Well, finally. Chapter 7 is done. I manually split it into two
parts, my mail couldn't handle a 62K cut-and-paste. If you want
the file in one part, just go to my web page. C&C always appreciated.

Neko
by Mark Doherty (mdoherty@mailbox.uq.edu.au)

Chapter 7: Ever Get the Feeling it's Going to be a Bad Day?
(Draft)

Time for a Story Summary! These will be infrequent, I don't think it's really
necessary to write these for every chapter, so expect to see a summary of
what has gone before about every five or so chapters, depending on the
importance of events since the last update.

So far:
 Things proved to be a little hectic at the out-of-the-way tourist spot/
 training site/dangerous place where only the foolhardy go/Jusenkyo Springs
 on one fine day when at least six people (plus 100+ lemmings) happened to
 fall into the cursed waters on the same day.

 As it goes, Akane and Ukyou both got cursed with water from the Spring of
 Drowned Boy. Akane, who had been 'volunteered' to be engaged to Ranma about
 three months ago, had decided to travel to China in order to get Ranma to
 help her to make their parents call off the engagement. On her way to Osaka,
 where Nabiki had arranged cheap and safe transportation for her, she met
 what appeared to be a young man, about her own age, Kuonji Ukyou. A slip of
 the tongue on Akane's part told Ukyou that she was after Ranma. Ukyou,
 having apparently had previous dealings with Ranma, managed to convince
 Akane to let 'him' come along. (In actuality, Ukyou was a girl, who had
 started disguising herself as a boy after Ranma had abandoned her ten years
 ago.)

 During their trip, Akane and Ukyou became friends. Through either fine
 tracking skill, luck, or else knowing where the Saotomes were going to be
 thanks to the fact that Genma had sent Soun a travel itinerary, the two
 teenagers made it to Jusenkyo. There, Akane accidentally fell into one of
 the springs. Ukyou, worried about the fact that Akane wasn't surfacing,
 jumped in and pulled her... well, now _him_ out of the water. After finding
 out how to revert to their normal forms, Ukyou led a shocked Akane out of
 the area, heading towards a village the Guide mentioned. Though Akane was
 naturally badly affected by her new form, Ukyou managed to hide her own
 reactions to having a male body until after Akane had gone to sleep that
 night, simply because she hadn't told Akane that she was a... well, a she.

 So it was that the two half-girls retreated to Japan, although why they did
 not resume their search for Ranma remains a mystery. They found their way
 to the Tendo Dojo, where they soon met a strange panda and cat. Ukyou,
 having saved the cat from the panda and having taken a liking to the small
 beast, took the feline with her when she and Akane sparred, and took the
 cat with her when she went to have a bath afterwards.

 So she wasn't pleased when she found out, not long after, that the cat was
 actually Ranma, her once best friend, turned enemy. She had been left
 behind, so long ago, when Genma had promised an engagement between her and
 Ranma and then ran out on her, taking 'Ranchan' and the Kuonji yatai, with
 him. To make sure that Akane didn't find out about her true gender, Ukyou
 took Ranma into the dojo to have a 'talk' with him. In the ensuing fight,
 Ranma knocked Ukyou unconscious, finding out that she was a girl in the
 process.

 After Ukyou woke up and Ranma made sure that this wasn't some 'cursed body'
 that she'd picked up, Ukyou told him about her life, since she was a bit
 too out of it from the fight to continue attacking him. After Ranma swore
 not to tell Akane that Ukyou was actually a girl, Ukyou decided to wait a
 bit on her revenge, to see if this Ranma was still the Ranchan she knew so
 long ago.

 Ranma has some real big problems with cats. When he was young, his father
 trained him in the Neko-Ken, a terrifyingly powerful technique that had two
 unfortunate side-effects. Firstly, Ranma became deathly afraid of cats.
 Secondly, when his fear of cats became too great, his mind used a defensive
 technique that made Ranma think _he_ was a cat. It was only then that Ranma
 could use the amazing power of the Neko-Ken.

