From: "Nikholas F. Toledo Zu" Take On Me by Rain Man --- A tall stranger moved through the crowd, a sliver of black cutting through the daylight, boot heels striking the concrete without sound. Sliding through the gaps here and there, he whispered by with the barest touch unfelt by that businessman rushing one way, by the housewives on their way home from shopping, by the horde of everydays that passed by without noticing. But she noticed. Where was he going, that stranger with those intense dark eyes? Without knowing why, without acknowledging the tingle that went down to her toes, the young girl followed him. She blushed when she realized that she was - what would he think? She was never this forward, she was proper and conservative and the daughter of a respected - But she hurried after him when he turned the corner (he was so handsome, she said to herself without listening). She took one more step and when he turned to look at her, oh those eyes they - "Akane, wake up!" She almost leaped out of her seat, very nearly smashed the intruder's face in, cheeks burning as she yelped, "Don't do that, Yuka!" "Akane, you're always reading those comics. Come on, it's sunny outside, let's go shopping or watch a movie or - " "But, but..." She was already looking at the next panel, where the tall stranger in the leather coat realized he was being followed and - "Come ON, Akane, you promised you'd let us take you out today!" She let them drag her out of her room, down the stairs and past the hallway. "Bye, Akane-chan! Have a nice time today!" Kasumi smiled as she always did, wondrous and quiet and calm. "Quit dragging your feet, girl!" Sayuri said, pushing Akane as Yuka pulled. Akane smiled and laughed, "Okay, okay, you win. Where are we going again?" "There's that new store in Akihabara - they've got the cutest looking little bags, Akane, we've gotta get some!" "And there's that new movie out about this alien who - " Akane smiled and nodded, pushed back the thick locks of her long black hair. It swayed from side to side as she walked, the slightest sway of her hair along her back accentuating the steadiness of her stride and the way she centered herself from the ground up, a martial artist's stride and a woman's. "So did you let Sato kiss you last night, Sayuri-chan?" Akane said. She grinned at the way her friend couldn't quite look her in the eye as she replied, "OfcoursenotAkane whyever would you think that I mean we're just friends..." So they walked in the sun, and laughed and giggled and chatted, but as soon as they were in full swing, swapping stories about their friends and the minutiae of the daily rumors about who was dating whom and who had been dumped for whom or about who had cheated on what test, Akane's mind was back in her room, with her heart, lying on her bed, open to page sixteen. Sometimes, when Akane was sad and was having a day that was, well, not very good (she remembered this movie her mother used to love, and the heroine of that movie sometimes had those days, too, and she called them "The Mean Reds") she thought about how little happened everyday, how boring it all was. So much so that she hated the steady boring chatter of her friends whom she loved so much, hated the numbing everydayness of school, and wanted something more, something to get her blood pumping. Akane liked that movie quite a bit. Only she didn't think that those days really had a color, or at least it wasn't red. Red was vibrant, alive, maybe sometimes it hurt with an edge, but it also maybe sometimes lifted you up like a fire in the sky. No, those days were, if anything, colorless. As if red was less red, and the blue of the blue skies was less blue, and everything was industrial gray and ugly and boring and nothing... (The stillness of death, the way the color was gone from her mother's face at the end, and she couldn't admit to herself how glad she was when the cremation was over because it wasn't her mother anymore it was just some dead thing and it was horrible that it looked even a little like her, but without the spark, without the life that filled the eyes and made Akane smile.) "Akane, you're daydreaming again," Sayuri sighed. "Sorry!" And she was, because she didn't like disappointing them, they tried so hard to be good friends. And Akane sighed, too, because she just wanted to go back to those wondrous pages, where everyone was more alive than alive, and the colors were always bright, and the heroes were handsome and the villains were dastardly and the worlds were brimming over with excitement to spare. Well, one hero was handsome anyway. "... and in that issue he saves this schoolbus being hijacked by terrorists who - " "Akane, jeez, it's just comics, y'know. What you need, girlfriend, is a real man." "Humph!" Akane said. "All the boys at school are just boys!" And boys were annoying. They kept on staring at her chest now that she was starting to get one while trying to seem like they weren't, and they kept on showing off, trying to impress her with how smart or charming or strong they were. Akane was as good a student as she cared to be, with grades nominally high kept there by a minimum of studying, and as fine an athlete as she cared to be, easily defeating most of the boys in sports except for the ones who were obsessive and didn't do anything else anyway (hence not bothering her with their presence). And their version of charming was, well, crude as only high school boys newly introduced to their own rocketing hormone levels could be crude. "Yeah, Akane, but at least they're, you know, in 3D. You're in love with pictures on paper!" "Hah, just because you finally let Sato kiss you, you're turning on your unattached friends!" She stuck her tongue out and giggled to let her know it was alright. Because the last boy that had made a crack about Akane's comics had been hospitalized. Twice. She didn't mind that her friends just didn't get her fascination with that character. 'Coz that way, it made it easier to pretend that he belonged to her and her alone. Oh, sure, this comic hero had princesses and heirs to fortunes throwing themselves at him and being saved by him, but he was never interested in them at all, afterwards, though he was always a gentleman and polite. In those episodes when a girl he rescued would ask him to stay for a little while (in some of the racier issues, they'd ask him to stay the night!), he'd always say that he already had a love, and he'd get this lost, faraway look in his eyes. "She's doing it again," Yuka sighed. "Akane, no man in real life could be anything like that Ranma character in your comics." "I'm not thinking 'bout that, really I'm not." And Akane sighed, too. I really want to remember today, she thought. I want to live a real life today, with bright colors brighter than bright, and... and I will be a good friend, and good company. She hooked her arms through theirs and said, smiling again, "Let's go to that club Sato works at tonight, maybe he can get us in!" "That's the spirit!" Sayuri cheered. Whisper of doors closing behind them, whisper of the electric motors spinning up to drive the wheels, whisper of the a computerized voice informing them to please take their seats or hold on to an appropriate handle. The train is departing, continues the bodiless, soulless, colorless voice. Rays of light, shining glass in shining metal doors. Carpeted floors, clean, unworn by the feet of countless commuters who commuted there no longer. All these things, these emptinesses, they pulled at memories in Akane she did not want to have, and as their pull increased, so did her need to hang on to her friends. I want to stay with you, please stay with me, Akane thought. The sound of the train rattling on its tracks, the way the floor shook under her feet, and she was filled, for just a moment, with the desperate need to hold on to something, someone. "Akane, um, that kinda hurts," Sayuri said, softly. "Sorry." And she loosened her grip at her friend's elbow, chagrined at the loss of control, but relieved that her friend didn't pull away. Behind these glass windows, in this shiny metal beast, we are alone, almost in another world. Outside, there are all these strangers, and on some days they smile at you and on some days they frown, and on others they are faceless. There are no mannequins here, just you and me, and the sound of our little world moving through a bigger one, itself just one city in an ever larger set of circles and worlds... floating, alone in the blackness. Blackness... Akane swallowed and looked around them. Anything, find anything, look around, look here, look at her, look at him, look at them, look at my reflection in the glass, the telephone poles sliding by. At the reflections of her friends, bent into narrow lines on the shiny metal poles they hung on to, at - Who is that? She didn't notice him when they had gotten on. He was sitting all the way in the back, a slender young boy - maybe he was her age, maybe younger? It was hard to tell, he looked smaller the way he was sitting, scrunching himself up to look smaller than himself, eyes looking at nothing. He looks small. And he looks skinny. And he looks weak, Akane decided finally. His hair was cut like a simple black bowl inverted onto his head, his clothes looked as plain as a school uniform. Little plug-in earphones at his ears, the wires leading to a little black box in his hands, and Akane could hear the words, if she listened closely enough. English was her best class. "... so you think you could tell... heaven from hell, blue skies from pain..." It sounded familiar... and so far away. He must have been listening to it really loud, she thought, for her to hear it. Slow guitar strings, so soft to her, must be echoing, roaring in his ears, and that soft voice a scream. "... how I wish... how I wish you were here - we're just two lost souls living in a fish bowl..." "... year after year..." "... Running over the same old ground..." "... how we found..." "... the same old fears..." It was the strangest moment, when he looked up and his dark eyes caught hers. Dark eyes, Akane thought... "... wish you were here..." Sayuri tugged Yuka, and whispered loudly, "Praise be, Akane is staring at a real boy!" "I am not!" She bonked them lightly on the shoulder, relieved that, when she glanced out of the corner of her eye, the boy was looking away. He couldn't possibly hear them anyway, not over his music. "Think he's cute, Akane?" "No! I hate boys! Um. I mean - " her eyes slid back for another moment. "He just looks so alone." There was a sound then, like the curiously weak sound made by a car crash - from the movies, you always expect something larger, explosions, flames, smoke, but in real life, most of the energy of the impact goes into deforming those metal frames, and it's never as loud as you expect. Unless, of course, you are the one in the accident, and then the sound can be louder than life itself, louder than pain, louder than movies and comics. That's when they were thrown forward, and the train ground to a screeching halt. Akane had known the right way to fall since she was old enough to train... which was since she was old enough to walk. Before she had time to think about it, she had tucked her chin in towards her chest, curled herself just enough to protect her head, with her neck the only part of her body not limp. She bounced off the metal door at the end of the car, was bruised here and there, mostly her back and shoulder blades, but that was all. Akane was used to bruises. When she recovered her breath and picked herself up, she needed to close her eyes for a moment to calm herself. Yuka was moaning terribly, and her left forearm was bent backwards on the elbow. Sayuri was fine, like Akane, just bruised, but she was groggy, and the bump on her forehead made Akane hope she didn't have a concussion. The boy knew how to fall, too. He was the only other one standing straight, and as he gazed out the window, Akane caught something in his eyes that was strange, and perhaps frightening. Akane took off her coat, the vest beneath it. Sky blue, charcoal gray. Crouched beside her friend. "Give me your spare clothes an' stuff," she said to Sayuri. "Hurry up!" "Yuka, you'll be fine, okay?" She started screaming when she saw her arm. "Stop it! Stop moving! Don't look at it! Sayuri, give me a hand!" Carefully, carefully she kept her friend immobilized, held her down but not too roughly. Sayuri was too dazed, was sort of half-crawling, half-stumbling over. Her eyes were wide open, saucers, surprise and fear and blankness. "Yuka, Yuka, it's going