Foreword:
	This is only a draft foreword and will more than likely change with
each revision to the story itself.
	The following is my first attempt at fan-fiction, although not my
first writing project, and is certainly an *extremely* ambitious idea.  The
concept began with a discussion between a friend Iaen and myself concerning
how amusing it would be to cross BGC and DP.  The idea more or less flagged
immediately as, on consideration, I decided I hadn't the patience to try.  I'm
heartily sick of pure sci-fi and although I'll certainly read something
impressive, I've no longer any inclination to write it myself.  However, that
got me pondering on whether it might be possible to cross several Anime
universes in a fantasy fanfic as dark, serious and terrifying (without a trace
of gratuitous bloodshed) as I could possibly conceive.  Thus was this thing
born.
	So far, I intend to include Ranma 1/2, Project A-ko, Mamono Hunter
Yohko, Sailor Moon, Ah Megami-sama, Bubblegum Crisis, Dirty Pair and two
characters (to begin with) of my own creation (neither of which even remotely
resemble myself and each of which are the very antithesis of the perfect Anime
interlopers able to save the multiverse), with the very faintest possibility
of Miyu, DBZ and Dr. Who (using John Pertwee's incarnation) to finish the
picture.  However, fair warning now.  This will *not* be comic, not in any
sense of the word and certain characters will therefore probably appear to be
a little more intelligent than their creators originally intended because of
this.  That is not to say that there won't be the usual comic relief in the
appropriate universes together with moments of respite and happiness, but the
story itself will be *deadly serious* and most definitely *not* for those who
don't wish to see their favourite characters put through a multiverse of
slowly gathering darkness and growing evil.  There is only one more condition
I have set myself.  Not one of the characters will make a cameo.  If I can't
manage an important role for each and every character, that universe's
participation in this is history.
	Well, now that that's out of the way, just seven things.
1)	This hasn't a title as yet and I'd be very interested in
suggestions.  `The Dark Chronicles', `Demon's Playground' and `Tether's End'
sound far too cliched to me (although the last two might just make it as
chapter or part titles).
2)	I'm starting this more or less alone, however, since the characters
(apart (thus far) from two and perhaps a demon or so) are not my own, I would
certainly be interested should anyone (but only established Anime fanfic
writers) be tempted to give me a hand with writing the thing.
3)	I've not seen anything save the American SM (gods but those things
are really *really* dreadful) and, as I intend to use the Japanese originals
I've had to extrapolate entirely from fanfiction.  Please correct even the
*tiniest* fault (although of course that goes for any faults in any universe
or portrayal).
4)	Are there English E-text script translations available on the net
for any of the above mentioned Animes, and if so, where?  The ability to
quick-reference would be *very* useful while writing this.
5)	I'm totally colour-blind.  This is both a pain in the neck and means
that I need a *very* detailed description from some generous soul of what the
characters and important places in the above listed Animes look like
colourwise and especially how strangers might identify them by distinctive
traits in scheme/dress.  I don't wish to make a total ass (oy, not the
American interpretation of that thanks) of myself with clothing clashes, hair
and eye colour, identifying characteristics and the like.
6)	Remember that this is merely an initial draft.  There are going to
be absolute wallopers of faults in this version and I need to know about them.
Anything but unmitigated flames will be listened to.  These last will be
delivered to a certain revenge-driven ki-blade-wielding character in this
fanfic for consideration and appropriate response. :-)
7)	I've set up this account specifically to deal with this fanfic and
gated it to a local group here.  Anything you send to it will be seen by a
select few reading the local NG, not that that bothers me of course but you
might get responses to critique from more than one person as this becomes
(perhaps) something of a team effort.
	Well, that's about all for now.  Enjoy (I hope).  The next part should
be posted within a week or so, depending of course on the response to this.

--------------------
				<Untitled>.

Part 1:				<Untitled>.

Prelude 1:			<Untitled>.

	Pain and numbing fear. These were the first sensations that told her
she was waking once more, rising yet again from the soothing, gentle oblivion
she had prayed at the end would take her at last, carrying her far from the
ruin that was her nearly shattered heart and the terror that she alone of them
seemed still able to endure.
	Another scream, and mingled with it the terrifying, screaming laughter
of their captor.
	`Mousse.' She thought with a numb helpless detachment. Shampoo would
follow, Mousse so drained and broken that he could do nothing save to watch
and whimper as she was tormented yet again. Then would come Ukyou. Ryoga was
already dead, an all too easy task once he had been trapped in his cursed
form, and she was lost, her madness divided between pleading for forgiveness
from his soul and the near witless screaming for her Ran-chan somehow to find
her.
	Then would come Tofu. Kasumi, mercifully, had died during the
beginning, incredibly, admirably stoic and silent in the face of pain and
terror that had had the man once destined to be her husband screaming and
nearly witless for release, although not, at least then, pleading for his own
life and soul. Perhaps, with the last vestige of what had once been a mind
capable of humanity or compassion, with the last tiny flicker of a soul once
able to understand warmth and laughter and emotion other than the twisted,
sickening perversion of demonic amusement and appetite, their captor had
spared her the agony that seemed to stretch back in her own mind into
nightmare eons beyond imagination or recall. She prayed still that it might
somehow be so. Who next? Tatawaki. He would rave again, his mind already
shattered and broken, ranting in imbecilic madness of the glory of his
sacrifice for his two loves and the splendour of the celebrations upon the day
when they should understand at last the fullness of his triumph, when they
would be freed from the accursed Saotome and be his own until the uttermost
end of time.
	She would cry then, listening to his madness, then to the screams and
her maniacal laughter as the pain tore at last and temporarily through the
protective insanity that held him as ferociously as any chain or bond, her
heart breaking again and yet again as she understood too late how impossibly,
desperately brave and faithful he had proved at the very last, before the
final shattering of his pride and with it, his soul and mind.
	"Oh my Ranma," She would whimper, almost silently, not ashamed to cry
whilst alone, pain more than any terror their tormenter could give tearing at
the very fabric of her being. "oh Ranma forgive him. He understood, if only a
little and for a moment. Oh my love, my life, forgive us all."
	Of the others she could not bare to think. Genma, bound now as had
been Ryoga in his cursed form, a shattered mindless ruin of the man he had
been, having long lost all power of thought and reason, would roar and howl in
witless agony for the little time their captor still troubled to spend in his
torment, after all, he gave her little sport now, less even than his life-long
friend whilst he had yet lived. At Genma's breaking, Soun had retreated
swiftly, his last hope lost, into memories of his wife and the three daughters
he had once had, when such an end as this was beyond all save the darkest
madness of nightmare. His end too, mercifully, had been swift.
	Nabiki would be last, before herself of course, her own torture
exquisite and prolonged, the screams and pleading in the cell next to her own
and the laughing wild words of her tormenter seeming to freeze her very soul
and heart while she fought desperately to hold only to the rage and the
hatred, praying to whatever gods still might hear her that her Ranma might
somehow still escape the crystal into which Cologne, desperate for a last
trump to play against the darkness, had sealed him ere her own and Happosai's
death during the final assault, for his protection and their own.
	The dungeon was bitterly cold. She shivered, trying even in her bonds
to curl about herself, desperate for what little warmth she might still gain.
She could not stand much more, she knew this. The others were already all but
broken, pale quivering shadows of what they had been. Only Ryoga through sheer
physical endurance and the love for Ukyou he had found in the last bitter days
before his end, and herself, her faith in Ranma a bright, shining thing that
no pain or torment could break, had shown any real resistance, and now, so
utterly alone, only she was still aware and rational enough to fight with what
little remained to her. If she broke her, if she shattered at last the last of
the souls by which Cologne had bound the crystal, then Ranma was her's, mind
and soul, her's in absolution and forever, and with his taking would end all
hope for what remained of the physical world and the broken fragments of
humanity that yet fought against the horror of the things from the darkness
that had come to claim them, world and souls. With that, her power, her
triumph would be complete.
	She shivered again. Mousse's screams had ceased, dying to pitiful
whimpers before he fell at last into sounds beyond the reach of her ears. For
a long moment there was silence, then suddenly there came the echoing boom of
the sealing of his cell. She waited, knowing that Shampoo's savage, maniacal
screaming would soon begin, but instead she heard the sudden wild peel of
malicious, demonic laughter and a moment later the sound of approaching
footfalls.
	Terror leapt in her. She *never* changed her routine. Not once since
their capture had it altered. Each was tormented, the torment at first for
their benefit, then, as each broke, for that of those remaining as much as for
her own pleasure, but now the footfalls drew nearer until at last they halted
at the cell beside her own. The door opened, then the voice purred, soft and
silkily warm:
	"Awake my precious. A little play, for a while, and for her benefit
until I tire of you. A little pleading, just a little at first that she might
understand what will happen to her this time should she not choose to submit,
to bind her soul to mine."
	Then the screams began. She did not listen. She had learned to shut
out the worst of the horror. She waited, curiously astounded that she could
pick the moment the torture would end with such precision, counting down the
seconds with a numb, frigid detachment until the last screams had died to tiny
whimpers, then at last to silence.
	"Still just a little fire I see." The voice purred again. "A fine
struggle. What price for your release I wonder? After all, you are already
mine. Shall we bargain Nabiki? Shall I name a price, a payment in pain
perhaps, or in blood and soul? Come, you were always more than willing.
Perhaps a dream, a fantasy of the wealth and power you shall never have? A
moment with your poor, mad Kuno-chan perhaps?"
	Abruptly there came another scream of wild depraved laughter. Nabiki
did not answer. She would be passed responding for the moment, she knew that.
	For seconds that seemed to stretch to eternity, the laughter
continued. Then abruptly there was a crack, another tiny whimper, then the
door crashed closed once more and the footfalls drew near. It was time.
Fighting down the fear with a strength born of rage and desperation, she
dragged herself erect, facing the door that would be in a moment flung aside,
gathering what will and courage remained to her to face the pain and horror
that would soon begin once more. Then the door crashed open and the thing that
had once been a girl stood before her. For what seemed a timeless moment both
appeared frozen, she staring at the creature of nightmare, the blazing blue-
black hair wild and lifted as though with some inner power, the red blood-
covered lips parted in a vicious smile of demonic triumph and anticipation.
Then the thing that had once been Akane Tendo moved towards her and Kodachi
Kuno began to scream.

--------------------
Prelude 1:			Notes.

	Ok, I know this needs a deal of work, however I hope at least that its
ending was a little startling?  The demon should have been recognised overtly
as Kodachi and the girl in the dungeon as Akane until that point, although I
would like some subtle indications as to each's identity from the beginning
without giving anything away but to those really on their toes.  Ah well.

--------------------
Prelude 2:			<Untitled>.

