Subject: Zen Revenge - Sono Two
From: databank@mindspring.com (Zen)
Date: 10/24/1997, 1:35 AM
To: fanfic@fanfic.com

A repost of Last Year's sillyness... part two.

-Revenge and Common Zens-

Zen sat in his dorm room on Academy and sulked.  There was a lot of
material that he should have been studying for the exams the next day, but
somehow, he just didn't feel like it.  Come to that, he didn't feel much
like a "he" either.  But there was a *reason* for that...

Zen growled deep in her throat.  "Well, you always said that you wanted to
lose a few pounds..." she snarled to herself.  "Now you've bloody well gone
and done it."  She looked down at herself.  This body couldn't weigh as
much as half of what her male form did.  "Hmph.  Wonder what Richard
Simmons would have to say about *this*."

Three weeks had passed since that fateful day when Kei and Yuri had blown
the office door off its hinges...  three weeks since his [sic] life had
been changed forever.  Three weeks of agony.

Training to be a Trouble Consultant with the 3WA was hard work!  Zen
imagined that it was a lot like the Navy might have been if she had
joined... Lots to do, and little time to do it before rushing on to the
next thing.  Zen doubted, however, that even the Navy had such a plethora
of neat toys to play with.  It was never boring.  Well, *almost* never.

Sighing, Zen warmed up her datanet terminal, and logged into the net.  That
was one nice thing about this mess... the bandwidth on the net connections
was the stuff that wet dreams were made of.  More out of curiosity than
anything else, Zen tried to tap into her old accounts with her Terran ISP.
Maybe she could get some news of the others...

After about a half an hour, Zen managed to get a link established to the
Terran Net.  The system balked at being asked to interface with such a low
order network, but Zen *wanted* her mail.  Finally, the screen cleared, and
she was in.

Three weeks of messages stared back at her.  Gazing numbly at the screen,
Zen was just glad that the SPAM levels on the list were at low ebb.  Even
with the bandwidth at her disposal, her ISP could not do better than a T-1,
and there was a LOT of material.

Scrolling through the newer messages first, she noticed that things were
quiet - perhaps too quiet.  A large number of people were gone - Zen
wondered what had happened to them.  Were they just lying low?  Were they
off the net?  Were they even still alive?  Zen shivered, and it was not
because of the outfit.

What had happened to her friends?  Hastily, she scrolled back to the
beginning of the queue... and what she read was horrifying.  Poor
Richard-san.  Zen had always tried to tell him that Politically Correct was
a double edged sword... but this... Zen shook her head.  At least Richard
was a sensitive sort... even if he did have the wrong Kasumi, he should be
able to hold out for weeks.  Months, even.

Sandborn - Uncle Fester - had slipped noisily over the deep end.  Still, he
seemed safe enough, if a little paranoid.  Zen decided against making any
attempts at contact at this point - Sandborn-san had his hands full of
Foxes, and the way Zen was feeling, she doubted the supply of Foster's
would have lasted the night.  Silently, Zen wished her fellow author luck.
As long as there was beer and ammunition though, she felt certain that the
wily old SOB would survive.

Zen read on, appalled as the madness spread.  Author after author had
fallen to the revenging horde.  Team Ranma seemed to be behind most of it,
though the Knight Sabers were plenty active too.  The carnage had been
unbelievable.  For the first time, Zen was grateful to the Lovely Angels.
After seeing what could have befallen her if Team Ranma hadn't been so
busy; her present predicament was almost a reward by comparison.  Thank the
Kami she had never written a Bubblegum fic!

There was, further on, a hell of a lot of encoded message traffic... Zen
considered trying to decrypt some of it, but decided against it.  The
origin codes on the message files made it likely that some of the authors
were behind it - and Zen was not about to do anything that might jeopardize
their security.  Whatever they were up to, Zen wished them luck.

Deeply disturbed, Zen shut down the terminal, and got ready for bed.  Her
dreams were not happy ones.

***** #### *****

The next morning came, as all mornings had for the past three weeks, early.
Very early.

Zen growled and rolled over as the alarm tried to wake her.  Burying her
head under her pillow, she fought to ignore its strident tone.  It was
actually starting to work, when her bed tilted up, and dumped her
unceremoniously on the floor.  She sat up and rubbed the back of her head,
glaring at the platform as it retracted once more.  "All right already!
Zen is UP now!"  Zen decided that she *hated* modern alarm clocks.

