The Pools of Sorrow


The Jusenkyo guide looked up in surprise at the brilliant flash of white
light outside his hut. A young man stood there, clothed in a tight 
fitting black shirt that highlighted his strong musculature, and loose 
pants. He was tall, six foot at least. His hair was black and his eyes
a deep blue. He was staring at the pools. "Honored Customer understands
Mandarin, yes?" asked the guide.

The young man turned to him, "Very well, thank you, Honored Guide. Tell
me please, which pool is the Nyannichuan?" The guide turned almost
purple. Customers never listened to him, never heard him until after
they had fallen in. 

"No, no, Honored Customer, you must not go to that pool. Is very tragic
story," he said quickly. 

Ranma interjected, "Yes, yes, I know. Very tragic story. Now which one
is it?"

The Guide sighed. Even when they listened, it did no good. He said,
"Very well, Honored Customer, I see you will not listen, like all the
others. Nyannichuan is this way." He led the boy on a careful path 
through the pools, before finally pointing to one. 

He sighed and watched, as the young man set down his pack, then waded in
and dunked his head. She broke the surface, brilliant red hair
glistening in the sun. The Guide gulped and quickly turned away, as she
rose. The shirt that had been tight on the young man was looser on her
slim waist, but threatening to burst under the pressure from her chest.
She looked down. "Damn," she said, feeling the unfamiliar tightness
around her chest, then quickly stripped off the shirt. The Guide
fainted.

Climbing out of the pool, she rummaged in her pack for a minute or two,
found a looser shirt and put it on. Looking over at the Guide, laying in
a pool of blood that seemed to have leaked from his nose, she lifted him
easily to her shoulders, then tromped back the way she had come,
focusing the Juushin Jisei to keep from accidentally falling into any of
the other pools.

When the Guide came to, he was lying in his own bed, a cool cloth on his
forehead, being watched by the beautiful redhead. She was nearly a foot
shorter than her male side, built smaller, but still well muscled.
"Sorry to put you through that," she said, her voice softer and richer
than it had been as a man. He gulped again in surprise. A customer
apologizing to him? That had never happened before. They were always
furious with him, even though he tried as hard as he could to stop them. 

"You... you knew what would happen?" he asked, his fear clear in his
voice.

She laughed, a delightful sound. "Yes, I knew." She reached out and
picked up a cup of hot tea from the table. He had not noticed at first,
in his disorientation, but as he gratefully accepted the tea from the
young woman, he saw that she had apparently cooked a simple meal of
ramen, as well as making tea for him.

She stood and bowed low to him. "I thank you, Honored Guide, for your
assistance. I apologize for the inconvenience I have caused you. Please
accept this meal as a token of my gratitude."

Before he could respond, Ranma had vanished out the door. He needed to
find a place to meditate without needing to worry about being
interrupted. For a moment, he considered simply using the Juushin Jisei
to fly across the pools but he discarded the idea, remembering Alana's
warnings about the nearby tribes. The area was strong in martial arts
and chances were good that if he flared his ki here, someone would
notice. That would not be conducive to his remaining uninterrupted and
if he was interrupted he could not be certain of his effectiveness. His
combat skills would doubtless be hampered by the unfamiliar body. Simply
walking from the pool to the Guide's hut, he had observed that his
center of gravity had shifted and the extra mass on his chest was
especially sensitive to the effects of inertia, which could easily throw
off his balance in a fight.

Holding the Juushin Jisei at the ready to guard against a loss of
balance and uncomfortably aware of the risk of using even this much ki
openly, Ranma began bounding across the pools, springing from pole to
pole as he crossed the valley. Several times he nearly slipped but by
the time he leapt from the last pole to land on the solid ground beyond
the pools, his balance in his new female form was near perfect.

Some distance away still, three young warriors raced towards the springs
of Jusenkyou, towards the source of the powerful ki signature, under
orders from their elder, who awaited their return at the grounds where
they had been undergoing special training, some distance from their
village.

