Chapter 4
Nabiki gave herself a moment to collect herself before answering the question, since Ryouga certainly couldn’t. By the time she spoke both sets of eyes that were currently open were focused on her.
“Just some unfinished business,” she finally answered. Although it should’ve been over with… Nabiki grimaced almost imperceptibly. But it’s hardly my fault. The almost euphoric feeling of knowing just about everything there was to know about the true nature of the world was wearing off as she actually had to face the consequences of her inadvertent mistake. Something had – for lack of a better word – rejoined with her, bringing knowledge that was as alien as Rai. She reached out a hand, knowing in a way that almost scared part of her what she would feel.
Rai was still solid, but not quite solid enough. She was fading, her very substance thinning out to support itself. The energy attack that she had fired almost instinctually wasn’t the right thing to do in a world where your very existence depended on keeping that energy to survive. In Rai’s world, the knowledge rushed into Nabiki’s skull, as long as there was *something* left a being was alive. There was no corpse when someone died, and old age was when you stopped regenerating energy constantly. It was usually voluntarily, or caused by an illness. But now she had no way of renewing herself, except perhaps rest… and there was no way she would last through a good night’s sleep.
Rai’s copied body – adapted to the dimension it was in but not quite perfectly - was scrambling to survive but old instinncts didn’t work. It was almost amusing, however, in a ghastly sort of way, that the human and alien instincts were meshing to make her seem to be visibly aging… slowly to be sure but telltale if you knew the reason why it made twisted sense.
“Damn!” she exclaimed, kneeling down next to Rai. This was something she hadn’t expected, and by extension Rai hadn’t either. Of course she didn’t mean to suicide…
Her mind scrambled. Strange memories floated to the surface, tantalizing her with possible solutions. “She dying…” she said, almost sadly but not quite, barely noticing that Ranma had come upstairs.
“Of what?” Ranma looked at the copy of Nabiki who didn’t look so healthy. There was no sign of anything wrong other than a vague sense of wrongness, however…
Nabiki looked up sharply. *What had I been planning to do? Oh yeah…* but Rai doesn’t seem much of a threat anymore. “Energy loss,” she answered simply, not caring to explain why. This would certainly be an easier solution, letting Rai die…
The thought ripped through her painfully. “What am I thinking?!” she looked surprised at herself even as she exclaimed the words in horror. Then she collapsed.
Nabiki Tendo was certainly all for letting Rai die. She was a good woman personally, it seemed, but they very idea of something like her race existing was disturbing on a base level.
But she wasn’t entirely Nabiki Tendo, not anymore. While that was the part that was currently in control of her senses, there was also the virus, a wax mold of Nabiki’s own consciousness that knew what was going on. But it only knew because engraved into it was a copy of Rai’s own consciousness… and that part protested very strenuously at the thought of letting the original die. It flooded her with memories, Rai’s memories, making Nabiki feel as if she were dying herself, with someone else’s life flashing before her eyes…
She squeezed her eyes closed and covered her ears, but the whispers of memory just got louder and louder… then cut off, quite suddenly.
Nabiki opened her eyes.
***
Rai opened her eyes.
She was young again, both by the standards of her race and in the body that she now occupied, which was still Nabiki's but looked to be about three years old. That was the first thing she noticed. She also noticed that she was in the middle of a long-passed birthday… celebration, for lack of a more applicable word. Not again…
The next two observations were made simultaneously. One, she was still in human form for some unfathomable reason, and two, there was a real human there…
“Damnit!” Nabiki exclaimed, the explanation of what was going on rushing to her all at once. Of course Rai’s people didn’t believe that your life flashed before your eyes when you died, and most humans probably didn’t even believe it, but Rai had known of the superstition. Her body, unfamiliar with the concept of having a separate mind and physical form, didn’t know what to do with the fragmented parts as all three died and so had latched on to this concept… simple enough, and it probably would extend her real life in a strange way. Not that it would really help much, since she was trapped in her head… but then no one could have predicted that Nabiki would be dragged in as well.
“What’s going on?” The three-year-old Nabiki, or Rai, wrenched herself out of the dream. As she walked away the scene faded, and she began to age.
