Chapter Text
"So, your mother…" Ranma Saotome stood with his father Genma a few feet apart from his fiancée's family, watching them grieve over a headstone.
He had never really thought about the lack of a Mrs. Tendo in the household before, considering his own lack of a mother, until that morning when the Tendo family had gathered to visit her. Then, as he'd donned his nicest black tangzhuang and followed the family out the door, he'd felt almost like a ghost drifting along with them. Distant, unable to close the gap, unable to understand the grief of losing something Ranma couldn't even begin to conceptualize.
"Uh huh, when I was very young," Akane Tendo, his fiancée, said as she looked into the distance, eyes shining, "But I remember a lot about her. She was such a wonderful mother."
'A wonderful mother.' Ranma wasn't much for deep thinking, but he tried once again to imagine what that must have been like, to have a mother only to lose her. If he really thought about it, Ranma's situation had to be kind of the same, right? He must have had a mom at some point, that's just how things work. But when he tried to look through his earliest memories, he came up blank. For all his life it had just been him, his Pops, and the road. That was just how it was, but now thinking back on it he felt only a strange sense of melancholy at what was missed.
Moms were something other people had, something that showed up in manga and anime and stories told on the playground but never in his own life. How could he even slot something like that into his hectic existence? What would she have been doing while Ranma was out there, training to become the greatest martial artist alive? Would she have been right there with him and Pops, learning on the road? A warm voice gently guiding him through the graceful footwork of a new kata? Or maybe she would have been more traditional, a homemaker keeping the house ready for whenever her boys came back from another long journey, making sure they always had somewhere nice and safe to return to?
Internally, Ranma scoffed at himself. Never, during the years of traveling and training, through all the hardships on the road did Genma ever imply that there was a home, some place they could go back to other than whatever crappy tent or run-down room they were staying in any given night. Even when they'd stumbled into the cursed springs of Jusenkyo, his Pops picking up a curse that could turn him into a panda and himself one that turned him into a girl, even when they'd been chased from a village of warrior women soon after and been hounded by assassination attempts all the way through China, even then Genma never brought up the idea there was someone else out there they could go for help. Then again, he hadn't brought up the Tendo Dojo or the arranged marriage to 'unite the schools' either until they were practically right outside their door.
A mother waiting at home to welcome Ranma back with a warm smile, no matter how caked in dirt and mud, no matter how beaten and bloodied by the travails of a martial artist, no matter how feminine or masculine or anything he came to her. It'd be just his luck if Pops 'forgot' there was someone like that Ranma could go to.
"What about your Mom, Ranma?" Nabiki, the middle Tendo sister asked, breaking him from his thoughts.
"Who knows?" Certainly not him, the boy who hadn't even noticed the apparent hole in his life until that morning.
"What do you even mean, who knows?" Akane chimed in.
Ranma turned to the only person who could know, the panda currently sweating beside him, and gave him a flat look.
[It is time at last, that I reveal the secret!] Genma held a sign aloft in his paw. Ranma's expression didn't change, he could already tell whatever came out of Pops' mouth— er, paws— would be bullshit. [I gave birth to you myself!]
Rolling his eyes, Ranma lifted his leg into a high-kick that came just a centimeter from hitting the panda. He felt a little shiver of satisfaction at his Pops' brief flinch before letting gravity do the rest of the work, his foot falling and smushing his Pops' face in as he gave an unimpressed glare. "More likely she ran out on you."
It would make a good amount of sense, his Pops was lazy, greedy, a compulsive liar, gambler, cheater, drunkard… Really, now that he thought about it it was amazing that Genma even managed to get with someone in the first place. His thoughts turned sour as he mulled the idea over in his head. If his mom ran out on Pops, well… Where did that leave Ranma? Was he not worth taking along, just another burden left behind?
"More likely that he ran out on her," Ranma heard the eldest Tendo sister, Kasumi, whisper from behind him. That was another possible explanation, and one that let Ranma focus elsewhere: on top of everything else, Pops was also a coward and a thief. If he did have a mother somewhere out there… maybe she was sad and lonely, desperately awaiting the day her son might be returned to her. Maybe it was a selfish thought but it was much nicer, the idea that he hadn't been abandoned but rather stolen away from whoever birthed him. That someone out there missed him.
As they left the graveyard, Ranma turned one more time to look at the headstone marking Mrs. Tendo's resting place. Hopefully his own mother was out there somewhere. And hopefully someday soon, somewhere in all the chaos of his life, they would be reunited.
It was a nice thought.
Nodoka meditated as the sun began to rise over the old Hunters' shrine behind her, bathing her in light and making the katana balanced on her palms glow as though she had pulled it from the Konmon itself. The soft rustling of leaves and the chirps and caws of the distant beasts of the forest were the only things floating through her mind as she basked in the morning sun. It was a peaceful almost-silence, the kind that she once found comfort in after the long nights of performing in front of the cheering crowds of her youth, the kind of silence that once told her you did it, all is safe another night, rest. The kind of near-silence that she used to feel, spread out on the grass with a chipped bokken at her side after a long day of practicing with her fellow Hunters.
The kind of near-silence that verged dangerously upon the true, deep silence that fell the night they died. The silence that consumed her even as she slayed the last of the ambushing oni, even as she begged and pleaded with the Konmon, her fallen comrades, and anyone who would listen that night to tell her that she hadn't been too late, that she had saved them. The silence that kept her from hearing whatever the paramedics said as they shook their heads with sad eyes, ushering a shaking Nodoka out of the alleyway. The dreadful silence that clung to her even now almost a decade and a half later, trapping her in place whenever she stopped for too long.
