[FFML] Quantum Destinies 23

[Jurai Knight]

*** Earth 0.000, 0.000



“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. Tears
of rage welled up in his eyes, that he would never have another chance to
prove his love to his goddess, the innocent and demure Kodachi Kuno, never
to take her into his arms and make her his own.



It wasn’t fair!



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. 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.



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!



One of the doors to the vehicle opened after several moments, and a slender
figure emerged. His small body still trembling from the shock of nearly
dying, Mikado could barely lift his head to look up. But what he saw
astonished him.



“Mistress, be careful! The beast might be feral!”



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. He trembled some more, caught up
in a rapture that suddenly filled him at the sight of that gentle look on
her face. Then she smiled at him, and he gave a little piggy sigh.



“You poor dear,” Kodachi said softly, studying the tiny creature before
her, cold and wet from the recent rain, looking utterly miserable and
alone. Gently, she extended forth a hand and touched the small animal on
the head, feeling no fear that it might bite her as she stroked its coat of
light fur. She looked up at the driver. “Get me a towel to wrap it in. I’m
bringing it home.”



“Yes, Mistress!”



Moments later, Mikado found himself wrapped in a soft, fluffy towel, and
Kodachi was carrying him back to the limousine, gently drying him with soft
strokes of her delicate hands. She sat down and cooed to the little pig as
the car continued on its way to Whitehall Academy to pick up her brother
before heading home.



“That was a close one, wasn’t it, little one?” she said with a smile. There
was something familiar about the animal, dredging up a memory of some of
the other worlds she had visited before arriving on this one. It wore no
collar, but it had the manner of a domesticated creature. Well, no matter
if it had once belonged to someone else. She was already planning to keep
it.



“Bwee,” Mikado agreed softly, gazing up at that angelic face. When she
began to cuddle his now dry body against her bosom to warm him, he gave off
another little sigh of contentment.



“I even have the perfect name for you.” Kodachi pulled the little piglet
away from her chest and held it up before her, smiling. She noted absently
that it was a male. “I shall call you P-chan.”



“Bwee?” The newly dubbed P-chan cocked his head to one side. When she
smiled at him again and then kissed him gently on the tip of his nose, the
silly name didn’t seem to be nearly so bad.





xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Quantum Destinies

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic

By S. Thesken aka Jurai Knight (qd_author at hotmail.com)



Ranma 1/2 and its characters are owned by Rumiko Takahashi. This story is
inspired by her works and the stories from some of my fellow fanfic
authors. Among these are D.B. Sommer’s “Shampoo 1/2”, Jim Bader’s “A Very
Scary Thought -aka- Nabiki 1/2” and John Biles’ Elseworlds series. All C&C
is welcome.



Other chapters of this story may be found at this website, or you can email
the author for them:



http://www.fanfiction.net/u/3764932/





The list of worlds reoccurring in this chapter:

Earth 0.000, 0.000 - The world of Scholar Ranma (Baseline cluster)

Earth +4.612, +4.509 - The world of Shampoo 1/2 (Shampoo 1/2 cluster)





What has gone before in this story (or at least what will help you
understand what is going on):



On a parallel Earth that diverged from the standard Ranma timeline over
five hundred years ago, the Empire of Japan rules almost half the world and
has done so for almost a century. Theorizing that one could travel to
alternate timelines by possessing counterparts in them, a young scientist
named Ranma Saotome, through use of a device of his own invention,
accidentally obtained the skills and memories of a martial artist version
of himself. Ranko, after a long journey across several parallel worlds,
finally arrived on Scholar-Ranma’s version of Earth, contributing to events
there which led to Mikado, Ryoko and Ryoga becoming cursed by the magic
waters of Jusenkyo. After colliding with Ranko, Ranma fell into a vat of
modified Jusendo water and became cursed to transform into her likeness.





xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Chapter 23 - Secret Identities



     All warfare is based on deception.



                              - Sun Tzu, The Art of War



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx





Ever so carefully, Cherry reached out across the vat of water with a pole
and hooked out a pair of gi pants. He set it down on the concrete with a
soggy thump, the fluid trapped in their cloth oozing out across the floor.
A small distance away, a nearly dry female cat with greenish fur watched
the proceedings with interest. A small fire heated some water to one side,
and the rest of Ryoko’s clothes were drying next to it, already rescued
from the vat she had fallen into.



“Meow?” Ryoko-neko inquired, and then sighed again. She was still not used
to her new form, and she wondered what had happened to Ryoga. After being
struck by that other girl, he had disappeared.



“Questions can wait until I can restore you to human form.” Cherry was
careful to not take his attention from what he was doing. He reached deep
into the water with his pole and snagged up first one shoe and then another.



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. A trembling assailed his hand for a few moments at the sight and
silky feel of them, before he hastily set them on the rack. A similar
reaction came over him when he came to the pink brassiere. He set the item
to dry and hastily focused his mind on other matters.