The clock display read oh-four thirty.  Zen stood, stretched, and headed to
the bathroom to shower and change.  Boy, had *that* expression taken on a
new meaning!  Still, after last night, Zen was beginning to feel that she
was a LOT better off than some of her compatriots.  She shuddered again at
the memory of what had befallen poor Richard-san.  Zen didn't think that
she'd ever be able to eat a cookie again.

Zen stepped into the shower and cranked up the hot water.  At least she
could be normal for a few minutes.  As the hot water cascaded over her, she
felt a now familiar tingle - but it was the wrong one.  All she - Gods, she
was still a "she" - could feel was the sonics.  Frantically, she stabbed at
the temperature controls, boosting it as far as it would go.  The scale
topped out at sixty centigrade.  Still, Zen was not... himself.

"Bugger!"  Overriding the safety on the hot water, she managed to get the
temperature up to sixty five, but still no joy.  She thought it might work
for a second, but the sensation was just past her reach.  This was NOT
good.  Zen was going to have to talk to someone about this - as soon as she
had some free time.

Toweling herself off, she dressed and headed to the mess hall for
breakfast.  At least the food was edible - even good, really.  Zen had been
afraid that Akane or Shiiko would have been doing the cooking, but her
punishers did not seem to be quite that sadistic.  At least they hadn't
before this morning.

Zen just made it to calisthenics by oh five thirty.  Zen really hated this
part of the day - at least it didn't last too long.  By oh six hundred, she
was at the practice range for weapons training.

The weapons range wasn't so bad. Truth be told, it was kind of fun.
Blasters, sabers, energy weapons, projectile weapons, missiles, hell, even
sticks and stones were covered.  This morning, there were plasma grenades
to play with.  Zen admired the design - light, powerful, and you could set
one as a shaped charge, if you had access to a computer, or a prog-unit.
Zen wished she'd had a few of these the night that she'd been drafted.  At
the end of the hour, Zen could have programmed one of the little grenades
in her sleep.  And rumour had it, that some time the next week, would be
their first chance to play with the infamous "Bloody Card."

Half an hour later, at oh nine thirty, Zen started her martial arts class
for the day.  For an hour and a half, she got the stuffing pounded out of
her with more styles of martial arts than she had known existed.  One thing
was certain - Ranma would have fit right in.  While the instructors may
have specialized in one or two specific styles, all of them were well
trained in a wide variety of combat styles - both armed, and unarmed.  The
Musubetsu Kakuto Ryuu was alive and well in the United Galactica.

After martial arts class, Zen had half an hour to hobble painfully to the
buildings that housed the 3WA's most advanced educational tools - the
massive simulator tanks.  By the time that she got there, her bruises and
contusions, which had been numerous, were all but healed.  Zen still hadn't
gotten used to the sensation - or used to watching as a bruise or cut
healed before her very eyes.  Nanotech really was incredible.

For a moment, Zen began to wonder.  There was something... creepy...
something unnatural about it all too.  It reminded Zen of far too many
horror stories that she had read - where the protagonist is tortured, but
confident that it will be over when they are dead - only to find that they
will not be allowed to die.  Zen shuddered and pushed that idea out of her
head.  There were very practical reasons to use this sort of technology
with Trouble Consultants.  There was little to be gained in paranoia over
something about which she could now do nothing.

When oh nine thirty came around, Zen was seated at a desk in the lecture
hall, waiting for the briefing on the days simulation.

The simulators were incredible machines - the ultimate in virtual reality.
Any environment could be created in one of the tanks - from the depths of
the most hostile seas to the vast emptiness of the voids between stars.
Gravity... atmosphere... every aspect of the environment could be bent and
shaped by the designer of the test.

Objects could be created and moved, with a combination of hologram and
synthesizer based technologies - the objects were as real as any outside
the tank.  Anything, from a small pebble to the largest space vessel could
be faithfully constructed in an instant from patterns stored within the
3WA's sophisticated central computer system.

Simulator programs were designed as mock field exercises and tried to cover
all the bases, from the basics to really advanced and more improbable
scenarios.  Flight simulators, combat on tactical and strategic levels,
training on new equipment and hardware, using or disarming bombs; just
about any scenario that one could imagine could be simulated in the tank.
It was the ultimate in safe and effective hands-on training.

