The Spring Of Drowned Thief

These Sins Aren’t Mine


Ranma slept in an empty purgatory of silence and self-restraint. The pale moonlight filtered through the window in a soft ambiance of deep blue and bathed him softly as he lay motionless. In contrast Ryouga sat on his bed with his knees close to his chest and not able to pull his eyes away from Ranma who was on the floor. The shadows shrouded him entirely and only the whites of his eyes could be seen if there was anyone else to pay attention. He watched Ranma with a furtive attentiveness to spot even the slightest movement of some kind. But Ranma just laid there like a stone to a century without any movement save that for the rhythmic raise and decline of his chest while he breathed. Ryouga knew the danger, as it was carefully explained to him in detail, but after what seemed to be a few hours, it was difficult to tell without a clock, his eyes slowly betrayed his self-awareness and started sliding shut on him.

He saw nothing in the room anymore, but the thick black behind his own eyelids and justified it by telling himself, ‘I’m just resting my eyes… I’ll open them in a second… I’m just resting them…’ The feeling of a warm mental liquid entered his head and started to drown him into a peaceful sleep. It must not have lasted long because when he awoke to a scratching sound it was still very black within the bedroom. He’d pulled himself up into a sitting position and looked around and then at Ranma. His senses must have been on high alert because the sound that had torn him from sleep was just Ranma rolling in his covers. Ryouga kept his eyes open for just a little longer, but saw no danger and saw no point in staying awake out of a paranoid delusion that Ranma was still dangerous after such a powerful sedation. It was actually the powerful fumes of Siren’s Whisper that gave him the groggy feeling when Ranma opened the bottle and took a few small drops for himself. Again he closed his eyes slowly with his focus on Ranma until the black was there again and that warm feeling swept through him.

It must have been some time later, but Ryouga had awoken to not a sound but a touch this time. He startled awake with wide eyes and saw Ranma lying beside him with open eyes, red hair and gentle smile. She was stroking his hair lovingly and soothingly, “Sorry, did I wake you?” she spoke softly.

It was still dark inside the room and probably very early in morning, or even still the late evening going by the troubled sleep he’d had. “Yeah… What time is it?”

Ranma brought her lips to his forehead and continued stroking his hair. “It’s still late…” Slowly she worked her way down his face with a kiss to the tip of his nose and then to his lips. She paused for a moment and stared into his eyes with a glassy look and comforting smile. “I love you…”

Ryouga felt himself being drawn towards her warm body and absentmindedly returned the gentle kisses. “I love you too…”

Slowly she straddled him and pushed her ample chest against his while gliding her hands across his body while pressing her lips against his. “I want to be with you… Now and forever… Just like this…” Their hot breath met between them in sexual extravagance and Ryouga found his hands moving up Ranma’s rolling hips, around to her stomach and stopping on her breasts. Slowly her hands lifted his shirt off of him and with a gentle clasp she grabbed Ryouga’s wrists and pushed him back against the soft bed. With an anxious tongue she licked his neck and then gave it a small nibble. Ryouga closed his eyes and breathed deeply while feeling her body all over. Her head raised and she spoke secretively into his ear. “I want to see you, and know you… I want to be part of you and you part of me… I want to know what you look like inside…”

Ryouga felt her raise herself up and put a hand to his stomach, but then the sound of something sliding caught his ear. It was the peculiar, yet distinct sounds of something metal sliding either in or out of something rough, like leather. He opened his eyes quickly to see a long jagged blade making its way to his chest at an alarming pace. He speedily brought his hands forward and clapped his hands together on the cold rusted steel knife stopping it dead. Ranma smiled wide and with a crazed looked she put all her weight on the blade and pushed it slowly down between the palms of his hands and cutting them wide open in the process. The pain started becoming unbearable and his mind races for a way out of it.

