Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 and all characters therein are the property of Rumiko Takihashi, meaning not mine. She just makes pretty toys.

Author's Note: Okay, I know everyone's waiting for the next chapter of When Love Isn't Enough (or Wrapped in Silk or On the Open Sea or Painful Truths) but the new chapter is being a pain. Besides, this one's been sitting in my skull, begging to be written. It's a little darker than what I normally write, though not unduly so. Be warned: This is an Akane rape fic but I will refrain from being overly graphic. I tried to write something similar a few years ago but I ended up deleting it cuz it got overly convoluted too quickly. At least, for me. Also, I am a rape victim personally so some of the description may come from my own memories. Don't worry - this is not catharsis in fanfiction form, I just wanted to write it and it wouldn't go away. Damned muse!

Akane ran through the dark streets of Nerima, marking out a pattern that would have been difficult to follow even if someone had been right behind her. Tears trailed out of her eyes and down her cheeks, twin paths of fire turning cold with the speed of her escape. She could feel the pain of two clashing memories warring within her.

The first was of a promise she had made to Kasumi and Aunt Nodoka the day before. When they'd approached her, she'd been wary and had felt that undertone of being double-teamed. It was a familiar sensation and hindsight told her why they had felt to need to do it but didn't they know she couldn't deny them anything? However, Nodoka had been the only one to speak, exacting a promise out of Akane that she knew she would be hard-pressed to keep. "I know that my son can be something of a handful and I would never deny you the spirit that makes you who you are, Akane. But we, Kasumi and I, have been talking and we want Ranma to choose you as his wife. I'm sorry, Akane, but I must require that you stop being so violent."

She had made the promise, all right, but the new situation had made it all the harder. Easier said than done, she thought with a shadow of her normal derision. At least this time her dejection had been strong enough to overpower her anger.

Now, she thought back to the tiramisu in the ceramic dish that she'd handed back to Kasumi before leaving the dojo in her wake. Akane sighed, thinking of the time she'd spent on the Italian dessert and how much effort it had taken her to finally get it just right, get it so that it tasted almost exactly like the ones her favorite restaurant served. Even Kasumi, who could be quite a critic when it came to food or her precious kitchen, had beamed that smile of approval she had been waiting for all her life. It had taken all her power to retrieve the recipe itself from the restaurant in question as it was.

Thank the Gods she had friends that worked there.

Though in years past all her cooking experiments had gone to her father, now they were always reserved for Ranma, the significance of which everyone but him seemed to grasp. Of course, with her record, no one else really wanted her cooking anyway. She had been taking her finished result, something she was proud of herself, out to the dojo when she heard the voices. One Ranma's rich and disrespectful baritone, the other a familiar lilting alto: Ukyo. Because the doors to the dojo were thrown open, she could see that Ukyo was feeding Ranma one of her rare dessert okonomiyakis. Looking down at her own amateur-looking tiramisu, Akane knew that she couldn't compete.

It was the last straw, more than anything else. Promising as she had to her sister and Ranma's mother, she had done some deep meditation that morning in lieu of her morning run in order to attempt to lock the anger away. It was the anger that led to her violent outbursts and that had to be done away with. Though she could feel the fury brimming into her muscles like the effects of opening a shaken bottle, she turned away from the scene without a word and fled her home before her powerful emotions would force her to act differently.

Deep in her mind, Akane accepted the reason why Ranma complimented Ukyo so much, which was the inverse reason why he insulted her so much. Ukyo had masqueraded as a boy for most of her life and Ranma's stream of 'cute' and 'nice' comments in her general direction kept her off-balance, much in the same way that 'uncute' and 'tomboy' kept Akane herself completely off-balance. Maybe it was something of a Genma teaching but she knew that the Anything Goes martial art taught that it was best to keep your opponent as off their game as you could manage.

Did that mean that Ranma thought of real life as potential battleground? Probably.

However, that didn't mean it didn't hurt any less and Akane's go-to reflex when in pain was to retaliate. It wasn't unheard of; she was still a martial artist, after all. So, if she couldn't hurt someone back, her only recourse was to hide, to escape for just a little while. Much like a wounded cat, she just needed to lick her wounds and then she could return home with little having changed.

In this instance, she was glad she had lived in Nerima much longer than Ranma or any of the others and had a more expansive knowledge of its territory. If she didn't want to be found, she wouldn't be found. It was just… she usually wanted Ranma to find her. The only person that would just stumble upon her might be Ryoga with his odd sense of direction but even that was quite unlikely.

Finally coming to a stop, Akane realized she was about a mile from home, slightly closer to Tofu-sensei's office than the familiar dojo. She also realized that she was in one of the seedier neighborhoods and was immediately discomforted by the fact. This place was something Americans might refer to as being 'on the wrong side of the tracks'. She was about to turn around and hightail back home when she heard the one thing that would change her mind.

A scream. "Help!"

Her martial artist instincts on full alert, she ran to the sound. It hadn't been too far away and it had been a girl's scream, high-pitched and full of terror. The only bad thing was that this neighborhood wouldn't take notice to such cries of help. If gangs could be found in Nerima, this is where they might be and it would take someone of superior courage – and stupidity – to mess with something like that.

"Girly, just shut it and take your medicine." The voice was rough and gravelly and Akane pinpointed the source to the nearest alleyway, where she turned into in order to take in the scene. The man was big but not the biggest she'd ever seen, dressed in leather pants and a leather vest but little else. He held a girl a few years younger than Akane herself against the brick of the wall and she could see that she already had an abrasion on one of her cheeks and was crying profusely.

So, he liked to beat on little girls, did he?

Without further thought to the situation or her own safety, Akane surged forward and launched a mighty snapkick at the man's temple. The force of it caused him to release the girl and stumble. But only slightly, which was disconcerting. The force of the blow should have knocked him to the ground and pushed him back a few feet, at least.

The girl whimpered and Akane knew automatically that she had been struck dumb with shock. She cast a friendly brown gaze in her direction and whispered a firm command. "Run!" The one word seemed to give the girl, who up close seemed to be even younger than Akane had first surmised, enough sense to flee as quickly as her legs could carry her.

The man righted himself and rolled his neck, causing a slight cracking sound as the vertebrae popped. "What the…?"

"You should pick on someone your own size," Akane intoned sharply, her eyes lit with challenge.

He tilted his head slightly and finally fully faced her, revealing something that sparked fear in the young martial artist. In the hand she hadn't seen, he held a large gun, the metal of it cold and menacing. "Well, little girl's got a bite. You're a little old for my liking but still quite a tasty morsel."

Akane could feel her gorge rise as he eyed her with something both dirty and dark. Before another thought could increase her fear, she rushed him again, meaning to put him down this time. What she didn't realize was that he was prepared for her now.

"Mm-mm. This is no good," Soun murmured softly as Kasumi padded into the family room with a slice of Akane's successful tiramisu for the Tendo patriarch. The eldest daughter was bursting with pride for her youngest sister – a single successful dish for something as potentially complicated as tiramisu showed that maybe the fog that obscured her cooking ability had finally lifted. However, no one needed to know Akane had made it yet. They could be quite insensitive when it came to her feelings.

"Here's some dessert, Father," Kasumi said softly as she set the small plate in front of him on the table. Her soft voice and the dull clink of the china hitting the wood of the table caught the elder Tendo's attention and he folded the newspaper he had been reading. She noticed it was left open to reveal the article he had been reading. " 'Criminal at Large, Curfew Recommended'?" she read, a question clear in her voice.

"Mm," Soun nodded, taking a bite of the tiramisu as usual. "Good as usual, Kasumi! And Akane's favorite as well! What's the occasion?"

Kasumi frowned at her father's easy distractedness. "I didn't make it. Akane did. She's been perfecting it for a week."

The Tendo father's eyes widened and his face broke into a smile, tears threatening to leak out of his eyes. "Oh, that's wonderful news." He made to stand, ostensibly to find Genma, but Kasumi had other ideas.

"Father," she began again firmly. Soun froze, his eyes wide as he was caught in Kasumi's demanding voice. "The newspaper?" she asked again.

Relaxing marginally, he shot a look at the paper, his eyes roaming over the kanji. "There's an escaped prisoner from Fuchu Prison on the west side of Tokyo. They're recommending but not forcing a curfew, especially for young girls."

Kasumi's brow furrowed slightly. "Why girls?"

Soun's face darkened. "He's a… serial rapist of prepubescent girls." His face twisted further, as if the words put a bad taste on his tongue and he'd hated saying them. But that was the Will of Kasumi. "He's also a master of judo and kenpo."

