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

    Buildings rushed past him, as he roof-hopped towards his soul mate, his tuxedo flapping in the wind-- his Tuxedo?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    -------------------------------------------------
    Ecchi Party -- Chapter One: Ranma's First Time

    A Ranma 1/2 Comic Party Fusion

    A Brother's^H Production

    Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 is the property of Takahashi Rumiko and Viz Video. Comic Party is the property of Aquaplus/KSS, those lovely people who create ecchi date sims for every occasion. Er... or so we hear.
    -------------------------------------------------

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ***

    Ranma stared about himself, bewildered. "What the hell is this?" he demanded.

    Akane nodded, eyes wide and focused on the 'this' in question. Massive throngs of people milled about, many of them chattering excitedly with one another. Large signs proclaiming, 'Bravo!' adorned every surface inside the building, bold colors and strong lines in oddly suggestive patterns behind the words themselves. The whole thing gave her serious misgivings.

    A man wrapped in a mass of bundled rubber hoses pushed his way through the crowd, loudly asking, "Where do the Urutsokodoji cosplayers go?" He bumped into Akane, then muttered an apology and ran past, disappearing into another cluster of people.

    The man who had introduced himself as Happosai chuckled. "A whirlwind of excitement, danger, desire, and FUN, My Students!" Leering, and leaning closer to Ranma, Happosai chuckled, "And the best thing of all, of course, PERVERSION, My Heir!"

    "Ugh, perversion," Akane muttered disgustedly, turning around. "I'm going home." Taking several steps, she shrieked in female indignation as she felt someone flip her skirt and goose her behind in the process. "Why you..." Akane growled, noticing that the perpetrator was Happosai. "Die!" she screamed, accenting it with a throw of her book bag.

    Happosai easily avoided being hit by the makeshift projectile, and smirked at her, ignoring the cries of agony behind him, where the bag had hit some unfortunate bystander. "The Ecchi in you is wild and savage, yet you deny it," he proclaimed sagely. "Until you become one with your inner pervert, your hormones won't know peace."

    Shaking with rage and embarrassment, Akane lunged at the old martial artist. Happosai sidestepped her swipes, goosing the girl several more times, before bounding over to a group of Spunky Knight cosplayers. Determined to get her revenge, Akane followed him, leaving Ranma standing alone in the center of a small crowd of onlookers that had gathered around them in the meanwhile.

    Ranma hung his head from embarrassment, wishing for the first time in his life that he hadn't skipped school. Going over to pick up Akane's school bag lest it be stolen, he stopped in his tracks upon seeing it entangled in the broken remains of a slimy and very realistic-looking tentacle.

    Not bothering to suppress his shudder, Ranma high-tailed out of there, sacrificing Akane's bag for the greater good. Besides, he doubted that she would want it back with all the slime on it...

    ***

    Hearing a low rumble from behind him, Ranma stepped out of the way of whatever was coming at him. Once he felt safe, the raven-haired boy turned around to see a cart full with what seemed to be manga speeding through the busy halls of the con. Squinting his eyes, he made out a young girl being dragged behind the cart almost parallel to the ground, barely able to hold on to it with her small arms.

    "Make way! Hot dojin coming through!" the girl yelled, though the people in her path moved out of the way even before her warning reached them, unwilling to become road kill.

    Curious to find such a young girl at a convention that by all rights should have been limited to fourteen-year-olds and higher, Ranma started jogging backwards alongside the cart. Giving the girl a friendly wave to catch her attention, he cut right to the chase. Indicating the dojinshi she was transporting, he asked, "Aren't you too young for this stuff?"

    She blinked, apparently confused at the question. "Well, no... I turned fourteen last month."

    "Oh." It was Ranma's turn to blink. "I could've sworn you were eleven or something," he mumbled.

    "You're mean." The girl pouted, making him wince.

    "Umm... that is..." Ranma fumbled with words, idly twirling his thumbs, before letting out a deep breath with defeat. "Aren't girls supposed to like it when you say they're younger than they are?" he asked desperately, hoping it would be enough to get him through this sudden crisis.

