Finishing what you start.

Chapter five.

If you're reading this, than you've probably seen a disclaimer before.
Use your imagination.

I hiss softly as my wounds come into contact with the hot water of the
bath.

Oh shit, this hurts.

I place a wet wash cloth on my forehead, and take a second to take stock
of the situation.

Its been one week since I moved in with the girls.  I've spent most of
that week patrolling the city, and doing a pretty good job of it.  For
every Second the Scouts had fought, I had fought two, and without word
of it getting out.  That is a classic case of good news/bad news.  Good
news: I'm killing the Seconds.  Bad news: They're coming to bloody fast.
I could barely keep up with them.

And then tonight happened.

It had seemed cut and dry.  A Second was running a muck, blowing things
up.  I had moved to deal with it.  Cut and dry, right?  Wrong.  As I was
dealing with the Second, three Firsts had ambushed me.

Now, to establish the facts.  The first is that I am much stronger than
almost any Second.  The second, is that I am also stronger, and much
more skilled than most Firsts.  Third, a portal can only let one
creature through every couple of hours, meaning that there was
definitely at least one other portal open.  Fourth, attacking in packs
doesn't just work for the Scouts.

I had been putting a fairly good showing for myself, all things
considering, though it was a doomed battle until the Scouts came to my
rescue.  Two of the Firsts had bit the dust, both of them falling to the
Scouts attacks, the third managed to escape.  I had left quickly when
the Scouts had turned to question me and even their suspicions had been
temporarily shelved in concern for my injuries.  They weren't as bad as
they looked, which is good considering how they looked.

I let out a shuddering sigh.  By now most of the burns, and a few of the
lacerations were closed, but I still look like I had came out second
best in an argument with a meat-grinder.

I think the wounds were a good excuse for me not noticing anyone
sneaking up on me, and my first alert to someone else being in the room
was a muffled gasp.

Oh no, someone's watching me.  I'll jump up and scream 'pervert'
tomorrow.  I do manage to muster up enough energy to move the cloth and
peer through the steam at whoever was at the door.

Hotaru stands trembling, a hand pressed to her mouth in horror.  Oh no.
She's not going to...

"Ranma!" she shrieks.  Living move over, the dead are getting up.  I
mutter to myself and listen to the thumps as the rest of the house gets
up.  "What happened?!"

I know I shouldn't get upset, but its just so annoying the way she asks
stupid questions like that.  It's only the immense pain of moving that
keeps me from making a sarcastic remark.  As the rest of the house
crowds behind Hotaru I move the washcloth back over my eyes.

"Look," I tell them tiredly.  "Come in or get out, but shut the door.
You're letting out the steam."  The rude buggers completely ignore my
request.

"Ranma," Setsuna asks, even her cool demeanor shaken.  "What happened?"


I guess I can't blame them for their concern.  Even with most of my
burns closed, I look a mess.  The bath water has been stained a
decidedly pink color, from the dry blood and the fresh blood from my
still open wounds.  And if one of them had came home with a burn
covering their left cheek, shoulder, and most of their back, as well as
half a dozen claw marks all over the right side of their ribs, I would
be pretty worried too.

"As bad as it looks," I tell them, regretting the words as the movement
brought a lance of pain from the burn, "I have had worse."  I don't know
which is worse, the fact that I can say that with a straight face, or
the fact that its true.  "Its my fault for being so bloody careless.  I
never even considered the possibility of an ambush..." I trail off.

"Jesus H. Son-of-God Christ," Haruka whispers.

I spare the energy to crack a smile.  "You gals sure know how to make a
guy feel pretty."  No one laughs.  Oh well.  It hadn't really been that
funny.

I'm trying to relax and let nature take its course, when I'm startled by
Hotaru putting her hands on my shoulder.  I move the cloth covering my
eyes and turn to look at her.  Her face is set in a serious expression,
and she's biting her lips with a look of concentration.

"Hotaru, what are you..."  A glow suddenly rises from her, and her aura
begins to leak into mine.

I gasp and arch my back as an agony crawls through me, spreading from
where she touches me.  What is she?...  Wait.  Under the pain I feel my
cuts stretch and writhe, trying to close in on themselves.  My burns
begin to heal, in a utterly disgusting reverse bubble.  She's trying to
heal me.  I can't let this continue.  She might notice what I am.  Plus
the pain was becoming unbearable.  She was trying to force her aura onto
mine.  This might heal a normal creature, but with my reversed aura, it
could quickly become more than just painful.  With a sudden move I slap
her hand off of me with a resounding SMACK.

