Die by the Sword

By Kyokukou

Disclaimer : I don't own the characters from Ranma 1/2 only the characters 
that I write myself . So please don't sue me ! But if you try to use my 
characters .....there will be ...unpleasant consequences if I find out . Do 
not repost or reprint this without my permission , however if you do ASK 
there is a good chance I will let you .


" We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we 
love."
                                            -Madame De Stael


Chapter 21
Seek satori 

    
    What a patsy! This girl had way too much ambition and not enough thoughts in 
her head. He watched her through the window that separated the inside of the 
derelict building he stood in from the debris strewn lot that his sacrificial 
pawn ‘stalked’ her quarry in. 
    Paladin stood at the front of a rusting car frame. Looking rather amused at 
the whole situation. The patsy had thrown a knife through the window of 
Paladin’s base of operations, a note had been tied to the hilt. He guessed that 
it had said something along the lines of a generic ‘come out and fight’ taunt.
“ I know you’re out there.” The laser mic aimed at the one remaining intact 
window of another chopped car in the lot picked up all sound outside as if he 
had been standing there himself. Even if he did not catch everything that was 
said, he had the mic on record as a precaution.
    He had decided to throw just about every plan he could at Paladin that even 
stood a slim chance of success at killing his dangerous client. All with the 
sole aim of gathering as much information about Paladin’s combat habits as 
possible. This girl did not stand a chance of killing Paladin. However, her 
failure and most probable death would not be in vain. He would know just that 
much more about how Paladin operated. Would he gloat before the kill? Or do the 
sensible and safe thing by gloating over the corpse? Quick kill? Or the 
vindictive type of slow physical destruction? Each answer would help him perfect 
a strategy to kill the man.
    Finding his current patsy had been all too easy. 
Newbies had to run the meat grinder of posting resumes on certain discreet 
boards. It was a way for someone new to get their reputation out and build up a 
brag sheet. However, the jobs there were dirty and paid dirt. So most newbies 
ended up under the dirt as a consequence. This ensured that the survivors were 
of a breed too smart, or too tough, or too damn good to be killed or caught so 
easily. That was when a career really began. This girl, who went by the street 
handle Lolita, was just one unfortunate newbie who was obviously neither smart, 
nor good. If she was tough enough to survive this encounter remained to be seen.
“ Oh come on, do you think that you’re going to jump me or something?” Paladin’s 
amusement started to give way to impatience. “ If you’ve got cold feet then run 
away now or I’m going to have to come over there and start breaking bones in 
alphabetical order.”
    From his hidden vantage point, he could see his patsy obviously thinking 
over Paladin’s suggestion from her hiding place behind a sizeable mound of 
trash. The girl had a gun, a obviously second-hand or third-hand Vektor SP1 
Sport to be precise. Lolita brought two extra clips with her, each with fifteen 
nine millimeter parabellum. He decided that she probably would only get all the 
way through her initial clip if Paladin was feeling playful.
    Nodding to herself, the patsy slowly started to ease her gun up and around 
the edge of the trash pile, attempting to conceal the gun barrel amongst the 
trash. Now if she had only been smart enough to try to do the same to her head 
Paladin might have a harder time spotting her when she moved her head into the 
open to aim along the pistol’s sights. 
“ Cute.” Paladin commented, leaning to the side an instant before Lolita’s gun 
barked once. 
    The mic could not recover from the sudden percussion fast enough for him to 
hear the bullet hit the wall behind Paladin, but the puff of powdered brick told 
him that the round had been dead on. That is, if Paladin had not moved a quarter 
of a second beforehand. 
“ Come on!” Paladin grinned. “ I know that wasn’t a muzzle loader. You got more 
ammo…or did your gun jam?”
    Without the prudence to start cover fire and move position, or to at least 
get a better angle now that her position was known, Lolita took another shot. 
This time Paladin did not even move. The round still struck the wall behind him.
“ AIM!” Paladin barked, his expression now annoyed. 
    This time Paladin dodged to the other side, once again barely a quarter of a 
second before the shot rang out. He would have to review the video that he had 
running out in his sniper nest. With a little calculation he could figure out 
exactly what timeframe Paladin dodged in. A quarter second might just be an off 
guess. In any event, could it be possible to train himself to fire accurately 
and fire faster than Paladin’s aim dodging trick?
    The dance continued for twelve more shots before Lolita dove and rolled to 
deeper cover. Amateur. If she had just used a low run it would have been faster, 
and she would have not lost needed reloading time. Paladin had no gun, no need 
to roll.
“ HEY!” Paladin cupped his hands around his mouth and called. “ How much more 
ammo do you have? I need some more practice.” 
“ Just DIE!” Lolita screamed in fear, bringing her pistol to bear again.
“ Um…no.” Paladin smiled and shook his head, preemptively dodging each shot’s 
path individually. 