    It worked, and the girl's facial expression brightened. "You're right." Smiling at him, she nodded as best as she could from her position. Steering the cart right, she added, "I'm Kurumi."

    "Ranma," he replied, returning her smile. "Nice to meet you." The next few moments were spent in relative silence, as he jogged beside her cart.

    "I think what bothered me most was the way you called my precious darlings," Kurumi said suddenly.

    Ranma looked at her strangely. "Your what?"

    "The dojinshi!" Kurumi exclaimed, pointing at the manga on her cart with her left hand and almost losing control.

    The cart swerved several times, but she managed to put it on the right track again, showing expertise and skill Ranma didn't expect from someone so young. He couldn't help asking about that, getting a laugh in return.

    "The Ecchi guides me through," Kurumi explained, once she got her giggling under control. "My precious darlings give me strength in my times of need. I let their essence enter me... possess me... make me whole." Blushing and sticking her tongue out at Ranma, she added, "At least that's what my big sister explained to me when I asked her. She knows how everything works, because she's really smart and old - but don't tell her I said that - and she even saw the Clair Dojin--"

    "Wait a sec," Ranma stopped Kurumi in bewilderment. "What are you talking about? Ecchi possessing you... some Clyde Dojin..."

    "Clair Dojin," Kurumi corrected him, talking at a normal pace again. "The Ecchi is everywhere and in everything. The Ecchi is the mother of all that exists." Noticing how Ranma's right eyebrow began twitching slightly, Kurumi stopped finding more analogies, and merely said, "You must read the Clair Dojin to understand. Though the original edition is very rare, so you're better off finding an of the reprinted manuscripts. They don't hold a candle to the original, but perverts can't be choosers."

    "Hey, I ain't no pervert!" Ranma protested, poking at his chest with his left thumb for emphasis.

    Kurumi gave him a careful once-over that made the pigtailed boy feel strangely dirty. "Does not understand this one," she mumbled quietly to herself. "Yet time he has not." Turning towards Ranma, she called out to him as the cart started picking up speed, "Denial leads to delusion. Delusion leads to favoritism. Favoritism leads to bashing. Bashing leads to the Dark Side."

    Despite Ranma's best efforts to keep up with the cart, it began to steadily outrun him. The boy cursed, realizing too late that he could have asked the girl to help him find the exit. Now, he was completely and utterly lost, having run through what seemed to be most of the convention's territory.

    "Beware the Dark Side of Ecchi," Ranma heard Kurumi call out over her shoulder as he stopped, breathing heavily and letting his hands rest on his bent knees to conserve his strength.

    ***

    "Exit," he grumbled, looking around and trying to find a clear path of travel through the hordes of otaku that filled the massive hall.

    He finally found a door, and was about to use it, when he caught himself, frowning at the sign. 'Emergency only', it proclaimed in glaring kanji.

    "Damn," he muttered, turning. He wheeled in time to see a matronly woman with reddish hair nod at him in approval before melting into the crowd, a rushing tingle racing up his spine.

    "Can you feel it, boy?" a voice echoed in his head.

    He whipped his head about frantically, looking around him, but couldn't see anyone addressing him. "Happosai?" he ventured.

    "It's the Ecchi. It surrounds us and binds us."

    Ranma frowned, looking down sharply, but the old man was nowhere around on the floor, either.

    "It has a Light Side and a Dark, and it--"

    Finally guessing where the old man was, Ranma threw a punch directly over the top of his own head. "Enough with the sides already! Everyone and their uncle talk about them!"

    The old man lodged there lightly leapt upward, bouncing off the extended fist. "That's because the Ecchi is strong within you," he cackled proudly, "My Heir!"

    "Old man, what's the idea here?" Ranma grumbled.

    "You're getting there, boy. Your inner Ecchi is a large yet untapped source. A veritable raging storm of hormones lies within you. When that potential is realized..." the man trailed off, cackling again, and leapt nimbly into the crowd. "Follow!" he exalted. "Learn!"

