[Ranma] [Fanfic] [alt] [lemon] ranma.sosei

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic Alternate continuity: sosei (a deviating continuation, really)

Disclaimer: All Ranma-1/2 characters and plot elements used here are in fact the property of Rumiko Takahashi and her assigns, and are used without their knowledge or permission. This is fan-fiction: an open fan letter in prose.

Sosei

--siaru 11may01/17jun01/20Aug01/13oct01

Her light voice was almost a whisper. "You didn't have to be so gentle, you know."

He lay beside her, now, slightly panting, though certainly not with fatigue, one arm wrapped almost protectively around her chest. She waited to see whether that hand would rise toward her breast, signaling a resumption. When it didn't, she looked over, taking in his nude form in a glance, and smiled as his gaze caught hers. He smiled back, wordlessly sharing, obviously still more in the moment than in the conversation.

She leaned in and kissed him, then rolled over and curled up a little, sunning her fading afterglow in the light of the bedside lamp, and fished around in the purse on the stand for a cigarette. The lighter shook in her hand a little, making it hard to put the flame where it belonged. This one she really needed.

Behind her, she felt his movement as she pitched her first smoky breath away from him, gratefully allowing it to bring her gently back to earth. She felt the gentle rasp of terry-cloth against her buttock, and idly noted with passing gratitude that he'd thought to put down a towel to catch the wet spot, as he pulled it up and out from under her.

He found his words . "I... I don't like it rough. If that's how you wanted it, well, I'm sorry."

"No, no, that's not how I wanted it. I just didn't expect that."

"I don't know why everybody thinks I'm like that. I'm a martial artist..."

She cut him off, correcting, and looked over at him. "You're a warrior. You've shed blood to protect those you love. You've killed to preserve life; you told me so this evening."

He grimaced. "Whatever... just don't make me out to be some sadistic creep. Times like this... times when I can be gentle... they're something to fight for. Not in. I get enough fighting in the rest of my life."

He rolled off the bed, trailing the moist towel, and headed for the bathroom, to discard his used protection if nothing else.

She sat up and pulled up the sheet and blanket over her knees, one arm hovering over the bedside ashtray, and thought back over the evening.

They had met at a ladies-only bar, one with a discreetly ornate Romanji 'J' calligraphed on a sho-card sitting in the far corner of the front window, meaning that they accepted Jusenkyo girls as long as they were discreet. The brunette had no such concerns, but the redhead was courteous enough to wear a brooch composed of a single pearl surrounded by shaped pieces of crystal, the whole tastefully looking like a water droplet or a splashed tear. An ornament like that, some variation on a splashed-water theme, was the unobtrusive sign that the wearer was a hot or cold Jusenkyo girl, female at the moment but not permanently so.

Some had raised eyebrows at her entrance. Her attire, though modestly cut, was just a bit too boldly-colored a multi-hued earthy brown for an officelady to be wearing. Her unbound red hair fell in waves about her face, curtaining the green jade earrings. The handbag she clutched in two hands before her accentuated the emphatic look, being a modest yet massive natural-colored piece of tooled leather. She was a tiny woman, especially in the modest flats she wore, but her stance was devoid of timidity and her gaze was unabashed as she stood at the entry for a moment, looking around for an empty seat.

The brooch explained it all: typical male assertiveness- going-on-aggressiveness even in the act of being a woman... as if the violently red hair, something only chemicals or Jusenkyo could put on a Japanese woman, wasn't enough of a giveaway. Shoulders were turned at her arrival, making it obvious just where in the room she was not welcome.

The brunette had idly noticed her arrival. Then her eyes widened as something clicked in her memory. She picked up her large black purse from the barstool next to her and settled it into her lap, then turned back to her drink to await events.

In a seeming matter of moments, the redhead was sitting down and arranging herself on the barstool. She smiled over at the brunette. "Thanks."

The brunette shrugged and smiled back. "I wanted the company."

"Thanks again, then."

"I call myself Sosei."

