...


-- Attached file included as plaintext by Ecartis --
-- File: LC4A.txt

Ranma 1/2 was created by Rumiko Takahashi and its characters belong to

her, and her alone. I'm just kinda borrowing them. The story below is

for entertainment purposes only, and not to be used commercially.

...Obviously.





"Learning Curve"

        Part IV



by:   J. Wagner   (Mako)







Very few men and women saw the first blow. Those who had blinked, or

flinched, or looked away for just a heartbeat, missed it, the moment

was so fleeting. And yet, if only a few saw it, fewer still, only two,

felt it, and understood it. The two stood there, Ryouga arm extended,

his fist nestled in Ranma's right palm, and supported by his left arm.

Ranma had caught the blow. Slowly, Ryouga pulled his arm back, and

Ranma let it go. The wind alone filled the silence of the moment

until, as it had to be, it was broken by a word, from Ryouga Hibiki.



"Good."



And the two warriors exploded at each other. Ryouga opened up with a

high kick that spun into a Muay Thai combination of blows, first high,

then low, then broken, as Ranma moved in, his fists a blur. Ryouga

moved with unnatural grace, avoiding or fielding the blows that could

have hit home. Ranma was attacking without restraint, and maneuvering

for a good solid hit, and the lost boy was not yet ready to

accommodate him. The exchange ended in an attempted backhand from

Ryouga, that Ranma ducked, and instantly switched to an attempted

counter around Ryouga's legs. The sweep hit only impossibly hard bone,

and Ryouga still stood, the momentum now his.



Ranma rolled back, kicked out, catching a bit of black hair, and onto

his feet seamlessly. Ryouga received him with aplomb, pressing the

attack with increasingly aggressive and savage blows. Ranma almost

bent in half, avoiding a snap kick that would have punted a regular

man's head into low earth orbit, and let his body flow into a new

stance, crouching. Ryouga never hesitated, and jumped while reaching

up, and letting lose a single bandanna. He landed, the bandanna still

in hand, and flipped it around his fingers, like a switchblade, with

practiced ease. One hand forward, to counter any attacks, he charged.



Ranma's upper body blurred, as Ryouga's hand and bladed bandanna took

seemingly random turns trying to either pound his face in, or slice it

to ribbons. The pigtailed martial artist, however, had more than

enough experience with sharp objects, thanks to a certain longhaired,

short sighted, male amazon, to last a lifetime. There was a

heartbeat's hesitation in the lost boy's attack, and Ranma moved in,

grabbed his wrist, pivoted, and axe kicked the lost boy, hard, sending

him flying ten feet back, before he righted himself and landed on his

feet, one hand minus a bandanna.



Ranma smiled, and tossed the now limp piece of cloth to the ground.



The crowd cheered, but neither boy seemed to hear or acknowledge the

noise. Ryouga walked, calmly, to where his umbrella stood, and pulled

it from the ground like an Arthurian blade. He seemed to test its

weight, for only a second, before leaping at his opponent, the battle

joined once again. Ryouga tucked the heavy weapon in, at first, and

came in with an attempted elbow to the neck that Ranma avoided by less

than an inch, having anticipated a strike with the umbrella. Ryouga

recovered without breaking stride, and pressed forward, his umbrella

now coming into play, and moving faster and faster with every strike,

finally approaching an unspoken threshold.



"Kachuu Tenshi Amaguriken!" he roared, and the speed behind the

strikes doubled. Ranma barely had time to think, as the blows came in

by the hundred; an endless barrage of attacks powerful enough to make

a jackhammer seem like a love tap. Behind the pigtailed one, the

ground erupted into puffs of smashed earth and dirt from the air

pressure that rapidly accumulated into a cloud that stretched over

half the field. Then, suddenly, the barrage ended, and Ranma moved to

attack, a second too late - the back of a fist, moving at terrible

speed, came in from the side, and caught him across the jaw. Ranma

tasted blood, and felt himself go airborne, flying over the ground for

twenty feet before plowing into the earth for half that distance

before he recovered, and flipped out and onto his feet.



Ryouga seemed momentarily stunned by his opponent's fast recovery, but

he brought his forearm up just fast enough to block Ranma's flying

kick, and respond with a lightning fast roundhouse that nearly

connected. Ranma again took the offensive, with combinations of a half

dozen slightly different martial styles, driving the lost boy steadily

back. Ryouga had to give his opponent credit - Ranma was, again, as

fast as he was, if not slightly faster, at this level. Ranma had

always been extremely skilled, and it looked like he may have had that

advantage again, no doubt due to his training with Cologne and his

father. Ryouga moved to counterattack, and Ranma shifted without

hesitation into Akaido and then, surprisingly, into something akin to

Tae Kwon Do. Caught unprepared, Ryouga jumped back and up, before he

could lose his footing. Ranma tensed to pursue, but was forced to jump

to the side as a one-ton umbrella spun through the air, nearly taking

his face off completely.



Ryouga was still in midair when they met, once again, in a flurry of

blows and counterblows. On the ground, the umbrella kept spinning,

like a saw blade, cutting through a swath of the field fence, before

turning around and heading back to its master. The crowd roared,

again, as the two martial artists landed, and continued fighting hand

to hand. Ryouga's attention on his opponent never wavered, and as

Ranma lunged, he caught the fist instead of blocking it, and initiated

a grapple, as Ranma caught his own fist, easily. The two stood there

for a moment, straining against the other, Ryouga using his superior

strength and Ranma his superior position. The latter attacked first,

with a high kick to the side of the head that the former intercepted

with his right knee. Repositioning himself, Ranma was about to try

again, when his danger sense went off - something was coming in from

behind!



The umbrella.



"Kuso!" he tried to break the grapple, but Ryouga's grip was too

strong.



He laughed, "One splattered Saotome, coming right up!"



Ranma's eyes narrowed, and he concentrated on his hearing. The

umbrella was making a barely audible cutting noise, as its hilt plowed

through the ground keeping it on course. His eyes met Ryouga's, and he

could see that the lost boy was never going to let go. It would be

impossible to try and move him, or even try and trick him forward by

falling backwards. Ryouga had grounded himself, and it'd take a

military cargo helicopter to move him even an inch. The sound was

slightly louder now. The weapon was getting ever closer to its

ultimate goal of slicing his back in half at the midriff. Summoning

all his will power, Ranma waited until the last second, tucked his

legs in, and with every bit of flexibility he could muster, pulled his

legs up, past Ryouga's face, and over his own head, taking his abdomen

along for the ride. Nearly folded in two, Ranma heard Ryouga's

astonished gasp, and felt the powerful grip on his hand and wrist

disappear.



Landing on his feet and straightening out, Ranma saw Ryouga, the

umbrella now stopped and lying at his feet, a long red gash on the

lost boy's shirt, across his chest. He looked infuriated, but Ranma

was surprised he hadn't been cleaved in half by the impact. Ryouga's

umbrella buzz saw trick was one of his most dangerous, but

fortunately, also one of his most easily avoided. The lost boy had

been unusually tricky, and ruthless, in using it like he just had. If

he'd been a second too late coming up with that plan, Ranma didn't

doubt that Ryouga would have just stood there and let something far

worse than what he got happen to him.



"Should yon blow have not done more harm to the Wanderer, Nabiki

Tendo?" Kuno clenched his bokken. He'd been able to follow most of the

battle so far, and he knew that the wandering rogue's thrown umbrella,

given that it sliced through steel link fence like paper, should have

done more damage. His money, of course, was on the wanderer (he'd be

damned if he ever put money on Ranma, regardless of his opponent), and

though Tatewaki Kuno was generally not one to look a gift horse in the

mouth, he was still curious.



"Ryouga-kun's wearing protection," Nabiki answered.



"Protection? ...As in armor? I see no armor."



"His clothes protect him, Kuno-chan."



"Interesting," Kuno slowly realized something, "You didn't charge me

for that information, you know."



Nabiki didn't answer right away, "I know."



Ranma took a step to the side, in a different stance, arms dropping

forward in an almost wounded fashion. Ryouga took a step forward,

quickly recovering from the blow he'd absorbed from his own weapon,

when Ranma's body began to fade. For a moment, he looked wavy, in a

way similar to looking at an object at the bottom of a pool. Ranma

just stood there, calmly, "Let's see what you've got, porkchop. Come

on."



"Porkchop. Porkchop!?" Ryouga snarled, his cool quickly fading in the

face of rage and indignation "You'll eat those words, you daughter of

a bitch!!"



He charged. Ranma's stance was pathetic, from a defensive or offensive

viewpoint, which meant he was up to something. Ryouga scoffed to

himself, and kept closing the distance. To those watching, he probably

almost disappeared. He pulled back a hand, ready to deliver a quick

tiger strike to Saotome's face and cave in his nose, leaving his face

a tangled, bloody, unrecoverable mess, when his hand went right

through Ranma without hitting anything, "Nani?"



"Haku Dato Shin Sho!"



He felt pressure on his back, up and down the sides of it, and skidded

to a halt, his feet digging grooves in the ground. He turned, facing

Ranma, "Interesting little trick, Ranma."



Ranma was still in his lazy stance.



Ryouga started to laugh, "Interesting. But useless on me! I've felt

cherry blossoms fall on my skin that hurt more."



The lost boy snarled, and attacked again, his fists and knees blurring

in a rapid series of attacks. Ranma barely seemed to move, as the

blows passed right through him, and then, suddenly, Ryouga's forward

momentum was lost, and he fell face first to the ground. As he rolled

to the side, and back to his feet, Ryouga's eyes couldn't conceal his

fury, "How?"



"Shichu Rakuchi Sei," Ranma replied, calmly.



"What a waste of time," Ryouga smiled, slowly.



"Oh?"



"Yes. A total waste," he stood up, tall, and crossed his arms in front

of him as he settled into a low crouch, his voice louder now, enough

for everyone to hear, "You're little trick seems dependant on reigning

in your ki. What happens, then, I wonder, when it becomes a matter of

life and death..."



Ranma could feel it, then. Ryouga was beginning to manifest his battle

aura. The glow came, suddenly, brighter than before, and in tune to

Ryouga's breathing. In seconds, the lost boy's body was trembling, as

he fought to contain his aura, and build it to new levels of power.

The heaviness came, then, and Ranma could feel it trying to push him

to his knees - to make him supplicate himself before its master.



"What happens," Ryouga repeated, his voice low and dangerous, "When it

becomes a matter of life and death... to RELEASE IT?!"



He reared back, arms splayed to his sides, as if in ecstasy, and

drowning out the lost boy's voice, great waves of red and black ki

poured off his body in a terrible, overwhelming deluge. Those watching

capable of feeling it recoiled, and at his feet, Ranma could see

blades of grass catch fire and burn away into nothingness. Birds took

flight, and dogs barked, for miles, as the living maelstrom around

Ryouga blazed, almost uncontrolled, for what seemed like minutes, but

was, in fact, only seconds. The weight on Ranma was greater now, the

heavy ki pushing him down. To the side, it seemed like their audience

was far enough away to avoid its effects, but for Ranma, there was no

choice.



He dropped out of the Umisen Ken.



Arms wide, Ranma closed his eyes, and felt the power within him rise

up to the surface, and form at its boiling point. Ryouga watched,

impassively, as blue wisps of ki began to coalesce around his nemesis,

seeping out of his skin and rising into the air. Ranma's mouth opened,

wordlessly, and more of the cold blue and white ki escaped to freedom.

Finally, some unspoken barrier broke, and snapped, and yellow crackles

of ki manifested amid the blue, sheathing Ranma Saotome in a chilling

power unlike any Ryouga had ever felt.



"Well, then," Ryouga finally said, "Lets do this thing."



"<Incredible>," Mousse's eyes were wide, but still obscured by his

thick glasses. He could see them fairly well, but more importantly, he

could feel their power. He was well aware of his own ability to

manifest ki as a battle aura, and his best was still far short of the

two titans out in the soccer field, staring each other down. To his

side, he saw Shampoo and Cologne, both of which were watching things

intently. Mousse blinked, then - was Cologne smiling?



"They're both monsters," a boy, a freshman, took a step back. In the

field, the two warriors clashed, and the sound was like the crack of

thunder. Hiroshi spared a glance to his side, where Ukyou stood,

watching the fight. A bit farther away, he could see Akane Tendo, who

looked somewhat nervous. Truthfully, they both made him nervous -

neither of them was really normal. In Akane, it was more exotic and

exciting than truly dangerous or intimidating, but in Ukyou, with

'his' odd habits, and obvious power, it was more than a little

disconcerting.



Ukyou scowled, as the two men clashed, exchanging blows in the middle

of the field. Clumps of dirt and stone flew past, occasionally hitting

the odd student, but generally going well overhead. She watched, arms

crossed, as Ranma found and exploited an opening, his fists truly

blurring, as hundreds of blows well exceeding mach speed pounded away

at Ryouga's chest. The lost boy barely acknowledged the blows, and

pressed on. The shockwaves were already tearing the ground beneath

them to bits. They were moving more and more quickly, too. Already,

she could see that some students were having a hard time even coming

close to following the exchange between Ranma and Ryouga.



***



~Three weeks prior~



"Ah!"



"Quit flinching, you big baby."



"I wouldn't be flinching if you weren't so clumsy!"



"Whose clumsy!?"



"Geez! Sorry!" Mousse cringed, and Ukyou went back to bandaging his

arm. With his other arm, he scratched the bridge of his nose. Another

problem with his too-thick glasses, besides their liability in combat,

and embarrassment in public, was that they always slipped out of

place. He wasn't stupid, of course, he'd gotten a pair tighter on the

nose, to try and prevent it, but they still slipped, and now, worse,

irritated his nose.



"There," Ukyou cut off a stray bit of gauze with a mini-spatula, and

admired her work. Mousse's arm had gotten pretty badly scraped up in

their last scrap... or to be exact, her last scrap, with Ranma. She'd

bandaged it up pretty well, and cleaned up the wound, and while it

wasn't up to the levels of Doctor Tofu, Kasumi Tendo or even Shampoo,

who was surprisingly well versed in holistic medicine, it seemed all

right. Still, it didn't hurt to make sure.