    Growling, Ranma charged after the old man, dismissing the tingling on his spine. "You asked for it, old creep," he muttered, as the man seemed to pass effortlessly through the masses of people. Frantically trying to check his speed when he realized that he couldn't do the same, Ranma backpedaled, but too slowly, and ended up plowing through a crowd lined up before a table, breaking between two particularly scary examples of the con's attendees.

    The first was a tall, lanky man in an ill-fitting multi-colored beret. The second was a much rounder man in a trench coat, glancing around furtively. "Eh," the first one said, adjusting his beret, "when ya gonna sell us your stuff? We don' got all that much time, mon..."

    "Ya," said the second, both of them addressing someone Ranma couldn't see yet. "We want der C-ko dojinshi, ya."

    "Ahem!" cried out an irate voice. "I don't traffic such filth!"

    The two men leaned forward ominously, the first muttering, "Brudda Cor, dis woman don wanna give us da ecchi!"

    "Meine freund Dur! What shall we do?"

    Ranma muscled his way past them, shaking his head.

    "Most not ayrie, mon."

    "Feh," the third voice continued, the speaker just coming into Ranma's point of view. "Dojinshi is like okonomiyaki -- it's got a proud tradition, and I'm not going to let your eagerness corrupt our enduring ethics!" Ranma blinked at the girl as he saw her. Long, brown hair in a pair of ponytails down her back, standing next to the banner that loudly proclaimed, "Kuonji!" in bold letters.

    Her eyes lit up when she glanced at him, and she lunged across the table, pulling him over it and towards her. "Our brother here is a dangerous man," she warned, tapping the table with a large steel spatula for emphasis. "Feared the world over for..."

    Apparently, 'Dur and Cor' were frightened, because by the time Ranma pried himself free of the girl's grip, they had vanished into the crowd. The mass of people quickly dissipated, as the red-haired woman strode past, glaring at the departing mass. Her visual sweep seemed to miss Ranma and the girl, as she moved on and the eerie tingle in his spine faded, only to resume a moment later.

    The girl latched on to him excitedly, pressing herself against him. "I knew it!" she proclaimed. "I knew you'd come back for me!"

    "Huh?" Ranma articulated.

    "You showed up just at the right time, too! My hero!" With that, Ranma toppled, borne to the ground by the exuberant girl. "Ranma!"

    He blinked, weathering the embrace from the floor, until the girl released him. "Okay," he said. "Who are you?"

    The girl blinked at him. "Kuonji Ukyou? Your fiancee?"

    "Fiancee?" Ranma asked, confused.

    "You _are_ Ranma, right?"

    "Yes?" Ranma said cautiously.

    "I'm so happy!" she gushed, pressing a manga into his hands and blushing darkly. "Now read this! Read this!"

    Ranma looked at the papers in his hand, reading the cover aloud. "'The adventures of Ranchan and Ucchan'? What's this?"

    "Our dojinshi!" Ukyou responded, blushing even more deeply.

    "What the heck's a dojinshi?" Ranma mumbled, eyeing the cover of the book in his hands. An oddly well drawn rendering of himself stood on the cover, in a grossly exaggerated bishonen pose, the same girl he was talking to draped over his picture-self's arm. "Kinda cool," he admitted, flipping it open. "It's just like me, I guess." Though he didn't bother mentioning that she had misspelled 'Martial Arts' as 'Marital Arts' on the cover...

    The first pages were kind of lacking, reminding him of Akane's manga, which bored him to death. Caravan Kidd, now that was the good stuff. The story started with the picture-girl walking to school, and being accosted by a group of young thugs. Ranma had to choke down a laugh at that -- if the girl he was talking to was the same as the guy he had known when he was a child...

    He blinked, unnerved by the thought. He had known someone with a similar name, hadn't he? Someone who made okonomiyaki? Shaking his head to dismiss the thought, he flipped another page into the manga. The picture-girl retreated into an alley, chased by the identically drawn thugs -- who all vaguely reminded Ranma of his father, for some reason -- where she cried out for help as they tore her clothes off.