---

In a small cramped cave accessible through a vertical crack in an
otherwise smooth rock face, Ranma prepared to enter into meditation.
Though he had, as Alana had strongly suggested, come to terms with his
responsibility for his female half's imprisonment, he still felt the
need for atonement. He was not bound by grief or guilt over the choices
he had made. He had learned long ago, when dealing with the pain of
knowing he had killed, that guilt is useful only as a tool to urge the
soul to make amends. Not for many years had he allowed himself to feel
guilt beyond the level of a simple acknowledgement of the wrong he had
done and a recognition of what he could do to right that wrong. If he
could not, then weighting himself down with guilt over it would serve no
purpose.

In this situation he had felt great guilt at Alana's first words and
while he had set aside that guilt as unworthy--the decisions he had made
that led to the guilt had been made for the right reasons--he would
nonetheless do all in his power to make amends for the results of his
actions. That was one of the strongest lessons he had learned, one of
the teachings that had been the most difficult at first to accept. No
matter how correct the intentions or reasons behind your actions, no
matter how right you had been to do what you did, it did not excuse you
from facing the consequences of those actions. It was not necessary to
apologize only when you had acted poorly. Even when you did the best
you could possibly do, you were still responsible for the harm or ill
your actions caused.

He had buried his emotions to preserve others from pain and in so doing
he had created a new person. Now she was his responsibility, wholly and
completely, and strange as it seemed, he had to heal that breech and
become one with her, for to try and free her, as had been his first
impulse, would have truly meant rejecting her, casting her aside as
unworthy to be part of him.

He knelt on the floor of the cave and with swift leg sweeps, brushed
aside the accumulated dust. With claws of ki he carved the floor until
he had created a region that was almost perfectly flat, about twice the
diameter of his body. 

On this flat ground he drew a circle in chalk, the precise control
necessary emphasizing in his eyes the tiny size of his fine-boned
delicate hand. At the cardinal points he carefully drew the appropriate
runes, then stood within the center of the circle. He reached behind his
head and pulled off the small band that bound his hair. The glorious
fiery tresses spilled freely in wavy curves over his slim shoulders. 

Placing a prepared flask of water at a certain point in the circle, he
activated the circle, which shielded his ki from detection, then
activated the spell on the flask. Immediately it rose into the air, then
a stream of warm water splashed him, drying immediately as the water was
taken back into the flask.

His eyes flared with lambent blue flames as his attention turned inward.
A splash came again, cold this time, reshaping his body once more. Ranma
was a master of ki and barely ten splashes had passed before his body
wavered and shifted quite suddenly without the aid of water. Three more
splashes passed before warm water fell upon red hair and had no effect.

A wave of his hand canceled the spells as he... now she, dropped to the
ground, pulled her small feet onto her thighs and returned to
meditation. Five minutes came and went before she finally found the
emotional strength to begin one of the hardest tasks she had ever faced.
Within her, the walls of ice shivered. A crack appeared quite suddenly,
running vertically in a sheer translucent blue face of ice. It sealed
over quickly, but another crack formed a moment later, and then another. 

Sweat began to bead on her delicate face as she battled within herself,
fighting her instincts and habit built up over nine years. Tears pricked
the corners of her eyes as a sheet of ice fell away, releasing a wash of
pain and shame. More ice thundered down, leaving a gaping scar in the
wall, a scar that matched the one on her soul behind it, the recent and
painfully fresh scar of her failure, and tears began making slow tracks
down her face.

---

The guide stood at the doorway of his hut, staring across the valley of
pools, the valley of sorrow, thinking of the strange young man who had
come that morning and deliberately cursed himself to become a woman. She
had thanked him, which the victims never did. He was generally expected
to guide Nyannichuan victims to the Niechizu village, the nearest
village of the Joketsuzoku, the Chinese Amazons. She had not seemed a
victim though. It had been quite deliberate and she had shown no signs
of stress over it during the short time he had observed her.

Not that he was any great observer of human emotions; he was used to
people's reactions to being cursed though. Screaming, threats of
violence, actual violence, collapsing in shock, all these things he had
come to expect and understand. Cooking and making tea? That seemed more
than a bit unusual. It occurred to him then, as he watched the sun pierce
through the cloud cover that had recently obscured it and light up the
pools, turning them into a field of liquid gold, that he had collapsed
by the side of the pool and awoken in his bed. It hardly seemed
creditable, given what a small girl the young man had become but she
must have carried him back to the hut. She had had her backpack when she
left, as well, which meant either she had made a second trip through the
pools and managed to avoid the other pools all three times or she had
carried both the pack and himself, and avoided all the other pools.
Either way it was startling.