By that time, the water had begun to steam heavily from the teakettle. He
removed it from the fire and poured himself some tea, setting it on the
concrete and letting it cool a bit before he used it on the cat seated near
him. He turned his gaze from her as a naked Ryoko seemed to balloon back to
her human form.



“Yeow! That’s hot!” Shocked to find she had a human voice again, she spent
several moments examining herself and her regained humanity. Her hands
traced up her body to her face, feeling the familiar shape with gratitude.
Seeing Cherry still facing away from her, she quickly began to dress in the
clothes she had been wearing, now mostly dry.



“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?” She eyed the vats of water around them. “Is it here?”



Cherry sighed. “I do not know if the cure is in here, but you should not be
so quick to attempt one. A Jusenkyo curse is a heavy burden, but it is not
insurmountable to live with one.”



“Forget that!” Still half-dressed, Ryoko grabbed Cherry and hauled him up
to shake him. “I’m not going around for the rest of my life being half-cat.
I want that cure, and I want it right now!”



“It won’t do you any good, and it will only harm you to try and cure
yourself now,” Cherry said quietly, meeting Ryoko’s angry gaze. “If you try
and remove it with water from the Spring of Drowned Girl before the proper
time, things will only get worse.”



“Worse?” Ryoko shook Cherry until his teeth rattled. “I turn into a damn
housecat when I get wet, Cherry! How can this get any worse?”



“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 stood stunned for a moment before her rage reasserted itself.



“Damn that little redheaded bitch,” she growled angrily. “This is all her
fault! This is all her fault!” She dropped Cherry unceremoniously and sat
down, her chin resting on her fist. She began muttering under her breath,
her facial expression dark and forbidding.



“It is Fate,” Cherry said, a bit piously. “You should return home now.”



“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!” Ryoko got up and charged out of the
warehouse, intent on getting revenge.



Cherry sighed again. Things seemed to be getting more complicated in Nerima
as time went on. He wondered what else was in store.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



“Now you sit right there, P-chan,” Kodachi told her newfound pet as she sat
him down on her bed, a small pillow resting underneath him. “I have to
change my clothes now for dinner.” She smiled when he gave off a gentle
grunt in reply and what looked like a slight nod, as if he really
understood her. What a smart little pig he was.



Sitting still and playing the part of Kodachi’s new pet was not proving to
be very difficult for Mikado. She had cuddled him during the entire car
ride home, which almost made up for the whole experience so far. As she
walked over to her closet, several female servants dressed in fine silk
kimonos and obis came into the room. One of them approached him, a
beautiful girl that was about his and Kodachi’s age. He did not recall her
name, since servants were beneath the notice of their social betters.
However, on his occasional visits to the Kuno household, he had seen this
girl in Kodachi’s company before. As a connoisseur of female beauty, her
face was familiar to him.



“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-chan,” said Kodachi, smiling at the girl, a
kunoichi, one of the numerous ninja who served the Kunos as retainers and
spies. Konatsu had been gifted to Kodachi by her mother to be her personal
retainer on her fourteenth birthday. She had since become a confidante of
sorts, and a loyal agent who performed any task the young noblewoman needed
done. “He’s my new pet. I’ve named him P-chan.”



Konatsu picked up the small black pig and cuddled him. “Oh, he’s just
adorable!”



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. She
turned around, and he could see Kodachi in a state of undress as the other
servant girls assisted her.



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 was. 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 and vindictive Asuka simply lacked. He gazed in rapture at
Kodachi’s lovely physique, aching for her.



“Please take him off for a bath while I have dinner with my family,
Konatsu-chan,” Kodachi said with a smile as the other servant girls began
helping her on with more traditional clothing. “He seems to like you, so I
do not imagine he shall give you any trouble.”



“Of course, Kuno-dono,” Konatsu replied. She bowed deeply at the waist.
“With your leave, I will see to it immediately.”



Kodachi nodded, now dressed in a kimono of purple silk, finely-stitched
black rose embroidery resting upon the left breast that she had done
herself. As one of the servants wrapped a white obi around her trim waist
and secured it, Konatsu bowed once again to her beloved mistress and
departed, carrying a drowsing P-chan in her arms, lost in a waking dream of
some kind.



A few minutes later, Konatsu entered an unused servant’s bathing area. She
set down a still drowsy P-chan and went over to the furo, twisting the knob
to begin filling the tub with hot water, intending to enjoy a nice soak
when finished with her assigned task. She began singing a peasant work song
as P-chan watched the proceedings, beginning to wake up from pleasant
fantasies of bedding Kodachi, the two of them entwined in sensuous passion,
their ardor for each other knowing no limits.



Konatsu smiled at the small piglet and began to undress, slipping off first
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.



“Bwee?” P-chan squealed in surprise under his breath, blinking, shocked and
amazed at the sudden and totally unexpected transformation of what he had
thought was a girl into what was now a rather effeminate young man, but
definitely male.



“I’ll take care of bathing you in a few moments, P-chan,” Konatsu said
pleasantly in feminine tones with a bright smile, sitting down on one of
the stools, quickly filling a bucket of cold water and pouring it over his
head. He continued to sing the little peasant song as he soaped himself and
then rinsed himself off, repeating the process a second time to be sure he
got clean.



