But as they peered down the gaping maw of the Pit, they couldn’t help but feel more than a little bit intimidated. After all, they had watched Ranma rise from that great depth in a fiery rebirth. They had all heard the tales of the Neriman Legends by that time. And, maybe worst of all, they had been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be completely ineffective when it came to fighting Ranma’s other half, given the name Ranko by Mercury.

The struggle had been odd in the extreme. For not only had Ranko completely outclassed them in most cases, but Jupiter and Venus had a queasy feeling that they might not have gone all out like they thought they had. As they looked back over the battle, they could spot several wide openings that had formed in Ranko’s defensive shield in various points. Yet, neither one ever took any advantage of the openings, despite having noticed them.

It was as if they knew her. And not only simply knew her, but wished her no harm. Above and beyond even that, they somehow knew that she could have killed them without much more effort than she had expended against them, and possibly even less.

Yet, she hadn’t bothered to even severely maim them when she had the chance. Suddenly, it dawned on them that she was possibly holding back her full abilities as well.

That was quite possibly the most frightening idea of all.

***********

Miles below, there existed a quite extensive cavernous system that culminated in a single massive chamber with walls fused into glass from an extreme source of heat which had once blasted its way through the land, leaving the system in its wake. It was towards that chamber that Ranko lead Akane. Through tortuous twists and down innumerable side tunnels they traveled.

At one point they were forced to slip through a gigantic slab of raw iron by way of a narrow steel door. Further down, they found themselves scaling a sheer cliff face marked with fist sized pocks in its glassy surface. They swam through a torrential underground river of water so cold that steam billowed off of them as they emerged shivering on the other side.

They pushed and pulled their way through the shattered remains of monumental golems that had been rent by mighty forces in eons past. Busted their way through two or three stone seals. And finally came upon an ornate door that seemed so strangely out of place in the dark subterraneous realm.

***********

Ranko strode forward with a smile. Her delicate hand brushed gently along the well oiled surface as she leaned against it. After a short period of time, she straightened and turned back to Akane.

"Through here." She whispered. "This is the door that will take you to him who you have searched for." Then she stepped aside to allow Akane access to the door.

Akane stepped forward with a lightness in her step that had not been seen in days. As she laid her hand upon the golden handle though, she paused and looked to where Ranko stood to the side.

"Are you coming?"

"Who? Me?" Ranko chuckled softly, and reached out to lay a reassuring hand on Akane’s outstretched arm. "No. It is not my place to go for him, Akai-hime. I must remain without."

Akane’s face screwed up in puzzlement. "Why do you keep calling me that? My name’s Akane, not Akai, and I’m not any princess."

"You may be Akane now. But once your name was Akai and you were a princess. Someday, it may even be true once more. Now, go to the one who awaits you." And with that, Ranko lowered her hand to her side and stepped back, vanishing into the shadows as if she had never been there at all.

Akane was mightily disquieted by that particular turn of events. As it was, she not only didn’t know how to get back through the maze that Ranko had guide her through, but was also filled with a great sense of curiosity about the mysterious door before her. And as quite often occurred with Akane, curiosity won again.

She turned the handle with a trepidation born of long emersion is the strange and ungodly. One does not become involved in battles with gods and whatnot with out becoming understandably wary. And one such as Akane who had been the object of kidnapping in Nerima so often was also paranoid to the extreme.

Thus did the door open, with no great excess of speed and yet no notable amount of creaking emanating from the age-old hinges. Akane stood in disbelief as the portal slowly revealed what it once had held hidden.

Within the ancient doorway was a vast cavern that bore neither touch of man nor that of nature. It was a smoothly hollowed emptiness in the center of the Earth. Lustrously polished walls glistened onyx-dark in a perfectly hollowed globe of existence. Light flickered and danced in reflection from the bonfire that roared in the epicenter of the chamber. The appearance was dazzling, like nothing so much as the most brilliant of lights being filtered through the largest, most perfect diamond in all of existence.

But that awe-inspiring sight was not what tugged at the scarred strings of the young spitfire of the Tendo clan. Though the beauty was beyond any that mortal eyes had touched upon before, her eyes averted from the surrounding sheen to prostrate themselves before the alter of divineness that stood in the center of the bonfire yet remained unharmed.

He was unparalleled perfection in appearance before her biased eyes. Long, glossy, sable hair cascaded down his wiry muscular back in a way that would make Fabio jealous. His scarred shoulders squared back against some unknown force. His long, lithe legs, encased in his ever present black velvet pants, stood braced against the two main logs that made up the fierce heat of the bonfire.

Finally, he turned to look at her with a smile that alit the fires his deep black orbs anew. He stepped from the fire towards her his arms outstretched to her. Though the flames clung tenaciously yet to his form, Akane found herself racing across the slick surface of the room to his arms.

