls apart. Nothing is sorted, nothing is done right, I'd have betrayed them. I'm the only fucking thing they've got left for a mother, and that's what I goddamn better well be. This is my effect, and I have to do it everyday."

She pulls the knife off.

"I took some responsibility, and went back to bed. The place I was going to be at burned down. It was on the second floor. Some drunken dumbass lit a broken whiskey bottle and that was that. Then it was 18 dead, 20 seriously injured, not one of them has ever left the hospital. Cause and effect."

At that moment it hit me. This is the real Kasumi. The one who rises up out of the flames, and cannot be touched. Her word is truth. Perfect and pure and honest. Her judgment is sound, and she has me at the end of a knife.

"The difference between us is that I chose to stand by my family and friends, and you chose to abandon them. What we have in common is that we both still lust. You motherfucker. You got away with it, didn't you?"

She pushes her nightgown into her crotch, and starts to knead her hips into me again.

"Oh, I can feel it. Your hard cock and nice, tight pussy. All these urges I hold on to. Everything I've kept myself from. You did it, and you got away with it. That's why I'm here, Ranma. Not for revenge, not family honor, and it's nothing personal. I'm Jealous. How come you get to have all the fun? You could have slept with my sister, and everything would have been fine, but you didn't. You went wild. You went all the way across town to get some ass. Kodachi Kuno?...please."

The hand on her crotch goes to mine, then tugs at my waistband.

"If you wanted to cheat on her, you could have just come to me. I've even thought about it. There were some late lonley nights. You were right down the hall, and I thought 'why shouldn't I?'"

She unbuttons my shirt. Puts the knife down at the center of my chest. Placing both her hands flat on my bare skin.

"Why shouldn't I?"

She picks up the knife, and points the dagger end right toward my heart.

"Why shouldn't I?"

My eyes go wide, my head starts shaking. Just beneath the gag, I'm screaming. She pust the knife aside, and slaps my cheek. Index finger to her lips.

"shhhhhh."

Suddenly, her hand goes off to the side, and picks up something, laying it flat on my chest.

Tuna. It's a tuna filet.

"Just another little fantasy of mine. Nyataimori."

I've heard of this. The deal is, a bunch of very horny men get together, and they hire a girl to lay down, stark naked. Next they cut up a bunch of sushi, prepare it, and they lay it out on the girl. They'll spend the whole night, slowly eating sushi, slowly undressing the table.

This is where perversity and art meet, in the stomach.

Kasumi adjusts the filet on my chest. Why it should be her dark fantasy to eat raw fish off me, I have no idea.

"Well, I coudn't imagine myself as a nyataimori girl. I just always wanted to put a spin on it. If it's eaten off the body of a woman, it should be prepaired on the body of a man."

She holds the knife up to her eye.

"Only fair, right?"

Before I can even squirm, the knife goes to the pink filet. Down it goes. The fuck-off razor edge slicing through the tuna, just like it would any meat. The blade cuts closer and closer to my bare chest, and you can tell, she's taking her time. I can see in the candle-light the pure-solid blade, glinting and wetening as it slices into the fish-meat, that solid orange line is the sharpened metal of the edge. Just as the blade is about to Make contact with my skin, she stops.

"Are you ready?"

I shake my head manicly. The way my heart is pounding, that knife will send high pressure blood streams all over the room, and ruin the walls. That, and I don't want to die.

She slices the knife down, all the way, then lifts, and the knife moves over to slice another segment, by the third, I was just shutting my eyes. I didn't want to look down, and see my heart beating in my own chest. Then I hear her announce; done!

She slamms the knife next to my ear, and my eyes jolt open from the shock. She's above me, and holding a long cut of raw meat. She pulls the gag off.

"Bon Appetit."

I tentatively open my mouth, and she drops the strand in. It tastes like tuna.

Suddenly, she wipes the fish off my chest. Her face dives down at me, so that her hairflows down next to our heads like a streamer. She's looking right at me, her face reflect the light of the flame.

"Now listen well, Ranma. If you thought today was shitty, wait until you see what I have planned for you tomorrow. If you're still in this bed in the morning you'll be a dead man."

Kasumi I-

She pushes a cloth to my face, and everything starts to Blur, until I can only see the orange-red hue of fire.

Next thing I know I'm leaning up in my room, gasping for breath. My hand is on my chest. Not a scratch. Outside, in the far distance I hear a roll of thunder.

It was 3:00 AM, too late for anything when I left the only place I could have called home.

-------

I wish to send my thanks to Soviet Inclination, who's behind me all the way.

Bricobrosse, who I'm glad I ended up talking to again.

Also Amy Lear, who helped me tone the chapter down a needed notch, and showed me that this story can relate to women, hard way or otherwise.

To my editors and hosts for their patience, communication and support, Thanks.

[email protected]

Chapter Twelve: Ranma on Dr. Strangelouvre