Being bathed by a beautiful naked girl was one thing, but being bathed by a
naked young man was something else entirely. And didn’t that old monk say
something about hot water? P-chan quickly scrambled away from the scene,
heading towards the door, hoping he could nudge it open enough with his
snout to provide an avenue of escape. He tried to be as quiet as possible.



Still a few feet short of the door, a slender length of sharpened steel
suddenly buried itself halfway in the wooden floor in front of him, a
thrown kunai. When he backed up suddenly, his eyes a little crossed at the
close call, he bumped into Konatsu, who had come up unheard behind him. A
hand came down and picked him up by the scruff of the neck.



“Don’t like baths?” Konatsu inquired with a pleasant smile, before carrying
P-chan over to where the soap was kept. Still speaking in a very feminine
manner, he said, “I promise to be gentle.”



“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
powerful. The boy splashed him with cool water, soaped him up with a
delicate touch, and then rinsed him off with more cool water. He let loose
with a snort.



“That wasn’t so bad, now was it?” Konatsu inquired with a smile. Still
holding P-chan tightly, which had been a bit more difficult when the pig
had been soap-covered; he approached the bath of steaming water. “Just a
little soak, and we’re all done, P-chan.”



Konatsu stepped lightly into the hot bath and brought P-chan down to touch
the hot water, intending to let the pig soak with him. Upon submersion,
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.



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 cross-dressing freak,” growled Mikado, moving to
the other side of the bath. The thought of a boy wearing women’s clothing
was perverse to him, and it also didn’t help his mood that he had been
entertaining sexual fantasies about Konatsu over the past couple of years.
He was about to step out when the other boy suddenly grabbed him from
behind and yanked him back into the bath, where a fierce struggle began.



Konatsu wasn’t sure what trickery Mikado had used to transform himself into
an animal, but his first duty was to protect Kodachi from the other boy’s
treachery. But first he had to subdue Mikado, which was not proving to be
easy. The other boy was quite a skilled fighter. Even so, he finally
managed to get an arm around Mikado’s neck and began applying pressure,
hoping to end this without bloodshed.



Having been taken by surprise, Mikado had gone under before taking a full
breath. He felt Konatsu’s arm lock around his throat as the two of them
struggled beneath the surface. He drove his elbow back into the other boy’s
ribs as hard as he could, but the water blunted his power. Already he could
feel his vision fading as the blood supply to his brain was choked off, and
he desperately tried again. He continued to attempt breaking the hold, but
the difference in leverage proved to be too much to overcome and darkness
overcame him.



Konatsu surfaced with his captive and hauled Mikado’s unconscious body from
the water. After making sure the other boy was still breathing, he left him
lying by the side of the furo and came back in a moment with some towels
that he used to quickly bind Mikado tightly with special knots his
instructors had taught him for just such occasions. He had never thought he
would have to tie someone up with towels, but his kunoichi training had
covered such possibilities.



Mikado came awake groggily, his head aching. The first thing he saw was
Konatsu, once more dressed in feminine garb, currently combing his long
hair and acting girlishly demure. His numb arms were bound behind him, and
he struggled for a moment to get free. When that failed, he glared at his
captor.



“Release me!” he commanded. “I’m Mikado Sanzenin, damn it!”



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
kunai appeared in his hand and was held up tight against Mikado’s throat.
“Are you one of the Goju? How were you able to change form like that?”



Despite doing his best to hold it down, a note of panic was present in
Konatsu’s voice, recalling the spooky stories his childhood friend Ukyo had
often told him during summer campouts when they had only been young genin.
Fear of the monsters from those ghost stories caused his grip to tighten on
the blade, the muscles in his arm bunching. Ghost stories had always
terrified him.



Konatsu pressed the edge tighter against Mikado’s throat, releasing a
single drop of blood. “Tell me!”



“I don’t even know what a Goju is!” Mikado cried out, now terrified that
this lowborn, cross-dressing pervert would end his life. “It’s some kind of
curse I’m under!”



Staring into Mikado’s eyes and seeing no dishonesty in them, Konatsu
eventually pulled the blade from the other boy’s throat and concealed it
back upon his person. “I believe you.”



“Then let me loose,” Mikado demanded. “And speaking of disguises, what are
you doing dressed as a girl, anyway?”



Konatsu turned a cold gaze to Mikado. “That is none of your concern,
Sanzenin-dono.”



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



The glare returned. “It would be best for you if you never revealed such a
thing.”



“Then I think we have a bargain in the making,” said Mikado, relaxing a
bit, the Sanzenin instinct for business sensing a potential solution to
satisfy all parties. “I don’t reveal your secret, and you don’t reveal
mine.”



Konatsu considered the offer. “If you break this bargain and reveal my true
nature,” he warned Mikado ominously. “I will kill you.”



“I won’t,” Mikado promised. “You have my word as a Sanzenin.”



