Revenge: Part One

Written by: Liz Donovan

The story follows in sequence to Eternal Sleep?, however it occurs almost 2 decades later. While not necessary it is highly suggested you read Eternal Sleep? first as it provides all the background information of this story. Just to recap briefly the events in Eternal Sleep? for the opening of Revenge.

Ranma, Akane, Kunou, Kodachi, Principal Kunou, Sasuke, and Shampoo are dead as the Kunou estate went up A-bomb-style by Ryouga’s Shishi Houkoudan. Ryouga sort of blames himself for Ranma’s death. Cologne blames Ryouga for Shampoo’s death, he blames Cologne for Akane’s death. The story (Eternal Sleep?) ended with Ryouga about 22. Revenge picks up when he is about 37.

The year is now 2005, twenty-one years after the death of Saotome Ranma, sixteen years after the chaotic ‘Kunou Massacre’ of Kunou Tatewaki, Kunou Kodachi, Kunou-san, Sasuke, and Tendou Akane. The city of Nerima has pulled itself back together again and buried the marring events in it’s past. The city of Tokyo has all but forgotten the boy Tatewaki and the wealth and fortunes he possessed. The schools and people of Nerima have all dismissed the Kunou Massacre in their minds, and rarely is the subject brought up. No one recalls Saotome Ranma save a few friends, no one can seems to remember the zany events that used to surround the town on a daily basis. Now it is only a dry town, with cars running along the newly paved streets and people bustling to and from work and school. No one remembers the prospering Tendou Dojo, or the best martial artist in the world who used to live there. Now only an old man and his unmarried daughter live in the large house, rarely ever seen.

Time had worn the place down, peeled the paint, faded the woodstained and weathered the ground. The trees even seemed old and shaggy, drooping and un-watered. The carp pool has dried up long ago and only a basin of peeling painted blue and sun baked rocks remained. The gates to the Tendou Dojo were cracked and the wood dry-rotted, gnarled with age and decay. No one was willing to repair them. There was no money to think about such things. Only the porch was daintily swept clear of the dead leaves gathered everywhere else in the yard. And now inside the house a middle aged woman walked, looking through the mail, heading towards the dining area.

She was tall with long brown hair up in a tight bun and a pink clip in her hair, holding back a few strands. She worn a plain white apron and a light blue dress with a bit of soft fringe. She seemed to be in her late 30’s with a soft face and bright brown eyes. She casually read the cover of the mail, and then stacked it behind the rest of the mail, taking no particular interest in anything she read. She looked up and stepped through the curtain into the dining area and paused, looking at a postcard in her hand. She set the rest of the mail on the low table as she knelt on a pillow in front of it to read the postcard. She read the postdate and address, then flipped the card over. He eyes scanned top to bottom reading the message, then brightened considerably. She then rose hand dropping and turned to the exit of the dining area.

"Oh father! Father!" she called in a pleasant voice, and turned walking out, and down the hall to the stairs that lead up. "Father!" she called again, happily, and acceded the stairs with a lightly hurried gait. She stopped at the entrance to a door that stood slightly ajar. "Father?" she questioned, pushing the door lightly open and stepping into the dark room filled with a morbid musk. She blinked lightly in the darkness and smiled a bit seeing her father lightly propped up against a pillow, smoking his pipe and reading his newspaper. He looked up as se entered and smiled a bit.

He was quite a sight to see. Long wispy solid white hair spilling along the pillow and his shoulders. His dark eyes seemed sunken into their sockets and covered with a filmy whitish haze. He sat up a bit at her entrance and set the paper and smoking pipe down, coughing a bit as he did so. His face was wrinkled and drawn as well as pale as though he hadn’t seen the sun in many years. He blinked at the woman holding the post care, and then spoke in a raspy dried voice, that didn’t seem to be used much now-a-days. "What is it, Kasumi?"

She smiled a bit brighter and walked to the bed, and re-read the postcard. "I have wonderful news father!" she said. "Nabiki wrote to say she is coming in for a visit and hat she convinced Miyoko and Mitake to come with her." She smiled brightly, referring to her younger sister, Nabiki who had been living far way in southern Japan since she got out of college, and of her twin children, Miyoko and Mitake, who had moved not too far from Nabiki, hopping to take pursue in a career following their aunt. Both twins were 12 and attending a private high school owned by Nabiki’s company, Kasumi hadn’t seen them for the majority of the year and was thrilled to see both her children and her sister at the same time. She looked up to her father. "Isn’t that wonderful, father?" she questioned. He took the postcard from her hands, reading it himself.