to be fine, look at my eyes, okay?" "Akane... it huuuurts..." "I'll help." The boy said. His white shirt came off, and Akane was relieved to see that he knew what she had been doing. He folded cloth, over and over, tied it with a belt to make it hold the correct shape, did it again to her coat. There was nothing on the car to use as sticks for a splint, and this was the best they could do. "This'll hurt, Yuka, but I gotta do it," Akane said. "Just look at my eyes, okay? Don't look at it. Squeeze my arm with your good hand when it really hurts." She straightened the arm, and as her friend was screaming, she and the boy put their improvised, cushioned splints alongside the broken joint, and tied it around with Akane's vest, torn in half. Yuka's cries faded to soft moaning. "That's better, right, Yuka? Now, just stay awake, okay? Don't close your eyes. I gotta check on Sayuri." The boy was already there. "She's fine. Just dazed." He was standing again, and looking out the window. "What happened? The power's out, there's no lights on the train and - " The boy pointed, and she looked. Billowing smoke was rising over the horizon, and finally, Akane could hear the sirens. "..." "Oh." It didn't take them long to force a door open. Standing on the tracks, they saw that a chunk of metal the size of a car had destroyed the elevated rail just in front of the train. An amorphous mass that had smashed halfway through the rails, deep into the concrete beams beneath. The emergency brakes had cut in barely in time, there were only inches before they would have smashed into it, the passenger cars sent flying off. "That's a bullet from an Eva rail cannon; must've ricocheted off and just landed here by accident," he said absently. It didn't take them long to check the other cars. There were not many passengers on the trains anymore, and today, early on a Sunday, they had been the only ones. The control system was automated, there was no engineer up front. "We shouldn't move her. We'll have to stay until someone gets us," Akane said. Well, that, and it was a long way down... She was a little mad at how distant he seemed, at how he was just looking at the smoke. "Hey, what's up with you anyway?" At his sides, his long, slender fingers twitched. His eyes were down, looking beneath his little feet in their little black shoes. He was maybe the same height as her, maybe half an inch shorter. "I have to go." "What? But - " "..." he just looked at her. Through her. She looked at him. He was not quite as skinny as he'd looked under his shirt - just starting to become wiry, as though he'd recently had to begin some kind of martial arts or maybe track and field or something. His eyes - she could not look at them. It made her feel cold. It made her remember her mother's eyes, just as the life left them. "I'm sorry about your friend." He ran, backtracking along the railway until he reached a ladder to climb down. And then he was gone. "Jerk," Akane muttered. She climbed back into the car, and sat by her friends. "'mso sleepy," Sayuri murmured, sitting, hunched over by Yuka. Akane sighed. "Nope, no sleep allowed." She tried to smile at them. "... Shouldn't have gone out today, huh, 'kane?" Yuka murmured. "Sorry. My idea." "Oh, don't be that way. We'll be fine. And I read in the paper that a train car is the third safest place to get stranded in during an Angel attack," she lied. "Mmm, 'kane, tell us a story," Yuka said. "A story?" "Yeah, Akane, how's that comic start again?" Sayuri said. Softly, she stroked Yuka's shoulder. She linked hands with Akane, as they sat by Yuka, lying between them. Akane closed her eyes for a long, long time before she opened them. For the first time in years, it had been difficult to think about the stories, and the handsome hero who somehow, someway, always won, throughout whatever trials and suffering. It was hard not to think about dark eyes, and how cold they looked, and behind that iciness, something wild and dangerous. "There's... um. There's these guys." "The bad guys," Sayuri prompted. "Right. They're called the Nine Men, they've got... number nines... tattooed on them all, somewhere." "Are they spies, 'kane?" Yuka's voice was only a little slurred. And her fingers felt okay, they weren't getting colder. That was good, right? Akane tried to remember the first aid she'd learned just from all the injuries she got, training. "Yes. Spies. And they've been trained in the nine best ways to kill by the nine worst killers of all time, and they started out as teenagers, and when they were 18, they killed their first president... They... get hired, by everybody, by governments, by Mafia families and Yakuza and Tong, by corporations and, every once in a while, by the police, too. The world was a dark place, ruled by terror and money." It was getting easier, she thought with relief. "But this boy, he was the son of a general, who was disgraced and - " Yes, it was getting easier. In her head, the colors were still brighter than bright. But as the orphaned boy began to face the first of the trials that would make him a hero, all Akane could think about was the look in the stranger's face, as his hands had twitched at his sides, and she had felt for sure he was going to kill someone. For a moment, she thought it would've been her. Akane had no illusions about her martial arts. She was the district champion, in her weight class, and in the unlimited weight class. And she knew she'd have a good shot at getting to the Olympic qualifier. But somewhere in his eyes, the boy was a killer. There were times when she knew skill and advantages just didn't matter. There are times when a smaller man, unskilled, never been in a fight before, has fought a bigger man, with more reach, with experience and skill, and won. There are times when a woman, kicked and bruised and abused and whipped and broken, will find something past the pain of her bones under her bruised flesh, and her lost beauty, and unleash rage upon a man who was supposed to be her husband. There are times when the smaller female lion, bony and hungry, will rip open the large male stealing her kill, or to protect her cub. Akane had thought that fighting the stranger, while his eyes were dead like that, would have been one of those times. A part of her, she had been terrified to realize, had been ready to die, serene in the face of something monstrous. As she continued the story, her eyes settled on the boy's black box, in the corner. It had gotten stuck in a loop, and the faint background to her story were the words, 'Did you exchange... a walk-on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage?' That night, she could not fall asleep. One hour passed by. She thought perhaps if she exhausted herself physically, then maybe she could pass out. So she worked out, ran a couple of miles, lifted weights for twenty minutes, did katas for forty, lifted weights some more. After the stress of that day, after the hour (or was it hours?) of her telling the stories of the handsome gentleman spy, after so much talking that she was losing her voice, after the men came for them and she and a patched-up Yuka stood by Sayuri's bed, saying, "You'll be fine, Sayuri. They said they just needed to keep you here tonight for observation, right? So nothing's wrong, the scans said so." Akane had heard of people who'd been struck in the head, smiled afterwards and walked away. And died from the blood pooling here and there in their brains an hour later. She and Yuka worried for hours convincing themselves that Sayuri's concussion was okay, that she had the best of care. They stayed with her until visiting hours were over. Yuka's broken arm was simple, and just needed a cast and a few pins. And then having to deal with her father, crying, crying, needing her and both her sisters to get him to calm down, as he cried about how he had been afraid the Angel had taken Akane in the attack... Akane still lay there in bed, eyes open, closed, open, closed. She was exhausted. She had only been this exhausted once before; she never visited that memory. Another hour passed like this. The SDAT was in her hands, she didn't know since when. The phones were in her ears, the music was on her mind. A little fiddling had gotten it playing again. There was classical, violins and cellos and horns and thunder, there was jazz of the blaring saxophone type, there was Grover Washington, Earl Klugh, George Benson, and the rock of Ray Charles, Pink Floyd, The Pencils and the Rolling Stones, and Chage and Aska and Soft Cell, Depeche Mode and INXS. She did not notice when she fell asleep, only when she woke up and the sun was in her eyes and the music was still playing. 'Hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me.' The music made her think of his eyes. 'There is no pain you are receiving...' 'You are only coming through in waves.' 'Your lips move, but I can't hear what you say.' Turned in her bed, buried herself in her sheets. 'I have become comfortably numb.' When she turned it off, the silence was so loud she wanted to scream to fill it up, to bring colors to life again. Outside her door, the phone was ringing, and the sound was such a welcome intrusion Akane almost wept. "Akane? It's Yuka. Yeah, I'm fine. Listen, I'm going to visit Sayuri later, wanna come with me?" Oh yes, it was morning again. Why was that so surprising? "Good, I'm glad you can come. Right, Akane. Yeah... And, um, thanks for taking care of me an' stuff. I'll see you there?" But she didn't want to go, she hated hospitals. Last night had been different, had been too fast for her to make any decisions about like or not like, want or not want - today, she did not want to visit a hospital and smell the stale aseptic clean smells and see the overly soft, soothing hue on the walls. Why had she said yes? There was some time before she needed to get dressed. Maybe she could escape for a while. In volume 16, Ranma had discovered hints that he had a long lost brother, a twin. But the leads had dried up, and villains appeared that needed destroying, corporations that needed to be exposed. Akane had just started reading volume 20, yesterday, before Yuka and Sayuri had shown at her door. Ranma had found a message under his door, and he knew, somehow, that it was from him. Directions to a safe, behind a painting, behind a cabinet, in an old motel that had been condemned in the heart of the Dark City. But someone had been following him... Who was that girl? He was reaching into his coat pocket. He hated guns, but he needed them. He hated to kill, but he'd do it, and faster than you could blink. Ranma did a lot of things he had to do, but hated, and it was in the hating that made him human, the remorse that made him a hero rather than just another spy in the bleak world of the Nine Men. He ducked into an alleyway. "Who are you?" A gun was pressed into a back, someone was terrified, and then shots rang out - Akane looked out the window. Even after the Angel had been destroyed, it had taken the Tokyo-3 fire department the entire night to control the fires that had burned out of control in that district of the city. On the news, they said that it had been an Angel of Fire, and that it had taken NERV two hours and sixteen minutes to neutralize it. There were conflicting reports, that it had been fought by one Eva at first, that it had been fought by two, by three, that the Angel itself had looked like an Eva, that perhaps it was not an Angel at all. There was still smoke rising in the distance - it was mostly steam from the lake that had formed from the superheated crater left by the Angel's destruction, and the broken water mains underneath that part of the city. Some said that there was radiation from that explosion, that everyone in the city was contaminated, would die slow deaths from cancer. NERV officials deny that any harmful radiation had been released, deny that there are any toxic chemicals released from the use of depleted uranium rounds used in the new Eva rail cannon. "These magnetically accelerated rounds are the most effective way we have for dealing with the Angel's AT field - the energy involved in the impact of each round is comparable to the initial pressure wave at ground zero from N2 mine detonation, but is far more controlled. Extensive lab testing has shown minimal disintegration of the round into gaseous form or an airborne dust - it is effective, and the safest alternative existing in terms of weapon usage." What about the positron gun used before? "Japan's power grid is already stressed to its limits due to the heat wave this summer. Japan