Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Dragon Bones and Phoenix Ashes ❯ Part One: Four Seasons ( Chapter 1 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

1. The Ryuujin Gokuraku is a complete invention. All characters are fictional, created by either Rumiko Takahashi or me. I have named several characters, and given others surnames. The following are my creation: Shiang-Pu's (Shampoo's) great-grandfather and mother, Saotome Akiko, Ranma's grandparents, Lin-Lin and Lan-Lan's (better known as Linlin and Ranran) mother, Mu-Tz's sister and mother, Bai Ching-Ming, Wei Hua-Shuhng, Lio Musk.
2. Chinese words are romanized the way they sound, with the exception of place names, which are romanized according to the standard.
3. The "Year of the Phoenix" is the Year of the Rooster.
4. 10 fen= 1 jiao. 10 jiao=1 yuan.
5. Last time I checked a yen's about a penny.
6. "Ranma no baka" roughly means "Ranma is an idiot," right?
7. In China, a baby is considered a year old at birth.

CHINESE VOCABULARY
1. Ah-Yi: "Aunt"
2. Biao-Jie: "Older female cousin from mother's side"
3. Tzau An: "Good morning"
4. Wan An: "Good night"

JAPANESE VOCABULARY
1. Gokuraku: "Paradise"

The whole thing is because of Aunt Akiko; not that it's a bad thing or anything. It just is, maybe good, maybe bad, maybe neither. But if it's bad, she didn't plan it that way, for sure. She isn't that kind of a person. She knows how my life is.
I've wished that she was my mother. She's so much Dad's opposite I sometimes suspect one of them was adopted- must be Akiko because why would anyone want to adopt Dad? Where he's outright rude, she's quietly sarcastic; where he's a coward she's more honorable than any samurai ever was; where he's stupid she's smart; where he ignores laws against bigamy just for okonomiyaki, she doesn't need to because she's got so much money; where she's perfectly neat and classy and on one of the levels closest to perfect, Dad has a big gap like the kind left after a tooth falls out.
So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that she managed to make all the arrangements for the big party, and all the arrangements are currently working perfectly-quite unlike anything me or Dad do. We're especially inept or unlucky or both with anything involving Jusenkyou.
It's hard to believe. It really is strange, how so much could happen in the course of a year. November's rolling around again. I'll be seventeen. The party isn't exactly on the thirteenth because that's a Thursday and I have to go to school even though it's my birthday, but it's close. Aunt Akiko said I ought to have a really big celebration this year, to make up for all the years without any, especially last year. What I didn't know was just how big it would turn out to be.
"Really, little brother," she told Dad off, "how would you like it if our father forgot your sixteenth birthday?"
"But he did forget it," Dad yelled back, "he did."
I asked Aunt Akiko, "You're not gonna invite every lunatic in Japan and China put together, are you?"
She frowned. "Why do you ask?"
After I finished explaining about the wedding and Nabiki she made this disgusted noise. "Selling out her family. I almost don't believe it. Well," she said, "I'll submit the guest list for your approval, all right?"
I nodded. "And whatever you do, don't invite the Kunous."

