Kuno Tatewaki's calamity had been second only to Ukyo's: in the time span of a morning he had found himself to be Furinkan's greatest source of hilarity. The discovery that Ranma Saotome and the pig tailed girl were the same person had been the last straw. The image of himself - handsome, rich, heir of an ancient family, basically perfect - had cracked to a myriad of opaque fragments. For one year he had refused to leave Kuno's Castle. Word was that he had tried to kill himself. He could have - only Sasuke's lasting devotion had prevented the ex-Blue Thunder from putting an end to his anguish. Two years later, his sister Kodachi married an American tycoon, and went to live in a closely guarded community for rich people into New Age nonsense ("Basically it was Wired meets Castaneda meets Mein Kampf every morning before breakfast - best thing for her, really"). Shortly afterward, Kuno had entered college. He was a deeply changed man.
While attending University, he and Ryouga had established an atypical, but still mutually beneficial relationship. Kuno needed someone to help him gather the scattered bits of his life. Ryouga needed someone to talk to - apart from Ukyou - and he had got unlimited access to Tatewaki's library. It had been like opening an Easter Egg and discovering that the present is actually far better that first presumed. Most of the books were poetry classics: Ryouga, now timidly turning his focus toward a writing career, had found some of the lyrics strangely fitting his present state of mind. The two had spent entire days discussing Ryouga's voyage memories and arguing over the correct use of a word. Kuno's seriousness had first amused, the puzzled Ryouga. "I'll never decide if this guy is a genius or a psychiatric casualty", he had once remarked. Ukyou, faithful to her roots, still didn't like the ex kendo's promise. "He's an upperclass bastard - those people acts as if Tokugawa Hayeasu were still alive." But when Kuno, after taking his PhD, had got a job for the UN and left, she couldn't avoid noticing how Ryouga had suddenly become much more uneasy than usual. Somewhere in him hung in balance - couldn't be much longer before he had to make a choice.

The wait

In the cramped darkness of their fourth night on the wall, lighted by the small, modified stove, they had only spoken intermittently. Ryouga felt tired - his muscles were stinging, he had a vague headache and his throat was sore. While drinking the brew prepared by Ukyou he checklisted all the medical preparation and pills he was supposed to take before sleeping - Diamox to increase disposal of body fluid, Decadron to prevent cerebral oedema, Roincol to stimulate circulation, Zymox for his throat. He decided against a tempting dose of Valium - its depressing effect on breathing centres was too risky for the current situation. He put his aching head outside the tent, resting over a flat rock. It was already completely dark, the mountain's outline on the opposite side of the basin could only be vaguely guessed. He wasn't familiar with stars patterns, but he could identify Venus, shining brighter as anytime in the last ten years. Temperature was dropping rapidly - he could no longer hear the noise of avalanches on the lower slopes of the mountain. The stillness was absolute. He vaguely outlined the increasing outward profile of the buttress over its head, tomorrow's target high above their current location: a small rocky pulpit on the beginning of the ascending ramp. He took a deep breath.

The staircase

The last few days had been immensely difficult, and their attempts to disentangle from the West Face upright labyrinth had drained all their energies. The lower, slanting ramp had ended up well left of the Shield's right margin, bordering the avalanche-stricken couloir, but still right of the immense gneiss buttress, cleaved by a vertical and inaccessible incision into the rotten rock. They were now on another pulpit: above them the wall curved on a overhanging ceiling. On the left, the rock was uniformly vertical, except for a sequence of vague steps. So they had to attack the overhangs directly. It had taken them three days of technical, exhausting big wall climbing, that Ryouga had constantly led, leaving to Ukyou only the task to find the correct direction. The overhangs were a rotten, unstable inverted staircase, held together only by the intense freeze - the afternoon heat had triggered more than once several rockfalls. Most of their equipment had gone there, including two of their invaluable climbing ropes. Once there, no return was possible anymore - unless they reached the top or some escape to the NW ridge was possible In any case, their last tie with the horizontal ground had been severed.