"Ranko. Pleased to meetcha, Sosei."

There was something extra in the redhead's smile as she offered her hand for a firm handshake, something at once faintly mocking and collusive, as if they were blaspheming by sharing such a manly gesture while so obviously being other than men. The brunette returned her half-grin with added irony, carelessly putting some muscle in her momentary grasp, while capturing the sensations of the touch for later appreciation.

"And I you, Ranko."

The barkeep, an older woman in jeans and T-shirt, was peering at them through the curtain of inverted wine-glasses, so Ranko ordered, surreptitiously pushing the ashtray before her away. The barkeep noted that and included removing it from view in her brief touch-up swabbing of Ranko's bar space. Sosei noted it as well, tensed, and took one last drag on her cigarette before snubbing it out. Ranko glanced over and shrugged, smiling, as if to say, "Okay for you, it's just not my thing". Sosei nodded and relaxed, but made no immediate move to light another, instead ordering a fresh drink and resuming the conversation.

"I haven't seen you here before. Is this your first time here?"

"Nahhh. I come here and hang out when I feel lonely." She shrugged. "As long as I don't get thrown out, I've had my fun."

"We must have been just missing each other, then, if you've come here for that long."

"Maybe; it's not exactly the kind of place I would've gone to, before..."

"Before" was an understood reference-point, the time before the world changed, when, in the space of a year or so, Jusenkyo water went from being something totally unknown to something so pervasive and commonplace that now, over a decade later, parents were making it part of their children's early education, and there was talk of mandating single-gender classes in the schools with it. J-water was what had made gender a matter of choice rather than predestiny, and it had thereby turned societies like Japan upside-down by making every member of society potentially a member of the ruling class, subverting hierarchies from within, leaching away rigidity.

The change had propagated through customs and conventions, dissolving hard edges there too. Where once people would gather as walking untouchable islands of carefully conserved isolation, compressing into honeycombs of beelike conformity, now they flowed through each other's spaces, touching only as required and as welcomed but unimpeded nonetheless.

Here, for instance, where once only those who were born female and preferred female company were allowed, but now anyone was accepted, however begrudgedly, if they were female for the evening.

"...so you've been coming here for a long time?"

"For a few years, now, yes. These days it feels like home to me."

The redhead looked askance at her. "Home? A bar? Sounds a little obsessive, don't you think?"

The brunette thought a moment, then ruefully smiled. "Perhaps... but it's a benign obsession compared to some I've experienced." Some darkness passed across her expression.

The redhead raised her glass in appeasement and perhaps apology. "Better this, then. To home."

The brunette raised hers to clink against the other. "To obsession."

The redhead was taking her time, drinking her own coolers. From time to time she'd ask for more ice and then renew her own drink, pouring in turn from a litre of white wine and a bottle of mineral water. From the apparent proportions, it was barely alcoholic by the time she lifted it to her lips. Her eyes scanned their surroundings, her gaze still flickering around whenever something changed in the murmur of the background or the rhythm of movement near them. Having fun or not, she was keeping her edge.

The brunette had no such compunctions. She was well into her third mixed drink. She had allowed herself to get tipsy and stay there, but she kept up her side of the banter nonetheless. Her roving gaze became more blatant, though, obviously appreciating her companion's form and implicitly inviting her to do likewise. If the redhead was gaining a slight flush, it wasn't from the drink. The brunette's thin black dress, severe in simplicity, was molded to her form in the muggy air, disclosing much by silhouette that perhaps she had thought to hide, and she was increasingly aware of it. It was enticing, that visual adventure, of completing the suggested lines to map the woman underneath while under the woman's equally watchful gaze, almost daring each other to come out to play.

"Your hair, cut that way... it reminds me a lot of someone I know... but then you're nothing like her, I guess."

Her hair, helmet-cut, painfully clean, framed her long face, making it seem virginal in its isolation from her body, lending her the air of a modern saint. The effect was as deliberate as it was a lie; under the austere appearance, she was starting to smolder as she gathered in her not-so-covert glances at the redhead and now locked gazes with her.