does not have the necessary surplus to power the tactical energy weapon in any meaningful way. The Eva rail cannon is very nearly as powerful, but uses up far less energy." There have been rumors that the Eva pilots are actually mere children, that they are not specially trained agents from the UN special forces, as mentioned in the official press release. What does NERV - "Those rumors are incorrect. We would never risk the safety of the world in such a manner, nor the safety of children. And even now, NERV research is moving towards the full automation of the Eva units, so that pilots' lives need not be risked in these missions. Since the full operation of the Evas commenced five years ago in the war with the Angels, there have only been three fatal NERV personnel casualties. Considering the scale of the war we have been fighting, the UN is very grateful to us for keeping the risk of life to such a small level." She just couldn't get into the story today. It didn't help that Nabiki was in the next room, and that she always had the TV or the radio on CNN. "Sorry, Ranma. Guess I'll have to save you for later tonight," Akane said. She closed the book, returned it to her carefully organized collection. Outside, the wind was blowing, the sun was shining, the sky was blue. The white pillar of steam in the distance could have as easily been a gigantic cake, rising into this perfect blue shade, a child's dream tower of sugar frosting and white butter candy flowers. Thoughts wandering, wandering like Alice falling down the hole, but would there be a Wonderland at the end? She turned the corner, feet moving her without moving, as though she floated along, not even touching the ground with footsteps. It was the music, it kept on going in her head even though the headphones were in their neat little case, beside the neat little box of the SDAT, inside her neat little lavender purse. "Ikari," she whispered as she walked and the music rang in her ears. It was the name on the back. "Shinji." There was no address, no phone. She wondered how she would get it back to him. Maybe he went to her high school? Maybe. Maybe she could ask the registrar if there was an Ikari Shinji there, or maybe at another school nearby. Maybe she could convince them that she was doing it for a school project or something. Maybe the boys at school would stop bugging her if she stripped off her clothes and danced the lambada all the way to class. "Akane! I was starting to wonder if you'd fallen asleep - " Akane giggled then, and laughed harder when Yuka asked why. How was she going to explain about the registrar and dancing the lambada nude in the same sentence? "Don't ask. Hey, we should pass by that little flower shop with the tulips - she'd like those. We'll celebrate her being able to come home." Sayuri needed to stay in observation for a few more days. "What? But why?" "Are you family?" Doctor in a white coat. They were always white coats. Couldn't they pick a friendlier color? Even when they had friendly smiles and kind looking hands, Akane had never been able to get over the white coats, the sick shade of blue-green on their scrubs beneath. "No, but..." "Can't really tell you, sorry. Look, she's going to be fine. Don't worry about it." Akane knew the news was bad when she saw Sayuri's mom, eyes so very red, and lower lip trembling. "Akane..." she hugged her close. "What's wrong with her?" Akane found herself whispering. Her throat was closing up, and she kept seeing her mother's eyes. "The bump was nothing, just a little bruise. But when they did the exams and tests, they found something..." "..." "There's a... mass. A tumor. They don't know if it's cancer yet..." And she sobbed and sobbed, and didn't protest when Akane hoisted her up easily in her arms, and carried her over to the couch when her knees gave way. Akane couldn't remember when she had gotten taller than Sayuri's mother - could still remember when she'd play with her as a child, and it was Akane who'd get lifted into the air and hugged when she tripped and scraped her knee and cried. "They... they haven't told her yet, Akane... They're asking if I want to be the one to tell her, or if I want them to tell her... I don't know what to do!" The colors faded from the room, from the sky, from everyone's faces. Everything was in black and white and slate gray, granite gray, tombstone gray, so many shades of gray. Doors opened in front of her, closed behind her. The music was louder than ever in Akane's ears. "What did her Mom say," Yuka asked. "..." "Well?" Akane said, "Sayuri's going to be - she's going to be fine." She'd always wanted to be an actor, had never realized how it would feel to be a liar. Not with something like this. She walked, Yuka followed, every once in a while scratching her cast, wishing it was possible to scratch under the cast. Through the hallway, down some steps, out into the lobby. There was a boy - it was Sato, walking forlornly back and forth. His clothes were rumpled, and the look in his eyes told Akane the story of how he had dressed quickly as he could, rushed all the way to the hospital as soon as he'd heard. "They won't let me in to see her. Why not? There's still five minutes left for visiting hours, right? Right, Akane? I wanted to give her these... I would've gotten tulips, I know she liked them, but they're really expensive right now, do you think she'll like them, Akane? Do you think they'd send them up to her room afterwards if I left them at the desk?" "I'm sure she'll love them, Sato. And she's just having a few more tests done to be sure. You'll see, tomorrow, you can visit her and she'll be holding some of your flowers to herself like they're the most important thing in the world, nevermind that they're not tulips." It was getting easier, this lying thing. Maybe, Akane decided, she had a talent for this. "Yeah, leave them at the desk." If she'd looked in the mirror, Akane would have noticed her eyes looked exactly like the boy's eyes, from yesterday, when he told her he needed to leave. She opened her copy of volume 20 as soon as she was alone. Need to get away from here, need to, she thought. Ranma, let's get out of here. There's Nine Men's men out there. I'll help you to escape. I always do, right? You can count on me, like I can count on you. Akane was the girl with the gun pressed to her back, and she said, babbled, more like, "Sorry, sorry! I don't know anything! I just, I just thought you were cute!" And that's when the gunshots went off - he had been followed after all. Nine Men's men were there, they had set off his danger sense. "Sorry 'bout this!" Ranma yelled as he shoved her, hard, sending her flying into an open garbage bin. "Stay down!" His pistol was out, he was shooting back, Akane wished she could peek out, but bullets were ricocheting off the metal siding she was hiding behind, and she did not think she'd like to get shot. Then a hand came in overhead, and before she could decide what to do, Ranma had pulled her out, pulled her with him into a run. There were two men in black on the ground, there was blood pooling under their heads. "See that bus? We're getting on!" She was glad that she wasn't being a burden. She could run just as fast as him, and when he saw her keeping up with him, he smiled at her, and she very nearly blushed ('It's not the time for that girl, sheesh! You're getting shot at!' she yelled at herself, but he was oh-so-cute). When they got on the bus, he whispered to her, "Just pretend you're my girlfriend or something, okay?" And he slumped heavily against her when they finally sat down. Something warm trickled onto Akane's hand. "You're shot!" "You shoulda seen... the other... guy..." he grinned at her. And passed out onto her shoulder. Akane put her hand under his coat, closed her eyes when she felt the steady ooze of blood. She pulled him closer, put pressure against the wound in his side with the heel of her palm. He moaned softly then, and when other passengers looked at them curiously, Akane would give them such menacing looks that they'd quickly turn away. She supposed they couldn't help it, it was sort of incriminating, the way he was practically draped against her and the way her hands were under his coat, the way he was groaning, their disheveled clothes. She blushed a little, muttered to herself, "Pervert," wondering if she meant herself, the spectators, or maybe him, he didn't have to be leaning against her quite so much. Okay, maybe he was shot, but really! "Miss? Miss, it's the end of the line. Did you miss your stop?" She started, opened her eyes. "What the?" Somewhere, between then and now, everything had faded to black. It happened to her, every once in a while, but it usually just meant that she had fallen asleep. Sometimes, on a summer morning, she'd be lying under a tree, seemingly only for minutes, only to wake up at sunset, still there under the tree. Somewhere, between then and now, Akane had actually gotten on a bus, the line that they would have taken, had Ranma and her actually run out of that alley behind the old red brick office building on the corner of 11th and 8th. "Oh Miss! Are you hurt? What happened?" She stared at her trembling hands. Somewhere, between then and now, she had gotten blood on her hands. Two weeks ago, the beginning of summer. They had celebrated, the three of them, by going to the grand opening of The Armageddon Cats, a club started by Sato's eccentric (and rather wealthy) parents. "Why worry? You might die tomorrow, let's party and feel alive while we're alive!" or something like that was its tag line (Akane wasn't too sure after a while - Sato had also gotten the bartender to serve them alcoholic drinks even though they were underage). Even though the city was slowly being deserted out of fear, there were enough people remaining, desperate for some happiness, to pack all the night clubs and discotheques. Akane was just a little tipsy, off of a Cosmopolitan and a White Russian. Yuka was off somewhere, dancing in another part of the club, and Sato was working behind one of the bars. Sayuri though, had just finished her fourth Sex on the Beach. She had never had anything alcoholic before. "Come on, Akane, let's dance!" Oh, she was smiling - Sayuri's smile was beautiful, infectious, more alive than alive, her lips a lovely, inviting red. Sayuri's smile was usually small, reserved, she held most of herself back from her smile, but that night, with more alcohol in her system than her little body could handle, she put everything of herself into that smile. It was like she was giving herself away, totally and completely, to each person who looked at her smile. Akane hated dancing, usually. It did not seem odd to her at all that, despite her extensive martial arts training, even in dance-like martial arts like some of the showier styles of Kung Fu, she had trouble following the rhythm in music, did not feel comfortable moving her body in that way. Self-conscious, a little awkward, because the fighting forms that she trained her body to move in were all about planned, strategic moves that were practiced until they were instinctual. When she saw others dancing, she was alarmed at the seeming loss of control they had over their bodies, the way their muscles tensed and flexed, the way their shoulders and hips swayed or jerked spontaneously, unpredictable to the beat of the music and the swirling, blinking, refracting, staccato-tap-strobing lights. Controlled seizures, almost, but sometimes they did seem like more, seemed almost as lovely to watch as the controlled motions of her martial arts, and those were the times she was envious and wished she could dance like that. "Okay, I'll dance," Akane said, because she couldn't stop looking at Sayuri. She let herself move her feet, shift her shoulders, sway her hips a little. She let herself go, wasn't watching herself moving, because she was watching Sayuri's smile, Sayuri's dance. Her heartbeat was wild, too fast, faster than if she'd run a marathon. Without her inhibitions, Sayuri changed from being a cute, normal teenager to being beautiful, a strange creature in loose, oh-so-thin layers of cloth that hung and clung to her slender, vibrant self. She was magnetic, other people around them were turning towards them, towards Sayuri, and a few of the brave ones went close to her and danced next to her, caught in the field she radiated before they were exhausted by the energy and wandered off, but always looking back. Look, Yuka, look, Akane thought. I'm dancing! I'm dancing with Sayuri - isn't she pretty? Everyone's looking at her. Seeing