"Ranma?" she ask, looking hurt.  A silence from the doorway greets my
action.

"Thanks for trying," I tell her.  "You helped a lot."  I stretch a bit
to show her that she had indeed helped a bit.  "But I'm serious.  I have
had worse.  I'll get better on my own, but I don't think you should try
to heal me like that.  You might hurt yourself."  That's true.  From
just the little bit she had done, her aura already had a noticeable
depletion.

I see her looking downcast, and sigh to myself.  I reach out and grab
her hand and her attention.  "I can tell you're already exhausted from
what you tried.  Go to bed, get some sleep.  Tomorrow, if you want, you
can do a little more."  I see her nod, though she doesn't look happy.  I
turn to look at Haruka and Michiru.  "Put her to bed alright?"

They nod slowly, but when Hotaru tries to walk to them and stumbles,
they are instantly at her side.  I slouch back into the tub.  The wounds
didn't hurt as much as they used too, but they still burned with a slow
throb of pain with every beating of my heart.

"Well, Setsuna," I say.  The greenhead is still silently standing in the
doorway, wearing a bathrobe.  "How about you?  You should get some
sleep."

She looks at me for a second, and I really can't summon up the energy to
look over her aura.  "I think that if we leave you here alone, you might
end up falling asleep and drowning in the bath.  I'll stay until you go
to bed too."

I smile sleepily.  "You just want to watch me bathe, don't you?"

She says nothing, so I continue.  "Come one Setsuna.  If you don't want
me to fall asleep and drown, you got to talk to me to keep me up."

Still nothing.  Alright, I'll get the ball rolling. "Setsuna, what do
you want out of life?"

"What do I want?"  The question seems to puzzle her.

"Yea," I egg her on.  "What do you want to be?"

Even without my aura reading, I can feel her hesitation.  "I wanted to
be a fashion designer."  I don't know how I know or why, but I know that
this admission took a lot out of her.

"Wanted?  Why'd you stop?"  I take deep and even breaths, concentrating
inwards.  I bend my energies to the task of healing myself.  This would
occur naturally on its own, but if I regulate it, I can make it quicker,
more efficient.

"I accepted the position I have now, and it took precedence over
anything I wanted."  She sounded sad, but not angry.  It was kind of
like she had long ago given up her dreams for the greater good or
something.

"Do you regret taking this job?"  Regulating my healing is helping, but
it will still take days to finish.  Though what little help I'll let
Hotaru give me will speed things up by maybe a day.  I'm looking at
about five days out of combat.  Damn.

"No," Setsuna answers my question.  "I don't regret it.  Though
sometimes..."  She trails off.

This catches my attention.  I abandon my attempts at healing myself and
turn to look at the greenhead, twisting in the bath painfully.  She's
sitting on a stool she had dragged from a corner of the room to sit near
me and the tub, looking off into nowhere.  Her bathrobe is still closed
for the most, but her top had opened just a bit more than modesty should
allow, letting her green sleepwear peak through.  "Sometimes?" I prompt
quietly.

"Sometimes I wonder what it might have been like otherwise," she
finishes in a whisper.

The silence hovers between us for a minute or two, her lost in thought,
me afraid to break the moment.  Not for the first time I'm struck by
just how beautiful she truly is.  The dim light of the bath floods her
face with shadows, making her look old; old and tired.  I'm reaching out
before I know it, my left hand a mass of burns, dripping pink water, and
I touch the side of her face.  Almost a caress.

She starts, seeming to wake, and puts her hand up to mine.  She starts
to grab it, but stops when she feels some of the blisters straining
under the fragile skin holding them closed.  She instead just touches it
for a second, and then pushes it away.

"I don't want a bath any more.  Will you help me to my room?" I ask
quietly.  She nods and stands, and I follow, a slow second afterwards.

She looks over me, and I hear her take another breath as the full extent
of my injuries make themselves apparent to her.  I guess she couldn't
see earlier how far the burns had extended, blocked by the bath wall,
and the nearly opaque water.  Most of my bleeding has stopped by now,
and she gives me a hand as I step out of the bath.