"I copied it from someone when I had to make a change... perhaps the same person. Do you not like it?"

"No, no, it suits you... it reminded me, is all."

"Your red hair reminds me of people I met in the States. You're sure you're not really Irish..."

They kept their conversation light, mixing in little bits of personal viewpoint but forbearing to make the mix sodden by adding much history. There were shared giggles enough just from little anecdotes carefully rinsed of revealing antecedents, though not all of them were humorous.

"..and then he asked me, 'How long have you been like this?', and I said, 'Does it really matter? It's what I am now', and he got up and left. The next time I called, I found that I'd been disowned."

"Awww, man, that's worse than what I went through. Well, I had my father going, 'my son, acting like a girl, ohhh, the humiliation!' -- and he was a panda half the time, if ya can believe it."

"Somehow I've learned to doubt that impossibility exists."

"Oh, I've seen some things, lemme tell ya. There was this one time in China, these bird-people..."

There were shared smiles which grew warmer with repetition, telegraphed looks which shared volumes of their amusement with some of the remnants of pointlessly formal behavior around them, stylized to the point of homage of the very thing it mocked. The endless fractal permutations of The Hunt, unassuaged by gender and unchanged since their templates were painted on the walls of caves, were amusement to two who had only thought to warm themselves by firelight for a while, and so found the very companionship they disdained to chase. Perhaps it was that neither was visibly insecure enough to adopt the role of aggressor.

It was near closing time, when the redhead pulled out her wallet to pay for their last drinks, that the evening took on a deeper meaning for the brunette. In the casually-waved wallet was a photo of two faces she'd never thought to see again, both of which now had reached an almost mythical quality in her mind, her memories of them worn out from overexposure.

She suddenly knew that it would be tonight. A burden long-carried would be delivered to its rightful owner tonight, and nothing beyond that point was certain enough to envision. She was suddenly hungry to complete her mission.

When her hand closed on the redhead's as it sat on the bar, something like electricity seemed to pass. They smiled at each other, then the redhead twisted her hand to clasp hers. Their hands conjointly drooped away from the countertop to hang, still clasped, at their sides, while fingers caressed fingers and the sidelong smiles just grew warmer and more revealing.

The brunette leaned close and whispered. "Can we go someplace? I'd like to get closer to you... closer than this place will allow."

The redhead nodded. "Let's go."

In this age of Jusenkyo, one never knew what body features one's neighbors had gone through puberty learning to fixate on, and in the end it didn't matter. Nothing did but the touch and the sharing and the acceptance, and that was universal. The love-hotel clerk had only asked whether the rental was for two hours or twenty-four, and taken the money and handed out the key. If he had two shapely rears to view rather than one as they vanished up the hallway, and if he was of a proclivity to appreciate that, that was his business; no one else cared, not even the two women.

Once behind closed doors, their conversation had become mostly nonverbal. Helping each other to undress had progressed smoothly to helping each other to climax. The redhead had been so loving with her hands and her wandering kiss, giving freely as if grateful for the chance. She had returned the favor, but now she was left somewhat satiated by the sustained caress, and her redheaded partner was still tangibly on the prowl, still hungry for more.

Before the tide of tipsy afterglow haze could recede and leave her stranded in full awareness of her actions, she had reached up behind her for the idling small electric kettle, as standard an item as condoms for such rooms these days, and poured some hot-but-not-boiling water onto the head of the woman who lay on her. It was an option the brooch tacitly offered, but its significance here was far greater.

Even as she carefully negotiated replacing the kettle on the headboard, she felt the greater weight of her companion. She glanced at him, not daring to stare directly for fear of showing her reaction, and, even though she fully expected it, was momentarily stunned that her guess had been correct.

She carefully composed a smile in her mind, formulating it for what she wanted to openly express, before letting it out onto her face. Allowing the fading drink to make things hazy in her mind and thus her expression, she crookedly grinned up into his eyes. "Take me... Do with me what you will. It's only fair." Smiling, she closed her eyes and gave herself up to whatever he chose to do to her, no matter how degrading or painful.