 When Ranma got cursed as a cat, this previous training caused problems. You
 see, if you fear cats so much that your mind makes you act like one if
 you're around them for too long, then what happens when you actually turn
 into a cat? The full facts of what happens to Ranma when he turns into a cat
 haven't been revealed yet, but the following things have been observed:
 - As a cat, Ranma tends to attack his father a hell of a lot.
 - Ranma does not remember his experiences as a cat, just like when in his
   Neko-Ken trance he doesn't remember what he does.
 - Ranma reverts to his normal personality when he changes back to human, but
   for a while he is woozy and generally slow of thinking. This is probably
   some sort of defence mechanism of the mind, to make sure that Ranma
   doesn't remember the change between forms.
 - Ranma REFUSES to believe that he is cursed. He has a fear of cold water
   that rivals his fear of cats, but he can't really explain why, usually
   only giving lame excuses about how cold water makes him black out because
   of 'some weird technique Pop must have used on me when we were at that
   Jusenkyo place'.

 And so it has come to be, that so far the following curses have been
 revealed:
 Ranma - Cat(But I use a Neko suffix because I'm annoying like that.)
 Genma - Panda(I guess some things are cosmically inevitable.)
 Akane - Boy(Or man, she has a male curse anyway. In her boy form, she has a
         rather strange hair shade of bluish brown.)
 Ukyou - Boy(Her male form, luckily for her, doesn't quite gain enough mass
         to cause the bindings that she uses to hide her gender to choke her
         off. Still, they probably make breathing a bit more difficult. As a
         man, Ukyou has red hair and blue eyes.)

 Other people/beings who have come from China, and therefore are at
 least suspect of having been cursed, are:
 - Kunou Tatewaki
 - Ryouga
 - A young woman with purple hair
 - A young man with long black hair
 - Kunou Kodachi
 - A hell of a lot of lemmings, all but one of which came with Kodachi. One
   lemming, for some reason, was accompanying the man with the long black
   hair.

 Anything else? Oh yeah... it looks like Akane might feel more than
 friendship towards Ukyou...

Well, I'm sure you can now see why these summaries won't be put in every
chapter... (Of course I could have made a more compact summary. I did it
this way to aid my conceptualisation, and I figured it wouldn't hurt people
to read it, especially considering how long it's been since I released the
last chapter.)


Characters are the property of Takahashi Rumiko. I deserve to be thrown in
the spring of drowned ferret for even thinking of using them. Please
don't sue me, I am but a poor and penniless student.

Anyone who has read any of my previous alternifics should know that I never
change just one curse, so read on at your discretion...

C&C's are welcome, wanted and not wasted on me.


My conventions explained:

- The suffix -kun is used to denote a character's cursed male form. No
  suffix indicates that the person isn't in their cursed form. If someone
  turns up with a girl curse, they'll get the -chan suffix. Animal curses
  are denoted by the name of the animal as a suffix. After a couple of
  times, animal suffixes will probably usually be shortened to the first
  letter. For example, Henry-Mockingbird, or Henry-M after the first couple
  of times the name is used in a scene.

- Just to be REALLY annoying, a cat curse will be denoted by a -Neko suffix.
  So, Ralf-Neko for example.

- <> Denotes Chinese.

- [] Denotes thoughts.

- ** Is animal speak when used without quotes, and is sound effects within
  quotes. For example: *Hello.* the duck quacked. And: "*sigh*" she sighed.

- {} Are Panda signs.


"Cruel, but composed and bland,
 Dumb, inscrutable and grand,
 So Tiberius might have sat,
 Had Tiberius been a cat."
                - Poor Matthias by Matthew Arnold.

*********************

Dawn found Tokyo bathed in a soft, comforting, rosy light as the sun greeted
the new day with its soft ambience. An old woman slowly, carefully, lovingly
watered the immaculately tended plants of her small garden. Young children
were up even before their parents, so that they could watch the early morning
children shows, before the drudgery of school could claim their time. A man
walked his dog along a cool, misty, dimly lit street as he mentally reviewed
the work he had set for the day. And a cybernetic cat-girl fought a large
mecha, causing massive property damage. It was a quiet start to a new day in
Nerima.