"What do ya think, sugar?" she prompted.



 "It's a bit tight," Mousse shrugged, and then saw the look on her

face, "But tight in a ...good way."



"Oh," she smiled, and leaned back on the chair. Her hair was a mess,

and idly, she undid the ponytail behind her, and let it cascade down

her shoulders and back. It was a mess anyway, right now. It'd be less

of a mess let down and long than bunched up into her normal boy-

disguise haircut.



Mousse was silently thankful when she did. Ukyou in her boy-disguise

look always made him feel a bit uncomfortable, though he couldn't

quite pinpoint why. When she let her hair down, it made him feel much

more comfortable, though he was careful not to say anything. Ukyou was

still very touchy when it came to her past, of which Mousse only knew

a little. Ukyou Kuonji was reluctant to let her secrets out.



"Thanks," she suddenly said, out of the blue.



"Huh?" Mousse shook his head a bit, focusing on the conversation.



"Thanks," she said again, more slowly this time, "You really saved my

skin back there."



"It wasn't a problem," he looked at his arm, and amended that, "Well,

maybe a little one."



"Its my fault. I... I shouldn't have gone off like that, and attacked

him myself. I knew I didn't have a chance against him, but still," she

clenched a fist, pain evident on her features, "When I found out that

he'd gotten Ryouga-kun lost, on purpose. And that smug smile on his

face... I just lost control. I had to do something."



Mousse nodded, understanding, "I feel the same way when the bastard

plays around with Shampoo. Taking food from her, then insulting her

behind her back, with that Tendo girl. When I see her dote on him,

it... it just makes me furious."



"You really love her, don't you?"



"I... I," Mousse stopped, surprised by his own hesitation. He did love

Shampoo. He'd loved her ever since they were children, when no one

else was interested in doing much with a male who wanted to fight, and

train. They'd grown up together, but they'd never grown closer,

together, in all that time.



"Yeah, I love her," he finally said, matter-of-factly.



"I think... I think I love Ryouga-kun," Ukyou ventured. Mousse quirked

an eyebrow, and his heart jumped a beat. His composure, however, never

changed, even to a trained eye. He had learned quite well to hide his

emotions, when he wanted to. It was a very handy skill, considering

his position at 'home.'



"Think?" he queried, calmly.



"I don't know. Maybe like a brother, I guess," she sighed, "Things are

a lot more complicated than before, when it was just me and my revenge

on the Saotomes. You won't believe this, but I think I loved Ranma,

too."



"What?!" Mousse hissed.



"It was a long time ago. We were kids," she didn't say any more,

preferring instead to look up at the ceiling, "Anyway... on the topic

of revenge, what are we going to do about Saotome?"



"We train. We get better," Mousse reached into his left sleeve, and

started twirling a small knife between his fingers, "It won't be easy,

though."



"Not with the old ghoul training him all the time," Ukyou frowned, her

features hardening, "I couldn't even touch him when we fought, and I

was faster than I'd ever been before."



"You were fighting angry. Very angry," Mousse clarified.



"I was. But I always fight angry. I use it to my advantage," she

repeated the same things Ryouga had told her, back when he'd given her

training to face Ranma, when they first met almost a year ago, "Still,

usually I come close to matching him sometimes. Now? Nothing. And when

he started to attack, it was like no defense I could mount did

anything."



"He hit harder, too," she felt a tender spot on her right arm

carefully, "Either he's been holding back..."



"A possibility."



"Or he's getting much better, much more quickly than we anticipated.

He'll be totally beyond us in a week, at a minimum."



The two were silent. Overhead, the large ceiling fan did its work,

slowly spinning and softly humming. Ukyou's Bar and Grill was closed,

given the hour, and the neighborhood, at least here, tended to be

quiet at night. Tsubasa hadn't even shown up in days. It was a

comfortable silence, though, Ukyou felt. They were both thinking along

the same lines, and they both knew it.



"Would Cologne...?"



"No," Mousse replied with finality, "She's already devoting herself to

Ranma. I know she wouldn't train me, and I don't think she'd spare her

time for you, either, because you're an outsider."



"Ranma and Ryouga were outsiders."



"The only reason she trains Ranma is because he's... legally married

to Shampoo, according to our laws. And she only trained Ryouga to try

and get Ranma to join the tribe of his own free will. She has no such

incentive to help us."



"Damn," Ukyou started tapping on the grill, growing frustrated, "If

Ryouga-kun were here...."



"But he isn't, so there's no point in moaning about it, is there?"

Mousse caught her hard glare, but pressed on, "You know I'm right."



Ukyou sighed, "Yeah. ...I know."



"Happosai's an option."



The two instantly broke out into laugher. Ukyou snickered at the

thought, "That'll be the day!"



"We could pay him for the lessons in underwear!"



"He'd be happy just to feel me up! I don't think he'd even ask for

anything else!"



"Wait," Mousse held up a finger at that, demanding attention, "He

doesn't know you're not a guy!"



"He..." she smiled, slowly, "He doesn't know I'm a guy!!!"



"It may not be such a bad idea after all. If nothing else, we can

appeal to his rivalry with Cologne. She is training the heir of his

school, after all," Mousse's eyes took on a dangerous glint, "And, of

course, we can always stuff him in a bag and throw him in the river

AFTER he teaches us all we need to know about defeating Saotome."



"Mousse," Ukyou smirked, and the two clasped hands, "By kami, it's a

Plan!"



Shampoo winced, for the fifth time, as Ranma flew back wildly,

skidding and carving a deep ditch in the ground with his shoulder. The

pigtailed martial artist slowly got back to his feet, drew himself up,

and walked forward. He had a determined, almost wild look in his eyes,

as he approached the Matriarch of the Amazons. Cologne blinked, and

Ranma charged, only to be thrown back again, this time spinning from a

strike to the side of his neck.



Cologne scoffed at his prone body, "Get back up."



Ranma groaned, and almost sat up, before gasping and rolling his head

back in exhaustion. Cologne growled, and slammed the blunt end of her

staff into his midriff, causing him to snarl in pain and anger and

curl into a fetal position, guarding the sensitive parts of his body.

He'd gone through a dozen training sessions where Cologne beat on him

mercilessly, and put him through all manner of tortures. Every day,

when he left, she encouraged him to give up - to not come back.



And like an addict, every day he walked to the Nekohanten, and limped,

or was carried, back to the Tendo Dojo. The only small consolation was

the food that Cologne herself prepared for him before he headed out.

The old woman turned, and faced her great granddaughter.



"Get the harness ready again," the matriarch began.



Shampoo was about to move from where she sat, cross-legged, when Ranma

yelled something unintelligible, and forced himself to his knees.

Cologne favored him with a glance, "What was that, boy?"



"No," he shook his head, eyes shut, "Not again."



"Look at you. You're afraid, aren't you? Hibiki wasn't afraid to face

the rocks," Cologne let her words drip contempt, "But, then, he's

always been tougher than you, hasn't he? Stronger, too. I hate wasting

my time, boy. Get up, or give up."



Ranma's whole body trembled, "Damn... you, old woman."



Cologne said nothing.



"I... don't... give... up!" impossibly, on battered legs, Ranma got

back on his feet, and weakly raised his arms, "Not Ever!!"



"Impressive," Cologne hopped up and over to where Shampoo sat, "Great

granddaughter."



"Yes, great grandmother," Shampoo stood up, and picked up one of her

bonbori. She was always the last test of the day - he had to fight her

before the day's training was done. It was far from fair; Shampoo

herself had hardly had more than a warm up over the day, when Ranma

practiced avoiding her and leading her attacks along a line on the

ground that, recently, had become a spiral.



Sighing, Shampoo looked Ranma over. He was favoring one side, the

left, and limping badly, and though he was compensating for it by

adjusting his stance, his disadvantage was impossible to overcome.

Earlier in the day, he'd been pounded on by rocks, in the traditional

Bakusai Tenketsu fashion, and while his regimen was much less

impressive than the one she'd seen Ryouga undergo - due simply to the

fact that Ranma simply wasn't as naturally tough as the wanderer, it

was still impressive. Far more so than the minor version of the

toughening technique she'd undergone back when she was a girl.



But Ranma hated it.



True enough, no one enjoyed the Bakusai Tenketsu training. A person

would have to be a severe masochist to even feel indifferent to it.

But Ranma hated it. He hated the feeling of helplessness, and he hated

being tied up. Ryouga had growled and cursed, but he had never needed

to be coerced or forced into the harness. Shampoo knew she'd wanted,

at times, to give up, but she'd voluntarily done through with it.

Ranma, however, squirmed and complained, and even tried to escape.

Shampoo had never seen anything like it.



"Here Shampoo come!" she warned, and started to advance. Ranma tensed,

and slipped past her first, exploratory strike. She pushed harder, and

taking advantage of his preference for his left side, struck the

right. He blocked, and barely stood, but didn't attempt to

counterattack. He was always too beaten and tired by the end of the

day to do anything but block and avoid her attacks.



Shampoo barely noticed the slowly inward spiral she and Ranma were

making, the cool grass barely registering where they had stepped.

Shampoo barely noticed it, but for Ranma, it was his guideline.

Cologne had showed him the power of the Hiryu Shoten Ha, and that

power was in the form of a spiral. Mastery was a matter of time... and

practice.



Still, as he neared the center of the spiral, he felt that something

was missing.



But what?



Darkness.



Ranma blinked and looked up. Shampoo stood over him, and slowly, she

reached down, "Come on. Shampoo take Airon home."



Feeling the side of his face where he'd been hit, finally, Ranma

sighed. Reaching out, he took her hand. Home was sounding pretty damn

good.





***



"Ranma! DIE!" Ryouga broke through the flurry of palm strikes, and

faked a strike with his right elbow, only to bring up a hard knee and

plant it deep in Ranma's gut. As the pigtailed boy doubled over,

gasping, Ryouga smiled. Sensing weakness, like a shark, the lost boy

elbowed down, into the base of his opponent's right shoulder blade,

and high kicked, sending Ranma straight up like a bottle rocket.

Looking up at his ascending foe, Ryouga's eyes narrowed and his hands

brushed past his temple, drawing bandannas.



Without warning, Ryouga began to spin the cloth, turning each bandanna

into a deadly shuriken. Not sparing a moment longer than he had to,

Ryouga began to let them fly, straight up, machine gun style. In the

air, Ranma clenched his teeth, got himself under control, and opened

his eyes. When he did, he almost wished he'd stayed ignorant. There

was a virtual wave of bandannas heading his way, and his momentum was

keeping him from even trying to get out of their way. Slowly, he felt

himself begin to decelerate, as he reached his apex, and Ranma splayed

his arms wide, as if he could almost catch some air and fly. His mind

raced for an escape, but there was none. The only way he could go was

down, and right into Ryouga's bandannas. He'd be dissevered into diced

bits of Ranma Saotome before he even hit the ground.



One choice.



No choice.



Ranma drew back his hand, concentrated his ki, and tracked the web of

bladed bandannas he was about to fall right into. He felt his hands

clench around what he needed, but it was too small, and he was running

out of time. Tears streaming down his face from the effort, even after

all these weeks, Ranma rejected the small one, and drew more ki into

the technique, drawing a larger one, and then a larger one. Finally,

he brought his hands forward, lit the bomb, and threw it with every

ounce of strength left in him.



"Happo Dai Karin!!"



Ryouga shielded his eyes, as a massive explosion intercepted his

bandanna swarm. The explosion was, at least partially, directed, and

sent the deadly projectiles flying in every direction, though mainly

back down. Ryouga dodged, to the side, as two of the bandannas came

down, and imbedded themselves in the ground at his feet, coming too

damn close to clipping him for his comfort. Distantly, he heard people

running, and trying to get under cover. Looking back up, and

concentrating on the descending Saotome, Ryouga growled deep in his

throat.



Stupid bastard refused to just die.



Ryouga reached up, and drew more bandannas, quickly shooting them off

at the rapidly falling Ranma Saotome. Ranma tucked, and barely avoided

the first two, but the fifth and sixth cut him across his left arm,

drawing blood. Cursing, Ranma dodged the next two, spun, and let his

foot impact the surprised Ryouga Hibiki in the face like a runaway

train. Ryouga twirled, gracefully, with the blow, and into a high kick

that Ranma almost broke his back avoiding. They were both back on the

ground now, and Ranma came up first, slamming another unannounced

three-hundred blow strike at Ryouga's throat, sending the lost boy

sprawling in midair, spitting blood.



Ranma moved in fast, hitting him before he could hit the ground. A

hard elbow to the sternum, another hundred blow attack, with his knee,

to the base of the spine, a double handed blow to the stomach, sending

Ryouga down and into the ground with a thunderous crash as earth and

stone gave way to flesh and bone. Ranma jumped, then, just as Ryouga's

left index finger lightly touched the ground, "Bakusai Tenketsu!"



Ranma turned, blocking or catching the bits of earth, depending on

their size. A cloud of smoke and dust obscured Ryouga's position, now,

and Ranma knew better than to boldly rush into such a situation. He

landed, on both feet, and waited for a cool wind to blow in and start

to disperse the smoke screen. He blinked, as a bit of dust got into

his eyes, and almost had his internal organs reduced to jelly. Ryouga

was in front of him, suddenly, rage in his eyes, arms a blur, "Kachuu

Tenshi Amaguriken!"



Ranma reacted instantly, with his own set of Amagurkien speed blows

and counters, trying to force Ryouga out of the cycle and lose his

rhythm. Ranma almost forgot, just then, that Ryouga used his version

of the Chestnut Fist differently. While Ranma used his to maneuver for

a good blow, or to concentrate hundreds of blows in the same place,

Ryouga used his primarily for distraction. Which meant...



The kick hit Ranma's forearm, and despite Ranma's bracing, almost blew

straight through his defenses and into his neck. At their feet, the

power of the blow shook the ground, throwing pebbles into the air, and

knocking more than one observing Furinkan High student off their feet.

Ranma saw the momentary opening that his hasty block had given him,

and took it for everything it was worth. Both his arms blurred,

"Kachuu Tenshi Amaguriken Revised! SUPER!!"



