No One Ever Said Life Was Easy

Prologue 

by Jonathan Ford

=====

Ranma slumped on the low couch. He was unusually pale and a faint sheen
of sweat could be seen glistening above his brow. He hadn't done
anything to deserve this, not even close to it. Sure, he wasn't the
nicest person in the world, and he was a bit too arrogant, he knew, and
sometimes he could be a real asshole, but he absolutely did not deserve
this new curse, and indeed it was a curse, worse even than being trapped
as a girl for eternity.

"Just take deep breaths, slowly, though, you don't want to make it
worse." The voice was gentle, soothing. It belonged to an attractive
woman in her early twenties. She smelled clean, kinda spicy, clean like
the open forests that he had trekked through years earlier with his
father.

Somehow, Ranma managed to speak, though his voice was tight with strain
and fear. "I don't need to take deep breaths, lady. You don't even
understand what's happening right now. It's all I can do just to hold it
in."

"We all go through this when we're infected, Ranma. It's worse for some
than others, but we all go through it. That's why I'm here, to be a
shoulder to cry on. There's no need to be ashamed." It was only the
sure, reasonable tone in her voice that kept Ranma from lashing out at
her.

"That's not...even what I'm talking about. I'm through crying over what
I can't change." His voiced wavered and the muscles in his chest spasmed
painfully from where he'd been clenching them without rest for hours.
The pain helped, returned to him a bit of his focus. "It shouldn't have
been able to get near me. I could have slaughtered it...if it hadn't
been a cat." Ranma wasn't even about to explain to her the hell of the
neko-ken.

"You can't blame yourself, Ranma. The weretiger who infected me, she
tore the door of my car off like it was made of paper. You're only
human, even now, and we just can't fight something like that."

Now Ranma laughed, a harsh, wrenching laugh that left his lungs burning.
"I could do that when I was twelve years old, lady."

"Please, call me Terry."

"Terry, then. What I'm saying, Terry, is that I really could have fought
any other creature off, destroyed it. I've killed demons with my bare
hands, destroyed small mountains...you don't believe me. Heh, I even
killed a god once, at least he thought he was a god. He may have been.
But it was a cat, a god damned cat. The single thing I'm afraid of in
the entire world, and it decided to eat me." He could smell her
disbelief, like a trembling note in the still air of the clinic. It
didn't matter if she believed him or not.

Ignoring what he'd said, even though she herself could smell that Ranma
told the truth, or at least what he believed to be the truth, Terry
said,"Is that why you're so upset, that you have a phobia of cats and
now you've been infected with lycanthropy to become a tiger?"

Another laugh. "Sure, that bothers the hell out of me, more than you
would believe. I'll deal with that. Ranma Saotome never gives up. No,
right now I'm upset because I can barely control my aura. I've trained
in the martial arts my entire life, for as long as I can remember. With
proper focus and training, a person can learn to do things with their
auras."

"Like witches and psychics?" Terry asked almost curiously.

Ranma tried to shrug, almost pulling it off. "I don't know. I try to
avoid magic, it's bad news, very bad news. I'd show you a few tricks if
I could, but its taking so much effort just to hold my aura inside me
that I doubt I'd be able to keep it under control. It's moving inside
me, shifting. That's not supposed to happen. Normally I have to call if,
sorta pull the energy out of myself. But now it's fighting to get out,
like it's alive all on its own."

Terry sighed in understanding. "That sounds like your beast, Ranma. We
all have them. They are our animal halves, the personality to go with
the animal form. Learning to control your beast is difficult. We have to
learn to resist animal urges we've never had before, mainly, but others
are just increased. Jealousy, anger, lust, and most of the others dark
emotions are the same. For now, though, it won't hurt you to let it
stir, I promise."

She understood, Ranma realized, but she only understood a single facet
of his problem. If he lost control of his aura...this beast, he really
lost control, as in he went into the full neko-ken. The day before, he'd
tried to relax, just to take a break and pull himself together. The
train ride into the countryside had left him exhausted. His chi had
reacted to almost any stimuli violently.

Once among the forested hills that bordered the mountains, Ranma let his
control slip away, and with it he had lost consciousness. That night, he
awoke, sticky and smelling of blood. There was fur stuck between his
teeth. He couldn't allow that to happen again, at least not with people
around. Terry wanted to help him, he knew. Once they'd learned of his
infection by a rogue weretiger, the local pack had contacted him in the
hospital. Terry was their represenative, spokesperson, therapist, all
rolled into one. Maybe she would understand.

"You need to hear a story of something that happened to me years ago,
and then maybe you'll understand exactly why I can't give into my aura,
my beast." Terry agreed, so Ranma explained. He only skimmed over his
childhood up until the neko-ken training. That he explained in detail,
leaving nothing out, telling her as much of it as he could force himself
to remember. Then he told her of what had happened the day before when
he'd voluntarily given up.

"Now do you see?" Ranma asked. The only sleep he'd had in almost a week
had been after going into the neko-ken. What would happen when he had to
sleep again? He could probably go a few more days, maybe four if he
stretched it, but he would have to sleep, and then his beast would be
free again.