Akane and me are taking a taxi-paid for, of course, by Aunt Akiko-to the Ryuujin Paradise Hotel. I guess that's not exactly accurate-more like Akane, Kasumi, Nabiki, Mr. Tendou, Dad, Mom, Aunt Akiko, Shampoo's great-grandmother, Shampoo (the last two because they want to have a meeting with the others in the village, so they say) and me taking a fleet of taxis. But she's paying for it, so what the hell?
When we get there, I'm nearly knocked over by it. It's fancy, fancy, fancy- one of the best in Tokyo; the only one of its kind in Nerima. I understand it's quite new, which is why we haven't smashed it up during one of our fights, which has happened to sixty percent of the other buildings in Nerima. I have a feeling its time will come sooner or later.
"Whoa," is my only option for what I can say, and I take that option at the same time I take it all in. It's the tallest building around, beating out the emporium even, glittering like it's made out of solid gold. Who knows, it might be. There are dragons curving around on the top of the door. I jump out of the taxi and just when I'm about to run off I remember and look back inside.
Akane smiles and holds out her hand. I take it and she steps out of the cab really carefully so as to make sure not to rip her kimono. I feel like I'm in one of those movies.
The inside measures up to the outside. Beautiful deep scarlet carpets darker and purer than blood could ever be, so thick I can't see my shoes, they've sunk so deep into those carpets. A tremendous chandelier with crystal thingamajigs like elongated teardrops swings from the ceiling decorated with even more dragons, and I turn my head to see Akane with the same sort of thingamajig swinging from a silk string around her neck. She doesn't believe in earrings, thinks the whole concept is disgusting, same as Aunt Akiko. She has a crystal pendant same as Akane only it's a leaf instead of a teardrop.
We take the elevator, a beautiful contraption of mirrors and crystal and a vending machine- it's the best elevator I've ever seen, the best I've ever been in. We step out on the fourth floor. This is where all the people coming from China for the reunion are staying, as well as Ryouga. They take up all the rooms on the floor. Shampoo and her great-grandmother split off.
Now Aunt Akiko uses the knocker on the door of 404. It reminds me of a dragon's head. Go figure, I guess.
"Who is it?" I know that voice from somewhere back during my innumerable encounters, though it was then not a voice that I paid much attention to back then.
"Saotome Akiko," she calls back, and then says something else, in Chinese.
He says something else, which happens to be one of my few learned phrases of Chinese, (among the others are "I love you" and "beloved husband) "just a minute." A moment later the same voice starts talking in Chinese that I can't understand this time. Another moment or so, and the door opens.
There's a kid standing there, can't be more than fifteen or so. I remember him, not just his voice, but only because of his hat. He has a very unique hat, brownish with wolf ears sticking up, and I would have thought it was real wolf fur except of course wolves haven't got tails sprouting out of the backs of their necks.
We come in.
Boy, it would be fun to live in this place if I couldn't go anywhere else. Everything's red in here, too, red and gold. Lots of decorations, primarily dragons and such, and a few red banners with characters on them. I blink as I wonder which came from China and which came with the room. I decide not to try and figure it out; they're probably on about the same level anyway. I'm so busy looking around I don't notice him until Akane stomps on my foot-not as hard as she would have before, but still hard-and kind of jerks me to look where she's looking.
He's on a couch, bright red like all the other furniture I can see in the room, right next to the cabinet on which I can still see the remains of candy bars, which have been massacred, most likely by the room's other two occupants. And right away I know.
I know this person. I know his voice. And I remember him, not just his voice. I remember the eyes, a brilliant deep scarlet like the carpets I've walked through on the way. I remember what I noted as undeniably odd in China and Nerima alike, long fair hair juxtaposed with blue and pink, the color combination I would have thought beautiful except for the circumstances in which it appeared. I remember the armor, strange even for the numerous weirdos that have been drawn to me, Saotome Ranma like paper clips to a magnet. It looks like fish scales, but gold.
And I remember that voice.
"Saotome Ranma," he says quite calm. "I do hope you are not as rude now."

The invitation came care of the Jusenkyou Tourism Department, and was promptly delivered by Mr. Li the Jusenkyou Guide to Musk Mountain. It was in a hand obviously toiled upon for quite a while in order to look elegant, but in the end wound up looking more mechanical and flat than the stuff mass-printed in the east.

Dragon guy and Co.,
Birthday party is on November13 and if you want you can come. It isn't some little kid's party either. Send reply to me care of Tendou Dojo if you want to come otherwise please don't bother sending anything. And I'm really sorry about that thing. Won't do it again. I swear.
Saotome Ranma

Saotome Ranma,
To begin with, my name is not "Dragon Guy." You are fortunate I did not call you Rude One in retaliation.
I will attend if you have not changed your mind. However, I am bringing the bucket in case you forget your promise concerning your indiscriminate behavior. And Nannichuan water, just in case you keep that promise.
Herb

The moment I had it sent off to the JTD for mailing, I wished to have it back because I had just discovered a thousand things wrong with it. The language- far too undignified, it sounded like crude threats. The writing was too rushed-even though it had taken me a half-hour to complete it.
And, the largest mistake of all, I had used the wrong name signing.
But of course it was far too late to change any of that.