Konatsu snorted. “I’d sooner trust a Hibiki,” he said derisively, his
mother’s many bitter stories of the sullen, savagely destructive clan that
had cost them their ancestral teahouse and killed his father still vivid to
him after all these years. It amazed him to this day how Ukyo, the boy who
had been such a good friend and helped him maintain his female disguise for
years, even once pretending to be his boyfriend in school, could ever
befriend one of the stupid brutes. Thoughts of Ryoga spending time with his
dear childhood friend burned darkly within him.



“Be that as it may, we’re going to have to trust each other,” Mikado
replied in soothing tones. “So, do we have a bargain?”



Konatsu considered the matter a bit more, and then he nodded. “We do.”



“Then untie me. I can’t feel my hands.”



Konatsu snorted in an unfeminine manner and untied him. As the other boy
was rubbing his wrists to restore circulation, he tossed a bucket of cold
water on Mikado.



“Bwee?” P-chan looked up at Konatsu and growled.



“What’s wrong, P-chan?” Konatsu scooped up the small pig and began drying
it with a towel. “Your bath is over, and now I return you to your mistress.
But we will talk again another time. I’m sure you will have need to come
and go, so I will arrange things to assist you in this. Consider it an
added incentive to you to keep your silence.”



P-chan nodded. It was a fair bargain.



The boy kunoichi tidied up the bath and left it, P-chan cradled in his
arms. He would watch the other very closely for treachery. Despite his
threat to Mikado, he was grateful not needing to kill him, but he would if
the other boy ever betrayed him. It was the shinobi way, the path of
shadowed honor. He had taken this position as Kodachi’s personal ninja, as
the shinobi clan serving the Kunos lacked a girl her age to act as a
companion. The money he was earning would someday allow him to rebuild his
family’s teahouse.



Konatsu absently regretted that he wasn’t truly a girl. If he was female,
he would have been able to give up his name and marry into the Kuonji,
ending his family’s past dishonor at the hands of the brutish Hibikis.
Genji Kuonji, Ukyo’s grandfather, had given a scroll to Konatsu’s mother
after the destruction of their teahouse promising this. But Ukyo was a boy,
so his only hope now was to continue to work loyally for Kodachi and save
his money.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Ryoga ran through the streets of Nerima, rage filling him, more rage than
he could have ever imagined feeling before. People cleared the way for the
large panda as it rumbled by, a heavy pack on its back and wearing a
bandana on its head. That wasn’t something you saw every day in the Empire,
even in Nerima.



This was all Ukyo’s fault! And that redhead! And that Ranma guy! It was all
because of them that he was now like this! All three of them were to blame!
Because of them, he was in hell!



After a long time spent running, Ryoga paused a few moments to catch his
breath, feeling hungry, and he glared at his reflection in a nearby window.
He glanced around, and the few people on the street looked back at him in
awe and fear as they backed away. He growled at them in frustration.



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.



“GROWR!” Ryoga raised his paw and shook it with fury at the sky and then he
took off running again.



Just you wait, Ukyo Kuonji! You, that little redhead, whatever her name is,
and that Saotome guy, that boyfriend of yours, you’re all going to pay when
I get a hold of you! I SWEAR IT!



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Ukyo sneezed suddenly and rubbed her nose, and she looked up at the ceiling
above the small storeroom of her aunt’s restaurant. Ranko was currently
lying 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, unsure how to ask
when she had brought the injured girl here. After emptying the girl’s
pockets and changing her clothes, her aunt had quickly shooed her away.



Her thoughts turned to Ranma. 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 suddenly 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, 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.



“Hey! What about my pork special okonomiyaki?” came a customer’s voice.



“On my way!” Ukyo shut off the light in the storeroom and quickly went back
to taking care of the customers, her thoughts about Ranko and Ranma set
aside for now.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Ranma gazed grimly across the dojo mat at Ranko, who glared back at him
with barely restrained fury. Clouds rolled across the sky, dark and filled
with the promise of a great storm. The lights in the dojo dimmed a bit and
flickered.



At that moment, both opponents made their move, streaking across the mat at
each other. They leaped and met in midair in the center, hands and feet
lashing out with lethal accuracy, blows only barely turned aside by the
other as they sprang apart to land mere feet apart. The glare each was
giving the other was undiminished.



Again and again they clashed, each determined to put the other down and
finish this. But they found themselves too evenly matched, deadlocked, as
they struggled fiercely with each other. Grunts and curses were the only
other sounds than that of their limbs clashing, each of them bringing all
their fighting ability to the fore, and holding nothing back.



“Damn you, you stupid jerk! Why won’t you fall?” Ranko drove her fist past
Ranma’s face, narrowly missing breaking his jaw with the blow.



“This ain’t happening to me here! I’m not turning into a girl! No way!”
Ranma responded in an instant to her attack with an explosive uppercut,
which she narrowly turned aside with a fast and graceful dodge at the last
moment.



“You idiot!” Ranko flashed her foot in a tight arc as she spun her body
around in a blur of motion, but the kick missed shattering Ranma’s hip by a
narrow margin when he deflected it with a downward sweep of his arm.