“ Why won’t you die?!” Lolita stood out in the open now, forsaking cover for 
clear shots.
    Another clip ran dry. The buildings surrounding the lot peppered with 
fifteen more bullets. Paladin had yet to start breathing abnormally, much less 
break a sweat. This guy was starting to worry him. It was bad enough that 
Paladin could read the path of a bullet by the aim of the barrel pointed at him, 
it was worse that this feat was apparently no strain at all.
“ Alright, this is getting old.” Paladin announced.
    Lolita brought her reloaded gun to bear, but Paladin was gone. Then she 
heard the thump of Paladin landing behind her. Paladin waited for her to spin, 
the gun out and raised before her. Whatever Paladin did, it was too fast for him 
to see. He would have to go frame by frame on the video for that. But whatever 
it was, the flicker of motion caused Lolita’s gun to fly off, bent like a 
boomerang. Her gun arm fell limp at her side and so did her other arm. But she 
did not appear to be in any great deal of pain, just an inordinate amount of 
terror.
“ Alright, you should know the drill.” Paladin swept her legs out from under 
her, but held her upright with one hand cupping her chin. “ Who sent you, how 
much, who are you, bla, bla, bla…” 
“ Please don’t hurt me.” Lolita’s voice shook so much it slurred her words. Very 
unprofessional.
“ No, no, no.” Paladin gently shook Lolita’s head from side to side. “ It’s not 
‘please don’t hurt me’ it’s ‘please don’t kill me’. Now try again.”
“ Please don’t kill me.” Tears started streaming down the newbie’s face.
“ Better. Now on to the usual drill of questions.” 
“ Anonymous contract.” Lolita blubbered. “ For one hundred fifty thousand yen.”
“ One hundred fifty thousand? Whoever put that contract out did not expect it to 
be completed. I usually go for a few hundred million yen. Someone used you. Next 
question.”
“ I’m Lolita.”
“ Real name please.” Paladin eased her head back more, to look up at him from 
her kneeling position. “ What’s on your birth certificate?” 
“ Fukunaga Yui.” The patsy sobbed. “ Please don’t kill me. I promise I’ll work 
for you. I’ll find out who used me. I’ll do anything you want!”
“ Um, Yui? Reality check here.” Paladin shook her head a little to get Yui to 
open her eyes and look at him. “ You will do anything I want anyway. I kinda 
have you at what is called in the business, my mercy. If you can’t kill me with 
your best shots then there is no way in hell for you to kill me in hand to hand. 
You were sent here to be a probe of some sort. We’re being filmed right now 
probably. Now proper etiquette states that in this situation I should put up a 
good show and kill you in some fancy way and state my response to the hidden 
camera and probably the hidden microphone. Then I walk away and wait for the 
next move. Trust me, I’ve played this game before. You’re just a pawn sent here 
for me to kill for the benefit of someone else. Now I would normally not have 
anything against you, Yui, but you did try to kill me. Now how does that make me 
feel? I mean, how do you feel right now knowing that I’m going to kill you just 
to satisfy etiquette?”
    Yui’s response was to break down. In between her sobs he could hear her 
confessing her entire life, pleading for him to do anything but kill her.
    Women. He had yet to come across a woman that wouldn’t offer herself 
sexually when her life was on the line. Men were different, even homosexuals 
preferred to plead for mercy or die, never offer. Maybe it was just the way men 
were raised?
“ I know you want to, but you’re not making this any more difficult.” Paladin 
looked rather annoyed. “ All you’re accomplishing is shaming the Fukunaga name 
even more than you already did by trying to become a hitwoman. Now, the mercy 
I’ll give you is time to pull yourself together and die with dignity. Or do you 
want to go out like a screaming newborn in an earthquake?”
    This was an interesting development. Not exactly a soft side, but some form 
of honor code?
    Yui took a deep breath and calmed her sobs, but the tears still flowed. 
” Please listen, I’ll do anything for you if you don’t kill me. I’ll be your 
slave, I’ll even be your pawn if you’ll just let me live a little longer.”
“ If I wanted a sex slave I’d seduce or buy one.” Paladin tightened his grip on 
her jaw. Yui’s eyes squeezed shut in pain. “ Don’t get me wrong, you’re 
definitely pretty enough. Maybe you should have chosen a different line of work. 
I really could see you as having become a porn star.” As he spoke, Paladin 
reached under his sweater and behind his back to retrieve an marble white tonfa. 
“ As an assassin you’re so-so, but I can’t see much potential for improvement.”
    Paladin’s arm disappeared in the same instant that Yui’s head from the lips 
up exploded sideways. The fluids and pieces splashing out on to the lot. Paladin 
let the body fall back before the squirting blood and CSF could reach his hand. 
The tonfa remained pristine, only one drop of blood slid off its tip to leave 
the weapon apparently clean and dry.
    Must be coated with something like Teflon. 
“ Alright, now I think that was enough of a showy manner.” Paladin announced to 
the microphone he knew was listening. “ Now, whoever did this, you got your show 
and your info. So make it interesting when you yourself come to kill me. Oh 
yeah, and no more pawns like this. It’s embarrassing to kill someone who’s that
helpless.”
    Killing this man would take some doing. Now he just had to pack up and go 
review the video.

