...

-- Attached file included as plaintext by Ecartis --
-- File: TRTC1-2.txt

-----

	"What the hell happened ta him, doc?"

	Dr. Tofu Ono shook his head, and let out a relieved sigh. "I
don't know. He seems healthy."

	Looking down at his patient, Tofu's brows came together forming
a grimace behind his glasses. On the table, Ryouga Hibiki had been
firmly restrained once more, this time with several cords of steel
chains around his wrists and ankles. It wasn't something Tofu liked, but
with all the thrashing about, it was for everyone's safety. The young
man, who Tofu had treated on occasion for the last two years, seemed the
picture of health.

	But something was wrong.

	Narrowing his eyes, Tofu could feel the restlessness in the
man's ki. He was angry, and afraid, but of what the slightly older
doctor couldn't imagine. Luckily, the ki was internalized, and couldn't
manifest into a potentially devastating aura or attack without a
conscious mind guiding it. Ono was tempted to think that the problem was
just some sort of deep reoccurring nightmare. When Ranma had first
brought him in, there had been signs of sleep depravation and protracted
insomnia.

	His body needed rest, regardless.

	"Attai." Tofu cradled his right hand in his left, massaging the
fingers. It had never hurt to use that pressure point on someone before.
Not only had he needed to activate the point through Ryouga's inhuman
constitution, but through local ki barriers as well. Everyone had then,
and it normally wasn't a problem, but Ryouga (like Ranma and some of the
other locals) had unusually strong ki. If the lost boy had been putting
out a good-sized aura, most pressure points would've been blocked
entirely. Only someone like Cologne or Happosai would be able to use
acupressure on someone with an aura like the two boys produced.

	"Well," Tofu adjusted his glasses. "He'll be out until tomorrow
morning, at least. You can ask him then. Hopefully, he'll have calmed
down somewhat."

	Thanks. Give us a call when he does, ok?" Ranma asked, and Tofu
nodded. The pigtailed martial artist spared his rival a worried glare
before taking his leave. Outside the clinic, he spotted Akane waiting,
leaning against the wall.

	"Will he be ok?" She quickly asked, her concern annoying her
fiancee slightly. "I heard so much yelling, I..."

	"He'll be fine. The jerk just needs some sleep, is all," Ranma
said, and started walking back to the Tendo Dojo. Akane had ran out
earlier, and truth be told, Ranma couldn't blame her. It was unnerving
to see Ryouga that way. Sure Ryouga getting beaten us tended to herald
some new challenger or danger, like Taro or the Musk, but this was
different. This wasn't something that involved martial arts, as far as
Ranma could tell, and so it was almost totally out of his element.

	The two walked in silence, as the sky grew darker above them.

	"I hope Akari's ok," Akane finally said out loud. It was
something they could both agree on, at least. Akari Unryu was a nice
girl, and a friend. Not a close or great friend, but still... given that
he didn't have many real friends, he still supposed she was one of them.
He had helped her get Ryouga, after all, though that had been as much
for the benefit of weaning the lost boy off Akane as it was for Akari's
sake.

	Ryouga had yelled out her name several times before, but calls
to her house had all caught the answering machine. This was hardly
unusual. Akari had her farm to take care of, and even on normal days
most callers either ended up with the machine or her grandfather - the
latter of which being the more reliable of the two. Ranma was surprised
that she didn't have a cellular phone that they could try. Hell, even
Ryouga had a cell phone, though he (more than maybe anyone else) really
needed one.

	They walked in silence for a few more seconds. The whole
situation with Ryouga had put a real damper on everyone's mood. Things
had been relatively quiet for a while now, since the disaster that had
been the last Tendo New Year's Party. Ukyou was prepping for college and
playing the waiting game to see what her Ran-chan would do after
graduation, Kodachi was off visiting a university in Europe, and Kuno
(much to everyone's joy) was struggling through the University of Kyoto,
trying to get a degree in Business Management. Only the China gang were
around to cause problems.

	Amazons were certainly tenacious, that was for sure.

	And, of course, Ryouga had either been wandering or spending his
time with Akari. He dropped by every now and then to get into a scrap or
have a spar (sometimes Mousse would jump in too) and it was essentially
an arrangement Ranma really liked. All it had taken was two years of
insanity, a series of unusual coincidences, and a little luck. Then the
martial artist formerly know as P-chan just had to show up, seemingly
exhausted and half dead, collapsed just outside the Tendo's front gate.
No doubt his arrival heralded some new wave of crazy Chinese Princes,
Amazons, and fiancees.

	He sighed.

	"So, Akane," Ranma began, licked his lips, and continued a
little nervously. "You going to juku tomorrow, or what?"