	When he was a boy, Johnathan Liam O'Reilly had loved the journeys home
late at night after a visit to one of his seemingly innumerable relations.
Curled up snug and warm under a blanket on the back seat of the family Rolls
Royce, he would lie still, eyes closed, listening to the soothing rumble of
the road beneath them and the gentle purr of the big engine and drift in a
half-dream, watching the patterns that danced upon the very verge of sleep,
listening to his parents' quiet talk and imagining that an as yet unnamed
brother or sister he'd always wanted to be settled at his side or waiting in
the huge, too-empty house for his return. They could stay awake far into the
night and talk about the Shire or Narnia and perhaps one day they might find
some ancient cave that would lead them to Middle-Earth or a secret door into
the land of Aslan where they might journey even to the beautiful castle of
Kair Paravel at the margins of the sea. He would always wake a little as his
father drew into the long, tree-shrouded driveway, then stir still more as he
was lifted by him or his mother, still wrapped in the blanket, to be carried
into the house and up the wide, curving stairway to his huge yet cluttered
attic domain, a domain that should have been a nursery for a large and merry
family of children. Then alone in the dark he would lie awake, listening to
the faint ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall, one of four the house
possessed, and pray silently and with fervour to the lord and the virgin that
a brother or sister might be there when he awoke the following morning, or
that at least some new boy or girl might be at school, a boy or girl who could
share dreams that no one seemed to understand and for which the other children
laughed at him and threw peals and called him mad Paddy and feather-head and
book-worm, or stepped on his school-bag and took his lunch when he wasn't able
to stop them.
	He had hated them, not simply for their teasing, but for the fact that
they liked all that stupid screaming rap-music and Michael Jackson and Death
Leopard or whatever they were and it was all out of tune and rubbish and they
were all halfwits and cads and they didn't know toss about when something was
in tune and well played and he just hated them all and wished that a black
rider or nine would simply appear and carry every last one of the stupid,
idiotic, worthless, vile, horrible, slimy rotten little dirty Orc-faced rats
off to some dark fate that would see every one of them gone forever and then
some.
	Johnathan had not liked the children with which he had been forced to
go to school, he had not liked them at all. Things would be better, he had,
for a brief time, believed, when he began at thirteen in his new school, but
he had been mistaken. He had always been small for his age and at thirteen he
had discovered that he needed glasses and that, contrary to what his father
had assured him, his growth seemed to be slowing rather than hitting the spurt
for which he'd been waiting for what seemed to be as long as he could
remember. He found friends of a sort, some few introverted, book-bound boys
like himself who would at least talk to him, but they had interests other than
his own and, being an only child and forced more or less without respite to
play alone, he was no longer capable of any real compromise. If there were any
differences, and these usually came down to some music other than the Irish
and Celtic influences he loved or a disinterest in classical history or, most
hurtful although not most important, comments concerning his own hopeless
physical ineptness and inability to defend himself in a fight, Johnathan would
erupt in a quick explosive flare of wild Irish temper followed by a very un-
Irish-like sullenness that discouraged any further intimacy.
	Johnathan had drifted through his later school years, concentrating
his time ever more completely on his own dreams and fantasies, not caring to
exert himself, deliberately under-achieving both to avoid notice and to spite
the too-rich parents who gave him all he wished save for praise and attention
and the teachers who knew his true abilities but refused to try to understand
him, whilst secretly devouring everything the school, then the public,
libraries had to offer. It was during his sixteenth year that he first began
to write, and with that, to imagine her, a wild, perfect anima to his own
loneliness, isolation and perceived inadequacies. Joanna Marina O'Reilly
became in his mind the sister and confidante he would never have, an invisible
presence able to understand his troubles and into whom he could channel all
the rage and frustration he had not the power or confidence to show.
	From the first she was an impossibility, a street-wise virago with a
heart laced with pain and bitterness and the need to escape the life of
depravation she was forced to lead, beaten mercilessly as a small child by
parents who could not have cared less about her until at last, on her ninth
birthday, when her twisted parody of a father had tried to make the almost
daily physical abuse into something more, she had driven a knife at his face
at a critical moment and sent him crashing screaming through the bathroom
window of their tiny eleventh-storey flat to a broken, bloody end in the alley
behind the tenement in which they lived, threatening to see the mother she
hated but from whom she refused to run to the same end should she not swear it
to have been his own drunken lust that had killed him.
	From that day forth she had set herself to pay her mother back a
thousand-fold for every day of suffering. By the time Joanna had reached her
twelfth year, Marina O'Reilly was in perpetual terror of her daughter,
cringing whenever she attracted her notice despite an attempt at callous
authority long since lost to her, surrendering with shaking hands nearly all
the money she made from selling her despicable, whoring body to any filth, man
or woman, Johnathan decided, sick and perverse enough to indulge in such
corruption and take her, so twisted as to enjoy and even seek out such
attentions, while her daughter spent her days winning back the self-confidence
her parents had tried to take from her with a frigid, righteous ruthlessness
that soon had every child she knew and some far older either in wide-eyed awe
or terrified of her and every teacher desperate for her to be placed anywhere
but under their jurisdiction.
	Joanna's fourteenth birthday, Johnathan decreed, saw her celebrate
with the killing of a dealer five years her senior who had tried, none too
subtly, to convince her that it might be in her interests to sell just what he
wished, when and where he wished, including at her school and especially to
those so stupid as to consider a cheap little street-bitch like her able to
protect them, in fact, she might sell something else too, he had leered.
Having determined her, by that stage, to have been training for years in every
form of martial art and physical combat of which she could learn, Johnathan
took great pains to have her humiliate the underworld filth, to have him plead
and beg and scream for mercy before he died whimpering at last like the
gutter-slime his kind were. He could picture clearly the absolution of
triumph, contempt and disgust that filled her face as she left him at last to
choke and moan his last.
	Like all those of her circumstances, his anima grew up too quickly,
her reputation for almost inconceivable righteous, unrelenting brutality and
bloodshed towards dealers, pimps, whores and any underworld pig-swill that
dared so much as think of her, soon so infamous that they both avoided her and
set a very high price on her head. She gave no quarter, beating, and, when
possible with impunity, killing anyone who crossed her with a savagery and
inventive flare that had even the coldest and most depraved soon too terrified
to consider touching her. So she grew in his mind, a girl of his own age, an
avenging bean sidhe nine inches taller than his pitiful five-foot two, an
impossibly, devastatingly attractive amazon with long flaming red hair and
blazing, emerald eyes, a savage, desperate creature convinced that she was
both physically plain, bordering on repulsive (and heaven help anyone who
dared call her beautiful as she knew herself not to be and they must be trying
to gain some perverse advantage over her) and incapable of any emotion save
rage and vengeance, supremely confident in her ability both in the destruction
of any enemy and the certainty that, no matter what, she would shape her own
destiny, a perfect singer and a player of the celtic harp, a soul whom,
beneath the wild, raging exterior, in a part of her mind scarcely acknowledged
even to herself, cried out through the pain of the music of her celtic
ancestry, raging at the injustice and sickening perversity of her
circumstances, longing only to escape to a place where she could find peace
and happiness.
	Such was the anima he had created and the finer points of whose
history now held his attention as he sat, staring moodily at the note-book
Pentium on his lap, trying to decide just how much of her story to include in
the fantasy novel he had recently begun to write to the detriment of his final
year of schooling. She, of course, would be the character shifted from his
world to the universe of magic and darkness, a being far more worthy than he
to be given such a chance, yet still close enough to him in those ways that
mattered for him to understand that, in every way that mattered, it would be
his ideal, the supremely confident self, that would make the journey. Not that
he had even the tiniest flicker of a desire to be female, indeed quite the
reverse. He already knew himself to be more than hopelessly smitten by his
creation, that was part of her appeal and a necessary result of his own pain
and trouble. She was his perfection, a creature lost and lonely as himself who
could, despite their differences, understand him and whom he could draw from
the ruin of her life to a new beginning.
	Johnathan sighed. His parents were talking easily in the front of the
car, as usual ignoring the small, frail youth with too-thick glasses and
quick, jerky movements who had been such a disappointment but who could, it
seemed, be placated with enough of an allowance to buy virtually anything he
could wish. Johnathan wished that they would simply shut up for five seconds.
It was proving impossible to concentrate with all their mindless prattle about
lord Rutherford's sacking of his butler or what lady Madeline had worn to the
ball to which he had been forced to go that evening and which had put him in a
mood more foul than he had thought was possible, or why their son was such a
hopeless incompetent when it came to girls. Naturally, no girl had been
interested in him, nor could he have cared less about any of the shallow, air-
headed makeup-ridden shrews his parents now despaired that he should ever
attract. He was a hopeless dancer in any case and, usually an elegant speaker
(if nothing else, his years of reading had given him that), he seemed simply
to lose all ability to think or react when a girl spoke to him.
	"and I just couldn't believe Johnathan ignored her!" His mother
continued. "To think that he could be so impossibly, disgracefully impolite
when it was perfectly obvious Mariane was willing to dance with him."
	`Willing to dance!'
	Johnathan fumed silently. The vicious little she-cat was trying to
show him up in front of all her friends, just to see him squirm. He had heard
the giggles and seen the pointing and if his mother thought he was such a
blind, hopeless fool --. He glared and turned back to the note-book. That did
it. Joanna was about to gain more of his rage and with it, abilities beyond
the capacity for purely physical mayhem far sooner than he had originally
intended. She would meet such a little she-bitch soon after entering his
created world and tear the twisted, vicious little cat to shreds. Johnathan
moved his hands to the keyboard, and the machine flashed another battery
warning and a moment later, went dark.
	"BakaBakaBakaBakaBAKA!" Johnathan swore savagely under his breath.
	Manga and anime were a recent experience for him and he, being a
strict and practicing Roman Catholic and refusing to swear both because he
didn't like it and because everyone else swore, had begun to use such terms,
especially within hearing of his parents, who were convinced they meant
something very unpleasant and who would get furious, much to his satisfaction.
	With another glare at them, after all if they hadn't distracted him he
could have had more written, Johnathan put the note-book away and sighed
again. They were all but home, he consoled himself. At least then, once he'd
bathed and dressed for bed, he could settle in his room and, under the
pretence of some homework or other needing to be finished before the school
camp that was to begin tomorrow, he could get back to the epic again.