I don't need her help to walk to my room.  My injuries are bad, but I
can ignore them if I need to.  Its just best not to ignore them if you
don't need to.  I don't bother putting on any clothes, as they would
just inflame my injuries while I sleep.  The same with the blankets.  I
merely lower myself onto the white sheets, kicking the fuzzy blankets
aside, not wanting to bleed on them.

"Could you tell the others not to wake me tomorrow?"  Setsuna merely
nods to my request.  As she shuts the door behind her, I toss out a
farewell.  "Sleep well Setsuna."  The click of the door is my only
answer.

***

I wake the next day to a sticky situation.  Namely my sheets.  Some
blood had leaked out of an odd slash, and some lint from the fuzzy
blankets in the corner of the room had stuck to my burns.  Oh well,
it'll come off.  I move myself into a sitting position, trying for a
moment to cross my legs before I decide against it.

I take a deep breath and begin to focus again on healing.  Without
distractions this time, and with a slightly rejuvenated aura, I find my
energies, and set them to work.  While the effects aren't quite as
noticeable to the naked eye as Hotaru's snappy little trick, I'm still
confident that I'll be more than capable of getting back to business in
a week or so.

The question is: Now what?

Ambushes are out of the question.  This last incident proves that.  The
fact that they had four creatures involved in this operation is
conclusive proof that more than one portal is open.  And a First
escaped.  It'll bring back news to the Lord that a strong Third is out
there, and alive.     My cover is blown, and a gorilla war is rapidly
looking to be a losing battle.  Now what?

The door to my room creaks as open, shaking me from my musing.
Michiru's worried face peeks in.  She flinches when she sees I'm up.

"You should lay back down and get some sleep," she tells me softly.  I'm
an invalid, not a glass statue, but most people seem to equate the two.
"We should get you to a doctor for those."

I sigh slightly.  We've had this discussion before.  While I have never
had quite so many wounds, I have come back bleeding before.  Michiru had
panicked the first time, and tried to drag me to the hospital, but I had
shaken her off, and the next day the wound had almost healed on its own.
I told her I didn't like hospitals, that I didn't trust them.  And I
don't.  Human tech isn't the greatest, but it still should be able to
determine that I'm not human.  Better safe than sorry.

"No," I tell her.  "I'll just get them dirty, and my wounds need fresh
air."  I hesitate for a second, and then decide.  "Do you have some cold
water?  I'm not going to be able to wear much clothes safely for a
couple of days.  It'll be less embarrassing for everyone if I'm a girl."
Michiru nod's reluctantly, and disappears from the door.  I can hear her
pad down to the bathroom, and run some water, and then pad back.  I get
up and go to the door to get my cup.  Several of my burn blisters
squeeze uncomfortably, one even popping.  Wow, I'm a mess.

Now what?  The gorilla offense has proven itself out of the question.
The thought of running, or assuming an even more defensive position
never even crosses my mind.  You can't win with your back to the
opponent, or hiding behind a wall.  Perhaps a more aggressive attack?
But how?  What could I possibly do to stop them?

The questions swirl in my head as I accept the water, and change my
gender.  On my more petite form, the wounds look even worse.  They're
still their to the same extent as on my guy form, but now their in
miniature.  Proportional to my size.  They clash with my innocent
features and attractive body.

"What time is it?" I ask.  How long have I slept?

"Its about three in the afternoon," Michiru tells me.  "We had to force
Hotaru to go to school.  She wanted to be here when you wake."

"That's really sweet of her."  And I mean it.  "When she gets back, if
she still wants to she can help heal me again."

"She's waiting in her room."  Michiru hesitates.  "I think she might
have been crying."

Guilt factor: 7.3.  I sigh.  "Send her in."

I seat myself in a lotus position, taking a moment to decently cover my
waist and legs with one of the bloody blankets.   I'm settled for only a
moment when Hotaru comes in.  Her eyes are red, and she tries not to
sniffle slightly.  Her aura radiates sadness, helplessness, and
depression.  This wasn't just because of my rejection of her aid.  This
is something more.

"Hotaru, what's wrong?" I ask softly.

She gives a little hiccup, a repressed sob, before she begins.  "I
should be asking you that," her aura's misery only increases.  My eyes
narrow.  What's wrong here?  Why is she reacting this way.  I pat the
blanket beside me, an invitation to sit that she ignores.