I began to be called Herb when I was eight years old by our way of counting things. This is why.
I was born a Fire Tiger, as was Liang-Hu; I was one just barely. You see, I was born on the 9th day in February, Western year 1986; one day earlier and I would be an Ox. But I am not an ox; I am a tiger, born on the first day of spring, the first day of the New Year. One year after that day, Jia Ro-Guei, or Cinnamon, Hakka's grandfather, was still alive; he had one more year of life left, one year until the day he died, the day before Hakka came into the world. He was called Hakka after the Guest People to the south, in the hopes that he would be resilient and resolute as they, according to Father at least. At first we called him "Kuh-Jia" because that was the real way to say it; six years later we were studying when we found the word "Hakka" in a Japanese dictionary. It meant "peppermint." So from then on we called him Hakka, or Mint.
In any case, Hakka was not born yet. His grandfather, Cinnamon, was alive then, so he could not have been alive as well. Cinnamon, my father said, as well as being a good fighter, was learned more, according to Father, than any imperial scholar; he knew nearly all the dialects in China, and several foreign tongues. One of those tongues was English; it was an English book of names that he read; it was that book that listed the name Herbert, which apparently meant in a different tongue, "shining army."
He reported this find to Father; Father thought it was the perfect match for my original name, Long Jing-Swei. "Long" is our family name; it means "dragon" for obvious reasons. My given name, "Jing-Swei," means Pure Water, or Bright Water. Father thought it was perfect, Shining Army to Bright Water, and so they began calling me Herbert as a nickname, when I was too young to understand why they called me two names. When I became really aware of Liang-Hu and Kuh-Jia (this was before they were called Lime and Mint. Those are only nicknames; I have never forgotten their true names are Bright Tiger and Hakka), they called me evenly Herbert and Jing-Swei. At first.
After Kuh-Jia became Mint because of that dictionary, he began to explore all things foreign; it didn't matter what it was as long as it was not from here. He was delighted when he learned the name "Herbert" was foreign as well. He called me Jing-Swei only rarely now; he learned that another, shorter way to say "Herbert" was "Herb" and so he called me that, and he pronounced it properly too.
Liang-Hu liked this as well so they both began calling me Herb. Jia Ro-Guei was dead of course; obviously he could not be alive because Hakka was living. But Father and Liang-Hu's father liked this name as well; mostly because it was shorter than Herbert but it really meant that name so it meant the same thing in less syllables. And soon the only person in the Yang Village (the Yin Village was irrelevant; the Yin Village, then, was something we boys only spoke of in whispers and brother's-friend tales) that still called me Long Jing-Swei was Father, and then only rarely. So by the time I was nine I had to all intents and purposes lost my birth name. Now I was Herb to those who knew me, the Young Emperor to those who did not know me. For five years I don't recall ever being called Bright Water. It was going on six until I returned from Jusenkyou
It was two months ago, before the business with the Phoenix People, so the springs functioned properly. When I returned, gasping with exhaustion and happiness, the former from racing Hakka up the mountain (Hakka won; he has the blood of wolves after all) and the latter from the event that had taken place just a moment ago, Father was waiting. He did not ask if I had been cured. It wasn't necessary; the rain splashing around me without effecting any anatomical change spoke for itself. "Long Jing-Swei," he said at last, "You and Hakka should get inside. There is a time and place for endurance training, and now is not the time or place."
I had a fever the next day, a very high one. I had not had one as high since I was ten and thus was excused from regular exercises- perhaps excused is not the right word, as I hadn't left willingly. Father had told me to stop after the incident during sparring.
I didn't put up much of an argument, as he was undeniably right. I'd felt fuzzy all through the warm-ups, though then it was a feeling that could be quickly denied. By the time it was time for sparring, though, it could not be denied with any level of believability. But nobody asked so I never denied it.
I was paired with Hakka, as he was the one that presented more of a challenge, despite his age; I had learned the weaknesses of Liang-Hu several years ago and they had not changed since then despite his best efforts.
That day it seemed harder than usual. Hakka's running form seemed even more blurred than it was naturally. His aura kept on jumping from left to right to behind me to in front of me, too quickly to be explained by his speed; the trails left behind by the aura danced all over the place. The one chi attack I tried wasn't even close; later I found out it had uprooted a tree and tossed it over the wall into the Yin Village (fortunately with nobody under its landing site), but Hakka was unscathed.
I almost screamed out of sheer frustration but kept my calm on the outside at least. I could sense my chi turning hot with anger, then suddenly cold…
The Reversal Principle. Of course. Too much heat becomes cold.
I shut my eyes, tired of seeing the blur that was Hakka. Someone shouted; I didn't know what was shouted. I felt all the chi in the Yang Village put together, Hakka's and Liang-Hu's and all the other boys and the adults as well, and the greatest was my own. It was not the familiar brightness like gold, like Father's own, or the more intense sort that appeared during times of greatest fury that hurt like looking at the sun. No, it was totally different.
I shivered as I saw more of this chi that was mine, yet I could not understand how this could truly be my chi. It was too dark, for one thing, darker than I could have imagined was possible. It was so dark I felt I was gazing into something with no bottom, something that never had an end and therefore could never really be understood. It was heavy like a cloud waiting to burst and produce a storm. This was not yang chi. This was yin chi.
And it couldn't be mine. Yin is the feminine side, and I am male. It couldn't be. But it was.
I felt something deep inside of me, something bubbling up from someplace I had forgotten existed. I knew what it was but somehow didn't want to know. I put a hand on my heart; its pulsing joined the chaos around me. I heard words.
"What's happening?"
"Run away! Run away!"
And then it burst. It was mine, yet I couldn't make it do a thing. It was yin chi; I had no experience with yin chi, no experience taming the wild animal that yin chi can be.
Heavy darkness burst out and I flew, but it wasn't the same kind of flying that I usually carried out. There was heavy dark yin everywhere I tried to see. Shouts drifted through, muffled by the darkness. I rose higher and higher on all this darkness; this darkness that I didn't know was there, or perhaps didn't want to believe it was there.
Then, when I was sure I had spent hours suspended in my own chi (Hakka informed me later it was technically only ten seconds or so, though, he said, it had felt like forever to him, too), I fell tumbling. With one tumble the Yang Village below was replaced by more heavy darkness, and I fell toward this without even trying to stop.
Right when the dark seemed right before me I connected with the ground and sprawled out, not caring in the least what was happening. I didn't care about anything anymore. I opened my eyes and auras danced and I heard Hakka shouting "Herb! Herb!" and Wei Hua-Shuhng yelling, "what happened? What happened?" and Bai Ching-Ming screaming "He's dead he must be dead!" and then everything was dark and heavy and cold and burning at the same time and I didn't care. I didn't.

