[fanfic][ranma][alt]ranma.ranmei.3 |
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Disclaimer: All Ranma-1/2 characters and plot elements used here are in fact the property of Rumiko Takahashi and her assigns, and are used without their knowledge or permission. This is fan-fiction: an open fan letter in prose.
Ranmei--siaru 22may01/14dec03 Who you are depends on who you want to have been.
Chapter 3 The dawn's long shadows of the dockside buildings had long since retracted in upon themselves, uncloaking the streets and docks and leaving them bleached and brilliant in the morning summer sun. The day was warm already: the sun had been beating down on the unprotected stripes between the fingers of shadow for hours now. Where the pooled night airs once hid, their shelter foreshortened and already ineffectual, their scant coolness was already stolen by the morning breezes and replaced with the mugginess of Osaka's summer, mugginess that made the smell of the sea seem flat and oppressive. Ranmei already had quite enough of the waterfront, and Osaka too, and was trudging along the main road toward the more familiar ground of Kyoto. It gave her time to think. She had plenty to think about. Right now she was furious with herself at how blithely she'd spent money on street-vended food and snacks on her way out of Nerima, and was determined to save the cost of the bus if she could. Her Saotome appetite, applied against her own funds, had put the Osaka-to-China boat, not just out of her reach, but so badly out of her reach as to be not worth thinking about. She had learned of the boat on the way from Atami, in one of those rare bursts of conversation she had had with the driver when his eyelids began visibly to droop. He had obligingly dropped her off here, close by his destination, rather than in Kyoto, her original target, so she could inquire about prices and departures. For the first time she was considering the monetary side of her planned journey, and she wasn't liking this fresh feeling of vulnerability, this awareness of having come into this unprepared. It had been easy to forget just how much time and effort Genma had put into their scrounged, or, far too often, stolen meals. Now it was up to her, and it scared her. Her initial grubstake had consisted of half of what was in the Tendo-ke kitchen drawer when she went raiding. Much of that went towards the backpack strapped to her shoulders, the sleeping bag it bore, and her jacket, a cheap nylon windbreaker. The original amount she carried when she set out from Nerima fell far short of the amount needed for fare. Now that she was paying attention, she realized that it wouldn't last long for food, either. Assuming she managed to scrape up the fare, what then? She would need more money for food and supplies when she traveled. Now she was annoyed at herself for spending so freely before she had all her facts in, annoyed at her continuing lack of dependable visibility that stole her time by making her wait for people to notice her... and, to be honest, annoyed with herself as well for being so easily enthused with false hopes just on the news of the shuttle boat, and so easily lulled into her old habit of thinking that it would all somehow just fall together and work right if she was careful not to give it too much thought. Nothing is that easy, she thought. Especially for me. Nothing is easy for a Saotome except lying and cheating and running away, and I'm sick of all that. Looking for the easy way out is what got me into this mess. Earlier, she had taken the time to clean up at a sentou, wincing at what was a small fee but which made her that much poorer, that much farther short of her goal. She'd had to find a line to stand in before she could get the clerk to notice her, and that had taken some begrudged minutes. Avoiding being stepped on in the washing room while managing her few toiletries took more time and effort. Often-invisible or not, she was reddening and refusing to look up at the women who, even in midmorning, already populated the changing and washing rooms of this public bath-house, so collisions with them were as much a surprise for her as for them. The snapshot glances that resulted, brilliantly captured for involuntary display to her mind's eye, made it that much harder for her to keep her unruly hormones in check. Condemned to a life sentence of womanhood as she was, still, she was a guy in a girl suit when it came to other women. Finally, with her pack leaned in a corner where she could keep an eye on it, she stepped out into the pool area, half-expecting someone to raise the cry of "pervert" and take up any weapon handy in order to drive her out of their territory. That wouldn't happen, no matter how she cringed at the thought; or perhaps she cringed away from acknowledging why it wouldn't. She quietly dropped her towel and stepped down into the pool of hot water, well above trigger-temperature, and nothing happened. Of course. And nothing would. This was her side of the pool now. Hormone-driven adolescents like Hiroshi and Daisuke might exhaust themselves seeking a way to take a peek into places like this. She had the freedom to discreetly survey every bit of naked female flesh on display here, to savor it if she would, and, even though it aroused her if she wasn't careful, she wasn't interested: it was very much not worth the price. Finally, well-scrubbed and well-soaked if nothing else, she dressed in her last clean clothing, one of the two or three