His first idea was to swiftly break the blade in two, but there was the possibility that she could still run him through with the broken end. He could have removed one hand to push her off, but he came back to the horrible thought all she had to do was tilt her weight at such an angle to slash through his fingers which would once again give way to a direct path towards his fleshy heart. He could not move, or roll to avoid the piercing weapon because she had placed herself on top of him and pinned him between a near impossible position to get up from without the aid of his arms, and a menacingly sharp blade with its direct point. His heart raced and his frantic breathing seemed to try and match it. He had to risk it; he had to risk something in order to survive. Quickly and with much agony, he drove his hands upward along the icy razor edges of the blade until they slammed against the grip she held and forced the butt of it into the nose of the red headed demon on top of him.

She let out shriek and fell back off of him without the blade in her hand and rolled to the hard stone floor just beneath the bed. Ryouga’s hands burned with a sickly fire and before he could think to check on Ranma he started wrapping his wide-open wounds in the bed sheets he’d been sleeping on. Without being able to hold back his basic instincts he stayed silent for a moment, shut his eyes and let out an agonizing scream heard by everyone in the palace.

Almost instantly the door burst forth and a swarm of bodies poured in and at that moment Ranma got off the floor, but she looked slightly different. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? Ryouga looked at her hard for only a moment, but it was more then enough time to see the red hair gone slightly stringy and the eyes not with a glassy look, but a vacant one that always looked inward at ones self. A fraction of a second was the amounted time in which her eyes truly focus, but it was only to see the path in front of her and thus her escape. She bowed down like a wild dog and launched herself between the stunned crowd and leaving Ryouga to bleed. Almost passively they let her by, but Ryouga shouted and pointed at her with the rumpled sheets, “It’s not Ranma! Stop her!”

Most of the people left, but some stayed behind like Dr. Tofu with the dilemma of either chasing the red head, or staying behind to help Ryouga. Their options became limited when Ryouga himself rolled off the bed and started running after her with the torn bloody sheets still wrapped clumsily around his hands. In his pursuits he found that she hadn’t gone far and quickly he pushed his way through the crowd in front of her. She’d disarmed a Musk guard and forcefully jammed his own short knife into the side of his neck. There was a brief moment where he became rigid and motionless, but his body twitched and his hands went to his throat as she pulled the knife straight towards her and right out the front of his neck. The windpipe had been slashed open from the inside and blood from the aorta discharged and leaked profusely across the stone floor. Half the blood had sprayed across her and the warm smile of being utterly contempt crossed her face like a rich orgasmic pleasure.

As she looked up she saw the crowd before her and Ryouga in front. Her eyes locked with his and she spoke with a thick English accent. “Hello love. I was only pretending when I tried to slash you open. I love you to bits I swear it, I want nothing to do with that dodgy scouser anymore, I promise. Jack means nothing to me, nothing I say! I just want you my love and only you.” The look in her eyes and the tone of voice told him that what she was saying was beyond any doubt true to every word, but then her eyes and face shifted for a brief moment and she looked at everyone else behind him. She studied their faces, each and every one of them. There was a short raven-haired girl, a tall sly looking one, a well-developed cattish girl, both a young and older man with glasses, a fat blimp of a man and his wife, and finally a young man with the essence of a dragon within him accompanied by his two feral bodyguards. “All of you are either too unique or not unique enough. But you my darling…” She locked eyes with Ryouga again. “You have something special in you, I can taste it on the edge of my lips…” She took a step back and watched them closely, “Unfortunately for both of us love, we cannot discover what it is just now… Good bye, I’ll dream of you every night from now on…” With that she blew a kiss, which left her mouth bloody and turned to go.

She ran fast down the lengthy hall, but before she could reach the end a large bulky man broke through the window and put himself in front of her and the door. “That’s far enough Marry. How about you get out of Ranma’s body before I beat the living piss out of ya? I don’t got much of a problem hitting women if you recall.”

A look of despicable hate crossed her face and she stared at the figure. “It’s you! I’ll make you pay for what you did to me!”