Hotaru stands in front of me.  Her back ramrod straight, her head bowed
so that her hair hides her face, and her hands clenched into little
fists.  "I thought that I could be normal to you, that you would never
find out," she begins, her tears barely held back.  "I thought that you
could always stay here, and that you would never know what a freak I am.
But last night I tried to heal you, and you saw that I can do things."
The words come out faster now, and its all I can do to make sense of
them.  That healing thing?  Her a freak?  What's going on?  "You saw and
now you hate me, you won't even let me touch you, you won't let me help
you, and you'll hate me, and now you're going, n-now y-y-you're g-going
to l-l-leave..." she degenerated into sobbing.

I can't stand it.  Wounds or not, I'm up in an instant, I cross the
distance to the girl, and I draw her into an embrace.  She stiffens for
a moment, trying to stop her tears, but than she collapses, and she
wraps her arms around me and puts her head down on my breasts and begins
to sob like her heart was being torn out.

My girl side is a bit shorter and weaker, and that combined with my
wounds aids to pull me down with her when her legs give out.  I kneel in
front of her as she tightens her arms around my waist possessively, and
cries into my chest.

I think I understand.  That healing thing she did last night, she must
have done that in front of others.  But instead of generating the
respect that it deserves, it brought her only scorn.  Scorn for being
different.  My good arm wrapped around her shoulder tightens, and I duck
my head so that it lays close to her ear, and I begin to whisper
soothing sounds into it.  Is this what it feels like to comfort a
sister? a daughter? a friend? a lover?  I don't know.  I've never truly
had any of those.  At the door I see Michiru and Haruka, standing
frozen, drawn by the sound of their adopted daughter's tears.  My burned
arm waves them aside.  Haruka looks for a second like she's going to
enter anyway, but I fix her a look that can freeze blood, and she stops.
Reluctantly the two shut the door.  I can almost guarantee that the two
will be hovering by the door, worried about their charge.  They're good
parents.

Hotaru slowly finishes crying.  After the shakes slow, and finally stop,
she just kneels their, wrapped in my embrace.  After a second, she moves
like she's going to let go, embarrassment plain in her aura, but I just
tighten my grip on her.

"Listen closely, little Hotaru," I tell her softly.  "I don't hate you,
and I will never hate you.  You're very dear to me.  I love you like a
sister, and I'll never leave you because I consider you a freak."  I
might have to leave her someday, but it won't be because I think she's a
freak.  The pot calling the kettle black.

When Hotaru realizes that she can't break my embrace, she just tightens
it, not realizing the pain she causes in my blistered side and back, and
I don't tell her.  "Why won't you let me help you?" she whispers into my
breast.  "Why did you push me away last night."

I sigh softly.  "Because it wouldn't have worked on me.  Because if you
had continued, I would have died."  She tenses in my arms, and I
continue.  "You see, I am like you in a way.  There's something about
me, something special, something that makes people hate me.  A
difference."

"What is it?" she whispers.

"Promise not to tell?" I ask softly.  She nods against me.  "In
everything there is an aura, a force, a chi, a ki, call it what you
will.  The thing about these aura's is that they move.  Constantly.
Every aura, for every thing, slowly rotates like fog pushed by a breeze.
They all slowly twist, like water going down the drain.  And almost
everything in the world twists the same way."  I stop for a second.

"Almost everything?" Hotaru asks.

"Everything.  Animals, plants, rocks, even those demons out there.
Everything, but me."  I feel her shift against me, but I'm to far lost
in my explanation to take in what position she's getting into.  "My aura
twists in the opposite direction.  And where I grew up, everyone hated
me for that."

"Why?"

"I don't know why.  I don't think you need a reason to hate, or maybe
just being different is enough.  That's why you can't use your power on
my.  When you tried to heal me, your aura mixed with mine.  It tried to
stop mine, to move me in the other direction.  If it had done that, I
would have died."

She begins to cry again.  Slow tears, not the desperate soul racking
tears from earlier.  "I j-just wanted t-to help."

I shush her gently.  She cries for several more minutes, but to her it
must have seemed like hours.  She stops as she slowly descends into
sleep.

Making sure that the blanket around my waist is tightly wrapped, I
gently pick Hotaru up.  Her grip around my waist refuses to loosen, but
I cradle her head against my burned arm, and her legs against my good
hand.  I carry her gently to the door, and open it with my foot.  Haruka
and Michiru are there, looking desperately worried.