outfits Ranma had left her when he moved back to Saotome-ke. She tied her hair back into that warrior's braid that kept it out of her face and out of reach, and, steeling herself, stepped back out into the streets of Osaka, intent on finding work. Over the next three hours, Ranmei came to realize that she was getting a harsh lesson in just how accommodating her neighborhoods in Nerima had been. Package-handling, warehouse help, runner, messenger, -- all these jobs were closed to her now, she quickly discovered, even though she was physically fit to do them, because of her gender; there was no middle ground. Either she was ignored when she tried to apply, even after the flicker of reaction that told her that they had seen her, or she was casually dismissed as too frail to perform them. Once, infuriated, she let slip with her old objection: "Dammit, I'm a guy! Can't you see that?" Then she saw their hooded expressions of polite disinterest in her ludicrous objection, even as they mentally dissected her clothing for the flesh that lay underneath. No. Of course not, she thought as she turned away. They only see a girl. "A girl", not me, "a girl". If they see me at all. If they can be bothered to look. Despairing at getting someone to take her capabilities seriously, she sought out "girl jobs", such as waitressing, serving behind counters or helping in snack bars, but she fared no better. While at first, once she had gotten their attention, they remained attentive, perhaps startled and fascinated by a beautiful girl showing such crudity -- her scruffiness, the roughness of her speech, the assertive masculine language that she spoke -- their welcome smiles vanished when she admitted that she had no clan and no place to stay. She could see their faces close up shop then, see them mentally dismissing her as "someone else's problem". One matronly woman, perhaps seeing and sympathizing with her frustration at yet another quick dismissal, came out from her snack shop and spoke on her doorstep with Ranmei, explaining things in earnest apologetic tones. "You are an attractive girl--" Ranmei bit her lip on her usual outburst in response to that. "--but only to someone who troubles to look. To be a hostess here, you will need beauty products to show off your skin, your hair, your face; and you will need good clothing too, because you need to be attractive to the patrons. We need them to want to pay attention to you, otherwise they will go elsewhere. "Without a clan to provide for your start, you have only yourself and what I can provide, which means that you will be dependent on me for everything, and I have children already." She leaned out of the doorway and pointed way down the street to where another street intersected, one that, even from here, seemed to be more shadowed, more soiled. "Perhaps someplace down there? They serve a rougher clientele. Their customers might not be so picky." On the way over to that other street, an idea surfaced amid Ranmei's frustration, a stealthy little voice in her mind that seemed to be asking, Why not use the Tendo name? Just to get going... And how long, then, she thought back at it in annoyance, before somebody from Tendo-ke shows up to collect me, to get their embarrassment home and out of public view? They can do that: I'm under-age. No, I've got to do this on my own. As she turned the corner and started to assess the grimy little storefronts, Ranmei realized that she'd seen entirely too much of this kind of place already during her travels with her father. Still, maybe they'd hire a ronin? For a hostess job, if nothing else? Maybe... After scouting a few blocks of the neighborhood, she backtracked to the cleanest and friendliest-looking of the lot, a snack bar where someone seemed to care that the sidewalk in front was swept free of trash, and stepped in for a look around. It was a nondescript little place, really, just a few mismatched tables and a coatrack, the kind of place that Ranmei knew, from experiences in her earlier travels, often held unpleasant surprises. Even as she set about trying to find the owner and attract their attention, she started scanning her surroundings. With her senses on alert, she felt it when someone went from intent to action, so she was watching closely when one patron's hand artfully flicked against his glass, knocking it over and spilling its contents away from him by seeming accident. He paused, staring at it for a moment, then he looked around and called out, raising a hand in signal. Presently a girl roughly Ranmei's age came out from behind the paper partition in the back, rag and sponge in hand, and came over to the table, making polite noises, showing a polite smile. She bent over, industriously swabbing up the spilled drink, and was most of the way done when that same hand stealthily closed on her breast. The girl's face went blank, frozen, for a moment. Then one could see her making the effort to reassemble a polite smile, even as she resumed mopping up the spilled drink, while that hand casually followed every movement of her bent form, cupped against her as if glued to her blouse. The task finally done, she carefully backed away from the table, bowing politely, probably as much as anything to throw off the hand that had tracked her movements so easily, without seeming to do so deliberately. Still showing that forced smile, the girl retreated behind the partition, taking her sponge and rag with her. The 'gentleman' sat there with a sly grin. Presently his