	"and see that you put the clothes *outside* your bathroom door."
	His mother's voice was the cold clipped tones of righteous
indignation. "I've told Sonja not to take them if you don't. Then when you
have no uniform tomorrow--."
	`I'm going to kill her, I'm going to kill her so much. She'll be so
dead they'll have to find every ancestor she ever had and kill them too just
to make up the difference.' Johnathan thought helplessly.
	"Alright, alright!" He said, his small weedy voice almost shrilling.
"Do you think you haven't told me that every night this week." He continued in
a mutter. "Baka! I said I'd take them down myself, what's the matter with
you?"
	"Don't you use that tone of voice to me Johnathan." She snapped, her
own voice, he noted furiously, although not raised nearly so much as his,
still managing to carry far more volume and authority. "And stop glaring and
muttering to yourself. If you learned a little courtesy perhaps Mariane might
have considered you a little more worthy of attention tonight."
	`Oh for the lord's sake will you just shut up about Mariane!' He
thought wildly. `She's a shallow, narrow-minded, mean-spirited, vicious, vile,
nasty little--.'
	"Johnathan," His father roared. "Are you ignoring your mother?"
	Johnathan gave up, turned and shot upstairs. His parents heard the
slamming of several doors, then faint sounds as Johnathan banged things as he
prepared for a bath and bed.
	"I'm going to kill you both!" He raged helplessly. "I'm going to kill
you and make a pact with the devil to bring you back just so that I can kill
you again and again, and then I'm going to--."
	He stopped, a little shocked despite himself, and anyway, what was the
point? He had better things to do. Gathering up his robe and night-shirt,
Johnathan left his room, restraining himself from slamming that door as well,
and made his way to the bathroom which no one but himself and the few friends
who had stayed very infrequently, had used. Some half an hour later and hoping
that he had used enough hot water to see that at least one of his parents
would have a cold shower, Johnathan left the spar and, just to be sure, spent
another ten minutes washing his hair. Satisfied at last as he felt the water
beginning to turn cold, he finished drying and dressed quickly for bed. If he
was lucky, he might get an hour's writing done before his mother sent Andrews
up to see that he was in bed. He wasn't.
	Just how old did they think he was, he thought as Andrews left and he
settled himself. "Nearly seventeen and they treat me like some baka ten year
old!" He fumed to himself. "Gods I wish I was anywhere but here."
	With a sigh, he reached for the note-book again, trailing its supply
as he settled himself more comfortably and switched it on.
	"You're going to get a power-boost, my wild Bean Sidhe." He said
softly as he called up the historical information he had determined for his
anima. "I'm in a particularly bad mood and you're about to benefit. I hope you
appreciate it."
	And smiling, he began to write.

	It was so dark, and more deadly cold than he ever imagined was
possible. Johnathan shivered again, staring through the icy, cloying fog,
trying desperately to see his way.
	"Please Azusa-chan, you can't do this." The scream came again, a
faint, thin sound, surprisingly precise in the cloying, stifling dark.
	`Fog shouldn't carry sound like that.' He thought numbly, searching
desperately with eyes that could barely see six inches before his face. `I
have to find them, I have to find them.' He kept screaming to himself.
	The wild, maniacal laughter tore through the terrifying, numbing cold.
	"Save what strength you have left to scream." The voice was lost and
wild.
	Then the world exploded in red and Johnathan heard the screams begin.
	Gasping, Johnathan tore himself awake, his heart pounding wildly,
hands clutching desperately at the blankets as he shot into a sitting
position, his stomach still clenched in a tight knot of fear. A movement and
crash nearly made him scream, then he realised that the note-book had tumbled
from the bed.
	"Kuso!" He gasped, fighting down the fear and reaching for the lamp.
	A moment later he was on the floor, lifting the note-book with a sense
of hopelessness. It just had to be damaged, things like that always happened
to him. For once however, his pessimism proved ill-founded as the little
machine fired up without a problem.
	Sighing with relief, Johnathan switched off the computer and packed it
and its supply back into its case in preparation for school in the morning.
Then he turned, glancing at the tiny antique travelling-clock he always kept
by his bed. Only half-past two. He had slept for barely two hours, yet the
thought of going back to sleep after the night-terror he had just escaped was
not something he relished just yet. He knew he was being irrational. He had
suffered from nightmares and the far more terrifying night-terrors for as long
as he could remember and was more or less used to at least two of the former
and one of the latter each month. Nevertheless, this one's end had been
particularly nasty. No, he would get up and go down to the kitchen for
something to drink before going back to sleep.
	Snatching his robe from a chair, moving quickly to shake off the
remnants of the horror of the dream, Johnathan moved to the open door, pausing
only to turn on the hall light before stepping out into the passage. The floor
protested beneath his feet and Johnathan fumed silently. His father, still
more than likely working in his study, would be bound to hear the movement
from above and demand in the morning to know what his son had been doing. He
had just passed the bathroom door when he noticed the light.
	"Blast it, I know I turned that off. Why can't Sonja leave things
alone up here? I've told mother time and again I'll clean the thing myself."
	Still muttering, Johnathan opened the bathroom door and half stepped
into the room, reaching for the switch.
	"Gods its cold in here!" He muttered as he flicked at the switch, and
stopped short.
	The thing was already off. Stepping full into the room, Johnathan
lifted his head, and stared. The light wasn't coming from above, but from
something small and half-seen that lay blazing in the middle of the spar.
	"What on earth?" Johnathan gasped, this time switching on the light
and moving quickly to the tub. "Kuso, but its cold."
	Kneeling by the tub, Johnathan leaned forwards, reaching for the
indistinct, glittering thing. But the spar had no bottom.
	Johnathan managed one shocked, choked intake of breath. Then, as he
somersaulted forwards into the abyss, his world exploded in red and Johnathan
heard his own screams begin.

--------------------
Prelude 2:			Notes.

	This one is still a mess.  Johnathan is more or less set, yet I need
to define immediately just how intelligent and talented he is in his own way,
and therefore just how truly pathetic is his behaviour and ideal fantasies.
His anima must be *extremely* unlikely while being very remotely possible and it
must be made crystal clear from the outset that he is absolutely fixated on
her creation while that fixation still remains rational.  He isn't mad, simply
*almost* but not quite obsessed.  A fine line that I need to make more evident
from the outset.

--------------------
Prelude 3:			<Untitled>.

	The little she-bitch would die. She had decided that the moment she'd
found Crystal, broken and beaten, in the alley behind the arcade. From where
she had knelt beside her, she could still hear the faint sounds of cheering
and laughter as Dave and Anna hammered it out against C-55s and B-12s on two
BGC-DOOMS while Lenore and Angela screamed insults at one another with as
little real animosity as usual and the others milled about, waiting for other
games to be free and all keeping an eye out for one another. It was useless to
try overtly to watch their leader's back; she was as likely to flatten anyone
who suggested she couldn't cope with anything that came her way, especially
now. Crystal's helpless whimpering had stopped as she'd reached a hand to her
cheek, then the blue eyes had opened to look up at her. For a moment they'd
regarded one another, her own gaze frigid with the promise of revenge for
this. Then she was on her feet, flying back towards the arcade, screaming for
the others.
	That had been a mere ten minutes before. She had not waited for the
ambulance; she couldn't afford to wait. She had headed straight for Faegan's,
hoping to reach the drug-hole before they realised the mistake they'd made in
pushing her this far and went to ground for the duration.
	She had been lucky. Gema and the goon-squad were still there, probably
waiting for Harrison to call to let them know what she and the others were
doing after he'd finished with Crystal. She'd found that idea amusing.
Harrison would never talk again. Lenore and Andrew should be just about
finished with him by now, just about.
	It had been easy. All she needed was to remember little, fiery
Crystal's helpless broken form and that she was dealing with drug-trafficking,
gutter-licking filth and she didn't have to hold anything back. She had
smashed the first of the hired help, a Viet she thought, into the brick-work
of the club's entrance with such force that the impact had shattered his spine
like kindling. Kicking the semi-automatic from the hand of another with a snap
that smashed his wrist to pulp, she leapt, flipped and landed, slamming the
third bodily through the plate-glass door, flicking out the stiletto even as
she followed, driving the fine blade to the hilt through his spinal chord just
below the neck before wrenching it free and diving over him, already running
before his body had tumbled to a stop. She was through the club and out into
the darker passages behind almost before the panic had begun. Then there was
the dimly lit stairway and the voices from the room at the smaller passage's
farther end. Sprinting for the closed door, she had slammed it open, leapt
through and hurled the blade into the throat of the first of Gema's personal
guard even as he looked up, turning only to smash the other over a table and
through the window on the room's farther side before she was beside Gema,
another blade already at her throat.
	"Lock the door." She snarled softly.
	The little she-cat ducked, trying desperately to twist towards her, a
knife in her hand. Dropping her own blade, she slammed her to the table and
slapped the knife to the farther side of the room. Something cracked and Gema
screamed. She ignored her, pivoting to the door in time to flick her last
blade through the left eye of the gunman in the doorway.
	"You should have used that." She said calmly as she retrieved his
weapon and the tiny knife, pitched the dying body from the room and slammed
and locked the door.
	"Now then, where were we?" She inquired, moving to Gema's groaning
form, pausing to retrieve her other blades and re-sheathe them before dragging
the dealer-hit-girl up by her hair.
	There was a crash at the door, then another and a moment later it
burst inwards. She smiled as three blades flew and three men screamed and
fell. Then the fourth entered with a pistol in his hand.
	"Put that down." He snarled quietly, jerking a finger at the last
blade she held to Gema's throat.
	"We'll go together, your little pay-mistress and I." She said calmly,
her eyes never leaving his face, her own expression utterly devoid of fear.
	"If that's how you want it. Doesn't matter to--."
	The knife slashed his jugular before he'd finished, embedding itself
in the door-jam behind him. He screamed, a thin gurgling sound, even as she
whirled, pausing only to crack Gema's neck with a quick twist of her hand.
	"You f** bish." Came a gurgling slur from behind her.
	In the midst of her leap to the window she half turned, in time to see
the man, blood pulsing between his fingers as he clutched uselessly at his
neck, stagger up, the pistol still in his hand. Her feet hit the sill and she
hurled herself forwards, somersaulting towards the alley below. Then there was
a crack from behind her and the world exploded in reds and yellows, even as
she plunged towards, then through the street to fall, choking back a scream of
shock, into the oblivion beyond.

--------------------
Prelude 3:			Notes.

	Not much to say about this, save that it's not some Priss alternative
or substitute :-) and somehow I don't think they're going to get along very
well, at least at first.
	I've had absolutely no first-hand experience of this end of society
and am drawing entirely from what I've read or seen/heard on TV/radio.  I am
also not exactly happy with the fight.  There needs to be more emphasis on the
fact that the girl so outclasses her opponents as to have everything over
before they properly realise she's there.  Her main advantage is her Ranma-
like speed and almost unimaginable savagery when dealing with a perceived
enemy.  She is most definitely *not* like the Ranma characters.  She will kill
without a moment's hesitation and abandon any sense of fair play in an instant
if she considers an enemy to be dishonourable.  Oh, and yes, she and Ranma
will certainly fight although I really don't want a victor (neither would be
willing to forgive the other in that case I imagine).  Besides, I no next to
nothing concerning the complexities of martial techniques and would probably
make a travesty of a good fight scene.  However, if anyone else is willing to
give me a hand when the time comes ...

--------------------
Chapter 1:			<Untitled>.