"She's fine.  She just tired herself out worrying about me.  Here," I
offer her to them, but they exchange one of those inscrutable feminine
glances.

"I don't think we could take her from you without waking her up," Haruka
says finally.  "Could you put her to bed?"

What's up with them?  Women.  I carry Hotaru gently to her purple room,
and gently set her down in her bed.  I try to pry her arms off of my
waist, but she just tightens them and murmurs darkly.  Oh boy.

Luckily, one does not stay alive as long as I had without learning to
think quick on your feet, or get out of a grab.  I use my toe to reach
under her bed and pull out her big pink bunny.  A second later and
Hotaru is comfortably nuzzled against her stuffed animal, sleeping
soundly.

What a little cutey.  I gently smooth her hair, and smile at her for a
second.  Someday she'll make a lucky guy very happy.  I turn around to
leave and start slightly.

Setsuna continues to look at me from the doorway, and I blush slightly.
It must look really odd.  A hideously burned red head, topless, and with
a blanket around her waist putting a fourteen year old girl to bed.  Oh
well, I've been in worse.  I put a finger to my mouth, as though Setsuna
of all people might be loud enough to wake up the girl, and move to the
doorway.  Setsuna's aura is a confusing swirl of colors, mixing so fast
that I can barely discern her state of mind, but her face remains the
picture of serenity, and she moves with me into the hallway so I can
shut the door behind me.

Once in the hallway, I'm treated to the experience of all three of the
mature ladies in the house giving me that patented inscrutable look that
women are fond of throwing around.  I scratch the back of my neck
reflectively, and wince as I remember just how injured I am.  The
excitement has driven it right out of my mind.  My back and arm has
several blisters oozing pus from where Hotaru had broken them with her
hug.  They hurt too.  Oh boy.

"Well," I break the silence.  "I'm going to get more sleep.  Good
night."

***

Now what?  An offensive strike.  Against what?  Anything that will slow
the invasion.  What would do that?

I don't know.  It's the day after Hotaru's crying episode, and the noon
sun descends from the skylight, drenching my body in a warm ray.  I'm in
a lotus position, the bloody blankets my only clothes.  Even as I
consider my next course of action, my body is focused on healing itself.
Four straight hours of this has done wonders for my injuries.  The
lacerations on my side have degenerated into nothing more than puckered
scars, and will soon disappear altogether. The burns are tougher to
handle, as they involved the actual loss of meat.  It will be much
harder to grow back, and leave me severely depleted of energy for at
least two days.

I wonder if there's some way to refill my energy quicker.  I really
don't like the idea of five days of inaction.  Five days could make all
the difference.  He-Who-Remembers will know that anyone of our kind
would take at least a couple of days to recover, and he would press the
Firsts and Seconds to get as much done as possible.  He would...

Wait a second.  He-Who-Remembers is the undisputed Lord of my kind.
He's the only thing that keeps the Firsts from degenerating into a
chaotic civil war for dominance.  If the Firsts were to fight, they
would almost certainly drag the Seconds into it.  The battle could go on
for years.  Knowing the way the Firsts are all completely convinced of
their own superiority, the battle might even result in the death nearly
the entire species.

But killing He-Who-Remembers...

There's a reason that he is the undisputed lord of my kind.  It's
because he is unbelievably powerful.  He is millennia old, and can
remember before the barrier was placed up.  To fight him would require
an unbelievable amount of power.

Power.  It just keeps returning to power.  If I had enough power, I
wouldn't be sitting here in a pool of light burning energy to repair
myself.  After all, where am I going to get power from?  Age would bring
it, or a lot of strenuous exercise.  But I haven't the time for that.  I
need a quick fix, and there is no such thing as a...

"You look deep in thought," Setsuna says to me.

Geez.  How did she sneak up on me?  I must be deep in thought if I've
didn't even feel her aura...

Her aura.

"That's it!" I declare, leaping to my feet.  Setsuna looks startled as I
start to dance around the room, and becomes even more so as I sweep her
into it.

"Setsuna," I grin at her.  "Has anyone ever told you  you're as smart as
you are beautiful?"  I twirl her around before pulling her startled body
into a dip, and planting a kiss on her lips.

About than, my brain catches up with the rest of me.  Lets see.  Me, a
girl, half naked, holding Setsuna close to my body, and kissing her.  I
consider freezing up for a second, and than decide the heck with it.
Always finish what you started.  I pull her up out of the dip, spin her
around twice, and stop my dance.