In a small tent that was set out on the backyard of the Tendo residence,
Kuonji Ukyou lay on her bedroll, staring at the cloth ceiling, thinking
about life. And love. And vengeance.

The thought of vengeance had driven her for so long, the thought of one day
tracking down Ranma and his father, of forcing them to feel at least some of
the pain she had gone through, of seeing her Ranchan again... Wait, no, that
wasn't it. She... she hadn't gone through all she had, she hadn't gone to
China, she hadn't been cursed just to... forgive Ranma, had she?

But he'd still tried to be her friend, even after she attacked him. He'd
still reasoned with her, when all her reason had fled. He'd held off in
their fight for as long as he could, he seemed genuinely concerned for her.
He'd seemed so concerned about her, when she'd told him her story...

On the other hand, he had used his cursed form to spy on her in the bath.

But then again, in the dojo, he'd been shocked to find out she was a girl.
And right before they'd gone to the dojo, Ranma had claimed he couldn't
remember even being in the bathroom. Perhaps his curse... perhaps all the
curses didn't just give the _form_, but the mind as well. And would a cat's
mind be able to remember much? Ukyou's mind shied away from this line of
thought. She didn't want to think about the curse taking over her mind. She
was having enough of a problem dealing with being a half-boy as it was.

But, but, but... Ukyou sighed. She'd lost that determined focus, that single-
mindedness that had driven her in her training, driven her to accompany Akane
to China. It used to be... hell, just _yesterday_ it used to be that just
thinking about Ranma would make her teeth clench from humiliation, pain and
rage. Now, just like that, she found that she couldn't keep up that hate.
What was wrong? What was she to do?

What to do? What to do?

Why had it seemed so easy to call him Ranchan, just before they had left the
dojo last night? It had just come out, it had seemed so natural to call him
that again. And as soon as she'd said it, she'd wondered why. In fact, she'd
spent the whole dinner, and half the night staying up, wondering why. Why
had it seemed so easy to give up the hurt, the pain, the comforting rage of
vengeance?

[You loved him once. Do you still love him?] her mind challenged her.

"Love? How could I love him, he left me behind. My life was shattered because
of him. Before Akane, he was the only true friend I had and he abandoned me.
Because of him, I abandoned my femininity. Because of him, I'm lying to my
best friend. Because of him, I am a man not only in the eyes of the law, but
in body as well. Because of him, I've lost so much..." Ukyou said, trying to
rationalise her thoughts by saying them out loud.

[Do you still love him?] her thoughts asked again.

"But he didn't know about the engagement. He didn't even know I was a girl,
the blind fool. He... he didn't abandon me. It was his father. And he was
glad to see me, I know he was. He was willing to help me, after all this
time, without a question. He... he's still there for me, even after I
attacked him."

[Do you still love him?] her thoughts repeated.

"He... he called me cute. No-one's ever called me that. No-one. And... and he
meant it too, I'm sure of it. And without him, I never would have even met
Akane. He was my best friend, and now she is. He... he likes me. He still
wants to be my friend. They're my two greatest friends..."

[Do you still love him?]

"May the spirits protect me, but I do..."

*********************

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-----------

With a satisfying WHAM!, another alarm clock was sacrificed to the great
God of Annoying Ways to Wakeup. Slowly, unwillingly, Akane oozed bonelessly
out of her bed. After three months of sleeping on a bedroll or a sleeping
bag, her body had taken to sleeping in a bed again with perhaps a little too
much glee. She'd need to do something to work out the kinks in her body.
Perhaps a bath, or maybe a light spar, or something like that.

Akane yawned as she stumbled over to her wardrobe, rubbing her sleepy eyes.
With another yawn, she opened the wardrobe's door, and looked at her clothes.
She sighed as her gaze flitted over her school dresses. After three months,
she'd have to go back to that again today. She was dreading the lectures
she'd be getting from her teachers, for skipping out from school for so long.

Akane walked over to the nearby clothes drawers, and opened one. She smiled
as she picked out a light shirt and a pair of shorts. Now here was something
she hadn't done in a while...

A few minutes later, Akane was out the front door of the house, dressed in
the shirt and shorts, along with a pair of running shoes and a red headband.
After a quick limber up, she was jogging down the local streets, her long
hair streaming behind her.

