Chapter Eight

Ranma looked down, and down a little more. After repeating this process a few more times, he finally saw who had spoken. He had taken his attention off of the single-bodied pair awhile before, deciding that they were doing just fine on their own and there wasn’t a single thing that he could do to help them anyway.

He wasn’t entirely surprised to see a little girl in place of the woman who had previously been standing there. Worried, perhaps, but not surprised. What /did/ surprise him was what she said when she finally spoke.

“Ranma, you’re taller than I remember.”

“Huh?” was Ranma’s intelligent answer to that statement. He looked at himself, even checked his size against that of the small child-like person who had spoken. He hadn’t grown, not that he could tell. “What do you mean?”

She shook her head furiously, the action seeming to bring her to some semblance of sensible. “Or I guess I’ve gotten shorter.”

“Pardon?” It was a sign of how stressed he was. Ranma hadn’t even known that the word ‘pardon’ existed in his vocabulary; if it had, it had been quite well buried. Apparently some unearthing had been done.   

Then the little girl became quite clearly, and quite seriously, angry. She looked rather cute, actually, shaking her mini-sized fist into the sky. “Why the *hell* did I do to get stuck in the kid’s body!” she yelled, the words somewhat diminishing the ‘cute’ aspect and raising the ‘weird’. She glared at Ranma. “If you tell *anyone* about this, ever, I swear that you will not live to see five minutes after you open your mouth.”

Ranma was officially weirded - again. But something managed to click anyway. “Ryouga?” 

She – he? – glared at him. “Who did you think it was?”

“Someone considerably – erm – shorter?”

Since Ryouga had yet to stop glaring at him, she could hardly glare again, so she settled for merely intensifying it into something that would eat holes through most any metal unfortunate enough to be its victim. Luckily Ranma was made of tougher stuff than most metals. Coincidently, this quality of his was currently the only reason that he hadn’t died on any of a hundred previous occasions, up to and including the current one.

A few more seconds passed and Ryouga dropped the look, quite possibly out of sheer boredom with the exercise.

“Whatever.”

A little more time passed. Soon the two participants in the little fracas had calmed down enough to acclimate to the new situation, something that they were getting exceedingly talented at. 

“So, where’s Miss Hinako?”

“She’s here.”

“Here here or there here?”

Ryouga gave him the sort of look that was undoubtedly theoretically impossible with the face of a ten-year-old (or so) girl, but she managed it quite impressively nonetheless. “Here. Why, do you want to talk to her?”

“I guess so. Make sure she’s alright and everything.”

“Okay.”

The little girl abruptly spiraled upward, body lengthening and features refining into a beautiful young woman with a clear resemblance to the little girl whose place she had taken. 

“I assure you I’m perfectly well,” she said smoothly. 

Ranma remembered to breathe. “Oh. How’d you manage that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Ah.”

There was a pause.

“So, I guess neither of you are in imminent danger anymore?”

“No.”

“That’s nice to know. So what do you suggest we do now?”

Hinako thought for a minute. “Well, it seems that your buddy over there is waking up. He might know something, do you think?”

“What?” Ranma whirled. Sure enough, the half-forgotten body of Ryouga – currently not occupied by the correct mind, though – was stirring a little, although still didn’t seem to be quite awake yet.

The voice of a little girl spoke from behind him. “He’s awake?” she sounded clearly eager. “I volunteer to torture the bastard thief for information…”

Ranma wondered for a moment if he’d ever get used to Ryouga speaking through the body of a child. He hoped not. “Fine, but it’s your body that you’d be torturing.”

That made Ryouga pause. “Hm. You’re right. I doubt we can hurt it enough to make it give up any information.”

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant…”

The subject of the current conversation groaned and cracked its eyes open. “Where…” it croaked weakly, but the rest of whatever statement it was planning on saying was cut off by the pissed-off brown eyes of a small girl who really, *really*, hated being such.

“You… bastard…” Ryouga grabbed the body that was rightfully her own by the collar. Unfortunately, his current body couldn’t pick his old one up.

“Wha… who are you?”

Ryouga’s eyes narrowed, but the ‘angry enough to kill’ look didn’t work to well with Hinako’s child form. Neither did the threatening tone. Ranma shook his head. The effect was rather comical, actually.

“Let me.”

Both sets of eyes turned to Ranma, who looked very stern or would have, except for the tiny smirk on his face. This was going to be *fun*. At last.