When I regained consciousness Father told me I was not to spar until the fever had gone down. "Launching that tremendous Lion Roar Bullet," he said, "was what would be expected under the circumstances." I didn't tell him what I knew but didn't want to know-that the fever had only been the catalyst, that the dark heavy chi had been in me all along.

"What's with the sad face?"
Hakka does not respond for a while, instead staring out the hotel room window. I join him and note the street below is packed. It's nearly as bad as Shanghai was when we passed through on our first visit to Japan. I thank the dragons that we took the airplane to Tokyo straight from Xining, instead of having to endure that again. It's a tremendous contrast with Musk Mountain. But surely simple overcrowding wouldn't depress Hakka this much, at least for very long.
In fact, the last time we came, he loved this place. We spent a night searching for the Nekohanten, and much of that night was spent pursuing Jia Hakka around the business district. So that couldn't possibly be it…
As I'm about to begin a full-scale thinking session, Hakka at last replies. "Well… she was nice, wasn't she?"
I just manage to keep from groaning aloud. It figures he would be unhappy because of a woman! He continues, unaware of the look on my face, or perhaps not seeing it because he doesn't want to see.
"Only that guy…" His attitude changes suddenly, from dejected to anger worthy of a dragon-an Earth Dragon, as it happens. That was the year he was born in, anyway. "That guy used a cheap trick and… and then he…THAT JERK!"
I smile, just a little, too little for Hakka to notice, too little for any but myself to notice. Then the smile goes away; this is not exactly a smiling matter.
Hakka was the only one in the Yang Village that knew Hidden Weapons. He learned it from one of the standard martial arts volumes, with some help from his father, but not very much. He was nine or ten then. And after he had learned it, he changed.
He no longer had exactly the same mutual empathy with Liang-Hu. He was affable and chatty as he had always been, but always now he seemed somewhat apart, different. He explained it himself, probably not even knowing he was.
"Herb," he said, "Now I have got something nobody else has, and it doesn't feel at all like I thought it ought to feel."
I believe that under different circumstances he would have befriended the one from Joketsuzoku. After all, he also practiced Hidden Weapons, and that was what I believed he wanted- someone that had the same thing he had. But these were not different circumstances- and, as it turned out, he hated the very person I thought he would go to, eagerly seeking friendship. Oh, he went toward the one from Joketsuzoku all right, but with his sword at the ready.
"Herb?"
His voice jerks me back to the here and now. "Herb?" He looks at me with those large blue eyes of his, the ones that were full of dragon rage a moment ago and now are soft and, it seems, somewhat ashamed. For what, I can't imagine. "Herb, I know you think I'm a fool. But please listen, anyway. He's probably told her about it already, and now she probably thinks I'm disgusting, too. Which is too bad," he finishes, eyes even more ashamed, "she was nice. She told a good story. And her name was nice, too."
"The Joketsuzoku girl?" He nods. "What was-"
I am interrupted by a shout from outside. And several moments later, I learn the cause, as well as a mathematical equation that, while unconventional, is ignored at one's own risk: Fong Liang-Hu + Joketsuzoku Amazons = Definite Unpleasantness.