Both of them promptly redoubled their efforts. Each fierce blow thrown was
followed up by a block or evasion, and then a counterstrike would return,
on and on in a brutal display of skill and grace. Neither of them could
manage to gain the upper hand, and their frustration visibly grew as time
passed.



At the conclusion of one such exchange, as if of one mind, both of them
abruptly paused.



“This is stupid,” Ranko growled, her chest heaving a bit. “We’re not
getting anywhere.”



“I agree.” Ranma backed away a little, his breathing heavier.



Ranko relaxed her posture, tired of fighting with him yet again. They had
recently turned a corner on his accepting her after the other Ranma
personalities ceased interfering, the process of integrating her into his
new gestalted consciousness beginning to draw near completion, but the dunk
in Jusenkyo water had brought his fears of losing his male identity roaring
back up from the depths. After ceasing her struggle and backing off a bit,
she studied his face.



“You don’t need to be so afraid, Ranma. I’m not.”



“Who’s afraid?” Ranma snapped back. “I ain’t scared of nothing!” He then
paused and shook his head, the atavistic terror of losing his manhood
fading, the influences of those other versions of himself being pushed
back. He wasn’t like that, he told himself. After a moment, the gaze he
turned towards Ranko was somewhat gentler. He sighed. “Sorry,” he mumbled.



“It’s okay. Our integration has been taking longer, and what happened
didn’t help things.” Ranko relaxed as she saw his posture changing too,
dropping from a more combative pose. “Ranma, it can’t be healthy to stay
fragmented like we’ve been. And don’t just focus on what’s happened as this
horrible thing. Maybe try and look at it as gaining a perspective on being
female that your other selves never had, maybe even a gift.”



Ranma abruptly dropped to the mat in a seated position, looking a bit
dejected. “I was just coming to grips with having your memories. Now I
don’t know what to do, how this is all going to affect me.”



She came over, her hands open and relaxed. Ranko sat down next to him, the
difference in their sizes due to their residual self-images showing in this
lucid dream they shared. She sighed and looked at him.



“Like it or not, it seems that Jusenkyo has messed up things,” Ranko said
softly. Her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. She hastily wiped them away.



Ranma surprised them both by enfolding her in his arms. She stiffened for
several moments in shock and then she relaxed and clutched at him. A few
tears burned in her eyes again, but she didn’t care.



“I’m so sorry, Ranko.” Ranma felt tears in his own eyes, and a stray
thought of how unmanly he was being was quickly quashed.



They pulled apart and Ranko wiped at her eyes again, sniffling a little
bit. “You’re going to manage,” she said, her voice firming. “You’ve never
given up before and you’re not going to now.” She suddenly grinned at him,
putting on a brave face.



She hugged him again. “You’re Ranma Saotome, and I want you to promise me
you’re never going to give up trying to beat whatever your future throws at
you. Deal?”



“Deal.” Ranma hugged her back one last time, and her appearance faded away
to nothing as if blown away by the breeze, leaving him alone.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Ranma-chan awoke with a sudden start.



“Where-?” she started to ask, when suddenly strong hands held her down.



“Rest easy, boy,” Yumi said in a comforting tone. The girl had been laying
there thrashing and panting from some kind of nightmare, but she had calmed
down just before waking up. “You’ve had quite a busy day.”



“Boy?” Ranma-chan quickly felt her chest, suddenly looking hopeful,
thinking it had all been a horrible nightmare, until her hand squeezed one
of her breasts. Her look of hope quickly faded. “Oh.”



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
wallet.” Yumi held up an identification card between two of her fingers,
bearing the kanji for Ranma Saotome emblazoned on it and his picture. “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 wallet and just happen to wear clothing like his.” There was a
brief pause. “Or you’ve had a run-in with water from a place called
Jusenkyo. Care to tell me which one it is?”



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.



“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. “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
putting it back into the wallet and passing it back to Ranma-chan, the
holographic logo of the Imperial Seal on it briefly flashing in the light.
“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 regular clothes
anymore, but an okonomiyaki seller’s outfit that was a little large on her.
Probably some of Ukyo’s clothes, she realized after a moment. She looked
over at Yumi. “But how do you know about Jusenkyo?”



“Wait here. I’ll be right back.” Yumi smiled in a reassuring manner and got
up from her chair. She went into the next room and closed the door behind
her. Ranma-chan heard running water for several minutes.



“Kuonji-san?” Ranma-chan sat up in bed, her injuries from the fights she
had been in seemed to be gone, but she still felt a bit unsteady. She set
her feet on the floor and was about to stand when the door suddenly opened.
A young man emerged, perhaps only a year or two older than Ranma-chan
herself was, dressed in exactly the same outfit that Yumi had been wearing,
toweling at his hair.



“Ta-dah!” He flashed Ranma-chan a grin.



“K-Kuonji-san?” the boy turned girl stuttered. “Y-you’ve been to Jusenkyo?”