you like this, Sayuri, I think I see the part of you that Sato is really in love with, underneath the manners and proper shell that you clothe yourself in during the mundane light of day. Your naked personality, the smile you're giving everyone, it makes me just want to stop and step outside the world and just stay here in this moment with you, where everything is perfect so long as you are smiling like that and you can make me forget the part of myself that wants to forget. I want to look like this to someone one day, I want to be magnetic like that, and loose, and honest with myself, with a smile that makes it so that people can't look at anything else. I want someone to fall in love with me the way Sato is in love with you. I don't let on much, but I guess I'm jealous - and at the same time, I'm so relieved that you make time for me and Yuka, even though when Sato and you are in the same place, everyone and everything else disappears for the two of you. I want to trust someone and lose all of my self-consciousness towards him, show the real me, the real smile, the part that lives in the moment that exists only with that other person. You claimed not to remember much the next day about it, said that you had gotten drunk. You blushed and said you could never be like that, you could never stand being on a stage, the center of attention. But I remember. I wish Yuka could have seen it... I wish... I hope that... that she'll have the chance to, and that this thing inside your head isn't cancer. I want to go to this club with you again, and with Sato and Yuka, and we'd get you just a little bit drunk, so you'd be like this and totally absorbed in the wonder of the moment. No matter what happens, this is how I will remember you, the naked self and happiness of your honest smile, the way your dress moved on you as you moved, the way you were so alive that we all felt more alive just by seeing you. And Akane cried then, because she was already saying goodbye. Did I do something like that just now? How did I get on this bus? Whose blood is this on my hands? I was just dreaming, that's all - or was I? Did I get drunk like you did, Sayuri? I don't remember, so now maybe I believe you when you said that you didn't remember how you acted that night. I'm a little scared, not so much because of the blood, but because, what if I had shown the totality of myself in the moment like you had that night, but didn't remember it, and had no one to tell me? I wanted to save that part of me for someone to love... I do wish Ranma was real, so I'd have someone worthwhile to fall for. What a coward I am, for starting to say goodbye to you, in my heart. I should be cheering you on, I should let you know that I know, that I'm fighting with you. That even if you might lose, there are times when the fight itself is worth it to stay, even for just a few minutes longer. I'm a coward, because when you die, I want to be ready for it, the way everyone else was ready when Mama died, except for me. I don't want to hurt when it comes all at once, the grayness, the emptiness. If I do it a little at a time... say goodbye a little everyday, then maybe the last one won't hurt quite so much. She got off the bus, and spent the rest of the day walking home. The sun moved through the sky, the shadows cast by the skyscrapers shifted along the ground, and Akane was always looking behind her, not quite shaking the feeling that there were others watching her. "Hi, Akane. How's Sayuri doing?" "... Fine, 'nee-chan. Just fine." "A boy came by looking for you. He looked kind of cute, a little awkward, asked if you lived here. Is he someone from school?" What boy? "I asked him what his name was, and he laughed a little bit and said, 'Tell her I'm a spy and thanks for keeping something of mine safe for me. I'll just come back later.'" "Maybe he reads comics too much, too," Akane mumbled. "I'm really tired, 'nee-chan. I think I'll take a nap before dinner." "He left a phone number, but not a name, isn't that strange? Silly, but cute," Kasumi smiled. "Is he one of the boys after you, Akane-chan?" There were too many of those, Akane thought sourly. "I'll look at it later, 'nee-chan. I gotta take a nap." She felt at the edge of her vision, a headache on the horizon, coming her way swiftly. With these, there was nothing to do but outlast it, and if she noticed them coming soon enough, perhaps to sleep before the pain arrived. Closed the door behind her. She kicked off her faded gray jeans, removed her white blouse, slung the bra beneath that off to the far corner of her room, and fell face first into her bed. Yes, the headache was coming, quickly, like a storm on the horizon. Akane curled herself up in her sheets, and closed her eyes. I am going to sleep now, Akane told herself. Nothing can hurt me while I'm sleeping. She opened her eyes, afraid for a moment that she had not been able to sleep in time, that the migraine was coming too fast and there would be no escaping - But it was night, deep into the night. Akane twisted over and saw her clock, numbers blinking on a background of glowing liquid crystal: 12:01 am. She groaned, groped and flipped the switch on her bedside Sanrio lamp-alarm-clock-radio-phone (it was a dejectedly cute powder blue, the last one in the store because one side of the casing was cracked). Kasumi had left her a note: I didn't want to wake you, so I just saved some extra food for when you wake up; it's in the fridge. Remember not to microwave it too much =P -K. ps Oh, Akane, that cute boy came by again. I told him you were sleeping, and the sweet thing sighed, he looked almost heartbroken or something. He must really like you. Give him a call tomorrow? Summer classes have been suspended for two days because of the Angel attack. Don't worry about sleeping in. What boy? Ever so briefly, Akane was intrigued at the thought - most of the males in her class had stopped trying at her, after their first year. Well, that's also when that stunningly pretty girl with the blond pigtails had transferred to 2E as well, so maybe it wasn't totally the fact that Akane had been very forceful in her rejection of their attentions. Only the new ones still bothered her these days. -boys- She shook her head, thought about the lost day. What had happened? Why couldn't she remember anything between starting to read Volume 20 issue 2, and getting off the bus, fingers tinted with blood. She flipped open the book beside her. Fell inside, fell deep deep down a black twisting tornado, only she had no magic shoes with heels to click to bring her back up. "It's the NightBooks," Ranma told her. "They must think I'm close to finding the NightBooks." "What?" Akane had almost gotten him to her home, when he had stirred and said, "No, no, you don't want to take me there. When they come looking for me, you don't want them to come to where you live. I'll rest there-" And he pointed off to the side, and Akane's face flushed, burning bright red. It was a motel, with lurid pink and red lights, decor. There were even more love hotels now that people were afraid that the end of the world might come soon. Living with the fear, the awareness of the possibility of the ultimate ending, honed a desperate edge in them, a desperation to affirm their lives. To somehow make it worthwhile, to take as much out of it in the short time that might be left as possible. Why save for my retirement twenty years from now when the world might end in the next Angel battle in a week, or a month, or just another year? "You pervert! You don't expect me to - " "Look," he sighed, wincing. "Thanks for your help, but I can manage myself now, really. The last time I stayed at a friend's family's home, that home was gone the next week, okay? A car bomb. It took out the whole block. The Nine Men don't care about subtlety... when it concerns me." "The who?" "Jeez, you don't got a clue, do you?" He took a deep breath, and pushed himself off of her. His smile was terribly strained. "Look, I'm sorry for getting you involved. But if I were you..." His eyes flickered up and down over her, and for a moment she blushed, but only until she noticed the detached, business-like way his gaze took her in. "Burn those clothes. My blood is genotyped and any traces are dangerous for you. Do that first, then scrub yourself down real thorough-like, okay? Cut your hair. It's pretty like this, so long, but it's also really distinctive. Cut it as short as you can. And remember, burn all your clothes, anything that might've gotten some of me on it." Then he was gone. She had spaced out, done exactly what he said. Gotten her hair cut short, to a stylish but terribly short boy's length cut ('Oh well,' she sighed internally, 'Dr. Tofu really only has eyes for Kasumi anyway...'), gone home, taken her clothes off, burned them in the incinerator in the basement. It had been dawn by the time she'd gotten that done. She went to the bath, scrubbed herself down, was sitting, sitting, eyes open and looking far away, as she sat in the furo, wondering about Ranma's eyes. She stayed that way for maybe an hour. The morning light was lovely, streaming in through the little window at the top of the sky blue tiled wall. Strange dark wild eyes. "Akane?" Kasumi. "You cut your hair! Oh, wow, it's really pretty like this, Akane." Akane smiled wanly. "I felt like a change." And her heart was beating again, and she knew she was awake. "I bet your young man will love it." "Umm... 'nee-chan?" "What is it?" "Have you ever had dreams that seem so real, it's like real life was the dream instead of the other way around?" Her big sister smiled at her in that way that always made everything seem alright. "Sometimes. But, Akane, the thing about the dream is that it always ends." "I... I guess you're right." It was getting worse, Akane thought. There had been no transition that time, between being with Ranma and being in the real world. But somehow, she had still been able to tell when it was over - even though she had not been asleep at all, and her hair was cut just like she had had it done in the dream. If it was a dream. "Kasumi?" "Yes, Akane?" It was nice sharing a bath with her big sister. She had felt so utterly alone until Kasumi had shown up to break the spell. "What did the boy who visited look like?" "You know," Kasumi paused, "it's funny, but it's really hard to describe him. Everything about the way he looks is easy to forget, except for his eyes. He was really... intense, yes, that's it. But he had a nice smile, and he blushed when he said that he was looking for you. I think he really likes you." She sighed in contentment, stretching, luxuriating in the heat. Akane surreptitiously looked down at her own breasts, before glancing at Kasumi's. Sometimes, Akane found herself wishing she was as pretty as her big sister. Well, and as generously endowed. It used to bother her a lot when she was little - maybe because of her crush on Dr. Tofu. But now... now, she really didn't care at all. And she just had this feeling that wouldn't go away, that Ranma liked her better this way, trim and athletic. She shook her head. This was getting really bad. Maybe Yuka and Sayuri were right. I should stop reading those for a while. Real life and all that. I will call up that boy. Hey, it would feel pretty dumb if the world ended and I'd still never had a boyfriend. Akane was a woman of action. Prolonging the thought before the act was, to her, usually an exercise in futile, often needless, worrying. So, bath over, toweling off complete, and to the phone she went. "Hello?" "Yes, it's the girl from the accident. Yeah." "How did you find out my name?" She twined the phone cord about her fingers, fascinated by the patterns formed by the coils upon coils. "Really, that's not funny. They don't make kids into spies." "Riiiight. So, do you want to get your SDAT back or not?" "Could you say that again, please?" And she sat there, blinking, looking at the garden just outside the living room. Sunlight, brightest greens. The smell of grass and flowing water. A part of her was filled with deepest dread, a part wanted to scream get away, leave me alone. Fluttering half-beats, fear of the colorful and the colorless, the desire to escape everything, this world that everyone knew was on the verge of ending. The desire to live. "Okay," she said, coming to a decision within herself, a resolve. It always made her feel better to decide on a resolution. Self-help books, hah, who needs them. "I'll have coffee with you. Un. I know where that is." "You mean right now?" "I'll see you there, then." What to wear, what