Today's sim was going to take the whole period.  Zen was issued an EVA suit
and told that she was to board a drifting spacecraft - the goal was to
prevent the ship's reactors from going critical - to keep the "passengers"
on the vessel alive, and to determine whether the reactor failure had been
accidental, or deliberate.  She had to be able to prove her assertions.

Zen managed to pass the test - though it was a damned hard one.  The
malfunction in Zen's sim turned out to be an accident - object of the
lesson - be prepared for malicious intent, but not all disasters are
planned, or sinister.  By the time lunch rolled around, she was exhausted.

The commissary was a blur to Zen as she rushed in, grabbed a quick bite,
and headed out again.  She just had time to choke down her food and arrange
to see one of the academy physicians before she had to be in class again.

The next five and a half hours were grueling - even more than the morning's
physical activities, the classes took their toll.  Zen had thought that her
college career had been frenetic - the sixty hour course loads that she had
wheedled out of the university computers back on Terra for a couple of
quarters were walks in the park by comparison.  When she had been at Uni on
Earth, Zen had never been able to really decide what to major in - and had
finally settled on Industrial Design.  Here, that decision didn't have to
be made - they were going to see to it that she majored in *everything*.

Astronomy and celestial navigation - physics, chemistry, electronics,
engineering, computers, mathematics, sociology, economics, history, law,
criminology, agronomy, medicine, life sciences - all of it was stuffed into
her on a daily basis until she was sure that her head would explode.  She
was mildly amused to note that 'Sun Tzu was still required reading at
Academy...' - for her strategy and tactics courses.  Zen could only thank
the Kami for RNA assisted learning.  Without it, she'd have been lost.

Even with the massive doses of RNA complexes that she was given, it was a
struggle.  RNA learning made it possible, but it certainly did nothing to
take the work out of it.  As the RNA based memories wove their way into her
consciousness, they opened up whole new worlds of knowledge - but it was
all theoretical.

All of a sudden, she *knew* things - how to do things that she had never
seen before - that she had often never even *heard* of before.  It was a
rush like she had never known.  The trouble was that while her mind
remembered the things as if she had known them forever, her body did not.

Even the language courses that she was given required some basic practical
application before they were useful.  Zen could now imagine what it must be
like to be deaf - learning a language that you would never hear - never
speak - and then waking up one morning to birds chirping.  It was a lot
like that - she had to learn sounds and moves and techniques that she
remembered as being instinctive, but that she had never before experienced.

A task or technique that she felt she should be able to do without even
thinking about it required intense concentration the first few times it was
tried.  It took the body some time to catch up with what the mind had
learnt in its sleep.

It was a very peculiar feeling - exciting and intimidating at the same
time.  It was also very draining.  Classes left her spent, but too keyed up
to rest easily.  As thrilled as she was to be learning so much, she was
always glad when the bells rang at seventeen thirty and she was free for
the day.

At eighteen hundred on the dot, Zen was back in the commissary, grabbing
dinner.  Some days, there were things going on after dinner - surprise
drills or exercises, tests, examinations, medical stuff and the like, but
for the most part Zen's after dinner time was her own.  This evening in
particular, though, she had matters to attend to.

Her body's refusal to assume its proper shape in the shower had alarmed
her.  In retrospect, it was a problem that she should have seen coming.
When she was first cursed, it had taken water just a bit over body
temperature - say about forty degrees centigrade - to trigger the shift
back to normal.  But after her arrival on Academy, that had changed.

It was taking progressively hotter and hotter water to make the change -
with every passing day.  Since Zen had always liked hot showers, it had
never been that obvious until the critical temperature had risen above the
safe limits set for her shower unit.

If this trend were to continue, then it might reach the point that she
would *never* be able to switch back.  That could be just the least little
bit awkward.  It would sure make it hell trying to renew the ol' driver's
license!

***** #### *****

Zen got to the medical building, and was told to hurry up and wait.  For
once, though, she did not have to wait long.  Because of the curse, Zen was
a favourite research subject in Medical.  Everyone in the department
scoffed at the idea of magic, but no one was able to explain the mechanics
of the curse, or even come up with a viable theory.

In short, no one understood it.  To Zen's mind, that made it magic, but she
appeared to be the only one on Academy that had read Clarke.

After another battery of tests, Zen was finally led into a room with a
shower head - she stripped, and stood under the water stream while the
temperature was elevated progressively.  When the indicator hit seventy one
centigrade, Zen felt the familiar shift wash through her, and she was a he
again.