*********************

Ranma surreptitiously started stretching his muscles as he followed his
father out the back of the house. It didn't matter where they were, practice
of the Art came first. Today would be no exception. And it'd be nice to spar
in a dojo for once, they rarely got the opportunity on their travels to use
a real training hall.

Genma stopped walking long before they had reached the dojo. He took up an
opening stance as he glanced meaningfully at the nearby pond. "Are you ready,
boy?" he asked.

Ranma looked from his father to the pond several times before his face
hardened in resolve. "Alright. If that's the way you want it." he said as he
took up his own stance.

Genma smiled. Despite all the problems that had developed between his son and
himself, at least the Art still drew them together. And at least Ranma still
had the courage to risk that which he feared, all for his own betterment.

"Defend yourself boy!" Genma shouted as he launched himself into the air.

Ranma's only response was an easy smile as he jumped to meet his father.

*********************

Ukyou sat in her tent, her arms wrapped around her drawn up knees. She was so
intent on examining her feelings that she was ignoring the shouts and sounds
of combat from outside.

[If you still love him, what do you do?] her thoughts challenged.

"I don't know." Ukyou whispered.

[What about Akane? She's engaged to him too.]

"But she doesn't want to be. Hah, I'm surprised she wasn't the one to fight
Ranma, the way she kept on about how unfair an arranged marriage was. If...
if Ranma kept his engagement promise to me, I'd only be doing her a favour."

[Why would Ranma keep his promise? He left you behind.]

"No." Ukyou said, clenching her fists. "No, I know it wasn't him now. Ranma
didn't even know I was a girl, he couldn't have run out on the engagement.
That means..." Her eyes flared. "That means that if he wasn't the one to
steal our yatai and run out on the promise, it had to be..."

With a muffled yelp, Genma flew threw the loosely closed tent entrance,
landing right in front of Ukyou.

"Pardon me." Genma said as he rose to a crouch, ready to jump out of the tent
to teach his cocky son a lesson.

"You!" Ukyou snarled as she patted the ground next to her, searching blindly
for the hilt of her combat spatula since she didn't want to take her eyes of
the older man. Genma blinked in astonishment at the look of rage on the
okonomiyaki chef's face.

"It was you!!!" Ukyou growled. She felt a surge of triumph as she finally
found the handle of her battle weapon.

"Can I help you with something?" Genma asked, puzzled at Ukyou's reaction to
his accidental entrance. [Perhaps the boy's just a bit private.] he thought.
[After all, he overreacted in the bathroom yesterday as well.]

"Yes..." Ukyou hissed as she rose into a standing crouch, her back brushing
the cloth of the tent's roof. "You can stand still so I can beat you into
next week!" With that she channelled all her rage into a powerful swipe
at Genma with her combat spatula.

Outside, Ranma looked on in confusion at the tent. By now, his father should
have barrelled out, ready for more fighting. What was going on? He blinked as
he saw the sides of the tent bulge in first one place, then another, and then
another, like someone was hitting the cloth from the inside. After a few more
seconds of this abuse, the tent collapsed, to reveal the outline of a thinner
person who looked to be doing their best to strangle a stockier person.

"Does this mean I win?" Ranma called out as he stood down from his defensive
posture.

The only reply from the collapsed tent was a muffled snarl, followed by a
pained yelp.

*********************

There was an easy familiarity to jogging, Akane found. The sheer, simple
pleasure of running for no reasons other than exercise and enjoyment was a
novelty she'd enjoyed all too rarely in recent times. This, coupled with the
surprising joys of simply seeing old places, sights and even people that she
had not seen in a quarter of a year had, on this day at least, turned a
simple fitness technique into an effective calming method, a sort of
meditation in motion.

And so it was a calm, collected (and barely winded) girl who entered the
Tendo house, half an hour after she had started her jog. Once Akane had
shucked off her shoes, she went up to her room, changed into a gi, and
walked down the stairs and out to the yard.

She stopped short when she saw a panda and a red-haired boy fighting over,
around and sometimes in the koi pond.