Inside, Ukyou wrote in her diary

"As we're getting into the heart of the wall, and we're just burning more and more bridges behind us, I wonder how Ryouga's coping with the disorientation and pressures of this condition. I've observed him during our trip up to the Base Camp - he looked like a kid choosing a new toy on some hyperstore's bench. Our knowledge of Ryouga's past is so limited - he has spent most of his teens hiking through Japan from corner to corner - probably the most crucial landscape on Earth. He's seen a lot, more than anyone else of his age - he's more familiar than me with these geological marvels. I was observing him as he climbed the third class ground bringing up to the entrance of the ramp. He was putting all his attention on the few feet of rock before him. As always, when he's doing something important, his concentration seemed sourceless, entirely disembodied."
She turned the page, then continued:
"For all the imageries and memories, Ryouga must start to experience an intense claustrophobia - coming here could have been a way to relieve his internal pressure, to put some order into his confused inner world. Ryouga's always been so intense, taking everything so seriously. I still remember the first time we met - and that plan to have him engaged to Mrs. Perfection and Ranma posing as an Overtly Annoying Female to prevent Ryouga from accomplishing anything. It's always a source of wonder for me that their relation didn't end in a bloodbath - must be something with Ranma's luck."
"Discussing his direction's sense impairment with Obaba, I've often suggested that it has to do with some form of gene alteration. But she says that Ryouga loses his sense of space (and time) because, differently from us, he's able to forget himself completely. Ten years ago, his obsession, the object of his close attention was Akane; now something else that even he doesn't know. Maybe this mountain, maybe all the mountains he's seen through his life, or the tall structures clawing the sky from Tokyo's centre... sometimes I wonder if it was right for him to follow me into this trip."

Spindrift

The following day, the sun was a radiant cartwheel. The ramp narrowed in a oblique chimney, few feet deep. While climbing simultaneously, they tried to follow the bottom of the slanting crack, more to avoid the unendurable heat reflected by the glacier, rather than for any tactical consideration.
As the temperature soared, the avalanches put themselves in motion once again. As soon as the sun touched the upper tip of the West Wall, their noise neared more and more. Their current position was relatively safe, but the mere reverberation of thousands of tons of ice and rock racing down the sinuous Scimitar Slash was terrifying enough. Later, a bigger chute had literally resonated on the entire basin. A vertical gneiss pillar screened the couloir at their right - but they had seen, seconds after the concussion, white spirals of snow appearing behind the pillar, racing down at terminal speed toward the glacier. They were implausibly attractive. When the shockwave wind came, only a pale leftover of the detonation that should have been felt inside the channel, Ukyou had tried in vain to capture some of the frozen spindrift floating around her head.

The tightening arcs

Ryouga looked down. The exposure was more terrifying than anywhere he could remember: the falling rock and ice debris no longer hit the lower rock steps. On any California big wall climb, you can spend days with your feet dangling on mid air - but the surrounding panorama seems to have been designed by a committee to reassure the climber that he's still on our planet. Here, they were truly getting lessons in vertigo - right on the shores of this petrified vertical landscape.
They stopped for a while, enjoying their progressive separation from the valley floor. As usual on these long climbs, most of the time they were silent - their heads full of the noise made by their own heartbeat. The sounds could have been catalogued for their intensity and variety - the distant thunder of avalanches, the unnerving staccato of rock chute, the grim roar of the high winds against the unreachable rock spires of the West Ridge, now plunging toward the abyss in a near vertical rampart arc at their right. And silence, a sound itself - Ryouga had never heard a silence like this. For him, it was a signal that this place had been forsaken in a sense more true than any other in the Earth.