"Oh dear," Kasumi murmured softly. A martial artist committing such crimes as rape? What was the world coming to? Finally, she stood and returned to the kitchen, functionally to retrieve more tiramisu to take to Ranma but her mind on Akane's recent escape from the Tendo compound altogether. "Oh, and Father?"

Soun looked up at his daughter as he was pushing himself to his feet. "Yes, Kasumi?"

"You will keep Akane's newfound skills to yourself, won't you?"

With a defeated sigh, he slumped back down and unfolded the newspaper again. "Yes, Kasumi."

Passing through the kitchen, Kasumi quickly fetched the other plate of tiramisu and walked briskly to the dojo. A grainy black-and-white photo of the rapist had been situated in the middle of the article and she had felt curiously disturbed at the sight of it. She didn't want to think of the possibility of her sister coming face-to-face with this man but Akane's luck had gone seriously downhill since her engagement to the gender-changing boy that lived under their roof. Afraid that she was unduly worried, she pasted a serene smile on her face and walked through the open doors of the dojo.

She saw immediately the reason for her little sister's earlier dismay as her brown eyes settled on the form of one of Ranma's fiancées. "Miss Kuonji, it is quite late to be visiting." She could hear the reproach in her voice and felt a small voice telling her to kick the boyish girl off their property. After all, after promising Auntie Saotome so fervently, she was sure that Akane hadn't resorted to violence. Besides that, Ranma belonged to the youngest Tendo, not some… okonomiyaki pretender.

Ukyo jumped, startled, and presented Kasumi with an embarrassed smile. "Just talking to my Ranchan."

Kasumi's eyebrow twitched and she silently counted to ten. Though anger was as familiar to her as it was to Akane, a good hostess never showed such emotions. So, she turned to Ranma to quell the rest of the rage. "I have your dessert, Ranma."

The girl looked ready to put forth an argument but Ranma had both a bottomless stomach and zero reason to argue another treat. Another, Kasumi noted idly as she took in the empty Ucchan's box near the boy's feet. She refused to let her lips twist into a scowl but could feel a thread of misdirected anger toward Nodoka. If Akane had never made that promise and hit Ranma instead, she would never had gone running off into the night. While she had no reason to believe that her sister was in danger, there was a stone-like feeling at the bottom of her gut that screamed that something was horribly wrong.

"Hey, what's this? It's really good." Ranma smiled up at the eldest Tendo girl around the dessert in his mouth.

"Tiramisu," Kasumi answered idly. "It's Akane's favorite."

"Oh? I didn't know that."

Of course you didn't, she thought with a vague feeling of distaste. "I find it rather fitting that her first edible dish is also her favorite dessert."

"What?" Ranma looked down at his now empty plate carefully. "You gotta be kidding, right?" He tilted his head and Kasumi blinked, afraid he could see the hard glint in her eyes. "You're not kidding. Why didn't she bring it to me?"

Turning away, Kasumi decided to face her mother's shrine instead. The longer she thought about it, the more she knew something was happening to Akane… but how to put that into words? "She did. I can only assume she saw something she didn't like because she brought the dish back to me and left."

"What do you mean, left?" Ranma asked, surging instantly to his feet. He didn't notice Ukyo's frown and Kasumi took a sick pleasure in the sight when she glimpsed it. "Why didn't she just hit me or something?"

Kasumi sighed, feeling guilty herself. After all, when Nodoka had brought up the promise, it had seemed like such a good idea. But she had forgotten the younger girl's other response to feeling hurt, something she had done when Nabiki's actions still made her quite angry. "She promised your mother she wouldn't."

"What?" he exclaimed. "That's a stupid thing to promise."

The elder girl turned to face him again. "Are you saying you deserve it?"

Ranma instantly sputtered. "What? No!"

Kasumi's face almost drooped slightly before she caught her internal disappointment and buried it away. "Well, I'm certain she'll return soon. She won't stay away long."

"You're worried," Ranma accused softly, his blue eyes searching her face intently.

"I am," she admitted. "There's an escaped criminal on the loose and I have the most horrible feeling."

Ranma turned toward the open dojo doors. "I'll find her." With that, he was gone, his speed making his escape mysteriously instant and leaving Ukyo behind. The girl herself huffed impatiently and left as well, though at a much slower rate. Kasumi frowned, wishing that she had remembered to inform the boy of Akane's impeccable knowledge of Nerima's streets. If she hadn't wanted Ranma to find her, she would not be found until she was ready.