It was a beautiful spring day in the park. The place was full of activity. Joggers were making their rounds about the running track. Many nine-to-fivers were out eating on their lunch break, enjoying the fresh air. Young children were playing in the sandbox while their parents looked on.
One of the park goers just sat and watched the world around her. She saw the joggers and their toned bodies and felt a sense of pride at being able to maintain an almost perfect physique that put many of theirs to shame. She watched the other blue-collar workers eating their lunches and felt a sense of accomplishment. She had climbed the corporate and political ladder to achieve a position that anyone not born in Japan should not have been able to get, and she had got there by hard work and sheer force of will.
Finally she looked at the children playing in the sand and felt a sense of loss. She was beautiful. She was intelligent. She had an excellent high-paying job. She could have anything in the world she wanted, but the man she loved.
Her eyes clouded over as thoughts of him started to come to the surface. “Foolish, Foolish woman.” She quietly chided herself in Mandarin Chinese. “To still hold a candle for a man you could never have for nine years, and still feel the same.” She shifted her gaze away from the children and their proud parents. “He’s a married man.” She kept telling herself, but today it did no good. It had the same effect that it did yesterday, the day before, the day before that, and even all the way back nine years to the event that she had witnessed so long ago. The day her heart was shattered in two, and never truly healed.
She reached up and ran a hand over her lavender hair that was tightly braided into a bun on her head. “How stupid could one girl be?” She asked herself. “Xian Pu, the champion of the Amazon tribe, pining over a man she lost nine years ago.” She shook her head at her own folly. She knew she had lost him when he had strolled in the Neko Hanten that fateful day…
Nine years earlier, a sixteen-year-old Xian Pu was busing one the tables as the last customer was paying at the register and walking out. She hummed a happy tune to herself as she thought of getting off work and seeing her Airen.
Just moments after the last customer had left, the bell over the door rang. Xian Pu quickly turned to the door and smiled brightly as she readied herself to say the welcome spiel. Her jaw went slack as she saw the object of her affections standing there bigger than life. She was getting ready to do her ever-traditional (and trademark) glomp, when she saw the look in his eyes.
The look in his sparkling eyes was of deathly seriousness, a look that contained more determination than she had never seen in her life. She thought that, maybe, she saw a little regret, but the determination easily had it dwarfed in its shadow.
Xian Pu subconsciously took a step backwards. “Ai-Airen?”
He lowered his head slightly and stared her down. “Shampoo. We need to talk.”
“Whatever would you like to talk about, son-in-law?”
Ranma didn’t even turn to look at the Matriarch of the Amazon tribe. “I said that me and Shampoo need to talk, not me, Shampoo, and Old Ghoul.”
Khon Lon was taken aback by the tone of his voice. It was a tone that she had never heard from him before. It was a voice of commanding confidence, the voice that great military leaders had used to order frightened men into battle. It allowed no room for misunderstanding or disobedience. Something was different about him, she knew. She decided that it would be a good time to step into the back. She wasn’t cowering; she was honoring his request. “Then I’ll let you two be alone.” She hopped off on her cane back into the kitchen.
Xian Pu watched as Khon Lon obeyed her husband by Amazon law. Never before had an Amazon elder, much less the matriarch, ever been dismissed this easily. Something was happening here, something important, and Khon Lon knew it. She turned back to the face of her beloved. “What you want tell Shampoo?” She asked in a shaky voice.
He gritted his teeth. “It’s over Shampoo.”
A confused look passed over her face. “What you mean?”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “The threats, the destruction, and the pain that you’ve been responsible for. From this day forward, our engagement is over.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “No! It cannot be like that! We not engaged; we married by Amazon law!”
Ranma narrowed his eyes. “Consider this an annulment. Japan does not recognize Amazon law, and since we are in Japan, neither do I. It’s over between us.”
“But…but…” She started sputtering.
“No buts! There is no more connection between us.”
“But why?!” She finally spat out.