Ryouga writhed, as Ranma's fists plowed mercilessly into his kidneys,

hammering both sides at the same time, hundreds of times. Ryouga was

helpless in the position he'd left himself in, and Ranma pushed past

his normal limit, passing the five hundred mark, even as his arms

cried and screamed into his brain, begging for a break. Ranma ignored

them, and broke his pervious limits to splinters, knowing full well he

may never again get such a golden opportunity. Ryouga's steel-hard

muscles were just now beginning to weaken, and Ranma hissed past the

pain in his arms, but pure determination could only fight off fatigue

for so long, and after just over a thousand blows, with each arm,

Ranma had to stop. Ryouga stumbled back two feet, not totally in

control of himself, his ki flickering as he fought to stay conscious.



"NOW!" Ranma lunged, drawing out a patterned cloth wrapper, "Goshin

Ryu Sei Fu!!"



Ryouga was still stumbling, when the cloth wrapped around his

head, cutting off his supply of air. Ranma them jumped over Ryouga's

head, tightening the noose, "Ri Giyo Hon Shin!"



"Haizan Tokai Tai!" Ranma planted his feet on Ryouga's lower back,

and straightened out partly, as Ryouga's hands waved wildly, clawing

like a madman's at the air. Ryouga finally seemed to give, and fall

back, but Ranma held tight, and rolled with him, so when Ryouga came

back to his feet, Ranma was still behind him, his grip on the choking

tablecloth secure.



"Ryouga!" Ukyou tensed to interfere.



Akane gasped.



In another section, Nabiki ground her teeth, "Ryouga-kun. He's

killing you...."



"Hold, Nabiki Tendo," Kuno put his hand on her shoulder, gently -

the gesture of a friend, "Watch."



Ryouga's hands became fists, and bringing both forward, struck

both back as one, slipping under Ranma's arms and into his vulnerable

underarms. Ranma howled, in pain, and lost his grip, as both martial

artists fell forward. Ranma gone from his back, Ryouga reached up to

the cloth on his face, and tore it off like it was no stronger than a

paper bag. He turned, and attacked, fist first. Ranma blocked, and

they began to dance a similar dance. Though only Akane, Shampoo and

Cologne recognized it.



The desiccated soccer field shook from the explosions.



"Back up, everyone!" Mousse jumped off the wall, recognizing that

things were only going to get more dangerous for those watching as

time went on, "Come on, you guys! Get back!"



"But...," one of the students, and older boy, didn't seem to want

to move. Mousse noticed that he had his arm around a girl's waist, and

inferred that he probably didn't want to look back in front of his

girlfriend.



Too bad for him.



"Its for your own safety," Mousse let a hand leave his sleeve, and

three razor sharp claws glinted off of a stray ray of sunlight, "Trust

me on that."



The other students didn't hesitate. Most of them recognized Mousse

anyway; from the times he'd helped deal with the Principal. Ukyou

noticed what he was doing, and came to an identical conclusion. Ryouga

wasn't hesitating to use his Bakusai Tenketsu, and while he'd kept the

explosions small, he was almost certainly just saving his energy and

biding his time before letting lose with a BIG one. Or something

worse. Who knew? One kid had been cut on the leg by a stray bandanna,

when there was that big midair explosion, and Ukyou wasn't keen on

anyone getting closer to the fight than they had to. Waving her arms,

she directed them to move back, closer to the School, where they could

at least duck into for cover, if they needed it.



"AHH! Finally da Big Kahuna's got outta der!" a familiar voice

came, and the Principal ran out of the building, a piece of duct tape

still hanging from the side of his mouth.



"Geez," Ukyou growled, "The idiot escaped again! Who was on guard

duty?"



"Umm... me," Daisuke, a boy with neat brown hair, spoke up. Ukyou

suddenly noticed he sounded a little like Soun, but chalked it up to

coincidence.



"Why ain't you keiki in class, ya?" The Principal's attention was

drawn by another thunderous explosion from the soccer field,

"AAAHHHH!! Ma socca field! Wha..."



The Principal crumpled to the floor, and Mousse landed behind him,

casually twirling a heavy looking mace in his right hand.



"Oops," he adjusted his glasses, and the mace slipped silently back

into his sleeve, "Did I do that?"



"You're a lifesaver, Hun," Ukyou kicked the Principal's body off into

a corner. Out of sight, out of mind.



...Hopefully, anyway.



It probably only took a minute or two for everyone to get back to the

cover of the school, but to Ukyou, it seemed like half an hour. People

kept milling around, trying to get a better look, and generally being

idiots. The freshman, especially, had never seen the first fight

between Ranma and Ryouga, and even when the explosions began, many

didn't want to move for cover. Luckily, Kuno rallied some of the older

students, and got them moving. Just in time, too, as a massive blast

totally engulfed what was left of the soccer field, and more than half

of the baseball diamond. Next to her, Mousse gasped, and she saw, in

what was almost like slow motion, the entire soccer field bubble and

grow, before finally simply giving way.



Caught so close to the blast, the bleachers bent and shattered like

twigs, and the supply shack was simply consumed. Further away, the

locker room windows shattered, and the walls caved in, like a house of

cards. Ukyou blinked, and concentrated instead on the rolling wave of

smoke and debris headed their way, "EVERYONE! GET DOWN!"



Ryouga hung in midair, his hair whipping around his face. Clumps of

dirt, and bits of stone and concrete, some tiny, some as large as a

beach ball, impacted his chest, arms, and legs, shattering on contact.

Eyes like slits, to keep out the dust, he saw Ranma disappear into the

firestorm of broken earth. His ears picked up, distantly, broken

piping and fountains of water. Ryouga's grip on his umbrella

tightened, and he was silently glad he'd gotten it back, just in case

he did run afoul of any cold water. To his left and right, massive

boulders hung suspended in the air, twirling in unseen and chaotic

orbits.



It had been the largest Bakusai Tenketsu Dan he'd yet unleashed.



Ryouga's eyes found a suitable landing spot, on a spinning boulder,

and he touched down for only a quarter second, before jumping up, and

off another boulder, getting high with each jump. As he reached the

apex of the explosion, with the debris finally starting to fall back

to earth, he saw Ranma, standing on another falling boulder. He looked

ragged, beaten and worn down to the bone. But he was far from broken

or defeated.



"You filthy thief," Ryouga jumped, umbrella held high and ready to

destroy the cause of his pain, "SHINE!"



Ranma smirked, and settled once again in to the Umisen Ken stance.

Ryouga cursed, loudly, as his umbrella hit the boulder, passing right

through the image-Ranma. Too late, he realized he'd put so much energy

into the Bakusai Tenketsu Dan that his battle aura had slipped, and

weakened, allowing Ranma to go back into the Umisen Ken. The umbrella

cracked the old rock in half, an instant before it splintered

entirely, and gave out beneath Ryouga's feet. The image-Ranma looked

down at him as he fell, its eyes glittering. Ryouga fell, helplessly,

into the pit where the soccer field had once been, swearing vengeance,

the boulders and stone from before closing in on him, blocking out the

sky and the sun.



Cologne felt the tremor, through her staff, a millisecond before the

second explosion rocked Nerima. In all her years, she had never felt

so much ki so perfectly, or perhaps, desperately, siphoned into a

Bakusai Tenketsu before. The small earthquake, however, was only a

side effect, as the ground shattered for hundreds of feet, like a

demi-god's jigsaw puzzle. She calmly motioned to her great

granddaughter.



"Move," was all she said, before Cologne took to the air, the wall

beneath her splintering.



"Ayia! What...?!" Shampoo's voice was drowned out, as every

Breaking Point within three hundred feet of the soccer field burned

with ki, and activated. The world disappeared in a cloud of ash and

dust, and all noise was as nothing compared to the deafening roar of

hundreds of tons of rock and asphalt and concrete tearing itself to

bits at the whim of one man. The rising cloud was visible for miles.



Inside Furinkan, students huddled together, as pieces of rock and

stone battered in broken windows, and pounded the walls and roof of

the school. Outside, right to the left of the main doors, a massive

slab of rock, ages old, crashed down, flattening one of the statues of

the Principal. Mousse smiled, at that, and looked down at the

pineapple-loving maniac he'd dragged in just moments before. He was

still out cold, thank goodness. It took more than a minute for the

last of the rubble to settle and fall, though the blanket of dust

still shifted and refused to release its grasp on the battlefield.



Ranma coughed, his spit brown with ash and dirt, and slowly moved

the hunk of rock off his legs. He'd been buried in the second blast,

despite his best efforts to escape. He'd had to scramble and scrape as

soon as he'd lost sight of the sky, and only now was he finally able

to get a brief look at the outside. Reaching up, he let his fingers

feel for a good surface to get a grip on so he could pull himself out.

Then, something found him. Ranma felt a powerful pressure enclose his

hand, and effortlessly pull him out of the rubble.



"Damn," Ranma gulped, blinking bits of dirt out of his eyes.



"I was about to say the same thing," Ryouga didn't smile. Around

him, the world looked like a wasteland. Nothing lived. There seemed to

be only broken rock and swirls of ash and dust. The only sound,

besides the beating of Ranma's own brain, to his ears was the loud

wail of police cars and ambulances. Ryouga's brows creased, and he

seemed to consider his options. He had his enemy, by the wrist and

hand, straight-armed, and off his feet.



"Tired already, Ranma?" he still didn't smile, instead preferring to

drive his words home with a hammer fist to the stomach, "Well?!"



Ranma looked up, and seemed to see something in the distance, behind

Ryouga, "What the hell is that?!"



"Eh?" Ryouga looked over his shoulder, "What...?"



Ryouga never finished his sentence.



"Roga Shuhai-tai!" Ranma kicked free of Ryouga. Silently, he was

thankful he'd taken the time to study the Saotome School of

Underhanded Trick Techniques. They seemed pretty stupid, but this one

had probably saved his life. Slowly, Ryouga turned, sporting a rather

unseemly bruise on his jaw, where Ranma had sucker kicked him about

two hundred times.



"Ranma," he was virtually shaking with rage, "I'm going to break even

your tiniest bones!!"



"Yeah?" Ranma felt his confidence rise, and with it, a second wind.

His ki was rapidly rising; again, despite the beating his body had

taken.



"Yeah," Ryouga nodded, his face a thing of fury, and his canines in

proud display. His own battle aura blazed, again, enveloping him, and

cutting off any effective use of the Umisen Ken. There were still

techniques of the Silent Thief that Ranma could use, but none that

would do much good in a situation like this. Ryouga attacked, his

anger only somewhat clouding his technique and style. Ranma received

him, and the two dueled anew, amid the wreckage and the rubble.



***



Nabiki Tendo yawned, and fighting the automatic impulse to simply go

back to sleep, looked to her side and checked the time. Predictably,

it was morning - another tedious and otherwise uneventful day. Slowly

working up the mental discipline to get out of her soft, comfortable,

warm bed, she imagined how things would go. Ranma would be training,

of course, like he had been doing for weeks. Lately, he'd taken t

doing strange things around the house, like sneaking around under the

floors, and taking odd things while people were reading or watching

them.



Kasumi would be making breakfast, and enjoying it. What she saw in

cooking, Nabiki never fully grasped. Of course, with Kasumi around,

she'd never had the chance to, but that was aside from the point.

Akane would, naturally, either be sleeping or getting ready for

school. Her little sister was immensely dull in that respect. She was

intelligent, if a bit dim when it came to common sense, but she had

little real ambition or drive. Her constant search for shortcuts to

doing everything was annoying at times, irresponsible at others, and,

coupled with her neediness, was one of the main reasons Nabiki

generally kept a reasonable distance from a closer relationship with

her. Akane was the youngest sibling, and she acted like it.



As for her father, and Saotome-san... her father would be up, he

usually was, reading the morning paper, or taking a long walk. The

Panda would be sleeping, seeing as he and Ranma didn't train together

anymore. There'd been a fall out between the two, a rather large

argument in the training hall, and since then Mr. Saotome had slept

until noon, or later, according to Kasumi, after which he generally

stalked around, aimlessly. There was something unusual going on

between father and son there, but they'd both been strangely tight

lipped about things.



Inching out from under the covers, Nabiki went to brush her teeth, her

mind still on imminent events. Ukyou was more of a morning person,

taking care of the breakfast crowd, (the freaks) and then heading out

for school. Occasionally, Mousse walked with her to the gates, and

they talked about things only they'd really care about - revenge and

martial arts, from what she'd picked up from time to time. They were

an odd pair, born of necessity, defiantly, and perhaps something else.



They were both Ryouga's friends, and Nabiki wondered if he knew what

was going on. She momentarily toyed with the notion that Ryouga more

than knew: he'd planned it out beforehand. After all, he had to have

known that Ukyou had something for him, and at the same time, had no

one of her own. More so, he had introduced them to each other, and he

had known about Mousse from Shampoo long before Mousse knew of him.



"Nah," Nabiki washed out her toothbrush and dismissed the thought. It

made sense, in a way, but Ryouga just wasn't devious or manipulative

enough to do something like that. Not that he couldn't - he just

wouldn't. The very thought wouldn't cross his mind. Sighing, she went

back to her room to change.



Where was the lost boy?



Nabiki caught herself, and amended that thought. She only cared

because he was messing with her timetable by being lost, and causing

her grief. Scheduling the event was difficult enough without half the

prizefight getting lost for days or weeks at a time. It was a

significant loss of control over the situation. It was an irritant and

an annoyance, and Nabiki Tendo hated annoyances.



Like the stubble on his chin.



Looking at her fingertips, she remembered the feel of it - rough and

unshaved, he'd obviously been on the road for who knew how long. He'd

flinched a bit, shyly, and blushed, his eyes wide and surprised,

tinged by a little fear. Odd, that of all the people and things to be

afraid of, he'd pick her. He was cute, in a shy clueless martial

artist kind of way.



"What am I thinking, me and Ryouga?" she spared a quick laugh, "He's

probably thinking about Akane, or Ukyou, or Shampoo, or any number of

other girls right now."



Opening her drawer, Nabiki gasped.



It was...



A surge of anger and panic came, and then just as easily went, as she

realized what had happened. Examining one of the vegetables that had

replaced her undergarments, she pursed her lips and checked her

drawers. Inside was the family fine china.



