Nine Years Later

Splash!

Ranma balanced easily on the slim bamboo stick and watched his foster father fall into one of the pools dotting the ground below them.

He stared in amazement as a huge panda came hurtling out of the pool and, in his surprise, he could not avoid being knocked off the perch. He fell into water.

Did I see a…?

He kicked and surfaced, water streaming through his hair and blurring his vision. He looked down and seeing that he had suddenly gained breasts, screamed in horror.

I’m a girl!!!??!! Is this some nightmare? Am I dreaming?

The monk of the pools came running in terror, just in time to see a red haired girl and a panda staring at each other.

“Oh, no! Your Majesty! Your Royal Highness! You have fallen in the pools of Drowned Panda and Drowned Girl.” The monk stopped because his knees were shaking with terror.

The oasis of Jusenkyou had a reputation as a cursed place. No camel train or merchant caravan, however thirsty their animals, would ever stop at the many springs of water that gushed from the ground. They might stop briefly at the monastery that guarded the springs. The monks had their own tiny spring, the source of all their water.

And now King Genma, the Tyrant of Jiya, had come to train with his only son, and they had been cursed. It was impossible for even the King to kill a monk without repercussion, but Genma was not the Tyrant of Jiya for nothing.

The monk saw visions of whips and chains in his near future.

“Don’t worry,” he stammered. “Hot water will turn you back.” They didn’t ask, he reasoned, about cold water. They could find out for themselves. By that time, he and his fellow monks would have fled across the desert to Jin.

Ranma listened dazedly through the monk’s explanations. She turned to see the panda growling deep in its throat and turned back to the monk.

“Boil us some hot water.”

She watched monk fiddle with a kettle for a moment before her tenous self- control splintered.

“This is all your fault!” she screamed at the panda. “How could you bring us to this cursed place?” The panda gave her a powerful swat that sent her flying to the ground.

“Why you..!” Filled with fury, Ranma attacked Genma viciously. Cursed to be a girl! For even these brief moments, to be a girl, for one’s body to be soft and yielding, as Ranma never would allow herself, no, HIMSELF, to be.

Unexpectedly, Ranma thought of Akane. He still remembered the soft touch of her lips against his.

He’d thought of her when he was 10 years old and had stapled Jso’s hands to the wall with his own too-long, too-pretty daggers. Jso had coughed blood in the end. His crushed throat had prevented him from begging for his life, but that hadn’t stopped him from trying, the prince remembered with bitter amusement.

At the last, Ranma had grown sick of the sight of his face and slashed his throat. Genma had watched smirking all the while, his arms folded and his legs apart in his stance of warrior pride. Genma had tired of his lover by then.

The monk fled as soon as the water began to boil. Ranma snatched up the kettle and upended it over himself. He felt the change, felt himself growing. He was a man again. But he still remembered Akane.

He tossed the empty kettle to the ground and walked off, leaving Genma in a fury, trying to collect water for himself.

Stalking through the city, Ranma's thoughts returned to the war. Genma had often led his armies in the place of his general. At such times, Ranma was chained to the wall in his old room in the dungeons, and not released on pain of death till Genma returned.

And the demon always returned.

"Nothing can kill that one!" swore a soldier once in Ranma's hearing. "I saw him cleave through a warhorse once, simply to unseat his opponent!"

"I heard he chained our army together in the last battle, so that the soldiers would not be able to lose courage and run."

"Yes, it truly was 'kill or be killed'," noted an old spearman. "They had no choice at all but to stand and fight or be cut down where they stood."

Back in the palace, Ranma stared at himself in his full length mirror, imported at great cost from Cantos, where such things were made.

“You look worried, brother,” said a calm voice behind him. He turned around to see Nabiki, his second eldest foster-sister, leaning against the doorway.

The two true-blood daughters of Genma had grown up into self-controlled young women. They never gave their emotions away. Kasumi smiled through both blessings and beatings, and she had discovered a talent for cookery at a young age. She had enjoyed it and the assistant cook down in the kitchens had been happy to teach her, until Genma found out. He had the assistant-cook carved up in front of Kasumi with his own knife.

Kasumi had smiled through that, too, Ranma had heard.

Nabiki, on the other hand, always wore a stoic, sometimes calculating expression. Genma’s second daughter had somehow learned early that having leverage over others made her stay at the palace more bearable. She spent all her time eavesdropping and collecting information the way ants stored up food for the winter. She had pages and some younger servants in her employ, Ranma knew. She had blackmailed him, too, when she felt the need.

