Here's a little something for the holiday... Spooky, what?

Previous parts available on my Ranma ff page: 

http://cyberwheel.simplenet.com/ranma/fanfiction.html

------------------------------
The Clan - Chapter 9:

Rationale

by Chris Jones
------------------------------


	It was a little after four in the morning and Ranma was alone in the guest
room with the door open, staring out over the koi pond when a rather pale
looking Ryouga happened by.
	"Get lost, Pig-boy?" Ranma asked mercilessly.
	"I'm... looking for the bathroom."
	"'S downstairs." Ranma got a closer look at Ryouga. There were black marks
on both his arms. "Ah man, Nabiki really got you, huh?"
	Ryouga's only answer was to blush again. His expression, however, was
rather vacant.
	Ranma hopped up out of his sitting position and grabbed Ryouga by the
shoulder. 
	"Ranma?"
	"C'mon man. I'll show you the way."
	Ranma pulled Ryouga down the stairs and led him down into the bathroom.
	Still strangely absent, Ryouga turned on the shower nozzle and began to
strip.
	Ranma, not sure what had gotten into the lost boy, averted his eyes.
	"So... Nabiki's pretty thirsty, huh?" Ranma asked dumbly.
	Ryouga nodded, still staring absently at the wall. He began to soap up.
Ranma noted, out of the corner of his eye, that Ryouga still wore his
headband.
	Ranma gritted his teeth in suspicion and frustration.
	"What'd she do to you, man?" he asked seriously. "You were in there two
hours!"
	Ryouga turned slowly to look at him, the absent haunted expression still
covering his face.
	"She... She knows about P-chan." Ryouga stated. "She could *smell* it on me."
	Ranma blinked, but then he nodded. "Kasumi and my Mom prob'ly does too."
	"She told me that if I ever tried to sleep in Akane's bed again, she'd
kill me."
	Ranma nodded. If Nabiki knew, then death would be the easiest out for
Ryouga. With Nabiki, a lifetime of financial ruin was always an option.
	"I think I... I have to... marry... Nabiki now," Ryouga mumbled.
	Ranma's eyes widened in surprise. "You sly dog! Switching girls just like
that! Can't be in Akane's bed, so you just had to seduce her sister.
All-right, man!"
	Finally enraged, Ryouga took a swipe at Ranma. "IT'S NOT LIKE THAT!!!!"
	"Then what's it like, pig-boy?" Ranma teased.
	"I still love Akane!"
	"So..."
	"Well... Nabiki did... She made me... do... *things* to um..."
	Ranma noted that Ryouga's face was growing redder by the second, and that
the lost boy looked about ready for another nose bleed.
	Ranma didn't really think that his rival could afford to lose anymore blood.
	"C'mon, Ryouga. Don't puss out on me here. What did Nabiki make you do
that you have to marry her now?"
	"She... um... I had to... um... *lick*... her... umm.."
	Ranma held his hands up. "Never mind. I don't wanna know." 
	He shook his head in shock. "Man, I didn't think she had it in her.
Listen, man. I know you think you gotta marry the first girl who shows you
her goodies, but you're kiddin' yourself, man. If I married the first girl
I had seen naked, I'd probably be married to Akane now. If you wanna go
after a girl then--"
	Ryouga looked seriously at Ranma, with that same haunted look. Ranma's
speech faltered at the intense gaze. He thought it looked vaguely familiar,
somehow.	
	Ryouga continued to scrub, and hosed himself off with the  nozzle.
Finally, he seemed to come to a conclusion.
	"I still love Akane... but I think I love Nabiki more," he said, simply.
"I... can't be forgiven for how I've lied to Akane."
	Ranma raised his eyebrows in surprise. This was Ryouga he was talking to?!?!
	Clean and rinsed, Ryouga forwent the obligatory soak in the furo, and
began to towel himself off. He shook his clothes out and began to put them
back on.
	There was a knock at the door to the bathroom.
	Both the stunned Ranma and Ryouga looked up as the door opened.
	Sliding into the room, through the darkness outside, Nabiki flashed a
sleepy, seductive grin at the lost boy. Her naughty demeanor was rather
intensified by the face that she was still wearing only Ryouga's worn
yellow tunic.
	"Ryouga-kun... come back to bed..." she pleaded in a purring tone, her
fangs clearly visible to both the boys.
	Ranma looked on in wonderment.
	"Hee..." Ryouga sighed.