	She looked at him with a mixture of surprise and hopefulness,
before blushing and looked in the other direction. "Probably. Maybe."

	"I was, uh... thinkin' ... maybe that, if yer not goin,' we
could get somethin' ta eat. And see a movie, like around five?" He
looked around, expecting an assault bicycle to interrupt at any second,
Shampoo at the helm.

	"When you say something to eat... I assume you don't mean
Uuchan's or the Nekohanten?" Akane asked, looking at him out of the
corner of her eyes.

	"No no no!" Ranma had learned his lesson about that. He smiled
in what he hoped was a charming way, and waved his hands placatingly.
"There's that new East-West Fusion restaurant, Dai Francisco... How does
that sound?"

	Akane smiled. "Well, I do feel a little bad about skipping
classes..."

	"They shouldn't schedule 'em so late," Ranma replied with a
huff. "I don't know why you even bother. We... I mean you've still got
the Dojo. Ya don't need any fancy university degree ta teach solid
Martial Arts."

	Akane frowned, then her features softened again. "I ... I know.
But in case that doesn't work out, it's a good idea to have some sort of
fallback option. Like regular teaching."

	Ranma scratched the base of the pigtail, feeling a little guilty
for not even trying to get a degree. He knew it didn't really reflect
that well on the school, or on the dojo (not to say that he was
seriously thinking of actually inheriting it any marrying anyone), to
have a sensei without any higher education. But was that really so bad?
He was a superb martial artist - one of the best, in fact! He'd attract
students by virtue of his skill alone.

	There was nothing worthwhile for colleges and the like to teach
him anyway.

	"I guess," he finally admitted. He then smirked. "Anything's
better than risking a loan from Nabiki."

	Akane laughed, nodding. Even after being admitted to Meiji
University, where she was determined to either pursue a career in Law or
Economics, Nabiki hadn't stopped being her typical mercenary self. If
anything, she had gotten worse, without any reliable income from
scamming Kuno and the rest of her family and friends.

	As they talked, Ranma couldn't help but smile to himself in
triumph. Not one slip up, not one malleting, nothing! It was almost
normal! He had to admit: when she wasn't blowing what he said out of
proportion, or taking things the wrong way, or jumping to unreasonable
conclusions, or being a violent tomboy, or coddling one of his
enemies/rivals, she wasn't that bad to be around. Getting near the Tendo
Dojo, the two realized that they were walking close together, and
quickly distanced themselves.

	Their eyes met, and they both silently agreed.

	There was no need to let anyone else know what they had planned
tomorrow.

	Above the two, and above the Tendo Dojo specifically, the stars
twinkled.

-----

	Nabiki was the first to realize something was wrong.

	It was just past midnight, when she saw something strange.
Looking up from her calculus book, to the laptop on her desk, she
blinked a few times, unwilling to admit what she had seen. Then, sure
enough, it happened again. On the screen of the notebook sized personal
computer, a window opened and closed. Then another.

	"What on earth...?" She put aside her book, rubbed her sleepy
brown eyes, and watched mutely more and more windows opened and closed,
until they went by too fast to see. Nabiki was no computer scientist, or
programmer, but she knew this wasn't normal.

	Her first worry was that it had something to do with all the
illegal downloads (and files) she had on her computer. And there were a
LOT. Only a second later did it occur to her that it may have been a
virus, worm, Trojan, or whatever... in which case she had no idea what
to do. Something was obviously screwing with the system. The obvious
solution was also the least subtle, but it was what came to her first.

	She pulled the plug, and tried to turn it off.

	The plug came out without complication, but pressing the button
wasn't having the desired effect. It wasn't turning off. She pressed it
hard, and then she pressed it rapidly. Neither worked. Cursing didn't
seem to be helping either. She then tried ctrl-alt-del. Nothing. The
Task Manager was AWOL.

	The processor was whirring.

	Whatever was happening to the laptop was obviously using up a
lot of processor power. Nabiki could only watch, stunned, as things
spiraled out of her control. Ten seconds later, the screen went dark, as
if the black computer, its job done, had suddenly committed seppuku.

	'My movies... my mp3s... my photos... my reports!!' Nabiki
silently grieved. 'Oh no! My English Paper!!! My economics report!!!'

	And then, her desk lamp went dead.

	'My...' Nabiki paused, and felt a sudden chill. 'What's
happening? What's going on?'

	Slowly, she eased out of her chair, and carefully felt her way
through the darkness to her window. The curtains and the blackout had
conspired to throw her into a sea of night, turning the familiar
contours and shapes of her room into a crisscross of shadows and shades.
Nabiki reached for her curtains, and was about to pull them back when
she saw a light - brighter and sharper than any streetlight or
headlight.