The people that had gotten to know Kyva had always seen him garbed in his signature long dark coat that covered his entire body and made the illusion of gigantism, but now without a coat, or even a shirt they saw his body to be something of a disaster. Scars etched and littered his entire torso showing the harsh patchwork he may have had to do when all alone all those years ago. He was still very tall and very muscular, but the width of his waist and broadness of his shoulders were much smaller then the coat gave him credit for which explained how a man of his size could be so agile. His hands were still large, but even despite the strength in them he was actually somewhat slender all around and it could easily be assumed that his superior strength came mostly from his natural born height. Although even without the long dark coat and just a pair of pants that only came to just above his ankles it was clear that he was not a force to reckoned with. His life story was written all over his body without having to form a single word, but still managed to display a strangely grotesque poetry of victory and sorrow.

Marry, or the one controlling Ranma’s dormant body made a move to head to other way, but with a rushing underarm strike, Kyva came at her with ferocity and aimed his flying fist into her gut. As he felt the connection he knew right away that Marry had discovered how to use Ranma’s agile body. She had quickly placed both her hands in front of her stomach and let herself be pushed away like a leaf in the wind that follows the flow of an oncoming storm. Kyva however was quicker then she was and as she glided backwards through the air, he pushed himself off the ground with a deadly velocity and brought one of his great hands down like a balled up club and smashed her chest hard enough to send her to the ground with a meaty thud.

There was something immediately wrong when he landed on his feet that forced him to stumble and grip his own chest in pain. He fought for his breath and looked at the redhead carefully and saw the bright red mark in the bridge of her nose that he’d passed off as blood. She had been hit there before and only a few minutes before he broke in through the window he had been sleeping on the roof until what felt like a rock had hit him in the face. But now his chest felt as though it had taken the smashing blow he had just delivered and that’s when he realized it. Their bodies were still linked together in some way and when one took a serious blow the other would feel it just as the receiver had.

Then a thought occurred as he pushed himself up. If he was still linked to Ranma in this way, then was Marry as well? What if all of them were linked at once, then that would mean that he’d just hit five people at once including himself. Would it be enough to wake them all and snap Ranma out of it? Then he saw Ranma’s body start moving and it gave him a moment of hope, but then he realized that a blow could not wake anyone up from Siren’s Whisper and therefore meant that Ranma was still under control.

Marry picked herself up in almost a leisurely fashion and brushed herself off in a very elegant lady like way. “Oh, deary dear. You have made quite a mess of me love. You gave me quite a terror you did, I thought I would be done in for sure, but the amazing thing here love, is that I didn’t feel a thing, just a little tingle. I can’t quite explain it meself, but it was defiantly rush of the heart let me tell you.” She raised her knife and prepared to shove the point of it between his eyes and all he could do was look up in horror. Kyva did not look up in horror because of Marry and knife, but because he saw Ukyo flying up behind her with the giant spatula over her head and coming down with the intent of a full power blow.

Kyva closed his eyes and instantly it felt like the entirety of the side of a mountain had fallen off its rocky wall and smashed without mercy against the back of his fragile head. Before he could even begin to cope with some foreign pain piecing the back of his skull, he felt as though his face had slammed against the ground, chipped most of his teeth and then slide about sixteen feet on the skin of his face. He wanted to shed his tough front so badly just so he could cry, even if only for a moment. The thought in which he was once a soul in the bottom of a pond rushed through his mind and fragmentally he wished that he had never left.

After a moment he gritted his teeth, which still felt broken yet whole and got up to forcefully yank the weapon out of Ukyo’s hands. He pointed at her and held his eyes wide open trying to antagonize her without words he couldn’t find. Instead he just broke the weapon in half and started chewing on the handle in hopes that he could show her that by eating her giant spatula, just how much he hated it. Then his weight shifted against his will and he was pushed into Ukyo knocking her over.

