Epilogue 1 - Jabberwocky I gambled in the graveyards Went against the odds With the saints and with the saviors With the maggots and the gods I cursed the things they showed me I'd never see them again... - The Pogues "Son, would you like to learn a very powerful new technique?" I smile. Of course I would! Does he even need to ask? He always asks. "Okay, Daddy," I tell him. He leads me into the backyard. There is a pit, freshly dug, and a stout wooden cover for it. Inside are cats. Lots of cats. I frown. I like cats. It seems mean to put them in a pit. "Do you want me to get the kitties out of the pit?" I ask. That seems a funny sort of training. "No, son." Daddy looks uncomfortable. "You're going to go down in there with them, and learn." "Learn what?" "The Neko-ken." I nod. That makes sense. I suppose you would have to learn the Cat Fist from a cat. "What's the Neko-ken? Is it any good?" Cats don't hit very hard. I know, cause I wrestle with our cat Kiki all the time. Kiki's fun to play with. "It's one of the most devastating techniques in the world, my boy. If you can learn it, you will have truly started along the path of a great martial artist." I smile. That sounds good. I want to be a great martial artist, just like Daddy. "Okay. What do I do?" He takes out a string of fish sausage, and carefully winds the links around me. Then he daubs fish paste on my clothes and forehead. I wrinkle my nose. It smells icky. "Just go into the pit, and learn, boy." I look down. The cats look up. They have shiny eyes. "Okay!" I hop down into the pit. Daddy's been teaching me how to land right. This is easy, only about six feet, but the cats are all over it. I don't want to hurt any of them by landing on them. They look at me, and it's not a very friendly look. I don't feel so good, all of a sudden. Kiki never looked at me like that... The wooden cover slides into place overhead. "Hi, kitties... will you teach me the Neko..." They leap, they leap as one, and I scream as they slash and bite and snarl. They jump on my shoulders, and on my head, and they bite and claw. There are hundreds of them. Thousands. One claws up my head and I scream, grab it, try to pull it off. It rips free, and I howl, and then another one is climbing up the back of my neck. The claws rip me. They are all over me, and I can't breathe and I throw myself against the walls until I hear snapping noises. I'm screaming now, and I can't stop, and there's blood and fur in my eyes, and they keep ripping their way up me, and my eyelids hurt as they claw at my face, and then they're on me and I fall down, and they bite and claw at my stomach and they want to rip my guts out and I'm scared I want out I want out Daddy take them away get them off me please please please they're ripping at my eyes stomach my throat... I've got to get out, I've got to get out of the pit, there's snapping noises and catyowls and screaming and I've got to get out, got to make them stop, got to get them off of my eyes, got to keep them from eating me, they want to eat my eyes, got to GET OUT GET OUTGETOUTGETOUTOUTOUT if I were a cat they wouldn't see me wouldn't kill me if I were a cat like them they might leave me alone maybe I could get out maybe I could hide maybe maybe be be cat pressure in my mind, cats trying to claw their way out of my head, in my head, eating my guts, ripping their way out, be a cat and help kill Ranma, be a cat and... "It's okay, son. Snap out of it. You're out. I took you out." Cats are around me, I'm still in the pit, got to get out. "I won't make you learn it. Okay, boy?" Pressure in my head, like when you gotta sneeze and it builds up but you never do sneeze, and the cats are trying to rip their way out of my head... "Are you okay, Ranma?" "Daddy?" I'm in the pit, but I'm up on the lawn with Daddy. "Are you okay, boy?" "I guess so." Why am I still in the pit? The cats are tearing me up, ripping apart my head, I've got to get out but I'm already out, how can I escape if I'm already out? "Good boy. Go put some antiseptic on those cuts. I'm sorry I tried to teach you this so early. Maybe in a few more years." "Okay." I go in the house, and in the pit the cats rip out my guts and eat them. I need to get out. I put stingy cream on my cuts. The cats tear out my eyes. I go watch TV. I watch. The cats chew on my bones. I'm still in the pit. Night, and I sneak out of the house, and I get the hose, and I put one end of it in the pit where the cats are eating my fingers. I turn it on, and bolt down the cover, and they scream and yowl and choke and drown. I crawl back into bed. The cats float by me in the pit, eyes bulging, fur falling off. They dig rotting claws into my flesh, and pull me down to the watery bottom of the pit, and tear at me in the mud and silt. I pull the blankets up over my head. They rip out my throat with decaying teeth, festering, bursting eyes glowing. I'm still in the pit, and I can't get out. Waking up, I eat breakfast and do my katas. It helps a bit. The cats can't hurt me when I'm