Waters Under Earth

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum 
-harnums@thekeep.org
-harnums@hotmail.com (old/backup)

All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.

Waters Under Earth at Transpacific Fanfiction:  
http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html
http://users.ev1.net/~adina/shrines2/fanfics.html

Chapter 22 : And One to Walk Alone

Now in sad autumn
As I take my darkening path...
A solitary bird
-Basho

     The light caressed the blade hungrily, glimmering along the
edges, turning the flat surfaces into perfect mirrors.  It slowly
rotated as she moved her hand.

     So beautiful, so utterly and totally pure.  Sharp enough to
split hairs, plain and unadorned.  It would cut easily, cut right
down to the bone, the beautiful purity of bone, as layer of layer
of weak flesh, soft flesh, bloody flesh was stripped away.

     Flesh was sweet and blood was sweet, but bone was sweeter,
sweetest of them all.     
     
**********

     Konatsu woke up screaming again.
     
     He couldn't remember how many days it had been.  Four, 
perhaps five.  Every night since he had come to the Clan Kenzan
compound, he had woken once like this every night, terrified and
unknowing of the terror's source.

     As his eyes came into focus with the darkness, he saw the
shadowy hulk of the dresser in one corner of the room, and the
dressing table with its dim array of pots and bottles.  He had
never imagined there were so many different kinds of makeup.

     Taking deep breaths, he brushed hair out of his eyes and sat
up in the large bed, resting back against the pillows and letting
the fear flow away from him.  His near-naked body was sheathed in
sweat like a second skin, and his heart pounded in his chest like
a drum.

     He pushed down the clinging sheet and swung his feet onto 
the floor, hearing the old wooden boards creak softly in the
darkness as he did.  Walking across the room to the sliding door
that led into the bathroom, he slid it open and stepped from the
wood onto the cool tile, closing the door behind him as he went.

     In the darkness, his hand absently found the switch on the
wall, flooding the bathroom with light.  He turned the tap on the
sink, and cool water began to splash into the basin, gurgling
down the drain.  He splashed a handful across his face, then
another.  

     Straightening up, he looked at himself in the mirror.  
Almost involuntarily, he raised a hand and traced the flatness of
his chest.  A man's chest.  A man's body.

     He was, despite how his stepmother had raised him, despite
how his father had told him to act, despite how Hako referred to
him, a man.  

     With a sigh, he leaned against the sink, resting his 
forehead against the coolness of the mirror's face, closing his
eyes against the sight of his mirror self.  He was so tired; his
body ached.  
     
     Since he had come, he had done nothing but train, by himself
or with Hako.  Despite the large size of Kenzan's compound, he
and the leader of Clan Kenzan appeared to be the only ones here.
He spent the days training, and the nights in his room.  There
were no locks upon his door, but there might as well have been.

     He wondered if Hako ever slept.  She was still awake when he
went to bed, and was always awake when he got up.  The training
they did was not like anything he had done before; before, it had
been easy, so easy he had barely even had to try.

     When he sparred with Hako, it was as if she truly were
trying to kill him.  He bore no small number of cuts and bruises
from narrow escapes, from killing blows pulled at the last minute
by Hako.  

     But he had to be trained.  He was going to be the leader of
Clan Kenzan; that was what Hako had decided.  What he wanted was
of no consequence.

     It seemed that little of what he had ever wanted had ever 
been of any consequence to anyone.
     
     Pushing himself away from the sink, Konatsu walked out of
the bathroom, leaving the door open and the light on.  He went to
the closet door in the wall and opened it, gazing at the racks of
clothing dimly illuminated by the light spilling from the open
bathroom door.  

     Silk kimonos, nearly a dozen, of the finest workmanship, all
in shades of red.  There was a kunoichi outfit as well, not the
ragged one that he had worn before, but a beautiful suit of 
crimson silk that fit him like a glove.  

     But what he wanted was at the back, tucked away into a 
corner in a folded heap.  He pulled it out and walked over to sit
on the edge of his bed, unwrapping the stiff paper that he'd
packed it in when he left Ukyou's restaurant.

     He let the slightly-worn cloth of the kimono she'd given him
fall in folds about his hands as he pulled it out.  With a long
sigh, and a hard pain like a stone in his heart, he lifted it 
free of the wrappings and held it in his lap, letting the paper
that had held it fall to the floor with a soft sound.

     "I miss you, Ukyou," he whispered softly.  "But please,
please stay away.  Please stay safe."
     
     And slowly, as he buried his face in the kimono, and began 
to weep, lonely and scared and frightened, he tried to tell
himself that she would.

**********

     With a bump, the plane touched down at the airport in the
early afternoon.  Ukyou stirred in her seat, half-asleep, then
yawned and stretched slightly, sitting up to look out the window
across the airport scenery.  

     Naha was the biggest city on the southern island of Okinawa,
which wasn't really saying much.  Its population was dwarfed by
that of the major mainland cities, but it was still very much a
modern city.

     Ukyou remembered what she'd learned about Okinawa in history
classes; about the Ryukyu kingdom that had been separate from
Japan for hundreds of years, about the role the islands had
played in the war.  There were lots of sights to see here if you
were a tourist; Shurijo Castle, the Gyokusendo caves, the
Cornerstone of Peace.  

     But she wasn't a tourist; she was here for a reason.  She
had to find Konatsu, and the only leads she had began here.  

     Ask in Naha, the old woman had said.  That was what Ukyou
intended to do.  

     The plane slowed to a gradual stop on the runway, and as the
voice of the pilot came crackling over the speakers, people began
to rise from their seats in preparation to leave.  Ukyou 
unbuckled her seatbelt and prepared to do so as well.

     Later, as she stepped outside the airport building and
looked around for a cab to take her to the hotel, she found
herself taking a deep breath of the air.  She was almost sure 
she could smell the sea, even from here.

     She spotted a cab and raised a hand, hefting her suitcase
and the long wrapped bundle that held her combat spatula.  Try as
she might, she'd been unable to convince the plane's crew to
allow her to take it as carry-on luggage, and it felt good to 
have it back in her hands again.

     The day was warm, far warmer than it would have been in
Tokyo right now.  Okinawa was subtropical, and she could feel all
the effects of that; as she put her luggage into the trunk of the
cab, she found herself already pushing away sweaty strands of
hair that clung to her forehead.

     She watched the buildings go by in silence as she sat in the
back of the cab, the wind from the open window fluttering her
hair about her face.  Music played tinnily from the radio, soft
and sad.  

     She tipped the driver generously when they reached the
hotel; this whole expedition was cutting deeply into all her
savings, but something in her simply didn't care.  The savings
had been for when she needed to start her own household, and 
hardly seemed necessary now.

     Checking in was easy enough; she'd made a reservation in
advance.  The hotel was small, moderately priced and pleasantly
decorated, located near the downtown area of the city.  The 
thin-featured young man behind the counter gave her a room key 
and wished her a pleasant stay, his voice tinged with the accent 
of the Okinawan dialect.

     In her room, she unpacked the week's worth of clothing she'd
brought into the dresser, after changing into shorts and t-shirt
that served as much wiser garb in the thick heat of Naha.  
Strands of paper fluttered like banners from the vents of the
air-conditioner placed in a window overlooking the streets below,
but even that did little to cool the room.  