  

    “ Is she alive?” Kasumi reached out to touch Nabiki, but Akane’s hand 
intercepted her own.
“ No, Kasumi, she’s not.” Akane shook her head slowly. “ But she’s not beyond 
our help now.”
“ What? I don’t understand. She’s either dead or she’s not.”
    The young girl that had come with Ranma and cast some sort of powerful spell 
on Nabiki spoke up. Since the casting of the spell the stranger had been 
exhausted, barely able to sit up. Her voice was tired and low as she spoke.
“ Here’s the lowdown on Nabiki’s current situation: What I did was essentially 
stop the presses inside Nabiki’s body. Everything from the outer layer of skin 
on inside is more or less stopped in time. Biologically that is. Chronomancy is 
beyond me, but this isn’t. You see, she may have experienced clinical death. 
Ya’know no respiration or heartbeat, but that doesn’t mean that all the cells in 
her body just kick off the moment she stops breathing. If we really did get to 
her in less than five minutes then I doubt that there is any big damage even to 
her brain. The CPR was just a precaution, get more oxygen into her blood and to 
that brain. So now her body’s cells are stopped. No real fluid movement, no 
chemical reactions of any kind. As biology goes, she’s frozen in time.”
“ For how long?” Akane asked.
    The stranger shrugged. “ Never had to make the spell last longer than a 
month, but I think that it’s good for a year and a day. If not, I can just cast 
it again. I’ll be up to it in a few days.”
“ If she’s dead, then what good is this?” Kasumi asked. “ I doubt that medical 
science will develop some new resuscitation method in a year.”
“ Resuscitation is the least of our problems.” Ranma said.
    All eyes turned to where small red head sat, at the porch, holding something 
small between her fingertips.
“ Getting Nabiki’s soul back is the problem.” Ranma tossed the metal chip in the 
space between Akane and Kasumi. “ That sword was covered in a venom, it felt 
like a sea-snake’s when I purged her blood. If I’m not mistaken all the sword 
needs is to kill someone to take their soul. So we need that sword before we can 
do anything further for Nabiki.”
    As the two sisters watched the chip between them the metal sliver seemed to 
evaporate slowly.
“ The sword is healing itself.” Akane picked up the chip. “ Even if the sword 
needs to kill, broken as it was there probably was a chip like this one still in 
her when she died.”
“ Either way it looks like Raishal has her soul.” Ranma nodded.
“ What if he doesn’t?” Kasumi asked.
    Akane opened her mouth, then closed it. Ranma gave Kasumi a small smile.
“ If we find out that the sword did not or could not take her soul then we’ll 
just have to try and resuscitate her. Either she will come back or she won’t. 
Simple as that.” 
“ How can you call that simple?” Akane stood.
“ Only two basic outcomes.” Ranma turned away from them and looked out to the 
ruined koi pond. “ Simple. Either Nabiki will return to the torture of life, or 
she will choose the next world. Few ever get the choice. Fewer still choose to 
come back. If her soul is not in the next world then she’ll have little choice 
but to return and no bias against life. If her soul has experienced the next 
life then she may be too afraid to come back to us. No fault of her own.”
“ Of course she’d chose to live!” Akane stormed up to Ranma.
“ Nabiki loves life too much to give it up!” Kasumi said.
    Ranma neither physically reacted to them, nor did she look to either sister. 
Instead her eyes grew distant.
“ I love life.” Ranma said. “ But I would have not come back if I had been given 
the choice like she might have. I didn’t have a choice. She will.”
    Akane looked to Kasumi for guidance, Ranma’s words confusing her. Kasumi 
only sat by Nabiki’s body, staring at Ranma’s back.
“ What do mean, Ranma?” Akane asked. “ If you died before, who could stop you 
from having the choice to live or not?”
“ I do not have permission to die.” Ranma answered. “ Disobedience is not an 
option. But we have more pressing matters. Leonorah?”
“ Boss?”
“ Fetch my sword and bring it to my room.” Ranma stood started for her room.
“ Wait, why are you going now?” Kasumi stood up in his way. “ Otama is still 