What she expected... she wasn't sure. Ferocity, perhaps; or simple quick use.

What she felt instead was a gently insistent touch that crept around her anatomy and gradually flooded her senses, persistently refusing to allow any part of her to escape her arousal. It was more than fingers and mouth, it was the serpent-slide of chest against chest, his hard and scarred, hers soft and sensitive, making the contrast arousing of itself. It was that hard hot reminder, bumping around at the other end of his torso as he moved about on her, teasing her with its pointed promise. It was his aura, seeping softly into hers, even as she lay visualizing with eyes closed, and teasing hers up out of the boundaries of her skin to join it in enticing prominences. It was the beam of his gaze, tangible on her skin, bringing her erogenous parts to attention as it swept across them and summoned. It was his mouth against hers, returning to invite rather than force her to share a deep kiss, seemingly whenever she started to feel its lack. It was that extra touch between her legs, hungrily anticipated by both and now waiting to be welcomed home.

This wasn't ownership, this wasn't domination... this was a sensual dance of equals, he leading by mutual consent and consensus, with conjoint ecstacy as its mission. Her last contemplative thought, as coherent thought dissolved into the eternal now of the prolonged cascade of pleasure as soul touched soul and internal discourse became not worth the effort, was that this was indeed the punishment she had expected and sought, but it was all the more retributive for being so sublime.

She roused from her reverie, the cigarette long gone, when he came back from the bathroom, freshly washed of conjoint fluids, his hair pulled back into a rough ponytail, with a fresh towel and a washcloth. He lifted her up to place the towel beneath her, then sat beside her and gently persuaded her legs to spread, and softly swabbed away the fluids as they leaked out from her. His caring touch felt almost like a blessing, confirming to her that, in his mind, something special had happened here, was still happening, and it addressed more than lust. That made the poignancy the more painful to her. When he was done, she sat up, folding her legs, and leaned against him, putting one arm around him. His arm came around her, steadying their embrace.

"We've met before, you know."

Surprised, he pulled back to look at her face, then shrugged and gathered her closer. She put one arm around his neck; he pulled her in from her fold, closing his crossed legs protectively about her rear, allowing her legs to drape across his leg.

"I have to be honest, I don't recognize you from anywhere before... I'm sorry." He buried his head in her near shoulder for a moment. "If I never saw you as special before... I do now. We would not be here otherwise. Please tell me."

It was hard to think and speak clearly with his embrace enveloping her, his hand casually and protectively cupped around her breast. Even as she sighed and leaned into it, her head naturally tucking in below his chin, she fought to remain focused; she owed him that much.

She smiled sadly. "You wouldn't be so loving if you knew who I was."

He shrugged and shook his head. "I don't..."

She cut him off with a dismissive gesture. "Don't be apologetic. We've changed, me particularly. I don't mind your not recognizing me, I'm..." She smiled up at him. "...grateful, really, it means that I was successful in mending my ways, in changing those things about me that were so important back then but that cause me nothing but humiliation to recall now. No, that's the best thing you could have told me... thank you." She kissed his chest.

"But ...who..."

"Sometimes, with magic, what we most want for others is what they least deserve... and we the most."

"I don't follow you."

"Magic is sometimes our way of trying to give our delusions some persistence. Oftentimes it's innocent, even when it succeeds... but when our delusions involve others they become contentious and are thrown open to debate. I was... outvoted. What I sought for another was turned on myself... and now here I am."

He leaned back, propping himself on his arms, still anchored by her weight within and upon his crossed legs. He eyed her critically. "You're being vague."

"Deliberately. I'm savoring these moments, our peaceful moments together." She crossed her arms, idly rubbing her breasts with her thumbs in a gesture that was probably commonplace when they were a novelty. The gradual tautness of the self-hug, though, was not. It wasn't cold she was bracing against. "Your touch... in some ways it was special to me; and now it always will be. I was surprised by your gentleness, your caring. You have given me something infinitely precious to remember you by; perhaps, in a small way, some redemption."