	"Ranma-sama!" The wild, sultry voice purred. "Awake my darling. You
can't possibly sleep now. Oh my Ranma-sama do wake up!"
	"Husband not sleep while Shampoo so close!"
	"Oh Ran-chan, how could you sleep when I have waited so long for this
moment?"
	"Ranma! Baka, wake up!"
	The last voice was a scream in his ear.
	"Aaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhhhh." Ranma screamed, shooting bolt upright in
his futon and staring wildly about him.
	Akane sat back on her heels, her face a mask of concentration as she
fought desperately to control her laughter. For a moment it seemed as though
she would succeed, then satisfaction overcame her and she collapsed into a fit
of unrestrained mirth at her fiance's expense.
	"Waddya do that for?" Ranma demanded, his heart still pounding.
	"What do you think I did it for?" Akane shot back, switching
immediately from amusement to growing anger. "Don't you remember we've a test
today? Baka! I could have just let you lie there. It would have served you
right if I had."
	"What do I care about some stupid test anyway?" He answered. "Only a
kawaiikune tomboy like you could wake someone up like that."
	"And only a hentai baka like you could forget that I told you
yesterday that I'd wake you up early this morning to help you study, something
you should have been doing last night. I don't know why I bothered. I get up
early to study *and* to cook you breakfast *AND* to help you and this is the
thanks I get."
	"At least if I'd woken up myself--." He began. Then abruptly the
second part of Akane's sentence sunk in. "You cooked breakfast! Waddya trying
to do? The test will be bad enough without being poisoned first. I told you
that I'd do the cooking while everyone's in Osaka. Gees! Even Nabiki's
cooking'd be better than the stuff you call food and I've never tasted it. I
dunno why it waits till its on the plate. Why not just let it loose in the
house if you want to kill me so much? I bet it could find its way right up
here and--."
	By this time, the room seemed almost to be bathed in the blazing blue
glow of Akane's battle-aura. A moment later, the familiar, but in this case
particularly enraged: "RANMA NO *BAKA*." seemed to make the very house shudder.
	A moment later, Ranma was given a ticket care of Tendo sub-orbital
express into the stratosphere. A faint cry of: "*KAWAIIKUNE*!" Could be heard
fading quickly into the distance, then nothing more save for the patter of
falling plaster and the pounding thuds as Akane stomped from the room and
slammed the door with enough force to shake the house.
	Ranma looked down at Nerima from his new vantage point. The district
really did look picturesque from up here. Unfortunately for Ranma, he had
reached the apex of his arc and was beginning his descent with ever more
frightening speed.
	Ranma sighed, preparing for the inevitable. Moment's later, he
splashed down in someone's back-yard swimming-pool. There was a swirl, then a
sopping-wet head of red hair poked above the water. A moment later a dripping
Ranma-chan emerged, clothed in nothing but the boxers he had worn to bed the
night before.
	"That violent, uncute, macho chick!" She muttered to herself as she
scrambled out, clutching her jaw where a purple bruise was already beginning
to rise, and leaped immediately to the nearest roof. "Wad'd she have to go and
do a thing like that for? Just because she thinks she can cook? Gees! Even C-
ko Kotobuki's cooking would have to be better than her's. At least her's just
poisons A-ko. Akane's has to chase me as well."
	Abruptly, he grinned at the thought of the anime and Akane in a
kitchen together. B-ko wouldn't have to kill A-ko. Their combined efforts
would be enough to do that for everyone within a mile just at the thought of
it. He wondered why Nabiki had never considered trying to sell Akane's cooking
to the military as a new secret weapon.
	Smirking now, Ranma made the last leap and landed on the Tendo roof.
Moment's later, he was climbing in at his window and heading for a hot bath.
>From downstairs came sounds like something heavy being chased about in the
kitchen.
	Ranma shuddered and entered the laundry-room, sliding the door closed
behind him. Moments later he had the bath running and was pouring cold water
over himself before entering. Reaching, he tested the water, and deciding it
was ready, slid into the hot bath with a sigh.
	Ranma felt the tingle of the onset of the change, then everything
exploded in sudden searing pain and blinding light, and then Nabiki was before
him, her face contorted in agony and terror such as Ranma could never have
conceived could fill a human face, screaming and writhing whilst something
naked and vaguely female, almost hidden beneath curtains of long blue-black
hair, pinned her, its mouth fastened at her throat.
	For a moment, Ranma froze, too shocked and sickened to move. Then with
a choking gasp he launched himself forwards. Quicker than even he could
comprehend, the thing released Nabiki and turned, and Ranma threw back his
head and screamed as Akane lunged towards him, the fresh blood spilling from
her suddenly snarling mouth.
	"Ranma!"
	The scream shocked him from the nightmare or whatever it was and he
found himself on his knees in the tub, water exploding in all directions as
his Katsu Tenshin Amaguriken slammed into it. A moment later the door slammed
aside and Akane rushed into the room.
	"Get away from me!" Ranma screamed, whirling and leaping to cling to
the ceiling.
	"Hentai! Baka!" Akane screamed in return, blushing furiously and
averting her eyes. "I thought you'd hurt yourself or something you jerk. Pity
you didn't."
	Still blushing desperately, Akane whirled from the room and slammed
the door.
	Still shaking, Ranma dropped to the tub once more, ignoring yet
another splash of water as he sat, fighting desperately to bring his shaking
and nausea under control. It was only a dream, or something like it, probably
caused by that violent kawaiikune tomboy waking him up like that, then punting
him nearly into orbit, mixed with the fear of her cooking. Yeah, that must be
all it was. Still, Ranma shuddered at the memory as he emerged from the water
and he didn't feel any better at the thought of the now inevitable meeting
with Akane's idea of breakfast that awaited him below.

	"What's the matter with you this morning?" Akane demanded.
	They were walking to school, Ranma on the fence as usual while she
walked along the street beside him.
	"Nothing." He answered too quickly. "What makes you think anything's
the matter?"
	Akane opened her mouth to answer, but just then a familiar jingling
was heard and a moment later a bicycle came sailing out of nowhere and landed
on Ranma's head.
	"Nihao Ranma." Shampoo cried cheerfully, extracting Ranma from beneath
her bike and glomping on to him. "You take Shampoo on date today?"
	"Listen you Chinese bimbo!" Akane shouted, losing her temper even more
quickly than usual. "We haven't time for this. We've a test first period and
we're gonna be late already so just get to wherever you're going, and you let
go of her you hentai!" She ended in a shriek, glaring at Ranma who had been
unsuccessfully trying to extricate himself from Shampoo's embrace whilst
shaking the stars from his head and trying not to fall off the fence.
	"Hey it's not my fault!" He exclaimed.
	"Ran-chan!" Came another voice at that moment from behind them. "What
do you think you're doing with Shampoo?"
	"Oh man, I *really* don't need this today!" Ranma muttered as Ukyou came
racing towards them.
	"Leave my fiance alone you Chinese airhead!"
	A moment later Ukyou's giant  spatula was descending towards Shampoo's
head. Under normal circumstances, Shampoo would have been able to avoid the
blow with ease, but Akane, particularly enraged at the delay and at what she
perceived as Ranma's usual hesitation in disengaging Shampoo, chose that very
moment to try to nail him with the biggest interdimentional mallet she could
find. The lavender-haired amazon twisted her head aside from Ukyou's attack,
only to see Akane's mallet descending directly towards her.
	"Aiya!" Shampoo shrieked, trying to release Ranma, push him away from
Akane's strike and leap on to her bike, all in one motion.
	While the mallet met its intended target's shoulder rather than his
head, the giant spatula clanged viciously against Shampoo's hand and the
handlebars. For a moment the amazon wobbled, trying vainly to maintain her
balance. Then, clutching desperately at Ranma for support, Shampoo, bike and
ranma crashed from the fence and into the drainage ditch beside it.
	"C-c-c-c-cat! Get it away from me!" Shrieked Ranma-chan as Shampoo-
neko meowed, pawing at her and struggling to get a foothold in the muddy
ditch.
	With a scream, Ranma-chan bolted wildly in the direction of Furinkan
while behind her, Akane and Ukyou turned away from the struggling Shampoo.
	In the next instant, a high keening scream made them turn. For a
moment, Shampoo-cat was frozen, her fur standing on end, blue eyes suddenly
huge with terror as she stared at Akane. Then with a murderous scream Shampoo
launched herself at Akane's face, claws extended, mouth pulled back into a
maniacal snarl of rage and fear as her eyes rolled wildly from side to side.
	Akane shrieked, stumbling backwards. Then there was a dull ringing
thud and Shampoo-cat dropped limply to the ground.
	"What on earth was the matter with her?" Ukyou exclaimed, sheathing
her giant spatula.
	Akane, still shaking, looked down at Shampoo's limp form.
	"I--, I don't know," She managed at last. "but it wasn't normal, not
even for Shampoo."
	"Hey, that wouldn't be normal even for Kodachi!" Ukyou said.
	Akane nodded, then suddenly there came the faint sound of a bell. "Oh
god, we're gonna be late!" She exclaimed. "That jerk. It's all his fault!"
	"Hey, you leave Ran-chan out of this." Cried Ukyou, immediately
defensive.
	Stooping, she scooped up Shampoo-cat and turned her over in her hands,
checking to see that she was still breathing. Satisfied, she put the cat down
on her clothes and reached into her school-bag for a thermos. A moment and a
splash of hot water later and Shampoo was human again and beginning to stir.
	"Come on!" Ukyou said quickly. "I don't think either of us should be
here when she wakes up."
	And with that, she began at a dead run towards the school, Akane
keeping easy pace beside her.
	Shampoo opened her eyes, gasping, the horror of what she had seen so
vivid in her mind that she had quite forgotten the blow that had knocked her
senseless. She must get back to Nekohanten as quickly as she could. Great
Grandmother must be told of this.
	With frantic speed, Shampoo dressed and gathered up her weapons. Then,
leaping on to her bicycle, she sped away towards her home.

