% Yay! Another new chapter.

"BWEE!"

After his headlong rush into the street, the small black piglet froze
in terror.  His death swiftly approached, its image filling his vision
from the brilliant headlights of an oncoming car.  In the depths of his
mind, he paused to wonder if this was to be his final fate, to die like
the lowly animal he now was, crushed beneath the wheels of a common
automobile.

Some would think it appropriate. :)

Mikado's mind quickly flashed back to the insane babblings of that old
monk he had escaped from only a brief time ago, who spoke some nonsense
about curses and hot and cold water.  He had fled from the scene, mad
with horror at his condition.  What did that old man's odd ramblings
matter?  He was a common barnyard animal, his precious humanity stolen
from him by the actions of that evil, vicious girl.

Yeah! The bitch, not appreciating him kissing her.

 She had not been

content with slamming her knee up into his treasured manhood when he
left himself unguarded, and then fleeing from his wrath.  No, this must
have been her goal all along, to lure him into a trap.  Thoughts of her
treachery filled him with a powerful lust for revenge upon her, for the
hellish state she had cast him into.

And we have a vow of revenge.

At the last instant, the car suddenly swerved aside, missing him by a
narrow margin, its wheels squealing on the asphalt, slick from the
recent rain.  When it came to a shuddering halt, Mikado felt his small
heart stutter back to life.

He was alive!  He was still alive!

And then the car that had been traveling immidiately behind the limo crushed
him. :)

With the glow of a streetlight illuminating her from behind, the sight
of Kodachi Kuno approaching and kneeling down next to him greeted
Mikado's wondering gaze.  Tears filled his eyes once again, but this
time they were tears of joy.  His gentle goddess had come to redeem him
from his fallen state, and a brilliant halo of light cast down by the
streetlamp framed her, giving her an almost angelic glory.

Heh. He does wax poetic.

 >

Chapter 23 - Secret Identities

          All warfare is based on deception.

                              - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Of course, when Sun said that, he was deceiving everyone even then. ^_^

"This ain't happening to me here!  I'm not turning into a girl!  No
way!"

Too late, for at least part of the time, anyway.

 >

"Like it or not, it seems that Jusenkyo has screwed up both our lives,"

It tends to do that.

Ranko said softly.  Her eyes glimmered with unshed tears.  She hastily
wiped them away.  "I just wanted to get back home, to see my Mom again
and to start over with her.  That's never going to happen now, is it?"

No, you're screwed.

"Deal."  Ranko took his hand in a firm grip and held it, the two of
them meeting each other's gaze.  "I'm in, no matter what.  Something
tells me it's going to be interesting."

Cursed version of living in interesting times, I'm sure.

When he was finished, he carefully climbed back down the ladder and set
up another small drying pole, retrieved from his camp.  He began to put
the items of clothing on it, pausing when he came to a pair of pink and
lacy panties.  An odd trembling assailed his hand for a few moments at
the sight and feel of them, before he hastily set them on the rack.

Heh. Little perv.

"As I started to explain before your companion ran off, hot water will
bring you back to your normal form," said Cherry, picking up his cup
and drinking from it.  "Cold water will transform you again."

"But there's a cure, right?" Ryoko quickly interjected.  "There's got
to be a cure, isn't there?"

Cherry: No, there doesn't always have to be a cure. Just ask anyone that's
died from a disease.

"If it's done too soon, before the proper time, before Jusenkyo is
ready to release you from its grip, the curses will mix together, and
you'll likely become a mixture of cat and girl, maybe for good."

Ryoko: Catgirls are popular. I can live with that.

"Home?  How the hell can I go home now?"  She growled again as she sat
up and smacked her fist into her open palm.  "My mom will freak out the
first time I change around her, and I can't blame her.  My brother
might be okay with it, but I don't want anyone I know to see me like
that.  Anyway, right now I just want to find that little redhead and
pound her into mulch.  It's all her fault that I'm like this!"

Ranko has become extremely popular in the hour or so that she's been there.

"Oh, Mistress," said the servant girl.  "What an adorable little
piggy."  She came over to P-chan and quite gracefully reached down and
began gently scratching his head as she cooed at him, hitting a spot
between his ears that caused in him a reflexive quiver of rapture.

"I think he likes you, Konatsu,"

That'll be fun.

This was the life, Mikado thought dreamily, breathing in soft scents of
jasmine and lilac in the girl's perfume, his sense of smell as a pig
having a profound acuity that astonished him.  He was used to enjoying
the sight and touch of a girl, but new vistas of smells had been opened
to him when first Kodachi and now this girl had held him enfolded in
their arms.

Now he's a pervert of smells as well.

He sighed with contentment, seeing her nude body gloriously displayed
to his eager gaze.  She was even more magnificent than he had ever
dared imagine, a work of art crafted in flesh.  Kodachi was actually
built much like Asuka Saginomiya, the so-called White Lily.  Both girls
possessed lithe but solid musculatures from their gymnastics training,
firm, full breasts set high on their chests, and long, trim legs.  But
there the similarities ended.  Kodachi possessed a tender innocence and
a demure softness to her, which the spiteful Asuka simply lacked.  He
gazed in rapture at Kodachi's lovely physique, aching for her.

He's going to be so dead when she finds out.

Konatsu smiled at the small piglet and began to undress, slipping off
her obi and then her kimono.  As she did so, P-chan seemed to watch her
with interest.  Eventually getting down to her Western-style underwear,
she reached behind herself and unsnapped the brassiere, pulling it away
to reveal a more masculine chest, the brassiere filled with padding.
When the panties were removed, Konatsu was clearly not a female.

Heh. Serves Mikado right.

" "Bwee!  BWEE!"  P-chan struggled for all he was worth, but the strength

of the boy's grip, while it caused him no pain, was quite deceptively

I'd drop the 'quite' as being unnecessary.

Konatsu stepped into the hot bath and brought P-chan down to touch the
hot water, intending to let the pig soak with him.  At first contact,
P-chan's body suddenly swelled and transformed back into Mikado, and
the sudden extra weight in his hands knocked Konatsu off balance.  He
and Mikado fell together into the water.

And a potential for hot yaoi action appears. :)

Both boys quickly surfaced, gasping for air.

"Wha-?" wondered Konatsu out loud, blinking water from his eyes in
shocked surprise.  His gaze then quickly narrowed.  "Mikado Sanzenin."

"Stay away from me, you freak," growled Mikado,

And disappears just as fast.

 >

Konatsu stood up from kneeling, as graceful as any courtly-trained girl
and approached him.  "You invaded the bedchambers of my mistress in
disguise."  A slender blade appeared in his hand and was held up tight
against Mikado's throat.  "Are you one of the Goju?  Only a Goju is
able to shapeshift like that."

Bah. I'm sure there are plenty of creatures out there that can shapeshift
easily.

A gleam suddenly appeared in Mikado's eyes.  "She doesn't know, does
she?  Kodachi, I mean."

This will be one way of gaining Konatsu's silence.

"Then untie me.  I can't feel my hands."

Konatsu: Oh, I cut them off earlier. That's why you can't feel them.

Konatsu regretted that he wasn't truly a girl.  If he was female, he
would have had one more option, to give up his name and marry into the
Kuonji.

Oh, it'll be interesting after he finds out what Ukyou's really like, then.

from him.  He did not even know why they had been killed, but he would
unleash his wrath upon his enemies.  He would destroy both the Goju and
the Shogun of the Dark, a being of ancient evil who had somehow
corrupted every man, woman and child of the Goju's once great clan,

Shogun: What can I say? I get around.

A panda.  He had been turned into a panda.  Why couldn't he have become
something less frightening?  Something smaller?  One of the neighbor
families back home had raised small potbellied pigs for pets.  If he
had turned into something little like that, at least then he would have
been cute, and girls would coo over him.  A bird would have been better
too, since it could fly, or maybe even a bat.  But he was a panda, a
hulk of fat, fur and muscle that scared people.

Heh. Never satisfied, is he?

Ukyo sneezed suddenly, and she looked up at the ceiling above the small
storeroom of her aunt's restaurant.  Ranko was laying unconscious
upstairs in Aunt Yumi's bed, the older woman taking care of her while
Ukyo handled the customers.  She had been wondering if she might have
been wrong about Ranko being Yumi's daughter, but there had been a
distinct flash of recognition in the woman's eyes when she had brought
the injured girl here.

Not a good kind of recognition, though.

There was also Ranma to consider.  Where had he disappeared to?  One of
her classmates had recalled seeing Ryoga talking with him, and she
hoped Ryoga hadn't been picking on Ranma.  The Hibiki boy hadn't made
any sense at all when he showed up the other day, ranting about his
sexual preferences somehow being all her fault, but that was no excuse
for him being mean to Ranma.  She had looked for them after classes,
but they were nowhere to be found.  It had been while she was searching
that she had come across the injured Ranko.  With her possibly being a
kinswoman to her,

can drop 'to her' since we know who she's referring to.

Ukyo felt it was her duty to help her, and so she had

carried the girl here, the only place she could think of to go.

and drop 'to go'. It's not really needed here.

Nabiki raised a single finger to her lips as she and Yohko watched a
security guard helping a girl dressed in clothes that looked similar to
Ranma's garb of late.  Her eyes narrowed.  This fan club thing was now
getting out of hand.  They were even dressing like Ranma now.  She
couldn't quite tell at this distance who it was.

Heh

Yumi raised an eyebrow at the sight.  "Well, when Ukyo dragged you
here, it was a surprise, but not nearly as big a surprise as finding
this in your pocket."  Yumi held up an identification card for the
Imperial Academy between two of her fingers, bearing the kanji for
Ranma Saotome emblazoned on it.  "So, seeing that now dashed look of
hope in your eyes just now when I called you a boy, I'm left with a
couple of choices.  Either you beat up Ranma and stole his clothes and
ID."  There was a brief pause.  "Or you've had a run-in with a place
called Jusenkyo.  Care to tell me which one it is?"

And what you've been hinting at will finally be revealed.

Ranma-chan's eyes went wide at Yumi's casual mention of Jusenkyo.  "I-I
don't suppose I could plead the Fifth?" the boy turned girl asked a bit
hopefully.

"Pardon?"  Yumi looked confused.

"I'll take one of those as well," Ranma said.

"Uh, never mind."  Ranma-chan wasn't quite sure what 'the Fifth' was.
But it was something one of her analogs had heard said on television
when questioned.

I somehow doubt it exists in teh Empire.

 "Yeah, it's me.  I'm-"  There was a brief moment of

uncertainty in her gaze.  "I'm Ranma."

Yumi nodded.  "I thought so."  She studied the ID card a moment before
passing it back to Ranma-chan, noting the holographic logo of the
Imperial Seal on it.  "Care to tell me what happened?"

"I-it's a long story," Ranma-chan said uncertainly, taking the card and
pocketing it.  She suddenly realized she was not wearing her own
clothes, but an okonomiyaki seller's outfit the

'that' rather than 'the

Yumi-kun smirked.  "Since I was a bit older than you are now, Ranma.
Years."  The smirk faded, and his face took on a more resigned sort of
look.  "It's been years."

"Years?"  Ranma-chan let that thought sink in for a moment.  To live
with a Jusenkyo curse for such a long time was a very sobering notion
to her.  "B-but you look so young.  Not like you look as a woman."

A fist slammed down hard on Ranma-chan's head.  "Ow!" she cried out,
clutching her skull.

Yeah, not a good thing to say. With enough beatings, he might learn.

"Who wouldn't want to remain young and strong?  I'd be male, but I've
never been much for acting as what men see as a woman's role.  And
there are ways to hold off the change."  Yumi-kun tossed the girl a
small cardboard box.  "It's much easier to stay in my cursed form."

"What's this?"  Ranma-chan opened the small box.  A cake of some waxy
substance fell out into her hand.  "Soap?"

Yumi-kun pointed at the bar of soap.

She might want to refer to it as 'waterproof soap'

 >

Ranma-chan sprang to her feet.  "I can't do something like that!"

Yumi: Oh, you can remain a girl instead.

Ranma: That's not what I meant.

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

Ukyo arrived outside the door to her aunt's room, having stealthed

'stealthed' seems wrong. Go with something else, like sneaked.

"Can't do what?" Ukyo asked, looking at the other girl.  She then
noticed the young man, and she frowned suspiciously.  "Who are you?
Where's Aunt Yumi?"

Yumi-kun blanched briefly, surprised at letting himself get so involved
with talking to Ranma-chan that he had utterly failed to notice Ukyo's
approach.  He quickly recovered and grinned.  "Uh, hi there, I'm Yu."
He then quickly added, "I'm Yumi's son."

Oh, that'll  make everything better.

"Her son?" Ukyo replied, blinking in surprise.  She was taken aback a
moment,

Her aunt must have been a real slut to have two kids out of wedlock.

