A Different Path
A Ranma / Sailor Moon crossover
Part One
By Raye Johnsen
The title is *very* tentative, and I'm open to suggestions.
Raye
'Ranma 1/2' is owned by Takahashi Rumiko, Shogakukan, and others. 'Bishoujou Senshi Sailor Moon' is copyright Takeuchi Naoko, Kodansha, Mixx Enterprises, DiC Entertainment, and others. In other words, NOT ME.
It was time.
She watched the bus pull up and checked the contents of her wallet yet again. The trust fund had paid its dividends only three weeks before; for the moment, she didn't need to worry about money. It would have to be husbanded carefully after tonight; but for tonight, she didn't have to worry.
The bus was only an intra-district one, terminating in Juuban. That didn't matter. It wasn't like anyone she knew travelled outside Nerima much. Juuban was as good a place as any; from all she heard it was quite nice. That, in fact, made it more attractive. None of the people she no longer wished to see would ever go anywhere that could be described as blandly as 'quite nice'.
She paid the fare - a few hundred yen, she could have paid it out of her pocket money - and sat down heavily in the seat. The cracked vinyl was dark with use and the weight of countless previous passengers had carved a depression into the foam padding beneath it. She sank into the seat, pale and small, a phantom of a girl, so unlike her usual self that even her friends would have had to look twice to recognise her.
It is a cliche to say that an afternoon can change a life. People forget, however, that cliches come to be simply because they do happen. This one happened to Tendou Akane.
It had been a handbook on marital separation, and she still didn't know why she'd picked the book up, nor why she'd brought it home to read. This procedure, though, as described in that book, was deceptively simple. It was one of the tests the authors had recommended: to sit down and list, in two columns, every single reason why the relationship should continue, and every reason why it should be ended.
She had no idea why she'd decided to apply it to herself and her engagement. But she had. In fact, because she was the sort who never walked a kilometre if she could sprint a mile, she'd applied it to her entire life. Every relationship she could think of, right down to her friendships.
The results were depressing.
She was unneeded. Unnecessary. Unwanted.
Akane could feel the tears of self-pity begin to prick behind her eyelids, and angrily began to wipe them away; then stopped. Her anger was behind too many of her problems. She had caused her own rejection because she had become too angry too many times.
But self-pity wouldn't help her either. She could sit at the bottom of the hole she'd dug and wail "Poor me!" till the end of days, and that would gain her nothing save a sore throat and a dirty rear end. Or she could pick up that shovel and try to dig herself a staircase.
Could she, though?
Her relationship with her fiance - well, that was irretrievable. He'd said as much himself. She loved Saotome Ranma, but the two of them were simply carrying on as they always had, building the walls of hurt and counter-hurt between them. How she wished that she had never started building it!
/But he said -/ and then she firmly shut the little internal voice that was set on "Blame Everyone Else" up. It was her fault. /They say 'stop encouraging them' to children who are teased. I encouraged him./
Her father - she loved him. He'd trained her to a certain level, then stopped. She hadn't known there was more, and he had never told her. He'd engaged her to a man who she didn't know and who didn't know her. He had cared so little for her dedication to kempo that he had gone outside the family to designate an heir to the family's school.
/I don't think he cares about me at all./
Her sisters - they did love her. She loved them.
/But we are separate people. If we were not related, I doubt we would even notice each other./
Her rivals would be glad to see her go. If Ukyou had not been her rival, she might have tried to make friends with her....
/And maybe not. I am no saint./
Her friends....
/I'm not close to them anymore. I haven't been close to them for over a year./
In short, there was nobody to whom her presence was necessary, and only among her friends, maybe, was it wanted.
It hurt.
It hurt knowing that she'd done it to herself.
But what really hurt was knowing that there was no way out.
She could try to take down the wall between herself and Ranma - but could she? For all of her feelings (/And when did you ever tell him you love him?/ Akane asked herself), he didn't want her in his life, so he'd insult her and she'd lose her temper and respond in kind, and far from tearing down the wall, she'd simply be adding another brick....
She could try to explain her feelings to her father, and he would all-but pat her on the head and tell her to run along.