Kyva looked down at his side to see a knife driven in close to his kidney. His eye twitched with an utter annoyance and he grabbed the hand holding it. He raised Marry up to eye level in front of him and looked deeply into eyes with a discouraging sneer. He spoke with almost a calm yet truly icy tone that could freeze the universe from motion for hours on end. “When I find you, which I will, I’m going to pull out all of you internal organs through that gapping bug infested vagina of yours, do you hear me? You’re going to die again and I’m going to make each and every one of you squirm until I’ve damn near died from laughter. You do not fuck with me!”

Marry smiled almost absentmindedly and leaned in close to his face showing him all the blood in her mouth and the broken teeth covered in it. “I look forward to it love, but remember my dear, all you ever had to do was say yes and none of this would have ever happened. It’s your fault we are like this, so until you do finally pull out my organs or whatever horrible punishment you may have in store for me, I shall continue to haunt, pester, manipulate, kill, and devour everyone one around you until I’ve fully transfixed myself with in a majestic deliverance of shear physical, mental, and metaphysical horror. So until then love, a gift from me to you.” With that she took in a deep disgusting gurgle of a breath and losing all demeanor of a womanly atmosphere, she spat a putrid mix of tooth and blood into Kyva’s face.

Kyva blinked once and in threatening whisper said, “Get out.”

As if daring him to tear her head off she just said, “Sorry deary, don’t know how.” in a delightfully bouncy and cheerful voice, as if she half sang it like a rhyme.

“Fine lets do this the hard way.” With a killer’s look and without even a slight movement from his own body a third semi transparent arm seemed to peel away from the one holding her up and stiffly plunged into stomach leaving a ring of soft golden light seeping out of her. With his own soul he had reached into Ranma’s body and grabbed Marry’s wayward soul. By the way he grinded his teeth and the way Marry’s voice screamed with a spine tweaking chill, he had done something horrible to her in the way he grabbed it. The way she screamed it could have been a physical pain she felt, but by the way her voice pierced through everything to the point where the windows began to rattle and riddle with cracks, it could have been a mental pain that made her mind feel as if it were being ripped into fine pieces. Strangely enough it seemed as if Ranma’s body started melting into Kyva’s and with an annoyed look he openly said, “Damn… I guess it wasn’t meant to last.”

Once Ranma’s entire body had soaked in beneath Kyva’s skin, all that was left was a shapeless thing of transparent light that jerked and wailed in what seemed to be many hundreds of screeching voices all screaming at once. “You brought this upon yourself lady, now pay the price.” His soulful hand glowed brightly for a moment and seemed to throw the disembodied Marry back to its empty shell deep in the woods. As if a gift from something merciful, all the pain in him went away and only left him feeling slightly tired, but his job wasn’t done yet. Without warning he pushed everyone out of his way and grabbed the dead Musk guard by his slashed throat and started muttering a few words.

He passed his nephew Prince Herb an unreadable look and said, “It may be too late, so don’t expect much.”

Herb being puzzled by this didn’t know what to think or expect. He barely even knew what was going on, only that his distant cousin had just caused a lot of damage, killed Parsley in the process and had melted away into his annoying asshole of an uncle. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you stay! You’re ruining everything you idiot! Now my best scout is dead because of you!”

Kyva waved him off with an air of disinterest. “Don’t worry princess I’ll take care of things.”

“Princess!? I am a prince you unlearned buffoon! I want you out!” But before Herb could go any further in his hysteria a blinding light shut him up and when it faded away he heard a cough. He looked towards Parsley with astonishment and said, “You’re alive!”

Parsley just stood there confused and still in the grip of Kyva and asked, “Did I die again?” There was an edge of confused fear in his voice that no one could really describe.

Kyva booted him away and said coolly, “You can thank me later, now piss off.” But as he turned he was faced with everyone from Nerima shooting dreadful looks at him. “What?”

Nabiki stared at him with an ambient hate and said, “How about an explanation!?” an expression of agreed anger spread through the crowd and all of a sudden he felt very small in front of them

Kyva scratched his head nervously and spoke dumbly, “Oh, right…”


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(Author's note: Well, it feels nice writing this fic again, I'll admit that.)