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Within minutes, all of the Joketsuzoku knew of the challenge, and the response.
Khu Lon had calmly emerged from the Hall, a gleam of hatred in her eye.
"<The girls are as yet untouched. I had hoped you would answer this way.>"
She never gave away the fact that she was afraid… how
had he gotten here so quickly? None had felt magic, or even Chi… and how
did he know that form? It had been out of use since her own youth…
The True Cat Fist
Chapter Ten: XV The Tower
I fear your ignorance of certain events—granted, this ignorance is no fault save my own—and facts regarding the Joketsuzoku, may be leading you down a path you may regret. I told you of the feud, yes, but only that which is commonly known: that your predecessor, came upon the village and was angered by its customs. The village refused to change its ways, and he became enraged, destroying two thirds of the village and warriors, throwing all of the rest into the Springs of Jhusenkyo. While all this is true, it is only the lesser part of the truth.
Your predecessor, from his early youth, had a friend by the name of Tao Tzu. Tzu, as he was known, was a friendly man, and married a beautiful woman from one of the nearby villages. He was, however, also a superb martial artist, and for two months of the year would leave his dearly loved wife—whom your predecessor also loved, though as a sister—to journey and train with his friend. One year, they came upon the Amazon Tribe of the Joketsuzoku and, having learned much from others of the Sister Tribes, sought to share techniques and skills. One Amazon woman set her eye on Tzu, and challenged him to a duel. Neither your predecessor nor Tzu understood the significance. Tzu, being a superb martial artist, won… and the Amazon claimed Tzu as her husband. He refused, and begged your predecessor to help him. Your predecessor agreed, and went before the Village Council… only to find that the woman who wanted Tzu was heir to the Head Seat. It is not known how the fight began, but Tzu was slain in the attempt to leave the village. Dhao Lon, the Amazon, had decided that if she could not have him, then none could. Your predecessor rightly avenged the death of his friend, but when Dhao Lon lay dead at his feet, the village swarmed him. As he slew a third of the village, he begged them to stop, to give up—for you of the Mao Fu are too selfish to give up your own lives when you believe yourselves in the right—but he was forced to kill half of those who remained before it was through.
When the carnage was finished, your predecessor took what remained of the Council and threw them into the Springs, letting Fate choose their curse.
Khu Lon, I believe, is a descendant of the Dhao Lon that began the feud, and I imagine that her version of the story is somewhat different.
I beg thee, son-of-my-soul, give up this friendship with the Amazon girl, a friend is not worth your life, and pull your nose out of the business of the Council. It will surely save your life.>]
{A.N.: All text is in Joketsuzoku dialect Chinese, unless otherwise stated. "Otherwise" probably means Japanese.}
Xian Mao was having second thoughts.
Not, mind you, about having come and made the challenge, but he was definitely regretting having not thought about what to do after that point.
He wondered if anyone else knew what had really happened, all those years ago, to start the feud. He doubted it. He hadn’t even known, before he came to Nerima… and likely wouldn’t have ever learned, had he not told the Elder Monk about his encounter with the Amazons. Only he would know that he wasn’t in the wrong… of course, given the people he’d met so far… technical right and wrong seemed to take a back seat to "us" and "them".
It was a beautiful sunset, Xian Mao observed absently… an oddly calm thought, amidst the turmoil of the rest of his mind.
At least Xian Pu and Nabiki were safe.
"So, young fool, you have come to accept your fate?"
"I am Xian Mao, I write my own fate."
"Fool. You are not strong enough. You have no choice but to accept the fate that those stronger write for you."
"Yes… but who is stronger than I? I who have mastered the Cat Fist?"
"Mastered it? None have mastered your dark art since I was a child."
"Oh! So you were there, then, when this began? Appropriate, that you should see it end."
"I was there! Doubt that not, for I remember the fire and blood. I remember watching as my mother’s blood poured from where her ribs should have been, I remember as the bastard laughed…"
Something flashed in Xian Mao’s eyes, and a cold wind whipped at the two as the village gathered round to watch.
"I did not laugh." It was almost Xian Mao’s voice…
"What?" Khu Lon’s voice was somewhere between a shriek and a gurgle.