Setsuna's shock and embarrassment over my action was so great that it
had even slipped onto her face.  All she can do is stare at me, touching
her lips, her snappy business suit all in a disarray, a blush on her
cheeks.

"Hey Setsuna.  Wanna go out tonight?" I ask with a grin.

***

The music throbs in time with the lights and the couples on the dance
floor.  A bar resides at one side of the room, normal lights
illuminating the drinks so that the bartender can snap out the drinks,
and see the bottles to catch them as they twirl the jars of alcohol
around like cheerleaders with batons.  The dance floor takes up the
center of the room, with a row of booths arching all around the edge of
the room.  Setsuna and I are in one such, both of us nursing our drinks,
Setsuna nursing her thoughts, and me nursing the gentle flow of energy
from the people sweating on the dance floor.

"Neat place, no?" I say to Setsuna, leaning close and speaking up so
that she can hear me over the noise.

Setsuna raises an eyebrow.  So much for starting a conversation that
way.  I lean back some more, sipping my club soda.

All around us are people dressed in the most ludicrous costumes.  Some
wore masks, others pile on the make up.  Feathers, sequins, patches, and
fringes adorned peoples clothes.  A few cat-people walked around, fake
tails swishing around their feet.  I grin at these.  If only they
knew...

Others are dressed like birds, kings, jesters, beggars, dead man,
monsters.  A menagerie of the fantastic.  I myself am wrapped in
bandages which are pragmatic as well as fashionable.  I'm a guy, wanting
to be a man for the date, and my clothes are saggy patchwork velvet.  A
bandaged fool.  I think I had earned the costume rather well.

Setsuna was dressed up in the strangest get-up I have ever seen her
wear.  A dark green dress, cut to fit snugly across her waist, and fall
in little bundles down the skirt.  It was cut higher in the front, right
under her knees in front, and trailed to the floor in the back.  The
dress came up to her neck, fanning high at the sides and back, and with
long sleeves, that belled open at about the wrists.  Her hair was done
up and high, coiling around her head and up on itself, balanced on her
head.

All in all the end product was stunning.  I guess I should expect as
much from someone who wanted to be a fashion designer when she was a
kid.  She would have done real good at it.

She took a sip of a little crystal glass of wine, and I try to start a
conversation again.  "That's a real nice dress.  It looks good on you,"
I tell her.  Women love it when you tell them they look good, don't
they?

Apparently not Setsuna.  A glacier could have been warmer.  Bloody piss,
she's not even trying to have a good time.  I hate it when people set
out with the sole goal of not enjoying themselves.  I sit back again,
wincing slightly from the pressure of the chair on my, greatly reduced I
might add, burns.  Oh well.  I might as well start the second part of my
reason for being out here.

All around me, people are living.  Some of the people in the club are
having a great time, yellow aura's of enjoyment flaring around them;
others are here to wallow in self pity, and they sit at the bar with
auras of dark depression brooding over them; others stare around them,
desperate for human companionship, red of lust and desire snapping at
the passers-by.

I begin to absorb their auras.  Just a little bit of them.  Too much and
people would notice, and I don't want to draw attention to myself.

Now, earlier I mentioned that I don't need to rely on others for energy.
This is true, and one of the reasons that I don't often do this.  The
other is that its dangerous.  Not dangerous as in 'She's gonna blow,
duck for cover' dangerous, but in a more subtle fashion.  Its addictive.
It is very easy to get hooked on that much energy, to come to rely on
having that much strength.  The problem is, its only a quick fix.  It
can be absorbed, it can be stored, but it can't be replenished
naturally.  So when you get used to having it, you become reliant on
absorbing it.  And if you've absorbed that much, why not absorb more?
Like a drug, you need more and more of it, until eventually it rules
your life.  If you just let your own energies get used, you eventually
build up a greater natural store.  It takes longer, but is much more
reliable.  However, I need all the energy I can get if I'm going to
break through the barrier, and assassinate He-Who-Remembers.

"Why are we here?" Setsuna asks me.  I pull my attention back into the
cubicle.

"What?"  I ask, startled by her sudden qeustion.  Setsuna gives me a
look that I recognize.  It's a patented 'you were looking at another
woman and not paying attention to me look' and I move to smooth it over.
"What do you mean by 'here'?"