The nightfall

For the whole day, they had been troubled by an increasing fatigue and dire warnings of imminent altitude problems. Ryouga's headache was unrelenting, and Ukyou's breath had an ominous, gurgling sound. As the night came, they decided that another bivouac, now well above the 8000 metres mark, would have killed them. So they got rid of most of the heavy gear, and pushed forward after a couple of hours of uncomfortable rest. The summit was still invisible, but they were now on a prevalently icy terrain, so their speed had sensibly increased. The first few hours they climbed into a dark but clear night, illuminated only very late by the raising moon. But later, abruptly, the sky became translucent and vibrating - a sure sign of weather change. The gale erupted soon afterwards, this time arriving from the north. In a matter of minutes, visibility was reduced to few meters. Ryouga unroped quickly - there was no use of it in the current situation. He had cut for the first time in five days this tenuous link with Ukyou - the sense of isolation for an instant overwhelmed him. Ryouga pushed hard to keep pace with Ukyou, who was literally racing toward the summit. He checked the altimeter again - 2:00 AM, 8450 metres. Darkness was absolute; the entire universe was limited to a few inches of snow and rock illuminated by his frontal lamp. "As long as I'm concentrating, I'm sure I'll not lose myself - just concentrate and follow Ukyo's light." Ryouga felt his nerves stirring, his determination focusing toward an point invisible in the darkness above.

Mars

Ryouga was now desperately breathless. He tried to keep a steady rhythm but every ten steps he had to stop to swallow big bites of thin atmosphere. Around his minuscule world of light, and the grey and black outline of Ukyou ten steps forward, roared a netherworld of air masses gunned at 100 miles/hour against the mountain walls - the frightening voice of God, as Ryouga considered while, once again, he checked his distance from Ukyou and the unknown abyss below. "We must have three kilometres of emptiness under our feet - if the wind changes direction, they'll not even find small bits of us." Forward and upward, cutting their way up the icy summit, fifty meters of vertical gain per hour, their march continued.
Ryouga was puzzled, because he could see, with the corner of his eyes, a girl climbing on his right. Her traits were confused, but the face was familiar. She seemed to enjoy the situation, but Ryouga knew that she was alert and checking his progresses. Once, when he tried to bypass a small rocky boulder on the left, she intervened. "You should try on the right, dear Ryouga, on the left is dangerous." Ryouga obeyed promptly - the girl was obviously familiar with the place. "Hey, what's a cute girl like you doing here?" he thought.
The girl giggled, or at least, that's what Ryouga presumed. I must remember to be polite: once on the summit, I shall introduce this girl to Ukyou - strange that she's never told me we were three up this damned mountain. But when will we arrive? I mean, it's been days since we left our last bivouac, and I know that once up, there's something very important I should do, but I don't remember what... I should ask Ukyou, but she's always so busy with the restaurant... if only we could stop for a minute and have some rest, maybe I could remember. If only... "RYOUGA! RYOUGA! IT'S HERE! WE'RE ON THE SUMMIT!"

See now, Ursa Major

It was true. The ice slope subsided, and there it was, a long and narrow snowy dome, like the top corner of a cathedral's roof. Ryouga couldn't think of nothing: he felt an inexplicable sense of relief. They were there - this was the only significant place of the world, now, and an endless knot had been quietly extricated. He sat down, unable to speak, searching for words and thoughts that had, suddenly, slipped away. Around, everything was black and impenetrable. Just my luck, Ryouga thought, I'm up here and I don't even have a view. Well, who cares - we don't have to climb anymore. We can go home, now...
Then, the sky opened.

Worn codes and signs unknown

Like a whale, the mountain top emerged from sea of cloud and for an instant Ukyou and Ryouga were as two stranded surfers riding it, pushed on by the force of the high winds. The light had changed - dawn was not far away, and the entire eastern horizon, that they were now seeing for the first time, seemed on fire. Abruptly, the sea of clouds parted, and the entire space around them was freed. The triple summit of Broad Peak, whose size Ryouga had found so oppressive while walking up from Concordia, was nearly seven hundred meters below them - and beyond stood the long theory of the Gasherbrums and the placid profile of Baltoro Kangri. They were in the top of a vertiginous space, surrounded everywhere by a multitude of mountains, white on the southern side and black toward China, as prostrated worshippers before an unimaginable deity. Ryouga could perceive, for the first time in his life, the curvature of the horizon. He looked up to the canopy of stars, and raised his fist in triumph. But when he looked down again, for one instant glimpsed, hundred of miles away in the inhuman morning light, the solitary mass of Nanga Parbat, the Naked Mountain, Earth's highest wall around the bend of the river Indus.
He sat down, numb and suddenly tired. The girl had disappeared, but he tried again to remember why they were there, and what was the important thing he had to tell to Ukyou. For the first time since they had reached the summit, Ryouga remembered he wasn't alone. He turned his eyes to Ucchan.
She was sitting upright with her legs stretched out over the two sides of the summit, calmly singing to the stars.