Kasumi would listen and understand, but she could do nothing; and Nabiki would demand payment for a plan that might or might not work, but would definitely be amusing to watch and embarrassing for Akane.
Her friends couldn't even begin to understand, much less help.
She had painted herself into a corner and the paint would never dry.
/The only thing to do is knock down the wall./
Knock down the wall... escape the cage....
/ESCAPE THE CAGE!!/
She had looked up from the book and her scribbled notes. It had been late, almost dinner time. If she went to dinner, then straight to bed - tomorrow was Sunday, nobody would be surprised if she slept in. If she wasn't expected down for breakfast, she wouldn't be missed until lunch time.
Walking over to her desk and picking up her hand mirror, Akane was not surprised to see tearstains on her cheeks, nor that her complexion was much paler than usual. She quickly and carefully applied some foundation to her face. Quickly, so she wouldn't be late to dinner. Carefully, so nobody would spot she was wearing makeup. After all, she had an alibi to establish.
Dinner was quiet, and Saotome Ranma's danger sense was screaming at him. About Akane.
She'd been up in her room all afternoon, 'studying', she said. All right, he had no reason to think she was lying. But he'd insulted her, twice, and she hadn't said nothing. Nothing! He called her uncute, she called him insensitive. He called her a tomboy, she called him an idiot. That was the way it went.
Except tonight it didn't.
"Kasumi?" Akane said quietly. "I haven't been feeling too well this afternoon. I'm going to go up to bed after dinner."
Kasumi's eyes had widened. "Oh my!" she said.
Ranma winced. Didn't she ever say anything else? Like "Oh dear" or "Wow" or even "Dammit, Akane, THAT WAS MY KITCHEN!!"
Still, that might explain it. If she wasn't feeling well, Akane might not feel up to a good insult-match.
"I hope you're not getting sick..." Kasumi was continuing.
"Yes, Akane. Illness is not a good thing," Tendou Soun commented.
Akane felt a flash of anger, which she carefully suppressed. Just because he'd been in floods when Kasumi caught the flu... /I do love him, I do love him,/ she chanted to herself. "I think I might not feel too well tomorrow either," Akane continued. "So please don't make breakfast for me - I might still be sleeping. If I feel well enough to eat I'll come down, and you can make something for me then."
Nabiki broke the silence. "Sure hope what you've got isn't catching, Akane."
Akane looked at her sister, noting the way the light caught in her cinnamon-brown hair and the curve of her uptilted nose. /Nabiki is beautiful,/ she thought suddenly, unaware that it was simply the shape of her eyes and colour of her hair that saved her from being Nabiki's twin. "So do I," was all the reply she gave, however.
Standing, Akane bowed to the table. "Thank you for dinner, Kasumi. Goodnight everyone," she murmured, and escaped upstairs.
Nobody followed her. Akane pressed her ear to the closed door, and before long she heard the television go on and the seemingly endless <clakclak> of the shogi tiles resume.
/They really don't need me,/ Akane thought again. She quickly and efficiently folded clothing into a small case. Too big and she'd never be able to get away.
It didn't take that long to fold what she considered the essentials into her chosen suitcase. She spent much longer on five letters, and when she'd finished writing them, and rewriting them, a full hour had passed.
Discarding the window (Ranma might be on the roof again, and he was the last person she wanted to witness her escape), Akane quietly opened her door onto an empty passage. Silently she slipped down it and down the stairs. She could hear Kasumi doing the washing up in the kitchen, and the shogi tiles hadn't stopped. Peeping around the corner of the living room, she saw Ranma and Nabiki both entranced by the TV. Listening, she soon realized why; a Gundam Wing rerun was on. Nabiki liked the music and the OZ characters, while Ranma liked the mecha.
So, while all her family were distracted, Tendou Akane slipped out of the door, into the night, stopping only to drop five letters into the postbox on the corner.
Sitting on the bus, the enormity of what she had done began to sink in.
She had abandoned her family, her heritage, her future. She had cut herself away from every single person she knew, the role she had been born to and the path she had followed all of her life.