    Sparing a questioning glance to the girl, he turned back to the manga. Where the buildings and backgrounds were only indicated with a quick brushstroke or two, granting them an inconsequential feel, the girl and her clothes -- especially as they were being torn into ribbons -- had been paid a lot more attention. Ranma shivered, so well had they been drawn, he felt it was almost real.

    He flipped to the next page nervously, as the girl screamed and covered herself with what scraps and shreds of her clothing remained, and a full-page illustration of his picture-self jumped in the way, dispatching the thugs with a single blow. He couldn't help but smile at that part -- he got to be the hero in his own manga!

    Continuing on, he watched the picture-girl throw herself onto the picture-Ranma, thanking him and telling him in no uncertain terms that her body was his to do with as he pleased. Ranma stared at that panel for a very long moment, before flipping to the next page. He managed to raise his face and stare at the girl across from him levelly before his eyes rolled up and he passed out, a faint trickle of blood issuing from his nose.

    "Uh-oh," he heard, as things began to fade. "I better get you to the first aid booth!"

    ***

    Muscling her way through the crowds, upset, confused, lost, and more than a little bit hungry, Akane wondered if she were moving in a large circle. The raving otaku gave her no more attention that the rare passing grope, and she simply couldn't move through the mass of bodies quickly enough to retaliate. Exit signs loomed hopefully in the distance, but she couldn't reach any of them -- indeed, no sooner would she draw near one than the crowd would spin her about, leaving her headed in an entirely new direction, and completely unable to discern the location of the previous goal.

    Something broke through the gloom she was slowly accumulating, as the public announcement system blared, "Tofu-sensei to the first aid booth, please. Tofu-sensei to the first aid booth, please."

    Akane blinked, staring in surprise. Tofu? Here? Well, he was a doctor, nothing like the otaku that surrounded her -- but if she could find him, then he could lead her to the exit, and from there, escape from the wretched hive of ecchi and perversion that had trapped her! Were she to have her way with things, she'd never see such a thing again.

    As she watched, a woman in a pristine white Kimono stepped before her, somehow creating a rift in the crowd, a bubble of personal space that the otaku seemed to be completely oblivious of, despite the woman's presence in their midst. Trailing shortly behind her, in a much smaller, yet still present envelope of solitarily, was an unmistakable man in the same gi she remembered far too well to forget.

    Bracing herself, she managed to barrel through the crowd, shoving fanboy and cosplayer alike out of her way, unable to reach him, but able to keep him in sight. She broke free of the crowd at the first aid booth, slamming into him forcefully, as the woman in white raised an eyebrow at her, and melted instantly back through the crowd, disappearing.

    Catching himself, and turning to steady her, Tofu exclaimed in surprise, "Akane-chan! I never thought you'd be coming to a place like this!"

    Akane straightened herself up nervously, scratching the back of her head. "Ah... I was here because of... Ranma," she mumbled. "I can't find my way out!"

    Tofu nodded sagely, turning to pick up something he had dropped when Akane had knocked into him. "Well," he said, stacking a small number of manga atop one another, "it's easy to get lost in the crowd if you don't know your way."

    Akane knelt on the floor, trying to help the doctor collect his comics. "Are these yours?" she asked worriedly. "'Housewife on the Rampage'? 'House Call'? 'Betty Does the Med School'..." Akane dropped the manga, backing away against the wall of the crowd behind her. "You're one of them!" she wailed. "You're just like them!"

    "Why else would I be here?" the doctor asked, tucking the stack of manga into his gi somewhere.

    Hanging her head, Akane whimpered, "I don't like this... I want to go home!"

    "Just be patient and wait here, Akane-chan," Tofu chided her. "I need to see someone who got injured here -- I'll show you the way out when I'm done."

    Shuddering, Akane stepped towards the table before a small curtained area that separated any patients from the crowd, murmuring to herself, "Mustn't run away... mustn't run away..."