His attention was attracted away from the pools when he heard youthful
voices. Turning to face them he saw three mouth-wateringly beautiful
young Amazons leaping across the fields. The purple haired one landed
just in front of him. "Which way did the warrior go?" she snapped.

The guide shivered in fear and shook his head. "I did not see," he said
unhappily. Luckily for him the blue haired girl tapped the purple
haired one on the shoulder.

"The ki signature leads across the pools."

He lifted a shaking hand to his brow as he watched the three beautiful
and incredibly dangerous warriors race down the path that led around the
cursed pools.

Lilac lost the trail when they reached a cliff-face. Shampoo and Lilac
split up to walk in either direction along it, while Perfume scaled the
cliff to see if the warrior had gone in that direction.

Shampoo had gone but a little ways when the sound of sobbing caught her
ears. Following it led her to a cleft in the wall and the proximity told
her the sound was female. A sneer crept to her lips as she considered
the weakness of a warrior who would allow themselves to cry. Not that
she did not feel the need of a good cry herself sometimes, but at least
she... she flushed suddenly when she realized that the warrior obviously
had hidden herself away, just as Shampoo would have done. Releasing her
arrogance, Shampoo allowed herself to feel some sympathy for the
embarrassment and shame the warrior would doubtless feel when her
private cry was invaded. She had no choice though.

She gave a warbling call, like the cry of a certain bird well-known to
her companions. She waited until they were in sight before slipping into
the cleft to find the warrior.

Ranma was in a haze of pain and sorrow, overwhelmed by nine years of
hidden and suppressed emotions, suddenly freed to torment her. Even in
her unenviable condition, however, she continued to tear at the walls,
to destroy the barriers in her mind. Her judgement was not at its best
at the moment, though, and even as Shampoo approached, the final
barriers in Ranma's mind fell, releasing the Neko-ken into her waking
mind.

She had never experienced the spirit of the Neko-ken, having always fled
into the darkness before it escaped. It was not the same as embracing
the power of the Neko-ken, though that power did indeed fill her body
and her ki even as the spirit filled her soul.

The presence of the cat brought powerful instincts that she was unused
to dealing with, especially after having destroyed all of her usual
coping mechanisms, so she was in no state to resist its influence.
Drawing on her experience, her instincts told her that she needed
comfort, needed affection.

They built on her memories, the love and comfort the women of the castle
had given her contrasting with the respectful praise and guidance her
mostly male trainers had doled out, telling her in no uncertain terms
that only a woman would give her what she was in need of.

Shampoo stepped into the cleft and immediately her eyes were drawn to
the red-haired girl glowing with lambent blue flames, tears pouring
forth from her eyes but making it no further than her soft cheeks before
evaporating. She had only time enough to register shock that she could
actually see the girl's aura and admiration at the girl's figure and
obvious strength, when a sudden and visible change swept over the girl,
as she rolled forward onto her hands and knees, arching her back and
stretching lightly. She gave a single playful yet tearful, soulful meow,
before pouncing with a speed that gave Shampoo no time to react, sending
them tumbling out of the cleft. 

Shampoo rolled to a rest trying to recover her wits to defend herself,
seeing from the corner of her eye her two companions approaching at a
run, eyes wide, mouths open, but both prepared to strike. A deep,
rumbling purr interrupted her thoughts and all three girls stared in
wonder as they realized that the girl was curled in Shampoo's lap,
purring like a cat, rubbing her head against Shampoo's tummy.

"I think she favors you," smirked Perfume, arching an eyebrow at her
training partner and rival.

The girl butted her head imperiously against Shampoo, for all the world
like a cat demanding a caress and before she had a chance to consider
what she was doing, Shampoo found herself stroking the girl's unusually
fiery tresses. The purr deepened. Lilac glanced at Perfume for a moment.

"She hasn't stopped purring since she rolled you, Shampoo," she
commented curiously, "How's she doing that? She has to breathe, doesn't
she?"

"She is breathing," replied Shampoo archly, as she continued to stroke
the strangely behaving girl, for she could feel the girl's breasts
pressing and receding rhythmically against her lap.

"She's... she's also crying," commented Perfume, noticing this for the
first time.

"That's how I located her," responded Shampoo. "I heard her sobs."