But the path had been empty. She had been held up against that heritage and found wanting. The role was already more-than- adequately filled, by those who were not wanting. And those who were in her life... would be just as happy if she were out of theirs.
He would be just as happy....
Akane gave up the fight against her tears.
Around this time, Mizuno Ami decided to take a break from studying. The notion occurred to her and suddenly seemed irresistible.
The informal juku at the temple was really helping her as much or more than the other girls. Teaching Usagi how to say "Please excuse me, I don't speak English very well" in English truly dinned the subject into one's brain.
If only it dinned it into Usagi's brain, too....
However, it did mean that Ami was at least ten chapters ahead in every subject, and she felt justified in taking a short break.
/Hmmm... a nice walk around the park?/
Kino Makoto would not know until much later exactly why she felt the urge to go for a walk. She justified it to herself as restlessness. She'd cleaned up after dinner and the apartment was spotless, there was nothing on TV, and she wasn't tired. She'd done the laundry and her school uniform was ironed for Monday. There was, literally, nothing to do.
Pulling on her coat, she decided that a turn or two about the park might be just what the doctor ordered. Do a little bit of stargazing, see if she could pick out Mir and the planets, bathe in the rays of Jupiter... It was a lot better than sitting around vegetating.
Tsukino Usagi could not sleep. This annoyed her.
She might not have been so annoyed if her fiance had not been sleeping the sleep of babies, the dead, and newly-graduated doctors who are still exhausted from exams. Otherwise, she would have been chatting to him on the telephone, racking up a bill to turn Tsukino Kenji's hair white and convincing anybody who was nosy enough to listen in that evesdropping on a lover's conversation is a very embarrassing way to be bored to death.
She definitely would not have been so annoyed if her parents had let her stay over his place like she'd asked. Begged. Pleaded. She'd sworn on her grandmother's grave that nothing would happen. She'd pointed out that they were engaged and would be getting married in a year, as soon as she got out of high school. It didn't work. Her parents were adamant. She was not going to spend the night in Chiba Mamoru's apartment.
Maybe a walk around the park would make her sleepy. Or calm her down. Or something.
Since she was so annoyed, she didn't stop to ask permission, simply snatching up her coat and stalking out of the house, shouting, "I'm going for a walk in the park!" as she left.
"Maybe we should have let her go," Tsukino Eiko mused.
Her husband gripped his newspaper tighter.
"I swear," Hino Rei muttered, walking down the steps that led from the Cherry Hill Temple to the street. "Two of them! Two! And I thought Grandpa was bad enough on his own!"
Above her, Hino Seijuuro slept in blissful ignorance of his grandaughter's touchy temper, the way his apprentice's snores were harmonizing with his own, or the fact that those snores were actually vibrating the temple on its foundations.
Aino Minako was nowhere near ready to sleep. Still energized from the singing audition she'd just attended, she decided that a nice walk around the park just might help her unwind.
Meiou Setsuna sat back on a shaded bench in Juuban Park.
Sometimes it was very hard to cling to her raison d'etre, to remember exactly why she existed. These were not the same thing, and when one decreed actions that were contrary to the other it was sometimes very hard to make the necessary choices.
To the other Sailor Senshi, Pluto existed to ensure things happened the way they should. To be a link between Past and Future.
Meiou Setsuna knew better.
Things happened. Sometimes they were good. Sometimes they were bad. As Pluto, she could nudge things into place; but chance existed and she could never be one-hundred-percent, completely sure events would follow her plan. Setsuna was far more familiar with the Quantum Weather Butterfly than she wanted to be.
She considered herself to be, not the Future, but the Hope for the future; the hope that tomorrow is sunshiny, not stormy.
As Hope, she hated shattering it. She hated pessimism and fatalism. She had always fought for the best future. Sometimes, the 'best future' required someone's hopes to be shattered. That didn't mean she had to like it. The 'best future' required Tendou Akane to be unattached and living in Juuban. For Reasons, and for at least the next six months.
She might have had to shatter the girl's heart and hopes, but Setsuna would be damned if she would let them stay that way.
Minako met Ami at the Juuban Park's gate.
"Hi, Ami-chan! I thought you'd be studying!"