"This club.  Why are we in a place that requires a costume to get in?"
I regard her and her aura for a moment, but once again, both are
unreadable.  Her face a picture perfect mask of coolness, her aura a
whirling collage of unrecognizable colors.

"Well," I begin slowly.  I could have gone to any club and gotten the
energy I needed, but I picked this one out for a specific reason as
well.  I tell her it.  "I remember how you said you sometimes wonder
what it would have been like if you hadn't taken the job you have now."
I wonder what it was?  She never told me.  "And I thought that you might
like this?"

"Why did you think that?" she asks, fixing me with a look as though she
hadn't decided whether or not to take offense at my statement.

"Because," I smile slightly.  "Everyone here is pretending to be
something they're not.  I thought you might like the chance to pretend
as though you hadn't taken the path you had."

Her outward expression doesn't change in the bit, but her aura catches,
for just the barest hint of a moment.  Than its color solidifies into
one I think I recognize.  Determination.

"You asked about my dress," she says, and I lean in so that I can hear
her over the murmur of the crowd and the music.  "It was the kind that
was in style, back before I started the job I have now."  She pauses to
sip her wine.

"You look beautiful in it," I tell her, and mean it.

She accepts my compliment with a slow nod of her head.  "And how about
you, Ranma?" she asks.  "I told you what I wanted to be.  How about
yourself?"

I lean back a bit, taking a sip of my soda to buy myself time to think
of an answer.  Witty or honest?  I think that I'll be honest.  "I never
had a specific.  I just want to be useful.  The kind of guy that
finishes what he starts."

"And what kind of things did you want to start?" she asks.  She suddenly
finishes off her glass of wine in one quick drink, and pours herself
another.

"Things that need to be done," I tell her.

"Done for who?"  She finishes off that glass of wine quickly as well,
and pours one more.

I rest my chin on the palm of my hand, and take a second to study the
table.  Things that need to be done.  Done for who?  My Lord?  My fellow
Thirds?  How about myself?  Have I ever done something that I needed for
myself?

I remain silent.

Setsuna pours herself another drink, and finishes it again, and I
suddenly realize that she's drinking an awful lot.

"Umm, Setsuna,"  I speak up.  "Aren't you drinking a lot?"

She drinks one more, and than stands.  She sways for a second, and than
holds out a hand to me.  "Would you like to dance, Ranma?"

Am I that hideous, that she needs to slam back five cups before she
could ask?  I stand up and take her hand.  She leads me to the dance
floor, where we begin.

The music throughout the night had been varied in the extreme, tailored
to fit the colored crowd that attends the club.  Hard rock had brushed
elbows with country, gospel, techno, and classic.  When we reach the
floor a eighties dance tune had just ended, and a moderately fast waltz
was just beginning.  Standing close, the two of us begin to dance.

Now, I can jump up seven feet and perform the splits midair.  I can
launch back flips by the dozens.  I can cross a piece of twine a hundred
feet up in high wind and look graceful doing it.  Dancing is no problem
for me.  Setsuna seemed to be a different matter.

She moved clumsily, overly self-conscious, and nervous.  I pretended not
to notice when she stepped on my foot, but I could tell that it
embarrassed her.  We continued our parody of a dance for a minute,
before Setsuna finally tripped over the back of her dress.  She regained
her balance without falling, but turned to leave the floor, her aura
crimson with shame.

No way.  It ain't going to happen this way.  I catch her elbow and she
stops.

"Please let go of me," she asks.  "I think I want to go home."

"You asked me to a dance.  Are you going to finish what you start?"  She
unconsciously straightens her back.  "Relax Setsuna.  Remember, in here
you're somebody who doesn't have the world on her shoulders."  Slowly,
she turns back to me.

Maybe it was what I said, maybe her determination not to embarrass
herself.  Maybe it was the five quick slugs of wine catching up with
her.  All I know is that as she slowly began to relax, her steps became
more sure, more graceful.  By the end of the waltz, it was like she had
remembered steps she had long since thought she had forgotten.  She
floated beside me, both of us as smooth as though we were on ice.

The next song started, another slow song, and couples around us moved
into close embraces, swaying with the music.  I prepare to go back to
our table, when Setsuna shocks me by stepping in close, and wrapping her
arms around my neck.

Hey, who am I to complain?

She whispers it softly, too softly for most to hear, almost too softly
for me to hear.  "Tonight I'm just a fashion designer."

We dance on.