Ranma was vaguely aware of the girls and their conversation, and wanted
to talk to them, but she was too emotionally exhausted to override the
cat's instincts and soon succumbed to the pleasure and the exhaustion,
falling into a deep sleep on the girl's lap.

When Shampoo saw that the little girl, who was strangely light, was
asleep, she tapped a shiatsu spot to help her stay that way, then lifted
the girl into her arms and struggled to her feet.

Rolling her onto her back to make carrying her easier brought her face
up to where the other two girls could get a better look at her. "She's
beautiful," Lilac breathed, "but she acts feral. Why would a feral girl
be so trusting?"

"Great-grandmother will know what to do," answered Shampoo with
confidence and her companions nodded. Together they set out to return
to the training grounds.

They were hardly half the way there when Shampoo stopped suddenly and
her companions, halting a few moments later and turning back to look at
her, saw that her burden was shifting in her arms. Shampoo was staring
down at the fiery tressed girl in her arms with alarm and amazement. "I
pressed her sleep point," she protested, "she can't be waking up."

Yet there was no question that that was in fact what she was doing.
Perfume made a snide remark about Shampoo's imminent re-education in
shiatsu at the hands of her great-grandmother, but Shampoo could see in
her eyes that she was as startled as Shampoo herself. All teasing aside,
they all knew that Shampoo had not missed the spot, not on an unmoving
target.

The three girls were surprised and concerned when the redhead's eyes
opened and tears immediately began leaking out. She meowed sorrowfully
once more before shifting in Shampoo's arms, putting her own slender
arms about Shampoo's neck and nuzzling her affectionately. Shampoo
stared down at the girl in surprise, noting absently that in the absence
of the flames the girl's eyes were still a startling shade of blue. The
girl did not move again, though Shampoo could feel the hot tears
trickling down her neck. She moved forward slowly and when the girl made
no protest but rather pressed tighter against her, purring softly, she
picked up the pace and they resumed their return journey.

They entered the clearing where they had been training to see Cologne
waiting by a fire. She watched their approach in silence but with
evident interest. She was mildly disappointed to see that the warrior
they were returning with was female. The girl was being held by her
heir, who was noticeably uncomfortable with the slight girl's
open show of vulnerability and her apparent need for comfort. Shampoo
was quick to attempt to disentangle the girl to present her before
Cologne.

Cologne was somewhat startled when the first look that came into the
girl's eyes when they fell upon the tiny, wrinkled elder was not one of
fear nor disgust, but an almost predatory hunger. It faded almost
instantly into a desperate sorrow that touched even her heart, however,
and the girl was no sooner out of Shampoo's arms than she was behaving
in the strangest and yet most disturbingly familiar manner, remaining on
her hands and feet, rubbing up against Shampoo and mewling piteously,
like a cat begging for attention.

"Sit, Shampoo," Cologne instructed, "I first detected her near
Jusenkyou, we must test her for its waters." The moment her heir settled
onto the ground, the girl was on her like an affectionate kitten,
purring, distinctly purring, a continuous rumble from deep in her chest
that went on and on with no apparent connection to her breathing.

She gave the elder a reproachful glance when the hot water hit her and
she shook herself, an all-over shimmy that won a favoring glance from
Lilac. She hissed when cold water followed and darted from Shampoo's lap
to hide behind her, eyeing her little tormentor suspiciously. It was
Perfume who first noticed the change the elder's behavior brought about.

"She's stopped crying," she said. Shampoo tilted her head back to see
and jumped when her glance was met by a wet tongue against her cheek.
The wetness was immediately rubbed away by a rush of silky hair as the
feral girl rubbed her head against her protector.

At the same time, startlement and chill water had brought a temporary
end to Ranma's mournful reverie, bringing her back to the present. At
first she made no move to take control from the cat, feeling
overwhelmingly startled at the change in her surroundings and further
disoriented by the alterations in her senses.

She would have expected to have no problems there, having attained the
use of the heightened senses the Neko-ken granted during her training
long before but in fact there seemed no comparison. It was not that they
were better, for the improvement was the same. The disorientation was
rather due to the presence of the cat's instincts, linking the sights
and smells into a series of identifications and behaviors. 