	"Oh man I *really* didn't need that today!" Ranma was stalking gloomily
towards the lunch-room, his bento conspicuous by its absence. "And I didn't
have a chance to make my own lunch this morning. If that macho chick really
expects me to eat the stuff she calls food--."
	He shuddered at the memory of the snarling green something that had
leaped at him when he had opened his lunch-box that morning to throw it in the
kitchen dust-bin. He could still feel the thing's tentacles curling around his
hand.
	"How does she do that?" He muttered to himself. "She should get a job
as a biologist. She could make new species all on her own without having to
find them."
	"Hey Ran-chan." Ukyou called, hurrying up to him, the longed-for
okonomiyaki held before her. "I thought you might be especially happy to have
this today," She beamed ecstatically at his expression. "and for once I don't
think we'll be seeing Shampoo."
	She giggled, the strangeness already vanished from the memory.
	"Thanks Uk-chan!" Ranma exclaimed with real relief as he wolfed down
the okonomiyaki with even more gusto than usual.
	At that moment, the wall exploded in a shower of bricks and Ranma
turned, expecting to hear Shampoo's greeting. Instead, the all-too-familiar:
"Ranma Saotome, prepare to die!" Followed by a storm of bandannas had him
ducking and weaving wildly as other students yelped and scattered in all
directions.
	"Hey Ryoga, waddya think you're doing!" Ranma demanded. "You can't
chuck those around in here!"
	"Saotome, you accursed cur!" Came another cry.
	A moment later, Kuno leaped towards him, his normally spick kendo
outfit sliced from neck to waist. "How dare you treat the blue thunder of
Furinkan high with such malevolent distain. By all the gods you shall rue this
day."
	"Hey, that was Ryoga you idiot!" Ranma exclaimed.
	"Silence peasant!" Kuno raved. "Seek not to attempt to deceive the
blue thunder and cast aspersions upon another with thou accursed lies and
calumnies."
	"Yeah, then what's that around your neck?" Ranma sneered.
	Kuno reached up a hand and extracted the black and yellow cloth that
had lodged in the torn material that had once been his shirt.
	"Then it is true!" Kuno exclaimed. "The accursed Hibiki has chosen to
ally himself with the treacherous sorcerer Saotome. No doubt you plan to
divide your unholy lusts between my Akane Tendo and my beautiful pig-tailed
goddess. Then Hibiki, prepare to meet thy doom. Strike! Strike! Strike!
Strike! Strike!" He ended, rushing at Ryoga with a blur of speed.
	Ranma and Ukyou rolled their eyes, then watched, Ranma smirking with
satisfaction as Ryoga leaped back through the hole he'd made in the wall,
leading Kuno outside where he'd have more room.
	"Come on," Ukyou said with a grin. "let's see how long it takes
Ryoga."
	Still smirking, Ranma followed her through the hole.
	"Stand and defend yourself, coward! Infidel!" Kuno ranted, charging at
the still retreating form.
	Abruptly, Ryoga swung round and with one tremendous blow, brought his
umbrella down on Kuno's swinging bokan. There was a crack, and Kuno found
himself holding a considerably shortened piece of wood. A kick to the face
from Ryoga ended the fight and he turned once more towards Ranma.
	"Don't think that little distraction of your's has made me forget!"
Ryoga shouted.
	"Wha!" Ranma gaped. "You must be an even bigger idiot than I thought,
P-chan."
	"And don't call me P-chan!" Ryoga screamed, rushing wildly at him.
	As usual, Ranma leaped over him and the fight had begun.
	Ukyou sighed and watched them chase one another across the school-
grounds until at last, tired of the fight, Ranma waited his chance, guiding
the fight towards a drainage ditch near the fence until he stood, almost on
the lip of the drop. Then, as Ryoga leaped at him again, Ranma flipped over
him and tagged him from behind, sending him sprawling into the muddy water.
	"Ranmbwee!" Ryoga screamed as his body shrank and changed.
	A moment later, Ranma reached down towards the struggling black pig.
	"Heheheh, looks like you lost again P-ch--." He began with a smirk.
	A moment later he stared in utter disbelief as Ryoga gave an ear-
splitting bwee and shot skywards. Head up, Ranma gaped at the arcing black
form. For a moment, nothing more happened. Then with another bwee, ki-energy
exploded into the heavens in a colossal flash. A moment later, Ryoga's limp
form dropped from above, Ranma catching him by reflex; he was too stunned to
do more. Ryoga lay unmoving in his hands, all four legs curled up as though
hugging something to him, his eyes wide and unseeing.
	"Hey, P-chan!" Ranma managed at last. "Hey Ryoga, you alright in
there?"
	"Ranma!" Came a scream.
	A moment later Akane was descending on him, mallet in hand.
	"Oh man!" Ranma thought. "Hey it's not what you th--."
	He got no further.
	"Picking on my poor P-chan again?" Akane growled, plucking the little
black piglet from the twitching form. "What a jerk!"
	With a furious kick, she sent Ranma tumbling into the ditch.
	"Aaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhhhh!" Ranma-chan screamed, shooting to her feet
and staring at Akane as though she'd just grown horns. "Get away from me!
Don't touch me!"
	Then with another scream, Ranma-chan leaped the fence and was gone.
	"What's got into him!" Akane gasped, staring in shocked disbelief at
the space Ranma-chan had occupied scant moments before.
	"What did you do to Ran-chan?" Ukyou screamed, leaping to stand facing
Akane, her giant spatula already drawn.
	"N-n-nothing!" Akane gasped, for once utterly unable to react.
	Vividly in her mind, she could still see the look on Ranma-chan's face
as she'd screamed. It had been one of absolute, all-engulfing horror, horror
and loathing.

	She was afraid. It was something that she still found very hard to
come to terms with, even though she had made her decision early that morning.
Never one to shrink from anything, she nevertheless shivered with apprehension
as she prepared herself for a meeting that she knew might prove one of the
most difficult she had ever had to face. Not that she was afraid of that
meeting in itself, merely of what it might reveal.
	Forcing calm, she inspected herself one last time in the full-length
mirror in her room. It would not do to be anything other than flawless in
appearance. Satisfied, she moved to her window and opening it, leaped quickly
to the sill, then to the roof above. It was for Ranma she was doing this, she
reminded herself. For him, she could face anything. For him, she would
sacrifice the world, her very soul. At that thought, she shivered again,
sobering as she remembered where she was going and why.

	Shampoo, her anxiety of the morning temporarily set aside, had just
finished with the lunch-time rush when the door opened once more. Shampoo
turned from wiping down the counter, a beaming smile on her face for the
customer, then frowned at the figure who stood before her.
	"What crazy girl want here?" She demanded, reaching for her bonbori.
	Kodachi Kuno looked straight into her eyes, her gaze disconcertingly
level and calm.
	"I wish to speak to your great grandmother." She said quietly.
	Her voice too was unlike any tone Shampoo had ever heard from her, a
low threatening purr, yet a sound more absolutely determined and rational than
Shampoo could have conceived her capable. Unnerved by the change, yet still
determined to maintain her contempt for this mad Japanese witch, Shampoo
glared at the female Kuno, one of her bonbori poised in her hand.
	"Why you want speak to Great Grandmother?" She demanded, her eyes
spitting venom and suspicion. "If it potion you want--."
	"Shampoo," Kodachi said very softly, and now her voice was a low snarl
of utterly un-Kodachi-like rage, focussed and cold as midnight. "I'm only
going to say this once. If you do not tell Cologne that I am here and now, I
swear to you by all the gods that I will tear out your eyes and tongue and
feed them to you before I leave this place."
	"That will not be necessary." Came a sudden cool voice from the
doorway as Shampoo's eyes blazed and she tensed, preparing to pound Kodachi to
a memory.
	A moment later, Cologne hopped up on to the counter and stood, calmly
studying the gymnast.
	"Does this visit" She continued, her tone still calm. "concern a dream
or vision?"
	Shampoo gasped as she saw Kodachi's eyes for a moment go wide with
startled surprise before she covered her astonishment with what should have
been one of her patented laughs. However, the mania seemed to have vanished
from her and she remained unmoving.
	"How?" She demanded, then suddenly her eyes regained some of their old
mania. "Is this some play on your part old witch. If so--."
	"It is no doing of mine; I also have dreamed recently of things that
are, shall we say, concerning?"
	Cologne chuckled at her own understatement and turned as the door
opened.
	"Greetings son-in-law." She said without surprise. "We were just about
to begin. I'm surprised it took you so long."
	"Wha!" was all Ranma could exclaim.

	"It seems to me" Cologne continued after hearing each relate the dream
or flash he or she had experienced. "that there is too much consistency, *far*
too much, for this to be either imagination or coincidence. Shared dreams are
possible, but only between those either bound together by love or by fate.
Since the former is very unlikely," She chuckled again as she glanced between
Kodachi and her great granddaughter. "we must consider either the latter or
turn our attention to other possibilities. Tell me," She continued, turning to
Kodachi. "when did this dream begin?"
	"Last night, or rather, before I arose this morning." Kodachi
answered, her fingers never still as they played with the ribbon in her lap.
	"And your's, son-in-law?" She inquired of Ranma.
	"This morning, when I er--, entered the bath after that kawaiikune
tomboy punted me into someone's swimming-pool." He answered.
	"During the change?" Cologne said quietly. "Interesting, since Shampoo
also experienced her vision at such a time."
	"Change?" Kodachi inquired, her expression immediately both wary and
curious.
	"Waitaminute!" Ranma exclaimed suddenly. "Ryoga!"
	"Ryoga had a similar experience?" Cologne demanded, her gaze suddenly
fixed on Ranma's face.
	"Yeah, at least, it might have been something like that, when I
knocked him into a water-ditch." Ranma said. "He suddenly lost it far more
than usual and Shishi-Hokoudanned. Nearly took Uk-chan's head off."
	"A pity he didn't." Kodachi muttered to herself.
	Cologne gave Ranma a meaning glance and grinned ghoulishly. "Also,
hmm, under *identical* circumstances." She said, emphasising the word.
	Ranma didn't catch the meaning for a moment, then just gaped at her.
	"You knew!" His expression demanded.
	Cologne nodded and chuckled again and Ranma shivered. What didn't the
old ghoul know?
	"Then it seems to me that we have the beginning of a theory at least."
She continued. "Mousse!" She shouted suddenly. "In here, immediately."
	A moment later Mousse entered, his glasses for once in their proper
place.
	"Saotome!" He cried immediately. "I see that your engagement to Akane
means nothing to you after all. Is not Kodachi also enough for you? What are
you doing with my Shampoo!"
	His tirade was stopped as Cologne bounced her staff off his head, not
quite hard enough to put him to sleep.
	"I didn't call you here to prove yourself yet more of a fool than you
have shown thus far." She said mildly.
	"And I not your Shampoo." Shampoo cried. "I Ranma's."
	"Over my soul." Kodachi cried, leaping to her feet.
	"If that what crazy girl want!" Shampoo answered, also standing.
	"Enough!" Cologne commanded, flicking Kodachi back into her place with
her staff and giving her great granddaughter a withering look. "Now, if you
will excuse us for a moment, Kodachi, son-in-law? Shampoo, Mousse!"
	At her command, both followed her from the room. Moments later there
came a splash, followed by a few seconds of silence. Then, for the first time
in his life, Ranma heard a duck scream in terror.