Nodoka was snapped out of her meditation by a sharp pain in her hand. Opening her eyes, she relaxed the unconscious grip she had on the blade of her katana and stared down at the deep cut she had made in her hand. Glowing blue threads of Konmon peeled up from the ground around her, twirling their way into the wound and sealing it shut. The faintly glowing waves of blue pulsed and the sound soft bells chimed around her as though the Konmon itself was playfully chiding her for her clumsiness. Silence was not the only thing that clung to her during her long period alone. The Konmon was always there, spread across every surface, a comforting weight that also reminded her that she had a duty even as its light grew fainter and fainter by the day.
It had been fifteen years too long since a trio of Japanese Hunters stood on stage as pop idols, fueling the Konmon with their songs. Every one of those years had seen Nodoka wandering the country searching for her successors while she hunted down the oni that slipped through the ever-weakening barrier between realms. She could hardly bring herself to sing without her girls, nor did she have the business sense to join the other side of the idol industry like some other retired Hunters did. Instead she had two feet, a sword, and enough money from royalties to keep traveling indefinitely.
Still, in spite of her dedication, she'd not encountered a single hint of anyone else in-tune enough with the Konmon to bear its mantle. The barrier continued to decay year by year, fed on a famine diet of rereleases and covers that didn't keep the edges from fraying.
Nodoka let her eyes trail off into the distance, the hill the Hunters' shrine sat on letting her see the countryside for miles around. Focusing on her connection to the Konmon, she could just barely make out the faint waves of blue coating the surface far in the distance and, interspersed, the brighter lines that weaved between. The reaching, supporting tendrils of the Konmon's sister barrier across the Sea of Japan— the Honmoon.
Both were part of a disjointed, overlapping sequence of barriers that spread out across the entire globe to protect humans from the demon realm. One of Nodoka's old mentors had called it a "patchwork quilt keeping the oni at bay", and with the way the barriers weaved and interlocked at the edges it wasn't hard to see why. For a few, dire years prior, there had been a massive, growing hole in that quilt with thousands of demons gnawing like moths at its edges. The Honmoon and Konmon both faltering at the lack of their Hunter trios.
Then, almost overnight, the glowing threads extending from the northwest grew incredibly bright, extending out to interlace with and strengthen the flagging Konmon over Japan. Korea had its Hunters once again, but that only delayed the decay elsewhere. Even now, with the threads extending from Korea so strong they verged upon golden, the rate of oni incursions in the land under Nodoka's protection only grew, and with it her time grew shorter. Even if the Korean Honmoon turned golden that very moment, Nodoka doubted she had more than a year or two before the thinly drawn threads of Konmon around her dissolved into nothingness. In as literal a sense as possible, it would be hell on earth.
Just another year or two of desperately scouring the country with nothing but the ailing Konmon as her traveling companion before thousands, possibly millions dying as Nodoka's failure would be exposed for all the world to see. Hundreds of years of tradition, of Hunter blood spilt in a secret war for the hearts and souls of humanity. Her bandmates— her girls— and everyone she'd left behind in the wake of their brutal deaths. The Konmon itself, which had chosen a modest kendo enthusiast and turned her into a warrior and a star. She'll have failed them all. Has been failing them all, with each passing day.
She looked down once again at the katana in her hands. Kneeling as she was before the old Hunters' shrine, it was easy to imagine herself in the same position two years hence, a different weapon in hand. Maybe one of the small tanto tucked away in the old Hunters' armory, blade turned inward so its point almost pressed into her gut.
No, such thoughts never led anywhere good.
With a shaky breath, Nodoka rose from her seated position, feeling every ounce of weight placed upon her shoulders, and slid her katana back into its sheathe. It was time once again to depart the Hunter's shrine, nestled as it was far on the outskirts of Kyoto. She had an early train to catch back to Tokyo to begin her search for the Konmon's chosen anew. Slipping off her wooden geta sandals, she stepped into the shrine to say her final goodbyes.
As she walked, she stopped and gave a slight bow to each of her predecessors as she went. Old brushstroke paintings gave way to detailed portraits and then photographs as she passed through the generations of hunters, paying her respects to each and ever one who had ever carried the weight she now bore like a penitent's cross. Finally she arrived at the center of her world and, for just a moment, let everything else melt away into a genuine smile as she gazed upon it.
An ornate box like all the others, set aside centuries ago for the purpose, with two urns already slotted into it. Above the box was a picture of herself, standing with her girls in a photo commemorating their debut. Nori-chan, brightly smiling at the camera as she held her Jumanji spear in one hand and made a peace symbol with her other. Rei, trying hard to look cool as she held her twin axes crossed over her chest. And finally, her younger self staring back, smiling serenely as she held her katana in stance.
She remembered that day fondly, how Nori-chan had teased her, doing everything she could to break Nodoka's composure for picture after picture until their mentor had finally forced her to stop. Those photos, the ones of her face twitching with unconcealable joy as Nori-chan posed triumphantly over an annoyed but smiling Rei, those were for herself. The photo hanging in the shrine of three proud Hunters, ready to face the world? That was for every future generation.
Assuming there was a future generation. Nodoka frowned again, feeling the weight return.
Someday, she had to believe, when those future generations came and the weight was passed on, she would join her girls once again. Her urn would be slotted into the box with her girls and the next generation of Hunters would complete the ceremony, reuniting the souls of their elders as they scattered the ashes together at the base of a blessed tree. For now, though…
"Nori-chan, Rei…" Her voice strained around the names as much from distress as from lack of use. She paused, letting the silence and the Konmon's embrace enshroud her like an insulating cloak. What more could she say, that she had not said before? How many more I-miss-you's, I'm-sorry's, and I-promise's could she make before she was fully hollowed out? Almost fifteen years…
Nodoka made the only promise she could, the one she still lived to fulfill even if she had nothing to show for it.
"I will find them, I swear it."