"Ranma," she growled. Luckily for the next time she saw him, Nabiki

didn't have the anger of her sister. No, Nabiki Tendo had a patient

form of the Tendo Rage - she'd wait, and scheme, and come up with

something both suitably punishing and entertaining to do to Saotome.

She made a quick mental note of it before going downstairs and

checking the kitchen.



"Kasumi, have you..." Nabiki skipped down the stairs as a brisk pace.

Kasumi was at the bottom, a rather large armful of clothes on hand,

"Ah. There they are,"



"Why were these in the kitchen?" Kasumi's voice was just the tiniest

bit impatient. The kitchen was her castle, and she disliked intruders

who came without notice. It wasn't enough to make her angry, or even

really unhappy, but it made her ...less content when people messed

with her domain.



A sudden crash from the floor above seemed to answer the question.



"Well, Akane's up early at least," Nabiki quickly took the clothes and

headed upstairs before the two lovebirds took their fighting

downstairs.



***



Ranma felt the pressure of Ryouga's open palm strike graze past his

ear, opening a cut in his flesh, and felt a trickle of blood flow.

Dismissing it for a moment, he drew on the power of the Happo Dai

Karin, and let it coalesce and form in his cupped hands, "Happo Dai

Karin ...Revised!!"



Ryouga saw it too, and his eyes widened in realization, as Ranma's

cupped hands slammed into his midriff. He looked up at Ranma in

surprise just as the bomb went off, blowing the lost boy back and off

the ground. Ranma's hands were singed, and felt like he'd held on too

long to a box of dynamite (an understatement, actually). He was

hurting, but the pigtailed one consoled himself in the fact that

Ryouga had to be hurting a hell of a lot more than he was.



"Huh. What the hell is going on over there?"



Ichiro Nishimura wasn't a martial artist, and he wasn't a resident of

Nerima. He was a truck driver. He was happy being a truck driver. It

wasn't the most exalted job in the world, but it had to be done, and

it allowed him to get out and see a lot of Japan on his way from place

to place. It should be noted, here, that Ichiro Nishimura had never

been through Nerima before, and so, when he tuned out the radio

warning of a 'Disturbance' near Furinkan High School, he ignored it

and kept going. He figured it was probably a traffic accident or

something.



Ryouga's trajectory took him over the nearby street, through a wall,

and into the side of a truck that had been moving down the road. The

impact was sudden and brutal, and knocked the vehicle off the pavement

and into the metal guard railing on the street. The crunch of metal,

and the popping of abused tires sounded as Ryouga's momentum finally

came to a stop, and so did the truck that had stopped him. Touching

his feet to the ground, Ryouga elbowed back, deforming the metal

behind him. Snarling, his battle aura still a personal inferno, Ryouga

Hibiki pulled his right arm forward, and then back, letting his

forearm pulverize what he was currently imbedded in.



The truck groaned, tipped back and over and Ryouga fell to the

pavement, free. He was about to run in the direction he came, when,

almost on a lark, he looked over his shoulder, and saw a man, with a

rough moustache and beard, trying to unlock the driver's side door

that was currently smashed beyond recovery, courtesy of a certain

martial artist. Ryouga shrugged, and was about to leave, when he smelt

leaking gasoline, and saw where his impact had broken one of the fuel

lines.



Almost without thinking, Ryouga jumped up, and tore the door off. The

man started to babble something, but the lost boy just reached down,

grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, and jumped away from the

burning wreck. The older man stared at him, mouth still moving but not

making any noise. Ryouga pointed in an arbitrary direction.



"Go."



The man nodded, comprehension making its way through stunned surprise,

and he ran. A few seconds later, the fire reached the gas, and the

truck exploded. Ryouga ignored it, and focused instead on the blue and

yellow streak of fire that was heading his way. Bringing both arms up,

he braced himself for the impact. Looking behind him, Ichiro winced,

as the... man that had saved him was damn near run over by something

that looked like a blue comet. The titanic crash sent Ichiro to the

ground, and the man with the bandanna seemed to struggle, for the

blink of an eye, against the blue energy, just long enough for the

black image of another man to become visible in its epicenter. And

then, just like that, the man's footing gave out, and the two were

exchanging blows, faster than Ichiro could follow, the one sheathed in

blue driving back the one, the man, who now had a red and black aura

around him. They crashed through a fence into a construction yard, and

then they were gone.



Go!



Ichiro remembered, and ran like his life depended on it.



Ranma's fist quivered, and he felt like his knuckles had cracked, he'd

hit Ryouga so many times, and so hard. The lost boy was stunned, and

Ranma pressed the attack, burying his fist into Ryouga's abdomen. He

was about to flow into a roundhouse, to the base of the neck, aiming

for the nerve clusters, when Ryouga's hand shot up into a vicious

uppercut. Ranma felt his head smash through something, probably a

couple layers of plywood, and then another, before the ceiling stopped

him. Falling to his knees, Ranma looked around, and finally realized

where he was. It was a construction site of some kind. And he was in

an uncompleted floor, still plain wood paneling and exposed metal

supports, and some windowpanes lying around. There was a packed lunch

on the floor, and sets of tools. Obviously, the Nerima construction

crew had evacuated when they found out about the fight nearby.



Smart.



Righting himself, Ranma looked down the hole he'd made in the floor,

courtesy of Ryouga's uppercut. His head was still ringing, and his ki

was starting to waver at its current level. His endurance had improved

dramatically over the last few weeks, but he knew Ryouga's was almost

certainly still superior. Throwing all those thousands of punches, and

surviving blasts and impacts that would turn the normal human body to

jellied mush wasn't exactly very healthy either. Ranma shook his head,

and it quickly cleared out the cobwebs. Ryouga was around,

somewhere...



Unless he got lost.



No. That seemed unlikely. Ryouga would almost certainly destroy the

whole building before...



"Oh shit," Ranma's eyes widened, and he yelled out and down the hole,

"RYOUGA! Hey, P-chan! Here, P-chan, here piggy!"



The floor began to rumble, and a deep voice yelled up from below,

"RAMNA! YOU'RE A DEADMAN!!!"



"Oh... goodie," Ranma took a few steps back, a moment before Ryouga

jumped up, widening the hole, and landed in front of him, steam

literally coming out of his ears. Ranma steeled his nerves, set into a

fighting stance, and charged, taking the initiative. Ryouga blocked

his exploratory blow, and retaliated with his own combination of jabs.

Ranma dodged them, and groaned inwardly - Ryouga had altered his style

of fighting, again, for about the twentieth time. Every time they

broke with each other, Ranma adjusted his tactics and his fighting

style slightly, and so, apparently, did Ryouga.



Bare handed blows, predominantly chops, aiming to cripple or break

bone, rained down on the pigtailed martial artist like snow falls in a

blizzard. Ranma fielded most of them, and bared his body for the few

that connected. They moved, together, back and forth, for what seemed

like an eternity on that floor. Sometimes, walls would get in their

way, but they were like nothing now - the two men splintered wood and

crashed through doors and dented metal supports almost as a sideshow

to the main event that was their fight.



Their war.



Ranma heard a drywall behind him shatter, more than felt it. Ryouga's

blows were like bullet trains, hitting him at hundreds of miles per

hour. Ranma had hit the lost boy so many times, he'd lost count, but

he was still going. Ryouga was like a runaway bull, driven wild with

anger and pain, oblivious to damage or danger or the mundane concerns

of the flesh. Ranma got a good look at his foe, as Ryouga recoiled

from a hard hundred-blow snap kick to the shoulder. They were both

beaten and bleeding, with patches of skin torn off altogether, and

burns and scrapes over most of their body. But the lost boy was still

sheathed in his battle aura, and showed no signs of slowing down, or

weakening, or giving up.



Then, Ryouga simply stopped. Taking a step back, he wiped some dry

blood from his broken and cracked lips and chin, "Well, Ranma... it

seems we've come to an impasse."



"What are you babbling about?" Ranma kept his fists raised and ready.



"I mean... its time to end this," Ryouga brought his hands up as well,

and slowly circled Ranma, "I can't afford to have you in my life

anymore, Saotome."



"Wha..."



"You don't understand, do you?"



Ranma almost laughed, "I should be asking you that."



Ryouga frowned, "You're the bane of my existence, Ranma. But... at the

same time... you are my goal. My motivation."



"Should I be complimented by that?"



"Maybe," Ryouga sighed, "This fight only proves it. No matter which

one of us lives, so long as both of us breathe, this won't end."



"You're delirious, P-chan. Did I hit you one or two hundred too many

times?"



Ryouga chuckled, softly, "Listen, Ranma. If I won, here, what would

you do?"



"You're not going to win, P-chan. Don't worry about it."



"What IF?"



"If, by some miracle, you ...walk out of this better than I do, I'll

just beat ya later anyway!"



"Exactly. And if you win?"



"If I win," Ranma paused, "If I win... you'll just come back again,

won't you?"



"Yeah," Ryouga nodded, slowly, "That's about it."



They stood in silence.



"That's why," Ryouga spoke up, voice cold, "That's why you won't walk

out of this fight at all, Ranma."



"You..."



"I would," Ryouga smiled, canines visible, "I will."



"You think Nabiki'll like you after that? You think anyone will?"



"Nabiki," Ryouga said the word slowly, almost softly, before his voice

hardened, "Nabiki will get over it. And if she hates me... so what?!

I'm a loner, Ranma! I've got nothing to lose... except my worst

enemy."



"You really hate me, don't you?" Ranma bit his lip, "Why? Why do

you... why do so many people hate me?!"



"Maybe you should be asking yourself that, Saotome."



"I never wanted anyone to hate me!" something in Ranma just...

cracked, and he yelled, now, without caring who would hear, "I never

wanted THIS! I... we could have been friends!"



Ryouga seemed aback by Ranma's sudden outburst, "R... Ranma..."



"Look at us, damnit! Look at what we are! What this... what you're

hatred made us! FOR WHAT!?"



"HATRED IS ALL I HAVE!" Ryouga snarled, his fists clenched to the

point of drawing blood, "Its all I have! My hatred kept me going... it

kept me alive... and damn me to Hell, but I was willing to forgive

you! Damn me, but I WANTED to be friends! One kind word! One apology!

One moment, and I would have forgiven you! But I got nothing! You

mocked me... you humiliated me... you ruined my LIFE! I'll NEVER

forgive you! NEVER!!"



Ranma watched, stunned, as Ryouga's ki went wild, tearing at the walls

and the floor, its fury belying that of its master.



"I'm... I'm sorry, man," Ranma said, though his voice was only a

whisper. Ryouga's eyes opened, and they burned with an inner fire that

no amount of kind words could put out.



"I really am," Ranma gulped, and attacked, holding nothing back.



***



"Damn you Ranma. Damn you to hell. Damn you to the darkest, deepest,

shit shoveling pits of... hello, what's this?" Ryouga pushed through a

thicket of bushes and into an open clearing in the woods where a small

wooden house, run down, but serviceable in an emergency, stood in

stark contrast to the wilderness around it. Examining it for any

external signs of occupation - looking into the boarded windows, and

searching the ground around it for trash, Ryouga came to the quick

conclusion that it was either totally abandoned, or recently whoever

had lived there last (squatters) had just left.



Knocking first, and careful to reign in his strength and not break

down the door, he waited a few seconds, and gently pushed it open a

crack. Looking in, he narrowed his eyes and searched the darkness.

There was no movement in the open area, and the Lost Boy opened the

door wide.



"Hey!" he called out. Smiling a bit, seeing that no one was around to

contest his squatter's rights, Ryouga carefully put down his backpack

and umbrella. There was no basement, so far as he could tell, but

throwing down his stuff hastily could still damage the floor, and

cause leaks and other problems. On the far side of the cabin, Ryouga

found a dusty cabinet and some empty drawers. The place had obviously

been cleaned out long ago of anything really useful.



Reaching for his pack, Ryouga took out a small watch, and checked the

time. It was late, and about to turn dark. Finding the cabin, in the

middle of nowhere, with his terrible direction, had been a godsend.

He'd take the opportunity to get some work done, some reading, too,

and maybe to write down his thoughts. He'd been toying with the idea

of a diary for years, but had never really gotten around to it.

Though, like all Hibiki's, he tended to roll around thoughts in his

head until his ears bled, he only felt the need to write anything down

sporadically, never consistently.



Arbitrarily, Ryouga took out one of the newer books his parents had

left behind for him - a German book on Western Religious Philosophy.

It sounded dull, but the lost one made some headway into it before

taking a break. Putting the text aside, and closing it after dog-

earing the page he finished at, Ryouga took out his trusty hot plate

and started heating up a cup of instant noodles. He kept a healthy

supply with him, and given that he could easily go two days without

food before he really started to feel it, supplemented by the

occasional hunting foray and dried and smoked foodstuffs kept him

fairly well stocked. As it was, Ryouga could afford to eat at least

something every day and still last a month by himself in the woods.



While the water boiled, Ryouga took out some paper, and started to

write on the hard cover of the German book. Ever since Saotome had

gotten him lost, and he'd wandered out of Tokyo, he'd been largely

occupying his mind with assorted shades of vengeance. Whether he'd

twist Ranma in half clockwise or counter clockwise was one he was just

now getting around to. There were benefits to both ways, really, from

both a physiological and artistic point of view.



"Damn you, Ranma," Ryouga repeated, and leaned back, sighed deeply.

Dismissing thoughts of revenge, at least for the moment, he turned

instead to another old standby - Akane Tendo, and his curse. Or at

least he tried to focus on Akane.



Nabiki Tendo.



"Nabiki... Tendo," he spoke the name, and closed his eyes. In his

mind's eye, he could see her clearly. She was sitting at a desk, in

her school clothes, laughing at something he'd said, but not in a

mocking way. She understood. She understood him better than anyone,

even Ukyou. Her brown eyes were like pools, and her hair swayed

slightly as she smiled at him.



Nabiki Tendo.