"Same old Ucchan." Ranma noted to her from where he was standing nearby. He
wasn't facing her, he was looking at the fight, but he'd still sensed her
presence. "He... I mean sh..." he caught himself from correcting his initial
mistake as he remembered his promise to Ukyou. He coughed in an attempt to
hide his gaff, before he continued. "Uh... like I was saying, he always did
have a bit of a temper. He was a great guy though."

"Ucchan?" Akane asked as she watched the fight. Ukyou-kun had the speed and
reach advantage, but he was obviously fighting angry. Genma-Panda was using
this to his advantage. When this was combined with his greater experience,
strength and willingness to fight dirty, it looked like Genma had the
slightest of advantages.

"Yeah, Ucchan. It was the nickname I gave him when we were young. Sort of in
retaliation for the nickname he gave me."

"Ranchan?" Akane suggested as she remembered some things Ukyou had once said
while dreaming.

"Yep. Guess he told you about me then." Ranma said.

"Not really." Akane admitted. She turned from the fight to look at the boy.
"It looks like they're going to be a while. Do you want to spar?"

Ranma turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow. "Spar?"

"Yes. Spar. As in combat practice? As in a fight, just not for real? You
know, a spar."

"I don't fight girls." Ranma said.

"What?" Akane asked, blinking. In the background, Genma-P managed to get
within Ukyou-kun's range, and he gave the boy a stunning blow.

"What sort of an attitude is that?" Akane continued indignantly. "Ukyou's a
boy, and he doesn't mind sparring with me. What makes you so special?"

Ranma looked over at Ukyou-kun, who had recovered from the panda's blow and
was now throwing some mini-spatulas at his furry foe. "Well that's... him.
Look, the last time I fought a girl it gave me more grief than it was worth,
ok?"

"It's only a sparring match!" Akane protested. Then she sighed. "Fine. If you
don't want to spar, that's fine. You probably wouldn't have been worth the
effort anyway."

Ranma blinked. He blinked again. The he said "What did you say?"

Akane smiled. It looked like he was going to fall for one of the oldest
tricks in the book. "I mean, since you're afraid of a mere girl, you can't
be that good."

"Right, fine. If you want to spar, we'll spar." Ranma declared as he stalked
off to the dojo. "Come on, with those two out here, there's no room to
fight. We'll take it to the dojo. I guess with Pop occupied I needed someone
else to spar with anyway."

Akane hid her grin as she followed the boy to the dojo, skirting around the
other two cursed fighters. That had been almost too easy.

Back at the pond, Ukyou-kun finally managed to breach the panda's defences,
and he started pounding on the animal with cries of "Argh! Feel the pain I
felt!"

Genma-Panda finally managed to block the blows with a couple of his wooden
signs, upon one of which was written the words {What! What'd I ever do to
you!} and on the other, the words {Oh wait... You're not related to that fish
seller in Osaka?}

Ukyou-kun responded by throwing a couple of his spatula shuriken at the
panda, who blocked them with another sign, which read {You're not the son of
that pickle dealer in Kagoshima?}

The half-boy tried to sweep the panda's legs out with his combat spatula,
but Genma-P just leapt over the sweep, sailing over the combat chef. As the
panda flew past the boy, he bapped him with a sign that said {Uh... are you
the brother of that ramen store owner in Matsue?}

A swing of the combat spatula, which narrowly missed the dodging panda.
Another swing, and it also missed. {I swear I was going to pay for that meal
in Sapporo, there's no need to get angry.}

Three swings, all missing, followed by the thud of two thrown mini spatulas
hitting the earth where Genma-P had so recently stood. {Look, this is
obviously all my son's fault. Go blame him.}

[Argh! Where is he getting these signs!?] Ukyou-kun thought as he continued
to attack. [And how can the old bastard write so much on them in the middle
of a battle?]

{If you're from that store in Kanazawa, I tell you the cheque is in the
mail.}

"Ahhhhh! Stop it with those signs already!" Swing, miss, swing, miss.

{Surely not that sushi bar in Kochi?}

"Arrrggghhhhh!!!!" Swing, swing, swing...