in control. I stop, and they swim in, rotting flesh over lean, bony skeletons, and they tear holes in my stomach and eat my breakfast as I scream. I train. It helps. It's worse when Kiki watches me. I thought he was my friend, but he's not. He's just waiting. Waiting until I fall asleep. He keeps watching me. Watching my throat. Watching my eyes. But I fool him. I have a pocketknife. And I tear out his throat, his eyes, his stomach. And then I lose control, and the cats swarm in and kill me, rip me apart, bite off my tongue and pull out my intestines and I scream and scream and scream... Control. Control keeps them away. Got to keep them away until I can get out of the pit. Maybe if I had stayed in a little longer, maybe, I would have found a way out. Maybe I could have been a cat too and escaped. But Daddy took me out, and left me behind. I'm still in the pit. Control. That keeps them away. They can't hurt me if I stay in control, if I don't scream and try to kill them, kill them all. Daddy found me and Kiki. He doesn't understand. He made me stop stabbing Kiki, but Kiki's not dead. He's in the pit now. He's in the pit with no eyes and no stomach and no throat, and he tears mine out when I lose control. I grow up. And I'm still in the pit. I'm still in the pit. I'm still in THE PITI'MSTILLINTHEPITI'MSTILLINTHE ^_- Mariko turned away from the observation gallery, shuddering. "You know how we kept saying we wanted to send him to hell?" "Yeah?" Koji replied somberly, staring at the writhing figure strapped to the table, watching as the white-robed attendants sedated him. "I think we were too late. He's already there." He sighed. "So. What now?" Mariko looked uncomfortable. "He's never going to get out of there." "I know." "And he's in more agony right now than anything we could come up with." "Probably." She glared at him. "Okay. Look, I say we call it quits. Right now. We don't have any justification anymore. Just revenge. And that's not enough." "I agree." "You can keep going if you want, but... wait a minute, you AGREE?" Koji nodded. "I agree. I still hate him, and I'd still love to see him dead, but I'm not going to do this to us anymore." Mariko looked down. "It hasn't been that bad. It's not like..." "Mariko, you broke an innocent girl's finger and nearly killed Akane. I helped. Ukyou's probably dead because of us, even if Shan was the one who did the killing. It's that bad. We're turning into him." He looked at the screaming boy behind the gallery windows with repulsed fascination. "We don't even have his excuses. We aren't insane. We don't live in some sort of nightmare, not unless we make it ourselves." She sighed, seeming to deflate. "I told Ukyou. Damn it. I've still got her blood on my hands." "But we haven't actually killed anyone, not yet. Not directly. I think... I think we might have become something unpleasant if we had. We still might, if we keep going. The person who broke Kasumi's finger was not my sister. I didn't recognize her, and I didn't like her." She didn't meet his gaze. "This is why you make the big deal about honor, isn't it," she said quietly. Koji slowly nodded. "It keeps us from becoming what we fight. It helps, anyway. I haven't recognized myself either, the past few weeks." "So we..." She struggled for words, for a bit, her eyes filling with tears. "We aren't letting Ryouga down. We can't be. This wasn't about him. It was for us, not for him." "It... I guess it was." Koji looked lost for a second, confused. "So it's over?" "It's over. Let him rot in this hole for however much longer he has to live. And if they cure him... god, then more power to them. He was our friend, once, Ryouga's and mine. And now I'm letting them go..." She burst into tears, bawling like a baby for the first time in longer than she could remember. Wordlessly her brother hugged her, and they held each other up as they both cried away the years of hate and revenge. "Sorry," Mariko finally said, sniffling. "Don't know what came over me." "It's over," Koji said, saying the words wonderingly. "What the hell do we do with ourselves now?" "Back to school, I guess. Didn't you always want to be a doctor?" He shook his head. "I don't remember anymore." A strange look came over his face. "I haven't wanted anything in a long time that didn't involved killing him. Is it really over?" "It's over, brother mine. It's really over." Slowly, still holding each other, they left. In the room below, behind glass windows, Ranma screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Ask my brother to tell me when the sun is high Have my sister show him how They have tied me down and taken out my eyes So I won't be crying now The stars I've followed have all fallen to the ground Pulling shadows through the air You may call my name and gently lay me down But you'll never keep me there Hold the rope and tie it gently to the tree Thirteen twists upon the noose There's a hanging man a-trying to get free But I will not cut him loose I will not cut him loose! - Cats Laughing