     She sat down on the futon that lay near one wall of the 
room, beneath a coloured ink print depicting a white bird flying
over a calm ocean, unwrapping her spatula from the soft white
cloth and laying it across her knees.

     Picking up the remote from the floor nearby, she turned on
the television for background noise and began to oil and polish
her weapon.  The easy monotony and the soft hum of the voice from
the television news lulled her in the heat of the day, and she
found her head nodding more than once as she worked on caring for
her weapon.

     "...North Korea continues to deny it is in any way 
responsible for the deaths of six members of a Chinese army 
patrol killed on a beach in Shandong province four days ago.  
Tensions between the two countries have risen since the deaths, 
which the Chinese claim are the work of North Korean spies.  The 
exact circumstances of the deaths are being kept under wraps, but
sources say the manner in which the men were killed is..."

     Ukyou turned off the television, laying her spatula aside
and standing up to stretch with a yawn.  The heat was making her
tired, and she contemplated taking a nap.

     Going to the small bathroom attached to her room, she ran
water in the sink and washed her face and hands, revelling in the
coolness of it.  Returning to her room, she laid out on the futon
and gazed at the wall, thoughts of just how she was going to ask
around about Clan Kenzan running through her head.

     Slowly, her eyes began to drift closed, without her even
truly realizing it.  Hair spilled across her face like a cloak,
still in her clothing, lethargic from the heat, Ukyou slept, as
outside the life of the city went by.

**********

     Konatsu was sitting at the edge of the cliff that extended
out over the beach, gazing down at the white sand a hundred feet
below and watching the waves roll up onto the shore.  

     It was what Hako had suggested he do after the morning's
training.  Hako never really commanded that he do anything; she
simply suggested, in a way that made it perfectly clear that she
would be obeyed.  It was not as if he wasn't used to obeying,
after all.

     And despite everything, the beach was still almost 
heartbreakingly beautiful.  The sand was pure white, the tiny 
crystals shimmering in the sunlight.  Coiled rock formations of 
cooled and hardened lava lay like fat serpents, dotted upon the 
beach below.  Off to his right, a long natural stairway led down
to the beach, twisting along the cliffs.

     He dangled his legs over the edge, and watched the waves
rising and falling.  Far away, he could see a tiny flock of birds
flying to the west, white as the clouds that hung lazily against
the blue.  

     The moment of peace was shattered when Hako sat down beside
him.  He hadn't even heard her approach.

     "Lovely view, isn't it?" she said, brushing a strand of
stark white hair away from where it dangled over her dark eyes.  

     "Yes," Konatsu answered softly, looking away from her across
the clear blue ocean.

     "You don't need to look away from me, dear," Hako said.  
"I'm not going to hurt you."

     "Sorry," Konatsu said, still not looking at her.
     
     Hako reached out and took his chin in a gentle but firm 
grip, turning his head to look into her eyes.  "Do you like it
here, Konatsu?"

     "The sea is very beautiful," Konatsu said non-committally,
wanting to look away.

     "You need to understand, Konatsu," Hako said softly, the
faintest undertone of menace in her voice.  "Happiness is a
luxury.  Whether you were happier working for that girl does not
matter in the least.  You are a member of the clan, and you will
be until you die.  You have a duty."

     "I know," Konatsu said, relieved as Hako finally released
him and he could look at the rocky ground of the cliff top
instead of into her eyes.  

     "You are good," Hako said.  "But you must be far better.
You lack the edge that is needed to be a true warrior, Konatsu.
You are an unsharpened blade."

     "Oh," Konatsu said, brushing a minute grain of sand from the
leg of his uniform.  The silk whispered softly beneath his
fingers.

     "Have you ever killed anyone?"
     
     Konatsu's head shot up and he shook it frantically.  "No,
never.  I couldn't-"

     Hako laughed.  "You have so much to learn, little girl."
     
     Konatsu shook his head again.  "I don't ever want to-"
     
     Hako's hands shot up and grabbed him by either side of the
head.  She leaned forward, putting her face within a few inches
of his.  The scars of her face seemed to burn against her tanned
skin.  "What you want means nothing, Konatsu.  Nothing."

     Her lips split in a thin rictus of a grin, twisted by the
scar at her mouth.  "Forget everything you have ever thought 
about life, about other people, about love or friendship or
desire.  Everything is lies but what I will tell you, and that is
that there are two ways to live your life, as ruler or ruled.  
People today live in their own nice little worlds, until they
fall through the cracks.  If the average person today realized 
one-hundredth of what goes on behind the scenes, below their 
feet, and what has gone before, their weak little minds would
snap like twigs trodden beneath the feet of the gods."

     The intensity in her gaze was terrifying.  "We are the
walkers in the shadows, Konatsu.  We are the ones who stand
behind the curtain and direct.  We are Kenzan, and we were here
before the current rulers arose, and we will be here after."

     "Let go of me," Konatsu said, half-pleading.
     
     "Make me," Hako snarled.  
     
     "Please," he whispered.
     
     "That girl you lived with in Tokyo," Hako said.  "Did you
ever touch her?"

     "What?"
     
     "Didn't you ever want to kiss her, even if she was another
girl, didn't you want to-"
     
     "Of course, but-"
     
     "You could have.  You were stronger than her.  You could 
have made her do whatever you wanted."

     "But I couldn't," Konatsu said, half-choked by fear and
confusion.  "I couldn't do that to Ukyou, ever."

     "Why not?" Hako hissed.  "The weak must bow to the strong.
Wouldn't it have been wonderful to see her bend to your will, to
tear the clothes from her and-"

     "Don't talk that way about Ukyou," Konatsu said, the fear
giving way to an unfamiliar cold rage.

     "To see her naked flesh moving beneath you," Hako said, eyes
blazing.  "To hear her scream as you-"

     Konatsu moved, a thin cry of anger rising from his lips.  
His arms came up, swept wide, parting Hako's grip and pushing her
hands away from his face.  An instant later, he had wrapped his
hands around her throat.

     "If you ever talk like that about her again, I'll..."
     
     Hako laughed.
     
     Her hand flashed up and seized his wrist.  She gave a quick
twist as she rose to her knees, tearing his hands from her 
throat and slamming him crushingly to the ground.  

     She stood to her feet, looming over him as he tried to catch
his breath.  "Don't forget, Konatsu.  I'm stronger than you.  If
I want to talk that way about her, there's nothing you can do,
unless you can get strong enough to stop me."

     She knelt down and smiled at him.  "And you will never, ever
be strong enough to stop me unless you are willing to become like
me."

     And she rose back up, and just as Konatsu had managed to
recover his breath, it was driven from him by the kick of her
foot into his stomach.  

     As he heard her almost inaudible footsteps tracing away
across the stony ground, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain,
he wished desperately to be anywhere but here.  

     But Hako could find him wherever he went, and even if she
could not, his fear was not so much for what she would do to him
as it was for what she would do to those he cared for.

     Out in the ocean, a stray white bird lost from the flock
gave a solitary cry, echoing out across the waves like a mourning
song.

**********

     Ukyou walked the streets of Naha, combat spatula hung across
her shoulder and hair tied back to keep it cool and out of her
eyes; her bandolier was strapped across her chest, a dozen small
spatulas gleaming in the sun. 

     There were always places like this in the cities; crowded
streets where the cry of street vendors mingled with the 
footsteps of people passing by, where the scent of food cooking
at outdoor stalls drifted into the air like perfume.  