	"I can't believe such a thing of her!"
	Mousse glared at Ranma as though he were somehow to blame for the
horror he had seen.
	After that first blood-curdling scream, there had followed several
seconds of wild quacking whilst Ranma stared shaken and Kodachi simply stared
bewildered. Then had come another splash and yet more screaming, this time in
Mousse's voice. The visions it seemed, occurred with either transformation.
Then had followed a furious discussion in Mandarin, followed by a few seconds
of silence, then the reappearance of Cologne, Shampoo and Mousse, the last
still pale and shaking.
	"The indications leave little room for interpretation." Cologne said
simply. "However if by your statement you mean that it is difficult to believe
that the Akane Tendo you know could be capable of what you have seen, I would
have to agree."
	"Violent girl capable of anything!" Shampoo announced with conviction.
	"I doubt it." Said Kodachi simply, staggering Ranma and receiving a
startled glance from the old crone. "She hasn't the strength or self-
confidence."
	Ranma grimaced. He should have known better than to regard Kodachi's
sudden apparent generosity and rationality as anything other than a temporary
aberration.
	"Crazy girl certainly do such a thing." Shampoo continued.
	Kodachi leaped up once more, glaring malevolently at her.
	"To torment you would be a pleasure, although ultimately pointless.
You would provide less than pathetic entertainment if what I saw in the dream
was any indication."
	Shampoo leaped to her feet and Kodachi whirled.
	Cologne sighed as they chased one another around the restaurant for a
few seconds before Kodachi bounded to a window and disappeared, a storm of
black rose-petals in her wake, her wild laughter still lacking something of
its usual insanity as Shampoo avoided the petals and leaped after her.
	Ranma and Mousse remained still for a few seconds, then Ranma rose to
his feet.
	"What we saw? It couldn't happen?" He demanded, his tone subdued as
his eyes fixed on the ancient amazon.
	Cologne sighed again and her expression was unwontedly troubled as she
returned his gaze.
	"I don't know." Was all she said.

	"Oh man come on Akane!" Ranma cried as he entered the kitchen.
	Something unrecognisable was hissing and bubbling on the stove while
dark green smoke choked the air. For once, the smoke had little smell, which
to Ranma's mind only made matters worse. At least usually he knew that she was
trying to poison him. Whatever this stuff was it was giving him no warning.
	Akane, her apron covered in some dark brown oily stuff and her hair
dusted with a fine soot that was the same colour as the smoke, was busy
hammering away at the mixture with what looked to be one of her patented
mallets.
	"Ranma, I'm not in a very good mood tonight." Akane warned quietly
through clenched teeth, the ferocity of her hammering increasing.
	Abruptly there was a tearing bang and the pot split in two, the dark
stuff gushing out on to the stove.
	"I don't need this, I *really* don't need this." Ranma muttered as his
fiance turned on him.
	"Baka! Now look what you made me do!" She exploded, raising the dark-
coated mallet high in the air.
	A moment later it crashed down on Ranma's head.
	"And get <slam> out of <slam> my <slam> kitchen!" She finished,
creating a Ranma-sized hole in the wall.
	From outside came the familiar cry of: "Kawaiikune!" Followed by a
sudden frantic shout as Ranma tried desperately to avoid the pond and what he
was sure would accompany the transformation.
	He didn't succeed. There was a splash, then a blood-curdling scream as
Ranma-chan shot skywards.
	"Just what *is* the matter with him lately?" Akane thought, remembering
again the look on Ranma's face that morning.
	"I gotta calm down, I gotta calm down!" Ranma-chan said again and
again as she crouched on the roof. "It's just a dream. It's not as if it's
real, or likely. Akane may be violent and unfeminine, but that thing--."
	It had been Shampoo this time, caught in that same grip, screaming and
screaming as the demonic Akane pinned her with effortless ease and tore at her
shoulder with its sharp teeth.
	"It's not Akane. It's some demon trying to get at us. Probably
something that old hentai managed to summon up and forgot to tell us about."
	With that thought, some calm returned to him. Whatever it was, it
wasn't going to hurt Akane; it wasn't going to make, to make *that* of her.
	With sudden purpose, Ranma-chan made her way to the window of the
guest-room and slipped into the house once more. She would have to change
back, and that would mean another brief exposure to the horror. Steeling
herself, Ranma-chan moved to the bathroom. She didn't want Akane to see this,
nor did she want her in the room when the "thing" appeared. Moving to the tub,
Ranma-chan leaned over it, ringing out her wet clothes. She'd change them
after this. Turning on the water, she adjusted it and dunked her head beneath
it. A moment later the horror appeared again, freezing him for a few seconds.
	"Ukyou this time." He noted with a kind of numb fascination.
	Then it was over and Ranma was turning off the water. Stilling the
shivers, he stood, turning to glance at his reflection in the mirror.
	Akane heard the scream from the kitchen.
	"What now!" She gasped, turning and racing towards the closed door of
the bath.
	"I'm only half changed, god, I'm only half changed!"
	Ranma's scream froze Akane in her tracks. For a moment she remained,
her head up, her eyes wide with shock. Then another scream, this time of pain,
snapped her into life once more. Hurling herself forwards, Akane slammed the
door aside and burst into the room. She stopped short, staring in utter horror
at what she saw. Ranma, blood streaming from his skin like perspiration, was
crouched over the tub, his whole body rigid in agony, his face, half turned
towards her, twisting and straining as he fought with all the will he had to
choke back the screams.
	"Ranma!" Akane screamed, stumbling to fall to her knees beside him.
	"M--my body!" He choked. "It's tearing, it's--!" For a moment he tried
to stand, then, as Akane watched, Ranma began to change, his hair becoming a
blur of black and red, his body twisting and writhing as portions of it
shifted between his male and female forms. There were the sickening sounds of
splintering, shattering bone and other sounds of tearing. Then with another
scream, Ranma pitched forwards into the tub, and through its surface.
	"Ranma!" Akane screamed again, lunging desperately to take hold of
something to pull him back.
	In horrified shock, she felt her hand pass through Ranma's leg. Then
she lost her balance and pitched herself forwards into the abyss. The last
thing of which she was aware as numbing shock and deadly cold engulfed her was
her own screaming and the continuing cracks and sounds of splintering as Ranma
dissolved before her darkening vision. Then all was blackness and terror as
Akane plunged down into absolute oblivion.

--------------------
Chapter 1:			Notes.

	I've really no clear idea of how to improve this.  Ranma and Akane
feel about right to me, although I've not seen/read nearly all there is to
see/read and would like others' opinions on how Ranma should react, not only
to the ever more horrible dream-like flashes but to the real Akane because of
them.  As for Kodachi!  How do you write a (perhaps) temporarily shocked-to-
sanity Kodachi whilst she remains Kodachi?  I've absolutely no idea and would
welcome any suggestions.  Would Ryoga really lose control like that should he
see a demonic Akane or would he immediately try to tear Ranma apart, blaming
him?  What would Shampoo do after such a vision and Cologne after such a
dream?  I assume Shampoo would redouble her efforts to remove Akane, but would
Cologne put aside the fiance fiasco and help or simply take what she considers
the easy way out and try to kill Akane before the imagined change can take
place?  And Happosai?  I haven't even begun to consider what he would do
(although he must play a part, after all he has a great deal of power when
needed).  Oh yes, and speaking of Cologne, does she know about Ryoga (I
couldn't remember) and is her characterisation in this as much of a mess as I
think?

--------------------
Chapter 2:			<Untitled>.