    Tofu ignored her, pulling the cloth barrier aside, and stepping inside. Akane's eyes widened as she recognized Ranma laying on the cot, eyes staring upward dizzily, head in another girl's lap. "So you're Ucchan?" he asked, stifling a hysterical giggle, holding a reddened tissue to his nose. "And you've always been a girl?"

    "Yep," she announced, beaming at him. "And don't you forget, you _are_ my fiancee."

    "I am?"

    "Yep! Your father engaged us, and I decided to sell dojinshi about us to educate the world about our love!"

    Ranma raised his head a fraction, trying to see another of the manga, this one laying across his chest. "Ucchan," he mumbled, blushing crimson and dropping the tissue, "I don't think there's enough room in my body for _that_ much fluid. And I'm _really_ sure that none of that ever happened."

    "Creative license," Tofu responded before 'Ucchan' could speak for herself. "So, Ranma, what are you doing in the first aid tent?"

    The girl handed the dojinshi from Ranma's chest to Tofu. "He just read this," she offered. "I thought he could handle it!"

    Tofu flipped through the manga, and Akane peeked over his shoulder to study it. She looked away again, very quickly. The artist had done a reasonable job of guessing what Ranma looked like, to have drawn him naked in that much detail. The doctor made a thoughtful noise, and flipped the manga shut, returning it to the girl. "A little bit much for someone who's not used to it," Tofu admonished. "These things need to be built up to, you know. Make a man jump into something like that with no preparation, it's no wonder he loses it all three pages before the money shot!"

    The other girl's eyes widened, as Ranma sat up, staring at his feet. "Ranchan!" she exclaimed. "That was your first time?"

    Ranma managed a nervous laugh, and admitted, "Um... yeah, I guess that was..."

    ***

    "My Student!"

    "Go away, Happosai," Ranma mumbled, rolling over and putting a hand over his right ear to block out the wizened martial artist. "I'm tired from the con, okay?" Besides, he was still a bit weak from the blood loss.

    "MY STUDENT!"

    "Ugh, get lost already!" Akane yelled, appearing at the entrance to the guestroom wearing her pajamas. Rearing her head back, she throwing a barbell through the open window, hitting Happosai, who had been sitting on the windowsill, right in the face. "Pervert!"

    Ranma yawned, his eyes closing. "Thanks, 'kane."

    Pointedly ignoring him, Akane raised her nose and left the room with a huff.

    'Is she still upset about that?' Ranma wondered, adjusting his pillow. 'Sure, there were lots of perverts there, but it's not like they were all bad.'

    "Ucchan..." Ranma sighed nostalgically. 'Who would've thought my old buddy was a girl? Not to mention a girl with such an... accurate... imagination?'

    Strange. His pillow felt off. And it smelled of... ink?

    Bolting up, Ranma turned to examine his pillow, his mouth opening in disbelief. Somehow, it had been replaced literally under his nose, and with hentai dojins, no less!

    "There is no escape," a disembodied voice announced then, seemingly coming from the walls themselves. "Don't force me to make you impotent."

    The pigtailed boy crouched next to the pile of manga, readying himself for an attack that could come from any direction. "Just try it, Blue Balls!"

    "Ranma, you do not realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your Inner Pervert. Join me, and I will train you, My Student! With our combined perversion, the Anything Goes can finally have a true heir, uniting the schools!"

    Ranma's stomach churned at the mention of uniting the schools, and he grabbed a random manga from the stack, flinging it to the right. He heard a smack, and Happosai appeared out of thin air, holding the dojin. Flipping it open, he started reading the manga, grinning. Ranma tried throwing more dojins at him, but the old martial arts master managed to avoid them all without taking his eyes off the manga he was reading.

    "The Ecchi is with you, young Saotome, but you are not a True Pervert yet," Happosai commented, nodding his head thoughtfully.

    "Just dry up and die!" Akane yelled, entering the guestroom again with bloodshot eyes and booting Happosai out of the window.

    -------------------------------------------------
    Errata:

    E-mail me at the address above, and Corwin here: ely7@inter.net.il

    Or visit his website here: http://corwin.anifics.com