He nodded and flipped it over, looking at the front picture of a large corporation building on the front. "Yes, yes. Both my daughters and my grandchildren under the same roof again." he sighed a bit, and set the postcard down on his lap and shut his eyes a bit. Kasumi only stood and watched him. He spoke again, after several minutes. "It says they are coming down for the 18th." He stated. Kasumi nodded a bit and smiled, looking at her father with almost wariness. "Of April." He added, and opened his eyes, and looked up at her. She nodded again, obviously.

"That’s right father, so soon, isn’t it?" she added. "I’ll have to prepare the beds and get everything ready for the twins. Nabiki I suppose won’t want to sleep with Miyoko…we’ll, I’ll just have to put her up in my room-"

"Kasumi." Soun interrupted with a slight unused force. Kasumi stopped mid-sentence in er obviousness and looked to her father.

"Hai, Otoosan?" she questioned.

"That’s the date of Akane’s departure…." He trailed off. Kasumi nodded and smiled a bit, as if realizing it for the first time.

"So it is! How curious!" she smiled and closed her eyes, cutely, even for a forty year old woman. Soun looked up at her.

"Tell them not to bother." He gravely said. Kasumi’s eyes opened and she frowned.

"But father, I’m sure they’ve already purchased the plane tickets and everything! I simply can’t tell them they can’t come!" she protested. Soun glowered at her.

"I don’t want your brat children to ruin my littlest girls departure date." He snapped at her. Kasumi froze, looking at her father with almost coldness. She picked up the postcard from his lap and held it at her side.

"My children aren’t brats." She stated looking at Soun. "and all three of them are coming down to see you. I won’t let you ruin this for them." and with that she picked up a few dirty dishes and turned away, and walked out his door, shutting it again, lightly, leaving it slightly ajar.

Soun, angered called after her. "This is my house! I make the rules around he-…" and he stopped in mid-sentence and sunk back on his bed, knowing Kasumi was right. He shook his head, hating himself for always jumping on her case when she tried to help him. He coughed a bit, then sighed and picked the newspaper up again, and proceeded reading it.

"But Nabiki, he is only getting worse. I don’t want to disobey my own father, but he doesn’t want to see anyone…" Kasumi said onto the phone. She sat on a chair in her room, speaking on a cordless black phone she had received for one of her wedding presents.

"Listen, Kasumi. Daddy’s getting a little senile. He doesn’t always know what he is saying. You’ve got to just do somethings without telling him, otherwise the Dojo would fall apart within days." Nabiki stated, her voice clear and controlled over the phone. Kasumi tucked her legs up underneath her and sighed lightly.

"That isn’t nice to say, Nabiki. Father isn’t senile, he just isn’t as sociable as he used to be."

"So unsociable to the point of not wanting to see his daughter and grandkids? Get real Oneechan."

Kasumi slightly sighed and bowed her head. "Nabiki, father doesn’t want Miyoko and Mitake to come down on the 18th. He says they’ll ruin the date Akane died." She paused and blinked a bit, in thought. "He called my children brats."

"What?" Nabiki scoffed from the other line. "Kasumi, trust me. Tell daddy I’ll bring down some of his favorite clove cigarettes and some Swiss Chocolate down with me, and that if he misbehaves while Miyo-chan and Mita-chan are there that I won’t give them to him." Nabiki stated, growing tired of her fathers unwillingness to see his grandchildren after he begged so much for Kasumi to have them.

"You know I can’t tell him that." Kasumi replied, sighing a bit, and leaning her head back.

"Sure you can, you just go- "Daddy, Nabiki told me she’s gonna bring down-" Nabiki paused as she was interrupted by a beep on her phone. "Drat. Other line, Kasumi. Can you hold a minute?" she asked.

"That’s alright Nabiki. I’ll just call back another time. I’ll try and deal with father." She replied and sat up.

"Alright sis. See you around." Nabiki answered.

"Bye, Nabiki." Kasumi said, and clicked the off button, and hung the phone up, signing and looking about her room.

Nabiki hit the flash button and sat up a bit straighter. She spoke with an authoritative voice. "Nab Co. Incorporation’s management level, we’re closed for lunch right now, may I take a message?" she inquired.

There was a moment of silence on the other line, but she could hear the whistle of a train in the distance of the other phone line. "Hello? May I ask whose calling?" she spoke.

More silence issued, then a click, insuring the caller had hung up. Nabiki shook her head and put the receiver on base and sighed. "Stupid crank callers." She muttered and then picked up her chopsticks to proceeds eating her lunch.