Hastily, he turned off the water, and reached for a towel.  He caught his
breath as the towel rubbed across skin made sensitive by near scalding.
Red as a lobster, but considerably relieved, he headed back into the
changing room to dress.

After another battery of tests on his male form, Zen was asked to wait.  He
grumbled a bit, but there really wasn't any choice.  He found an empty
workstation and signed into the network to check his terrestrial mail
again.  Might as well make *some* use of the time.

Checking all the later messages, Zen was again struck by the relative
quiet.  Fics were starting to appear again - though their number was down.
Most of them fell into two categories - happy or bittersweet pieces that
would be little cause for retribution, and those that tended to the other
extreme - overly violent or grotesque pieces that were sure to create
another wave of terror once they came to the attention of the animates...

Scanning through the list, Zen caught a file header that made him smile.
So.  Richard-san *had* survived.  So far, anyway.  This time he had posted
a Nuku Nuku fic - and there was another...  Zen read them quickly.  Both
fit into the first category - warm fuzzies that could offer no one any
cause to take offence - even though Richard-san had billed the second one
as an angst fic.  That one might have miffed Kyusaku a bit - but Zen really
didn't see him as the vindictive type.

Zen started to feel a lot better about the possibilities of his friend's
chances for survival - until he saw the Ranma fic.  <Oh dear> thought Zen
to himself.  <And he was doing so well, too.>  The story was a good one -
possibly the best Ranma fic Zen had seen him write - but if Ranma had taken
offence at "Appearances", he was going to go apeshit when he saw this one.

Zen shook his head in despair.  Ranma stuck as a girl - forever.  Akane
abandoning him to pursue a life with another boyfriend - identity unknown.
No traces of Ukyou or Shampoo at all - and in the end... in the end, Ranma
had kissed a guy.  Willingly, if not eagerly.  The story was beautiful in
its poignancy - but it was, Zen feared, also tantamount to Richard-san's
death warrant.

Zen hoped that Richard-san would survive through AWA...  He had gone to
considerable effort to get leave on Terra so that he could attend.  It
would be a pity if, after all that had happened, Zen were unable to meet
him face to face.

At least Bridget Engman was safe - her last stories had been beautiful
pieces - heartwarming and kind.  Zen was glad for her.  Heck, Team Ranma
might even decide to do something *nice* for her - they were trying with
Scott Jamison, in their own... unique ways.

Fester, on the other hand - was getting cocky.  Zen shook his head again,
this time in amused admiration.  Sandborn-san had written a Halloween fic
that was guaranteed to piss off the entire cast.  Zen had to give the man
credit - he had guts.  Zen just hoped he wouldn't come to see them on the
blade of a chainsaw.

After a moment of thought, Zen keyed in a special command code sequence.
Back in his office on Terra, his own computer system responded to the ping
with an ident query.  A number of pass phrases were exchanged, and Zen had
access to his own material still stored on optical disk.

Appropriating a blank isolinear chip from the desk drawer where he was
working, Zen dumped his own machine's core memory to the local workstation.
After storing it on the chip, he instructed his own machine to go back to
standby - and in secure mode.

After scanning through the material he'd downlinked, he finally found what
he was looking for.  Zen scanned through his Ukyou fic.  The first episode
was all but finished.  He made some changes that had been recommended by
his pre-readers, and reached a decision.

Re-opening his link, Zen posted the story to the ML.  Zen suspected that
the quiet on the list was the calm before a storm... the war was not over
yet.  But Zen was serving sentence already.  He had been tried, convicted
and sentenced on the basis of fics that were as yet incomplete - this had
been one of them.  If he was to do the time, then he was bloody well going
to do the crime.

Zen imagined that there might be some anger when his story came to the
attention of Team Ranma - though he suspected that he would have at least
one ally, even there.  No matter.  They could not punish him twice for the
same offence and maintain their honour.  For the next few stories anyway,
Zen was safe.  After that?  Who knew?

Zen could not see himself taking revenge - he was still alive, and his
sentence was hard - but he was adaptable.  Besides that, to seek revenge,
Zen would have to go up against the Dir... the Lovely Angels.  A quick
check of the records confirmed it - no one had EVER taken on Kei and Yuri
and survived.  Never.  Zen didn't much care for those odds.