unconscious, your friend is exhausted so you’ll be without magic support against 
Raishal’s magic. Akane and I would be your only help.”
    Ranma stepped around Kasumi. “ I’m brining my daisho, I won’t need help.”
“ Ranma,” The stranger said to him as he walked past. “ most of what he has is 
designed to go against a close combat opponent.”
“ Then I’ll have to keep that in mind, thank you.” Ranma said before exiting the 
room.
    Leonorah climbed back on the porch with the sheathed katana in her arms. She 
paused when walking past Nabiki but hurried on after Ranma.
“ This is madness.” Kasumi scowled. “ Raishal stood, saluted and ran away after 
I broke just about every bone in his body dozens of times. If that won’t stop 
him what will?”
“ You never saw Ranma demonstrate a few things for Nabiki and I.” Akane consoled 
her sister. “ I’d wager that he’s stronger in the art than even you are. If we 
go along with him then that bastard won’t stand a chance! Magic or no magic, at 
the worst we’ll just overwhelm him.”
“ Don’t count on that.” The stranger sighed. “ Like I said, he’s stocked himself 
with wards and fetishes with you gals specifically in mind.”
“ So what are we supposed to do?” Akane snapped. “ Give up?!”
“ No,” Kasumi answered for the stranger. “ we wait and plan before going after 
Raishal.”
“ No need.” Ranma walked between them. Startling both sisters by his sudden 
appearance, and by being male again. “ You two will stay here and look after 
Rei, Nabiki’s body and Otama. I should be back with the sword before tomorrow.”
    The two scabbards arcing down from the sash tied around Ranma’s waist gave 
an anachronistic appearance to the scene of Ranma pausing over Nabiki’s still 
corpse. Anachronistic the swords were on Ranma as he was dressed in his loose 
silk pants and sleeveless vest, but no less ominous. Something about the way 
they naturally sat on his hip stopped anyone from speaking. Hypnotized by the 
way they shifted and balanced with each step and movement, more apart of Ranma 
than the clothing he wore.
“ Leonorah?” Ranma whispered.
“ Boss?” The young girl hurried to Ranma’s side.
    Ranma whispered something in her ear. The thin girl nodded, listened to more 
lengthy instructions, and nodded again. “ I will Boss.” 
    Without further word Ranma walked out of the room and into the back yard. 
The young man appeared to take a deep breath before vanishing from sight in a 
small cloud of dust kicked up from the ground. Kasumi watched a distant figure 
land on a roof blocks away. The figure leapt away the instant it touched the 
roof. Soon she could no longer see Ranma in the distance. 
“ What do we do now?” Akane asked Kasumi.
    Leonorah approached them and put a hand on each of their shoulders. “ Boss 
knows what he’s doing. We leave it in his hands and do what we can here. Akane, 
how is Otama?”
“ It feels like she’s sleeping.” Akane answered after a pause. “ When Raishal 
attacked you she tried some spell that I have never seen before. I don’t know 
what Raishal did but it went through the spell and back to her. It blacked me 
out for a good thirty seconds or more. I can only imagine how hard it hit 
Otama.”
“ Why don’t you take a short lie down and see if you can’t help Otama?” Leonorah 
suggested.
    Akane nodded and headed for the couch. Leonorah turned to Kasumi and spoke 
softer than Akane could hear. “ While she’s looking after Otama you and I should 
move Nabiki’s body to the bed in her room.”
“ Why?”
“ Boss said that we might have to keep it the way it is for a few days whether 
or not we get the sword back immediately.” 
“ You mean he wants to keep me busy so I don’t break down.”
“ And me too.” The thin girl smiled with a film of held tears in her eyes.
“ You’re a brave girl, you know that?” Kasumi smiled.
“ I’m trying.” Leonorah said before turning to the girl that Ranma had brought 
with him. “ Rei, isn’t it? Boss said for you to take a nap in his room, and that 
the new issue of Shoten Jump is by his pillow.”
“ Great, I haven’t bought that one yet.” Rei got to her feet and yawned. “ Don’t 
wake me please. I’ll need all the sleep I can get.”
    Rei caught Kasumi’s harsh look. “ My sister just died.” Kasumi stated. “ I 
think you’re taking this a little too lightly.”
“ I told you that I’ve done this before. Nabiki’ll be back before you know it. 