     Street vendors saw a lot of business, a lot of people come
and go.  They knew the cities they lived in as well as anyone.  
She'd met a lot of them, travelling with her father and the
yattai, and though they'd never gone as far as Okinawa, she knew
that things would be much the same here.

     There was something of an informal network that had built up
over time among the traditional travelling food sellers in Japan,
and it had also come to extend to the small open-air cooks in the
cities.  Nothing particularly complex; simply a way of looking 
out for common interests that had grown up centuries before the
unions had been formed, and that had never died away.

     "Afternoon," she said, approaching the old man behind the
grill at the tiny stand beneath a blue and white striped umbrella
that would serve to keep off both sun and rain from the 
proprietor.  The smell of yakitori skewers frying filled the air,
fragrant and enticing.

     "Afternoon," the old man said, turning his cooking with a
long fork.  "What can I get you?"

     "One of those skewers would be good," she replied.
     
     The old man nodded and turned one over, his eyes falling for
a moment to the spatula across her back.  A moment later, he
handed her the skewer of grilled chicken, hot from the grill.

     Ukyou blew on it to cool it down, and then popped a chunk
into her mouth, chewing contentedly.  "That's good."

     "I make the best yakitori in the whole city," the old man
said, wrinkled face beaming with pride.

     "Best I ever tasted," Ukyou said.  "I was wondering if you
could help me out."

     "You're not from round here, I can tell that," the old man
said.

     "Yeah," Ukyou said.  "True enough, by the widow's son."
     
     The old man's face went serious immediately.  "I did not
think the widow had a son."

     "No," Ukyou said.  "But she does have a daughter."
     
     The old man nodded and leaned forward slightly.  "What can I
do for you?"

     "Clan Kenzan," Ukyou said.
     
     He went pale and shook his head.  "I am afraid that even the
widow's brother cannot help her daughter now."

     Ukyou felt an uneasiness fall over her.  That meant that the
information could put not only her life in danger, but also his.

     "The widow's daughter needs her dowry," she said, wincing
inwardly at the words.     
     
     The old man hesitated for a moment before speaking, barely a
whisper.  "Shinzo Morimoto."

     Ukyou nodded.  "The widow's daughter is grateful."
     
     "The widow's brother hopes that the dowry will be adequate,"
the old man said, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.  

     The air of tension dissolved slightly with those words, as
Ukyou pulled another piece of hot chicken from the skewer between
her fingers and popped it into her mouth.  "What do I owe you?"

     "On the house," the old man said.  "Provided you never talk
to me again."

     Ukyou nodded and turned away without a word, so quickly she
flung her ponytail over one shoulder.  As she walked away, she
reached up with her hand and absently flipped it back.  She could
feel the old man's eyes watching her as she went.

     She made a point of stopping at a half-dozen other stalls,
buying something to snack on, talking for a moment or two to the
owners, asking about local sights.  If anyone was watching, it
would take the heat off.

     Finally, at a noodle stand squished against the corner of a
faded bookstore, she recited again the old code words, and asked
about someone named Shinzo Morimoto.

     The plump middle-aged woman behind the stand paused in her
stirring of a pot.  "Best you stay away from him, dear."

     "Who is he?" Ukyou asked, leaning her hand on the thin 
wooden counter of the stand.

     "One of the local crime bosses," the woman said with a sigh.
"Small fry as those things go, but big for Okinawa.  You know how 
it is."

     "Protection rackets?" 
     
     The woman nodded.  "And other sundries.  A nice young girl
like you doesn't want to be involved with that kind of thing, now
do you?"

     Ukyou frowned.  "Any idea where I can find him?"
     
     "There's a restaurant he frequents a few blocks down," the
woman said.  "The Aozora Cafe."

     A followed set of directions later, Ukyou found herself at
the restaurant, a pleasant-looking place serving traditional 
Japanese cuisine.  A table of three men in suits, dark jackets
draped over the back of their chairs and shirt-sleeves rolled up, 
stood out amidst the chattering crowds of tourists, engaged in a 
quiet discussion; Ukyou was willing to bet one of them was was
Morimoto.

     Making her way to the table, Ukyou saw the gazes of the 
three men turn to her.  Two of them quite blatantly gave her the
standard male look; the third, slightly older, simply looked into 
her eyes, a slight smile on his face.

     "Shinzo Morimoto?" she asked, addressing the third man.
     
     "Yes?" he said.  "What may I do for a pretty girl such as
you today?"

     One of the other men grinned; Ukyou grinned back at him and
shifted her spatula slightly on her shoulder.  He stopped 
grinning.

     "Clan Kenzan," Ukyou said.
     
     Shinzo Morimoto glanced to either side of him.  "Hata, 
Nobuo, take a walk."

     The two men stood up and walked out of the restaurant 
without a backward glance.  

     "Please," Shinzo said, indicating the seats at the table.
"Sit."

     Ukyou pulled out the chair that had been unoccupied when she
arrived, and sat.

     "You old enough to drink?" the yakuza said, indicating the
half-full bottle of sake on the table and the small clay cups.

     "Nope," Ukyou said.
     
     "Good.  Neither was I when I started," he said cheerfully,
pouring a cup for her.  Ukyou got a good look into his eyes as he 
did so, and realized that the man was closer to drunk than he was 
to sober.

     Ukyou took the cup and gulped it down; the alcohol was warm
as it went down her throat.  "You want to know about Kenzan, 
then?" Shinzo said.

     Ukyou lowered the cup and nodded, face feeling slightly
flushed.  "Yup."

     "This won't take long," he said.  "Go home.  Forget about
Kenzan, whatever your reason.  Forget you ever heard of them."

     "That's what everyone keeps on telling me," Ukyou said.  
"And I haven't done it yet.  I'm not about to start."

     Shinzo poured himself a cup of sake, gulped it down, poured
another, gulped it down to.  He looked at her blearily; his face
was thin, but he had the flushed nose and cheeks of a heavy
drinker.  

     "You can't fight them," he said quietly, his dark eyes sad
beneath greying eyebrows.  Of all things, he looked frightened,
very frightened.  "Don't think we didn't try.  But we lost in the
end, and we lost so much."

     He took another drink and sagged back in his chair; in the
background, the other customers chattered on.  "I had a daughter.
She would have been about your age last month, I think.  It's
hard to remember these days."

     He couldn't be older than forty, Ukyou realized, but right
now he looked impossibly aged, impossibly tired.  "The yakuza are
old, but they're older.  And we're like children next to them."

     "I think you've had enough to drink, don't you?" Ukyou said,
softly reaching out and taking the bottle away from his 
unresisting fingers.

     "He certainly has," a dulcet voice said from behind her.
     
     Ukyou glanced back to see a young woman, a few years older
than she was at most.  She wore loose jeans and a sleeveless 
white blouse, but the way she stood and the hard muscles of her
bare arms showed a lot of exercise.  Her dark hair was cut very
short.

     "And you would be?" Ukyou asked frostily.
     
     "I would be Kako," the woman said.  "That's Sae and Yui."
     
     Ukyou looked back to Shinzo to see two other women, about 
the same age and dressed almost identically to Kako.  One had her
hair up in a high ponytail, and the other's spilled down her back
nearly to her waist.  Both had a hand on Shinzo's shoulder; the
yakuza looked pale and frightened.