A wave of anger passed over him. “What? You can’t figure it out? You ruined my wedding!!!”
Xian Pu picked up a little of her resolve and managed to stand up straight. “You never want marry violent girl in first place!”
“Yes! Yes, I did! But that’s beside the point! You barged in with explosives everywhere and waged war in the middle of a house that you had no business being in. You openly admitted that you were after my fiancée with intent to injure or kill!”
She put a hand over her mouth. This was the first time that she had seen him REALLY mad at HER. “Sorry.” She said in a small voice.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it! That was the last draw! All the other times you have assaulted me and my fiancée were forgiven, but this time you will not be! It’s over! Go home!”
Xian Pu dropped her hand and pushed out her jaw in a look of determination. “Shampoo never give up!”
Ranma’s anger backed off a little, but not much. “I knew you were going to say that, so I offer you this choice: Either you leave the country, never come back, and all is forgiven; or we take legal action.”
Shampoo gave him a questioning look.
Ranma pulled out the list that Nabiki had made for the occasion and started reading. “Disturbing the peace, illegal immigration, willful endangerment, assault, slander, trespassing, harassment, reckless endangerment, attempted murder, and these are just the tip of the iceberg.” He was still reading from the sheet. “We’ll just start with a restraining order. If you violate that, we will have you arrested.” He finally put that sheet away.
Tears started to form in her eyes. “But I love you…”
“I said, ‘no buts!’ Those are the terms. Either way, I never want to see you again.”
She fell to her knees and started crying in earnest.
Ranma slowly turned and walked out of the Neko Hanten.
She cried harder as the door closed with a finality that shook her to the core…
Xian Pu wiped the single tear that had formed in her eye. “Still crystal clear. Why can’t I forget that? Why can’t I move on?” She continued on her daily berating and pity party. She sighed as she realized again how foolish she still was.
She stared across the park looking for something to take her mind off of her own problems. She looked around and started rating the men that were jogging around, heavily resisting the urge to compare them to Ranma. A lot of the men were simply joggers, not a lot of muscle mass, but little fat. Occasionally a body builder would jog through. She laughed to herself. “All that muscle is good, but worthless in a real fight. It would be too easy to hit pressure points and muscle groups.” She wasn’t impressed to say the least.
She inhaled a deep breath. “None of them compare to Ranma.” She thought to herself. “Not the lean muscle that came with intense training. The kind of build that aided agility and dexterity.” She then berated herself some more for slipping and comparing them to Ranma again.
She shook her head and started watching them again. Finally one of them caught her eye. He had long black hair freely trailing down his back. He had an almost wild look about him. He was wearing wraparound sunglasses that gave him an air of mystery. He was wearing black shorts and a white tank top. She looked at his muscles and started to drool. “Now that’s the body I’m talking about!” She smirked as she watched the jogger go around the track. “That’s exactly what a great warrior should look like. I imagine he’d be a great lover as well.” Indecent thoughts began playing around in her mind. She reveled to herself that she was actually thinking about a guy besides Ranma.
She did a quick double take as that thought crossed her mind and looked at the man again. “It couldn’t be. What would he be doing on this side of Tokyo?” Despite her words she stood and walked closer to the track to get a better look at him. She stood under one of the more heavily shaded trees to attract the least attention.
He came around again. She stared at him with the attention to detail that a fighter would use to size up their opponent. She finally saw what she was looking for: scars. Scars that came from fighting repeated battles to the death. “It’s him!” Her heart leapt in her chest. As many times as she had surprised him in the bath, she knew every scar on his body. Granted he had a few more now, but how many people had the same scars as her Airen? Butterflies flew around in her stomach as she thought about how to approach him. She took out a compact from her purse and touched up her makeup. Sure she had a few more years on her, but she was still a beautiful Amazon warrior, wasn’t she?
She paused for a second as her brain resumed its operation. “He wouldn’t want to see me. Not after the way her broke off with me.” She thought. “He’s probably still mad at me. Even if he wasn’t, he would get that way if he saw that I was still in the country.” She paused and thought about the best way to go about this.