to wear? A foray through the closet revealed a number of old things, worn once and never again, a number of things worn everyday for every occasion, and in the very back, where her Dad would never think to look, one or two things never worn at all. Akane grinned. There was no way in hell she'd ever have been caught wearing that. No way at all. It was perfect. "Akane!" Kasumi gasped. "Bye 'nee-chan! Don't tell Daddy!" she grinned and ran. She recognized him, sitting at a table outside the little cafe of smoky glass and wrought iron tables and chairs. Little people, little because of the high ceilings, the oversized proportions of the tables and cups and chairs, people who cast long shadows from the clever arrangement of the lights. He glanced her way and lurched clumsily to his feet, and she giggled. "Shinji?" "Oh God. Oh wow," he whispered, eyes widening. "Um, hi." She was in front of him, and smiling. "Hi!" Akane said. "Do you like it?" She did a little twirl. Was this how Sayuri would have felt, wearing this for Sato? Would he have been so overwhelmed? She was terrified - at any moment it felt like the light, slippery material would fall just so, a strap sliding down her shoulder too fast for her to pull back up before revealing more of her breasts than was probably appropriate on a first date. Or perhaps a particularly strong gust of wind blow wide open the slit that went so far up her thigh. Or maybe something as simple as tripping on the heels of her shoes. Her heart skipped at his nervous laughter, his muttered, "Um, pretty cute, yeah, very nice." She felt utterly delicious. "Just cute?" "I'm not good with words," he admitted. "Here's your SDAT. Nice selection." "Thanks." He was momentarily shell-shocked by how much deeper her dress was decolette when she bent just a little to withdraw it from her purse. She caught him looking, and he snapped his eyes to one side sheepishly. Akane just smiled. On any other day, such a look would warrant rigorously administered corporal punishment, but on any other day, she would not be doing something like this at all. The rules, she decided, just did not apply on so lovely a day as this. They stared at each other for a minute. "Coffee!" he blurted out. "Let me get something for you. Would you like a latte? A mocha?" "Whatever you're having." It felt divinely flattering to know she could have an effect like this on anyone. She did not even taste the coffee he brought to the table, just the way he was looking her, it was something else, something frightening and yet irresistible. "Are your friends okay? I like the haircut, by the way. Looks good on you." "Um, thanks. One's got a cast, she's fine." Akane paused. "The other, well, the doctors checked her for a concussion - she didn't have one. But they found something else." Why was it easy to talk to him? He was a stranger. He was plain of face, of clothes, of stature. And yet buried inside, she could still detect the wild force that had flickered to life in his eyes, just a few days before. Softly, "She has cancer." "Oh." The soft ringing of his teaspoon as it glanced against the inner surfaces of the cup. Somberly cheerful. "I haven't told anyone else yet. I don't know if her mother has. I don't know why I'm telling you," Akane said. "I really hate feeling helpless." "Yeah." "Her boyfriend looked so sad, so pathetic there, standing with his flowers, waiting for his chance to visit her. When I die, I don't want it to be in a hospital." His fingers twitched reflexively on the table surface. They both looked down at his hands. "I have two questions," Akane said. "I have a feeling you're only going to answer one of them." He smiled at her for the first time that morning. A tiny smile, one you had to look at twice to make sure it was there. "Ask the first one first." "The scars on your wrists." Shinji took a long draft of his coffee and grimaced a little at the thick, bitter goodness of it. Breathed deep once, twice, looking at how the fingers tightened and slackened like the claws on a newly dead bird. "Once upon a time, I had friends. They needed me. Needed me to win, more than anything else in the world. I made a mistake. A bad one." He clenched his fists. Opened them. "Did you know that, sometimes, when a person is hypnotized so strongly that he believes that a pencil is a red hot piece of iron, his skin will blister when touched with the pencil?" She brought her cup to her lips, still not tasting it, still looking only into his eyes. "No." "These," Shinji said, raising his hands palms up (Akane wondered if anyone else was looking at the broad swaths of pale, shiny tissue across the wrists), "are also from wounds that weren't quite real, but were real enough to bleed." Akane felt that she should say something, but did not want to interrupt the life flickering in the darkness of his eyes. "There are more of these scars all over my body." What was somebody supposed to say in the face of something like this, she wondered. "One day, my friends received more than their fair share of these phantom wounds, trying to protect me when I fell. They did not survive them. And now, I'm the last one left." She saw it then, visions of giants fighting amongst shadows and smoke, and at the last moment, a burning light more intense than a dozen nuclear fires. A cockpit like a coffin, breathing deep of something that smelled and tasted like blood. A tiny metal womb. Agony. Screaming. He looked away from her, broke the spell. "Did that answer your second question, too?" Akane said, "You weren't carrying that gun and that pager on the day we met on the train. Were you running away?" The gun was concealed, but she could see the bulge under his coat, and it didn't take a lot of guesswork. "Yes." "And you're not running away anymore. Then I think... I think you have answered the second question, too. I wonder how - I mean, you barely said anything, but." She swallowed. "How did you make me see that?" "The more I fought, the more I was a part of it and it a part of me," he said, as if that explained everything, and it did. She stood up, and offered her hand as they walked. She liked how his grip had been trembly at first, but firmed as her own had tightened. "Let's go watch a movie." Bye bye, blue skies, bye bye. She wanted to yell it in the air. But didn't. At some point through the movie (she hadn't even paid attention to the title), his hand had slid over hers and closed, ever so tentatively, and she squeezed back. At some point, the movie had ended. Walking along the edge of an artificial stream running through the park, that ended in an artificial lake, their hands were alternately warm and cold with nervousness and fear, but always there was a mutual, almost convulsive twitch as one or the other would grip a little tighter, afraid the other would let go. "Look," Akane said, "boats." "You want to take one?" "Ok." So they took one, and he tried rowing first, but gave up when she laughed at how fruitlessly the boat turned and turned, never quite able to go in a straight line. "You weren't very active until just recently, huh?" she said, smiling. Her strokes with the oars were strong and even, and under her control the little rowboat cut through the water like a shark. "I'm still not active," he said, not minding her laughter. It was nice, friendly, not at all mocking. "Walking around with you is the most real exercise I've had in quite a while. Well, mostly." "Oh? You've got more muscle than what you should have, though." "Well, it's a side-effect of what I do. One of the few good ones. Anything I do while I'm... doing what I do, translates to effort that my body thinks it's expending. So my muscles have been getting a work out, I guess. I'm still pretty weak though." She tilted her head, looked him over again, up and down. "You're probably stronger than you know. Did they start training you or something? I can tell that, too." "Yeah, but I'm not very good at it. Before, well - before all this. Before all this, I thought fighting was pretty stupid, sports, too, since most sports was an indirect kind of fighting. I just had my music." "Don't you have to want to be good at what you do now? Everything, well," she bit her lip, "everything sort of hinges on you now, doesn't it?" "I don't like to think about that." They were quiet for a while, and all there was to hear was the sound of the creaking oars, the sound of the water breaking under the wooden blades as they went into the surface and out. Shinji made himself look off to one side. It was too dangerous facing her while she was the one doing the rowing, something he didn't notice until they stopped talking long enough to just look at each other. It was too easy for his eyes to wander where they weren't supposed to, her bare legs, the way the hem of her skirt crept up her thighs when she dipped forward to bring the oars back, the way he could see all the way down to her belly between her breasts when she was leaning towards him. Even looking at the (relatively) properly covered parts of her wasn't safe. The material looked like silver, as though her flesh had been draped in a paper-thin layer of metal that stretched and molded and folded and hid in bright mirror highlights and blackest reflection the slight translucence of the material when it stretched particularly thin over her form, here and there. He was glad he was wearing loose slacks and not tight jeans. Akane noticed easily, and grinned a little bit. The dress was definitely a good choice. For what purpose, she really wasn't sure yet. "Shinji, why are you looking away?" Sheepishly, he asked, "Are you trying to embarrass me on purpose?" Familiar thoughts, familiar, but even though she was lovely and fiery as another in his memories, they were not the same at ll, not at all. "Well, I mean, I did choose this dress, didn't I? What do you think a dress like this says? On a first date." And it was a first date after all, no sense denying that. It didn't make much sense to deny anything anymore. "Um, it's what an old roommate of mine would call a - " he closed his mouth abruptly, blushing. "Um, nevermind." Akane was a little pink in the cheeks herself, but there was just something about the day, how it was almost unreal, almost dream-like. And then there had been her thoughts about death, and her thoughts about endings, and maybe she knew that deep inside, just like everyone else in the world, she was afraid that the world might end at any moment. So she said, blithely, "It's what my sister Nabiki would call a 'Fuck Me' dress." He let out a breath, looked directly at her. "Yeah, that's what Misato would've called it, too." Akane decided that she liked the way he was looking at her, all smoldering and just barely in control. "Who's that? Your sister?" Shinji's face twisted, and he was looking away again. "Umm, I'm sorry," Akane said. "Should I not have asked?" "She was my guardian. For a while." Oh, his voice is gray, so very gray. It sucked the heat from her, the blush from her cheeks, the warmth in her heart, and now, she felt cold. How had the day become so gray? She hadn't noticed them dancing closer, but now, there were dark clouds all across the dome of the sky. "For a while?" she whispered. "She tried her best, you see, she really did. To help me. Protect me. Sometimes, I could tell she wanted so badly to make me feel better, but she didn't know how. She was one of the few people in the world who I mattered to - and I was. I don't know. I was so cold to her, why was I like that? I could've been her friend, I could've been there when she needed me, but I was a scared little boy instead. She's dead now." Shinji drew his legs in close to him, and hid his face in his arms. "Everyone's dead now." It started to rain. Akane quickly brought the boat in underneath a bridge crossing the water, and they were both only moderately wet, rather than soaked. The rain was only growing heavier, and the heavy drops splashed violently upon impact with the suddenly turbulent surface of the stream. There were a few mooring rings around the pillars supporting the arch of the bridge, and she tied their little craft to one with a slip knot. "Shinji?" she said. He said something then, but it was drowned out by the steady roar of the crashing drops. And there was thunder in the distance, and it didn't help that he still had his head in his arms, curled up more tightly than a fetus. "Shinji, I'm going to move over to your end of the boat, is that okay? I just want to sit beside you." So she did. Look at my eyes, why don't you look at my eyes? But she couldn't say that, and