Terry was silent for almost a minute. Concerned that he had horrified
her, Ranma glanced over to see Terry. She was sitting in a cushioned
armchair, trembling. As he watched, the slight woman's fingers dug into
the wooden armrests of the chair as she squeezed them.

"Are you all right?" he asked. He paid for his concern as his aura
flared bright crimson. Just a moment without almost total concentration
and he'd almost lost control. The few moments it took to master his
beast once again left stars floating before Ranma's vision and he
doubted he would be able to stand if he tried.

Terry's eyes were wide, but they no longer held the rage he'd seen
before. She scratched the backs of her arms reflexively, breathing slow
and deep. "I apologize for that. Like I told you, our beasts react
strongly to certain emotions. What you told me, about the...training you
were forced to endure, it nearly made me lose control. Then, that light,
what was it? It felt like our power, but I've never actually seen it
before." The Rex of her pack, the most powerful shapeshifter she'd ever
met, couldn't have mustered even a fraction of that much power, not even
in their den.

Embarrassedly, Terry had to fight the urge to purr. Her beast had
responded to Ranma's. It acknowledged him as male, very male. Oh boy,
this wasn't supposed to happen.

"Oh, well I can understand that. Not many people know, but everyone who
does always have a few minutes where they want to kill my pop. It wears
off, don't worry. If it makes you feel any better, he really isn't worth
killing." Besides, Genma would destroy a lycanthrope long before it got
a chance to infect him. He didn't have a paralyzing fear of cats. Though
it would be interesting to see Genma's reaction if a pack of weretigers
showed up wanting a piece, or several pieces, of his chunky hide.

Terry shook her head. "This is all beyond me, Ranma. I'm just not
trained to deal with your particular problem. If you were having
problems adjusting to the disease, that I could help you deal with, but
your control issues...I don't know how to even approach."

Ranma's now overactive sense of smell had caught something in the air.
He wasn't sure what it was, but the scent had Terry written all over it,
not literally, but it was a part of her. The beast thrashed against
Ranma's mind and he could almost feel it moving under his skin, not
quite trying to physically paw its way from him. Whatever the smell, his
beast either loved it or despised it, for it to provoke this reaction.

"Three nights from now is the full moon. You're too inexperienced to
control yourself during that time, Ranma. There won't be any possible
way to hold your beast back. It'll be your first transformation and the
whole pack will be there to support you. We'll all help pull you through
this, then maybe once it finds an outlet, you won't have to struggle
with your beast constantly." Ranma was making Terry anxious. He couldn't
help that his beast called to hers, or that she wasn't powerful enough
to keep it sealed away for much longer.

Ranma nodded. He'd read the little handbook the nurse had given him in
the hospital before he checked himself out. "I don't what'll happen when
I transform, the neko-ken is already too powerful for my tastes, but if
anyone can survive it, it would be a bunch of cats." He chuckled
hollowly. He was disturbed a great deal that he didn't mind if he did
kill a few of the weretigers on the full moon.

"There aren't a great deal of us, feline lycanthropy is much harder to
contract than the other forms, but I do't doubt we'll be able to help.
Our den is very calming, you'll see," Terry assured him. She felt bad
about rushing Ranma off, but his continued presence was wearing her own
control thin. If her beast surfaced even a bit, and with Ranma's tenuous
control...it didn't bear thinking about.

"Would you like me to talk to your family? I can explain a great deal to
them that's not covered very well in the papmlets, maybe lay some of
their fears to rest."

That would be a bad idea. "Nah, thanks anyway. They don't know about it
yet, no one does."

"Ranma, keeping this to yourself will only cause you more pain later
on," Terry cautioned.

"As soon I get myself under control, then I'll tell them. If I do it
now, other people will find out, and some of them don't like me very
much. It's a psycotic martial artist thing. If any of them attacked me
now, I wouldn't be able to control myself, then they would die. I don't
want that on my conscience." Ranma could almost imagine waking up in an
alley with Ryoga's partially eaten corpse lying nearby. He definitely
didn't want that to happen.

"It's your decision to make, but shouldn't you take their safety into
account, too? You can barely function right now. It'll get worse over
the next couple days. Being around you might not be very safe for them.
Even if you keep your beast in check, your temper will be very bad."

"I'm living in an apartment. I won't be around anyone."

Terry retrieved a pen and notepad from her purse. "If you'll give me
your address and phone number, I can keep in touch to make sure you're
doing all right. I can come by and pick you up the day of the full moon,
too. That way you'll have time to meet a few of your future packmates
and talk to them before nightfall." She hastily scribbled down the
information as Ranma recited it to her.

Though she was reluctant to be around him for much longer, Terry
offered,"I can give you a lift to your apartment if you want."

"Don't worry about it. It's only a few blocks from here." The rooftops
would be quite and deserted. Maybe the peace would help clear his mind
and give him time to think about his beast. Looking at it as a separate
entity just might give him the advantage he needed to fight it.

Terry all but fled from the clinic once Ranma was on his way.

****

Author's Notes - Um, well, how about another fic? It's another new one,
but I can't help it. I'm so damned happy to be able to write anything at
all that I'm just letting my imagination run, even if it does seem to be
a little fixated on the Anita Blake books lately.