"You make it sound like it can't last."

She looked up, longing fading through old dull pain and then to neutral clarity in her eyes as they met his, and momentarily found words difficult. That openness in his male gaze... She had never known how to interpret it before. Now she did, and it stunned her with just how much about him she had missed or misinterpreted when he had been right there in front of her all along. How much friendship had she spurned, how much had she ruined on her way to becoming forced to be herself... She rubbed her face with her hand. Her eyes ached from the effort to hold back tears. They were tears of self-pity; they had no place in this moment of developing honesty.

"How I truly wish it could..."

She shook her head, causing her hair to swing in a counter-rhythm curtain about her face. There were glimmers of tears in her eyes.

"It can't. When I tell you who I am, who I was, that will end this... and I don't want it to end. You're the first man who ever touched me that way... the first person who ever cared to try. I want to hold onto that for a few moments more... sorry. I promise to end the mystery; just please let me have a few more moments of this."

He nodded, visibly unsure of how to deal with this moment, openly hurt by her painful effort to remain composed, pain he couldn't help her with because she withheld its source; and that look on his face broke her mood.

She slumped, allowing her arm to slide down from its embrace of his shoulder. Her open hands cupped together in her lap, useless. Still cradled in his folded legs, she cringed from what must be, and began work on its arrival anyway; he deserved no less.

"I ...was not female when I was born; this you know. I am a woman, only a woman, now. This is my penance."

"So you were locked."

She nodded. Her tears were silently creeping out as she mourned the expected death of the intimacy even as it occurred. She felt his arms close around her again.

"I was splashed and I was locked... with the water I would have used to lock another. It was divine justice, given me by those around me. I was so deranged by my obsession that, even when others patiently explained it to me, I would not see the truth. I sought to free another with it, refusing to see that my actions would enslave her, she was already free..."

"She?"

She gulped back the lump in her throat, face averted, and nodded. Her voice came in a harsh whisper, obviously closed down on a sob. "She... my... my pig-tailed goddess."

She felt his embrace stiffen around her, then carefully relax into that special stillness which is the silent warrior's cry of challenge. His stillness gave away nothing and allowed her to fear everything. The last of her bravery dissolved into the silence. She leaned forward, up from his lap, reaching for her purse.

"I... I have shamed us further... I have something I must do, then... to atone..."

She reached into her handbag and pulled out a thin bundle wrapped in paper, tied with string.

"I will use this, and then you will do what must be done, and... No one knows who we are here, no one need know. This is for you... only for you... and for my shame."

He seized her wrist, squeezing gently. "NO. You don't need that... put it away. I don't want you dead... I never did, not even back then. Please."

His grip tightened. She allowed him to steer her hand back over to the open purse. It wasn't until his grip changed to address pressure points that her hand opened and allowed the wrapped tanto to fall into the purse.

"In spite of the dishonor I brought you?"

"What dishonor did you ever bring me? You had your problems, but they were your problems. Other than when you got in my way because of them, what should I be holding against you?"

"That I was obsessive? That I refused to see or acknowledge the truth about you, even when Jusenkyo water was becoming common here? When our friends were already living proof?"

His hands roughly grasped her shoulders, forcing her to face his concerned gaze. The mix of sympathy, pity, affection and familiarity in his gaze was like salt in the wounded ruins of her resolve. She would have wilted further if she could.

"That's not good enough. I don't buy that as a reason for you to die. I don't even buy it as a reason for me to stop caring. Maybe it changes things between us, a little, but... not much.

"Now, is this the last of the obsession? Please? That's what it was, y'know. I'd break that thing if I didn't think it'd do more harm than good. If you try to use it again, I might yet."

He pulled her into a tight embrace and simply held her there for long moments. She numbly felt his breath on her scalp, unable to do more than catalog sensations, evading thought.