For a moment, Yumi-kun considered the choices he had made.  There were
few regrets he had in life, but one of those was his decision to leave
the place he had found for himself in Nerima many years ago, even as
bad as it had seemed at the time.  It was partly why he had come back,
out of nostalgia.  When he had chosen to continue on in service to the
Mobius Institute instead of staying, at his request they had erased the
memories of those few who had come to know both Yumi and 'Yu' Kuonji in
the interim.  At the time, it had seemed to be the only real choice
available to him.  Now, he was uncertain.

He could still remember when a much younger Yumi Kuonji had come to
Nerima all those years ago, and how chaos had followed after her like a
carnival coming to town.  Even as she had been struggling to come to
terms with her curse, weird events and all sorts of people wanting to
fight her or her male self had appeared on an almost daily basis.  It
was a year that he would never forget, even if the others who had
experienced it with him could not say the same.  Thinking about it now,
it seemed so long ago.

Ah, so she was the Ranma of her age, insteresting.

Kasumi was tired from a long day spent at the Directorate and getting
used to her new assignment, so she had decided to stop off in downtown
Nerima and buy dinner tonight instead of cooking.  It was unfortunate
that she was unable to work in her father's section, but the Security
Directorate had strict edicts about such matters to prevent nepotism.
So her current assignment was under Assistant Director Ninomiya, in the
Special Investigations Bureau.

Oh, she's going to have fun there, all right.

Her other cousin, Yu, was currently taking his ease

relaxing might be better than 'his ease'

 at a table near the

door.  After spelling her at the griddle for a while, he had ordered
one of the house specials from her and had taken it to the table he was
currently sitting at.  He had eaten it with a slightly critical look on
his face, an identical expression to the one Yumi always seemed to wear
whenever she sampled Ukyo's cooking.  He seemed to be watching the door
for someone.  A girlfriend perhaps?

Let's say 'It's sort of complicated' and leave it at that.

Yumi-kun took a sip of his water, feeling the cold savor of an icecube
in his mouth.  He crunched it absently between his back molars as he
thought about what to do about Ranma-chan.  Revealing his own secret to
the cursed boy might have been a mistake, but Yumi-kun didn't believe
so.  It had felt like the right thing to do, and it would be nice to
have someone around who understood what it was like to bear a Jusenkyo
curse.

True, burdens become easier when shared.

Behind Yumi-kun, Kasumi blinked at what she was hearing and took a
hasty swallow of some water from her glass.  It sounded like the rather
handsome boy behind her was engaging in some sort of transaction with
the woman.  Judging by how she was dressed, which Kasumi had observed
in a quick glance before the woman had sat down, that could only mean
one thing.

Heh. Cute.

"Not here," said Yumi-kun, standing up.  "Come with me."

Oh, that'll confirm things in Kasumi's eyes.

"Very well."  Sakura stood up gracefully and smoothed her skirt a bit
before picking up her purse and following him as he headed off towards
the stairs.

Ukyo watched her cousin take the strange woman upstairs and blushed.
Yu was certainly a fast worker, not even buying his date dinner before
taking her up to the bedrooms.

She'd have to drop a cattily line about how cheap he was.

Yumi-kun let Sakura walk into the bedroom ahead of him and then he
followed her, turning briefly to shut the door behind them.  When he
turned back, he received a stinging slap across his face that came
close to knocking loose several teeth.

Must not have angered her that much if that's all he gets.

"Well, you did hurt me," she huffed, then sighed.  "But I've gotten
over it, mostly."

Yeah, as the slap indicated.

Sakura looked away after a moment.  She snorted once, and her tone
became a bit venomous  "It must be nice to find someone with a reversed
curse to yours, Kuonji-kun."  Her voice then softened.  "He's very
attractive in female form.  Is he as handsome in male form too?"

Yumi-kun: Hung like a horse. Want a three way?

 She nodded.  "Yes."  Her usual serious look faded for a moment into a

pleased smile, her eyes sparkling.  Her old partner and nemesis, Ayaka
Kisaragi, was out of her life, and she had received a second chance
with someone she had once thought irretrievably lost to her.  Life was
looking very good.

"Yes, I'm satisfied.  For now."

Sakura; I'll expect some hot sex soon, though.

Will get to the next part when I'm able.

DB Sommer



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