Tour Rouge, Tour Noire, Grey Slabs

Her face seemed to be millions of years old, but all the grievous years had vanished from her self-immersed eyes, and she was singing in an unknown language, coolly measuring the invisible orbits of stars with her chant. Ryouga didn't understand the words, but, in that instant, he knew that Ukyou had finally made peace with her own obsession. He sat nearby. The winds noise abated, and they stood together in silence on the summit, hand in hand, waiting for the sunrise to come over the forgotten mountains of northern Karakoram.

Later, Ryouga wrote in his diary:

"Aurora's rising
showing up its multi-lights
I watch it coming
A fearsome growing
beheading my illusions,
empress of visions
The veil of Maia
has been torn before my eyes
Aurora's rising"

The silence lasted only few minutes. The clouds had gathered again, and were upsurging at fearsome speed, like a tidal wave. In seconds, the summit was engulfed. Ukoyu slowly rose, and put back her helmet, the glasses and the hood of her altitude jacket. She turned to Ryouga. "Let's go down. Now."

All the way down

"So, there it is" Ukyou said with a coarse voice "Down this slope until the serac barrier. Then, we traverse under the serac wall to the Bottleneck. After that, it's a matter of keeping our direction through the Shoulder, until the second serac barrier and the Black Pyramid. Later, we'll reach the fixed ropes - and from there it should be just a matter of sliding down to safety. How do you feel?"
"Fine - just groggy from the altitude. And you?"
"Tired, but once we'll get into some thicker air we'll both feel better. Down we go, Hibiki."
They were 100 meters under the summit, where they had stopped to brew something on their way down the SE face and the Abruzzi spur. On this side of the mountain, the wind was less violent - but it was snowing, in heavy and irregular flakes. "The storm could break in earnest at any moment. Let's try to stay clear from the exposed part of the ridge." Ukyou stared again in the direction of Broad Peak and Concordia, now invisible. "We've well earned our view, haven't we?" She looked exhausted.
Ryouga was alert. He hated descents. The immense tension he had felt before reaching the summit had been now released, and he could feel all his weariness. He was worried for Ukyou - she looked really distraught. Unfortunately, and particularly under these conditions, it was out of the question that he could lead the descent, at least until the Black Pyramid and the beginning of the fixed ropes. A direction's mistake would have meant a jump down 3000 meters towards the Godwin-Austen icefall, or even a longer distance on the Chinese side. The most difficult part of their climb, the true ordeal, had finally arrived - and they weren't in the best condition to confront it.

Descent

The silence had returned. Ukyou was leading, keeping her balance with one short axe, and placing carefully her crampons one in front of the other. A few feet above Ryouga followed, keeping several coils of rope around his waist. He was paying maximum attention to avoid any quantity of snow to enter inside his carefully tied altitude jacket; otherwise Ukyou would have to carry P-Chan down to the Base Camp. His smaller lungs would have made him hypoxic in few minutes - and dead in less than one hour. "I'm running the gauntlet here," Ryouga thought again "Mom wouldn't have approved."
Ryouga noticed how his vision was much clearer, and he had no more hallucinatory signs. He was curious to hear what Ukyou had seen on the summit (if anything) - but this wasn't the place, neither the time. Maybe back at the base camp or, better, back in Tokyo, before the grill of New Ucchan's, with a cold Kirin and a freshly made okonomiyaki...

To Red Tower, Black Tower, Grey Slabs, part 3
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