His hand came up to gently stroke her hair. His other arm still held her in restraint. He had charge of this moment; she had abandoned all control of it with her final offer.

"You're different. Like another person entirely. Do still have that katana?"

"I gave it up... along with my name and my clan. I still have my old bokken, if you want it... I never use it myself now."

"You've changed, all right... How long have you been living as a woman?"

"Twelve years. I attended college this way in the States."

He shook his head. "It shows. Not even the old name fits you anymore, I just can't think of you that way. Funny... it's the ones who resist change the most, who change the most when it comes."

He gently shook his head again, carefully against hers. "No, I don't want you dead. You've... already gone through so much, it's like the only part of the old you I see in there is the memories. You're the woman I just met tonight, really, with just a history in common."

He leaned back, taking in her form anew with his gaze. She unconsciously arched her back to jut her breasts. He smiled, noticing. She took in the smile, noticed what he had, and returned the smile with a wry edge, almost mocking herself. That turned his smile to an affectionate grin which she shared with him, enjoying how much was said unspoken, how much intimacy had survived the disclosure.

"Look... whatever there is between us, it starts tonight, okay? I liked you when I met you tonight; I like you now. Maybe something more might come of it, we don't know that yet and right now maybe it doesn't matter. And our history... is just that. History. I don't even see the old you in there; how can you expect me to react to it? What I see is the woman I met tonight, someone I can relate to and care about, someone who maybe understands me just a little, and doesn't mind how many genders I have and how crazy my life gets."

She leaned into his embrace, put her arms awkwardly around his shoulders, and took him into a prolonged kiss. "I..." She raised her gaze to meet his, separated by mere inches. "I am honored. I want that. I... perhaps I need that... as long as that isn't fresh obsession." Her gaze dropped into introspection.

His momentarily tighter embrace shook her out of her dark reverie. "Do you still practice the Art? You were pretty good, all things considered. Sometimes I really had to work to take you out."

"I teach the arts now... Not the Art, just the arts. I practice unarmed forms now, but it's just that, practice. I could not give you an honorable match, but I will spar with you if you wish."

"Yeah, I'd like that. I can probably teach you some things; it's what I do for a living, after all."

She giggled. "If I am to be a woman in your life, I may well need it."

He snorted. "Ya never know. Well, things like that kinda quieted down after..." He fell silent into his own introspection.

She looked up again. "I was surprised to see you cruising... is this something your other half needs? This openness?"

"My other half? You mean my girl side?"

"No, your wife. I know you; I know who and what you married, remember. I could hardly forget." She snorted. "I remember how outraged I was, the first time I saw her change. 'Foul sorcery', I called it... I blamed you for it... like everything else that displeased me."

"Fehh... she's the one who wanted this separation, not me. I already got all the adventure I could use, just growing up. I guess she needed more, on the guy side. I can almost understand it... almost."

"After you two fought for so long to be together in your own way? Against me and everyone else?"

"It wasn't quite that easy, really. She had to come to terms with how she felt about my girl side... and about then, when we were finally ready to get married, somebody started importing the J-water, and then everybody else had a girl side or a guy side, seemed like... She got splashed with Nanniichuan three times, d'y'know that? Three people thought I'd drop her if she had a guy side. So we got married over the weekend. Hell, I woulda married her even if she'd been locked... like she is now." He shook his head wearily. "Not that she wants to see my face, either of 'em, right now. After all the obsessives around us... I guess she needed to see for herself if the grass really was greener. I never wanted it, but I'm... coping. I just wish it would end soon and she'd ask me to come home, but that's not how it's headed. Sorry, I hope you can understand that."

She nodded, blinking. "I... I am sorry for that. Despite my position now, I would wish you two the best."

"Well, the kids have it the hardest... they never agreed to have their family torn up like this, it wasn't what we were offering when we brought them into this world. They had to have known they'd get weird parents, but this wasn't in the plan. They're the ones I worry about. They can't do anything about it when the loneliness gets to be too much. I can only sneak around there just so much before I get driven off. I even had to move the school."