eye wandered over to and up Ranmei's form. His grin got more broad as he openly stared at her chest. For a moment, she stood there, transfixed by his unblinking gaze. Then she shuddered, turned and walked determinedly out and away from there, defeated. She knew only that she could not work in such a place without inevitably injuring somebody. Disheartened, Ranmei retrieved her pack from the rooftop where she had left it, and set out for Kyoto with the distinct feeling of slinking out of Osaka with her tail between her legs. She would not return without money enough that she could without question pay for what she wanted. That day would be soon, she was determined. But not now. Not with so little money remaining. She was now acutely aware of how short-range her thinking had been when she had left Tendo-ke in the dead of night, and equally disappointed with and ashamed for what she had taken, even though the theft had been forgiven. It was woefully inadequate for what she intended, but she was grateful to have even that much to start on. Now she would have to discover ways to somehow earn her own way. Well in from the street front, the high-tech high-rises she passed, headquarters for famous names found on goods sold all over Japan and beyond, didn't look nearly as friendly as their television ads tried to imply. The buildings were like fortresses, blankly impersonal, well able to withstand any seige made by a desperate teenage girl seeking employment... as if they would be interested in her skill set in the first place. There was a breeze at her back, now, pushing at her pack as if at a sail, and, even as the weight of the pack on her back, driving her heels harder into the sidewalk, reinforced how earthbound she was, she felt as if she were being driven past those places by high winds: there was no place there for her to land. Hours later, with her stomach grumbling, she started passing markers announcing her arrival into Kyoto. She paused at one, staring at it unseeing, with a wistful smile on her face, as a feeling of homecoming overtook her. She was remembering the feeling of belonging to the austere and disciplined schools and dojos at which she'd studied, with a sense of pride at having attained such dignity at such a young age. Perhaps there was a place for her there yet. She resumed walking. It was early evening, now, and she had to pick her way carefully through hurrying crowds of people who, as was to be expected, were uniformly all but oblivious to her presence. It was slow going sometimes. She stepped down into the roadbed once or twice, following the half-remembered streets, but the stream of cars there was alien to her memories, enough so that she braved the tidal flows of people on the sidewalk from then on. Cars didn't even enter a young boy's thoughts, really, so they had no place in her memories, and this boy-turned-girl wasn't willing to deal with them, not after what had happened the last time she did so. She turned a half-remembered corner, and stopped short, causing people to bump into her and then fumble their way around an obstacle some of them couldn't see. There before her, gleaming in the last of the sun's rays, was a place she remembered well, a monastery where she had learned the rudiments of some key aspects of her art. Other schools, she knew, barred women, but this one... She nodded to herself and resumed walking. As tired and hungry as she was, she was not about to present herself there now, but that would be her main target for tomorrow. She lengthened her stride, now intent on finding a cheap meal and someplace to sleep. Next day, a little after sunup, she rose from her curtain of roadside bushes, ate the hoarded leftovers from the last night's meal, packed her things and set out. As expected, despite this being a university city, she got no job offers. The word 'ronin' was as deadly to her prospects here as in Osaka; no one wanted the responsibility. With plenty of students seeking part-time work, they could be even pickier about qualifications and preparations here. If they noticed her at all, that is; attracting someone's attention without offending them by the way she got it was a lengthy and wearying exercise in assertiveness and self-control. A number of times, she simply gave up trying and walked away. It was late afternoon when she went back to the monastery which was now her sole hope, intending to scout first to see if there was any opportunity to be found there. As difficult as it had become lately for her to get people to even acknowledge her presence, she thought she could go where she chose, unseen. It was one of the better places that she remembered from her travels with her father. The monks there were strict, rough to the point of abuse, but fair in their handling of an earnest young student who had been always willing to try the new method one more time, to sharpen his performance just a little more until even the most sour of the monks gave grudging approval. One monk in particular had spent much time helping her with techniques that her little-boy body was almost too small to perform. Her father and her had had to leave suddenly, she remembered, and there were techniques she hadn't had time to properly master there, particularly those of the staff for which this school was best known. At the time, she had, as instructed, concentrated on their open-hand forms. Now she thought to use her relative invisibility to catch up on what she had missed, at least to audit classes