But he never held it against her. They all survived here as they knew best.

He looked back at the mirror.

A sixteen year old boy stared back at him. Slim and muscular, his shining black hair tied back in a braid that bisected his shoulder blades. His glance skimmed the cobalt blue eyes and rested on the reassuringly large fists with their callused knuckles and fingers.

Yes, he was most definitely male. He had nothing to fear.

“It’s nothing, Nabiki.”

He turned and went to his washing basin, and splashed some cold water on his face. He came back to the mirror and stared at himself. At the edge of his vision, a blurred image of Nabiki’s shocked white face wavered.

An ominous silence hung in the room, the calm before the storm.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa……………..!!!!!!!!!”

*********************************************************

The City of Jin

Akane sat up in her bath. Ranma? Had she heard something? She sat quietly for a moment, water dripping from her sleek body, her head tilted to catch any sound. But there was only the sound of drops plopping back into the water.

She sighed and rose from the tub, wrapping a large, woven towel about herself. What had suddenly made her start thinking about Ranma? She had only seen him that one time, nine years ago, and she suspected she had suppressed some of those memories.

Of course, there was a lot of reason to think about him now, she chided herself.

In three weeks, on the day after her sixteenth birthday, she would have to travel again to Jiya to formalize her betrothal to Ranma. Then she would stay with him for the space of a year. To live in that awful place…

“Hello, Akane.”

Akane swung around with a shriek. “Ryouga!” Her cousin grinned unrepentantly at her, a bunch of wildflowers clutched in his large fist.

“Ryouga! I’m not dressed! Why didn’t you knock?”

“These are for you, Akane.” He held out the flowers. She smiled and took them. It was hard to be mad at Ryouga. Her cousin was so harmless. He really was a sweet boy. She knew Soun looked to him as his successor.

“Thank you, Ryouga,” She took the flowers and slid the stems into a glass vase on her vanity. “Now, you must leave. I have to get dressed.”

“Very well. I’ll meet you downstairs for dinner,” he said. Akane took a second to look outside her room. Yes, her cousin’s navigator was with him. He probably would get Ryouga to dinner on time.

Back in her room, Akane dressed in a soft, white, cotton tunic with embroidery on the neck and sleeves, an embroidered vest and loose pants that she tucked into her knee high boots.

She continued to think about Jiya. Her sisters. Kasumi and Nabiki. When she’d last seen them, they had been little more than shadows, hiding behind curtains and bustling servants. She wondered what they were like, now.

And Ranma. She’d made a promise to save him. She planned to fulfill it this time.

*******************************************************************

Nearly 4 Weeks Later, On the Streets of Jiya

Akane lifted the curtain of her palanquin to peek outside. The avenue they were traveling was filled with people throwing flowers and maize at her procession. The citizens of Jiya. She could see that the more prosperous citizens stood at the front of the crowds, but on the whole, these people did not seem nearly as happy or well-fed as her own. Akane snorted and sat back. And she was going to be queen to these people?

At the palace steps, the Jinian procession paused, and Akane waited tensely, though she remained serene on the outside. She dared not look through the curtains. Everyone’s eyes were no doubt on the palanquin already. She watched as a callused hand drew the curtain back.

Akane and Ranma met face to face again after nine years. They stared at each other. Everyone waited.

“Is her beauty so great, boy, that you are struck dumb?” Genma strode forward and peered into the palanquin, his eyes skimming Akane’s form from head to toe.

“By the beard of Gulzar!” he exclaimed. “Let’s see her in the daylight, boy!” He reached to pull her out, but Ranma blocked him.

“I have her,” he said quietly. He clasped Akane’s hand and led her out to stand on the palace steps. The crowds stared at them in awe.

“After all, Nodoka’s mother was one of the great beauties of Jiya,” a courtier’s wife whispered to another. “It’s really not a surprise.”

“I have heard she is known as the Flower of Jin.”

“They grow them well there, don’t they?”

Tofu heard the whispers around him, and his clasped hands tightened. She was beautiful. And what black thing masqueraded as the heart of Genma would destroy anything of beauty.

The councilor glanced at his colleagues. Kalamari, the wisest of all of them, wore a strained look, as though he were thinking of something. His nose began to twitch.

And that was how Akane came again to Jiya.

Tbc…