"I did not laugh. I have never laughed at death." It was Xian Mao, but there was something strange about his voice and his eyes. Something that spoke of memories older than his flesh… older than his bones… as old as his power. "That time, and all the times before, I wished to weep a thousand tears for every drop of blood. I did weep a thousand tears, but there was no one left to see me. There will be no tears, this time, though. I know now what I do."
Khu Lon—and the other Elders, as well, and many of the tribe’s warriors, tho’ they matter nothing to this tale—could feel a sublte pressure building within the young man… the image in her mind was of weight being added to one side of a scale, which for no known reason would not tilt.
"You cannot remember… it could not be you… you are too young! Who are you!"
"I am Xian Mao, I was Zhai Ku, who destroyed your village. I have been Thamdrin, Klaidro, Mathrig, Sholai, Mali, Mikara, and more. I am the Mao Fu!"
With a shriek of rage and fear, Khu Lon rushed the young man.
The scale tipped, the force holding it even gone.
In an instant, memories came flooding in. Lives he had lived before, each time mastering the unknown art of the Neko-ken, living and loving and dying in the end. Names and faces, male and female both, some he did not believe were entirely human.
With the memories came the Hall of Portals, wherein each of the Gateways lay… all were open, but he had passed through none, yet.
He finished, not entirely aware of what it was he had said, and Khu Lon charged. Almost without thinking, utterly without hesitation, he flew through the Hall, right to the threshold of the forbidden Tenth Gate: the Door That Would Not Open.
Power exploded into his soul.
When the dust cleared, no one was quite sure what had happened. Khu Lon was picking her shriveled body up from the dust, a piece of her shattered "pogo stick" staff in each hand and her eyes seeming even wider than usual. She’d never even heard of anything like this, before. Xian Mao stood poised, half crouched, like a bipedal tiger, in the center of a ten-foot crater. He snarled, and his eyes glowed.
Amazingly, Khu Lon cackled.
"At last! A real fight!"
The other elders understood: it had been nearly three hundred and fifty years since the Elder Matriarch had been seriously challenged in a fight. It had been around a hundred and fifty since she’d broken a sweat. This was everything she could have dreamed it to be: The first good fight in more than three centuries, and the chance to avenge her mother’s death and end the feud with the Wang-Mao-Yue temple. This, to Khu Lon, was a dream come true. Her eyes shone with life, and one could now imagine the beauty she had been in her long-ago youth, when she had been as lovely as she was strong.
Again, she drove foreword, taking the offensive, the dominant position that was her right as an Amazon, and drove the Chestnut Fist into Xian Mao’s ribs.
Or, rather, where his ribs had been. Like a shadow bending around torchlight, Xian Mao bent slightly to the side, and Khu Lon flew by, missing by a precise fraction of an inch. Almost gently, he pushed on her back, unbalancing her and releasing a burst of powerful Ki to send her face-first into the ground some thirty feet away.
Barely bruised and slightly disoriented, Khu Lon was nonetheless exhilarated… not since her last lover had she felt so alive. Neither opponent spoke, for no words were needed, now. The battle was life, life was the battle… focus was everything.
Again, Khu Lon took the offensive, rocketing through the air at speeds that should not have been humanly possible. Again, Xian Mao slid aside… a moment too slow, this time, for the Matriarch’s clawed hand tore in… catching nothing but cloth. Lightning struck in the form of the young priest’s hand, and the Elder impacted the ground at his feet. Khu Lon struck, and Xian Mao’s legs were no longer beneath him.
The adversaries found each other righted simultaneously.
This would be a long fight, if it kept up like this.
Khu Lon’s confidence swelled. There was no question of
her eventual victory… this boy could never outlast her. Men were always
weaker.
Led by the strange Ranma, who’d been here before, Akane
and the strange gaijin man struggled up the rocky path. They could clearly
hear the cheers from the village… things could not be going well for Xian
Mao.
Cats always play with their food.
"Where are the girls, Khu Lon?" Xian Mao demanded as he slid away from yet another of the Matriarch’s air-borne attacks.
The Elder twitched, startled by the unexpected taunt—the boy had not spoken since the beginning of the fight, and the question was an utter surprise… that, and he wasn’t breathing hard, either. The twitch was a momentary opening of guard, and the young priest struck, hitting Khu Lon with an icy ball of power that sent her crashing into the ground, again, some yards off. Moments later, a fireball roared back at him. Xian Mao took the hit, but came up unscathed… not even his clothing was burnt.