     "We hear that you are interested in Clan Kenzan," Kako said.
"We are most able to help you."

     Ukyou silently weighed her options; if she raised a fuss in
the crowded restaurant, she might get away, but other people 
might get hurt.  And despite whatever danger this presented, it
looked to be the best chance she'd have to find Konatsu.
     
     "Okay," Ukyou said, standing up.
     
     "Stay with Morimoto, Sae," Kako said.  The ponytailed woman
nodded, and the long-haired one moved away to stand near Ukyou,
the two older women flanking her on each side.

     The last thing Ukyou saw as the three of them left the
restaurant was Shinzo Morimoto's pale and terrified face, and the
small smile of Sae as she gently traced his throat with slender
fingers, as all around him the other customers ate, oblivious to
all but their food.

**********

     The two of them made their move in an alley, after ten or so
minutes of walking had led Ukyou and her two escorts down into an
almost deserted area of the city near the docks, with the smell 
of sea and rotted garbage in the air.

     Fortunately, Ukyou had been expecting something like this,
and, as soon as she heard the soft hiss of the knives being drawn
from their concealed sheaths, she was in motion.  Her heel 
slammed down as hard as she could on the instep of Yui's foot,
and the woman gave a satisfying shriek of pain, high and loud.

     At the same time, she drove her elbow into Kako's stomach
and pushed forward, spinning and drawing her spatula from her
back in a smooth motion, metal cool and comforting in her hands.

     She realized, on the edge of her mind, that the two had been
intending to kill her and dump her in the alley all along, but
she was running on adrenaline and anger and a little fear, and
there wasn't much room for anything else.

     Yui came forward first, long hair flowing behind her in the
swiftness of her motion.  Hobbled as she was by the pain of her
foot, she was still quick and agile, a long blade flashing in her
hand as she rushed Ukyou.

     Ukyou sidestepped and whirled, and the flat of her spatula
bounced off one side of Yui's head; a second later, the other
side of her head bounced off the alley wall, and she collapsed 
unmoving to the ground.

     Kako had recovered her breath by then, and her own knife
angled itself at Ukyou's heart.  There was a cold anger in her
eyes, and her lip curled back into a sneer.

     Ukyou remembered what the blind old woman had told her.
Kenzan did something to their members at a certain age, something
to their minds.  She found that easy to believe; Kako's eyes were
terrifying in their coldness, in their lack of emotion.

     She feinted high with the knife, then slashed at Ukyou's
stomach; Ukyou backstepped, swinging out with her spatula at head
height.

     Kako ducked under, and then Ukyou moved in, shifting her 
grip slightly, moving with the momentum of her weapon, and 
smashing Kako across the jaw with the heavy ring at the opposite
end at the end of her swing.  

     The knife clattered to the alley floor, and Ukyou let her
spatula go, hearing it bounce of the wall.  As Kako staggered,
Ukyou grabbed her by the collar of her blouse and slammed her
back against the alley well, placing the razored edge of one of
her throwing spatulas against the older woman's throat as she
did; Yui was an unconscious heap on the alley floor behind them.

     "Talk," she said, glaring into Kako's cold dark eyes.
     
     "You won't kill me," Kako said.  "You're not the type."
     
     "Don't try me," Ukyou said, and pushed forward with the
spatula slightly.  A thin line of blood welled across Kako's
throat; Ukyou was astonished at her own ruthlessness, but there
was a dark core of anger that had lain festering inside her for
many days now, and it was finally having a chance to come forth.
"Where is Clan Kenzan's headquarters?"

     Kako was silent, looking at Ukyou with the purest hatred she
had ever witnessed.  

     "Where?" Ukyou said, putting as much menace into her voice
as possible.     
     
     "Two miles due north of a village on the coast down south," 
Kako said.  "It's called Dasumura.  There's a bus that goes down 
there from Naha; it takes about two hours.  Follow the coastline
north and you'll find it."

     "Thanks," Ukyou said, not meaning it in the least.
     
     "You'd be better to let me kill you, though," Kako said,
smiling thinly, the hate caustic in her tone.  "I'll do it much
quicker than Lady Hako will."

     "At what age exactly do they put you girls under mind 
control, anyway?" Ukyou asked.

     "Mind control?" Kako said, looking almost surprised.
     
     "Never mind," Ukyou said, taking the spatula away from 
Kako's throat and hitting her across the jaw with a hard punch.
That was enough, combined with the earlier blow, to put the woman
under.

     Ukyou shook her stinging hand and tried to think of what she
was going to do next.  She had to move fast; she couldn't have
these two following her, or anyone else.  
     
     She tied the hands of the two unconscious kunoichi, then 
tied them together, back to back.  Thankfully, she'd thought to 
carry some strong cord; you never knew when it might come in 
handy.

     Mentally, she took a quick inventory; she had her weapons,
and she had the three objects that had been given to her before
she'd left Nerima, Shampoo's ring on the little finger of her
left hand, the box and the carved bamboo stick tucked into a hip 
pack at her waist.

     And right now, she also had a bus to catch, so she ran out 
of the alleyway as fast as she could.

**********

     Kako came awake roughly ten minutes after Ukyou left the
alley.  Yui was a dead weight against her back, still out from
the double blow she'd received from the girl's weapon and the
alley wall.

     She had been faster than Kako had been expecting, and she'd
obviously been prepared for them.  She silently cursed her own
lack of care; it would have done well for her advancement in Clan
Kenzan if she'd been able to deliver the girl's body to Lady 
Hako.  Those were the orders given to all members who lived near
the clan compound; kill anyone who looks for information and
bring the body to Hako.

     No one actually lived on the compound but Hako, and anyone
she might be training.  Kako flexed her hands, and began to work
at the ropes.  There was still time to catch the girl before she
got on her way.

     She would kill her slowly.
     
     A dry hiss, like old leaves rubbing together, made her raise
her head.  Her eye followed the source of the sound to an empty
patch of shadow cast by the walls of the alley.

     Mentally shrugging the distraction off, she managed to get
her hands free in a few minutes, and the other ropes followed
soon after.  She stood up, Yui's unconscious form slumping over
to the ground as she did.

     Rubbing the tender bruise on her jaw, she knelt down by her 
comrade and turned her over onto her back, checking her injuries. 
There were already swelling lumps on either side of her head, and
it was possible Yui might have a concussion; the girl had hit her
very hard.

     "Yui?" Kako said, lightly slapping the face of her comrade.
She was not particularly concerned one way or the other; there
was hardly anything that could be called friendship among the
kunoichi of Clan Kenzan.  Loyalty, perhaps, but no more than
that.

     There was another hiss, but louder, deeper pitched.  Like
laughter, almost, though inhuman.  Kako turned away from Yui; a
quick flick of her wrist sent a knife, smaller than the one she'd
wielded before, into her hand.

     "Who's there?"
     
     The noise continued, but it could not be described as a 
hiss anymore.  A wet gurgle, a manic titter shaped from the 
sound of something vast moving through dank places.  

     Fear was not a common emotion to Kako.  Few emotions ever
had been to her, to tell the truth.  But the sound filled her 
with a vague unease, a chill creeping up and down her spine.

