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Chapter Three: Recognition – Ranko
It had been nearly three years now. A long period of time for such a small child. Not that she knew that it had been over two years. No. She was, after all, only 12 years old. And she had been without human companionship during those years. But still, it had been a long time, and that she was aware of.
She knew that she had lost her parents, her older sister, and her little brother during a time of great confusion before she was alone. She knew that as well as she knew her freckled features and mangy reddish mane from her reflection in the lake’s waters.
She had gone back. To the place where she had last seen her family. She had even found them once more. But they didn’t want her. No. They didn’t want her at all. They had just laid there on the ground and refused to get up and come with her or take her home. They had just laid there and been cold to her. Then, when she came back sometime later, they were gone. They had left her behind.
But that was alright. She didn’t need them anymore. She knew how to take care of herself. The animals helped her from time to time. So she had forgotten her name a long time ago? She didn’t need a name. She didn’t need anything.
But that didn’t mean that she didn’t want for things. That she didn’t sometimes cast her hopes and dreams into the skies to ride on the tails of the falling stars in her strange pidgin tongue. That she didn’t wish for things.
Because she did. She wished she had a home and a family that still loved her. That wouldn’t leave her like her family had.
She wished she had a name. It didn’t have to be anything fancy, but it would be nice to have a name. Some way to tell who she was apart from anything and anyone else in the whole world.
But most of all, she was lonely. She was human, after all. And humans are, by nature, sociable creatures, herd animals as it were. And the days got longer and the nights got colder, and she was alone. So terribly alone.
And she would howl her sorrows into the wind so that they would be carried away to the distant full moon and trouble her no more as the wolf pack did. But she was not a wolf, and the sorrows followed her. She could not leave them behind, and so her nights were oft marked by small dark stains upon the bundled hide pillow which could have been made by tears. Tears, if she wasn’t a warrior. And warriors never, ever cry.
But she was so terribly lonely. And she did wish for a companion. A friend. Someone, anyone, who would be there for her. Someone upon whom she could depend forever and always. Someone to help carry her many sorrows. So she cast that particular wish in every direction.
She just hoped that someday her wish could come true. And so every night, she laid down, after casting her wish, and fell asleep under the velvet skies.
**********
It was approaching the night when she heard them. Horses. She remembered horses. There had been horses in the village. They had pulled things for people. People had ridden them during the great confusion. And, most importantly, she had never heard them in her part of the forest where she was so lonely.
She could only think of one answer to the question posed by the jingling of harness and the quiet rustling and clopping that marked the passage of horses through the underbrush. People had come to her part of the forest! They had come to her! She was not to be lonely anymore! And with a glad cry, she had raced through the trees upon silent feet to where she had heard the horses coming from.
When she arrived, the horses were no longer moving. They had been tied to long sticks thrust into the ground. Their riders clustered about a flickering fire in the center of the clearing. Some others stood around in a big circle, staring out into the night as if searching for something. She wondered what they were looking for, as they didn't seem to be finding it.
Then the riders had laid down upon the ground and not moved. She supposed they were asleep, and quickly scurried up into a tree so as to find safe resting place for the night. Pulling her hide cloak about her and tucking the rough hood behind her head to serve as a pillow, she drifted off to sleep.
**********
She awoke with the dawn, and the clanking sound of men in armor clambering about. Silently ghosting down the tree, she slipped around to where she could watch better. Surely they were coming to meet her now, she thought with a smile.
Then they pulled up the long sticks and climbed on the horses and began to ride away! With a frightened expression on her face she had raced down the hill to their caravan. "Muhate! Muhate!" she screamed as she ran.
Many of the riders and some on foot looked back at her but kept on riding. She slowed and finally came to a stop, gazing forlornly at the backs of the riders that had already passed her. They had not meant to be her friends after all.
Then, to her surprise, one rider had slowed his horse to a stop beside her. She looked up in a daze. The horse was a big one, with a reddish coat. And there, on his back, sat the most perfect man she had ever seen. He shone with an inner light and, as he smiled down at her, his dark eyes seemed to burn with a mirror of the fire from last night.
"Ohayo, Kodomo no Mori." He spoke with a voice that almost commanded reverence from all that heard it. "Do you need a ride, little one?"
She nodded slowly, hoping beyond hope that this was the friend she had longed for for so long. He reached down a gold encase hand to her, and, as she grasped it, pulled her up behind him on the red stallion. He glanced back over his shoulder with a smile. "Be careful now, Kodomo no Mori. I’m riding to battle. Can you stay on?"
"Hai, Ojisama." She whispered, grateful that he seemed to speak her tongue.
*********
The battle had been long and difficult, but they had persevered and now their enemies laid defeated before them. She and her new friend rode back slowly, dragging the bandit king’s corpse behind the stallion. She had recognized him as the man that had made her family not want her anymore. So she had killed him. Now she had a sword like her Ojisama! She had even given it a name! Shino Doroboo! A fine name for a fine sword! True too.
"Oi! Shima-sama! There you are! We were getting worried!"