She blinked, then turned away to hide her tears, preferring to stare through them into the private sunset of the bedside lamp.

"I... see. You shouldn't have been so gentle with me, then. I helped do that."

"Will you quit that? I don't want to punish you. If it helps, I forgive you. Actually I knew, and I forgot about it a long time ago. And you're not even the same guy... whatever... as you were when all that happened. You've gone through some real changes... we all have."

He lifted her chin and looked down into her upturned gaze.

"And gentle is how I want it to be. That's how I like it. I hated having to fight all the time, I still do. Times like this are what I fight for."

He slid away, got up and walked towards the bathroom, raising his voice as he went.

"If you still need kinky, well, I don't wanna do that. That was your sister's thing, and I hated it."

"No. I never embraced that myself, I just... I am grateful for your gentleness. Thank you."

His nod was both acknowledgement and dismissal. "Time to trade in Dick for Jane and Sally again." He leaned over the bathroom sink, scooped cold tap water into his hand and sprinkled it down onto his head, and that was enough to trigger the change. She watched in fascination as he seemed to lean further over the sink as he shrank into she, then realized that the lean was constant, that the apparent increase was due to the emerging breasts. She shook her head; it was the first time she'd seen it clearly and been unable to deny the sight as it was seen. So little for so grandiose a delusion.

She watched the redhead admiringly for a moment as she bent over their pooled clothing, separating out her own underthings and tossing Sosei's to land on the bed next to her. No matter the gender, even in undignified moments she moved with automatic feline grace. It turned every activity into dance, even the current act of pulling on a garter belt over bikini brief panties.

"How do you see yourself these days? You seem more at peace with yourself, male or female."

The smaller woman paused and considered. "I'm a full man, and a full woman, both; and that "both" lives through one form at a time, but both sides are always there. These days I wear the form that suits my mood or my business; mainly female. I usedta be mainly male, back before the separation."

She nodded and started pulling on her own clothing. "Do you think that might have been part of it?"

"I doubt it. She usedta yell at me whenever I stayed girlside for too long. Hell, she'd yell at me when she got wet and went guyside. I dunno what she wanted... I dunno if she did, even. Wish I did, maybe we wouldn'ta split up."

"You really think it's permanent."

She sighed. "Looks that way. She hasn't filed yet, but she's talking about it. He is, I guess I should say."

Sosei sighed in turn and concentrated on the remaining clothing next to her. She looked up from her own preparations to see the redhead already having fought her own bra into submission and now finishing the buttoning of her blouse as she pulled a brush from her handbag. Somehow the skirt, despite its treatment, had emerged unwrinkled; even her nylons were straight.

"Anything-Goes Martial Arts Cross-Dressing?"

The other looked back at her levelly. "It's not cross-dressing when I'm a girl. Woman. Female."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply... I just noticed it as another of your admirable skills. All the more for me to envy... if I hadn't left all that behind."

She suddenly realized that she was dressing for the ending of the last bit of certainty in her life, that beyond that door there were no guarantees anywhere except as she made and fulfilled them to herself. Then she realized that, after all, that had been the goal all along, the one worthy goal left for obsession, that being the end of obsession. In a way it was penance enough; and that was itself frightening.

Her hands fumbled badly behind her at the catch of her bra. In a moment, strong hands were there, gently taking charge of the errant ends and their tiny metal connectors.

Her voice came softly, still with a catch in it. "Thanks..."

The other woman's voice was calm and low, almost whispered, but firm. "I know ya can do it yourself, but sometimes it helps to have someone help you with the little things while you deal with the bigger stuff."

She leaned over to pick up her dress, then paused in stepping into it. "Like obsession." She pulled it up and onto her arms.

"Is that what had you so rattled? I wondered."

She nodded. "You were right, it was the last of the obsession... and now I'm through with it... and I have to face what comes next." She smoothed the dress to make the fabric drape properly across her bust, and paused to judge the oddity of both the sensation and the situation, neither of which had caught her attention in a long time.