*********************

Akane eyed Ranma speculatively as she adopted an opening fighting stance. She
stood there, her bare feet set on the hard wooden floor of the dojo, ready
for anything from her opponent. She was in position to start, but she didn't
attack since Ranma was facing her in a pose that was the very image of
nonchalance. It certainly wasn't a fighting stance from any school she'd
seen. After a few seconds of putting up with his totally non-combative
stance, Akane said "What? What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Ranma answered in a tone that could be interpreted as bored. "Just
waiting for you to attack."

[Why that arrogant... fine. I'll show him not to underestimate me.] With a
focussing cry, Akane launched herself forward, putting all her speed into a
set of fast jabbing strikes.

None of them connected. Ranma was like a light ribbon caught in the strong
breeze of a summer's day. Just when Akane thought one of her strikes would
connect, he would ghost out the way, like the ribbon would capriciously
flutter just out of range of its owner's grasping hands. It was, to say the
least, frustrating for Akane. And so she changed her tactics, and tried a
leg sweep.

Ranma leapt over it, with such an air of almost indifferent ease that Akane
couldn't help but lose the calm she had so carefully fostered on her morning
run. She whirled out of her leg sweep and went straight into a high kick,
hoping to tag the boy while he was in mid-air. After all, when you were in
the air, you didn't have the easy dodging options that you had on the ground.

But apparently no-one had ever told Ranma this. He twisted his body like an
Olympic class high jumper, easily clearing Akane's outstretched foot. Then he
turned his body around in a flip, so that he landed on his feet, facing Akane
in the same 'no-stance' that he had started the match with.

Akane breathed hard as she considered her options. [He's so fast. I'm glad I
didn't fight him in my guy form, the loss in speed might have made this
embarrassing.] She clenched her fists as she prepared to attack again.
[There's got to be a way I can get him. Maybe a distraction...]

"You know," Akane said as she attacked, this time with a couple of body
strikes, "we haven't really talked yet, even though we're supposed to be
engaged."

"True." Ranma admitted as he waited until the last moment before he
side-stepped Akane's strikes. "I guess things were a little hectic yesterday.
So what do you want to talk about?"

"The engagement." Akane said bluntly, hoping that would put him offguard for
the crescent kick she followed the statement with.

Ranma dodged the attack without any problems as he said "Yeah. The
engagement. Man, I couldn't believe it. There we were yesterday, me and Pop.
We were just walking along, and out of the blue, he says 'Oh, by the way.
You know the Tendos, the people we are on our way to see? Well,
congratulations boy. You are going to marry one of them.' What sort of a way
is that to find out about an engagement?"

Ranma dodged a couple more of Akane's strikes as he continued to talk. His
eyes narrowed as he noticed that a couple of her blows were actually almost
hitting him. She was actually pretty good at the Arts, he decided, it was
just that she obviously needed to work a bit on her speed. "So, what about
the engagement?"

Akane stumbled, before she recovered and started up another series of
attacks. "What about it!? You've just been engaged to someone you've never
met and all you can say is what about it? Don't you care?" Her attacks were
taking a ferocious turn. "Don't you think _I_ care about being married off to
some stranger?"

Ranma started concentrating a bit more on his dodging. On the good side,
Akane's attacks were getting a little erratic. On the bad side, for some
reason her anger was making it harder for him to read her body movements,
which was how he had been dodging so easily before, he'd been reading the
minute signals her body was sending out about how she was going to attack.
Ranma didn't know how anger could possibly make someone hide their moves
better, usually it became easier to read an angry person's attacks. [Great,
must be some quirky training she's gone through.] he thought. [What is it
with my luck with girls lately? All of them seem to be out to kill me.
What'd I ever do to deserve this?]

"Ok, ok!" he said as he narrowly dodged one of Akane's wilder swings. "I'm...
uh... I'm sorry, I guess. Of course I care about being engaged. Who wouldn't
care? There I was yesterday, with a new problem heaped on top of my already
impressive pile. I was all ready to meet some bucktoothed uncute girl. Hell,
I figured that anyone who needed an arranged marriage wouldn't be too good."