the words died in her throat. Akane faced him, stradling the narrow bench, and pulled him close, into her arms. He shivered at the feel of her breasts pressed against him. "Shinji," into his ear, she whispered, "we're not dead yet." And just like that, the heat was back inside of her, and there were colors again. All around them was gray and cold, but between them was heat and color. "And you're not going to run away anymore, right? Not when life itself needs you." The warmth of her breath against his chilled, wet ear. The gentle rocking of the boat on the water. Slowly, so very slowly, he uncoiled along her, against her, pressed her even closer to himself. His eyes were still closed, it would be too much if he looked at her and the way he knew she must look with that wet dress coating her flesh. He shuddered. There was a hitch in his voice that thrilled her when he said, "I'm being stupid, aren't I?" Shinji took his jacket off and draped it over her shoulders, before pressing close to her again. Cheeks sliding along each other, and then he turned and pressed his lips to her cheek, to her jaw, to the soft skin along her neck, and he wondered if he heard her gasp when he, ever so gently, closed his teeth onto the slick skin over the muscles of her neck and shoulders, here and there. She was biting him a little, too, searing wet kisses trailing along his skin like burning brands. Her fingers clutched, spasmed a little when he dipped lower and closed his lips around the hard point of a nipple, exposed by the surrender of the clasps holding her dress together under his hands. Those fingers of hers slid down, pressed against his sex. Curled around it through the material of his pants. The storm lasted all afternoon. Sayuri-chan, have you ever wondered what the dinosaurs might've thought, if they had been able to think like we do? If they had awareness that the world was about to end, how would they have behaved? Would they eat more, try to get the most out of every single day of living remaining? Would they kill more? Would they be merciful instead, every once in a while, because in the end, what does one more kill matter when it adds what it adds to your karma? It's been three years since the Angels started showing up. In the first year, millions of people all over the world got divorced. Millions more got married. Millions of kids started having sex younger, and younger, and younger, and you know what, a lot of parents didn't care. After a sudden pandemic of AIDS and STDs, all the governments started handing out condoms like candy. Even when tomorrow might not be another day, well, it's just polite to make sure you're not spreading something, I guess. Organized religions everywhere swelled suddenly with more and more followers, and then, just as suddenly, as though a bubble had gotten bigger and bigger and finally burst, they just, well, went away. Nobody wants to believe that God has decided that our time is over, and it is His will that we all die. It's funny. Now that everyone in the world has seen concrete, irrefutable proof of the existence of a living God, nobody wants to believe it anymore. Better aliens than a God who thinks our time is over, right? These are the reasons why history is my favorite class. It seems unbelievable to me now, how many people used to consider themselves a part of one of the big religions. Unbelievable the tensions in the Middle East, back then, before the world had its ultimate, undefeatable and final crisis of faith. Old words don't matter anymore today, and who cares if your parents were Jews or Muslims? Today, we are all humans, trying to squeeze in the last bit of living we can, before our world is over. Any day now, we all might just go away. Go away with more finality than if there had been the great nuclear war everyone used to worry about. How sad the dinosaurs must have been, in those last few moments. After finally living life to the fullest, filled the world to bursting, what must it be like to know that it's going to all end? The best of times, the worst of times, all that stuff. Sayuri-chan, you're one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world. Do you think I would've done what I did with Shinji if the end of the world wasn't hanging over us? It felt good. Different, at first, just weird... but oh, neither of us could stop once we started. Because I am an optimist, I believe that if they had known how, the dinosaurs would have been kinder to each other once they realized that their time was up. I believe, I really do, that they would have stopped whatever wars they might have had amongst their kind, because it just didn't matter anymore. I'll bring Shinji by the hospital tomorrow, when I visit you. And I'll laugh so hard when you tease me about how I always say that I hate boys, hate them lots. "I don't understand something," Akane said, settling closer to him as they walked, arm in arm. "If you're the last one, what were those other things fighting the Angel, when you were with us on the train?" His lips twisted a little, before resuming a faint smile. "Copies. Just copies. Of me. The thing about those others is that, because they are just copies, something in them is a little off - enough so that they don't respond exactly the way I do. And they make mistakes, little mistakes at a time but... well, in the four Angel battles since we started using them, six of the copies have been killed, and I'm still here." "Copies?" "Don't ask, you don't really want to know." He kicked aside a stone in his path as they strode on. The sun was shining again, warm heat, warm shades of reds and pinks and purples as it descended slowly, slowly over the horizon. "I really, really enjoyed today, Shinji," Akane said, syllables slow and measured. "And I," he stuttered just a bit, "e-en... enjoyed it, too." "Oh, really?" She grinned. "I couldn't tell!" Shinji turned his soft little smile on her. "Well, it's not like I could tell with you! Even with the screaming." "Liar. I didn't scream." "Mm-hmm. Yes, you did." "Well, you yelled, too, pervert!" she pulled him to a stop and pressed her lips lightly, lightly against his cheek. Her fists were clenched tightly about the thin cloth over his shoulders, and she was shaking when he put his arms under the jacket around her, and embraced her. "Shinji, I'm scared," Akane whispered. "I don't think about it much, but - have the Angel attacks - well, I mean, are they ever going to stop? Or are they going to keep coming until everyone is. Until everything that matters is gone." It was a surprise for her that she was afraid. Her life had been gray for so long, outside of the comics she read, that it took today for her to remember what it meant to have something to lose. He could see that. Looking into her eyes, Shinji saw the pieces of her that were like the pieces of him, buried inside with the dead, buried with a burning fury like his own, hidden deep. Eyes of dread, of tears that weren't falling. Shinji whispered, "I thought for a while that everything that mattered was already gone. That's why I ran that day, on the train, when we met. Everyone was dead, everyone who mattered to me, who made life what it was. Akane, um. You give - well, you." "Hush, sissy boy. You don't have to say anything." "Meanie. I'm not a sissy boy just 'coz I'm weaker," so, so relieved that she was smiling again. And he sighed into the face of a soft, clean breeze, warm with the sun, moist from the earlier kisses of the falling rain. Long, long moments that blended into another, as the clouds went by, and the sun was setting. "Shinji, well. I'm not, you know, madly in love with you or anything. Love doesn't happen like that, but, well, today was. Nice." "Just nice?" arch of brow, cant of hip, curve of dimple. With that look, Akane couldn't help think about the way they were quivering together at the last, the way it all just felt so right to be naked with this strange, scarred, other naked self who looked at her like she was the whole world swallowed up in his eyes. She shook her head, bopped him lightly in the stomach. Just enough to make him wince. "More than just nice. But don't push your luck too much, Romeo. I have a reputation to uphold." He laughed softly, leaning his forehead against hers. "Did you really used to have to beat up that many guys at your high school?" "Yeah." "I'm glad you're not beating me up." "Well, I'm glad you're not upset that your SDAT's probably ruined." "Yeah, well, I can always find the music on it again, and, well. Well, I wouldn't ever trade today for a waterproof SDAT!" "You better not!" Akane kissed him then, brief, light, moist, and it was hard for him not to pull her to the ground, not to start again, with her so close and touching him like that and the indistinct flower scent of her shampoo mixing with the scent of her sweat and musk. She stepped back when she noticed him trembling. Her voice turned serious, still smiling, but serious, "Shinji, just, just don't ask me to love you or nothing, 'kay? Today was. Special." "Special," he breathed, sighing. "Don't look at me that way. I just mean, well, don't expect too much from me. Only, only promise me you'll do your best. 'coz if the world ends before we do this again, I'm going to be really mad at you and I'm going to smack you around more'n you've ever seen smackdown going down before." She was blushing, looking away when she said the last, her thumbs sliding back and forth over the backs of his knuckles, squeezing his hands in hers. "I promise." He was walking her back to her home when his pager beeped. Shinji raised it to his eyes, and his face became cold and stone. A fell light lit them, the light of the moon and the yellow street lamps along the sidewalk. He pushed a red button on the side of the little black box and turned to her. "Akane, you'd better get home." "Is it, um, is it - " "Not sure." "Just. Just remember you promised, okay?" "I will. I'll call you tomorrow, if I can make it and visit your friend with you." Just like that, a black car, black as the foreboding rising from the pit of her belly, screamed down the street, stopped just a few feet away. He entered it, and even as the colors around her seemed to fade, Akane told herself that at least she had had one day, one day like this, over and over. Akane took a deep, deep breath, and let loose the longest sigh, a sigh composed of all the sighs she always kept inside and held on to ever so tightly. She slipped off her shoes (the heels were starting to hurt her ankles) and continued walking, shoes in hand, bare feet stepping, stepping, stepping to the rhythm of her hips, from earlier with Shinji. And she was smiling again. A cat raced across the street, crossed her feet so fast that she tripped - and the world spun into shadow webs of slate gray falling rain. She saw the gray men pushing him, half carrying him by his shoulders, half dragging him, off into the darkness of an unmarked, windowless van. No, that couldn't have been him, could it? Hadn't he escaped? "Ranma," she whispered. Something snapped and Akane looked down beside her, at an old little Toyota hatchback, struggling to life with a young, put-upon looking man sighing at the wheel, muttering about needing a new car. Casually, she dipped down, slid her fist in through the window, a deceptively gentle-looking blow, and he was unconscious, a trickle of blood winding its way from his mouth, more from his ears. Akane tugged him out of the car, left him on the sidewalk, and drove. She wasn't sure how she managed to follow them. The twists and turns through the city streets were numerous, confusing, and so intent on following them was she that she did not notice when the street descended into a tunnel and the only sources of light she could see were the tail lights of the van. Every once in a while, running lights along the sides of the tunnels were all that kept her from losing him, as they continued to take a twisting, convoluted route through side-tunnels and access shafts. After a time, she heard it. Echoing noise where there was only silence before, more than just the gravel crunching beneath their tires and their engines puttering along in the still, damp air. The sounds of talking, of walking, of coughing and breathing and farting and sneezing and yelling life. At some point in the tunnels, there was a transition into steadily increasing ambient light. There was a whole city all around her. The scant lights and phantom lights in the shadows revealed people, huddling here and there, walking back and forth, sitting at stalls and tables. Sometimes there were doors