     And then someone stepped out of the shadows, emerging from
them like from behind a curtain.  She flipped the long braid of
dark hair behind her back with one black-nailed hand, and looked
at Kako with disdain, dark eyes staring over a black mask that
covered her mouth and nose.  A black robe hugged the curves of
her body, cinched tight at the waist and flowing down over the
long definitions of her legs.

     The woman in black laughed, and it was the scrape of a knife
on flesh and bone.  Kako sent the blade speeding at her left eye 
without a moment's hesitation.  The woman reached up, blindingly 
quick, and snatched it from the air, pinching the flat of the 
blade between two fingers.  She dropped it to the alley floor 
with a clang, startlingly loud in the silence.  

     Kako turned to run.  Pain flared blindingly across her lower 
back, arced through every nerve of her body.  She tasted blood in 
her mouth as her legs collapsed of their own accord.  Her cheek 
scraped against the alley floor; darkness edged the corners of her 
vision.

     A hand lifted her by the hair and raised her head, and she
looked into the cold, horribly dark eyes of the woman in black.
Another hand was raised for her to see, and she saw crimson
dripping in streaks down ebony nails and alabaster skin, glinting
wetly on the razors beneath the black-laquered fingernails.
     
     The hand slowly pulled down the mask, leaving a trail of
blood down the black silk, but, in one small mercy, Kako passed
out before she was forced to see the reason why Yamiko wore a 
mask.
          
**********

     Hako picked up the phone on the second ring.
     
     "Hello?"
     
     "Lady Hako, we have a problem."
     
     She recognized Sae's voice.  It was slightly shaky; the girl
had never truly acquired the ability to entirely suppress the
emotions that was needed.  "What is it?"

     "A girl was in the city earlier today, asking about the 
clan.  She managed to talk to Morimoto while he was drunk; we're
not sure how much she got out of him before we intervened, 
but..."

     "Just kill her," Hako said tiredly.  "You know that."
     
     "That's the problem," Sae said on the other end of the line.
"Yui and Kako took her while I dealt with Morimoto, but now 
they're gone, missing.  We think she may know the location of the 
compound."

     "So have the Dasamura branch assemble a team and watch for 
her," Hako wearily replied.  "If she manages to actually get into 
the compound, I'll deal with her.  I'd rather not, and I'll be 
very disappointed in all of you, but..."

     "Oh, no, Lady Hako," Sae interrupted.  "We will find her."
     
     A thought suddenly struck Hako.  "What did she look like?"
     
     A quick description of the girl followed.  When Sae told her
about the weapon the girl had carried, Hako's grip tightened on
the phone.

     "Tell them to watch for her in Dasumura," she said slowly.  
"When she arrives, have them contact me.  Do no more than that."

     She could tell by the pause on the line that the girl was on
the verge of asking a question, but all the members of the clan
who had ever met the head knew better than to question her.  
"Yes, Lady Hako," the girl said finally.  "Goodbye."

     There was a click on the other end.  Hako hung up, and
sighed as she saw that, in a moment of distraction, her right
hand had been busily gouging chunks of wood out of the desk with
a knife.

     "Stop that," she snarled, grabbing the wrist her left hand.
There was a moment of resistance, and then the hand went
momentarily limp before the feeling returned to it.

     Hako stood up, flexing her fingers and scowling.  The girl
had come after all; she had expected that her concern would be
for her vanished fiancee.  Then again, her understanding of the
tangled situation that Yoko had been watching in Tokyo was 
fairly sparse; Yoko had never been forward with information, only 
with demands.

     It was almost a blessing that Yoko had moved against her
first.  It had been a minor transgression, the killing of a
single servant, and a man at that.  But it had been a first move,
and that had given Hako the excuse to retaliate.  

     To her surprise, she had discovered that there had been a
number of minor slights like hers against the other senior 
members of the Circle Eternal as well, bearing Yoko's mark.  None
had directly confronted her, of course; things did not work that
way.  

     She supposed it was Yoko's way of testing to see how far she 
could go; if she was not checked, she would go further, until she 
had the Circle under her thumb, as if they were not all equals.

     Hako shrugged.  Not that she particularly believed in that
kind of thing anyway, but it had always been the foolishness
spouted by the other members.  She considered the elaborate
rituals and worship rather silly herself, but the allegiance
between the Circle and Clan Kenzan was old.  She knew that well
enough.  

     She would do more than check Yoko.  The power struggle
between the thirteen senior members scattered throughout Japan
had always been going on, but it had been purely political 
before, shadow plays within a shadow world.  Now, it looked as 
if things might have finally come to the surface.

     Like a dam bursting, Hako thought silently.  Everything
looks fine, until those few cracks explode, and then the carnage
is beyond imagining.

     Hako smiled.  She enjoyed carnage.  She was very good at it,
and usually came out on top.  It appeared that the time had come
for a shift in power.  

     She plucked up the knife from the desk in her right hand and
threw, burying it up to the hilt in the thick oak door of the
study, then picked up the phone again.  She had some time to
waste before the girl arrived, and she might as well waste it
constructively.

**********

     Ukyou realized there was something wrong with the town as
soon as she arrived.  She'd caught the bus from Naha just as it
was leaving the station, but she'd noticed none of the other
tourists had gotten off at this stop.  

     The town was pleasant looking, admittedly, a rustic little
place that she'd seen variations on a hundred times while
travelling with her father.  She'd put the number of people at 
around a thousand, given the size and number of buildings.  But 
there was something hanging over it, a feeling of wrongness, 
like a haze of smoke.  Sunlight seemed muted, and the normally
pleasant sea-smell of the Pacific was tinged vaguely with an 
acrid scent like something burning.

     There didn't seem to be enough people on the streets.  It
only took her a few minutes to realize that most of the people
she did see were women, all looking very similar to the three
Kenzan members she'd left behind in Naha.  

     She remembered vaguely the conversation she'd had with
Happosai in the backyard of the Tendo house.  He'd talked about
power wielded from the shadows, from behind the scenes.

     Thinking about that kind of thing frightened Ukyou slightly;
how much power, she wondered, was actually wielded by those in
the shadows?  The street vendors, the kind of people who had been 
disdainful about a yakuza boss had been afraid to give her 
information on Clan Kenzan.  The yakuza boss himself had been 
afraid of them.  

     She realized then that Dasumura was likely thick with Kenzan
members.  She had to get out here and heading north up the
coastline; she had no idea how fast information might travel
between the clan members, but Kako and Yui would probably have
escaped by now.  And unless kunoichi had some aversion to using
phones, she was likely being watched.

     She had to get out of here, and fast.  She made her way
through the centre of the small town as quickly as possible, 
trying to blend in, as well as someone carrying a spatula the
size of a halberd on her back can blend in.

     She gradually made her way to the outskirts of town, out
past a picturesque little harbour that was almost deserted,
except for a few hard-eyed women who watched her without looking
as if they did.  
     
     The whole place was creepy, and would have been even if
Ukyou hadn't been sure it was just a cover for Kenzan activities.     
Walking down past the docks to the sandy beach, Ukyou gazed up to
the north along the coastline, waves lapping softly at her
sandalled feet.  At the ultimate edge of her vision, she saw a 
cliff face beginning to rise from the beach.  

     Perched upon a cliff that overlooks a beach of white sand.
Where Kenzan lairs in their darkness.  Ukyou clenched a fist
tightly and scowled.  She realized vaguely that she should have
been afraid, that she was in enemy territory, and was about to
walk deeper into it.  