She hadn't kissed him. She hadn't even hugged him. She'd hardly showed

any real affection, as far as he could remember. They'd talked, and

held hands, though that was more because she hadn't wanted him to

wander off and get lost. But they'd talked, and enjoyed each other's

company. Of course, the same could be said of him and Shampoo, and

Ukyou. What made her different? What made her drive all other thoughts

from his mind?



Slowly, Ryouga began to sketch. He started with the outline of her

face, the contours of her high cheekbones, and hints of her hairline.

Her eyes, her nose, and her delicate eyebrows... they came from his

memory onto the paper unbidden. She was smiling at him, only at him,

and in right hand, she had a fresh pencil, just resting on her chin,

as if she had been caught in mid-thought. Captured forever. Inspired,

Ryouga began to write beneath the picture. He wrote about his travels,

about how much he'd enjoyed talking to her, walking with her. It began

to pour out, and Ryouga was hard pressed to write as fast as the

thoughts translated to words.



Then, slowly, someone started to open the door.



A heartbeat later, Ryouga's eyes were focused entirely on the door. In

quick, swift movements, he put the book and paper down, and the

pencil, while reaching for his umbrella. His sensed expanded, and he

reached out with his ki, trying to predict what or who it was that was

making its way inside. He took in a deep breath of air through his

nose, and something small and fast darted out of the door and into the

cabin. His eyes followed it as it lunged, and he moved to intercept.



...A little girl.



"Hey," Ryouga stood up, holding his barely-warm instant noodles just

out of reach of the young redhead, "What do you think you're doing?"



"Food!!"



Ryouga looked from the girl to the noodles, "Yes... food."



"Can... can I have it?"



"Er...," Ryouga groaned. He hated giving starving people food. This

girl would almost certainly be like every other starving hermit or old

man or bum he'd ever run across, and end up eating his entire supply

of rations. Predictably, the little girl got all teary eyed, and the

lost boy's resolve dissolved. Handing her the mostly lukewarm cup of

instant noodles, Ryouga blinked, and missed her eat the whole thing in

one gulp.



"What are you? A land shark?" Ryouga whispered in awe. Even Ranma and

himself didn't eat that fast!



"Mmmm!! Got anymore?!"



"Excuse me," Ryouga took a step back, "But who are you, anyway?"



"Oh, sorry," she gave him a quick but mostly polite bow, "I'm Karumi.

Tendo Kurumi."



"T... T..."



"Ten - do. Kurumi."



"Woah," Ryouga shook his head, willing the unreal thoughts out, to be

hopefully replaced by something more believable, "Small world. You

wouldn't happen to have any sisters, would you?"



"Just one."



"Ah... good," Ryouga nodded slowly, understanding. Tendo wasn't that

uncommon a name. It was a simple and almost comical coincidence.



"Kurumi," a voice, female, and older, came from just beyond the door.

Ryouga's eyes focused on it, simply on instinct. This girl's first

thought had apparently been to go for the food, who knew what this

older version would try?



"In here!" Kurumi called out.



A woman walked in, wearing a ragtag jacket, and holding a large rug

beater like some form of staff weapon. She had long brown hair, that

vaguely reminded Ryouga of Ukyou's, done in a samurai weave. Unlike

his first impressions of Ukyou, however, she was defiantly female -

her jacket did little to hide her gender. Ryouga reached up quickly

and wiped a bit of blood from his upper lip.



"Kurumi, what...?" the woman stopped in mid-sentence, and saw him,

"Um... hello."



"Hi," Ryouga felt a bit nervous, suddenly. Luckily, he seized on a bit

of depression and defensiveness - after all, he had found this cabin

unoccupied and unclaimed, and he wasn't about to get thrown out so

easily - and rallied himself against his natural impulse to freeze up

around blatant exposure to the female form, "You must be... Karumi's

sister."



"Kurumi," Kurumi corrected.



"Yes. Tendo Natsume," the girl's voice was cold, and had a small

undercurrent of hostility, "And you are?"



"Hibiki Ryouga."



"What are you doing here?"



"I could ask you the same thing. There was no one here when I wandered

in," the lost one crossed his arms defiantly. The two started each

other down, and sized each other up for a few tense moments. Such was

the way of things on the road. Ryouga, of course, would have to yield

to her if she wanted the cabin, as a matter of honor, and Natsume

could feel that he wasn't a normal person. His ki was too strong.



"Martial artist?" Natsume spoke first.



"Something like that," Ryouga closed his eyes, confidently, "You are

too, I'd think."



"Both of us are!" Kurumi piped up, "And he's got FOOD!"



"Well... this is a spacious cabin," Natsume gave Ryouga another look

over, and deciding he was mostly harmless, propped her rug beater

against the wall, "There should be enough room for all of us, Hibiki-

san."



"I suppose," Ryouga slowly lowered himself to the ground, cross

legged.



"Natsume," Kurumi motioned towards the empty Styrofoam cup o' noodles.



"I wonder, Hibiki-san, if you could perhaps share some..."



"Food?" Ryouga shrugged, "Ah, why not?"



Actually, he thought to himself, he could think of more than a few

reasons 'why not' but they'd never stand up against that little girl's

puppy-eyes anyway, so he dismissed them. He pulled over his pack, and

fished out two extra cups of noodles. He also dipped into his supply

of fresh, clean water, and started heating it.



"So," he turned to the two, who were seated on the other side of the

cabin. An uncomfortable silence followed. The kind that made most

people either want to pass out, or look at some fairly interesting

inanimate object. Desperately, Ryouga's eyes darted around, looking

for something to distract his mind.



"Is it done yet?"



"Be patient, Kurumi."



Ryouga finally came to the sad realization that there was absolutely

nothing interesting at all in the cabin. Lacking options, he turned

back to attempting conversation, "So... what're you two doing out here

in the middle of Hokkaido?"



"Hokkaido?" Natsume raised a noble eyebrow, "This isn't Hokkaido."



"Of course it isn't," Ryouga sighed. Mentally, he chided himself for

not saying 'middle of nowhere.'



"We're searching for someone."



"It wouldn't be Ranma Saotome, would it?"



"No..."



"Oh. Never mind, then. Who?"



"Our father. ...Tendo Soun."



A large sweat drop inched down the side of Ryouga's forehead,

"Figures."



***



"Come on! This way!" Akane yelled over her shoulder, as she stopped at

the burning wreckage of a medium sized truck. Behind her, Nabiki,

Kuno, Mousse, Shampoo and Ukyou all ran, ahead of a small group of

other students, who were hesitant, now, to be anywhere near the fight

they'd all wanted, just a little while ago, to see. Akane felt the

metal trunk of the overturned vehicle. It was still hot. A nearby fire

hydrant was broken and streaming water out and onto the side of the

road.



"Talk about property damage!" a student, a brown haired boy, took in

the scene. Traffic had been cut off, and police were starting to

arrive, but even they knew to keep their distance. Already, the

streets and roads were clear - no one was getting near the area, and

those that were already there were generally wise enough to get the

hell out of Dodge while they still could.



"Where are they?" Mousse looked around, "Ukyou! I can't see them

anywhere!"



"Idiot," Ukyou smacked him on the back of the head, "That's a

telephone pole."



"Oh," Mousse scratched his head, nervously, "Sorry."



Ukyou just sighed and shook her head, "They should be around here

somewhere. I can't tell where, though..."



"There," Nabiki pointed up, and on cue, the half complete building

trembled slightly, and one of the supports seemed to just give out,

collapsing part of the third floor, and a greater deal of the fourth

and some of the second. Before anyone could say anything else, an

explosion rocked the same area.



"Yeah... that's them alright," Akane was about to head in that

direction, when something small and fast cut her off.



"I don't think so, Miss Tendo," Cologne stood on her staff, her voice

level and calm, "No one is getting near them."



"That's my... those are my friends in there!" Akane tensed to try and

push past the old woman.



"Just try it," Cologne's voice left little doubt that she was going to

follow through with her threat.



"Vile troll! Thou wouldst dare threaten the beautiful Akane Tendo?"

Kuno stepped forward, bokken raised. In the background, lightning

flashed, "You would dare incur the wrath of the BLUE THUNDER!?"



Cologne blinked.



"Well, fiend? Spawn of Ogres? Evil midget? Old... um... creature?"



"Are ...you for real?"



Kuno laughed, "Yes, I am the great Blue Thunder, and you would be wise

to supplicate yourself and entreat my forgiveness, troll woman, lest

you taste the bitter sting of my mighty blade!"



"Stupid stick-boy," Shampoo tapped him on the shoulder. Kuno turned,

and came face to face with a set of knuckles.



"Truly... thou doest have... a strong punch.... Maiden," the scion of

House Kuno mumbled, as he slowly wilted and fell to the ground.



"Oww," Shampoo rubbed her right hand, "Stick boy have hard head."



"No kidding," Nabiki turned away, towards the building, "Ryouga-

kun...."



"Stand still and DIE!" Ryouga kicked, and his shin smashed into, and

through, a metal bracer around an already destroyed door. Ranma took

particular care to avoid those blows. Ryouga had, previously, kicked a

metal support column, and deformed it enough that the floor above them

had given in and come down all around them. Ryouga had, somehow, taken

it in strike, and kept going, almost like it hadn't happened.



Ranma could feel that he was starting to tire. He suspected Ryouga was

more than a little winded, too, but not nearly as badly as he was. The

smaller boy's lungs hurt, legs hurt... virtually every muscle hurt,

and protested every move, and howled in pain with every blow that made

it through his defenses. Even hitting Ryouga was beginning to hurt,

and Ranma could see that his knuckles were bloody and raw, from

hitting the lost boy. How long had they been fighting? It felt like

hours... maybe more than a day...



"Damn you, stand still!" Ryouga's fist plowed into a wall, and Ranma

ducked out and away from the enraged Hibiki.



"Come on, you swine," Ranma taunted, hoping the bold words would make

up for lacking actions.



Ryouga didn't buy it.



"Big words," Ryouga reached to his side, and pulled out a large brick,

"From a small, spoiled child. Bakusai Tenketsu Tokudan!"



"Special?" Ranma watched, as Ryouga threw the brick. It was a good

throw, but Ranma easily dodged it.



Ryouga reached for another, from a pile of them, "Bakusai Tenketsu

Tokudan!"



Ranma dodged it again, and it fell somewhere behind him, "What are you

doing, P-chan?! Wasting time?!"



"Baka!" Ryouga's hands moved quickly, throwing one brick after

another. Ranma easily dodged them all.



"Che!" Ranma laughed, his cockiness returning full force. There were

hastily thrown bricks lying all around him, "Some Special attack!"



"Yeah?" Ryouga took a step forward, and draw his belt.



"Yeah!"



"Yeah?" Ryouga smiled, and the belt became a belt sword.



Ranma clenched his teeth, and took a step back... onto one of the

bricks. He saw Ryouga step back, an instant before the brick exploded

under Ranma's foot. The pigtailed boy fell back, onto three more

bricks. In seconds, the entire floor was consumed in a blast of hot

air, bits of metal and wood and mortar raining down everywhere. Ranma

blinked, having blacked out for a few seconds, and found his whole

body numb and unresponsive. He looked up, and saw, behind the stars

and pretty dots of light, a massive hole in the ceiling, bits of

sparking wires and plaster hanging lazily from its edges.



He also felt... wet.



"Oh no," Ranma got to his feet, quickly, remembering that Ryouga was

probably only one or two floors up. He looked down, at his chest, and

saw them. He was female - at the worst possible time. Ranma groaned,

and then looked back forward just in time to see a familiar form crash

through the ceiling, and land on both feet, still wielding a ki-blade-

sharp belt sword.



"Finally showing your true colors, Saotome?" he smirked, and advanced.



"Shut up!" Ranma looked behind him, quickly, and saw that the puddle

of water he'd fallen into, caused by an icebox he'd fell onto, and

smashed to bits. It wasn't nearly enough to be of any real use against

Ryouga.



"Don't even think about it," Ryouga spat a bit of blood to his left,

"No fountain of water is going to save you this time."



"I said shut up!"



"Oh no. This is my party, and I'll talk if I want to," Ryouga took

another step forward, "I think I'll stop you with my Yubisaki Ishimi

Miketsukan, then either pound you into a fine paste, or..."



His belt sword sliced cleanly through a concrete pillar, "Or... you

know."



Ranma's eyes narrowed, "Stupid pig. You still don't get it, do you?"



"What?"



"You think Akane cares about you? You think she's your friend? She

only talked to you because I told her to!" Ranma saw Ryouga visibly

flinch, "I know about Uuchan, too! Guess what, P-chan? My idea! I told

her to be nice to you, but frankly, she's getting kind of tired of

playing pretend."



"Y... You.... No," Ryouga shook his head, and his voice was suddenly

very small, and very unsure, and finally... finally, very afraid,

"No!"



"You get it now," Ranma-chan clapped her hands, "Well, good for you,

piglet, I can call you piglet, can't I?"



"I..."



Ranma smirked, driving the nail in the coffin, though he wasn't

entirely sure whether the coffin was his, or Ryouga's, "As for Nabi-

chan... let's just say that she placed her bets where they've always

been."



Snap.



"That seemed to do it," Ranma thought, taking a few steps back,

"Now... all I need to do is survive for a few seconds..."



"I'm... going... to tear... you apart," Ryouga threw his belt sword

aside, "WITH MY BARE HANDS!!!!!!!"



Outside, Shampoo blinked a few times, "Great grandmother."



Cologne stood watch over the group, her back to the building, "Yes,

child?"



"Is lower floor supposed to be glowing like that?"



"What?" Cologne turned, and saw it a moment before the heat hit her.

It was like a tidal wave of raw, red, angry ki. Overhead, the sky

darkened.



"What's going on?" Nabiki started to run forward, but Cologne cut her

off, "What's happening in there? I can feel the heat...!"



"Um...," Mousse started to say something.



"We... He's not..." Ukyou blinked away tears, "We have to do

something!"



"There is nothing any of us can do," Cologne could feel it, now; the

ki was coming off in steady waves, "Except stay away."



A spiral was forming.



Ranma moved like he'd never moved before. Ryouga was attacking him in

an almost insane fury, with little vestiges of technique or style

left. They'd both been long drowned out by the pure hatred and rage

boiling out of the lost boy's aura, and crashing into everything

nearby. Papers nearby had either burned away, or been blown to ash.