Great-grandmother and I are going to the hotel to see the Jiang twins and Honorable Ancestor Jiang, as we invited them on the invitations Saotome Ranma allotted us. "Just don't invite anyone crazy or anything like that," he warned us.
Great-grandmother chortled when he said this. "Don't worry, son-in-law," she told Ranma, "we have no intention of spoiling your birthday celebration."
He said something that was not Chinese or Japanese. "I learned that in English," he said, and grinned. Great-grandmother grinned too, and winked at him; she must have understood.
"But son-in-law," she said, "we are not visiting hell anytime soon."
Later I looked up those English words. They read like this: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

When I was young I believed my father would die soon, because he was a Spring.
This was what I told the Musk boy, though I did not tell him I was the child in that story. And I did not tell him that the first dead spring-indeed the first four- were all of the Lin family, that they all lived in the same house as my great-grandmother.
The first one was definitely one of Great-grandmother's brothers. I wasn't certain whether it was Lin Mei-Tsuen or Lin Ling-Tsuen. True, Mei-Tsuen, Beautiful Spring, had died sooner; but Ling-Tsuen, Delicate Spring (though according to Great-grandmother he was anything but delicate), had openly renounced the Joketsuzoku and run off to the east, shaming the family-it took Great-grandmother's election to the council to negate this, apparently. And he had done this before Mei-Tsuen had died. So perhaps he was the first dead spring.
When one looks at it purely chronologically, Mei-Tsuen was the first. This, I concluded, was perhaps the only significant thing about him. He was Great-grandmother's brother, too. A search for his name through the old records only turned up files on his birth, his marriage (which had produced only two sons just like him. I still can't see how he could have at all been related to Great-grandmother) and his death from a fever in the year of the Sheep-incidentally, in the spring.
And chronologically Ling-Tsuen was the second. Great-grandmother told me she had found out he had gone to Shanghai, changed his name and become a rich merchant, with many children, daughters and sons alike. But then the ill will of Joketsuzoku came to him in a most bizarre way-their curse was carried, unknowingly, by pilots that one day, aiming at the Japanese, dropped bombs on their own people. At least it was not in the spring. That was something.
But she did not find out all this for years-the news did not come until war's end, and that was eight years later. Five years before that, in the year of the Dragon, Great-grandmother and Great-grandfather had gained and lost their second child all in one day. He was born in the last days before spring. Great-grandmother told me she named him Bao-Yui, Precious Jade, after someone in a book, but they had seriously considered Ching-Tsuen, Pure Spring. So he, in a way, was a Spring too.
And in the days before word came of Lin Ling-Tsuen's death, in the year of the Rooster, a cousin of Great-grandmother's, Lin Bao-Tsuen, swallowed gold and died. Nobody ever could think of a reason why he would do this. He was the fourth dead Spring.
There were no more dead springs for a long time, as far as I know. Forty-eight years went by, and that spring, Shueh Mu-Tz had the strange fever that made his vision so capricious. One minute he could see clear as anyone, next minute he was practically blind. He was not technically a dead spring, but what happened to him might have been a warning that what was happening wasn't over yet.
And then Great-grandfather and Grandfather died, also in spring, also in the year of the Rooster.
And it was then that I became convinced my father would die, too.
I learned his name from looking through old records because how could I ask my great-grandmother? When I saw it, I was so surprised! Jiang Ching-Tsuen, the record said- Ching-Tsuen, Pure Spring, and I remembered. And he, too, was born in spring.
This was another part I did not tell the Musk boy, because how could he ever understand? He just thought it was some scary story, like the ones my mother told me to scare me into being brave. Of course, Musk being Musk, he probably never had his own mother tell him stories, to scare him or otherwise. Maybe his father told him, them. Scary stories are a staple ingredient of civilization.
But this was true. This happened. This was real. It wasn't just a scary story. It was true. Spring was not a time of life; spring was a time of death. Spring was dead, in Joketsuzoku at least.