* * *

The Girl knelt by the duck pond, the spring breeze blowing through her long black hair, scattering the bread crumbs as she tossed them out to the ducks. She smiled as they swam and honked gathering for the bread fighting duck-like over it. She smiled and splashed her fingers about in the water a bit, creating ripples and stirring the ducks up a bit. She laughed lightly as one duck swam closer and she tossed it her last piece of bread. The duck snapped it up quickly, and then waggled its tail, looking back at her cross-eyed like. She smiled back at it, and then sat back a bit on the blanket she’d brought out with her. She looked up and up into the clear bright blue sky and laughed a bit at the birds flying happily by overhead. She looked at the trees with the cherry blossoms all in bloom, falling to the springy grass like pink snow; scenting the air in a blissful aroma of cherry and bright sunlight. The sky remained cloudless, bright airy, the world round and smooth. She sat in the center of it all, with only herself and the ducks and pond flowers, and the sakura drifting lazily down in the breeze. She smiled to herself again and pulled her knees up to her chest and started to unbuckle her shoe straps, longing to trail her toes in the lake water and feel the coolness of the tide lapping at her ankles. A light breeze lifted the sun hat off her head and sent it spiraling up into the sky. She blinked and turned, forgetting about her shoes and watching the hat float of. Her dark brown eyes widen in shock and surprise and she scurried a bit to her feet, startling the ducks in the pond. They scampered away and vanished into the under growth. She paid no mind to them as she set down a small book in her lap on the blanket and followed after the wind-swept hat. It traveled up towards the falling cherry blossoms and her thick black hair became speckled with cherry blossom petals as she trailed the sun hat. The pink bow on the hat took wing and the hat soared higher up. She paused as the hat circled higher above her head, far out of her reach. She shielded her eyes with a small thin hand squinting against the bright sunlight, trying to keep tabs on the hat. It went up higher, then the wind seemed to change and it came fluttering down and landed on a grassy green hill just about ten meters from where she stood. She lifted the hem of her sun dress and made her way to the escapee hat, not running but at a fast enough pace that she reached it before the wind decided to play fetch with it again. She held it to her bosom and stood at the top of the grassy green hill, and looked over it, the direction she had not come from. Before her stretched a span of rolling grassy, calf high blowing lightly in the wind, perfectly in sync with the rippling of the lake water. She stood transfixed by the rippling grasses, and the swaying of the distance trees. Her white sun dress billowed forward caught by the cool breeze, her dark hair lightly blowing about her face. She tucked a strand of loose hair behind an ear and blinked, looking at the rippling grass, mesmerized at the smoothness and serenity of the pattern. She turned after a few moments of staring then paused, looking down at the hat in her hands. The hat that’d taken to this wind and soared up and up with it and spiraled though the sunlight and blueness into oblivion, to be freed of earthly constraints and to fly endlessly without bearing through the crystal air, cascading into space and nothingness. She smiled, longing to do something similar, wished to shack off her worldly bonds and be taken up by something more powerful and consuming. She wished to be swallowed by the endless sky or vast sea, to become a part of it and live as a part of it, without a mind, in endless bliss and harmony. She pulled her arm back and smiled, as she flung the hat out into the sky, where the wind picked it up and lifted it far up and away. She watched it, with delight and with almost enviousness as it took off on a journey into the great expanse of sky that she could never travel, into the bliss of protection and falling but knowing another current would lift it again and carry it on. She watched it dance on the invisible stage, and go higher and spiral more erratically taken by unseen hands and thrown into a frenzy of flight. She watched until the hat spiraled up and out of sight, vanishing into a speak of pink and white and then nothing more. Then she turned, eyes sparkling and laughed gleefully aloud and took off down the hill, letting the wind play through her hair and her dress, letting it tickle her maturing body and dance along her smooth face. She moved swiftly, gracefully, as if moving with the currents of the wind, letting them guide her. Soon she was dancing in a field of shifting grass, spotted flowers of soft yellow and orange, and falling cherry blossoms. She laughed more, happily, forgetting her jealously over the hat and spun, watching the blue sky spiraling above her, daydreaming that she too, could leave this world and take off and up spinning endlessly through space into nothingness and fear nothing and hold everything at once and feel that warmth and security. She spun, until the sky became speckled with spots of clouds, wispy little things, thin and dissipating quickly. Then she knelt where she was, and laid back down, sprawled out on the thick tall grass, hands behind her head her eyes watching the clouds roll in, and vanished like ghosts. She sighed and smiled closing her eyes for moments, letting the wind play o her body and the grass tickle her feet. And shortly she let the wind and grass and fragrance and coolness overwhelm her and lift her and drift her off to a land of unawareness. To a land of slumber.

To Be Continued…