The peculiar wrinkled old woman, looking disturbingly like the
grandmaster of Ranma's former school, Happosai, smelled old and leathery
and bad to eat, for all that sight labeled her prey, which together put
her in the realm of chew-toys and playthings, and Ranma felt an urge to
stalk her. The two standing girls smelled pleasant and nice and were
classed as potential pets, toys that could be trained to pet her and
cuddle her and feed her and so should be treated nicely. The sitting
girl, however, smelled nicer still, for she smelled pleasant but also
familiar, she was an actual pet, a proven source of cuddling and
nice sensations.

Ranma was only beginning to work through these feelings and thoughts and
was not yet near to attempting to regain control when a stick thrown at
her triggered a defensive reaction. Her hand lashed out as she hissed in
anger. The stick was sliced cleanly into five pieces, though it came no
nearer than a few inches from her fingers.

Shampoo was startled by the sudden throw but was even more shocked by
her great-grandmother's reaction. She had never seen fear on her
great-grandmother's face before. It took her several moments before
her trained mind recovered from the unexpected sight and analyzed it
properly. "She's not afraid for herself," Shampoo realized, "she's
afraid for me."

Cologne warned the other two girls away with her eyes then crept slowly
closer to her heir, watching the blue eyes that followed her movements
intently. When she was near enough she lashed out with her cane, aiming
for a disabling pressure point.

The cat's reactions were fast but Ranma was accustomed to the boost the
Neko-ken gave him and her trained reaction was faster still when alertly
defending against a recognizable attack. Cologne was alarmed to the core
of her being as she recovered in mid-air, having been thrown across the
clearing by a single finger meeting her questing staff-tip, in a move
she had not seen since the villainous Happosai fled their justice. She
was not nearly so shocked by the unexpectedly skilled defense as by the
fact that a warrior whom she had been certain was under the influence of
the Neko-ken had just used a skilled technique, rather than batting at
her as a cat might, which she had been prepared to defend against.

The three girls were quite simply stunned and disbelieving, unable to
comprehend someone so easily defending against an Amazon elder,
especially someone who looked as young as this girl, who was surely no
older than they.

Cologne recovered easily, bounding back to land again by the fire, where
she waited, warily watching the flame-haired girl. Staring into her blue
eyes, Cologne became aware that there was a gleam of intelligence in
them in spite of her feral behavior. She sat and set aside her cane.
Immediately, as if perfectly aware of the significance of her actions,
the girl bounded back into Shampoo's lap, purring happily, but watching
Cologne closely.

Shampoo's eyes slowly lost their wide look of shock and refocused on her
great-grandmother, even as the other two girls responded to Cologne's
gestures by sitting near Shampoo. Ranma found herself distracted once
more. She had been trying to focus on the old woman, so obviously a
skilled martial artist, probably the trainer of these three girls, but
the moment the cat felt the nearness of another of the potential pets,
she found herself butting her head against the girl's thigh, then
purring deeply as the girl responded by stroking her brilliant red hair.
Shampoo joined in almost absently, stroking down Ranma's back. If Ranma
had had a tail there can be little doubt that Perfume would have joined
in stroking it, as they began to tell their elder what had happened.

Ranma wanted to listen to their story, once she realized what they were
doing, but she found the caresses too distracting. They were so
comforting, so soothing, that she soon found herself lulled to sleep
once more.

Cologne listened to the tale the girls wove with patient attention and
the growing sense that something was not adding up. The flash of ki that
came when the redhead had slashed apart the stick was almost
unnoticeable and was certainly not something that she should have felt
across such a distance, so it could not account for the surge they had
all felt.

The girl was unquestionably behaving in a feline manner, but she had
reacted to Cologne's attack with a skilled defense. That implied a
degree of intelligence belied by her having yet to say a word. She had
apparently been in the depths of sorrow and sobbing like a human when
she was found, yet she had reacted to Shampoo's presence in a cat-like
manner. A Neko-ken warrior should not react to a sudden and unexpected
presence by seeking comfort from it. Indeed, all Cologne's knowledge of
them indicated that the girl should have viciously defended herself, a
thought that sent a pang of fear and sorrow through the old woman's
heart as she pictured the effect such an attack would have had on her
unprepared heir.

Most certainly, outside of any other considerations, no Neko-ken warrior
should have been willing to go to sleep in the presence of one who had
attacked her.