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  She sank to her knees on the hard packed dirt of the road, scowling and enraged. "Hey!" she shouted as loudly as she could. "You forgot me!" So saying, she took the okonomiyaki that was in her hand, and with the brush in the other, swiftly painted out in flawless, neat kanji, 'Loyalty.' Smirking, she muttered, "I'll catch up, just you watch."

  "I swear upon this--"

  A man she hadn't seen before interrupted her yell. "Say, that's pretty good. You look like you really know how to manage a brush."

  "Huh?"

  "You gonna eat that?" the man asked, leaning casually against a tree on the side of the road.

  She stared at the okonomiyaki for a moment, then flung it carelessly to the old man. He caught it effortlessly, and sampled, taking a bite. "Not bad," he commented.

  "What do you mean about my brush?" she asked, staring at the implement still in her hand.

  "You're good with it. Graceful. You want to tell me what all that," he jerked his thumb in the direction that Ranma and his father had left in, "was all about?"

  Sniffling, Ukyou's strength crumbled, and she hesitantly explained the whole story to the man. "And now," she concluded, "I'm all alone! How am I supposed to tell my father and support him when he gets old?"

  The man eyed her up and down for a long, silent moment before grinning wolfishly, licking a stray bit of sauce from his fingertips. "Oh," he said, "_I_ know a way you can make money."

  She backed away a few steps nervously. Where was her father? "He... he... HENTAI!" she screamed, stumbling backwards.

  Stepping towards her boldly, the man chortled, "YES!"

  ***

  Ranma ran, not knowing where or why. He had to get there, wherever 'there' was. And he had to get there fast. He felt it in his bones!

  Buildings rushed past him, as he roofhopped towards his soulmate, his tuxedo flapping in the wind-- his Tuxedo?!

  Ranma screamed, and lost his balance, plummeting towards the street below. He felt a crunch, and winced in sympathy towards the poor person he must have landed on. "Hey, you okay?" he asked, getting up while trying to ignore the intense pain coursing through his body, and pulling a large, errant thorn from his side. The grotesque mockery of a female that had cushioned his fall twitched, laughing shrilly and loudly, before disappearing in a cloud of dust.

  "Tuxedo Airen!" several female voices chorused, reminding the teenage boy of his plight. He paled and grabbed the offending article of clothing, ripping it off his body. Looking around, he was disturbed to find three of the girls leering at him. The fourth formed a bow from fire and started flinging fiery arrows at him, crying out "Pervert!" occasionally.

  As he tried his best to dodge the arrows of fire - luckily for him, the raven-haired girl was a lousy shot - Ranma lamented the unfairness of it all. He also made a mental note to wear something under his tuxedo next time.

  "Stop it, Sailor A!" a brown-haired girl commanded, giving her comrade a firm glare. Turning towards Ranma, she beamed at him. "Please excuse her. You know how she gets."

  "Yeah, Sailor U." Ranma laughed nervously, tugging on his pigtail. Or trying to. "WHERE THE FUCK IS MY PIGTAIL?!" he screamed in panic, when his hand met nothing but air. Ranma started shaking his head from side to side frantically, trying to look at the back of his head.

  "Calm down, Tuxedo Airen!" two girls cried out together, each latching onto one of his arms.

  That had the desired affect, as Ranma relaxed considerably and looked at the girls holding him, the passionate purple-haired Sailor S and the exotic and beautiful yet bashful Sailor R. A little over to the side, he saw Sailor U holding her teammate, Sailor A, in a headlock. No doubt to prevent her from doing him great bodily harm, he thought darkly.

  Just as he was getting relaxed, Ranma sensed a dark presence converging upon him. Shaking the girls' hold on him, the teenage boy jumped away to get some space between him and what appeared to be a red-haired female monster holding a wrapped up package. Before he could realize what was making his skin crawl at her mere presence, Ranma noticed that he was somehow female, naked and held in someone's arms.

  "Hello, my beautiful airen," Sailor T crooned in his masculine voice, his long hair done in a weird style that resembled meatballs and spaghetti to Ranma. "Now, finally, the Schools will be United!"

  Ranma woke up screaming, and lashed out violently, socking his old man and Mr. Tendo, who had been whispering into his ears to marry Akane already and unite the schools.

  ***

  Ranma jerked himself out of the normal distracted haze, trying to forget about the disturbing dream and its foreboding warnings. Something felt... off.

  "Hurry up, Ranma," Akane insisted from a short distance up the road. "We're going to be late for school!"

  "Oh, like it really matters," he muttered absent-mindedly, pausing next to a bench to look at a clock. "It's just school. Martial arts are good enough for me." Despite his casual response, the pigtailed boy inwardly tensed for battle. 'Oh man, and just after Shampoo left...'

  A squeak of female indignation sounded off to his right, and Ranma practically jumped in the air, coming into a crouch. Akane giggled from beside him, reminding the boy of her presence.