“You’re dying.” The words were curiously unemotional as Nabiki said them.
“Dying?” Rai seemed puzzled for a moment, but then she remembered reality, and her shoulders sagged. “Oh.”
“Is there any way to save you?”
“If you don’t know that one you should know I don’t,” said Nabiki, dryly.
There was silence for a moment. “You should know!” Rai insisted again, rather half-heartedly however. She now looked to be about ten, and aging quickly. Nabiki didn’t know when she would stop, but it would be interesting to see what would happen when it did…
“You remember what I did… you know what humans are capable of on their own better than me,” Rai continued.
“You’re dying of energy loss,” Nabiki said flatly. “You used it all trying to incapacitate me.”
“But surely you can transfer…” Rai was in Nabiki’s early teens now; it was becoming difficult to tell them apart.
“What?” Nabiki remembered something, a vague hint, but it did nothing more than taunt her. Technical details weren’t part of her newfound knowledge; there was just no way that her brain could accept the information. There were things too alien to be known without translation…
“Our energies… are compatible… get someone to give me…” Rai was seventeen now, and seemed to be weakening.
“Someone to give you energy?” Nabiki prodded.
She nodded weakly. “Not… cur…” She was eighteen now, physically identical to Nabiki.
Rai fainted.
***
Nabiki snapped awake.
The first thing she was aware of this time was being shaken by Ranma, which did little other than get her annoyed. “Stop that!” she snapped. “I’m fine!”
Ranma stopped. “You okay? You said something about her dying and then fainted, and she’s… I don’t know, but something’s wrong…”
Nabiki suddenly remembered and looked over at Rai. She now was visibly older, seemingly in her thirties now. That little bit of time that she had been caught in Rai’s memories had been longer than she thought…
Ryouga was tentatively poking Rai, trying to wake her up. Nabiki snapped at him to stop, then had to calm herself for a moment.
“Okay, so how long was I out?” she asked briskly. Seems like I’m stuck trying to save her…
“A couple of minutes.”
“Okay…” Let’s see… the average lifespan of a Japanese female is about seventy years, more or less. I don’t have any bad habits that would kill me early if that would even count for this, so add a few years… so if she aged over ten years in two minutes that means she’s got about another ten, twelve minutes at the most until she dies of old age…
Nabiki shuddered. If I keep her alive I’ll see when I’ll die… well, that’s another reason to keep her alive… don’t want to see that… But all she said out loud was, “Okay. She’s dying because she used up all her energy, but we can replace it. We just have to find someone to donate it.”
“Donate?” Ranma shrugged. “I guess I could do that," he offered, a little uncertainly.
“Good.” Well, that was easy…
Nabiki felt somewhat uneasy as Ranma put one hand on the aging Rai’s head and concentrated. She scowled… there was something nagging at her, but she couldn’t remember what it was…
Ranma and Rai glowed for a moment.
Rai’s eyes snapped open, perfectly in focus rather than blurry from the time unconscious. She cursed, loudly, upon seeing Ranma’s face and seemed to leap at him, succeeding admirably considering she was lying flat on her back. Ranma, caught light-headed from the loss of energy couldn’t avoid her, and ended up held pinned against the wall from the very suddenly solid, thirty-year-old Nabiki duplicate. He didn’t struggle; in fact, he seemed to be unconscious although his eyes were open.
“I told you! Not him!”
“What?” Nabiki said, taken aback.
“I said… or did I… anyway, you should’ve known! Don’t use anyone who’s cursed!”
Nabiki was caught speechless as the implication hit her. “So that’s what you were saying…”
“Yes!”
“Excuse me…”
Nabiki ignored Ryouga and resisted the urge to slap her forehead. “Well, as long as he doesn't transform, then he’ll be fine.”
“That’s not the biggest problem. Don’t you know?”
“No! I don’t know everything about you, you know…”
“Um…”
Rai rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t a case of someone giving me energy, it was a case of letting me take it. You could’ve done it, you know. Of course, he did give an awful lot…”
“So you took all of his energy?”
“It’s survival instinct!” Rai defended herself. “Or rather some mixed up version of my survival instinct and yours. That sort of thing’s suicide, rather like starving yourself to death.”