	The first thing of which Johnathan became aware as he opened his eyes
was the fact that he was shivering violently with cold. Then there was light,
a diffuse, gloomy greyness that seemed little more than a diminution of
blackness. Then the pain hit him, not a savage agony, but the dull relentless
ache of almost numbing cold and the hard black something upon which he was
sprawled, half on his back, half on his left side. Johnathan moaned and began
to move, every muscle aching with the chill that seemed to have become a part
of his very soul. Slowly and painfully he scrambled to his hands and knees,
then, with every muscle screaming, he began to struggle to his feet.
	"What--! Where!--!" He gasped.
	HE was standing on a flat featureless greyness that seemed to stretch
as far as the eye could see in every direction. Not that that meant very much.
A thick, soul-numbing fog, defined only by its swirling whiteness, hung to the
ground about him and he could make out nothing only a few inches beyond his
outstretched hand. In any direction he turned the sight that met his staring
eyes was exactly the same. Above him, the diffuse grey light seemed to fill
all the sky, coming from no source that he could see.
	Johnathan stood still, shivering, staring about him.
	"Am I dead?" He muttered softly to himself.
	His voice, curiously, seemed to echo and reverberate in the heavy
whiteness rather than falling dead as it should have done and abruptly, he was
reminded of the surroundings in the night's dream.
	"There's no chance I'm dreaming now." He continued, talking to make
some sound other than the barely heard sigh of the slowly swirling fog. "If I
am dreaming--."
	With that, he fixed his eyes on his hand, willing some detail to
change. Nothing happened. Johnathan slapped himself, then concentrated on his
own breathing and heartbeat. His body felt solid and absolutely corporeal as
did the frozen, rough hardness beneath his fingers when he bent down to test
the ground or whatever it was upon which he was standing.
	"Not a dream then, or the most real I've ever had." He muttered.
"Alright, let's take this one step at a time."
	Lowering himself carefully, Johnathan settled himself, his knees drawn
up to him, but almost immediately the chill began to gnaw at him and he rose
again to his feet. This was insane. He couldn't just stand here until he
collapsed from cold. Grimacing, he turned, thinking suddenly, absurdly, that
falling through a spar into oblivion wasn't exactly the entrance to another
world he'd been looking for when he'd imagined such adventures.
	"Hello?" He called softly, then with more force: "Hello? Blast it, if
this is someone's idea of a joke it's not funny!"
	He turned, staring about him once more, but even had there been no
fog, he'd have had trouble with his deteriorated sight. He'd left his hated
glasses on his bed-side table and with the fog also to hinder him, his short-
sightedness meant that he was all but blind.
	"Damn it, damn it!" He continued in a furious mutter, the closest he
would come to swearing. "Hello?"
	He hesitated for a moment, then began to move forwards. "Hello damn
you!"
	With sudden explosive fury, he lashed out with a foot, and impacted
something soft.
	"Aagghh!" Something, or rather someone, screamed.
	In the next instant, Johnathan's foot was wrenched from the ground and
something shot at him and slammed him down.
	"Oof!" Was all he could manage.
	Then he was flipped over on his back and a figure, barely seen in the
greyness, was astride him, pinning his arms and legs.
	"Alright whoever you are, just where are we and who are you, and
waddya mean by doing that?"
	"Wha! Leggo!" Johnathan gasped, wheezing as he tried to force air back
into his lungs.
	The voice that had addressed him was undoubtedly female and Johnathan
was suddenly very aware of how close the unknown girl was. Immediately he
began to panic in his usual fashion, all ability to form coherent speech
leaving him.
	"I don't--, I mean if you could--, when you--, that is--, um I--!"
	"Jees, what an idiot!" He heard the girl mutter. "Listen, is all this
your fault?" She demanded, reaching to slap him on the face.
	The blow, apparently casual, made stars dance before his eyes and he
was certain he could taste blood.
	"Ahgh! Hey, what in God's name do you think you're doing!" He cried,
the pain shocking some sense back into him.
	"Well, you can talk properly then!" The girl demanded. Then: "Well?"
She continued.
	"Of course it's not, damn it! L-l-let me up for crying out loud."
	With a: "Hmph!" The girl released him and Johnathan scrambled to his
knees, then slowly struggled again to his feet.
	He turned, peering at the girl, trying desperately to make sense in
the fog of what he saw.
	"Hey, what're you staring at, hentai!" She demanded.
	"Wha!" Johnathan replied. "Are you Japanese by chance!"
	"You got a problem with that or something?" The other answered.
"Course I'm not Japanese. That's why I talk Japanese, because I'm Chinese. You
didn't know that?"
	"If you're talking Japanese then so am I." Johnathan retorted.
	"Well what do you think you're talking, German? Jees, what kind of
baka thing to say is that?"
	"Oh Lord I really can't deal with this now!" Johnathan muttered. "I'm
talking English, exactly as you, you idiot."
	Anger was making him coherent, that and the fact that the girl was no
longer so close.
	"Who're you calling an idiot you hentai?" The other shouted.
	A faint glow seemed to emanate from around her.
	"And who do you think you're calling a hentai?"
	"And if you're talking English how'd you know what that meant?"
	"Alright, alright!" Johnathan returned, putting a furious hold on his
rising temper. "This is just crazy. Shouting at one another isn't going to
solve anything. You say you're talking Japanese, right?"
	"Wad'd I just tell you!" The other said, still shouting.
	"Will you just shut up for a minute!" Johnathan said, his own small
voice raised again. "If you're talking Japanese and I'm talking English, then
it either means we've both suddenly learned each other's language perfectly
and don't know it, something's translating what each of us is saying for the
other, or we're not really talking at all. Or I'm dead or mad." He ended to
himself. "So let's just slow down for a moment. Ok, say something, slowly."
	"Something slowly!" The girl parodied with a smirk that Johnathan
couldn't see.
	"Oh very funny!" He said, his own temper near breaking again. "Still,
I think we might be getting somewhere. Whatever that was, it certainly wasn't
English, although I understood it. Now, if I say, hmm, you're a crazy baka!"
	"Hey!" The other shouted. "At least I'm not a little hentai like you."
	"What did you hear blast it?" Johnathan cried.
	"I heard--." The girl was silent for a moment, then exclaimed softly.
"You're right you know. I can't repeat what I heard, but I do know it wasn't
Japanese, apart from baka that is, and you didn't pronounce that properly."
	"Seems that, assuming we are speaking, we can understand one another's
language but not speak them, at least, not yet." Johnathan mused. "Although it
probably wouldn't take very long to learn, probably just a matter of getting
the mouth used to forming appropriate sounds."
	"Hey you know the more I concentrate, the more I can *hear* that you're
not speaking Japanese." The girl said.
	"Same with me." Johnathan answered. "That could mean either that we're
just waking up properly, becoming more aware of our own consciousness, or
because, being so impossibly unexpected and the copying or whatever it was of
each other's language each to the other being so perfect, it took us time to
realise consciously what had happened. Anyway, there's no point in trying to
speculate on that now. The question is, where are we? Oh, I'm Johnathan by the
way, oh and that's not John or Johnny; Johnathan O'Reilly."
	"Ranma Saotome, heir to the Saotome school of anything-goes martial
arts." Said the girl, seizing and almost crushing a suddenly lifeless hand.
	"Wha!" Was all Johnathan could gasp.
	"Hey, you still in there?" Ranma-chan demanded, peering at the
suddenly frozen boy.
	"You--, I mean I--, no! This is just--! It's just absolutely crazy!"
	Johnathan proceeded to pinch himself viciously, then slap himself
savagely across the face, then bite his finger, hard.
	Ranma-chan simply rolled her eyes and waited.
	"I'm not dreaming! Tell me I'm not dreaming this!" Johnathan gasped at
last.
	"Not unless I am too." Ranma-chan answered. "What's the matter with
you all of a sudden? I thought you were weird but--."
	"Oh Lord. I don't believe this, I *really* don't believe it." Johnathan
exclaimed. "Alright." He continued. "Assuming I'm not dreaming, dead or mad.
You're Ranma Saotome right, son of Genma and Nodoka, engaged to Akane Tendo,
one of three daughters of Soun Tendo, the others being Kasumi and Nabiki?"
	"Hey, how'd you know all that?" Ranma-chan demanded. "Just who are you
anyway? Oh, and your pronunciation is *really* terrible."
	"Just tell me if I'm making any mistakes." Johnathan was suddenly
almost babbling, nearly incoherent with growing excitement. "You're also
engaged to Ukyou Kuonji; your father did that for food; and Shampoo thinks
you're married to her because you defeated her, and Kodachi Kuno is after you,
and Tatawaki Kuno is after you're cursed form, and--."
	"Hey!"
	In the next moment, Johnathan found himself flat on his back with the
enraged Ranma-chan astride him again. This time though it wasn't so bad.
	"She's not a real girl." His mind told him.
	Then he saw the fist cocked to send him back into the land of very
deep sleep and decided that it was as bad after all.
	"Ok, start talking." Growled Ranma-chan softly. "Just how do you know
all this?"
	"I don't believe it, I really donoof!"
	This last as Ranma-chan's knee met his midriff.
	"Back to earth yet?" She demanded.
	"You-- didn't-- have-- to do-- that--!" Johnathan wheezed, all the air
driven out of his lungs for the second time in nearly as many minutes. "It's
quite simple. In my reality, you don't exist. That is to say, you're a manga
and Anime creation of Rumiko Takahashi."
	This time it was Ranma-chan's turn to gape.
	"Nani!" She gasped at last. "No way. As in Urusei Yatsura? You're
crazy."
	She hand-sprung off his stomach, causing another: "oof!" and landed on
her feet. "You can stay as another weird part of this weird place for all I
care. I'm outa here."
	"Wait! Listen to me!" Johnathan tried to shout, managing only a croak.
"I'm telling you the truth. How else could I know so much about you?"
	"Who knows? Perhaps you're something Happosai called up. Perhaps I'm
dead or perhaps that kawaiikune tomboy hit me again and I'm still unconscious.
I dunno, but this is all too weird for me."
	"Please Ranma, for once don't just go crashing through everything. It
won't work this time. This is different. We shouldn't, we *can't* be in the same
reality. Things like this just shouldn't happen. Something's horribly,
*desperately* wrong, can't you see that! Our only chance is to find out why
we're here, and how, if we can."
	"No way." Ranma-chan repeated. "I'm getting outa here now."
	"And how exactly do you plan on doing that?" Johnathan demanded.
"Look, we don't know where we are. We don't know how we got here or whether it
was by accident or design. We don't even know what here is. Our only hope is
to stick together."
	"You mean you don't want to be on your own. You're more scared than
anyone should be."
	"Alright, what about it!" Johnathan flared. "Don't tell me you're
not."
	"You wanna try and prove that?" Ranma-chan shouted, cracking her
knuckles.
	Johnathan bit back his retort before it got him a fist in the mouth.
	"I don't want to fight you Ranma. I couldn't in any case. I wouldn't
stand a chance. I'm only trying to make you understand. Our only hope is to
stick together. We've no chance alone, can't you see that? For God's sake,
can't you see how wrong all this is? Can't you--"
	"Hey!"
	At the shout, both whirled. In the next instant, someone came racing
towards them out of the fog.
	"Baka!" A female voice shrieked. "There I was wasting my time worrying
about you and you've been just standing here."
	In the next instant, Johnathan winced as he heard a dull thud, then
Ranma-chan groaning as she collapsed in a heap on the hard ground.
	"BAKABAKABAKABAKABAKA!" The girl he assumed impossibly to be Akane
Tendo wept as she pounded her fiance again and again. "I thought you were dead
you jerk! I thought that baka curse of your's had finally killed you!"
	"Hmm, if you keep hitting him like that you might well be right."
Johnathan ventured, wincing at each successive thud.
	As if noticing him for the first time, Akane stopped pounding on
Ranma-chan and turned to face him. Beside her, Ranma-chan groaned again, then
began to stir.
	"Kawaiikune!" She muttered, then slumped back into unconsciousness.
	"Who are you?" Akane demanded, glaring at Johnathan with the mallet
already raised.
	Johnathan shuddered. Ranma, and perhaps everyone in his reality, might
inherently be able to take punishment like that, but he was certain that a
single blow from that thing would split his skull like an eggshell.
	"Wait, for heaven's sake!" He cried, raising both hands. "My name is
Johnathan O'Reilly and I'm from a reality where that thing would be considered
a deadly weapon."
	And with that, he began to explain.