“What was your first clue?” The boy nodded and grinned more broadly,
dropping the towel around his neck. He came over and flipped the chair
around, sitting on it and leaning forward up against the backrest. “I can
see you’ve got all kinds of questions.”



“H-how long have you been like this?”



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.



“It’s not nice to tell a woman she looks old, Ranma,” Yumi-kun said, a
brief twinkle in his eyes, offsetting an otherwise stern look. “Even when
she’s a man.” He chuckled and looked himself over. “But you’re right. My
cursed form hasn’t aged a day since I fell into that water, as near as I
can tell.” He rotated an arm in its shoulder socket, the now greater muscle
mass in the limb stretching the cloth of his outfit a bit. “That’s partly
why I’ve kept it. Maybe in a few more years I’ll just stay this way for
good.”



“Stay?” Ranma-chan blinked.



“Who wouldn’t want to remain young and strong? I’d be a teenaged 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. “Washing with that each day, you can
stop the changes from random splashes, at least the brief ones. An
acquaintance of mine makes it himself. I can get you a supply.”



“But that’s not a cure,” Ranma-chan said dismissively. Both of her other
cursed selves had already encountered such soap and discarded them as being
of any use. “What good does it do?”



“Well, think of having a Jusenkyo curse as like having a chronic sort of
illness, Ranma, like asthma.” Yumi-kun took the bar of soap from Ranma-chan
and spun it on the end of his index finger. “You’re right; this isn’t a
cure at all. But it is a means of controlling the curse, if even a little
bit. I had to soak myself in cold water for well over two minutes just now
before I changed. So while I may not be able to go swimming, except as a
man, I also don’t change every single time I get splashed with a random
thrown glass of water either. However, even that little bit of control
comes with a price.”



“A price?”



Yumi-kun smirked again. “You have to give the curse its way as much as you
can, or the soap gradually becomes less effective. I try to spend some time
each week as a man, which has been a lot harder to do with Ukyo around, let
me tell you.” He closed his hand into a loose fist around the bar of soap.
“Before she was around, I would sometimes spend an entire day or two as a
man, but not lately.”



Ranma-chan sprang to her feet. “I can’t do something like that!”



Ukyo arrived outside the door to her aunt’s room, having stealthed up the
stairs and down the hall during a lull in the crowd, even ghosting across
the boards that were specially loosened and designed to creak loudly if any
weight was placed upon them. She could hear two voices talking in the next
room, so it appeared that Ranko was awake. She opened the door.



Ranma-chan was startled when the door suddenly opened and Ukyo came into
the room.



“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.”



“Her son?” Ukyo replied, blinking in surprise. She was taken aback a
moment, then noticed the strong resemblance the boy in front of her had to
her aunt. “But I heard Ranko call herself a Kuonji.” Was that why Aunt Yumi
kept her distance from the clan? A son and daughter born out of wedlock?



“I’m his sister,” Ranma-chan chimed in without hesitation, wondering when
Ukyo had heard her say such a thing. That earned a surprised look from
Yumi-kun, which then quickly turned into a nod.



“Yes, that’s right,” Yumi-kun said, deciding to play along by putting an
arm around Ranma-chan’s shoulders, hoping it gave off a brotherly
appearance. He felt compactly solid muscles in Ranma-chan’s shoulder when
he gave it a squeeze. “Ranko here is my little sister.”



Ranma-chan grinned a bit nervously. Ukyo’s not going to buy this, she
thought. She stood there, striving to look sincere, as Yumi-kun left his
arm there around her shoulders.



However, the other girl suddenly smiled. “This is great! I’m glad to meet
you both.” She studied her two newfound cousins with interest. Then a
puzzled look crossed her face. “Yu-kun, why aren’t you two living here with
Aunt Yumi?”



“Oh, we’ve been out training,” Ranma-chan blurted out. She then quickly
added, “A long training trip.”



Yumi-kun nodded, giving Ranma-chan another brief hug before releasing her.
“Uh, yeah, we’re out training together a lot. I just came by when I heard
Ranko was here, to pick her up. Mom had to go run an errand of some kind.
I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”



“Well, I could use some help downstairs in the restaurant.” She then
grabbed Ranma-chan by the arm and grinned. “Since my date with Ranma was a
bust, work is the next best thing. Maybe you and I could even do some
sparring later on, Ranko. I’m kind of curious to see how good you are. So
come on.”



Ranma-chan gulped. “Y-you want me to help?”



“Sure.” Ukyo paused. “I can run the griddle just fine on my own, but I need
some help serving. I’m sure Aunt Yumi’s had you do waitressing duty before.”



While Ukyo dragged off a still protesting Ranma-chan, Yumi-kun just smiled
and shook his head.



“Looks like you were right, Cherry,” he murmured. It bothered him a little,
lying to Ukyo like this, but it was better this way. The girl had looked
really happy to discover a couple of cousins, especially since she did not
seem to have any friends here yet. And having ‘Ranko’ around the restaurant
on a regular basis would let him keep an eye on the cursed boy while he
thought about what he could do to help Ranma deal with his condition.