"Don’t worry about me, Deshino Endymion! I had a good luck charm for this battle!"
Shima-sama? Was that his name? Shima? She smiled. It was a good name for her wonderful new friend.
"Oi? Good luck charm? Who, the kid?!"
"So, what’s her name, Shima-sama?"
He smiled down at me where he was holding her onto the front of the saddle before him, as the rope holding the corpse was tied where she was last sitting. Then he looked back up at the men in the bloody field. "This? Oh, you should know her! This is my Kodomo no Ran!"
Everyone laughed at that. Then Endymion himself rode up.
"It’s good to see you safe, Shima-san. And you too, Kodomo no Ran." He looked up to Shima-sama at that. "You know, Shima-san that is truly a mouthful to say time an again. Why not we just call her.. Ranko? It gets the point across as sure as Kodomo no Ran..."
"What do you think of that, Kodomo no Ran? Would you like that to be your name? Ranko?"
She couldn’t believe it. All her dreams were coming true! First a friend and now a name! She smiled up at him and nodded happily. "Hai, Shima-sama! I would like that much much!"
Shima and Endymion laughed, but it was Shima alone whom spoke. "Then that shall be your name! Everyone, I’d like you to meet my guardian angel of the battlefield! Ranko!"
She drifted off to slumber in the arms of her newfound friend and buoyed on the sound of cheering with a smile on her face.
**********
Ranko flopped happily down onto her cot in Shima’s quarters. It had been quite a fun game she had been playing with Akai-sama. Even though it seemed as though Akai-sama had been becoming quite frustrated. But not as frustrated as Shima-sama became whenever he got finished dealing with Akai-sama! She giggled a little at that thought and rolled over to face the wall where she idly traced the outlines of the stones that made up its surface.
And then that cute boy from Earth had asked her out! His name was Marcus and she was quite head over heels at the moment. She rolled back on to her back and spread her arms wide with a happy sigh. Everything was going so much better than it had in the forest! She had a family, and a name, and a home, and, and everything!
Then, abruptly, she swung her feet back over the edge of the cot and sat up. Now, if that annoying pest Kuno Ikari would just leave her alone everything would be solidly in the realm of perfect! She growled in frustration of her own as she thought of that pervert who kept on trying and trying to sleep with her as though she had no self respect.
She had a distinct feeling that he would have done the same to her friend Akai-sama if she hadn’t so obviously outranked him and been deemed completely out of his reach by the head of his clan. She growled again, and her fingers curved into their familiar claw shapes as she thought of the touch of that filthy beast. She swore that if he even dared to try that again she would personally insure that he had no more children!
Then she sighed and leaned back against the wall while staring idly at the door to the Sacred Fire Chamber where Shima was ensconced. Right there, behind that door, she figured was the biggest obstacle in the way of a real friendship with Akai-sama. Shima-sama himself. Akai-sama always seemed so... so mad whenever Ranko talked with other guys when Shima was around. It was almost as if... as if...
Ranko sat bolt upright again with a hastily stifled giggle. Akai-sama couldn’t possibly be thinking that now could she?! Ranko flung herself face down into the pillow to muffle her suddenly outrageous laughter. Akai-sama thinking that Ranko and... and Shima-sama! She couldn’t help laughing!
Slowly she sat up and wiped away the tears that had trickled down her face as she ran out of laughter. But if that was the problem between her and Akai-sama it could surely be remedied. All she had to do was explain her relationship with Shima to the older girl. Beside, Shima wasn’t that way as far as Ranko knew!
Still... Akai-sama thinking something like that!
Ranko’s pillow soon found itself home to another round of giggle fits.
**********
Ranko raced head-long through the thick underbrush on feet that long remembered the way to move silently through even the thickest growth with speed that resulted from terror and panic. She was being chased. Through the forests that had so long been her home before Shima-sama had come to them. It was betrayal of the ultimate to the yet youthful girl.
She had traveled down to the Earthian forest as a messenger to the Amazonian tribes that filled these tangled areas. She had come on behalf of Shima-sama and Akai-sama. She had come bearing tidings of the coming nuptials between her most beloved of friends. She had come with good tidings and bearing gifts to the friendly warrior women.
She had been followed.
It was a the second village on her route that she had been warned. A young mother still bearing her darling little girl, Kuh-long, her arms had been the bearer of ill tidings. As Ranko had leaned over the pretty babe and made the proper exclamations of wonderment at the tiny life, the young mother had whispered her news into the girl’s ear.
"You are being followed, little one."
Ranko had looked up with a smile on her face, but confusion in her eyes.
"There is a strange man always behind you as you travel. The young warriors have been following him for sometime now, guarding you as you travel." The woman paused to smile at some small comment Ranko had made about her child before continuing. "However, this man bears a steel blade and we have only enough steel to guard the village from the Musk now. The girls are armed only in bone, wood, stone, and glass and I must say that I fear for my comrades. We have not long been at war. I hope nothing evil comes from your follower."
And that, as they say, had been that. Ranko had bid her farewells and continue as she knew she must. She was aware of her tail by this time and began taking efforts to lose him. But it was far naught.