* * *
	
	Morning came, and it was obvious that Nabiki and Ryouga had spent the
night together. Kasumi had lectured them at length, but Nabiki assured her
that she simply didn't feel safe without someone in the room to watch over
her.
	Ryouga was blushing quite a bit too much for just 'watching over' Nabiki,
and he had a distracted, haunted look on his face.
	Akane recognized it as the same look that Uncle Saotome got when ever he
was with Auntie Nodoka.
	"So this ravener," Nodoka asked. "It looked like a man?"
	Nabiki nodded, munching her breakfast rice. "Yeah. Right up until it
attacked me. Even then, he still had normal skin in places."
	Nodoka put a finger to her lips in thought. "This may be serious. It's
something that I've ever dealt with. It spoke you say?"
	Nabiki nodded.
	"Raveners just don't speak," Nodoka wondered.
	"Maybe it's some sort of general," Kasumi ventured. "Or a spy of some
sort. The raveners' leader perhaps."
	"I just don't know. We know so little about their structure," Nodoka
fretted. 
	"We should call the police," Akane suggested.
	"In a case like this," Nodoka explained, "I would report it as an assault,
with Ryouga-kun having saved her just before he killed her. It fits my
mother's formula rather nicely."
	"The police already know," Genma stated coldly, as he walked into the
room. He dropped a news paper on the table. The women froze at the sight.
	"A NEW TOKYO SLASHER? POLICE BAFFLED BY MURDER"
	Ryouga grimaced and clenched his fists in anger.
	Ranma picked up the paper, and began to read the story aloud.
	"'Nerima ward police are baffled by a new murder committed in the style of
the 'Tokyo Slasher' who killed himself last week when the students of a
local dojo confronted him at a potential victim's apartment.
	"'While the police have not released the new victim's name, they have
confirmed that she was a young woman in the same age range as the other
slasher victims. Her body was found in an alley just inside Nerima ward
near the popular 'Rose Garden' night club. Police Sergeant Kenji Matanna
would not comment on the girl's wound's, but a source inside the forensics
division reported that the girl was not sexually assaulted, like the other
victims, but that the pattern of stab wounds matched the other victims
almost exactly. 
	"'On the condition on anonymity, the same source informed this reporter
that police have yet to find a murder weapon, fingerprints or DNA evidence.
	"It goes on and talks about that maybe that the guy is a part of some cult
or somethin'," Ranma continued, summarizing the article. "Basically, a girl
got stabbed last night, about an hour or two after Nabiki got into trouble."
	"At least she wasn't raped," Akane said quietly. "Nabiki made sure that
that monster won't be able to do that again.
	"Oh yeah, I'm sure that's a big help." Ranma sniped. "Not that it makes
her any less dead."
	Akane winced at Ranma's rebuke.
	Nodoka took a deep breath and wrung her hands. "Ranma... does it say what
time the girl died?"
	Ranma scanned the article, looking for the information. "Yeah... a little
before midnight, they're guessin'."
	Nodoka clenched her eyes shut and slapped her hands down on the table.
	"What is it, Auntie?"
	"They're worse than cockroaches," she muttered. "It's opening a gateway,"
she announced. "Or it has already opened one. If the monster is as
intelligent as Nabiki says, then it almost certainly would have waited to
kill again after Nabiki escaped him. The only thing that would have made
him bring so much attention to himself like that was if it was risking
losing a gateway already in progress."
	"So we got one freak, and another already here, or on the way," Ranma
paraphrased. "What do we gotta do?"
	"Kasumi and Nabiki will watch the dojo," Nodoka commanded. "While I will
contact the police. They may listen to me this time. We really have no way
of knowing where the monster will strike again until we find out if he has
killed before.
	"Soun and I will take shifts monitoring the police bands, then," Genma
volunteered. 
	Ranma rolled his eyes. Instead of getting drunk and playing shogi, Soun
and his father would get drunk, play shogi, and listen to the radio.
	"To work then, Saotome?" Soun asked. 
	"To work!" Genma answered, leaping to his feet. "I have some Sapporo
chilling in a bucket by the porch."