In the meantime, the man had stopped by a fairly secluded, but close to Xian Pu, bench. He sat down in the center of the bench and put his arms out over the back of it and rested his head back. He breathed deeply and relaxed his body. As he was lounging, two men in black business suits and sunglasses seemed to fade into existence to his side. He didn’t even make any movements to their appearance, like he was expecting them.
Xian Pu noticed the men and took off her high heels. She snuck over closer to where she could be within earshot. Luckily she still practiced hard on her martial arts every day. She also had many techniques that she could use to avoid detection. She looked closer at the men and saw traces of tattoos around the cuffs of their jackets. “Yakuza!” She shouted in her mind. “What do they want with him?”
“You’re late.” One of the suits commented.
The jogger chuckled. “Sorry. I wanted to get in a couple more laps before I went to work.”
The speaking suit coughed. “Well, Mister Masaki. We here to offer you a job.”
He snorted. “That’s obvious. The question is, ‘what is the job?’”
“First we want to talk to you about a few things.”
“Like what?”
“We are worried about any potential security problems.”
“Sure we all are, but what are you worried about? Have I ever given you reason not to trust me?”
“This is a business Mister Masaki, not a friendship.”
“Okay. Have I ever botched a job and have any your people ever been fingered because of said jobs?”
“Well no…”
“Well, why the sudden security problems?”
“We’re concerned about your, eh hum, associate.”
The jogger raised an eyebrow. “Oh really. Which one would that be?”
“That girl. The redhead. How do we know that she’s okay?”
“Oh, she’s trustworthy.”
“How can you be so sure?”
The man sat up and lowered his sunglasses to look the suit in the eye. Shampoo knew those eyes immediately and her heart skipped a beat. “Trust me gentlemen. That woman would never do anything, but what I tell her to. She’s under my complete control. She’s also in too deep not to get in trouble herself.”
“How can you substantiate that?”
“She does half of my jobs for me. For a quarter of the pay of course.”
“Of course. She IS only a woman.”
They both laughed a second. The jogger reclined back into the bench. “The point is: There is no security problems on my end. If there are any problems, they’re on your end. I’m just a businessman.”
“Okay. There’s also something else to discuss. It’s about the lack of evidence on your part…”
The man shook his head. “You pay me to make people disappear, and they disappear. Have any of them ever come back to haunt you?”
“Well no.”
“Then they’re no longer in existence. I’m very careful. You should be glad that there isn’t any evidence.”
“I’m personally wondering how you do it.”
The man shook a finger at the suit. “You should know better than to ask a magician how he does his tricks. Let’s just say, I’m good.”
The suit chuckled. “Okay, you’ve convinced me.” He opened up his coat and pulled out a minidisk case and handed it to the man. “Here’s the dossier. We want this job done before the conference next week. Can you do that?”
The man took the disk and put it into a pocket in his shorts. “Look who you’re talking to. I’ll have the job done in three days.”
“That works for us. The masters will be most glad to hear that.”
“Great, great. Now get outta here. You’re blocking my sunlight.”
The two suits smiled and walked away. Xian Pu was totally confused about the whole exchange. “Was Airen really a killer for hire? Was he really working with the Yakuza?” Several other questions mulled through her mind as she replayed the scene over and over in her mind, questions that threatened to ruin her image of him.
After a little bit, the man stood and started to walk the other direction. Xian Pu decided that she needed to find out what was going on. She jumped out of her hiding place and landed front of him. He dropped into a stance. “What do you want?”
“Ranma, what are you doing?”
The man straightened up. “I’m sorry, but you have me confused for someone else. My name is Tenchi Masaki.” He started to walk on past her.
She grabbed his shoulder before he could leave. “You can’t fool me. I’d know you anywhere.”