Akane's eyes narrowed. [I can't believe he's calling me uncute! Oh, he'll pay
for that!] She poured her flagging strength into another set of attacks.

Ranma continued talking as he dodged, flipped and side-stepped. "So anyway,
imagine my surprise when I came to in your house to have my father lead me
out and point to you, saying that you were my fiancee. You know what my first
thought was? It was 'Why would she be going through with an arranged
marriage?'"

Akane stopped her attack as she blinked in surprise. [That's a compliment,
isn't it?] she thought to herself, trying to figure it out. [I think it is.]

[Of course, that was because I thought it looked like you and Ukyou had a
thing going, the way you two sat next to each other.] Ranma admitted to
himself. [Now that I know about Ukyou though, I can't believe I thought you
two were a couple.] He looked at the still frozen Akane, and took the time
to reach out and gently tap her forehead. "Gotcha." he said with a smirk.

Akane shook herself out of her thoughts. "Hey! That's not fair! You tricked
me!"

Ranma laughed as he scooted out of the dojo. "Hey, it wasn't me that let my
guard down!" he shouted over his back at the fuming girl. "Thanks for the
spar, it was getting fun near the end!"

Akane clenched her fists as she stared at the door that Ranma had so recently
exited through. "Oooohhhhh... that... that... if he thinks he's getting out
of this conversation that easily, he has another thing coming."

*********************

Akane adjusted the folds of her school dress as she thanked Kasumi for the
breakfast she had just finished. It felt a little strange to be in a
relatively dress, after having spent the last few months in pants and shirts,
often pretty tight pants and shirts thanks to the curse. Still, it gave a
comforting sense of familiarity to be in her school clothes again.

She looked at Ukyou, who was sitting to her left. The chef had bathed after
the fight with Mr Saotome, and had changed into his spare set of clothes,
the one with a purple shirt. Ukyou was glaring at Genma, who sat opposite
them. The older man seemed oblivious to the stare, he was obviously not at
all worried by Ukyou's annoyed gaze.

Akane glanced over at Ranma, who was sitting around the edge of the table,
next to Ukyou, just as the pigtailed boy quietly said something to Ukyou.
Akane blinked as Ukyou's irritated expression slowly dissolved as it was
replaced by a small smile. She couldn't believe it, Ukyou was getting on
with Ranma. What on Earth had they said to each other in the dojo last night?
She shook her head as Ukyou glanced back at Genma and regained that irritated
look. Well, whatever had happened, obviously Ukyou still had some problems
with Ranma's father.

The Tendo girl glanced over at her family. Her father was reading a paper,
Nabiki had, like everyone else, finished eating and she appeared to be ready
to leave for school. Kasumi was just being Kasumi. She was clearing the
dishes. For such a long time, it seemed like Kasumi would always be doing
something or another around the house. The family would be lost without her.
Which reminded Akane of something.

"Say, Kasumi, I meant to ask you last night..." Akane said, "...where did
you find that tent? I searched through all the closets and I couldn't see it
anywhere."

"Why, I found it in the storage room." Kasumi explained as she gathered some
of the used dishes.

"Storage room?" Akane asked as a sinking feeling descended upon her. "You
don't mean... the room where we keep a lot of our old stuff?"

"Yes." Kasumi replied happily.

"The one that used to be our second guest room?" Akane prompted.

"Yes." Kasumi replied happily.

"The one where we could have put Ukyou, if I'd remembered that we could use
it as a guest room?" Akane suggested.

"Yes." Kasumi replied happily.

If it had of been anyone else, Akane would have happily choked them. But this
was Kasumi, you just didn't, _couldn't_ do anything nasty to Kasumi. It was
one of those unwritten laws of the universe, like the one that said that
redheaded girls and mecha were a combination to be viewed from a safe
distance, such as another continent.

"I really don't know why your friend wanted to sleep outside, since we could
have put him in that room." Kasumi added, smiling. "But you two seemed so
set on your camping idea, it just would have seemed rude to point it out."

Soun looked up from his newspaper and blinked. "We have a second guest
room?" he asked.