Yumi-kun could remember his own fears and doubts from the days of his own
youth, the horror of knowing that his original gender was like some kind of
tissue-thin mask that cold water could wash away in an instant. What had
seemed a simple mission in China for the Mobius Institute at the outset had
forever changed the destiny of the girl he once was, leaving Yumi Kuonji as
only half a woman, bearing a curse that forced her to turn her back on the
Kuonji clan. She had forsaken an arranged marriage to a childhood friend
and left her home behind her to try and find a new place for himself. The
experience had been terrifying and yet also deeply liberating.



However, Cherry had been right. The past always had a way of catching up to
someone when it was least expected. And downstairs right now was a teenaged
girl who was originally a teenaged boy, a boy who needed a mentor, needed
someone who understood the profound changes his life would have to undergo,
and the secret that he would have to live with until he either found a cure
or chose to accept his body’s cursed condition, as Yumi-kun had accepted
his years ago.



For a moment, he 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 after so long a time away, out
of nostalgia. When he had chosen to continue on in service to the Mobius
Institute instead of staying, at his request they had kindly 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 the
curse, weird events and all sorts of people wanting to fight her female or
male selves had appeared on an almost daily basis. If he closed his eyes,
he could remember it all so clearly.



After the incident at Jusenkyo, he had been forced to flee from China to
escape the relentless pursuit of Ko Em, the Chinese Amazon, the girl
seeking to fulfill her “Kiss of Death” on his female form. Fortunately she
was not able to track him back to Japan to exact her revenge. That had been
two months of sleepless nights spent wandering throughout the countryside
trying to evade her, and he could only imagine what might have happened if
he had also defeated Ko Em while in male form. There would have been no
hiding from her then.



The real party began in Japan. His old boss, Cherry, wanting to give him a
long R&R, had arranged for him to stay with the family of a friend of his,
the Himuras. Because of a miscommunication before his arrival, and an
untimely run-in with some rain, he had to remain in male form almost
constantly to stay there. It ended up with the father continually trying to
put him together with his rather ‘high-spirited’ daughter, Nodoka. But that
wasn’t really the end of it. Far from it.



Nodoka’s arch-rivals, a young noblewoman with a demented laugh named
Kenseiko and a tough-as-nails Furinkan cadet named Kimiko, had then entered
the picture. What followed were numerous fights, dramatic and romantic
plots, comedic scenes and seemingly a whole lot of time spent arguing with
Nodoka and being beaten up by her. One of them came to hate his female
identity, but all three girls fell in love with his male form, and they
fought over him, a lot. It was kind of flattering, in a way.



After six months, things finally came to a boil. Kenseiko and Nodoka nearly
killed each other, their mutual hatred and intense rivalry over him
eventually reaching the breaking point. He had arrived on the scene almost
too late, delayed due to fighting with Kimiko. The soldier girl hated his
female form due to a stupid misunderstanding, so it had been a lengthy,
savagely brutal battle for nearly an hour before Kimiko was finally
defeated.



Nodoka had been in danger of dying from internal injuries, and Kenseiko was
in roughly similar shape. After getting them both to the hospital, he
decided to leave. Despite all the arguments, despite all the times she hit
him for saying something unintentionally stupid that offended her, he just
couldn’t bear to see Nodoka hurt like that again, not over him. He had
contacted Cherry, and it was taken care of before the dawn. None of them
would ever remember either Yu or Yumi Kuonji anymore.



It was a time in his life 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. However, the past was gone, and those lives had gone on
without him. His younger self had only brought strife in his wake, so
perhaps that was sufficient reason to do as she had done. Seeing Ranma-chan
had brought all of those old memories back to the surface, as well as the
regrets associated with them. He had since repaid the Mobius Institute
several times over for erasing the memories of his existence, allowing that
younger Yumi Kuonji to simply walk away from the whole complicated mess her
life had become. Perhaps he should have requested them to take his own
memories of those days as well, so that he would not feel what he felt now.
Even now, he missed Nodoka, his first love.



Yumi-kun abruptly shook his head. It was time to focus on the present now
and call in some help. He pulled out his cellphone and dialed a number he
had not called in some time, feeling a pang of concern at using it now. It
rang twice before being picked up.



“Hello?” came a voice from the other end. “This is Sakuranbo.”



“Hello, Sakura,” he said calmly. “It’s me, Yumi Kuonji. I could use your
help with something. Can you come see me tonight?”



There was a brief hesitation, and then Sakura said, “Yes. Yes, of course.
Give me the address, and I’ll be there shortly.” After he told her the
address, they exchanged brief goodbyes, and Yumi-kun heard the phone hang
up on the other end. He closed up the cellphone and put it back in his
pocket, feeling relieved. He glanced at the window.



“Greetings once again, Kuonji-kun,” said Cherry suddenly from there.



“It’s sure busy around here tonight,” Yumi-kun remarked dryly. “What brings
you by again, Cherry?”



The monk smiled beatifically. It made him somehow even more horrifying.