"And that is?"

"I don't know. And that's the point."

The redhead zipped up the back of her dress for her and then paused to put an arm across her shoulder. "Just like the rest of us, eh? Well you're not alone, at least you don't hafta be." She pulled her around into an embrace. "Not if you don't wanna be."

She kissed her ear, then half-whispered into it. "I don't."

Both mindful of the clock, they loosed their embrace. The redhead turned to close her handbag, while, suddenly shy, the taller woman looked down at her feet. "I... will I... see you again, then?"

"Of course. Just leave the tanto at home. And don't bring your bokken, I don't think the girls at the bar could handle that."

"These days, neither could I." She looked down at herself. "I cannot wield a sword anymore; I must entrust that to you." She smiled wryly. "So far you have done us born-as-men proud." She chuckled, a masculine sound which was jarring for coming from so completely feminine a voice and form. "All my old spouting notwithstanding."

The smaller woman came over, drew her once more into her embrace, and gently kissed her. "We all gotta grow up sometime... I'm kinda sad it had to be this way for you. You coulda been more, if you got through your obsessions..."

"It had to be this way... the obsessions nearly killed me. I barely made it through college. Even with my change, even with therapy, when I wasn't manic I was suicidal." Head averted, she gathered up her purse.

The redhead unlocked and opened the door, then paused, looking back at her.

"You could change back now, y'know. The kettle's been found. We found it. With all the J-Water around, we had to..."

"I heard." She slowly shook her still-averted head. "I am very ashamed of who I was... and frightened. If I should go back..." A quick, decisive shake. "No, I'm better this way." She looked up earnestly. "You can understand that, can't you?"

The readhead nodded slowly, thinking. "Yeah... I think so. If it's what you hafta do to keep on living..."

"It is."

The redhead shrugged. "Well, I gotta teach classes tomorrow, otherwise I'd invite you home with me right now." She opened her handbag again, pulled out a business card and a pencil, and began awkwardly writing something on it, across her raised knee.

"Just as well; I have obligations too," said the other as she fumbled with her purse.

She finished her scribbling, handed the card up and accepted the other's card in return. "Here. I've got my own place now. It ain't much, but I'd really like to see you some more, take you up on that offer to spar, girl-on-girl, and just... spend some time with you. If that's all right. If ya don't mind that this is how I look mosta the time."

She was rewarded by a grateful smile. Then the brunette looked down and puzzled out what was on the card.

"This is in Nerima; you didn't move your school very far, then."

"Yeah, it's where Ucchan's usedta be, before she took over the old Nekohanten. I expanded it and turned it into a dojo, I teach beginner's self-defense there; the ceiling's too low for the heavy stuff."

"Not your family school? Surely you haven't abandoned that."

"I teach one class of Anything-Goes a week, out in a park; it's too destructive to teach indoors. I teach masters; they teach others. Oh, and once a year they toss a cat on me, and then I teach a class on the Cat-Fist, just to keep some damn fool from trying to do what my Pop did to me."

The brunette frowned. "I remember the name from before, but..."

"It's really dangerous. So far nobody's gotten killed, but it's been close. You hafta understand: once I go into the Cat-Fist, I'm not there, instead there's a cat, a cat that can shred steel, and that cat just plain doesn't care. You get in its way, it cuts you up, it's that simple, nobody can make it settle down anymore. You saw it, don't you remember that part?"

"I do, barely. I don't think I was conscious for long... if I was conscious at all in those days."

"Fehh... We all hadta go through that, I think. Part of growing up, maybe. Ya ready?"

Propping the door open with her foot, with the room key tucked into the fingers of the hand that held her handbag, the redhead reached back offering a hand. The taller woman gratefully took it; they emerged together from the dim room into the hallway's brighter light.

My thanks to FFMLR/FFML beta-readers shenlin, Aescension, JJJaeger, SJScalaro, Ginrai, BrianOhki, DanYHKim for their C&C.

C&C welcome: