Prices Paid
There was a storm over Nerima that night. It was extremely violent in its ferocity and even in the Tendo-ke the charge it was giving off could be felt.
One large bald man in a dirty white Gi turned to his shogi companion "bad feeling in the air tonight" he said.
"Yes there is Saotome, reminds me of the night the boy disappeared" Replied the moustachioed companion. He looked back to the game just in time to miss the shiver that ran through Genma's body.
In the next room Akane and Kasumi sat watching a TV show about a world-spanning special ops team fighting off an alien menace.
Suddenly there was a crack of lightening and all the lights went out, leaving only the TV on, which was running static. Ominous shadows were thrown across the room and its occupants. Thunder rolled, and then everything was silent.
A voice full of gravel and hate broke the silence.
"Saotome Genma, I have come for you!" The extended family quickly whirled to face the shadowy corner from where the voice had come.
A Deeper Darkness stood there pierced only by two burning eyes that shed flickering shadows across a sinister visage. Akane drew Mallet-sama and threw herself at the figure, she never got there. A bolt of black-purple light struck her in the chest and threw her back, breaking a set of shelves the other side of the room. The smell of scorched flesh assailed their nostrils.
"On the fourteenth of march nineteen eighty one you sold a six year old child's soul. For that and more crimes than can ever be counted I call you to account.!" Said the voice. Genma fell into the crouch of the 'white-tiger revised,' 'fat-man shitting himself.' Soun burst into tears over what he assumed was his dead daughter (despite the fact she was still twitching in the mess). Kasumi fainted.
"Dawn tomorrow fat man or I will take matters into my own hands." Said the voice and it threw a package to the crouching coward.
The lights came back up and the family was alone again. Genma slowly raised his eyes, Soun rushed over to his baby daughter (ignoring the more worthy ones plight as usual).
Genma slowly lifted the white package the figure had thrown, It was a white kimono, and obi wrapped around a tanto. He looked up, "Boy?"
Doctor Tofu was quickly summoned, only to prove incapable of coherent thought because his dearest love was unconscious.
Genma had retreated to the Dojo and Akane was moaning loudly in a pathetic demand for attention. All of this left Soun crying a river.
At length Kasumi came to and proceeded to take things in hand, Akane was carried to her room by Soun, and Tofu eventually got the idea and followed. Then Kasumi went to find Genma.
He was kneeling, face down, before the shrine. She stopped by the door, "Oh my!" she exclaimed. He raised his head and she could see the tear tracks running down his face. "Oh my!" she repeated.
"It was Ranma," he said in a small voice as if from very far away. The admission stunned her.
"The shadow-"
"Was Ranma" he confirmed.
"How, why?" she asked.
"Yes why don't you tell her fat man!" came the voice, mocking, from the back of the dojo. The two occupants turned.
Ranma stood there, but it wasn't him, Gone was the pigtail, the innocent blue eyes, and his traditional red shirt. In their place was a cross between some man and a demon of some kind. His eyes burned with an internal flme that shed its own light. His Hair was spiked and seemed blacker than black itself. He wore a black waist-coat with silver patterns, open at the front, a set of black pants and a pair of big silver and black boots. His right hand was clawed and grey-scaled. The shadows themselves seemed to form dark wings around his body, twitching in an absent wind. Worst of all across all his body, and curled onto his face was what appeared a black tendril tattoo, only it too seemed to squirm and writhe.
"Why don't you tell her where I have been, where you sent me!" the voice rasped.
"My boy-" Genma started only to be interrupted by a sudden flaring of Ranma's fiery aura.
"NEVER call me that again!" he ordered "You lost all rights to me when you sold me to Hell"
"Please Ranma" Genma begged, sobbing "I didn't know I didn't mean it to.." he broke off into wracking sobs.
"Didn't mean to?" Ranma demanded "I've seen the contract! You signed it in blood, yours and mine! You knew exactly what you were doing! You just didn't care." Genma had fallen back into his patent crouch, only this time his fear was mixed with genuine sorrow.
"Tell her Genma! Tell her how you signed away your child's soul to a demon from hell! Sold it for a single meal. How you bargained with it to keep me for as long as you could before he took me. Not so you could find a way out but so you could continue living off my sweat." Ranma stalked closer, shadow wings streaming out, seeming to defy the dimensions of the room.
"I have spent an eternity as a plaything of demons. I have been tortured in ways no mortal could ever dream of, not even in their wildest nightmares. And I have forever lost a piece of myself, one that I can never get back. Now tell me fat man, was filling your gut worth it? WELL?" Ranma shouted, his voice full of dark power. At the last even the lights flickered.
"You have nine hours fat man, better brush up on your haiku!" And then he was gone, only shadows remained. Kasumi, like a puppet whose strings were cut, fell to her knees, her own tears falling to join Genma's on the dojo floor.
Dawn arrived late the next day. Mist had gathered in the post storm stillness and shrouded the sleepy town. In the garden of the Tendo-ke several figures were gathered. First there were the Tendos, less Nabiki who was still away in America. Beside them was Nodoka, looking very formal in her best kimono. Then came Konatsu and Ukyo, looking confused. Besides them and completing the semi-circle were the Amazons, mouse already ducka-fied and caged. In front of them, with his face to the dawn knelt Genma. He was dressed in the formal white kimono of mourning, and had a tanto and a scroll laid out before him.
Suddenly, where before there had been only mist, there stood Ranma. He was still dressed in the unremitting Black of the night before but gloves, a long sleeved shirt and a dark long-coat hid most of his own darkness. The eyes remained the same though, burning pits of hate.
"Where is your second Saotome?" the figure asked.
"I, Saotome Genma, son of Saotome Tenma, formally ask you, who I have wronged worst of all, to deliver the fourth cut." Genma said adding a formal bow. By now only the shock of Ranma's changed appearance and the formality of the occasion restrained the inevitable chaos. It couldn't last.
"Ranma No Baka!" Akane cried hurling herself at him again, mallet –sama readied. Ranma caught her by the throat with his left hand and swatted her mallet away with his right. For a moment he said nothing, instead his burning eyes bored into her choking face.
"Akane, I will say this once," he began, "You have no claim over me and nothing I want. You have one more chance and then I WILL kill you." The last was said with such sincerity that all the colour drained from the girl. He threw her to the ground.
"But you said you loved me" she whispered. "When you killed Saffron." Ranma stopped and turned back to look at her fallen form.
"Saffron. Hah, I had forgotten," he began, but his mirth was far from reassuring. "Maybe I did then, but not now, now all I have left for you is contempt. To think I used to think you were pretty, HAH!" Needless to say Akane was lost, so she reverted to form, thinking things through in her own special way.
1-Ranma, missing for days-
2-Ranma comes back, changed, claiming he doesn't love me-
3-Ranma is wearing black
1+2+3 Ranma has been with Kodachi!
"Ranma No Hentai!" she commanded, looking around for a heavy object. Only to be interrupted by Ranma's boot kicking her across the chin. She lay there stunned, his mocking laughter filling her ears.
"I have been subjected to, and subjected others to, depravities you could never comprehend. I have wallowed in perversions that would blow your tiny little mind. Believe me when I say you have Nothing that I want." He laughed and turned to the others. "Now in case any of the rest of you decide to mar this moment with crass outbursts, be warned, my patience is exhausted and you wouldn't like me when I am angry!"
"Son?" Nodoka asked. He turned to her, eyes aflame.
"HUSH!" he commanded. Then he turned to his father, "Genma, I refuse, find someone else. Now!" Genma tried to stifle the tears.
"There will be no need," he said and began the ceremony by bowing to the rising sun.
-
"In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers."
-
Genma intoned in the dread stillness.
Then he laid down the scroll and raised the tanto to the sun. Its blade shone bright as it was drawn.
He reversed his grip placed the balde against his abodomen and raised his face to the sun.
Without another word Genma Saotome did the only honourable thing he ever did, he died.
-
-Nodoka turned her face to the floor, failing to stem the tears.
-Soun fell to his knees weeping silently.
-Kasumi buried her face in her hands and fled into the house.
-Akane remained on the floor truly moved by a moment of greatness by a man she despised.
-Ukyo forced a grin, but Konatsu wept in her place.
-Cologne took hr heir and duck by the hand and cage and left.
- Ranma moved over to the shell that had been his father. He whispered "Good-bye sensei, father." And then he too walked away.
He had not reached the first corner when Akane caught him up.
"What about the engagements?" she asked. He smiled.
"What engagements?" he replied, striding on. She caught up again.
"What about me?" she asked in a small voice.
"You," he started "You will go on to marry some repressed little norm, remain trapped in your repressed little world and go on to raise repressed little children and make each others' lives miserable for the rest of your repressed insignificant little lives." And then he was gone, from Nerima and her life.
Ranma moved into his mother's home the same day, he didn't ask he just did it. She said nothing, with the death of her husband a fire in her had gone out and all that remained was routine.
Meanwhile up in his room Ranma was removing his shirt, changing into something less formal. All of a sudden there was another figure in the room. She was tall blonde and built. She was wearing a tight leather bodice, with shoulder plates, high blue stockings and higher heels, around her back floated a red cape. On her face were the diagonal-line markings of a Demon first-class.
"Mara," he intoned, without turning. She flinched a little.
"Hild-dono wants to talk to you," the demoness told him. He slowly turned to face her, wings of darkness gathering.
"I am not hers to command! Nor am I yours demoness!" he spat, "So you can tell your bitch queen that I have had enough of her and all her ilk. She can take her summons, her invitations and her rules and shove them up her well buggered asshole!" Mara found herself pressed up against the wall, his imposing presence mere millimetres away from her. "And while you are at it" he said "Tell her that the next time I so much as see one of your kind it dies!" and then he was gone, back across the room. She scrabbled for a cd and fled back to Nifleheim as fast as her energies could carry her.
Some time later he was walking through a neaby park, dressed in a fuller disguise and lost in dark thoughts. When all of a sudden a voice cried "There he is!" and he turned to see four people running towards him. The three girls were radiating deific energy and were clearly of some note by its quantity
They were also quite beautiful, or would be in the case of the youngest.
"Halt demon!" she commanded pulling out a MASSIVE hammer.
"Maybe not," he thought. Out loud, almost shouting, he said "What?" The quartet were momentarily taken aback. The mortal already looked like he wanted to run.
"You've got to leave here and never come back!" commanded the youngest.
"Tell me why Skuld?" he asked, she seemed genuinely shocked by him knowing her name. "Give me one good reason why!"
"Cuz otherwise I'll squish you with a Skuld Bomb TM!" the youngest Norn declared. Ranma for the briefest moment considered not laughing and then gave in. His laugh was not kind, not at all.
"Child goddess, when I was still mortal I tore out the essence of a Marquis of Hell. I tore out his still beating heat with my own hand and ate it, raw. Now please tell me again what you plan to do."
"Back-off buster," said Urd, the eldest, and sexiest. "Leave the kid alone."
"Gladly," Ranma replied, "You extend the same favour and maybe I won't have to eat you all too."
"Whoa there big boy" she said "Your attitude needs some adjustment!"
"My attitude?" he sneered, anger rising, "What would you know of it?" his aura started to flare. "You who call yourselves goddesses, protedctors of the innocent!" he spat the last "You make me sick!" the three goddesses were clustered together, backing off, Keichii was finding courage where there had never been any before. "You stand back and let this happen and you call yourselves good? You let your father impose the doublet system and claim to be righteous. You give up the fight against hell and you claim to be holy?" this time he really did spit, a gob of flaming acid. "You let Nifleheim buy the souls of innocents, let them drag the children down into hell, toture rape and twist them, you let them do this and you claim to defend?" Well I spit on you, and all your filthy lying breed. I reject you and offer only scorn!" At this last Belldandy ran off, tears flowing freely down her face. Keichii looked once at Ranma with a gaze that would have made medusae proud and ran after her, shortly followed by Skuld.
"I know who you are now" Urd said in an even voice. "And I know you have reason to be angry, but Bell did not deserve that." Then she turned and left, slowly.
Ranma was left standing alone in a burnt patch of ground, thoroughly deflated.
The next day there was a knock on Keichii's temple's door. He opened it, glancing behind him at the still crying Belldandy. The four of them had sat up till the wee hours reviewing Ranma's file and hearing the latest tradgedies to strike the family Saotome.
Standing at the door was the very subject of their study, Ranma, once a boy now something between a demon and a man, possessed of the power of a Great Lord of Hell, within the altered shell of a ordinary human.
"Domo," he said bowing a little " I am here to see Belldandy."
"I really don't think she wants to talk to you!" Keichi said.
"No. Its alright Kei-kun" bell's voice chimed out, "Give me a moment please Saotome-san."
"Hai." Ranma said bowing again. Keichii stepped out of the way and motioned for him to enter, he just raised an eyebrow and then looked at the holy floor and back at him.
"Oh yeah, holy, I forgot." Said Keichii. Then Belldandy appeared behind him. Keichii reluctantly moved out of the way, and Bell moved to the door proper.
Ranma bowed deeply, "Gomen Nasai Belldandy-dono" he said formally "My troubles were not your fault, I was wrong to blame you." He bowed again. She reached out a quivering hand, and lightly touched his shoulder, only to see him flinch.
"Gomen Saotome-san" she replied in a trembling voice. He straightened, turned and left. "If only that were true" she whispered, watching his retreating back.
Urd met him at the next corner. At his raised eyebrow she looked at a mirror placed on the nearby driveway.
"Thank-you Saotome-san" she said. He smiled, and for once it showed just a hint of the person he was before Balthazzar dragged him to hell. She moved aside to let him pass. As he was almost away she said "the motor club is having a party on Saturday at the Student Union, it could use a little livening up." He paused for a moment, looked over his shoulder at her, smiled and nodded. And then he was gone, lost in a passing crowd.
"Damn that's a fine ass!" she whispered to herself, whistling. Shortly followed by an "oops" as she was shockingly reminded of the swearing rules.