The worst the rest of the lot from the FFML had to face was Team Ranma, and
maybe the Knight Sabers or the Sailor Senshi.  Rumour had it that the Magic
Knights of Cephiro were after one writer... but they were ALL harmless in
comparison.  Zen shook his head.  Maybe he hadn't gotten off so lightly
after all.

It didn't really matter - even if he had been inclined to fight, Zen was an
old fashioned sort - and would not fight girls.  Whatever else one might
say about the Lovely Angels, they were *definitely* girls.  Just not always
ladies.

In fact, Kei and Yuri were tolerable company, as long as they were sober...
It had gotten embarrassing one night at a party when Kei had gotten a bug
up her butt and tried to fix Zen up with some guy.  It had been a rough
night, and Zen had been forced to use some of the martial arts that she had
been learning, but in the end, there had been no hard feelings.

Zen's musings were interrupted as he was approached by a man wearing a lab
coat and a pair of old fashioned spectacles.  His hair was mussed, and he
looked like he hadn't had much sleep in recent weeks, but there was a fire
in his eyes that made Zen wonder.  Was it the spark of enthusiasm, or rabid
fanaticism?  Zen shrugged inwardly.  Did it matter?  The two weren't so far
apart - nor was there really any conflict between the two.

Zen turned his attention to the man, and waited.  The man took off his
glasses, polished the lenses for a moment, as if trying to choose his words
with care.  After a moment, Zen began to get impatient.  Perhaps sensing
this, the man cleared his throat.

"Well?" asked Zen.

"Ah," said the man.  "There is good news, and there is bad news..."

Zen rolled his eyes in exasperation.  "Great.  A joker.  Just what do you
mean by that, ne?"

"Well, the part of it is that we think we know why you are having this
little... ah... difficulty."

"You mean aside from a bucket of magic water?" asked Zen sarcastically.

"Ahm... well..."  Zen's fists started to clench, and the man blanched.
"Youseeit'sthenanotech..." he said.

Zen twitched and pulled a fist back ever so slightly.  The man gulped
nervously and tried to calm his trembling.  "The nanotech.  It's... for
some reason it seems to be interfering with the 'curse' as you call it."

Zen nodded for the man to continue.  "The nanites that we inject into a TC
candidate, to accelerate healing and to make you more resistant to injury,
are increasing the critical temperature, above or below which your shift
takes place.  We think that the curve will flatten out, and the threshold
will stabilize soon."

Zen nodded again.  It could be worse.  "So.  What is the good news?"

The man twitched.  "That, ah... *was* the good news.  The bad news is that
the stable temperature will be somewhere between ninety and one hundred
twenty degrees centigrade."

For an instant, rage flared in Zen.  It must have shown for the man took an
instinctive step back.  But as quickly as it had come, it passed.  Zen let
his shoulders sag, as the implications of the man's proclamation sank in.

He was doomed.  In a few weeks, water would have to be boiling to change
him back.  After that, it might even take steam.  The change would still be
possible, but it would be very painful.  There would be no more casual
shifts.  And in male form, Zen was going to have to be *very* careful about
water.

Zen thanked the man, who seemed relieved that Zen was showing no
inclination to punish the bearer of bad news.  Zen smiled sadly to himself
as he watched the man go.  <Better start getting used to life as a girl,>
he thought to himself.  He turned as the terminal beeped for attention.

The Ukyou fic had been successfully posted to the net.  Zen smiled to
himself again, logged out and shut down the workstation.  Pocketing the
chip, he ambled back towards his dormitory room.

Halfway there, he paused.  Changing direction, he headed for a nearby bar -
the Draco Tavern would be a good place to unwind for a bit.  Not as much
fun as the White Hart, or Callahan's, but it was the best that Academy had
to offer.  If his days as a guy were going to be numbered, he was going to
enjoy them.  Besides, there was always the chance of a cure.

Revenge was a funny thing, Zen decided.  Sometimes it worked out for the
revenger, and sometimes for the revengee.  Zen was not sure yet which
category he fell into - only time would tell that.  But there was still
hope.  Feeling a little better as his natural optimism reasserted itself,
Zen strode into the bar.

The bartender smiled at Zen as he took a stool toward one end of the long
counter.  "What'll it be tonight, Zen?" he asked.

"Scotch and wa...  no... on second thought, just a Scotch, please."

Owari-?


Zen no Ita-sha