	More afraid than she would have cared to admit, she pulled the
curtains back and to the side, and fell back nearly blinded. Reaching
out as she fell, she knocked over her chair, and it fell to the floor
with a clamor of hard plastic on wood. Scrambling backwards, away from
the light that now engulfed her room, moving from the bottom of the
window up, she bumped up against her door.

	Heart racing, she reached up, and quickly locked it behind her.

	Already, her body had began to feel numb. The light had been
warm at first, but when it left, she felt cold and her skin clammy. Even
after the light was gone, somewhere on the roof or above the house, she
had trouble moving or thinking. A part of her hoped, prayed, that it was
a helicopter, one of the new ones that were very quiet.

	And another part of her knew better.

	Behind her, she felt the door start to tremble, and heard the
lock unlock with a metallic click...

-----

	The Matriarch of the Joketsuzoku awoke instantly.

	Reaching up to her forehead, she felt a cold sweat trickle down
her wrinkled brow. Crossing her arms and her legs, she closed her eyes;
she extended her mind and ki. She went beyond the walls of the
Nekohanten, beyond the flickering or dead streetlights, towards the
Tendo Dojo. She could not pinpoint the problem, but she could sense the
wrongness.

	The abomination.

	It was like a slick of oil in the water that was the natural
flow of ki on earth. Her mind raced, through legends as old as the
Bronze Age, up to hushed whispers and storied rumors in this Age of
Information. It was something beyond her actual experience. Something
she had never given more than a passing thought to. The implications
horrified her as noting before ever had.

	Grabbing her walking stick, she shriveled old woman moved with
surprising speed and purpose. Shampoo was the closest. Cologne entered
her room like a shadow, and saw her tossing and turning in her sleep.
The old woman looked at her closely, and once again marveled at how much
her great granddaughter resembled her. At eighteen, the resemblance was
even keener. She had gotten taller, like a proper Amazon, much as
Cologne herself had so many years ago.

	She was still so young, with so much to look forward to.

	"Shampoo!" Cologne hit her on the rump with her walking stick,
and the younger Amazon jumped out of her futon with a surprised yelp. It
wasn't the nicest way to wake up her heir, but it was the most
expedient.

	"Quiet." Cologne commanded. "Come."

-----

	Ranma was a sounder sleeper than his father.

	It was a weakness Genma had never quite managed to weed out of
his son. It was little surprise, then, that Ranma remained sound asleep
while Genma's eyes opened and narrowed. His ears twitched, as the
electric hum that had interrupted his slumber sent a chill down his
spine. He could feel it in his bones. Something was wrong.

	Very wrong.

	His sensitive ears heard the door slide open. Filled with an
unexplainable unease in the put of his stomach, he slowly turned his
head and rolled onto his back. There was a glow beyond the slowly
opening door that belonged to no hall lamp or light. Genma Saotome's
eyes widened, as a small, slender, childlike hand, the fingers half
again too long, became highlighted against the light.

	He nudged the sleeping body next to him.

	The door opened fully, and Genma saw two of them: bulbous child
sized bodies with thin arms and legs, the former long the latter squat
and shrunken. The faces on their oversized heads weren't human. The eyes
were too large, and dark, and the rest was nearly featureless. They had
no nose and only tiny thin mouths. Each carried some sort of... weapon
in their right hands. It was large, and vaguely podlike, but obviously
some sort of ranged weapon. There also seemed to be something else,
dark, on their sides near the waist.

	Genma reached for his 'I'm just a cuddly panda' sign.

	But...

	Involuntarily, he growled. It was really the only sound besides
'gworf' that he could make at the moment. The two creatures looked at
him. Or maybe they didn't. It was hard for Genma to tell. He kept
nudging Ranma with his right foot/paw, hoping the boy would wake up.
Instead, the younger Saotome just grumbled something, and rolled into a
ball, taking the rest of the blanket they shared.

	Genma could've sign-slammed him.

	The creatures briefly exchanged looks, apparently surprised to
see him. Or, more accurately, surprised to see him... as a panda. Genma
gulped. One trained its weapon on him, while the other pulled out
another gun, smaller, like a handgun. It was a dull green and brown. He
doubted they would fall for the loveable-panda-and-his-tire trick, so
Genma inched towards the window.

	'Forgive me, son!' Genma spared his son another look. Ranma was
snoring. The creature took aim, and with a crash of skin and fur and
broken glass, Genma jumped. He escaped a split second before a bolt of
green plasma hit the wall. The bolt burned halfway into the wall before
dispersing, and instantly turning half the wall to ash. The air
temperature rose a handful of degrees.