  "Oh, so the great Ranma Saotome is afraid of a little girl screaming." Her eyes narrowing dangerously in sudden realization, she frowned. "This had better not be another Chinese Amazon after you," Akane threatened in a low tone of voice.

  Ranma cursed himself for being so jumpy, and slowly raised himself to his full height. Chuckling nervously and rubbing the back of his neck, he stammered, "A-Another girl? What o-other girl?"

  His fiancee didn't look convinced, and turned away in a huff.

  Ranma sighed, and cursed his weird dream for the umpteenth time. Who were all those weird girls, anyway? Damn that dream for making him stammer! Damn his dream for causing him to think of all those beautiful girls after him! Damn that dream for making him think of Soun crossdressing...

  "Hey, Ranma, are you okay?" Akane asked, her voice penetrating the pigtailed boy's thoughts.

  "Yeah, I'm fine," he answered absent-mindedly, shaking his head to clear it from all the images. "Why?"

  "You spaced out all of a sudden, and had the scariest face..." Looking at him suspiciously, she questioned, "You were thinking of something perverted, weren't you!"

  "No way!" Ranma yelled, waving his hands in front of him in a placating manner. "I wasn't thinking of your father in drag or nothing!" His hands quickly clamped over his mouth, but a quick glance at Akane's tomato-red face revealed to Ranma that he hadn't been fast enough.

  Shaking, Akane balled her fists. "You... you per--"

  A shrill female cry for help interrupted his fiancee, making Ranma eternally greatful to the screaming girl. 'Wait. Screaming girl?!' Breaking into a sprint, he shouted over his shoulder, "Sorry, Akane, gotta save someone."

  Several female cries followed, increasing in volume and frequency as Ranma got closer to their source. To his puzzlement, he realized that the cries were not of fear but of outrage. The teenage boy looked around warily, looking for the cause of the disturbance. 'There!' Ranma thought in triumph, his head whipping up towards an open window on the second floor. He briefly caught sight of a shadow, but it disappeared before it could be identified.

  "What's going on, Ranma?" Akane asked him, finally catching on to her fiance.

  Ranma noticed with a healthy amount of relief that her previous anger at his indiscretions had been forgotten, and waved a hand at the street in front of them uncertainly. "I dunno. But something's not right here." With a frown, he added, turning towards her, "You've been trained in the Anything Goes school as well. Don't you feel it? This... disturban--"

  A soft, sinister laughter began, and Ranma tensed himself, looking around once more. Ringing out as the laughter cut off, a voice as disembodied as the laughter suddenly cried out, "YES! I see that my presence here was needed!"

  Springing violently from the bushes, dressed immaculately in a pressed and dry-cleaned white gi, a figure shot upwards, and landed on the back of the bench, balancing neatly there. He posed dramatically, from his vantage point on the peak of the bench, and proclaimed, "You two are undoubtedly good martial artists in your own right. And as martial artists, you have no real need to learn anything else... the Art is your entire life!"

  "Tell us something we don't know," Ranma commented lazily.

  Ignoring him, the figure continued his passionate speech. "Once you become masters of the art, and able to teach, you won't have to worry about your future at all."

  "What are you rambling about?" Ranma wondered out loud, looking bored.

  The figure yawned theatrically, looking aside. "But is that good enough? Would you really want to spend your entire life just teaching other students of the art?"

  Gritting his teeth, Ranma kicked a small stone at the gi-clad figure. "Stop ignoring me, you bastard!"

  His form blurring, the elderly man that had been talking to them avoided the stone with surprising agility. He leaned forward and _leered_ at both Ranma and Akane, who were leaning back in alarm. Smirking at Ranma, he shook his finger to the negative, closing one eye. "Sloppy, sloppy..."

  Ranma's face twisted into a scowl, and he cocked his hand, preparing to hit the annoying guy, when his next words stopped the pigtailed boy in his tracks.

  "So... you both are students of the Anything Goes..." A smile breaking on his face, the old man drawled out, "Would you like to be all that you can be... My Students?"

  Ranma blinked. The entire presentation would have been more effective had he not had to look down at the speaker, even as he was, standing atop the bench. "Um, Akane?" he asked. "Should we just go home?"

  "Wait!" the elderly man cried out in alarm. "Hey, stop!" he yelled, when Akane shrugged and turned around, Ranma following her lead after giving him a wary look. "Don't go! I really am your master! Wait! I AM YOUR FATHER!"

  Ranma and Akane stopped in mid-step. They looked at each other, blinked, and turned around to face the short man in shock. "Fa... fa..." the two stammered, not noticing they were mirroring each other.

  "Well, not father." The short man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe godfather. I trained your fathers." Smiling at them, he added, "Would you like to know more?"

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       Written by Corwin. Scripted by Brian Randall.

                                Ecchi Party.

                     A Brothers^H Production.