     But there wasn't room for fear.  There was only anger, that
anyone would dare to hurt Konatsu further.  All his life had had
been beaten down, whipped into submission by his family.  And now
it seemed as if Clan Kenzan was going to go even further than
that.  

     Not if she had anything to say about it, though.  Perhaps 
all this, this cold determination, perhaps it was only a way of
distracting herself from other things.  But that didn't matter.

     Konatsu was what mattered.
     
     Ukyou walked back into town, and followed a winding path
throughout the streets, feeling invisible eyes watching her from
windows, from doorways open only a crack, from places she could
not see.  Finally, she took the path that led a few hundred feet
back to the place the bus had dropped her off.  It probably
wouldn't do much good to deter really determined watchers, but
she didn't have the time for anything more.  

     She walked north for ten minutes, taking it slowly, taking
in the scenery of the flat plains and sparsely scattered trees.
Then she walked west, until she reached the beach again.  She
stared out across the vastness of the ocean, to the west.  

     Somewhere across those rolling waves, she knew that Akane
and the others were headed for Jusenkyou, for Shampoo's village.
They were going to look for Ranma.  

     Sometimes, it seemed to her that too much time was spent in
looking for what you'd lost.  Ukyou sat down on the beach and
sighed, hugging her knees to her chest.  Thinking like this only
made her depressed.  

     She traced a meaningless pattern in the white sand with her
finger, and that made her think of making hearts in sauce, and-
     
     And now she was crying, damn it all.
     
     Wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, Ukyou stood 
up, sand shifting beneath her sandals, grains tickling the soles
of her feet as it slipped in.  

     Ranma had been such a jerk, such a completely inconsiderate,
insensitive, ungrateful jerk.  

     But she still missed him, and she still loved him a little,
and she still wanted, just a little, to imagine that he could
love her back.

     She gathered the grief and forced it down, piled anger and
determination atop it.     
     
     The tears stopped as quickly as they had begun, and Ukyou
took a deep breath and began to walk north along the narrowing
beach, towards the cliffs rising in the distance.

     In the air above, a white sea-bird wheeled once, softly 
calling, lost, lost, lost.

**********

     Yamiko watched the girl stand up and move north up the beach 
from the cover of the shadows cast by a thin tree upon the 
stretch of hilly, grassy ground that lay on the other side of the
beach.  
     
     That was one of them.  One of the ones she'd fought on the
mountain, when Denkoko had been killed, when everything had gone
wrong in their plan.  

     Her dark eyes narrowed, and she growled, low and deep in her
throat.  The girl was responsible, in some small part, for 
Denkoko's death.  Under any other circumstance, the temptation 
would have been to rip her to shreds slowly, letting the pain 
linger.  

     But she had thrown her lot in with Yoko now, and Yoko had
told her to protect the girl.  She was going to Hako, and she was
going to help them bring Hako down.  

     Yamiko was not a good leader by nature.  She had arisen to a
senior position in the Circle simply because she was extremely
hard to kill, and had managed to outlive most of the others.  
Magic, particularly the sort of magic the Circle dealt in, was a
dangerous business; a mistake dealing with a power like Galm was
almost always fatal.

     She had always gone along with Denkoko because the other
woman had always seemed to have good ideas.  Now she went along
with Yoko because otherwise Yoko likely would have killed her.

     Hako had apparently slaughtered some of the Children that
owed allegiance to Yoko.  That could not be allowed.  Yoko said
so.  
     
     That sort of thing was too unsubtle for the Circle.  Hako
needed to be brought down, but in such a way that suspicion would
not fall on Yoko.  The girl was a pawn, though Yamiko did not
understand how a child like that could possibly bring down 
someone like Hako.

     Yamiko was incredibly dangerous in combat.  All the senior
members were, their abilities enhanced by spells and by the
gifts of the master.  She also knew that Hako could, in simple 
hand-to-hand combat, beat any one of them with ease.  But Yamiko 
knew that Yoko was seldom wrong in things such as this; just as 
she had been granted dominion over the shadows, over the 
darkness, so too had Yoko been given the gift of seeing deeper 
and further into the tangled skein of reality than was normally 
possible.  It was not that Yoko knew the future, because the 
future was not fixed.  She simply understood much better the 
complex weave of events that would lead to desired ends, and how 
a single act could resonate, changing everything, spreading out 
and leaving nothing intact.

     Yamiko buried her thoughts and stepped out of the shadows,
glancing around.  The girl was a speck in the distance, moving up
the beach.  
     
     Odd.  She'd been expecting some of the Kenzan members 
present in Dasumura to at least follow the girl; like the Circle,
they had not gotten where they were by being incautious.  Even if
her disposing of the two the girl had left tied in the alley had 
stopped the news reaching Dasumura, there still should have been
observers.  Yamiko sighed, or her closest approximation of it, 
which was rather like a piece of sheet metal being torn in half.  
She had been hoping to do some more killing before the day was 
through.  Shrugging resignedly, she gathered the darkness around 
her like a cloak, and set off to follow the girl.  

**********

     It was slow going, walking on the sand, but Ukyou managed
well enough.  Twilight began to fall as she walked, the sky
turning ruddy, streaked with purple and crimson clouds, as the 
sun sank into the western ocean.  

     Twilight fell, and, as she continued to walk, night began to
come as well, an unravelling of the sky from sunset to darkness.

     One moment, there was light, as the last of the sun hung
above the rim of the horizon, and then it dipped below, and the
darkness came.  Ukyou stopped and looked up at the stars, at the
waning moon, still nearly full.  A wind blew from the west,
tasting of salt and sea, fluttering her hair about her face.  

     She felt a slight chill, and continued to walk.  She was
sure it had been more than two miles now.  Kako had almost
certainly lied; she'd been stupid to trust her at all.  The
Kenzan headquarters were likely nowhere near here.

     A dark movement out of the corner of her eye made her turn 
her head, but it was only the branches of a thin tree waving in
the wind, skeletal arms.  

     Shaking her head, Ukyou looked up at the twenty feet or so
of high, rocky cliffs that rose above her head.  The beach was a
narrow stretch now, perhaps twenty feet wide.  Lava formations
were scattered across the white sand, formed untold ages ago
when the fires of the volcanoes had spewn forth from the heart of
the earth.

     The waves rolled gently on the beach, as Ukyou turned and
began to walk back the way she'd came, berating herself for
foolishness in walking on the beach, letting herself get
distracted by the beauty of the scenery.  The compound was 
supposed to be up on the cliffs, after all.

     Her stomach rumbled, and she realized it had been a long
time since she'd eaten.  But there was no food at hand.

     The cliff sloped down as she walked, until she came to an
easily climbable part.  She slung her spatula over her back,
grabbed the lip with her hands, and hoisted herself up, arm
muscles straining.

     She paused to rest for a moment, wiping sweaty bangs out of
her eyes and retying her ponytail which had come loose in her
walking.  The night was still very warm, kept temperate by the
moderation of the sea and the position of the Okinawan islands.

     Ten minutes later, she was walking thirty feet above the
beach below, gazing down at the night-painted sand, a dark
landscape of desolation as bleak as any desert without the light
of the sun.

     A scrabbling sound made her turn suddenly, but there was
only another tree, ragged and tattered against the night.  But
she could not shake the feeling that she was being watched.