"Well, what's done is done, right sis?" Nabiki said to Akane as she stood.
"Your boyfriend can sleep inside tonight."

"Boyfriend?" Soun asked, his eyes starting to dangerously mist over. He
looked like he was about to cry. "What's this about a boyfriend!? How can you
have a boyfriend when you're already engaged!?"

"Hey!" Akane shouted as her cheeks reddened. "He's not my... he's not...
You've got it all wrong! You take that back Nabiki!"

"Boyfriend?" Ukyou asked, annoyed that Nabiki thought of her like that. It
didn't help that Ranma looked like he was barely holding back from laughing.

"Well, whatever." Nabiki said as she gave a slight smile. After three months
of romping around China with some cute guy, Akane was probably in need of a
few jabs to the ego, Nabiki figured. And she was always happy to provide
this particular service for free. "Anyway, I'm off to school."

"School..." Ukyou said as she glanced over at Akane, noticing the school
dress. "I've been away from school for too long myself. I'd better see if I
can transfer over to the school you guys go to."

"What, just like that?" Nabiki asked.

Ukyou shrugged. "Well, maybe not just like that." she admitted. "But at least
I can start the paperwork now, get it done as quickly as possible."

"I'll tell you what." Nabiki said. "Come with me, and I should be able to
speed things up." [Heh, if anyone knows how to manipulate the school
administration to get it working their way, it's me.] "I'll be glad to
help..."

The other Tendos paused in what they were doing as they looked at Nabiki.
They seemed to be waiting expectantly for something.

"For a small fee." Nabiki finished. The other Tendos went back to what they
were doing, safe again in the knowledge that all was normal in the universe.
Relatively speaking anyway. For Akane, that meant that she went back to
glaring at Nabiki. She couldn't believe her sister was embarrassing her in
front of Ukyou and the Saotomes like this.

"But I guess it couldn't hurt to waive the fee. Just this once." Nabiki said
after she'd put up with Akane's glare for a few seconds. She wasn't at all
scared of her little sister, but part of being a family was knowing when to
back down on something so as to keep the family peace. "But you'll have to
come with me and I'm leaving right now."

Ukyou shrugged as she looked down at her okonomiyaki chef's clothes. It was
the best repaired set she had right now, travelling over in China for three
months with minimal changes of clothes, not to mention a curse that didn't
do any good for the seams meant that right now her best clothes still looked
a little tattered. She certainly didn't have her old school clothes on her,
she'd have to go shopping. But for now, these clothes would have to do.

"I guess I'm ready to go." Ukyou decided as she stood.

[Ah, school.] Ranma thought as he looked over at Nabiki and Ukyou getting
ready to leave. [That's one of the good things all those road trips we went
on gave me. A chance to get out of all that unnecessary learning and stuff.]

"You should probably be getting ready as well." Genma noted to his son as
Nabiki walked off to get her bag.

"Ready for what?" Ranma asked back.

"Why, school of course. Didn't I tell you? I enrolled you at one of the local
schools, Furinkan I believe it was called, since we'll be here for a while."

Ranma sighed. So much for his hopes of having an easy, quiet day. Just once,
it would have been nice to spend the day in a real house, with plentiful
food and no worries about having to run for your life because of something
your father had done. [Or because of some crazy Chinese chick.] he added to
himself. And the first time in years that it looked like he was going to
have a good day, his father pulled this 'school' thing on him. It was just
typical.

Akane narrowed her eyes as she looked between Ranma and Nabiki, who had just
walked back in and was looking impatiently at Ukyou. Walking to school with
Ranma would be the perfect way to talk to him about this engagement. Neither
of their parents would be with them, and Nabiki would already be at school,
so there would be no more of her interfering jibes. "I guess I'll meet you
there." she said to her sister. "I'll go with Ranma. To... um... show him
the way. Yes, that's it."

"My, you have learned to be forward since you were gone." Nabiki smirked.
"My little sister's building herself an harem."

"Nabiki!"

*********************

(Continued in Part 2)

************  
Mark Doherty  -  mdoherty@mailbox.uq.edu.au
My fanfics are at http://www.uq.edu.au/~zzhdoher

"Kawaii must die."