	Ranma opened his eyes, and saw the two visitors standing in the
doorway.

	He paused, shock and disbelief causing potentially fatal
indecision. Was he still dreaming? A second later, he winced as a
screaming voice cut into his mind. He held his head in his hands as it
rose in volume, louder and louder. His body began to feel numb, but he
fought against it, and tried to get to his feet. One of the intruders
fired their larger weapon, though Ranma never heard the sound.

	A purple mist filled the room.

	Remembering his experience with Kodachi and her fascination with
paralysis powder, he held his breath. Not that it mattered. He felt his
skin tingle, as the chemicals entered his body. It worked instantly. He
felt a moment of freezing cold and blinding pain, his back arching, and
then his vision plunged into darkness.

-----

	Cologne found Mousse in the same state as Shampoo. The Chinese
boy's hair was a matted mess, and his futon looked like he's just slept
in it... with someone else. Watching him reach for his thick glasses and
fumble before putting them on his face, Cologne shook her head. It was
hard to believe that he was the best warrior the male population of
their village had yet to produce.

	Not that they were encouraged to be warriors in the first place.

	The Master of Hidden Weapons adjusted his glasses, and frowned.
"Cologne? What's going on here?"

	"That's a potted plant." Cologne smacked him upside the head
with her stick. He looked in the right direction, saw Shampoo, and was
about to speak with Cologne cut him off. "Be silent and follow me."

	He stood, checked to make sure his boxer shorts were on, and
followed.

	"Stupid Mousse," Shampoo added, whispering.

	He seemed about to respond, no doubt in a pleading manner, but
thought better of it. It wasn't the first time Shampoo had said as much
of him, and it wouldn't be the last, but anyone seeing Mousse's face in
the dark could've seen that it hurt him nonetheless. Cologne led the two
quickly to the basement door of the Nekohanten. It normally served as
storage for the restaurant, and the door was thick and heavy, the hinges
fat and iron. Shampoo reached for the dangling cord that would turn on
the lights, but Cologne softly batted her hand away with her stick.

	"Don't." Was all the old Amazon said.

	Mousse and Shampoo followed in the dark, not really needing the
light to feel their way down the steps. At the bottom, it was dark
enough that their companions were only a vague shapes. Shampoo idly
figured that it was probably how Mousse saw the world most of the time.

	"You both know where the faucet is," Cologne said, her voice
tense. "Use it. Hide. Stay in your cursed forms. Do not leave here for
at least half a day. At least until morning. Is that clear?"

	Both youths nodded.

	"Yes, Great grandmother," Shampoo said, quietly.

	Cologne paused to look at the two of them. "Good."

	And then the Joketsuzoku Matriarch moved swiftly up the steps
and closed the door behind her. With a tap of her walking stick, she
walked towards the restaurant entrance, waiting. For a few minutes, she
held out the hope that she was wrong. The problem was, that at her age,
she so seldom was.

	Sure enough, the sick feeling returned.

	Closer, now.

	Closer.

	Lights descended, suspended outside, eerie like will o' wisps.
To her left and right, she saw shapes move, gangly but faster than
expected. The digital clock above the stove was off, but the mechanical
one in the likeness of a beckoning cat, that Shampoo had perched in the
dining area, was still moving. She felt their minds, at least three,
distinct but frighteningly inhuman. She gritted her teeth, trying to
understand the nature of the attack and develop a countermeasure.

	Her mental discipline held.

	Her body alternated between numbness and pain, but she stood.
She could almost see the course of the attacks, like perversions of ki
energy, as they buffeted her. Adjusting her perspective made it easier
to fortify her mind and her senses. After a few seconds, the invading
minds switched tactics, bombarding her with irrational fears and mad
thoughts. Still, she stood, the staff in her hands trembling like a
leaf.

	Ahead of her, the door to the restaurant unlocked itself, and
slowly opened.

	A single tall figure stood out against the demonic glow outside.
Even in the dark, the strange robes it wore shone with an unearthly
luminescence. She readied a ki attack, building her energy, and dividing
her concentration between that task and her mental defenses. As it came
closer, floated closer, making no footsteps, Cologne began to see its
face.

	It was a shriveled, desiccated, face.

	YES

	Like that of a corpse, risen from the grave.

	YOU

	In the blackened hollow pits where there may once have been
eyes, something glowed, and the room shook and erupted into flame. In
the stone bunker of the basement, hidden behind a number of heavy
preserving jars, a small white and lavender cat and a cream colored duck
heard Cologne's battle cry. It was not a voice either had ever heard,
nor one they would ever forget.

-----


             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'