He pulled her hand off his shoulder and twisted it at the wrist. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m telling you to forget everything you’ve seen today, forget you ever came to the park, and forget you ever saw me; or you’ll regret it.”
She winced a bit as the pain shot through her wrist. “But Ranma…”
He released her wrist and continued leaving. “My name is Tenchi. Go away.”
Xian Pu was even more confused than ever as she watched him walk away. She was sure that was Ranma, the voice, body, eyes, everything said it was him.
He walked over to another bench where a very attractive redhead was sunning herself. Xian Pu almost fainted when she saw her. “What the?”
The man motioned for the girl to stand and come over to him. She stepped up and put her arms around his neck. Xian Pu couldn’t tell what they were saying from this distance.
“How’d it go, partner?” The redhead asked.
Ranma looked down at her. “I got the new job.”
“I heard over the bug. What was that about ‘complete control’? You think you’re some sort of domination type now?” She winked at him.
“I wasn’t referring to you. I was talking about my girl half. Anyway, there’s a new complication.”
The redhead looked past his head at the professional woman with lavender hair. “Ah, yes, the old Saotome charm. You know women find you attractive.” She brought her body up closer to him and started to rub it against him suggestively.
He remained nonplussed. “She knows me, and that’s a problem. She could ruin the whole operation.”
The redhead traced a finger over his lips. “So, will she need to be eliminated?”
“No, you can’t kill her. Personal reasons. I just need to do something to make her back off.”
“How about you kiss me? If it’s an old girlfriend, she should walk away then.”
“Maybe…Humph!”
Xian Pu watched in shock as the blazing redhead forcefully kissed Ranma on the lips. She could see her tongue playing around in his mouth. Her shoulders lowered as he took the girl in his arms. She put her heels back on and walked away.
Ranma saw her leave and waited until she was out of sight. He grabbed the redhead by the shoulders and pushed her back. “What was that?!”
“It’s a kiss, baka.” She winked at him.
“You said a kiss, not tonsil hockey!”
“It was convincing wasn’t it?” She smiled playfully at him.
“It was hardly professional.”
“Who cares? We should do it more often, like tonight at my place…”
“I don’t think so.”
The girl scowled at him. “You know, for being divorced from that banshee, you’re still too dedicated to her!”
He turned and started to walk away. “It’s nothing like that. This is just professional. You’re only job is to act as my girl half in public, and that’s it. We’re going to keep it that way. And don’t refer to my ex that way.”
She grabbed on to his arm and turned him back toward her. “Why not? From what you’ve told me about her, that’s my opinion of her.”
“You don’t know anything about her, so don’t try to think you know everything.”
“You really need to get on with your life. You can’t live in the past, you know.”
“I am getting on with my life.”
“Throwing yourself into your work is not getting on with your life. You need to get with somebody!” “Like me.” She added in her thoughts.
“No thanks. I’ll repeat this as many times as it takes to get it through your head: We are partners in this case and our relationship WILL be strictly PROFESSIONAL. Got that?”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Yeah, Yeah. You’re just in denial.”
“Never mind. We’ve got preparations for the next infiltration. Let’s go.” He turned on his heel and walked toward the parking area.
“I’ll get you yet, Saotome Ranma.” She hissed under her breath as she walked on after him.
Ranma rubbed his chin in a thoughtful gesture. “What’s Shampoo doing here? She’s supposed to be in China.” He thought. “She recognized the suits as Yakuzas. I’ll probably need somebody to keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t kill my whole operation. She could kill years of preparation in one glomp. My life is always so complicated…”
Shampoo was heading back to her office with many confused thoughts in her head. “Ranma wouldn’t do that. Ranma isn’t a killer. What is he doing? If he’s gone bad, then it’s my duty to stop him. But Ranma wouldn’t do that! What do I do?” She massaged her temples to keep the oncoming headache at bay. “If Great-Grandmother were here, she’d know what to do, but I can’t talk to her anymore because of my dishonor.” She shook her head and went back to work to try to get something accomplished before the workday ended.