This was what I thought then. I was only eight or nine then, and I remember staying up very late to keep watch on my father, to make sure he did not die. When he went to sleep I watched him to make sure he did not die in his sleep. I watched him every moment I could. I became efficient at combat because of this, a master at getting the match over as soon as possible so I could rush home and watch my father. Nobody, if they knew this entire insane story, would believe me, but life is this way.
I even trailed him to the fields and kept watch from behind the fence dividing the land of the Lin family and the Shueh family to make certain the capricious thing that is chance did not launch anything at my father.
Now I'm amazed I cared about my father that much back then. I'm amazed I managed to stay with him out of so many hours of the day. Now, if time permits- I work six hours minimum at the Nekohanten, and just in case there's some left over Saotome Ranma is a major killer of time, larger even than sleep, and of course there's sleep itself- I say maybe four words to him a day: "Tzau An" and "Wan An."
But of course I didn't speak much to him back then, either. I was too busy making sure he didn't become yet another dead spring.
Before this, I was a true tiger, born in the last days of winter, so though I was born in 1987 by the western calendar I was a Fire Tiger like Saotome Ranma, not a Fire Rabbit like Shueh Mu-Tz. I was wild and no one could ever control me. I laughed and taunted the other girls my age as I raced across the square and they tried to catch up. I let my hair tangle and then laughed at my mother's scolding and threats to "tell them to come and take you away and tear you apart if they wish!"
But that year-no, it was not really a year, it was a month- I was not at all a tiger, I was a rabbit; I hid and feared the worst. I barely slept for fear that my father would die once my eyes were closed. I screamed at small things and things that weren't even there-once I threw a shoe at an ominous figure and then realized it was only my mother's shadow. But still I feared.
Within a week Mu-Tz began to suspect. He was my loyal friend then, not the bothersome admirer he grew to be. Seven days after I began my stakeout he asked.
I did not tell him exactly. "Father may die soon."
His eyes got wide. "Shiang-Pu, you know he will die soon? How?"
"It is his fate," I said, "but I must prevent this fate." He nodded and understood.
Thereafter I got some more sleep because he volunteered to watch my father while he was out in the rice fields and going to the market, so I only had to be awake while he was at home. And some nights Mu-Tz would sneak in through the window and watched him for me, so there was more time for my sleep. I appreciated this. I gave him things in return-pork buns, sweet cakes, little dumplings, candies. He loved these gifts, and told me so. I think this is what ruined him, turned him from the obedient little boy that always knew what I wanted and loved to get it for me to the kowtowing boy (now older) that devoted all his time to trying to fulfill my every wish, when my one wish was to have him go away (I admit, that was only one of my wishes. The other was to win Saotome Ranma).
But that was not then. That is now. Then, he still was my loyal friend. He was probably the one thing that kept me from losing my mind through that awful month. It had started on a full moon and through the days now slightly less wearisome thanks to him the same moon shrank and then began to grow again.
When it was near time for the full moon, Great-grandmother realized as well.
"Great-granddaughter," she said, "what is the matter?"
"Nothing, there is nothing the matter."
"Don't lie, Shiang-Pu."
And then I began to cry and shout and in between crying and shouting I told her all about the awful cursed dead spring, and that it would take my father next. I felt all that fearful rabbit spirit beginning to burst out of me with every cry, every shout, every word of this story I was telling. And when all this rabbit had gone I felt tired, so tired. It had held me up for that month, and now it was gone. I remember falling, and Mu-Tz screaming, "Shiang-Pu! Lin Shiang-Pu!" And then everything went white, with only Mu-Tz's screams and then a different voice, that was not him.
I slept a long time, and when I woke up it was the full moon and the tiger spirit was back inside me. I was not afraid. I knew my father would not die for a long time, and only after a life well lived would he die. The voice that was not Mu-Tz had said so, had promised me this. Back then I believed it had been Chou-Tien, Warrior of the Autumn Sky, first Matriarch of the Joketsuzoku. But now I realize-it must have been Great-grandmother, calming me down to prevent me from going mad watching over my father. So she had no way of really knowing whether her promise was true. My father could die, in a short time. Maybe as I think about this he is dead.