     "Is anyone there?" she called.  
     
     Silence answered, and the rustle of wind through grass.
     
     She stood still for a moment more, and then began to walk
again.  Up ahead in the darkness, she saw a pinpoint of light.
As she walked, it grew larger and larger, though it was still
very far ahead.

     And after more walking, as the cliff rose higher and the
beach below retreated, Ukyou came to the lair of Clan Kenzan.

     A wall enclosed the compound on three sides, and the fourth
wall was provided by the open air of the cliff, and the hundred
foot drop to the beach below.  Each wall stretched nearly two
hundred feet, topped at each corner by blazing electric lights
that hurt the eye to look at directly.  The walls were weathered
granite, thick and over fifteen feet tall, narrow peaked roofs of 
dark red tiles topping them.  

     Ukyou walked around the walls until she reached the front of
the compound, where a great wooden gate stood, flanked on either
side by ancient stone statues, tall women with scowling faces who
held long spears.  The lamps atop the roof of the gate cast
flickering shadows across the statues, making their expression
seem to change from moment to moment.

     "Creepy," Ukyou muttered, and began to tie a cord to the
small ring of one of her throwing spatulas.  The gate would be
locked, of course, so she'd go over the wall.  

     Creepy as it was, the compound had a sense of peace to it.
Desolate peace, like an old deserted city, but peace all the
same.  Ukyou got the strange impression that despite its size, it
was almost uninhabited.

     She twirled the makeshift grapple over her head, then threw.
It snagged one of the lamps over the gate, and after a few quick
tugs assured her that it was solid, she placed her feet against
the old thick wood of the gate, and began to pull herself hand
over hand up and over the wall.

     When she reached top, she stood for a moment, balancing
carefully on the sloping tile roof, and gazed upon the compound
of Clan Kenzan.

     The centrepiece was a tall building, three stories high,
covered by an elaborate pagoda roof.  Four other buildings,
identical but smaller, lay on diagonals from it, connected to
each other and the central building by long roofed hallways.  In
the area enclosed in the centre, she could see gardens and trees
and ponds sparkling in the starlight.

     It was a lovely spot, a masterpiece of integrating
architecture with the natural setting.  From her perch, she could
see the ocean, rolling endlessly in the distance, boundless and
free.

     It did not seem right, that this place should be evil.  But
Konatsu was here, and she knew he was in trouble.  The old woman
had told her about Kenzan, about what they did.  Worshippers of
dark gods and foul demons.  A force of the shadows, who used
sorcery to put those they trained under their control.  

     Kako had mentioned a name.  Someone called Hako.  Ukyou
suspected that was their leader.  Despite the odd peacefulness of
the place, she still could not be too cautious; it only looked
empty, she was sure of that.

     She dropped lightly to her feet on the well-clipped grass 
inside the compound, and began to walk towards the central point
lying draped in the shadows, a pinpoint of darkness at the centre
where the light did not reach.

     Laughter made her turn.

**********

     Yamiko watched the girl climb over the wall.  She was in,
then.  This was as far as she came; Hako would have wards all
around her sanctuary that would alert her to any presence, and
Yamiko did not want to enter open conflict with the sorcerous
kunoichi at this point.

     Hopefully, the girl would do what Yoko wanted her to.  If
she didn't, well, she was only a pawn like Galm had been.  You
always lost a few pawns by the end of the game, even if you won.

     Silent as the darkness, Yamiko folded into the all-consuming
shadows that lay across the world in the absence of the sun, and
was gone.

**********

     Ukyou turned back to see a tall woman in a red outfit like
the one Konatsu had worn leaning against the inner gate, arms
folded.

     Striking was the best word to describe her.  Stark white
hair enfolded the harshly beautiful lines of a face tanned dark
by the sun and scarred by the blade, her lip twisted into a
permanent half-sneer by a white scar at the edge of her mouth.

     "Let me guess," Ukyou said, slowly taking her spatula off
her shoulder.  "You're Hako."

     The woman straightened up, and Ukyou saw something in her
eyes that almost made her drop her spatula and reach for the belt
pack at her waist, the one that held the box and the bamboo
stick.

     But she was so sick of being needy, of needing other people.
This was something she could do herself, without magic artifacts
or anything else.  Her hands tightened on her spatula.
     
     "And you're Ukyou," Hako said.  "Konatsu's ever so fond of
you.  Did you come here to rescue her?  I'm sure she'll be 
touched."     

     "Where is he?" Ukyou said.  
     
     "He?" Hako said, raising one eyebrow.  "You know perfectly
well Konatsu is a girl."

     "I know perfectly well he isn't," Ukyou said.  "Now where
the hell is he?"

     "Konatsu is in her room," Hako said.  "She is here of her
own free will, and does not want to see you.  So go away, little
girl.  Go back to your restaurant."

     "Konatsu doesn't want to see me?" Ukyou asked.
     
     "Yes," Hako said, taking a step forward.  The distance 
between them was barely ten feet.  "What do you think of that?"

     "I think," Ukyou began, "that you are full of crap.  That's
what I think."

     She raised her weapon slightly.  "Now take me to Konatsu, or
don't stand in my way."

     Hako laughed again.  It was cruel, a cold sound in the 
darkness.  Light and shadow stroked her face, made the scars seem
to burn with an inner light.  "Little fool.  You are nothing."

     "You wanna see nothing?" Ukyou growled.  "I'll show you
noth--"

     Hako moved, silver flashing from her hands.
     
     Ukyou raised her weapon like a shield, and the knives
clattered off.  Her vision of Hako was blocked for a fractional
second, and as she lowered her weapon Hako-

     Was gone.
     
     Instinct, and a flash of crimson made her turn, weapon
sweeping through air, slicing wind, whistling...

     Hako ducked under, smiling, and somehow she was _behind_
Ukyou now-

     And as Ukyou tried desperately to recover from her missed
swing, a red-clad foot lashed out in a perfect kick and slammed
into her side like a hammer blow.  A muffled scream escaped her
as she staggered.

     And Hako moved in, blindingly fast, laughter dancing in her
dark eyes, twinkling like the stars above-

     A knee slammed into Ukyou's stomach, and the air exploded
from her body in a mad rush, fleeing like darkness from light.

     Fighting pain and panic, she slashed out at Hako, a weak
blow, defensive, trying to put the ninja off-balance.

     And she missed, somehow, and Hako's sweep kick cut her legs
out from under her-

     Grabbing desperately at her bandolier as she crashed to the
ground, taking the fall one on arm, she hurled a packet into the
air, and a choking cloud of flour engulfed them, as she tried to
scramble to her feet-
     
     And pain drove in icy splinters through her ribs, through 
her heart and her lungs, as the point of Hako's foot slammed
against her side, knocking her sprawling, gasping and 
involuntarily inhaling the flour, coughing and choking-

     "There is no one here to save you, little girl," Hako said
from somewhere beyond the pain, and she laid another savage kick
into Ukyou's ribs, and Ukyou screamed now, not muffled at all, a
high wail of pain.  