I’d bet that Ranma is acting so serious just for the sake of you and your 
sister. I’ll tell you what might make you feel better: think about what you’re 
going to do with Nabiki when she gets back. I’m going to try to get her to buy 
that girdle of Aphrodite that I got from Crete a week ago.” With that said, Rei 
retired to Ranma’s room.
    Kasumi looked to Leonorah. Who knelt at the feet of Nabiki’s body. “ I’ll 
get the legs if you can lift the torso. And I’ll have a long talk with Nabiki 
about our relationship when she gets back. This dying thing just isn’t good for 
our working relationship.”
    Kasumi tried to smile. “ I can handle her on my own.” She knelt and slid one 
arm under the knees and the other under the shoulders and lifted the warm body.
“ I’ll open doors, I guess.” Leonorah shrugged.
“ I suppose I’ll have to cook a welcome-back-to-life dinner for her.” She held 
the body closer as they ascended the stairs to Nabiki’s room. “ Nabiki’s a picky 
eater, I’ll have to take time in selecting the dishes.”
    Leonorah opened the door to Nabiki’s room and held it for Kasumi to shuffle 
in with her burden. The younger girl pulled back the bed covers and Kasumi sat 
down on the bed. 
“ Take her socks off, please.” 
“ Why?”
“ They are dirty and wet.” Kasumi began. “ If the spell is from the second layer 
of skin inwards then that means that the outer layer is still vulnerable to 
infection and such. Before we leave her here we’re going to have to undress her 
and make sure that the rest of her is clean and dry as well as dressing the her 
wound.”
“ Oh…I, uh, never thought of that.” 
“ No reason why you should have.” Kasumi leaned the body’s torso against her and 
reached around to start undoing the belt and fly. “ Now get her socks off, and 
put them in the hamper. But this shirt and these pants are ruined. Just fold 
them up and put them by the hamper.”
    Once they started pulling the pants off, for no reason, Kasumi became 
acutely aware of just how limp her sister’s body was, how dead it felt as the 
warmth was already fading. She watched her vision blur over with tears while the 
two of them worked.
“ Leonorah, could you go to the closet just down the hall and get some towels 
and the first aid kit there? The Kit will be in the far left corner behind the 
vacuum cleaner.”
    Once Leonorah had left the room she gave in to the tears. Holding the naked 
body of her dead sister she wept into Nabiki’s hair, hugging the body close. 
Wishing that her sister could return the embrace. A few minutes later she 
recovered her composure enough to dry her eyes and wonder why Leonorah wasn’t 
back. Then the door opened and Leonorah promptly entered with the requested 
items.
“ I, uh, had some trouble getting the kit.” The younger girl stared at the floor 
with eyes reddened by her own tears.
“ Thank you.” Kasumi said.
    Without words only gestures, the pair laid the body out on a long towel. 
Kasumi closed and dressed the wound while Leonorah cleaned the rest of the body.
“ I’ll go get one of her robes.” Kasumi said. 
    When she turned away from the closet Leonorah was staring at her with a 
frustrated expression.
“ What’s wrong?” Kasumi asked.
“ Why the hell are we getting so worked up about this?” Leonorah balled her 
hands into fists. “ She’s coming back. She’s dead, but she’ll be back in no 
time. So why the hell do I feel like I can’t breathe? Like I could cry forever? 
It’s so stupid!”
“ It’s not stupid.” Kasumi laid the robe by the body and took the younger girl 
by the shoulders. “ Do you cry when a friend leaves for a trip far away? Do you 
feel sad when someone you care for gets hurt? Those are not stupid. Neither is 
this. My sister is dead. She may be coming back, but I can’t think of a farther 
journey or a greater wound than death. If I honestly did not think that she 
would be coming back I would still be sitting downstairs crying my eyes out.”
“ Thanks Kasumi, I think I get the message.” The younger girl nodded.
“ Alright. I’ll lift her, you take the towel away and put the robe down.”
    When they left the room Nabiki looked to Kasumi like the sleeping princess 
from that western children’s story book. She only hoped that Ranma would be back 
soon to reawaken her.