The way I told it to the Musk boy, I told him it was Chou-Tien who had said this thing, who had made this promise. "And," I told him, "the voice said to the child, 'I am the Warrior of the Autumn Sky, and this I promise.'" This was a lie. But then again, as I told it, it was a lie. I had left out so many things, changed so many names or simply not mentioned them, that it was not the real story. And he, Jia Hakka he said his name was, thought it was only a story, too.
But all this cannot change the past. And I know that after Great-grandmother made this promise, I was as wild and uncontrollable as before. I raced across the square as before. I went barefoot, as before. I laughed as before, climbing trees and trampling rice plants and hiding behind Great-grandmother's bookcases as my mother called, "Shiang-Pu! If you don't behave I'll tell them to come down from their mountain!"

It was a strange thing, that fever. I had it when I was two, it lasted an entire year, and it sabotaged my life.
The last time I had sight like everyone else was before I began to remember things. So I don't know what real seeing that won't go away is. The first thing I remember is burning and screaming. I believed I had come from one of those tiny villages with insane laws, which had burned down, and was therefore adopted. Fortunately I never told anyone my speculations.
Later I found out it was the fever. My mother told me, in the days before she died (my father was already dead), that it had lasted a little over a year, and it was so capricious in its fluctuations that more than once I had been pronounced cured. And when it went away for good, my eyes were just as capricious.
All my remembered life I never knew when it would strike, whether I would wake up in the morning and see everything perfectly clear (in which case it would only be for a minute, or less) or everything amorphous smudges. On one occasion I mistook Lin Shiang-Pu for a giant purple octopus (lucky for me she spoke before I acted on that assumption. But other times I wasn't so lucky).
"So why not wear glasses?" they ask. I would, but they have a disturbing tendency to fall off, get crushed, and similar things.
"So why not get an operation?" That was Shiang-Pu speaking this morning, after I tried to explain why I mistook her great-grandmother, Matriarch Lin Go-Long, for her. "This place is not ruled by the stupid Communists! You can just go into one of those hospitals, they'll give you one and then you can quit bothering Great-grandmother!"
Ah, Shiang-Pu, it's not that simple.
After she said this and left, I called the hospital and asked about the price of eye operations, then pulled out my accounts. Not nearly enough. My salary is hardly large, only five hundred damned yen an hour. Out of the six hundred thousand I would have if I saved it all, I only have a sixth of that. The rest is gone on gifts for Shiang-Pu and new hidden weapons and such. The laser surgery the hospital worker mentioned over the phone will just have to wait.

Saotome Ranma only gave me one invitation, which I used on my sister. That doesn't really matter though. Who else would I invite? The Brotherhood of Hidden Weapons, which, as far as I know, is nonexistent?
I'm the only one in the village that knows it. I learned it from an old volume in the Council library, with some help from Incense, but not very much. I was ten the way Japanese people count it.
I always wanted to find someone else, anyone else, that knew Hidden Weapons. I probably would have kowtowed to the shrunken lecher if he knew it. I might have let Saotome Ranma have Shiang-Pu, if he had known it. And when I finally meet someone that knows it…
Isn't it ironic? That the person that could have been my friend is instead among my worst enemies, even though we only fought twice, unlike the case of Saotome Ranma? And I suspect he's angry with me, too, due to the outcome of our last fight, and/or due to the means used to get that outcome.
And none of it was my fault!
Okay, maybe it was…

I was in my cursed form, as was Ryouga, when Saotome Ranma rescued the Young Emperor of the Musk from being crushed under falling chunks of Horaisan.
We made our way off the mountain, stopping very close to an inn- I say very close, because we only had enough money for the train back and so we camped out.
After the rescue the tiger-striped one had been carrying their Young Emperor. They weren't camping with us, though Ranma had offered them the chance. "Come on," he had said, "I don't care how strong you are you can't carry him all night!"
"We're in a hurry." He said that, very politely, in Japanese far better (I admit it!) than Shiang-Pu's best, while fiddling with his hat. It was a very odd hat, made to look almost like real wolf skin. I was fooled for a while, until I recalled the physiology of wolves. It had suffered much wear and tear during the past days (part of it inflicted by me, though that was not directed at the hat specifically), and now looked circa Taiping Rebellion.
I wondered how I could make one.

I finish up the dishes and position myself at the window, watching for the returning taxi. Probably they'll bring the Jiang twins with them, and turn the restaurant into a screaming madhouse while Lin-Lin and Lan-Lan "get settled" as only they can.
Ah, here it is now. Matriarch Lin leaps out and heads for the door, Shiang-Pu close behind. The twins don't emerge, and there's only one taxi. They must have liked the hotel very, very much. I've heard it's quite a fancy place. Named after a dragon king or something.
I wait for the door to open, my hand ready to flip around the placard saying CLOSED. I wait…
And wait…
And wait…
Someone is now pounding on the door. Matriarch Lin? Why would she…
I turn to see her key ring, with a grand total of one key, on a nearby table. Next to it is a cord with a safety whistle and Shiang-Pu's key attached. I nearly burst out laughing. The Matriarch forgetting her key! But then I stop. There are more important things to do.
As the pounding threatens to break down the door, I slide in the key, twist it, and yank toward me, sending both of them falling through the space where the door used to be and landing hard on the floor. I almost laugh- it looks utterly ridiculous. But then I realize.
"Are you all right?"
"Stupid Mu-Tz!" is her tender reply.
I'm not being sarcastic here. It didn't sound annoyed or anything, just really nice and gentle and mild. The way she talks to Saotome Ranma. But I'm not Saotome Ranma.
"Stupid Mu-Tz." Still that tone I always hoped to hear from Lin Shiang-Put. It's not saying, "I love you" but just give it five minutes. "You didn't notice the keys 'til now, you rice bucket."
"I'm sorry," I say. And I smile.
She smiles back. "You stupid rice bucket." And then she smiles even wider. "I take that back."