Ranma himself, could feel the heat, even protected as he was by his

Soul of Ice. Just a few more steps... just a few more.



Behind him, Ranma heard a wall fall apart from the air pressure of

Ryouga's blows alone. The lost boy was attacking without true

technique, yes, but his speed and power were both at incredibly high

levels. A single blow from him, to Ranma's weaker female body, and

she'd barely have enough time to scream before he set on her and tore

her to bits with his bare hands. Looking at Ryouga, Ranma could barely

see any hint of the occasionally friendly, always depressed or shy

lost boy that he'd thought, once, that he could have been friends

with. There was nothing left of the little boy, who cried tears of

bitterness over his 'theft of the curry bread.' Those things seemed

like a lifetime ago.



Maybe they were.



It was too late now.



Ranma felt himself near the center of the spiral. He'd trained with

Cologne, and he'd seen it in action, but Ranma had never actually

executed the Hiryu Shoten Ha. He'd come close to thinking about using

it, just to make sure he could actually do it, before he found out

about Ukyou. Ukyou... he could have, would have, eventually used it on

her, before he found out. His thoughts on her, he hesitated, in

indecision, and saw the specter of death, cloaked in the garb of

anger-given-form. He hesitated, and saw a fist, Ryouga's, crackling

with power, descending on him like the vengeance of an angry god. A

sudden chill, past muscle... past bone... deeper somehow, touched

Ranma. A dull resignation came and went. Ranma Saotome doesn't lose!



Ranma Saotome doesn't LOSE!



Strength came from where there had been none, and a fist rose, in

defiance of death.



And the Spiral... Roared.



Electricity danced from the bottom floor of the building under

construction, arching along metal supports, before climbing high to

meet the lightning from the sky in a terrible clash that blew out

wiring and lights on the entire structure, overloading electronics

completely. But even the crack of thunder was drowned out by the noise

from below. It started low, like a distant rumbling one only felt deep

in the pit of one's being. Then, steadily, it rose in power and pitch,

from a low base, to a towering howl, like a hundred thousand wolves,

crying to the night sky for companionship... or release.



"Nani?" Nabiki held onto the nearest person, in this case Ukyou, for

support. The ground was shaking, "Another explosion!?"



"Worse," Ukyou squinted, and pointed at the building, "Look!"



Like the death of a flower, bit-by-bit, the building expanded, and

started to simply break apart from the inside. It was almost like

nothing was happening at all, when, suddenly and without any prior

warning, the uppermost floor erupted like a volcano, spraying wood and

panes of broken glass, and metal and even I-beams into the sky. There

was total stunned silence, save for the gathering howl of the wind,

and the cracking, creaking death throes of the building caught in its

epicenter.



"No," Akane seemed ready to run to the building, but Mousse held her

shoulder, and she stopped.



"Please, Akane Tendo...," he said, his voice shaky.



"But," she gulped, fighting back tears, "Ranma... Ryouga..."



Mousse was about to respond, to say something, anything, when the

building finally reached its limits, and exploded outward, in a

strangely beautiful way, before being drawn inward into the still

growing tornado that, by now, stretched from the bottom floor up past

the clouds. Clouds that were, even as he watched, fleeing the area

like scared sheep. Massive arcs of lightning had free reign, moving

from one airborne piece of metal to another, on its way down to the

ground. Floor by floor, the building was sucked up, funneled into the

tornado effortlessly, and drawn up and away, into apparent oblivion.



"Akane Tendo!" Mousse quickly snaked an arm around the younger girl as

she started to rise off the ground. Feeling himself being drawn off

his feet as well, the male Amazon threw a chain that wrapped around a

nearby telephone pole.



"Hold on!" he gritted his teeth, and looked around. He saw Ukyou,

holding onto Nabiki, and Shampoo trying to drag the still unconscious

Kuno away. Cologne was nowhere in sight, and before Mousse could try

and look for her, his glasses slipped off his face, and he was

effectively blind.



"Shampoo," Ukyou felt herself get lighter, "Shampoo! Get Kuno out of

here, damn it!"



"I trying! Stick boy heavy!" Shampoo 'eeped' as she left her feet,

still holding Kuno. She screamed, as the gale force winds began to

suck her in to the spiral. Already, the Chinese girl could see broken

glass, wood, and even massive steel columns spinning around in a dance

that promised death to any caught in its embrace.



"SHAMPOO!!!" Mousse roared, "Shampoo! Where ARE you?!"



"There!" Mousse heard Akane yell. Firm hands grabbed his chin, and

pointed his face in another direction, "There! Hurry!"



"Right!" Mousse drew back his spare hand, and said a silent prayer. He

could barely hear Shampoo through the wind. His hand snapped forward,

with a heavy weighted yoyo at the end of a firm length of string. He

lost sight of it, and for a moment, feared the worst, then, a strong

weight tugged at the line.



"Do I have her? Do I?!" Mousse needed to know. Was it her, or...



"You've got them. Both of them!" Akane's voice was joyful, and

relieved. Shampoo and Kuno were hardly her best friends, but that

hardly mattered right now. Mousse could barely smile, it just didn't

seem like enough. Quickly, he and Akane concentrated on taking turns

reeling the other two martial artists in.



"Nabiki!" Ukyou felt her grip on the other girl lessen, "Nabiki, hold

on, damn it! Don't let go!"



"You... think I want to?!" Nabiki held onto Ukyou's hand like a

lifeline, which it effectively was. Ukyou's other arm was wrapped

around a sturdy telephone pole, which was the only thing keeping her

from being swept up into the all-consuming winds.



"Nabiki! Just... just... Nabiki!!! NO!!" Ukyou felt the older girl's

hand slip through hers, and saw her form disappear into the blinding

wind, "NABIKI!!!"



Nabiki balled her fists and screwed her eyes shut as she fell out of

Ukyou's grasp and into the merciless fury of the Hiryu Shoten Ha

Tornado. The winds had been raging for some time now, and she knew

there was no way it would die down before she was drawn into the

funnel and consumed. A sense of total weightlessness came of her, and

a mental distancing from what was happening around her. Tiny bits

of... something flew into her, and bit deeply into her flesh, given

more than enough kinetic energy by the gusting winds that were, even

before she could come to terms with the situation, tearing away at

her.



Maybe it was defiance that caused her to open her eyes.



Or simply a lack of caring. If she was to die, she might as well see

it coming. Long lashes protected her, somewhat, from being blinded by

bits of everything, caught in the storm. Unexpectedly, her ears

popped. Looking below, there was nothing but haze, but up above, she

could make out objects, some small, some huge, and some of

intermediate size. Her mind realized it for what it was: a killing

zone. The height of the tornado had collected a great many things, and

it was currently smashing them against each other, like a brutal

gladiatorial game at ten... or maybe fifteen thousand feet. She was

cold, too.



Awfully cold.



It wouldn't matter in a few seconds. She'd be smashed to paste in the

killing zone, anyway. A little cold was only an inconvenience before

death. But, then again, Nabiki Tendo had always disliked inconvenience

a bit more than one normally did. What a fate! Caught up in some

stupid battle between two equally stupid macho idiots. They couldn't

have just had a pissing contest or something that wouldn't destroy

swaths of the city, could they? No... martial artists who just

happened to be boys. Boys who just happened to be capable of razing

buildings, and, just by chance, they had to hate each other.



She'd have to remember to haunt them.



Both of them: But especially Ryouga.



At least he could carry a conversation. Besides, he looked a lot

goofier when people surprised him. Deciding to make at least a little

noise before the Big Crunch, Nabiki inhaled deeply.



Ryouga Hibiki had had better days. He'd had better years. And there,

indeed, had been a time when he didn't look like he'd been dragged

through hell and beaten within an inch of his life. Another impact

came, without warning, and Ryouga felt his clothes buckle and give

out. He'd been slammed and beaten around by assorted heavy objects for

what seemed like hours. He'd quickly used his own Yubisaki Ishimi

Miketsukan on his shirt, and tucked in his legs, after the first few

had him seeing stars. He was barely holding onto his aura, the only

thing keeping him in one piece - the tornado seemed to feed off of it,

but finally, at least, it was dying down.



Ryouga had dissolved his shirt, finally, when it was nothing but torn

fiber and patches of hardened cloth. The lost boy snarled, as a steel

girder met his back at well over a hundred miles per hour, before

slipping to the side and disappearing back into the melee that was the

uppermost portion of the Hiryu Shoten Ha. He cursed it mentally, and

covered his face only a second before a small hailstorm of glass

shards, almost invisible, cut into his arms and legs with a vengeance.

Just a little longer... ride it out... survive...



Ryouga's eyes widened and his ears burned.



That was the loudest profanity he'd ever heard.



And... it hadn't come from him...



Ryouga looked down, pin pointing the general area of the voice, and

recognizing it after only a second or so yelled out in reply,

"Nabiki!! NABIKI!!"



He strained his ears, listening, but didn't get an answer. Taking a

deep breath, Ryouga streamlined his body, and plunged steadily

downwards in what he hoped was an intercept course. The winds were

cutting, now, and not kind to those that struggled against them so

actively. A cut slowly formed on a weakened patch of skin on Ryouga's

face, spraying a trail of blood over his ear, and onto his bandanna

before it was sucked upwards into the maelstrom.



"Ryouga!' Nabiki saw him, just barely, his flickering red and black

aura like a beacon in the night. Her voice was hoarse from yelling

that one titanic obscenity, but she tried, regardless, "Ryouga!

Ryouga!!!"



He seemed to be looking around.



"Ryouga! You better not get lost on me now, damn it!"



The aura shifted slightly, paused, and blazed brighter, like a comet,

as he raced down, against the wind. She could see his face now... why

was he blushing? Nabiki looked down, and saw that her collar had been

shredded, and that she was displaying a fairly generous amount of

cleavage. If he passed out now, they'd both be as good as dead.

Covering herself with her hands, Nabiki sighed inwardly. The whole

situation might have been really funny if not for that imminent and

continuing threat of intense bodily harm.



"Nabiki," he closed in, his blood flow now back under control. A

strong hand reached out, took her by the shoulders, and brought her

close to him. Without another word, he seemed to surround her like a

glove, or a shield, against the biting wind and shards of debris. His

arms encircled her, and pressed her to his chest. For the first time

in what seemed like forever, she felt safe.



"Nabiki," he said again, "Are you alright?"



Nabiki bit back a retort about nearly dying, and instead simply shook

her head. No longer constantly battered by the elements, she could

feel her wounds, and cuts and scrapes and a hundred other things,

vying for attention in her mind with increasing levels of pain. Nabiki

wasn't used to it, not at all, and she surprised herself when tears

never came. She'd never hurt so badly before, and for some reason, she

couldn't cry if her life depended on it.



"Just hold on," he moved, and changed his position so that he was

standing straight, and she was on top of him. He angled himself so

that the wind hit his back, and still shielded her. Nabiki saw his

arms fold gently over her abdomen, holding her firmly in place. He was

up to something, and her ears popped again, as they descended rapidly.

The sudden realization of what he planned on doing hit, and she

reached down, her hands on his. The air was whizzing by now, and

everything was a blur.



    Nabiki closed her eyes, and felt his aura around her get stronger

until it literally enveloped her completely. It felt like pinpricks on

her skin. It felt almost alien, and she resisted it. It was starting

to burn, and she had to fight not to shudder. The emotions were coming

strong, now, and with will alone, she let the ki into her all at once.

He was giving this to her, giving himself to her, and she could taste

the anger, the rage, the depression, every emotion from every fold of

Ryouga's mind entered hers. She saw memories, hidden memories, of a

boy, barely old enough to tie his shoes, alone in the forest. His

first tears... tears of loneliness and abandonment - his only tears

for such a thing, and then never again. Never again, that weakness.



Hidden memories.



She saw him, only a little older now, with a large man, his face

marked with stubble. Ryouga attacked, and the man parried the blows

easily. Words of encouragement from his father, especially... so rare

as to be more precious and treasured than the most expensive jewels.

Hidden memories. Memories of being lost, of searching for days to get

to school, only to face quiet mockery at the hands of cowards. The

humiliation. The hate... was palpable, directed not so much at his

tormentors, as it was at himself. Darkness. She saw a dark sea, with

no end, no island, and no hope of rescue.



And Tendo Nabiki cried.



Ryouga found solstice from the agony of the descent in his mind. He

concentrated on directing his ki into Nabiki, letting it seep into her

body and her bones and her soul, fortifying her. When the impact came,

the final impact, she would need it to survive, even as it left him

feeling drained, and suddenly, very weak. His mental barriers and

controls began to slip, and as they did, he felt the feedback from his

charge. He found himself in another body, wracked by the shadow of

ever-present demons.



He could see, now.



Brief flashes, like a slid show, a woman and her three girls. He saw

himself... herself... watching, from behind the screen of the dojo, as

another girl, young, with bluish black hair, sparred with an older man

in a white gi. The sadness, the loneliness, the fear of rejection and

...nothingness was like a wave. It washed into Ryouga, and through

him, like an unstoppable tide. Hidden Memories. He saw Kasumi, young,

probably only thirteen, on the tips of her toes, cooking next to a

tall woman. Both had their backs to him. Kasumi looked over her

shoulder, and he seemed to lock eyes with her for only a fleeting

moment, before she turned back to helping her mother, and her mentor.



Hidden Memories.



Then, Ryouga felt something strange, uncomfortable, and yet familiar.

He saw a boy, with wavy black hair and a perfect smile. Somehow, this

boy was charming and suave, despite his youth. A single red rose in

his hand rose to eye level, and things got light. It was, he noted,

the sort of lightness at the apogee of a climb, before the

inevitability of gravity, and life, brought things crashing back down.

The black haired boy turned, tied a white bandanna around his head,

and suddenly, the rose became a wooden sword - a bokken. He spun, his

back to her, and went towards someone else... a young woman, her hair

long. It took a moment for Ryouga to recognize her like that.



Akane Tendo.



Hidden Memories.



Ryouga opened his eyes, a tiny sparkle of wetness appearing, and then

disappearing into the wind, as if it was never really there.