if she couldn't attend them openly, and perhaps find an opening where her skills would be appreciated. After hiding her pack, she slipped through the entrance and made her way to the dojo, where a class on unarmed forms was in session. She was spotted almost as soon as she entered. While the class went on, oblivious to her presence, an old monk carefully picked his way through the students and came over to her, gesturing her into a side area with a smaller practice floor. His voice was soft and a little reedy, as though speech was not something he used regularly. "You are an unusual visitor." "I-I studied here for a little while, a long time ago. I thought maybe I could learn some more." "And what is your name?" "Ranmei. Just Ranmei." "So, what have you learned from us, Unruly Shade?" There was a hint of a smile at that treatment of her name, as if emphasizing it underscored the inappropriate manner of her entrance. He stepped back, gesturing towards the floor, and sat on a thin bench, little more than a railing, to watch expectantly, still with that hint of an amused or bemused smile. Now she remembered this man, remembered that same patient almost-smile when he had taught her before, a decade ago, and it made his polite challenge the more significant to her: he would see the results of his own teaching efforts. She began to hope that he would find her worthy to continue under him. She chose a kata which she had started learning here but only mastered after she and her father were on the road again. It had enough difficulties within it, even as learned, to demonstrate her skill. Perhaps that would suffice to allow her to stay and learn here, and perhaps even to teach. With quiet pride, she set out on the first steps, at first at a pace suitable for instruction, displaying the snap-precision of her movements between stations. Her movements, though, steadily increased in speed until no student could have picked her stances out of the whirlwind, and only a grandmaster could have corrected her form. At the end of the long sequence there were two punches and then two choices, one a standing block, the other a kick which led back into the first block-and-punch, repeating the sequence, and this was her choice. Now her forms were superficially the same, but different. She was showing the Saotome variations which she had learned, and, at some points, helped devise, and those movements were less about power-of-impact and more about speed and flexibility, and always the emphasis was on the aerial, on gaining and keeping the drop on your opponent without letting them dictate where and how you would land. Now it was as if every few turns had a leap which, in addition to making her an unpredictable and very evasive target, made the difference between her height and that of a man inconsequential. Where a level blow with a closed fist was the next move in the sequence she'd been taught here so long ago, her version was a heel-kick delivered from four feet in the air, with her other leg in position to use her opponent's body as a stepping-stone for more height. Absent an opponent, of course, she dropped back to the dojo floor, but the next three blows and blocks in the series were delivered even as she dropped, in a way that could accommodate either a foe who was still standing or one who was in midair with her, and then she was leaping again. Finally she finished her kata by coming down from a leap rapidly kicking into her phantom opponent's space, lunging for those two punches but delivering Amaguriken bursts instead, and then straightening up into sudden motionlessness in the standing block. It was as if a hurricane wind was suddenly silenced, and then there was just her audible but even breath as she held the position for a few seconds, triumphant. She turned with a smile to him, but her smile leaked away at the look on his face. There was something amiss here, something that felt like a threat to her, but she couldn't think of anything she'd done wrong. She watched him closely as he rose from his seat, nodded slightly, smiled even more subtly, and spoke in his soft calm voice. "Very good. You have learned it well, however you may have learned it. What you have done with it, though, that style I have good reason to remember..." His expression had become impassive, carefully neutral, and she realized that he was standing at ready. His voice was even softer, but firmer now. "That is Musabetsu Kakutou Saotome-Ryuu. What have you come to steal?" Shocked, she took a step backward. "N-nothin'! I didn't come ta steal nothin'!" He said nothing, he merely gestured, and three stolid monks approached carrying staffs. They clustered before her, standing between her and the dojo's main expanse of floor where still the class continued, and then they started snapping their staffs diagonally from corner to corner in unison, forming a solid wall of meaty men and swinging wood. They stepped forward, crowding her back towards the entrance, as the old man backed casually out of the way, and then she could only bow her way out the same way she'd come in, repeatedly apologizing for the intrusion. At the entry doors, confused and distraught, she looked up at the faces of the monks, saw vindictive readiness in their expressions, and turned and ran. Twenty minutes later, pulling her invisibility to her as much as she could manage and slipping from shadow to deepening shadow, she returned to retrieve her pack from where she'd left it, in a clump of bushes in an