He had attacked halfway between the village where tiny Kuh-long slept and the newest of villages at Joketsu. The brave Amazon warriors had fought valiantly and died quickly with honor before the mad man’s fierce onslaught. Their deaths had not been for nothing though. Ranko had used the time afforded by their brave, if foolish, struggle to vanish into the undergrowth to the side of the trail.
She had been running for several hours now. Plunging ever deeper into the darkness of the twisted maze the forest provided. She knew who it was that followed her now. It was the same, deadly fool that had been stalking her since the day Shima first introduced her properly to her Majesty, the Queen Serenity V, in court. Kuno Ikari had never learned to take no for an answer, despite the beating frequently imposed upon his person by her friends and herself.
Now he had dived far off the cliffs of reason into the ocean of dementia. He had actually bared steel against the named ward of the Phoenix Prince. His life was completely and utterly forfeit if Ranko ever emerged from these woods, and he knew it.
She knew she would not leave these woods alive, and yet she also knew that if she allowed Kuno Ikari to catch her she would suffer a fate far, far worse then any possible death. She saw but one last answer.
Pools were all that remained of the once great lake that she had lived near all those years ago. And that was where she was headed. She knew that the pools were deep, very, very deep. She had often dived into them during trips back to the area with Shima and the girls as they had trained above her on the long poles Shima had sank into the earth. They were her last hope to escape Kuno Ikari and his sword. Both of his swords, metal and otherwise.
At long last she burst into the clearing that held the pools with the last of her flagging energy. It had been a long time since she had found need to run that fast or that far. She staggered through the maze of pools until she reached the center.
It was there she stood, pulling every ounce of ki that Shima had taught her to harness to her, when Kuno Ikari burst into the clearing his eyes mad with his dementia and his sword upraised. His formal Royal Earthian garb was tattered and torn, and blood ran from many injuries, yet he bore on after her with teeth bared in a snarling grimace.
"Stop." Her voice, quiet though it was, bore the same commanding power that she had once recognized in Shima long before. Kuno Ikari staggered slowly to a halt, the madness slowly taking second place to confusion. She looked up and met his gaze and he recoiled bodily from those glowing white orbs that energy fair crackled from.
"Oh, stranger, tread lightly." She whispered, the sound rolling over and about the clearing, growing in strength, growing in power. "’Tis holy ground here. In Death’s cold embrace, the Soldier sleepth here. On the red field of battle our brave Comrade died, and his last smile I caught as I knelt by his side."
The power growing in the clearing cracked and sparked across the pools. Ranko merely continued on her way, slowly striding forward towards one of the deepest ponds, knowing she was beyond exhaustion.
"Oh his lips they were smiling, he feared not to die, and his ear caught the shout as it rose to the sky. For ‘Victory is ours!’ his comrades cried. ‘Thank god.’ Said the Soldier and, smiling, he died."
Her foot touched the surface of the pond but failed to sink. Instead, she tread upon the water itself.
"Sleep well, my young Soldier, and soft shall be our tread upon this holy ground where lies the noble dead. And you who are listening, may you look upon this grave, and be proud, of your brother Soldier brave."
She slowly strode ever further towards the center, never flagging in either speech or stride.
"May God help his mother, her sadness to bear. May God help the Widow, of he who lies here. May he help the Orphans, their little hearts grieve, who no more shall a fond father’s kiss receive. And stranger tread lightly, ‘tis holy ground here. In Death’s cold embrace, the Soldier sleepth there. ‘Tis the grave of the hero neath the grass covered sod. His spirit’s in Heaven, at home with his God."
She now stood in the center of the pond and simply stood there as the power snapping and crackling about her rose to new heights.
"Sleep well, my young Soldier, and soft shall be our tread upon all this holy ground where lies the noble dead. And you who are listening, may you look upon this grave and be proud of your brother Soldier brave."
With the sounding of the last word, Ranko sank down far beneath the sill surface of the pool. She didn’t even attempt to grasp at the long pole that protruded from the water beside her. She simply sank deeper and deeper until she was no longer within sight through the clear waters.
Then suddenly the clearing exploded in light and power as the energies that had been building throughout the clearing suddenly found themselves released from what had previously bound them. When the light finally cleared, Kuno Ikari was no more. Where once had stood the most insane man of the Realms, who had so many illegitimate and legitimate progeny scattered about the 10 Kingdoms that some referred to him as the Evil Father, now was a small dumpy man in a ragged old robe and hat crouched.
"I.. I am... I am the Guide.." he muttered dimly as he set about gathering supplies to construct a new home for himself within the clearing.
Many years later, the Guide would meet with one who was his many, many times over great-grandson. But that would not be for a great while.
For now, Shima’s sole companion outside of the Senshi and his new wife, Akai, had drowned herself in a pool that she had once played in so carefreely. And in her desperate action made to escape a deranged man, she had cursed the entire clearing. Now the pools held within them the image of the form that had drowned within them for all eternity until that image was released by a living creature falling within it without drowning.