"Hello, Mina-chan! I was, but I felt like a short break. Why are you out here at this time of night?"
"Eh heh heh! I just got back from an audition. You're looking at the latest, greatest idol! Or at least I will be when they post me the results!"
Rei bumped into Usagi - literally - at the (closed) ice- cream stand.
"Rei-chan! You're out walking, too?"
"Sure am! Couldn't sleep a wink. Grandpa and Yuuchirou-san are each bad enough on their own, but when they're both snoring, it's impossible! You could use them as air raid sirens! You?"
"My parents are impossible! They just won't listen to me!"
"You got kept at home away from Mamoru-san, didn't you."
"It's not FAAAAAAAIIIIIIIRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!! Hey, look, there's Ami-chan and Mina-chan!"
It is a little-known fact outside the area that the Juuban Bus Station is actually right beside Juuban Park. The town planners had decided that the arrangement would be harmonious, in that passengers would have something to look at while they waited for their bus, and people from outside the area would immediately have a landmark to orient themselves with.
They did not consider the possibility of muggers at the time, but the later youma infestation took care of them nicely.
Makoto was actually the last of the Senshi to reach the park, and saw the last bus pulling up at the station. She would've kept walking past... except one girl got off.
Her eyes were big and red, and still leaking tears. She held one small portmanteau, and had a general air of desolation about her.
In short, she looked as if her life had ended.
She looked around, and saw Makoto. Walking up to her, the strange girl asked, "Excuse me, my name's -" she hesitated a bit and continued, "Tendou Kaneda. Would you know of an inn or apartment building with vacant apartments around here?"
Makoto blinked. Her Senshi senses were thrumming, but not with danger; much as they had around Usagi, the first day they had met, but somehow differently, too. The only thing she knew for sure was that 'friend, friend' was part of the singing in her bones.
"Hi, Mako-chan!" came a call, and Makoto turned to see Usagi come puffing up behind her. And behind her stood Ami-chan, Rei- chan and Mina-chan.
Remembering the fact that the apartment opposite hers was vacant and making a split-second decision, Makoto spoke. "Hi, everyone," she replied absently. To the girl, she said, "I'm Kino Makoto, and yes, I know of a place."
Usagi, for her part, peered at the strange girl. "Hello, I'm Tsukino Usagi," she announced, holding out her hand. "It's good to meet you."
Kanada looked startled at Usagi's open friendliness. "I'm Tendou A- Kaneda. It's good to meet you."
"I'm Aino Minako," "Hino Rei," "Mizuno Ami," the three other girls introduced themselves. "It's good to meet you!" All three chorused.
"You look awful," Usagi commented, tactlessly as usual. "Are you ill?"
Kaneda gave a short bark of empty laughter, sour in its overtones of pain. "No, not ill," she replied. "I'm here to start."
"Start? Start what?" Rei asked curiously.
"Life. Everything."
Minako frowned. "What do you mean?"
Kaneda looked at the five of them. "What do I... Okay. I'll tell you. Lord God knows I've got to tell someone," she muttered.
"Today, for the first time in years, I was honest with myself. I took a good, hard, long look at my life and I realized that I'm a bitch. I'm violent, I don't cook as much as create biological weaponry, every second word I say is an insult and I never, never give anybody even a first chance to explain themselves. Everybody I care about hates me or dislikes me or is indifferent to me. I have driven away all my friends. And it is all my own fault."
Kaneda drew in a breath that sounded suspiciously like a sob. "If I tried to change, well, I've burnt all my bridges. Everyone would be suspicious of any changes I made and everyone would treat me the way they've gotten used to treating me - the way I've deserved to be treated - and I'd fall back into my old ways and, well."
She shook her head. "So. I left that life. Everyone there will be much happier, and I - I'm going to try to begin again, and do better this time."
There was silence.
Rei took in a breath. "Are you sure? It sounds an awful lot to me like you're just running away from your problems."
Kaneda's crooked grin was pure black humour. "Oh, I am. But there's no other way to solve them. Believe me on that."
"Running away is never a solution-" Ami tried.