obscured corner well away from the entrance. She found it open, its contents strewn around it, and she gathered her belongings and stuffed them hastily back inside. There was one thing missing from her belongings: the little pouch with all her money in it. Whatever her father had stolen from this place ten years ago, she thought, they must have taken part-payment from her by taking her money. She knew it was them because in its place was something she remembered seeing on display within, a begging bowl. She left that in the dirt, untouched, exactly where she found it. The message wasn't lost on her, but not only did she reject the message, she had no way of knowing that the bowl was not a relic whose absence would be reported as a theft, giving the police an opportunity to get involved. Instead, schooling herself to calm, she closed her pack quietly and hurriedly left the area, bumping into people who didn't see her, the whole while feeling as if there were eyes in the shadows watching her. For the first time since leaving Nerima, she was acutely aware of how exposed she was without shelter. Without money, though, there was no possibility of her finding a room for the night somewhere, much less of getting less conspicuous clothing. The cost of the boat she had thought to take from Osaka to China was no longer the only thing out of her reach: now she couldn't even pay for food. She was glad to happen upon a colorful takeout bag containing some greasy pieces of chicken and congealed mashed potato, left forgotten at a bus stop, even if she grimaced at how they tasted after being out in the sun for unknown hours, because otherwise her dinner would have been nothing at all. Her bed that night was a cardboard box behind a dumpster, folded inside another which was her shelter. There was just enough room inside for her to curl up in her sleeping bag alongside her pack, with her head toward the closed end to hide her hair. Twice during the night she was awakened by prowling cats come sniffing for food. Each time, she had to struggle to control her panic enough to kick them away without killing them. Just after dawn, she was awakened by the sound of an approaching truck, unusual in this alley. Grabbing her pack, she leaped out of her box shelter, seconds before the refuse truck, ramming its fork under the dumpster in order to lift it, crushed her makeshift shelter flat against the adjacent wall. She had to wait until the truck pulled away, trailing bits of garbage, to shoulder the emptied dumpster aside far enough to pull out her sleeping bag from the mashed box. She spent the day in cautious wandering, surveying tentative new neighborhoods while her stomach growled. Behind a block of professional offices, she found a walled alcove where yellowed scraps of newspaper, evidently undisturbed except by wind and rain, implied that the spot was mostly overlooked. There wasn't enough space to stretch out, but she'd slept curled up in uncomfortable places before; now she had at least found shelter. Not too far away from there were colleges, and their inevitable modern outposts, fast food eateries. If she could persuade some of those people to see her, her body was proven good for cadging free food. If they couldn't see her, well, they were casual enough in their operation that she could easily keep herself alive with unseen pilfering. That thought rankled, though. There was the persistent memory of the begging bowl that she had left in the dust. The image was a silent accusation, reminding her that her history of dishonesty had earned her the contemptuous rejection of people she respected and whose respect she needed. Better rinds, honestly got, than stolen feasts, she told herself: I am not my father. Late evening found her sitting behind yet another dumpster. She was gnawing at a discarded stale hamburger, the last of several she had found behind the foreign restaurant which was their source, when she heard footsteps headed her way. She stood up just in time for a man's meaty hand to seize her shoulder. She turned: it was one of the monks. Her startled glance took in an uncertain number of burly figures behind him. He growled, "We have never admitted women. We do not know how you come to know our school, but it is no matter: you dishonor us by existing." Ranmei squirmed as the man's grip tightened on her shoulder and shifted, seeking pressure-points. When she noticed that, she awkwardly twisted free of his grip, turned and stared: this was not about her complicity in her father's thefts anymore. "So now you're gonna kill me cuz I'm a girl." "No, we will teach your body not to use our forms." It was the same three burly men, and now they began their march forward, their staffs once again snapping from diagonal to diagonal in unison, a moving threatening wall, and now she could not run from that wall because it had sought her out. If she ran now, she could never stop running, because they meant to cripple her if they could. She eyed them as they advanced, casting her confusion and embarrassment aside and embracing the cold logic of strategy. Their unison style was well-practiced, but maybe if she broke their cadence... She leaped back, then sprang against the dumpster. She lost some of her momentum in rocking it up onto two wheels, but she had enough to spin in the air, ducking weakly-driven centerward blows, and uncoil to put her kick into the center man's chin, rocking him back. She twisted, almost walking down his front, with one slap-kick