“I know.”
“Okay, then let me tell you the part that you didn’t know. Once he touched me and opened up his chi to me, I started blindly taking it, all of it, any I could take. Like a dehydrated human gorging himself on water, only I can’t die from too much energy.”
“Hello…”
“So he’ll have to recover for a while, and no cold water -” Nabiki was puzzled. This seemed to be an easy enough problem to solve…
“No!” Rai was visibly growing angrier. “Don’t you see? I. Took. All. Of. It.”
“All of it…?”
“Including hers!”
Nabiki almost fell back down onto the ground, only barely managing to catch herself. “You’ve got Elrii in you!?”
“Shhh! Don’t say that name so loudly… and no, I don’t. If I did I couldn’t be talking to you like this right now. Most of her is locked up into the android, we’re not that stupid. But… some of it did get loose, probably into him. I’m guessing that she was still free, just a little… she probably hid a bit of herself where I couldn’t find it before. Not the first time that’s happened, I should’ve expected it… but still…”
“Then I should’ve let you die!”
Rai looked at her with an expression that Nabiki could only recall ever having used herself with very dense people and very small children. She almost shivered except for the fact that she already was, almost imperceptibly. “You couldn’t do that anymore than I could’ve let myself die.”
“Er…”
Nabiki and the older Nabiki who was Rai glared at each other.
“I could’ve let you die,” said Nabiki coldly.
“Yes.” Rai admitted. “But the part of you would think it was dead too. Do you think you could survive that?”
“I’d have better chances than with Elrii loose and you worthless.”
“Don’t say that name!”
“Excuse me!” Ryouga, unable to say more than monosyllables for the entire course of the conversation, finally interrupted with more conviction.
They turned to look at him, and he almost wished he hadn’t spoken.
“Well, at least you didn’t use him,” Rai sniffed. “Better her than Cei, the sniveling coward…”
“Hey!”
“What? I wasn’t talking about you or anything.” Rai looked at him as disdainfully as Nabiki on a really good day (or a really bad one, depending on who you were talking to), only fifteen years older. This just made the effect worse.
“Mind explaining what the hell you’re talking about? What did you do to Ranma?”
“I can’t replace your memories in this state.”
“Well that’s just wonderful…” Nabiki said sarcastically.
“This has never happened before. Seekers have chosen to ‘retire’ to Earth before, but always with a host.”
“I know.” Nabiki almost spat it out. “Your people are despicable.”
Rai glared. “What alternative would you suggest? We have no other ways of dealing with criminals. No way to enforce a death penalty, no way to jail them on our plane. And we do risk ourselves to keep a convict from wrecking havoc here.”
“So they don’t destroy our planet and your jail!”
“There are other planets, you know.”
They exchanged glares again. Lightening was temped to strike between them, but that would just be dramatic effect and physically impossible besides.
“Will someone tell me what’s going on?!” Ryouga exclaimed, fed up with this. “Who are you? What are you? What are you talking about? What happened to Ranma? Isn’t there some sort of problem?”
“My name’s Rai. Answering the second question would take longer that I have. Ditto with the third. Ranma’s just unconscious, I think. Some rest should clear that up. He’s more stable than me right now.” Rai looked pointedly at Nabiki. “And yes, there is a problem.”
“You’re the one who took away our memories earlier? Why?” Ryouga continued, persistently.
“My, you are demanding. Yes, I did. It was for the best. If she hadn’t been so curious, that would’ve been all of it, and you’d live on with you puny little lives without knowing what had happened, that there was more out there than you were prepared to deal with.” Rai’s face twisted into a grimace, but there was something wrong with her eyes… they just didn’t seem to match the rest of her face. “No more questions!”
“What…” Nabiki could tell there was something wrong, now. That wasn’t Rai speaking… or rather it was, but there was definitely a bit of Elrii in there. “What can we do?”
“Nothing!” Rai grinned manically for a moment, but her eyes weren’t smiling. If anything, they were pleading…
Then Rai collapsed as if strings had been cut.
“Do you want to tell me anything yet?” Ryouga asked almost blandly.
***
~Mordain