"Litte daughter. How I have missed you." A soft voice whispered in the musical tones of a sweet child. Long, tapered fingers gently curled under her chin and caused her to raise her face to look into his.

She knew that he was not Ranma. Ranma had never bore the very essence of perfection about him. Ranma was confident and arrogant, to be sure, but he was far from perfect. And he rarely seemed to truly believe that he was perfect like so many of the other guys she had met in her life seemed to be. He was merely confident in what he could do and arrogant because he was simply as good as he often thought. It was pride that guided his life. Pride and honor.

This man, who though similar in appearance, was definitely not Ranma. Which was not to say that this man did not possess great pride, or honor or bear overbearing confidence and arrogance within his exquisite frame, of course. For simply the way in which he held himself so like Ranma spoke volumes about his confidence and pride.

But, despite the fact that he was not, per say, the man that she had believed that she was looking for, she had found within him the man that perhaps she should have been looking for. The strict father figure that she could not find in her own biological parent. And at the same time, the tender mercy of a mother that she had never truly known.

As these and many other thoughts soaked into Akane’s mind she found that she could not hold her fiercely tight leash on her emotions any longer. And slowly her silent tears transformed into open sobs as she clutched at the man who held her in his arms so gently. He was so like Ranma, and yet so fundamentally different that made all the world stop for a time and take note.

Ranma had held her in his arms so few times that she would often wonder if, perhaps, she had imagined the whole thing. Sometimes she had the distinct impression that maybe, just maybe, the front they put up before their fathers was not actually a front at all. Sometimes she found it so hard to believe that Ranma could ever care for someone like her.

And then, he would turn around and smile that beautiful smile of his that could brighten the entire day, no matter what happened. Or he would do something so nice that she found all trace of pessimistic thoughts about their relationship, or lack thereof, drifting away on the winds. Or maybe he would just be there for her when she needed someone and didn’t have anyone to turn to. She always knew that when she needed him, he would be there, no matter what. He would rouse the cavalry and come charging in as always. The handsome knight in shining armor upon his charger.

Somehow, though, she found herself longing for Ranma to come in and take him away from this strange, yet familiar, parental figure and simply hold her in his arms and never let her go. Yet, she knew that that was just an idle fantasy. Never in her wildest dreams did she actually believe that Ranma would ever do something like that for her. She may have known how terribly much he cared about her, still and all he was Ranma. And Ranma was still so much a little boy on the inside. And little boys just did not do that kind of thing.

Which made her sob all that much harder into the powerful chest of the man who held her.

***********

Some distance away, outside the ornate door, Ranko had back tracked for a bit after leaving Akane at the door and had turned off into a side tunnel. Down that tunnel, she came upon a place in which there were two steaming hot pools of sparkling water. It was on the shores of the nearest one that she knelt and gazed into its crystalline depths.

And the face which gazed back at her was not her own. As well she knew it would not be. For the face which gazed back at her was that of he whose form she shared.

She reached down with a gentle hand and lightly touched the surface of the water. Beneath her, a large callused palm mirrored her maneuver. She knew what it would mean to the man in the pool if she would simply throw herself in. The curse that bound them would be released and she would be never again with him, her first and foremost friend.

For a moment, she stood and made as if to step into the hot pool, but the frantic gestures of her male reflection that moved so entirely out of sync with her own movements halted her forward motion. She crouched again beside the water’s edge and gazed curiously into the water. The man that peered back wore an expression of pleading on his features.

Slowly, as if with intensive effort, he raised one tapered finger to the undersurface of the water and traced one painstaking figure after another.

"Do not." Ranko read quietly, then brought her own hand to the water’s surface and traced another word in reply. ‘Why?’

"Do not want you gone." She read again. Tears shimmered in her eyes and she gazed down upon the suddenly blurred surface. She quickly traced two words. ‘Thank you.’

The man smiled up at her with so much love and caring in his face that she found it hard to believe that one man could ever contain everything which he managed to hold within him. Then she rose from her crouch with a final wave into the pool and strode over to the next pool.

Diving in to the comfortably heated pool, Ranko disappeared quickly within its crystalline depths. From the bottom of the pool in her place suddenly kicked her masculine counterpart. A quick adjustment to his suddenly too tight pants and Ranma hoisted himself bodily from the water. Excess liquid cascaded from his body in a sudden shower as he shook himself furiously.

Then he was gone racing down the tunnel that Ranko had so recently traced back towards the ornate door.

***********

AUTHOR’S NOTE: ;P I love cliffhangers! So, the question now is what’s going to happen between Ranma and his doppelganger, eh? You have no idea how right you are. But, you’re probably wrong in one idea.

I don’t think I’m gonna tell you what that idea is though.

By the way, who thinks that I should keep listening to Don Dokken’s ‘Up From The Ashes’ while I write this? It’s what I’ve been listening to as I write for all of Part Nine.