against the poorly guarded fingers of each hand, and then she had his staff. She whirled even as she touched ground, swinging the staff around, and used it to beat back the others. Their disarmed comrade moved behind them, backing out of their way, even as they converged, concentrating their blows. She fended off their volleys, then went for height, with her legs tucked for a smaller target, and took the battle towards their heads. Perhaps she couldn't raise overt ki, but she could still use it, diffused into her muscles and sustaining her leaps. The staff whistled and moaned as she put real power into its movement, raining down blows on their heads, while the counter-momentum was jerking her around in the air like a mosquito, making her even harder to hit, another Saotome enhancement to the original technique and a movement she had long practice in compensating out. As their staffs rose to meet her, she dropped low and used the staff in the classic patterns she had learned from these people: fending, blocking, redirection and slamming into the openings thus created. She didn't have their sheer muscular power, but she had power of her own, plus her own speed of reflex and movement. When their blows gathered at her lower height she leaped once more, forward this time in a move which, had she not known that she would be flagging and vulnerable soon, she would not have risked. She tangled their blows with her staff held broadside and whistling with each sudden move, even as she punched her way through the confusion. She writhed in midair, suspended somewhat by their blows against her staff, taking poorly aimed and poorly driven hits in exchange for precision punches and kicks. Even in the twilight she could see when each man lost his focus and then his consciousness, and she knew she was winning when she touched down, leaped again and started hammering her way through the third man's guard. Suddenly, bruised and a little disoriented despite herself, she was dropping to tiptoes and staring at three men down on the ground before her, men who were alive but bloodied and still. Behind them, impassive as before, the old one stood unmoving but ready. She quailed inside: from what she remembered of his form and his teachings, he could probably take her out as she was now even when she was fresh, and, after this fight on an all-but-empty stomach, she was not fresh. She stood a moment, panting, trying to think of an honorable way out of this confrontation, and the only one she could think of involved giving up some pride, but pride was something that was priced out of reach at the moment anyway. She straightened up as if she was at the beginning of one of the lessons the old man had taught her, straightened as if she were being judged on the strength of her spine and not the shape of her crotch, and then with a two-handed snap she hurled the staff back across the line of sprawled men, so fast that the air moaned along its passage. The old man caught it easily with one hand and held it motionless, broadside as he had received it. Then she bowed to him, man-style, and held that bow, just as she had at the conclusion of each lesson so long ago, until, after a long moment, he bowed back, just as limber as she remembered him bowing in response a decade ago. Only when he rose again did she straighten up, just like a decade ago. The old man easily turned the staff vertical, and, still silent, was turning to go, when her voice, ragged with stress and outrage, and at the point of tears, rang out. "I usedta be a guy!" The old man halted and turned his head slightly, listening, nothing more. "Jusenkyo." The old man stood a moment longer, and it seemed that his gaze was slightly downcast in thought, or his expression hinted at surprise, but then he nodded, turned and walked away into the shadows of the alley. As soon as he was out of sight, she sagged against the dumpster, leaning back with her eyes closed, and gasping to catch up on her air as she waited through the flush of unspent adrenalin. She knew she should leave this place immediately, that other monks would be on their way shortly to retrieve the three before her, but, as tired and hungry as she was, she needed these few moments to recover. Maybe they wouldn't hunt her now, but she couldn't count on it. She'd known the other three schools refused entrance to women, that's why she'd chosen that one. She hadn't known that it kept the same policy. If those schools shared information... "Shit... Thought I'd left all my reasons for being a ghost back in Nerima." She sighed heavily, wiped her eyes, stood and brushed herself off. Wearily she picked up the half-eaten hamburger and trudged back to the little alcove where her pack was hidden, a refuge which now seemed far too exposed. She needed a better place to hide, she knew that much.
Credits: Tom Ladegard vetted the dojo and fight scenes and made suggestions. Mike Noakes' detailing comments on earlier chapters helped when this chapter was being plotted, as did Allyn Yonge's FFML posts of helpful hyperlinks. If your suspension of disbelief still snaps, it's my fault, not theirs. Thanks, guys, this story is better for your help. Precedence: This story is preceded by events in "Two Sides of the Coin" by Benares and "Misuteru" by Jason Drozd, and proceeds along lines other than those of David Johnson's "Dare Mo" and JPBuckner's "The Ghost of Curses Past", though much inspiration was lifted from Johnson's work. C&C welcome: siaru@stormbringer.org |