                           *         *         *

    “ You know why I’m here.” Ranma stated.
“ Ah. Much sooner than I expected.” Raishal stood and turned to face his 
pursuer. “ Can I ask who you are first?”
    Ranma stood on the north side of the overpass, at the point where the 
incline flattens to a level bridge until the south side slopes downward again.
When Ranma arrived Raishal had been sitting in the road. In the blind spot of 
the oncoming traffic of that lane. 
“ Who I am does not matter as much as who you just killed.” Ranma answered.
    To Ranma’s puzzlement his words invoked an entirely different reaction from 
the tattooed man than he had expected. The sorrow on his face bordered on 
madness. 
“ I never knew it would happen like this!” Raishal cried. “ I thought I could 
simply trap her soul in this sword and that would be the end of it! That I could 
move on to publish my music and live out this incarnation in some modicum of 
peace.”
    As he spoke Raishal staggered about the lane, like a man in shock, clutching 
his wounds.
“ What went wrong then?” Ranma scanned the area around Raishal for the sword. 
Raishal did not even have the empty scabbard on his person, and there were only 
construction debris on the two lane overpass.
“ Can you imagine the purity of a soul? The beauty of a soul? Nabiki’s feelings, 
Nabiki’s dreams, Nabiki’s intentions, Nabiki, Nabiki, NABIKI!” Raishal clutched 
at his head as if trying to keep his skull from tearing itself apart from the 
inside. “ All that she was, all that she ever could be went THROUGH me!” The 
tattooed man fell to his knees and beat his head against the concrete. “ Through 
me! Through me! Through me!”
    Ranma watched the blood on the road vanish almost as quickly as the self 
inflicted wounds on the Indian man himself. Ranma decided to wait and see if the 
man would volunteer the sword’s location. The bridge was newly constructed, and 
not open to traffic yet. He had time to let the man abuse himself. All Ranma had 
to do was prevent his suicide until the sword’s location was known.
    Raishal ceased his own beating and stood up again. 
“ If you came here to kill me then I welcome you. I need to validate myself. I 
need to know that what I did wasn’t meaningless. I need to know whether I am 
suffering from being right or from being horribly wrong.”
“ You’re suffering from being horribly wrong.” Ranma stated.
“ Nothing is as easy as so few words.” Raishal’s manner shifted. Ranma knew that 
shift, the sharpening of focus. The conscious decision to kill. “ I will have my 
answer by your swords there. Will my karma be worse than yours? Could my taking 
of Nabiki’s soul be worse than the blood I smell on your karma?”
    So much for letting the man confess the location. 
“ I’m not here for some lengthy showdown.” Ranma shook his head. “ I followed 
you here for two things, that sword and your life.” 
“ The sword?” Raishal growled in disgust. “ I threw it in the back of a 
mailman’s truck on the way over here. I couldn’t stand the touch of Nabiki’s 
soul any longer. It pained me too much.”
    At this time the mail trucks were heading back to their post offices. That 
narrowed it down. Ranma set to assessing what this man had on him that was 
responsible for his regeneration.
“ Now we duel. If you kill me then I know that I was in the wrong and will be 
reincarnated appropriately. If you die by my bare hands then I know that what I 
did was the right thing and I can bear my suffering through righteousne-“
“ Shut up.” Ranma watched the shattered topaz talismans fall to the ground.