Xian Mao nodded sharply. "You’re better than I thought."
Khu Lon growled and lunged in, putting more of herself into the fight. The Chestnut Fist, again, and this time it connected. He took the blows well, but one of the several hundred puches wormed through; one of his ribs cracked loudly.
Get out of my head!
Ranma winced, seeing the Chestnut Fist slam repeatedly into Xian Mao’s arms and chest, clenched his jaw at the sound of breaking bone. Jake had been right, they’d been too late.
Akane clutched at his arm, afraid for her sister—and even Shampoo, for whom she had developed a good deal of sympathy, since hearing the full story—but knowing that unless Xian Mao won, they’d probably never see them again.
Jake watched calmly.
I am me! Not you or you or you or…
"Worthless fool," Khu Lon growled as she hammered Xian Mao with punch after kick after punch after swipe. "You are nothing, here me? Nothing!"
The young man just coughed, blood staining his lips.
"You thought that you, a mere male!, could best the greatest fighter in Amazon history?"
I am me! I don’t care who I was before. Maybe later, but not now. I will not be you again! I am me! I am Xian Mao!
The young man coughed again, more blood speckling his lips and chin.
"Fool, you—"
"Yes."
"What?"
"Yes, I thought I can win. Now, I know I can."
"What?"
Xian Mao’s eyes flashed.
{A.N.: This scene has a soundtrack: Iron Maiden, "Can I Play With Madness" from the *Seventh Son of the Seventh Son*… hell, just start playing the CD and keep ‘er goin’.}
Xian Mao had exploded. There was no other way to describe it… or, if there was, neither Ranma nor Akane could think of it. A tear leaked from the young woman’s eye. Cologne had done something, and now the nice young priest was dead. If only he’d waited, they might have worked something out…
"<Yes>," Jake hissed in English, then Japanese, "<Yes!> <He’s done it!>"
The purple haze was finally blinked away from the two
youths’ vision, and they saw a scene that they never could have imagined:
Xian Mao was not on the ground, or even doubled over. He was standing,
loose and straight-backed, while Cologne struggled to her feet some yards
away. Xian Mao crouched, and leapt… and Hell broke loose again.
He understood, now, what the Ninth Gate meant. It was vengeance, yes, or anhilliation, but it was also perfect crystal clairity. He had opened it early, unprepared, and seen more than he was ready for… but he was nothing if not adaptable, and would cope. Beyond that, though, the Ninth Gate was power… power to do what needed to be done.
He landed with deadly, beautiful grace and delicacy, two yards from Khu Lon. The ground shuddered under his power. A snaking, cat-like strike that did not touch her but shredded the Council Head’s clothes and left one clean cut along her cheak.
"Bow down," he commanded in a voice that could be heard clearly in the front row and in the Jhusenkyo Guide’s hut by the springs.
"Never," she hissed.
His other hand slashed upwards, the claw glowing a putrid black. Six feat away, Khu Lon screamed as she was sent flying up and back. Xian Mao jumped back and prepared for her repartee. And she did with a vengeance, battle aura flaring to life, and his erupting in response to hers. Shining blue, a shade paler than Ranma’s met black the color of the Void as the two traded blow-for blow, auras shrinking and growing with the tide of the battle.
At last, Khu Lon went for the finishing blow: a searing sphere of light as white as the human eye can perceive that shattered the black aura. Xian Mao fell, and Khu Lon held the pose, breathing heavily.
"Idiot."
Khu Lon still hadn’t quite realized that it hadn’t been her that had spoken when a shaft of black energy pierced through her.
"As the Yin will never rise victorious over the Yang, so may the Yang never defeat the Yin… you didn’t even touch me. Submit."
"Never," snarled Khu Lon. The blow wasn’t physical… she was untouched, really… but there was very little holding her aura—her Ki, her Chi… her very soul—together, attached to this body. Xian Mao twisted the shaft, sending searing pain through her soul.
"Submit, and you will live."
"I will die with honor."
"No you won’t," he said, gathering his strength—plentiful,
now, but he could feel that when he released the Mao Fu he would be weak—and
throwing her into the Springs, as he had done—not he! His predecessor!—five
hundred years before… or, maybe a bit less, it seemed.