* * *
 
	When Akane was seven years old, her best friend in the world was Mika
Takamoto.
	Mika was there for her the next day when her mother died. Mika always knew
what to say when Akane got mad. Mika loved Akane, and Akane loved Mika.
They were like sisters.
	Then, one day, Mika didn't come to school.
	Akane went to her house after school to play, but Mika's family wasn't there.
	They weren't there the next day after school either.
	Mika's father was there the day after that, but he said that Mika had been
hurt, and couldn't play because she was still in the hospital.
	Akane told her sisters and her father. Father contacted Takamoto-san and
asked what was wrong and if it would be acceptable for Akane to bring Mika
flowers.
	Then Father said, "Oh, I see. Yes, I quite understand." That was when
Daddy closed the door to his room, and talked to Takamoto-san for almost an
hour.
	Nabiki listened in on the phone in her room, but she wouldn't tell Akane
what Father and Takamoto-san talked about.
	Akane went over to the Takamoto's house every day for two weeks to see if
Mika could play yet, but every day, Mika was still in the hospital.
	Then, one day, Mika was there when Akane came over. Mika had several
bandages, and one of her arms was in a cast, but Akane played with Akane's
action figures, but when Akane's Gatchaman action figure did the kenpo
punch Father taught her last week on one of Mika's barbie dolls, Mika began
to cry, and ran away.
	Akane had to go home. Mika's mother drove Akane home, and cried and hugged
her before she got out of the car. Akane didn't understand why she had to
go home or why everyone was so upset.
	Kasumi-oneechan didn't know. Nabiki knew but she wasn't telling. Father
had been very emotional since Mother had gone, but Akane felt that she had
to risk setting him off again to find out what was wrong.
	Father told her.
	Mika had been... Father paused for a second, trying to come up with the
right word. Mika had been abducted by someone the Takamoto's trusted. The
man, Father did not say who, beat Mika severely and did many other bad
things to her. He had done so many bad things that he was in jail now, and
would probably never get out.
	Akane didn't really understand. She sparred with father, and got hurt on
occasion. Father always helped her understand why she had been hurt, and
explained how to avoid the same hurt in the future.
	Father explained that the man who had hurt Mika was not trying to help her
learn martial arts. His mind was sick, and it made him angry at Mika.
	Then he made Akane promise that she would never *ever* talk to strangers,
and that she would never *ever* go anywhere with *anyone* unless he said it
was okay first.
	Akane promised, but she didn't understand.
	Desperate need called for desperate measure. She gave a candy bar to
Nabiki, so that Nabiki would tell her what happened.
	Nabiki wouldn't take the candy bar. Nabiki was almost as upset as Father. 
	Akane thought that it was silly because Nabiki was a year older, and just
thought she knew everything.
	Nabiki took her into her room and closed the door. Then she told Akane
what Takamoto-san had told Father.
	The Takamotos had gone out for the weekend, leaving Mika in the care of
her uncle, Mika's mother's younger brother.
	When they came back, Mika and her Uncle were gone.
	There was a storage shed behind Mika's uncle's house. That was where they
found Mika. 
	They arrested the uncle a day later for assault, battery and rape.
	Akane had never heard that word before.
	Nabiki explained what Mika's uncle did to her. At length.
	After Mika moved away, Akane never quite trusted any man besides Father or
Doctor Tofuu ever again. She knew what they wanted. She knew what they
would do to her if they could.
	She would never give them that chance.
	It wasn't until eighth grade that Akane began to have those feelings for
the opposite sex that most girls who are growing up have at that age. For a
while, Akane forgot Mika.
	Then she met Tatewake Kunou. 
	Nabiki liked Kunou, and told Akane so. She thought that he was cute, if
kinda dumb, and occasionally came to school with a really bad haircut. She
really liked that he had so much money.
	It was after school one day that Akane decided to talk to the older boy.
	He was very polite, and spoke very formally. He knew a lot about martial
arts and poetry. It really impressed Akane that someone her age was so well
versed in classic literature.
	Then Kunou told her that he loved her, and tried to hold her hand and kiss
her.
	All the old feelings, all the old fears came rushing back. She beat Kunou
within an inch of his life, and ran home crying.