     And Ukyou thrust out at the voice, an attack driven by pure
adrenaline, by desperate fear, and she heard Hako scream, felt
something slice open beneath the edge of her weapon-

     And she was out, of the darkness, out of the cloud of flour,
desperately trying to catch her breath and get to her feet all at
once-

     And Hako stepped out of the drifting remnants of the flour
cloud, the right side of her face laid open by a hideous slash, 
blood flowing down her cheek and neck, dripping darkly onto her
uniform.  Ukyou saw a white flash of bone amidst the red, and 
realized with an odd, sick feeling that she had done the wound.

     "That hurt," Hako said, voice barest hatred, purest pain.  
"I would truly, truly like to kill you for that, but you are of 
more use to me alive.  However, I'm going to hurt you very, very 
badly."

     Her right hand came up, clasped itself to her cheek.  Blood
ran across red-gloved fingers.  She took her hand away, and 
slowly licked her fingers.  Ukyou watched, half-paralyzed,
fascinated with the horror of it.

     "Flesh and blood," Hako said dreamily.  "So transcendent."
     
     Her right hand and arm flicked out to her side, and she
grabbed her right wrist with her left hand.  "No.  Not her."

     Momentary hesitation gone, Ukyou took advantage of the
opening and leapt forward, swinging the flat for Hako's head,
ignoring how the movement sent pain throughout her body as her
ribs throbbed-

     And Hako's right hand flashed up, so fast it was only a
blur...

     The screech of metal tearing apart-
     
     Hako's left hand, balled into a fist, slamming out across
Ukyou's cheek, a crack like a thunderbolt bursting through her
head-

     The clatter as the two separate pieces of her spatula
dropped to the ground...

     Falling, trying to catch herself, arms not working right,
though, damnitall, head bouncing off the grass, smelling the
scent of new grass and blood, gazing up at the endless sea of
stars, at the dark spaces between the stars-

     A heel crashed down into her stomach, and all the air left,
and everything she'd eaten tried to leave as well for a moment...

     Hands hauling her to her feet by the collar, red hands like
blood, slamming back against the wall, how did they get near the
wall, it hurt so _bad_, it felt like her ribs were going to snap
at any minute.

     Slammed back against the wall again, head bouncing off the
rough old stone, tears of pain in her eyes, clawing at the hands
holding her, but the strength in them was impossible, rigid as
iron bars, implacable as starvation-

     Laughter ringing in her ears, in her eyes, thrown stumbling
forward, and then a kick behind her kneecap sent her crashing
down as her leg collapsed...

     A hand seized her hair, slammed her face into the ground,
new grass, coppery blood on her tongue-

     She was screaming, she realized.  Pleading with Hako to 
stop, but Hako wasn't stopping, and again her ribs ached beneath
the kicks, fractions away from breaking, heart pounding like a
drum.

     Some part of her dangling on the edge where there wasn't any
pain tried to make her fingers reach for the pouch of her waist,
but Hako's foot slammed down on them.  

     "What's this?"
     
     And no, no, no, because the pouch was torn away, gone, the
hope, and Hako knelt, digging a knee into the small of her back.

     "Well then," she said.  "What else have you got that's
interesting?"
     
     Don't let her find the ring, don't let her find the ring-
     
     And the ring Shampoo had given her, the second object, was
plucked off her fingers, gone, gone, lost, lost.

     For a merciful second, as Hako stood, there was no new pain,
though the old pain was enough, the aching of her body.  

     Then Hako kicked her in the joint of the left knee, sending
her entire leg into spasms of agony.  "I don't know if I'll cut
you or not.  I tend to go overboard when I start cutting."

     She kicked her in the joint of the right knee.  "Or a part 
of me does, at least.  No, I don't think I'll cut you just yet."

     "Please," Ukyou whispered, voice high and thin like a 
child's.  "Please stop."

     But Hako didn't.
     
**********

     Konatsu was out of his room and running as soon as he heard 
Ukyou scream.  He was there as fast as he could, but it wasn't
fast enough, because Ukyou was laid out on the grass, unmoving,
and Hako was standing over her, foot drawn back, levelled at
Ukyou's head.

     "STOP!" he yelled.
     
     Hako looked up at him.  There was more than twenty feet
between them, but he saw her eyes, terrifyingly cold.  "Why?"

     Every answer Konatsu could have given died in a second.
Hako could not be appealed to, not for any reasons of compassion,
or kindness, or love.  

     Ruler or ruled.
     
     He could not stop her.  He would never, ever be strong
enough to stop her unless he was willing to become like her.  And
that frightened him more than nearly anything.  

     He had nothing to bargain with.  Hako was stronger than him.
     
     And slowly, realization came to him.  He walked forward,
locking eyes with Hako, forcing his fear down, focusing on Ukyou,
on how she needed his help, on how she had come to save him and
had found the nightmare that was Hako.  She was hurt.  Hako had
hurt her.

     He was fairly sure he could have killed Hako in that moment.
There was a power in rage, in the flame of anger, and it was
burning in him like a furnace.  

     And he saw, reading it in Hako's eyes, that she knew it.  A
slow smile curved onto her lips.  She looked at him, not afraid
or unafraid.  Simply interested.  

     He might have been able to kill Hako, but he would not try.
Because then she would have won, she would have made him like 
her.  Only one thing left to do.

     He reached to his belt and drew his sword, placing the
gleaming point under his chin, against the hollow of his throat.
Every breath caused it to prick his flesh.  "Stop, or I'll do
it."

     Hako's eyes narrowed.  "If you do, I will make her suffer in
ways you can never imagine.  I will make it go on for so long
that she will believe it is forever."

     The tension was between them like a haze, the matching of
their two wills.  Hako glared at him, eyes burning darkly, and
every part of him, everything of how he was raised, told him to
submit, to give in.  She was clan leader, she was his ruler, he
was only small, pathetic Konatsu, he was nothing.

     And he looked down to Ukyou, unmoving, still, lovely face
covered in blood, dark hair sticky with it, breast slowly rising
as she breathed weakly.  He felt such an aching love in his
heart, so deep it was like pain.

     He looked back at Hako, and slowly spoke, silently begging
forgiveness from Ukyou, from whoever else might be listening,
whatever gods there might be to judge him.     
     
     "That you may do," he said softly.  "But I will still be 
dead, and you need me."

     And there a moment, a moment upon which everything hinged,
Hako's foot still poised for the kick, Konatsu with the blade
pressed to his throat.  He did not know what he would do if she
called his bluff, if bluff it truly was.

     The sword trembled in his hand, drawing a thin line of blood
at his throat.  He ignored it.  

     Blood slowly dripped down the side of Hako's face from the
massive cut, already scabbing over.  Konatsu was sure she would 
have a new scar.  

     And then Hako lowered her foot and spat blood onto the 
ground.  "Take her inside.  There are medical supplies in your
bathroom cabinet."

     Konatsu nodded and sheathed his sword.  He knelt down beside
Ukyou and gathered her limp form into his arms, never taking his
eyes from Hako.  The white-haired woman stared at him, face
totally without expression, unreadable.

     He turned away from her, Ukyou's head cradled against his
shoulder, and began to walk towards the buildings.  He had won,
he vaguely realized.  

     If there was a cost to that winning, he would pay it later.
Now, he was only concerned for Ukyou.  

     "Why did you come?" he whispered softly, closing his eyes
against the need to weep, the harsh tears of frustration.
     
     From out on the ocean that rolled below the cliffs, there 
came the cry of a bird, lonely and sharp, echoing through the
night, sad and lovely and terrible all at once.