     “ Shut up.” The words were not from across the bridge, but barely a hand’s 
span in front of his face. There had been no afterimage, there was no back draft 
of air from the motion. It was as if the swordsman had not crossed the space 
between them. 
    One moment he had been speaking to the swordsman, then his necklace, 
Amelioration, shattered an indeterminable instant before a palm gently touched 
his stomach and all feeling below his navel vanished in a explosion of agony.
    His legs collapsed under him, nerveless. Only his hands propped him up from 
the ground. He looked up at the swordsman standing over him. The man gazed back 
down at him without expression.
“ I told you I did not come here for a showdown. I told you that you were 
horribly wrong.” The swordman’s voice was as clear and even as any blade’s edge.
“ How?” He asked the man, looking down the bridge to where the man had stood.
“ You are just that wrong.” The swordsman replied. “ Killing is one thing. 
Killing and entrapping an immortal soul is a crime far beyond what your simple 
mind imagined it to be. I think that only after you felt it pass through you did 
you just begin to see the vast scale of your crime.”
“ Why haven’t you killed me yet?” He asked the swordsman.
“ I have.” There was no change in tone, only the most calm of announcements. “ I 
have shattered four of your lower vertebrae. Your lower spine is severed and the 
bone fragments have punctured arteries. You have only a few minutes left to 
live. I will grant you a quicker death if you wish it. But I would wait a while 
longer if I were you. Speak your last as you wish. Few get the privilege.”
    Raishal thought. With no future left to him in this life he thought with a 
clarity that he had never knew was possible before.
“ I wish that I could undo my crime as I pay for it. I do believe that I love 
Tendo Nabiki now. Ironic isn’t it? That I work for years to kill her. Only to 
love her after she is beyond even reincarnation. Actually, I think that after 
pursuing her for so many years, deep down, I never really expected to win. I 
have more than wasted this life. The only hope left is for my own soul to take 
what little wisdom I can from this. The rest is now my karma. 
    “ Swordsman, may my blood not haunt you as the rest that stains your hands 
does. End me now or leave me to pass as I will. Give me the death you wish.”
    Raishal watched as the swordsman took the scabbard in his left hand, as his 
Right hand floated up to the hilt.
“ My name is Saotome Ranma the Living Kodachi. Seek satori.”
    He heard the metallic click of the blade being thumbed out to sit loosely in 
the scabbard. Raishal closed his eyes and wished tha-



    Ranma checked his blade, no visible blood remained, but he ran the silk 
polishing cloth along both sides just in case. Then he looked down at the corpse 
at his feet. It had been a long time since he had killed. It still felt like 
nothing. No regret, no exhilaration, no sadness, or enjoyment. Yet he could not 
help but go overboard. As the Kodachi it had become as second nature as blinking 
to kill. It seems that it still took more effort for him not to go for the kill 
than to kill a man ten times over.
    He sheathed his sword and saw how to dispose of the body. Ranma reached down 
and plucked a porcelain phoenix from the belt on the remains. He had seen these 
used as a suicide attack even before he was made the Kodachi.
    When he left the overpass the golden light of the sunset masked the burning 
pyre on the bridge. In an hour only ash would remain in a puddle of molten 
concrete. The porcelain phoenix untouched, and lying in the ashes.
    He hoped that there was some redemption for those who learned from their 
mistakes, even if it was only at the end.














*Satori: A term for the state of deep intuitive illumination, enlightenment. 
Sought by Buddhists.

*Karma: Is your permanent record of sorts. All the actions from all your 
incarnations makes up your karma and thus decides your next life. 
Part of both the Hindu and Buddhist beliefs.