	She avoided him until the end of the school year, when the upperclassman
moved on to the high-school.
	Akane spent a year in relative peace.
	The first week of her tenth-grade year, however, Kunou came to her and
made his intentions known.
	Angry, more than afraid, Akane beat him senseless and told him to quit
bothering her. A few weeks after that incident, however, Kunou made a
speech at the debate club contest.
	Akane descended into hell.
	Everyday, Kunou, as well as some of the other boys attacked her. It was
only a few, at first, but they ganged up on her.
	Akane had no doubt in her mind as to what would happen to her if she lost
those fights.
	The fights grew larger and larger and Akane's skill grew stronger.
	Then, like a tornado, Ranma arrived.
	Ranma, who scared her so badly in the bathtub.
	Ranma, who was a complete pervert.
	Ranma, who fought brilliantly, and trashed Kunou with little effort.
	Ranma, who was Akane's fiancee. She knew that if Ranma decided to force
her to carry through with her Father's idiot promise, that there would be
no beating him off. He could take her body, no matter what she wanted.
	Ranma showed her, however, that he had little interest in her body. When
he wasn't being a jerk, he was actually kind of fun to be around. Akane
began to grow... attached to the impetuous, impertinent boy.
	For the first time in almost ten years, Akane began to see that not
*everyone* was out to hurt her.
	She began to make other male friends, like Ryouga. Mousse scared her badly
by kidnapping her, but he was so pitifully in love with Shampoo, that Akane
couldn't help but befriending him as well.
	Then came the day when she was actually left alone in the house with Ranma
for an entire night.
	He had been acting odd all day. She suspected that he was flirting with
Shampoo, and had actually seen him embrace her. Everyone was sneezing quite
a lot, but Akane didn't really associate it with his behavior. Akane got
mad at him, and was having a generally rough day anyway, so it only made
things worse when she fell into a drainage manhole and caught a cold.
	Then Nabiki made a chance comment, teasing her that Ranma might get out of
hand since they were going to be left alone all evening. As usual, Kasumi
took it quite seriously, and instructed Akane to take caution with a boy in
the house. Akane was shaken badly by the conversation. Ranma wouldn't do
that to her, would he?
	Then Ranma came home. Akane's nerves were on end, but Ranma was
trustworthy, right? He didn't' have any interest in her body.
	Akane sneezed. Ranma grabbed her. It terrified her. She was quite certain,
for that one horrible moment, that Ranma was going to attack her.
	And of course, it was a fluke. One of Shampoo's grandmother's potions. A
hypnotic mushroom of some sort. 
	Akane was shaken but reassured. She gradually began to loosen up around
Ranma. By they time he rescued her from Saffron at Phoenix Mountain, she
was quite sure that she could fall in love with him, if only he would admit
it himself. She had been ready to marry him.
	Then Nabiki had been attacked by a ravener. The same raveners who cruelly
raped and murdered girls simply because they were virgins.
	Who would rape and murder *her* if they got the chance.
	Nabiki survived, though. She beat the ravener! It was only because she had
taken what Nodoka had offered her, though. A normal girl wouldn't have been
able to do it. A normal girl would have been left violated and dead in the
hotel room.
	Akane didn't want to be a normal girl anymore.

* * *

	Akane struggled with her problem for most of the day before she came to a
decision. Last period was home ec, however, so Ranma wouldn't know if she
left. 
	She cut class, feigning an upset stomach, and rushed home. 
	She found Kasumi and Nodoka sipping tea in the front room listening to the
police radio with her father and Uncle Saotome.
	"You're home early," Kasumi noted.
	"Did you find out anything?" Akane asked.
	Nodoka sighed sadly. "Nothing. We have little option but to listen to the
radio for trouble."
	Akane bit her lip. It only made her more sure of her decision.
	"Can I talk to you in private, Auntie?" she asked.
	Nodoka nodded, allowing a slight smile to cross her face. "Is it all right
if Kasumi and Nabiki are there?" she asked, already knowing what the girl
wanted.
	Akane blushed and nodded her assent. "I... just don't want Ranma to know
yet."

- - -

Happy Halloween, everybody! More parts to come when I get 'em written. You
know the drill.
* * *
Chris Jones - hamster@arn.net 

The Ranma 1/2 Gallery: http://cyberwheel.simplenet.com/ranma