drilled into the sides of the tunnels, with scavenged neon lights flickering on and off above them. There were men in black robes and gray robes, and some of them had all white eyes, or eyes of silver chrome, or no eyes at all. Numb, too numb to think, all she could think off was to follow the black vehicle still ahead of her. She knew there was no way they could not have noticed her following. The tires made a distinct, rhythmic sound as they rolled over old cobblestones and mortar. Perhaps, a stray thought informed her, they were giving her a chance to turn around, to back out of the strange dark tangled world of shadows and grime. I'll follow you, Ranma, she told herself. I don't know what else to do. The van rolled to a halt, and she stopped just a few feet away. As a black-gloved hand sprayed an odorless mist at her face, Akane wondered if she would have had time to figure out a way to fight if she had remembered to close the window all the way. Reflexively, she pulled the door handle, kicked with tremendous force that sent the man standing there flying. But the first step out of the car, and she fell, down, down into darkness. The bindings at her wrists were tight, painfully tight. It felt like wire. And her arms and shoulders ached from how they were tied to the back of the metal chair. Light, burning bright after the hours of darkness, right on her, it felt like a spot light held up right next to her eyes, and she tried to flinch back, turn away, but her muscles weren't working right, and her head just lolled to one side, neck aching, stiff. "You will tell us what you know," a voice said, harsh, rough as gravel. She couldn't see much of him, just a dark, hulking shape to one side of the light. "My throat hurts," she croaked out. "Who did you think you were following," another voice said. "Can... Can I have some water?" It hurt terribly, hurt as much as the throbbing ache at her wrists, the numbness of her cold, almost bloodless hands. Her feet were bare against damp concrete. "Talk." "P-please." Something was held to her lips, water trickling between them, and she drank at first, relieved by the cool wet sliding down her throat. Her eyes widened then, as strong fingers gripped her jaw open, forced a hose between her teeth. Akane would have screamed, but the trickle of water became a torrent, filled up her mouth, started getting into her lungs. Water spilled out of her mouth, down her neck, and she was crying then, hot tears down her cheeks. She tried to yell, tried to say, 'I don't know anything I don't I was just following him because he was cute I don't know I don't I don't - ' The moment seemed like forever, the protesting spasms of her belly, the burning in her throat, her chest. The squeak of a rusty spigot (it sounded close by to Akane), and it stopped. They pulled the hose away and she threw up, hacked and coughed thin vomit and strings of mucus from her nose and mouth. Gently, a soft piece of wadded up cotton was swabbed over her reddened face, cleaned up her nose a little. She hated most of all the soft touch of slender fingers when whoever it was wiped the tears from her cheeks. Through all this, she still could not see their faces, they were still just shadows. A distant part of her noted that her dress was probably ruined now. Why had she been wearing it anyway? How had she gotten here, she remembered being home and going to a park who with what happened why when it was all so gray so very gray in her thoughts - "There now, you've had your water. Tell us what we want to know," the second voice urged, sinuous syllables, slender as the fingers that had cleaned up her face. "It will be better for you if you do," he said amiably. "You must understand that a professional takes no pleasure in these things. I, like my partner here, only do what is necessary." The other had moved close again, and Akane saw stars at the edge of her vision when the back of his hand battered her jaw, whipping her head around. She tasted blood. "Talk!" the larger figure rasped into her ear. "Now, now, Thumb, you really ought to remember to remove your wedding ring when you do that. Just look at what you did to our pretty guest's face." A grunt of acknowledgement. Or perhaps of indifference. "Do you see, miss? I only have your welfare at heart here. So if you'll just tell us what we wish to know, my counterpart here can use a wirecutter to free your hands, and drive you off to a hospital or clinic nearby. I'm sure your family must be worried. Wouldn't you like to speed this process along?" "I don't - " Akane croaked. Thumb smashed his hand against her again. Dizzily, Akane thought she could tell this time, that he was still wearing a ring on his hand. "Mr. Ring, I don't think she's cooperating," the rough-voiced one intoned ominously, deep roaring bass. It was worse when Ring's soft, gloved fingers cupped her cheek, and Akane shied away, tried to keep him from touching her. "Ah, Mr. Thumb, since you married that shrewish wife of yours, you've stopped being able to appreciate true beauty." She tried to bite down on his thumb when he slid it past her lips, but was too weak to do any damage, and Ring only chuckled as he admired the softness of her lips. A thunderous noise slammed into Akane's ears at that instant, a sound so loud she could feel it shoving her back. She huddled down in the chair and squeezed her eyes shut, and when her ears stopped ringing she heard Ring yelling at Thumb: "Well, GO, you idiot! Go! We might be under attack! Or worse, the Project might have escaped!" In the sudden silence, the big man's boots echoed, and Akane could still hear those ponderous steps as Thumb charged (not ran, from his shadow, Akane thought he was far too massive to approximate running) down the corridor outside. "Now, dearie," Ring said, "I'm afraid time is running even shorter for you and I. Is it not tragic? The drama of our story has barely begun." His touch again, his touch and she whimpered, she hated the sound of her whimpering but couldn't help it, his touch was... slimy... against her cheek, against her neck, and he was, he was - His hand was between her legs. Akane mumbled through her swollen, bleeding lips, "Please stop, please, I don't know anything!" Eyes closed, and she felt her tears dripping, dripping. "Ah, dearie, dearie, th'art far too pretty, you see. And it's been so long since I've had time for such a pretty as you." His teeth closed on her ear, and she cried out, more in surprise and revulsion than from pain. "I'd not do this normally, unprofessional it is. But if the Project's escaped, then we're all dead anyway, eh? Best to die 'tween a woman's legs, I think." He leered as he bent down, and as he clipped open the wire holding her left ankle to the chair leg, the other hand was, was - Her ankle was free, she had to focus on that, she had to! His hand was tight on the ankle, but he was distracted and the sound of his zipper made her ears hurt but Akane screamed then, threw everything there was left of her into it. Too suprised to let go of her ankle, Mr. Ring was pulled towards her just as much as she and the chair she was still wired to was flung towards Mr. Ring. The eight large bones of the cranium are the paired parietal and temporal bones at the sides and top, and the unpaired frontal, occipital, sphenoid, and ethmoid bones. Together these form the brain's protective shell. Because the superior aspect is curved, the cranium is self- bracing, giving the exterior superstructure remarkable strength. Especially at the front. The nasal bones are paired, rectangular planes joined medially to form the bridge of the nose. The hollow structure is supported inferiorly only by the cartilages that form most of the skeleton of the external nose. There are a great many blood vessels just under the skin of the face. Akane had pulled with her leg, simultaneously ramming forward, bending with all the strength of the muscles of her neck and of her abdomen. She wasn't suprised when the impact imploded his nose into his face, wasn't suprised with the sheeting blood that splattered out, as well as some fluid from ruptured sinuses. The angle of the blow was perfect. The shards of nasal bone were pushed inwards, going through and collapsing the weakest part of the braincase: the thin-walled, delicate cribriform plates of the ethmoid bone, perforated to allow passage of the olfactory nerves into the brain. The force was enough to send the fragments tumbling inwards, through the dura and beyond in broad swaths of broken tissue. He did not get up. And Akane had no time to think about this, the first person she had ever killed. She had to get free. It did not matter that she and the chair had fallen afterwards as well - it was just a couple of bruises more. She couldn't undo the wire at her other ankle or wrists, but with one leg free, all she had to do was slam the chair, back and forth against the wall, until the chair itself broke. It didn't take much longer to force the relevant pieces of wood through the bindings, loosening them enough for her fingers to undo the rest, but afterwards her wrists and ankle were bloody anyway - the motions of the past few minutes had cut through the skin shallowly, painful, but only distracting. She got up and winced as she worked blood back into her hands, her feet. She bent low, and obtained Mr. Ring's gun. And wiped his blood off her face. There were gunshots outside, and shuddering, Akane whispered, "Ranma." She ran. Smoke, dust and bodies everywhere, something on the ground, what was it? It smelled like blood - blood up to her ankles, so much blood. How could there possibly be so much? Akane almost ran into the pile of fallen stone marking where the corridor had collapsed. It was only partially blocked, but it would be a tight squeeze over the rocks, and as hideous, tortured screams echoed her way from the other side, she was struck by the sudden terror that perhaps it was not Ranma who had escaped, but something else. Something monstrous. Which way to go? Footsteps and shouting behind her - she scrambled to the top of the rocks, into the hole at the top. She stopped, and listened. "Commander, access tunnel 4 has collapsed." "Yes, sir." "You two, go get some blasting charges to clear this rubble." "Anders, Toshi, circle around and check on the prisoner. He is a small priority - above all else, be alert for the Project. It must be contained. Go." More explosions in the distance, and the men cursed and did as they were told. Akane scrabbled through the tiny hole, trying very hard not to think about the possibility that she could get stuck, or that the tunnel could collapse completely, crushing her. She ignored how the rough points of stone tore the remains of her dress, snarled when it got caught on something and she had to tear it completely off. She did not sigh in relief when her hands came upon open air, she made few sounds at all. She pulled herself the rest of the way out, managing to keep a hold on Mr. Ring's gun. There, another body, eyes wide with the horror of whatever his last vision had been. He was dressed like a soldier underneath the bloodstained lab coat, but it struck Akane that he had no guns on him. None of the bodies had firearms, just some unlabeled spray canisters and knives. And they had no wounds on them. She shivered when she stripped the drab green jumpsuit off him, shivered when she pulled it on over herself and strapped on his boots which were too large for her. By then, she was almost used to the cloying, sick smell of blood, but for just a moment she was nauseous, controlling herself only with supreme effort. She heard the men returning on the other side of the blockage, and she ran on, steps kicking up fountains of red, her gun held in both hands like she'd seen in the TV shows and movies. The tunnel seemed endless. Featureless brick and mortar along the sides and top, and all the way along, the blood at her feet up to her ankles. A few blisters were rising on her heels and the balls and toes of her feet, but she didn't care, she didn't want the blood on her feet anymore, and the boots were not too loose, really. More than once, just as she was seriously considering taking the boots off (how her feet hurt!), she felt something shatter under her feet and heard the tinkle of breaking glass, and kept them on. After the longest thirty minutes of running in her life, the brick walls turned to off-white plaster, the naked light bulbs swinging over head became fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling, and there were doors on each side. Glancing in through