And then, there was Silence.



"Look! Up there!" Ukyou wiped a layer of dust from her brow and

shielded her view as the clouds cleared, letting the Sun shine

fiercely down from above. The Hiryu Shoten Ha blast seemed to be

dissipating as quickly as it had manifested, and as the winds faltered

and weakened, the practiced martial artist could see that high above,

silhouetted against the now crystal blue sky, hundreds of suspended

shapes, though only the large ones were easily visible.



"What? I... I can't see a damn thing!" Mousse blinked a few times, but

as expected, his vision didn't improve. His glasses were gone, now,

and though he usually carried a spare, he didn't want to risk putting

it on in case the winds picked up again.



"Is it Nabiki?! Where is she?!" Akane ran out of Mousse's arms, toward

Ukyou, her eyes scanning the heavens, "Ukyou! Do you see her?!"



"...No," Ukyou answered, after a momentary silence, "Um... we better

scatter. All that stuff's coming down, and it's doing it FAST!"



"You no have tell Shampoo twice," the Chinese girl threw a still dazed

Kuno over her left shoulder, "Come on, stupid stick-boy."



"But," Akane began, again, and started to look around frantically.

Everyone else was already running in random directions, as the sky

began to rain debris of all shapes and sizes. The small bits that had

been caught at the bottom of the tornado were the first to come down,

like a light drizzle, followed by the slightly larger, but still not

too heavy, bits, like plaster. Then, finally, the shards of glass, by

the thousands, rained down, the sound of them shattering on the ground

bordering on deafening. Akane dove for cover under a large sheet of

metal before they came, fortunately, but had to leave her shelter as

the massive chunks of concrete, metal and wood began to fall with

increasing frequency.



Then, a thunderous impact that was felt, more than heard, caught her

attention. Turning, the youngest Tendo saw a small cloud of smashed

asphalt, and slabs of pavement upturned by the fall of something. Her

mind told her it was probably just a piece of an I-beam, or something

else large, but otherwise noteworthy only as one less piece of deadly

falling debris. But a feeling, a gut instinct, disagreed. Half in

shock over what she was thinking, and half numb with the thought of

what she might see, Akane crept closer to the impact site, still wary.





Around her, the last bits of what was once a regular part of Nerima

fell, and settled into a dull backdrop. It was like a bomb had gone

off, and leveled an entire street block. Car horns were blaring, Akane

only now noticed them, and a barely audible creaking of broken

concrete on concrete relaxing into position were the only sounds she

could hear. Feeling slightly bolder, Akane kept forward, a single word

escaping her dry lips.



"Nabiki?"



Akane reached the edge of the crater, and carefully pushed aside a

two-meter long length of the road that was stuck in the air, blocking

her view. There, in the center of the devastation, two forms were

visible, nearly motionless. Akane gasped, leaned all the way over, and

reached down to where her sister lay, limply cushioned by the body of

Ryouga Hibiki. Amazingly, miraculously, both seemed to be breathing.

Akane wiped her eyes, and half laughed, half choked. Nabiki was alive.



"N... Nabiki," Ryouga coughed, his voice strained.



"Ah," Nabiki seemed to snap out of a stupor, and carefully moved her

arms a little, resting them on his bare, bruised chest. Turning her

head, she saw his face, for the first time since he'd caught her in

the Hiryu Shoten Ha blast funnel, "Ryouga-kun..."



"Nabiki," he choked back any more of a reply, "Nabiki..."



"Yes?" she leaned in a little closer, and felt his breath, still hot,

but now soft and labored, on her lips.



"Could," he took a deep breath in, and completed his sentence, "Could

you get off me, please? I've got a fight to finish."



Akane blinked.



Hard.



"What?!" Nabiki huffed.



"I can't fight with you on me like this," he said, plainly.



"You sure know how to ruin a moment, Hibiki," Nabiki shook her head,

and pushed off him. She was still a bit unsteady, but otherwise fine.

She felt a bit sore in places, and unusually tired, but otherwise the

pain was largely gone.



"What moment?" Ryouga was even slower to get up.



"What happened to me? To ...us?" Nabiki added, now on another topic

entirely.



"Looks like you healed up really well," Ryouga gave her a small smile,

"It comes with the territory."



"And... the other things?" Nabiki looked away, blushing a little.



"Worry about it later," Ryouga's voice became steady, again, and more

than a little cold, "Ranma's coming."



The two girls climbed out of the rubble and wreckage just a few

seconds before Ryouga did. Indeed, as they looked towards where the

building had been, they saw a familiar figure, walking on measured

steps, through the haze and the remaining dust clouds, towards them.

He looked pale, and dirty, but at least he was male, thanks to more

than a few boiling pools of water Ryouga's ki had created. Torn and

ragged clothes were barely hanging onto his shoulders. Bloody

splotches covered his ripped pants, and flowed freely from more than a

dozen open wounds. It looked like he had a few broken ribs.



Ryouga stood, with visible difficulty. Another deep breath filled his

lungs, and he stood straight and tall, again. If Ranma looked bad,

Ryouga looked worse. The lost one was the perfect picture of a beaten

man. While his eyes were unharmed, and he could still see perfectly,

he had bruises across virtually the rest of his visible body - a

slight limp hampered him noticeably, and he had what looked like one

or two broken ribs on his right side. Akane also noticed something

else a millisecond after Ranma did, even as Ryouga tried to disguise

it. It was the reason Ryouga had asked Nabiki to get off him.



His left arm was dislocated at the shoulder.



"I've seen hell because of you, Saotome," Ryouga took a few steps

forward. His battle aura was non-existent.



"Ryouga... its over. You look like you've been through hell," Ranma's

words were sincere, but he warily raised his hands in defense, "Don't

make me put you down."



Ryouga, somehow, perhaps beyond pain, laughed.



"What?" Ranma's pride got to him, quickly, "You think I'm bluffing?"



Ryouga held out his good arm, and gently pushed Nabiki aside. As he

did, she resisted, and grabbed his arm, "Ryouga-kun! Stop! Its over!"



"No," that one word left no room for argument, or debate, but he still

went on, and using a fraction of his still formidable strength, pushed

her out of the way, "This doesn't end... until one of us is beaten."



Akane was about to say something, when Ryouga cut her off.



"And I am far from beaten," Ryouga closed his eyes, as if

concentrating on something deep and hidden away, and opened them,

renewed by some inner strength, "The Cycle ends today. I'll never

endanger those I care about by letting this happen again."



"Ryouga-kun! Ranma-kun! Please!" Akane tried to reason with the two,

but it was too late. Ranma was growling, and concentrating his ki.

Ryouga was like a statue, and several times as immovable, when he set

his mind to it.



"If that's the way you want it, Ryouga," he started to move into the

Umisen Ken stance.



"Ah. No you don't," Ryouga reached to his shoulder, grabbed it firmly

with his good hand, and with an audible pop, put the joint back into

place, "Me first."



"You know, just when I think you can't get any more inhuman..." Ranma

smirked, "You're still too wounded to fight, Ryouga. You're too badly

hurt to beat me."



"A remedy... then," Ryouga felt his mind begin to switch to combat

mode, narrowing and focusing on a single, solitary point. He was

hurting, and the damage was limiting the amount and intensity of ki

that he could manifest and use. Ranma was going to use the Umisen Ken,

and unless Ryouga could manage to get him angry enough to attack

recklessly, he would barely be able to fight back. The lost boy's mind

raced, and ultimately came to the same decision he knew he'd have come

to anyway. A desperate man couldn't afford to be picky.



The lost boy growled, and the world fell silent. The earth was calm,

for a moment at least; even the wind died. Two hundred feet away, and

closing, Ukyou, Mousse and Shampoo all felt it coming before it hit; a

sense of gathering, in the air and all around them. It was as if some

terrible bomb shelter, packed with munitions and explosives, that had

laid dormant for years, buried and forgotten, capriciously decided to

simply give up and explode in one gargantuan, city-shattering

cataclysm. The sense of immeasurable pressure building grew when

Ryouga closed his eyes, lowering his head and raised his clenched

fists, as if in pain.



Ranma instantly realized what his opponent was doing.



Ryouga wasn't just dipping into the Abyss... he was diving head first

into it.



A wind, like dry ice, descended around those present, and there was a

faint, barely-noticeable tremor in Ryouga's body, for just a moment,

as if his power was fighting to escape from his body, but he kept

holding it in. Crackles of white ki, a color none present had ever

seen Ryouga manifest, appeared with rapidly rising frequency, and

then, suddenly, and without any further caveat, his ki exploded into a

hurricane of uncontrolled light and fire. Akane and Nabiki stumbled

back from the sudden explosion, and Ranma nearly recoiled. Ryouga's

mouth opened, and a roar loud enough to be heard almost thorough

Nerima exited, assaulting their eardrums.



Ranma stumbled back. What the lost boy was doing was suicide!



Ryouga's face was frozen in mid-shout, his eyes blazing, and the

corners of his mouth slowly starting to bleed and tear from the

strain. Across his body, Ryouga's wounds began to close, and heal;

muscle groups became more defined, and the lost boy's aura seemed to

become a small sun. Blood dripped from his clenched fists, and new

wounds began to appear, across his body at almost the same rate they

began to close up and suture themselves. And then, abruptly, Ryouga's

voice gave out, and he fell forward, gasping for air like a fish out

of water. His ki alternated glowing green and red and black, and

slowly began to recede. Slowly getting back to his feet, Ryouga

smiled, and raised his hands into an open-handed stance.



"What... the hell are you?" Ranma's gasped for words, as he got a good

look at the lost boy. Most of his wounds were now just red, sore

looking spots. Even the nail-impressions in his palms had stopped

bleeding, "What was that?!"



"Everything has a price, Saotome. Sacrifice, and pain... those two are

the only currency of true value in this world," Ryouga's voice was

still a little shaky. Ranma noticed, and everything began to snap

together. The moment the thought came, he attacked with an almost

berserker fury. Ryouga seemed totally unprepared, despite his stance,

and his bravado. It had been a show - he'd been able to heal himself,

though Ranma couldn't imagine how intense the pain must have been to

force ki out and back into his body at such a massive rate, and in

such a short period of time.



However, he had not truly exceeded his limits, despite appearances.

Instead, he had carefully consumed the ki as quickly as he channeled

it from within, while maintaining his impressive battle aura. However,

while Ryouga's battle aura, as always, had been impressive... and

intimidating, it was, in truth, nothing more than a false impression.

A true battle aura was representative of the power that its user had

at his physical disposal. Ryouga, however, was drained and weakened

from the healing, and buying himself time to recover by talking. It

was smart, sound, and risky. It would have worked, too, if he hadn't

seen Akane and Nabiki, now behind him, looking at his back with shock.





Three hundred blows to the cheek sent Ryouga spinning, and Ranma saw

that his guess had been correct. He'd only healed part of his back -

most of it was still scarred and bleeding. He'd put everything on

display in front of him, so Ranma could see it. That minor mistake was

costing him. Ranma kept attacking, forcing Ryouga onto the defensive,

where he was weaker, skill and technique-wise. Ryouga was panting

heavily now; barely able to keep up with the barrage of strikes Ranma

was throwing at him. In the back of his mind, Ranma realized he was

short of breath himself, and running on fumes.



"I have to end it now!" Ranma reared back, right arm tensed.



"Kachuu Tenshi Amaguriken!!" the two teens echoed, and both flew

backwards from the cacophony of blows. They hung, in midair, for the

blink of an eye, before flying backwards and away from each other.

Ryouga landed on his shoulder, scraping a bloody furrow in the ground,

while Ranma landed on his back, ungracefully, with a hard crunch of

weakened bone on unyielding pavement.



Ryouga rolled and got to his feet first, holding up a slab of

concrete, "Hey, Ranma! Bakusai Tenketsu!"



The block exploded savagely, and all in one direction - at Ranma. By

now also on his feet, Ranma got into a low crouch, as if to block the

shotgun like blast. Ryouga leaned forward, just slightly, to see what

he was going to do, and Ranma took that instant to move, faster than

he felt he'd ever moved before. Closing his eyes, Ranma plowed through

the Bakusai Tenketsu fusillade, bits of blood trailing from where the

larger, sharper points hit, and kept going until his fist, now

crackling with ki, drove home, burying deep into Ryouga's torso, all

the way up to the wrist.



"Aa... aah," Ryouga's mouth heaved specks of spit and blood, and he

stumbled back, gasping like a drowning man.



"Hiryu..."Ranma set himself in place, swirled his hands, and brought

them forward.



"Shoten..."



Ryouga's aura, still angry and hot, began to distort and flow forward,

into and around Ranma's hands. The pigtailed martial artist poured

every last drop of his own ki into the mixture, and the air suddenly

smelt of ozone. The clash of temperatures, and Ranma's final lunge,

pushing the forming tornado up and into Ryouga's lower chest, did the

rest.



"HHHHAAAAAAAA!!!!!!"



Ryouga's chest glowed, and for all of a second, he was able to fight

back the blast, even in his half unconscious state. But, inexorably,

his feet began to give way, and, in that instant of weakness, he was

enveloped and disappeared into the horizontal Rising Dragon Wave. The

tornado stream widened, and narrowed, and a blurred black form was

swept up in the current like a leaf. Hundreds of feet away, in the

same direction, a thick concrete wall, that had survived even the fury

of the last Hiryu Shoten Ha blast, shook and ultimately held, as a

humanoid shape, beaten and battered, imbedded itself several inches

into it. The limp form of Ryouga Hibiki hung there, for a brief moment

in time, or perhaps an eternity to some, before slumping forward and

falling to the ground.



Unconscious.



"He's out cold," Akane turned Ranma over, and opened one eyelid to

check.



"Good," Nabiki didn't sound concerned with him in the least, "I'm

going to go get Ryouga. If the idiot's alive, that is."



Ukyou and Mousse looked at each other. Finally, Ukyou ran up to

Nabiki, "Let's go. Mousse, you know what to do with Saotome, here."



"I do," Mousse chuckled softly, a truly evil sound.