The unknown person’s eyes widened as he spotted Ranma. “You!” After a moment of being frozen, he fell off the bench, landing with a loud *thump* on the ground. 

Ranma and Ryouga both blinked. That had been unexpected.

“Damnit, I told you before it was an accident! I’ll pay you back, you know I can, just take me with you when you leave this wretched place!” he babbled, incoherently, for several minutes, crumpled into a little ball on the ground, not looking up.

Blink. Blink. Their eyeballs were now thoroughly moistened, at least.

“What the hell are you *talking* about? Who are you, anyway?”

That made him stop suddenly, and look up. “You… don’t remember me?” his eyes narrowed. “Or… Elrii is not awake yet?” 

They exchanged a glance. “Tell us what we want to know and we won’t kill you.”

He looked a little taken aback by that. “That doesn’t exactly answer my question.”

“Well then, we’re just gonna have to keep you wondering, then, won’t we?” It was Ryouga who said that. The stranger looked at him, seemingly confused. 

“My name is Cei,” he said at length, enunciating the word clearly. He pronounced it ‘say’. He stood.

“Cei,” Ranma repeated. “I would start explaining if I were you.”

Cei tilted his head in a curious manner. “You’re not Elrii. She would’ve killed me by now. How is it that she’s still asleep…” he paused, thinking. “So you’re that… erm… Randa? Ran…la? Ran…pa? Hm… I can’t quite remember… was it… Ranka? Ranko, maybe? You seem to like ending your names with that syllable…”

“How do you… whatever. My name’s Ranma, not that it matters for you… now tell us everything you know. Starting with this ‘Elrii’.”

He laughed shortly, the sound obviously sarcastic. “Like you could understand anyway.”

Ranma picked him up easily with one hand and threw him back unto the bench. “You’re not in a position to argue. Start talking.”

“Are you sure you’re not Elrii? Trying to fool me, maybe, although I don’t know what the point of that would be… anyway, I’ll play along. You know I’m still weak, this body is not exactly comfortable.”

“Shut up and get to the point!” Ryouga yelled.

Cei gave him a curious look. “You’re that little girl who almost killed me. But you’re also the so-called ‘soul’ that used to inhabit this body. How did you manage to make the transfer…? no matter.” He laughed again. “Elrii’s awake. I can sense her. So it doesn’t matter what you do to me, because when she’s free it won’t matter anymore.”

Ranma just glared at him expectantly.

He laughed again. It seemed to be a nervous reflex. “You still don’t know. Elrii’s the devil, to put it in mild terms that your brains can understand. She owns you, she’ll take everything from you until there’s nothing left but any empty shell that knows nothing but fear, and obedience… and she’s *you*.” He poked Ranma hard in the chest, making him stumble. “She’ll kill you – no, worse than that, because killing will be what you will beg for. She’ll make you live as she has been, as I have been. Imagine life without a life, trapped in freedom unable to even think your own thoughts because that ability has been locked away. Totally helpless…”

Ranma knocked him hard in the side of the head, pushing him back unto the grass. “So you’re saying that she’s living in my girl form?”

“You could say that. If you could call what she’s doing living. Hell, even this isn’t really living, but it’s better than before.”

Ranma chose to ignore that last sentence. “So you’re souls that were trapped in the Jusenkyo springs? Who put you there?”

Cei lifted himself back unto the bench and sat casually, crossing his legs. He looked tired, now, the fear-inspired energy melting away and leaving nothing to replace it, literally. “Jusenkyo is merely the transfer method. It’s convenient, since the springs had a myth of having weird effects on people – they just made that superstition true and the people here pretended it always had been. But the true purpose of the springs is to remove the – how do I say this – undesirable elements from our society and keep them safely locked away. Usually these people are criminals, evil supernatural beings, etcetera – or in my case, political dissidents.” He looked disgusted. “Dozens of us… stripped of two-thirds of ourselves, left to mindlessly follow a mindless life, simply because we protested.”

Ranma and Ryouga exchanged another glance. 

<Trust him?>

<Not a chance in hell. But he can’t do anything, at least not for now.>

Ryouga didn’t look happy with Ranma’s unspoken opinion on the matter, and twisted her mouth into a cute little childish pout that certainly wasn’t meant to look that way.

<Fine. Have it your way, then.>

Ranma turned back to Cei, but he had fallen asleep sitting cross-legged on the bench, chest falling and rising in a slow, steady rhythm. 

***

~Mordain

Next

Previous

Back to The Nest