the narrow slots in the doors, she saw that they were tiny cells, maybe only as big as four phone booths stuck together. She slowed her pace and began checking each one, recoiled when she finally saw someone in one of these cells, naked, emaciated, just skin and bones, fingers ending in bloody stumps from clawing at the door. Not Ranma, but she could almost feel his presence, and she moved on, forgetting the naked madness in those burning eyes behind the door. The hallway divided into three paths before her, and Akane noticed then the scritching, clawing sounds coming from all around her. And in the distance, further down the hallway to the right, a distinct pounding. Steeling herself, she avoided looking through the doors with the clawing sounds, and turned right. And at last came to the end of the hallway, the last door there. "Ranma..." Akane tapped the door. He looked up, and their eyes met and Akane was struck by the feral rage in them, slowly being overtaken by relief and recognition. She motioned him back with one hand and showed him the gun in the other, and he backed away, hid behind the bed he had disassembled and been trying to use to dig away where the door hinges on the other side would be. Akane pulled the trigger, and thought about how ironic it would be if the bullet were to ricochet about, killing her but not quite destroying the deadbolt lock. It didn't, and the door swung open, and then his arms were around her and she sobbed and almost fainted against him. "Silly girl, why did you do that for me?" Ranma whispered in her ears and kissed her. "You don't know anything about me." His hand touched the back of her neck, stroked her hair. "And you cut your hair. It looks nicer like this." He murmured softly as she told him in a rush about following them, and waking up and being hurt and having to kill the man and trying to make it to him and wondering about where all the blood on the ground could have possibly come from. He took the gun from her nerveless, trembling fingers. "Let's get moving. I'll tell you on our way." They continued deeper into the tunnels, gingerly stepping over bodies here and there. Pieces of bodies sometimes. Overhead, the lights flickered on and off, and everything was nightmarish, off-color and tinged red by the reflections of the blood on the ground. "The Project was unstable, they needed the Nightbooks to better control him." "The Project?" Akane asked. "A new generation of super soldier, a thing that can take the shapes of other men and women, a thing that can trick you with its mind, get into your dreams, make itself something inside your head." She shivered, and for a moment, her field of vision shimmered in the oddest way. But her attention drifted back to his voice, and the comfort of his arm around her, and the heat of him as she leaned against him. "The Nine Men have been impatient, so they began processing assassins for the Project before they had all the Nightbooks. Most of them died. One didn't." "So they succeeded?" "Not quite. It could go for weeks, stable, fully functional, the deadliest ally the Nine Men could have hoped for... but then it would degenerate for days at a time. Going from motionless vegetable to a killing machine, randomly killing, enemies and allies and sometimes people who were just unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes the Project's mind powers would be out of its control, destroying the minds of others who were too close. "But after these episodes, sanity would return, and the Project would prove its value to its superiors ten times over, infiltrating the tightest security with ease, insinuating itself into the minds of the incorruptible and persuading them to the cause of its superiors, sucking the information it needed from the minds of those who just brush by." Akane whispered, "That doesn't sound possible." "That's never mattered to THEM," and she shivered at the rage in his voice. "You've fought it before," Akane said. "Haven't you?" "It was luck that I got out of that alive. It had one of those episodes just when it had me. I dropped a grenade, and jumped out a window. I thought it died... I was wrong." Another hideous scream, but this time it was close. Very close. It was the cry of someone pushed beyond limits, a scream that damaged the throat doing the screaming. Ranma squeezed her hand briefly, let go, and put both hands on the gun. "That's him. It. Whatever." "We should just run, can't we just escape?" "It's weak right now, probably just went into a seizure and killed its captors, got free. All this blood is from the containment tanks used to hold it when it loses control. I'll never have another chance at this, and that thing could eventually destroy the entire resistance. How can we fight something that can look like any one of us and take the thoughts of the person it replaced?" He paused, and looked at her. Kissed her softly, very softly. "You should run. I think you'd have just as good a chance escaping alone. And I don't know if I can beat it." Akane just shook her head, and continued by his side. The tunnel widened and widened until the ceiling was fifty feet above them. And through two massive doors, they saw a great hall, filled from floor to ceiling with flickering screens and tubes and vats of equipment. And at the heart of it, a cage of glass ten feet across, broken and still more blood oozed from the cracks. "Stay here," he whispered to her. "I mean it. If I die, just run the other way." Ranma advanced carefully, poking his way through the debris. Just as she lost sight of him, she heard him scream, heard scuffling, a struggle, and she couldn't help herself, she ran towards the sounds rather than away. And then she saw them. The gun had been knocked to the side, rested precariously on some books just above the concealment of the blood on the ground. The two of them fought with fists and feet, moving faster and faster, and Akane wondered if she could ever be that good someday. "Akane, the gun, get it!" Ranma snarled as he slammed his palm into the other's ribs. She felt as though she was swimming through molasses. The closer she got to the gun, the slower everything moved. Her eyes could not leave the sight of them fighting. A punch here, a feinted kick there, blocks and parries quick as drumbeats. Her hand closed on the cold handle of the gun, and she raised it and pointed at them. The two combatants separated, and the stranger's eyes on her were wary and furious. "What are you doing? Don't you see - " "Don't listen to it, Akane! That's how it gets into your head! Shoot it!" Ranma said. "Dammit, Akane, don't you recognize me?" the stranger said, fingers clutching reflexively at nothing. "Don't listen to that thing!" Her vision jarred for a moment, like the picture of the movie had suddenly gotten out of focus and back in a split second. The Project, it looked like - it had suddenly seemed smaller, for a moment, it had short black hair rather than its smooth, hairless skin, for a moment, it had eyes and those eyes, they were - "Akane, it's tricking you!" Ranma said. "Focus on my voice! Shoot it!" "Ranma..." she whispered, dizzy, dizzier with each passing second as her sight was overlaid with something else, and maybe there was no equipment there, maybe it was something else, but - "Fuck! Akane, what are you seeing? That's not your comic book hero!" "It's tricking you, Akane, it's gotten into your head and making you see things!" Ranma's voice again, and she felt like she had been waiting to hear his voice all her life as she pointed the gun first at one and then the other. The faceless humanoid that was the Project snarled then, leaped at Ranma with animal quickness, feral savagery. Its massive arms closed around Ranma and they were struggling on the ground, rolling about, trying to execute lock and counter-hold and all the while, they yelled at her. "Akane, it's me! It's me, I spent today with you, in the rain and - " "Akane, it's me, Ranma, you saved my life before, come on-" Her vision flickered again, and she saw them again, but the light was different, they weren't in an underground lab, they were - "Shinji?" she whispered. "What?" Ranma hip-tossed the other against the wall, and there was the sound of breaking equipment, and the Thing was just a Thing again, faceless as it reared up, wordless, speechless screaming echoing from its mouth. "Shoot it!" Ranma yelled. "See? It can't even talk anymore!" The gun kicked back in her grip, once, twice, three times. "Akane..." Ranma fell, blood welling from his chest, his belly, his face a ruin of blood and gore. It felt like forever that she lay there, curled up on the ground, sobbing. A slender hand closed on her shoulder, touched her cheek. And when Shinji pulled her up to embrace her, she hugged him back, crying and shuddering and confused. "The sun is rising out there, and today is another day." "You promise?" "I promise." -that's it, the end. authory crap: I wrote this because of the music video for the A-Ha song. I was just remembering it, and it struck me that it would make for a great Ranma fanfic. Light, short, happy. But then when I finally started writing the damned thing, the scope of the Take On Me music video became irritatingly limiting. It became obvious that the original concept was lacking in substance for anything other than the shortest of shortfics (or a music video). So it mutated into this instead. Not what I had in mind at first. At all. But the idea of the dream world stuck. And as soon as Akane stepped on the subway with her friends, I knew she had to meet Shinji. Just to clarify things: Adrian Rainman has nothing to do with the NFT Zu, and has nothing to do with me, Rain Man. More power to him. Smile. -Rain Man overseas correspondent, NFT Zu epilogue: He was there when she woke up. The second thing she saw after the white ceiling of the hospital room was his face. "The remaining fragments of the previous Angel," he answered when she asked. "Pieces of its body were absorbed into the ground around the crater - it took a while for the scientists to detect the blue pattern signal getting stronger again. None of them had ever done that before." "They think a piece of it must have caught on the deflected rail gun bullet that stopped the train we were on. Maybe you breathed it in while we stood on the track, maybe it marked you for later observation. The first time it was detected again was after you saw me leave in the car. The signal was weak, out of focus, as though the Angel was mortally wounded, or maybe hiding. Then you went missing for an entire week. "When they went over to your home to check it out and explain things to your parents, the team detected more of the blue signal. Remnants of the signal. Like it had been there before, but was already gone. There was a trail through the sewers." "Where were we when you found us?" Akane croaked out. "Maintenance tunnels underneath the crater from the Angel's initial detonation, above the Geofront." "Why did it do that?" she said, voice shaking. "All the Angels are different, use different things to try to get to Nerv and destroy us so that the rest of the destruction can begin in earnest. This is not the first one that messed with the mind... it's not even the first one that took human form." He looked away, and she saw how he was remembering other times, other enemies. It took effort, but Akane got upright, and slid over next to him. Put her arms around him. "I'm glad you didn't kill me," he said. "I was sure you were going to. You couldn't seem to hear me anymore." "I couldn't." "So why'd you shoot it, and not me?" Akane pressed her face against his chest, held him close. "Don't know." "No?" "It just... it just felt all wrong. Everything. The colors, I guess." "The colors." "I couldn't see colors anymore. It was all gray. And all I could think about, all I could remember were the colors of that sunset after the rain. Why are you crying?" "Nothing," Shinji said. "I don't cry." He nuzzled her cheek and kissed her. "Still doesn't mean anything, 'kay?" Akane said, in between doing some of her own kissing. "People don't fall in love just like that." "Right." "I'm serious." But she was smiling when she pulled his face to hers, to look into his eyes, to see the wild desire to stay alive in them. "Just don't let the world end yet, okay, Shinji? If enough time goes by, maybe, well, who knows?" And when they kissed again, the colors of the world and in her heart were the brightest she had ever seen. Rain Man, Overseas Correspondent The Nikholas F. Toledo Zu @ The Entertainment Capital of UP Village