My growth had slowed to the regular rate by the time the invitation came.
Apparently my anatomy had decided that waiting years for the second Year of the Phoenix after this year was too long. I would undoubtedly have been obliged to wait that long anyway, except for the fact that my last one had begun when I was ten instead of the standard twelve. Therefore I was compelled to suffer through a growth rate so rapid Shanghai and Lhasa made chalk marks on the bedspread to show how many inches I grew per day.
Now I was ten once again, and the stuff that made it possible to grow ten years' worth in two months retreated into the background to wait for the Year of the Phoenix.
The rule of a Phoenix Mountain Emperor (or Empress, as the case may be) barring suicide and such, lasts from a hundred years upward. Speaking logically, two years is not a long time to wait in comparison. But things are not always what they seem.
I don't care about logical data and such. I know I should be patient and always sympathetic to everyone's needs and not complain about two years of waiting. But I am not what I should be, and I don't care if I'm not.
Not that anyone openly criticizes me for being impatient, for yelling at people, for complaining about two years of waiting. I am the phoenix; therefore in their eyes I can do no wrong. Never once has Ghee or Kiima censured me concerning my conduct. Shanghai and Lhasa only did so once to my face. Within the next fifteen minutes they were escorted in by Kiima, sporting several bruises, and hastily apologized, kowtowing so hard they nearly knocked themselves unconscious.
It was a week, or perhaps two, after this incident when the invitation came.
I remember I was in the study room specially made for me, reading something, or pretending to. Ghee and Kiima had decided to try and have me learn some languages besides Chinese and Japanese. I didn't argue about this- if I had the topic would have been dropped at once. I thought it might be interesting.
The time allotted for my studies was officially the Hours of the Snake in the morning, with the Hours of the Horse allotted for a meal, and then the Hours of the Sheep and of the Monkey. I remember that before the Event, it was never that long in reality. I was always running off, and Ghee never dared attempt to order me to return. Usually he managed to persuade me to return with the offer of a sweet cake or candy or such if I would just come back. But it only lasted for so long, and soon I was off again, whereupon he would have to cajole me back with another sweet, and the cycle continued until finally he gave up. He usually gave up within a few hours.
But now, I felt ashamed doing this. Don't ask me why. So I stayed to the end of the official time.
But there were problems.
Attempting to learn English, Indian, and Russian concurrently, as well as finishing with Japanese sentence structures, is not a good idea.
I hid my face behind the book, an English-Chinese dictionary. I had remained in the same position, on the same page, for an hour. For the first hour I had read the thing, but it's hard remembering how to pronounce certain letters at certain times, how to make plurals, and so forth. I was done with A-D, and was reviewing them while pretending to read E. I have to keep up appearances.
I looked at the clock. It would soon be time to switch to Indian. This was somewhat more intelligible, as we often use the language, so Ghee would be able to help with this. It's a tradition of the Phoenix People, to give their children both a Chinese name and an Indian name. I have no idea where it began. It just is. And the Indian name is the one used when speaking, while the Chinese name is the one used in writing, according to protocol; the latter is also used to speak to children. Shanghai and Lhasa- those are their Chinese names, everyone calls them Korma and Masala since they're past fifteen now. Ghee and Kiima haven't even got Chinese names. Mine- it's written Tai-Ping, Great Peace, but everyone calls me Saffron.
So…
Kiima entered and held out a sheet of paper. "Emperor Saffron, this was received."
I took it and read it. The message on it was in Japanese, in a hand so rigid as to remind me of the characters in the dictionary.
And at the end was that name. That name.

You're all invited to my birthday party. It's not a cheap one either in case you were worried. November 15, and if you want to come please send reply to me, care of the Tendou Dojo (address on envelope) otherwise please don't bother sending anything. If you don't want to that's okay. I just want to make peace, OK?
Saotome Ranma

"Saotome Ranma?" I muttered to nobody in particular.
Kiima nodded. "If you wish, we will send a message declining."
"No," I said, "we're going. We are going."

Now we're in Japan, "we" being Kiima, Shanghai, Lhasa, and I. I'm still wondering why I said we were going. Why, why, why did I feel obligated to come to his celebration? What did he ever do to me? He killed me, for crying out loud! And come to think of it…
Why did he invite me?
To laugh in my face?
No, that couldn't be…
He probably sees me as a selfish child. I was one. I may be one now, but who am I to know if I am or not?

"The Musk were also invited here?"
Kiima nodded. "And the Joketsuzoku. There was a commotion out there involving both parties. Nothing requiring your intervention."
This is my chance. My chance to prove to Saotome Ranma, to the Musk, to the Joketsuzoku, that I am not selfish. Reincarnation does not guarantee a duplicate in every trait, I know. I have no more empathy for the other selves before my directly last one, though I remember some, as I would for a firecracker. In case I haven't made that clear-none at all.
"Kiima, get the others. We're going to have a diplomatic audience."