"It is when your father's engaged you to a boy who hates your guts!" Kaneda snapped, then gasped. "I'm sorry," she added mournfully, "I promised myself I'd stop. I'm sorry...." she turned away.
Usagi reached out and touched her shoulder. "Don't go."
Kaneda looked back at her, and the way the five girls had arranged themselves in a half circle around her, Makoto and Ami to Usagi's right, with Rei and Minako standing to her left. "We need you," Usagi continued, softly, in a voice that was more mature than her years. "Please don't go... my friend Kaneda."
It was impossible for Kaneda to look into those deep blue eyes and refuse.
Not too far away, in a pool of shadow, a woman with dark green hair and eyes wiser than the Universe watched and smiled, as the future began to move.
True to her word, Akane did not come down to breakfast. Kasumi worried a little, and decided to prepare Akane's favourite, yakitori, for lunch.
Ranma got thoroughly trounced by his father that morning, being punted into the koi pond twice. He was easily distracted and kept glancing up at Akane's bedroom window.
Midmorning, the postman came. Kasumi automatically sorted out the mail. Bill for Nabiki to take care of, ditto, ditto, postcard for Father, letter for Ranma, cheque for Nabiki, letter for her - in Akane's handwriting?
So was the letter for Ranma.
Instead of quietly giving everyone their mail, Kasumi decided to open her letter and read it first.
A shriek rang through the house.
Nabiki dropped her pen, making an ugly smear of ink on the household account book, and sprinted downstairs.
Ranma nearly sprained his ankle on the door track of the doujou.
The shogi board was ignored as Soun and Genma ran to the kitchen.
Kasumi sat at the table, her eyes wild and her hands clenched into fists on the sheet of paper she held tightly.
"Akane-chan..." she whispered, shaking her head. "Akane- chan... Akane-chan...."
Rather than attempt to pull the letter out of Kasumi's fists, Nabiki peered over her shoulder and read it aloud.
"'Dear Kasumi,'I'm sorry I lied to you tonight, but it
was necessary. I love you very much but I have
finally realized that I am a burden to you and
to the entire family. So I am leaving.
'Please don't worry about me. I will be
all right. I will write again soon.
'I love you very much, 'Akane.'" "What?" Ranma asked intelligently.
Kasumi lifted her eyes from the letter at the sound of his voice. "There's one for you too, Ranma. Here." She picked up an envelope from the table and held it out.
Nabiki reached out casually and attempted to pluck it from between Kasumi's suddenly iron-hard pinch.
"The letter is for Ranma, Nabiki," Kasumi said, and her normally gentle voice was steel. Nabiki stared at this changed Kasumi in shock as Ranma took the letter from her hand.
"What does it say, Boy?" Saotome Genma demanded.
"How'n'hell should I know? I ain't read it yet!" Ranma snapped. He shouldered past his father, running up the stairs to climb out the window and onto the roof.
Akane gone? Why? They'd been through so very much together! Life without his Uncute Tomboy just wouldn't be worth aything. When he'd thought she was dead he literally hadn't cared whether he lived or died. She was that important.
Ripping open the envelope, he opened the letter.
'Dear Ranma,
'I love you. 'I never said it, did I? Maybe if I had, things
would never have happened the way they did.
'I'm sorry. I never said that, either. I'm
sorry, Ranma.'I'm sorry for all the times I hit you for no
reason.'I'm sorry for inflicting my toxic cooking on
you, and I'm sorry for all the times I hit you
for running away from it.'I'm sorry for all the nasty names I called
you.'I'm sorry you've had to put up with an uncute,
violent girl like me. You deserve better.'I love you very much, Ranma. But I know
you don't feel the same, so I am going. At least you
will be free of me.'Be happy, 'Akane.' /'Be happy'?/ Ranma wondered. /HOW??/
Meiou Setsuna smiled to herself as she looked with satisfaction upon her work.
Key figure in place... check.
Previous attachments terminated... check.
New attachments formed... check.
Transfer documents from Furinkan High and registration documents for Juuban High for one Tendou Kaneda, completed and in the Juuban High school office... check.
"I hate paperwork," she muttered, quietly closing the office door behind her.