Before anyone else could speak up, Ukyou grabbed Nabiki by the waist,

and jumped. It only took three quick jumps to cover the distance, and

see the motionless body of the lost boy. Both girls gasped, but Ukyou

was far quicker, and checked his neck for a pulse. Nervous, and

fighting panic, she fumbled for a second, before finding his carotid.

A look of relief washed over her features as she found a pulse, weak

but steady.



"Ryouga," Nabiki helped roll the deceptively heavy martial artist

over. Ukyou frowned, and stood over the two, as Nabiki checked for

herself, cradling his head in her lap. Silently, Ukyou cursed herself

- she could never imagine herself acting like that. Saotome Genma and

his worthless son had seen to that. Sighing, she stood by her friend,

who, she had once thought could have been more, and watched over

him... and her. After a few seconds, Ukyou reached down, and picked

Ryouga up. He was damn heavy considering his frame, at least two

hundred and fifty pounds, all jammed into a body only slightly larger

than a normal man's, but she could handle it easily.



"We have to get him... both of them to Dr. Tofu's," Nabiki couldn't

think of a better place. The Tofu Clinic was judiciously stationed

equidistant to most of the Nerima 'hot spots' and it wouldn't be the

third or fourth time these two patients had been admitted for a visit.

Hopefully, after this, they'd only visit for social reasons. Looking

around, as she ran after Ukyou, trying to keep up with the other

girl's moderate pace, Nabiki saw, for really the first time, the

devastation that the battle between the two martial artists had

wrought.



In the distance, Firefighters and Police were cordoning off Furinkan

High. It was still pretty much intact, but large chunks of displaced

rock and stone covered its roof, and in some places, had even punched

through into, thankfully, empty classrooms on the top floor. The

athletic fields were a total write off - the soccer field was now a

jagged, smoking crater, and everything else, from the baseball diamond

to the tennis court were covered in a thick layer of debris that had

toppled and covered bleachers, stands, fences, everything. Luckily,

the Principal seemed both able and happy to repair damage to the

school, as well as renovate it at a whim.



The street below them looked like it had been bombed. There were small

craters here and there, and literally tons of debris of all shapes and

sizes and types. Broken glass was strewn about liberally, and off to

the side, one truck was still burning away, and three parked cars had

been crushed, one beyond recovery. All were blaring their car alarms

like a trapped animal would scream for help. Of the construction site,

there was now only a clean circular crater. Nothing was left standing.

It was a disaster, but it looked like no one had gotten badly hurt

except the two that had caused the damage in the first place. The

famous Nerima Construction Corp would be busy the next week cleaning

it up, no doubt, but they'd never press charges.



They never did.



Business here in Nerima was far too lucrative. Construction companies

loved Nerima like Insurance companies hated it. Besides, martial

artist duels were a major tourist attraction for Nerima Ward, drawing

people from all over Japan, and even overseas, here, as well as the

numerous wandering martial artists looking for a challenge. Not that

either Ranma or Ryouga really thought of such things before they

decided to start tearing things up all around them. Nabiki then, out

of the blue, realized something else. She had no idea, which one of

them had won. Ranma had fallen down and out after his final attack,

and Ryouga was unconscious when she and Ukyou got there to check on

him.



Nabiki made a quick decision to tell Tofu to tie them both down very,

very securely while they were in his clinic.



***



Ranma smirked. He'd shown up at school, on a lark, to pick up some

things, and Mousse and Ukyou had confronted him. Apparently, the two

had just finished dealing with the Principal's plans to give the

entire school hideous haircuts, something having to do with coconuts

and the Kunos... Ranma really didn't care, except that the two seemed

to have gotten around to making themselves some sort of student's

champions. ...a spot that had been held by him for over a year.



Ranma cracked his knuckles, "You two better move. I'm not in the mood

for this."



"Too bad," Ukyou twirled her megaspatula and advanced.



"We've been receiving some... special training," Mousse's claws

glinted in the light, "You won't find us so easily bested."



The pieces began to fall in place, "The old freak."



Well, that explained things - notably Happosai's recent deficit of

mischief, and his daytime disappearances. Ranma became wary. Happy was

an erratic sensei, but the odd behavior hadn't been going on for any

longer than a week at the most, and Ranma had been practicing and

working under the tutelage of Cologne for even longer. Confidence

quickly overcame concern, and Ranma shook his head slowly.



"You two really are pathetic," he dismissed them with a flick of the

wrist, "Well, come on, then. I don't have all day."



"That arrogance will cost you, Saotome!" Mousse ducked and came in

fast, claws cutting through air. Ranma dodged the flurry of strikes,

noting that they were at near Amaguriken speeds. Of course, Ranma was

still faster, and avoided the strikes with apparent ease. Ukyou,

meanwhile, was circling them, waiting for an instant to strike.



So far, nothing to worry about.



Ranma was about to retaliate, and put Mousse down, when everything

became dark. He back flipped, and realized Ukyou had blanketed the

area in a smoke screen, a new and improved one, thicker and darker

than he'd ever used before. It had a sooty, oily quality, and began to

accumulate around Ranma's eyelashes, and it became apparent that he'd

have no chance of seeing as long as he stayed in the smoke. Already,

it was building up in his nose and throat.



"Damn it!" Ranma felt a sharp blade nick his side, as he dodged a

millisecond too late. He tried to back out, and get out of the cloud,

but the attacks kept coming, from every angle, and it was impossible

to tell which of his opponents was actually in the cloud with him.

Cursing mentally, Ranma lashed out, hoping to hit something with the

sheer volume of blows he was throwing. He came close, and felt a whisk

of longhair brush past his fist, but nothing solid.



And he was rapidly running out of air.



He tried to jump, but without a direction to jump to, he was simply

leaving himself a helpless target. Rolling forward, just as something

large, fast, and sharp passed overhead, Ranma felt creeping panic rise

up his throat, and it tasted like bile. He was losing! He was

helpless! All these weeks of intense training, and he was going to

lose to a stupid trick like this?!



"No," he opened his eyes a crack and looked around desperately.



"Ranma!!"



Akane's voice.



Ranma smirked, and kicked out, heading in that direction.



"Damn it!" another voice, Ukyou's, came from behind, "Mousse!"



"I'm on it!" Mousse's voice came from the side, to intercept, forcing

Ranma to step aside and avoid a strike that hit only ground. Mousse

was good, and kept at the pigtailed martial artist, hoping to get him

lost and confused in the smoke again, but Ranma was ready. Somehow,

Mousse could see him in the cloud, and Ranma took advantage of it. He

drew Mousse into a quick spiral, but the blind one jumped out before

it was complete, no doubt recognizing it for what it was and bailing.



Ranma kicked up and out in that instant, hitting Ukyou as he jumped in

to change places with the male amazon. Oddly, Ranma felt padding give

slightly from the impact, and realized that his former friend must

have been wearing it to try and dampen the strength of Ranma's blows.

Ranma sneered at the thought. Uuchan had reached an all time low, it

seemed.



Finally, Ranma felt himself leave the cloud, and he sucked in a deep

breath, burning lungs a tribute to Mousse and Ukyou's trap. While

physically weaker than he was, generally slower and lacking in skill,

the two opponents were consistently crafty. Unlike the Kunos, Ukyou

and Mousse planned traps that worked, sometimes too well. Ranma landed

roughly due to his exhaustion, but recovered quickly.



He looked up, and saw Mousse helping Ukyou up. They were both wearing

goggles, and Mousse's were probably his prescription. Clever, if not

very honorable, but their trap had failed. He'd escaped, and now...

now they'd take their beating like men. Still breathing heavily, Ranma

charged, and body checked Mousse just as Ukyou got to his feet,

holding his chest as if in pain. Ranma ignored him for the moment, and

laid into the male amazon with a combination of blows, culminating in

an uppercut that sent Mousse airborne and into a nearby tree's

branches.



Turning, Ranma barely had time to catch Ukyou's megaspatula between

his hands a half second before it cut into his throat. Using his

superior strength, he forced it aside, and used his momentum to drive

his left elbow into Ukyou's face, "I'm tired of this crap, Ukyou!"



He grimaced, and tried to respond with a backhand, but Ranma caught

it, and bent the arm into an arm lock, twisting Ukyou until his back

was against Ranma's chest, "I'm tired of these stupid traps... and

attacks!"



He pushed Ukyou forward, and tightened his grip, "And I'm tired of

you! You cross me again, and you'll regret it, you understand me?"



"B... Bastard!" Ukyou struggled, "Let me go!"



"Why? So you can try and cut my head off again?"



"One of them, at least!"



"Oh, very funny. Why do you hate me so much anyway, huh? What'd I ever

do to you?"



"You," Ukyou struggled again, with greater intensity, but to no avail.

Chest heaving, Ranma could see tears in his eyes, and suddenly

realized Ukyou's voice had increased in pitch.



"Ukyou?" he leaned in, "Geez, don't cry! You're actin' like a girl!"



"I AM A GIRL, you ...you ...JACKASS!!"



"Wa... what?"



"I'm a girl!" she broke free as Ranma's grip loosened to nothingness.

Turning to face him, standing tall, she took his hand and placed it on

her chest. Ranma's hand trembled like a leaf, and he quickly drew it

back like it'd been in the hottest of fires. Stumbling backwards, he

almost tripped on his own feet.



Ukyou was a girl.



Ukyou was a girl.



"Ukyou... You... you're," Ranma's mind raced, unable to totally

comprehend and deal with everything that had been revealed. Looking at

him... her, Ranma suddenly felt sick. He couldn't have... he couldn't

have... no! He'd never do that to a girl! Jusenkyou! Maybe, maybe...



"I've always been a girl!" she advanced, and Ranma fell back, his

question killed before it left his lips.



"Oh, kami... Ukyou... I'msosorry! What... I mean, why?"



Ukyou gritted her teeth, tears streaking down her cheeks, "I'm the

fiancee you left behind, you bastard! I'm the girl you and your damn

father abandoned!"



"You mean... Aw, man, I've got another fiancee?"



The slap was like Akane, times ten. It was the sound of a small

thunderclap, and then there was silence, broken only by Ranma falling

limply to the ground. Ukyou looked down at him, and choked back a sob.



"No. You don't."



***



The roof was his quiet place.



It was a place where he could escape from the madness, and the

mundane, and return to something simpler. The sun was slowly setting,

and the sky was briefly ablaze in color. There were hues of red,

orange and blue, all on natural display, only slightly marred by the

lights and noise of the surrounding human world. It reminded him of

the sunsets he'd seen in China, filling him with a sense of comfort,

and humility - of the insignificance of being.



And Ryouga Hibiki knew he needed both of those things.



Across the sky, a flock of birds took to the air, perhaps to wait

the night out somewhere else, maybe the park where Ryouga had spend so

many Nerima days and nights. Did Mousse ever fly with them? Was Mousse

ever lonely enough to find companionship in the loss of humanity...

Ryouga knew the answer before he asked it. Mousse may have been

desperately obsessed with Shampoo, he may have been a blind duck, but

he'd never given up what made him, him.



Ryouga smiled. Mousse seems to have found companionship, now,

regardless. He'd woken up and seen the two of them, talking

animatedly. He'd recovered from the fight before Ranma had, naturally,

though the pains of his desperation ploy at the end still haunted him.

Brief flashes of pain occasionally reoccurred, but it was just that:

physical pain, a factor long since dealt with.



Before leaving, he'd spoken with Ukyou privately. She didn't want

to feud with Ranma to continue. She'd explained what had happened, his

despite Saotome, or in spite of him, she had decided that enough was

enough. Ryouga tended to agree. There had been a time in both their

lives, not very long ago at all, that revenge had been all they had

left to cling to. Ukyou was moving on. She had already started down

that road when Ranma and Ryouga had fought, days ago.



She was healing her soul.



Ryouga was still nursing his back into being.



The sun was almost gone, now, and soon the world would be dark,

like it always was, and he'd be alone in the night. He'd been along in

the night since they day he was born, and it had always been

preferable to being alone in a crowd, like he was on the occasions

he'd tried to socialize and join the bulk of humanity. Ryouga closed

his eyes, not wanting to see the sun leave for the day, to see it

abandon those who depended on it. Instead, he concentrated on the

smells and the sounds, and even the ki of the world around him.



Footsteps.



"Hey."



"Hey," Ryouga opened his eyes, and looked up at her.



She sat down in the roof tiles, next to him, "Watching the sunset,

huh?"



"Not really," he admitted, and leaned back, looking up at the sky,

"I don't really like watching the sun set."



"That's too bad. It really is beautiful," Nabiki took in the

colors, and the contrasts.



"Never a camera handy, eh?" Ryouga sighed.



"Never," Nabiki nodded, and slowly reclined against him, her head

on his chest.



To her surprise, he didn't flinch. They lay there, in silence, as the

sun slowly disappeared.



"Ryo-kun," she tested.



"Yeah?"



"You never really said much about what happened between us. During

the fall."



"I'm not too sure myself, Nabi-chan," he blushed a bit, despite

his best efforts not to, "Something special."



"It was."



Somewhere in the distance, a duck quacked.



"I think I might stick around for a while," Ryouga finally said,

"If... if... you don't mind."



"You can't have another fight with Ranma like that last one.

...That's why you're really up here, isn't it?"



"I don't need to be downstairs when he comes back from Dr.

Tofu's," Ryouga hesitated a bit, but sensed what Nabiki was thinking,

"I want to bury the hatchet with him. I really do. I want to move on.

But... but its going to take some time. I just, I just don't want to

deal with that tonight. Its too nice out."



"Put it off for a rainy day, is that it?"



"I can't do much else on those days, can I?" he smiled, half

melancholy, half content.



"Besides," he continued, "Here I am, up on the roof with the most

beautiful girl I know, watching the sun set."



"Not watching the sun set," she corrected.



"Yeah," he shook his head, defeated. Against his previous

inclinations, he and Nabiki sat up, shoulder to shoulder, and watched

the star dip into the horizon. On a whim, a saying he had heard

somewhere before came to Ryouga's lips.



"Love will die if held too tightly; love will fly if held too

lightly," he sighed, but smiled, "Lightly, tightly, how do I know,

whether I'm holding or letting love go?"



"You're an incurable romantic, Hibiki."



"You better believe it, Tendo."









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