	They were going to suffer for this, that she swore. She would hunt
down Gema Renae's soul and tear it to screaming quivering ribbons, her's and
every last piece of slime who'd been in her pay. To be killed by something so
idiotic. She was dead, she had no doubt of that, although the frigid,
featureless greyness all about her was not exactly her idea of the afterlife.
Had she been so irredeemable? Bitterness engulfed her. It was what she might
have expected from the filthy travesty of a universe into which she'd had the
misfortune to be born. What else should she have expected? God, as well as
Gema, was going to get a piece of her mind and hatred if she ever found her
way out of this place. God, Satan; if they wanted a fight, they would have
one, and with interest.
	She continued to walk, something she had been doing for nearly an hour
now. There was no point in remaining where she was until she froze. She had
laughed at that thought. Could you die twice?
	The terrain was, of course, identical in all directions, but whatever
filth had landed her here had reckoned without either her determination or a
certain intuitive ability when it came to direction, amongst other things. She
*knew* herself to be going in a dead straight line. She could also see better
than most in this pea-soup. Just let anything try to touch her and she'd tear
it apart or go down with her blades, and then her nails and teeth, in its
throat when nothing else was left. Curious how her clothes and tiny blades had
followed her to the afterlife. But then, why not. Perhaps they were a
projection of her own soul. That was fine with her.
	She shivered. The cold was beginning to seep into her again. With a
snarl, she yanked her loosening coat tighter to her and refastened the buttons
yet again. At least her soul could have fixed the worn button-holes back to
their original size. She had tried concentrating on changing her clothes, the
fog and various other things regarding her situation but to no avail. Whoever
was playing this game with her obviously intended their domain and her
situation to remain static.
	"Fine then you bastards!" She had snarled. "We'll play it your way
until I find you. Then you can start to scream."
	She shivered again. The top button simply wouldn't stay done up and
she wasn't dressed for this in any case. She'd only put the coat on that
morning because it had been raining when she'd left for school.
	"God when I find you you'll be so damned sorry!" She snarled softly.
"Do you hear me?" She screamed suddenly at the very top of her lungs. "I'll
tear out your throat, and as for you you little bitch," She ended, picturing
Gema in her mind. "I'll have you pleading and screaming for death before I've
properly started on you this time. Do you hear?"
	Her only answer were the impossible echoes of her own voice, dying at
last to silence. Then suddenly there was another sound, the faintest
suggestion of a whimper.
	Immediately she halted, whirling in the direction of the sound, pin-
pointing it relative to her position so that she could retrace her steps and
continue in the direction in which she'd been walking if it turned out to be
yet another trick. Then she began, moving more quickly, her trained instincts
poised and alert for possible attack as she drew nearer. It was, as she'd
expected, very suddenly that the figure came into view through the blanketing
fog. A moment later she was standing before a small shape curled up tight into
a ball in a single fluffy blanket, a head of blonde hair virtually all that
could be seen.
	"Who are you?" She demanded, none too gently, moving effortlessly into
a fighting stance, ready for any sudden reaction.
	Whomever it was, it certainly wasn't the little bitch she would have
been more than happy to find. She needed something on which to vent her
growing rage.
	Slowly the figure uncurled herself, lifting her head and turning a
tear-streaked face towards her.
	She stared in return, almost certain she had seen that face somewhere
before but unable to make any connection.
	"A-ko?" The figure whimpered, a hopeful smile beginning to touch her
mouth.
	Then her face fell once more. "You're not A-ko. Where's A-ko. I want
A-ko!"
	Immediately, she fell into full-fledged crying, her face screwed up
and her eyes streaming tears.
	"What!"
	The other simply gaped at her, for several moments too stunned and
thunderstruck to do anything else.
	"This is not happening." She said at last.
	Then her face grew hard.
	"If this is some perverse joke," She said, her tone very quiet and
very murderous. "I promise you you'll regret ever being born to play it."
	For answer, the huddled figure whom she now recognised impossibly as
being what the Anime C-ko Kotobuki would look like were she brought to life,
simply cringed down in the big fluffy blanket and began to wail all the
harder.
	"Oh for God's sake!" She exploded, suddenly at the end of her
patience. "Will you just shut up for a moment?"
	The last was screamed at the crying girl, with the result that the
crying grew even more intense, mingled with: "A-ko! A-ko help! She's going to
do something *horrible* to me. A-ko *pleeeeeeeease*!"
	"That wasn't a good idea." The other thought furiously to herself.
Then: "If this really isn't a joke, how the hell does A-ko stand this?"
	It was at about this time that she realised the impossibility,
disregarding everything else, that she could be talking to and understanding
this girl, and listening more closely to her wails, she leapt quickly to the
obvious conclusion.
	"I wonder how long it will take me to speak it?" She muttered.
	Try as she might, she couldn't think in the Japanese in which C-ko was
whimpering, only understand what she said and translate it to herself. She
supposed it must be the same for C-ko.
	"Let's worry about that later. First I've got to stop her from
screaming before something else hears her, if there's anything else here to
hear her!"
	With a sigh she shifted closer to the girl whilst slipping a blade
into her other hand, ready to kill her at the slightest sign of threat. C-ko
however simply continued to wail and cry for A-ko until at last, she reached
down and laid a hand gently on the girl's head.
	"I can't help you if you don't stop crying like that." She said
quietly.
	There was a catch in C-ko's sobbing, then the head lifted slowly and
large tear-filled eyes fixed on her face.
	"Y-y-you're not g-g-going t-t-t-to h-hurt me?" C-ko sniffled.
	"Not if you're whom you say you are, and if you promise to stop that
racket." She answered, trying to sound as comforting as she could.
	"And; and you'll h-help me find A-a-ko?" C-ko whimpered.
	"If I can." She answered, feeling that she would regret the promise
but not up to putting up with the girl's screaming by telling her just yet
that she was dead. Best to find out what had happened to her before she broke
that particular piece of news.
	Pulling her coat closer about her she coaxed C-ko up from her curled
huddle and had her stand, just to be certain she was safe. The girl was
certainly not dressed for this, in fact she was dressed only in a thin shift
with a pair of fluffy slippers, and after seeing that there was nothing
concealed in the shift, she let her settle once more beside her, although she
wouldn't let her huddle against her, nor would she share the girl's blanket.
Regardless of anything else, close physical contact was not something she
allowed even her closest friends, let alone a stranger.
	C-ko was obviously unhappy about not being allowed this extra sense of
security, nevertheless, she'd stopped crying and was gazing at the girl she
was already beginning to regard as her new friend (for promising to help her
find A-ko) with relief and even the beginnings of a smile. She had been so
frightened here alone, and so cold.
	"I--, I was asleep." She began in answer to the obvious question.
"Then suddenly there was a sound and my window opened and B-ko was there. She
wanted me to go with her but I wanted A-ko. Then she picked me up and wrapped
me in a big fluffy blanket and then we flew out the window and i wasn't so
frightened any more, but then something was there on the ground, something big
and dark and B-ko screamed and there was a bright flash and I was falling and
B-ko was screaming and fighting the dark thing and then I fell through the
ground and then I was cold and then I woke up and it was colder and I was
here."
	By the time she'd finished she was crying again.
	"I think something happened to B-ko." She sniffled. "Maybe something
happened to A-ko too and so B-ko came and then--."
	And with that, she was wailing all the more.
	"Oh please not again!
	"Alright." The other soothed, trying to reassure her if only to shut
her up. "We'll find her if we can. But now we have to be moving. We can't just
sit here, do you understand?"
	"Y-yes." Sniffled C-ko, making a surprising effort to stop whimpering.
"Can we go now?"
	"Now." She said, rising quickly to her feet.
	C-ko stood up, then tripped on her blanket and would have fallen if
the other girl hadn't caught her.
	"Here," She said in exasperation. "Stand still while I fix this.
There," She ended as she finished wrapping the blanket around her. "and keep
it held tight. And stop skipping about all over the place!" She added in
growing anger as C-ko began to bound up and down, beaming now with the
certainty that she would soon find A-ko again. "We've no idea what the
surrounding terrain is like. Do you want to end up breaking your silly fool of
a neck?"
	Immediately, C-ko sobered, moving close to her.
	"I'm cold." She said, her tone suddenly very soft and very afraid.
	"Come on." Said the other briskly, ignoring the sudden imploring look.
"We'd best get started."
	And with that, she began to move. C-ko took two steps and tripped on
the blanket again.
	"God almighty, what's the matter with you?" The other exploded, again
catching her just before she hit the ground. "Look, just hold the damned thing
tight alright? That's all you have to do. Just hold it exactly like that."
	With that, she slipped an arm reluctantly around the smaller girl,
almost recoiling at the close hated contact, took too steps forwards and
plunged into oblivion again. There was no warning, no indication to any senses
that the ground before them was pure illusion.
	C-ko's scream of terror shrilled wildly around her, her own bitten
viciously back despite her terror and changed into a snarl of rage. Then in
the next instant they crashed into someone.
	"Hey! Waddya think you're doing!" An outraged female voice yelled.
	"Baka, it wasn't me!" Another shouted back.
	Then everything was tumbling and shouting until abruptly light
exploded around them and they tumbled out of the sudden brightness into cold
water.
	"Aagghh! Cold!" Someone shrieked.
	"A-ko! *A-ko*!" C-ko screamed.
	"Baka! Hentai! Let go of me!" Came another, followed by a thud.
	"Kawaiikune! Waddya do that for? I was only trying to help. Stupid
macho chick!"
	"Would someone mind? I can't exactly swim." Johnathan spluttered as he
was dunked several times in as many seconds.
	Struggling at last with a ferocity born of his fear of water from the
tangled mass of bodies, he splashed and thrashed about until a sudden fierce
grip caught his wrist. In the next moment he was scooped up as though he
weighed nothing and dumped unceremoniously face-down on soft grass.
	"Satisfied?" A new female voice demanded, its tone laced with
contempt. "How pathetic. The thing was only a pond, not the middle of the
Irish sea."
	A moment later, Johnathan was flipped on to his back and found himself
staring up at his rescuer. Her long flaming red hair, tumbling in a wild
cascade below her waist, gleamed in the light of the newly risen sun and
emerald green eyes blazed with a savage, almost feral gleam as they looked
down into his own.
	For a moment, all Johnathan could do was stare in stunned, open-
mouthed amazement at the face that had filled almost his every waking moment
for years. Then faintly he gasped: "Joanna?"

--------------------
Chapter 2:			Notes.

	Well this has been the most difficult so far.
	The description of the nowhere into which they have `fallen' is a
total dog's-breakfast at present IMO.  It needs to be if anything more gloomy
and depressing and apparently without any hope of end or diminution.
Johnathan's potential as a thinker should be obvious, together with the
possibility that he might be able to get Ranma out of the mess he's landed in,
given time.  Certainly the reader's sympathy should be with his approach at
the beginning.  The English/Japanese waffle seems very convoluted, however I
needed a deus ex machina for language difficulties whilst still leaving room
for temporary problems.  Also, I imagine that what I have described might well
happen should another language simply be `mass-dumped' into someone's mind
without any consideration being given to their own linguistic coordination or
latent ability.
	I hope not too many caught on to the fact that Johnathan's not-so-tame
anima came to life.  I do hope people catch on to the fact that she is *majorly*
irritated (wonder why?) and that she is not going to be any happier when she
learns more about a certain weedy, pitiful little nothing who keeps gaping at
her and whose fascination can only be described as Kunoesque.
	C-ko seems more or less right to me, and the circumstances of her
appearing will be explained.  I was simply not going to have someone else
`plunge into oblivion'!  My only question regards the viability of B-ko being
able to try to kidnap her.  How closely is she watched?
	From the beginning, Joanna shouldn't be a particularly appealing
character and it should be immediately obvious just how far Johnathan's
realisation is from an impossible ideal and just how callous he (although
unwittingly) has been in that realisation, particularly when she is only
behaving *exactly* in accordance with that ideal.  Was she cruel and cold enough
towards C-ko whom, IMO, could do with a little brusque treatment?

--------------------
Afterword:

	Well, that's about it for the first bit.  I would have waited until
I'd finished setting up the initial ideas but thought I'd best post this to
gauge reaction and see whether I should bother continuing it or go back to my
own to-be-published work.
	Coming soon:
	Sylia Stingray receives an urgent call from a terrified, barely
coherent Fargo raving of strange Genom experiments, disappearances and
terrible demons and the knightsabres are called to a boomer rampage to find
the adp, boomers and a strange sleek ship from a bye-gone Anime called `Dirty
Pair' (impossibly present) in an all-out *joint* battle against energy-throwing
semi-human monsters.  When the girls in the devil-hunting dress of yet another
bye-gone Anime appear wielding a sword and spear, what then?
	Reality is beginning to falter and the darkness begins to reach out to
claim those most susceptible.