Yumi-kun pinched the bridge of his nose slightly. He felt a headache coming
on.



“I was following the trail of your young friend,” Cherry said with a more
serious look. “We had a break-in at one of the Institute’s storage
facilities, and you’ve seen the results.” He looked thoughtful. “But it
wasn’t Nyannichuan he fell into, not exactly. He managed to find some of
your old foe Keel’s work.”



“Keel Lorentz?” Yumi-kun said in puzzlement. “He’s still dead, isn’t he?”



“With that one, who can say with absolute certainty?” Cherry said with a
shrug as he sat on the windowsill. “I checked the manifests at the site,
and the vat contained what we thought was Jusendo water, the same batch you
recovered from his base in Antarctica, the same water that we believe Keel
formulated to use in his Human Instrumentality efforts with whatever he
found underneath the ice there. The boy should have died, turned into
orange protoplasm like you reported that madman’s test subjects did. He
must possess a remarkably strong will to have survived the experience.
Unfortunately, since Shadowlaw stole the Musk Dynasty artifacts to lock and
unlock forms years ago, we can’t offer that solution to the boy’s current
difficulty, just like we couldn’t with you.” He bowed his head and solemnly
intoned, “Perhaps it is Fate.”



“You are one creepy old man at times.” Yumi-kun eyed Cherry, and the old
monk smiled beatifically back, causing the woman turned man to shiver
slightly with unconscious revulsion.



Yumi-kun sighed. Out of all the restaurants in all of Tokyo, someone hit
with a Jusenkyo curse came to him. To top it off, the boy was involved with
his niece. At least there weren’t any others involved except Ranma. That
would make the present situation vastly more complicated.



“So it should work like a regular Jusenkyo curse?” he wondered aloud. “The
whole hot and cold water thing?”



“I believe it will work like any other Jusenkyo curse,” Cherry said
solemnly.



“I’ll need a supply of soap for him.” Yumi-kun’s tone was thoughtful. “Can
you handle that?”



“I will, of course, take care of your request,” Cherry said with a nod. “In
the meantime, you can help the boy adapt. Observe him and let me know what
you find out. We don’t know what Keel’s concoction might have done to him.
There could be personality changes.”



Yumi-kun smiled and inwardly sighed.



“Thanks, Cherry.”



“I should go.” Cherry smiled at Yumi-kun. “It seems you will be acting as a
teacher in the days to come.” He sprang out the window with a chuckle.**



“Teacher, eh?” murmured Yumi-kun. He then headed off downstairs to see how
‘Ranko’ and his niece were doing.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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.



It was considered to be a plum assignment for a young agent, so she should
feel honored at receiving it. Instead, she felt unsettled.



Meeting with her superior had been disconcerting. Assistant Director
Ninomiya had seemed to be a pleasant woman, nothing at all like the image
of a poisonous viper that her father had painted of her in his occasionally
lurid descriptions over the past few years. Doubtless she had a core of
steel underneath her beautiful exterior, but that was a necessity in order
to rise to such a high position of authority in the Directorate, especially
for a woman. Still, Kasumi planned to keep her guard up, which was always a
necessity anyway amidst the cutthroat politics of the Empire’s Security
Directorate.



For now, she was assigned to work with Ninomiya’s personal assistant, Yui
Ikari. Likely it was so that her new boss could keep an eye on her. But she
and Ikari-senpai, who was only a little older than she was, had hit it off
very well. She had even received an invitation to come out with her
sometime, to meet with the woman’s friends for a night on the town. Despite
some initial hesitancy on the matter, she eventually decided to accept.
Being more sociable would help keep her mind off of her other concerns and
it had been too long since she had gone out and enjoyed herself.



Restaurants of all kinds were around her on the street, but some were
busier than others, a good sign of better food and service. While she was
walking down the street, it began to rain again. She hurried into the
nearest restaurant, named “Yu-Chan’s” on the banner out front.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Ranko was proving to be popular as a waitress, Ukyo observed, watching her
quickly taking orders and carrying trays of food back to the tables with an
experienced manner. Men in the restaurant smiled and watched the attractive
girl as she maneuvered her way around obstacles. She had seemed nervous at
first, especially at the mildly lust-filled stares men gave her, but after
a little while appeared more at ease. However, she still didn’t seem to be
comfortable with the flirtatious comments she was receiving from men, part
of the reason why Ukyo kept up her masculine disguise here. Most men could
be real jerks to women, not like her fiancé.



Her cousin, Yu, was currently taking 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 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?



At that moment, the door slid aside and Kasumi walked in. She looked
around, her sense of smell taking in the scents filling the air, of fresh
okonomiyaki batter frying, mixed with the rich odors of the various
toppings added in. She took a deep breath and smiled, looking around at the
interior. When her eyes passed by Yumi-kun, they paused. She quickly
blinked and looked away, embarrassed that she might have been staring at
the strange young man who had been looking back at her.



“Welcome to Yu-chan’s,” Ukyo said with a smile. She saw the brief look her
cousin and the uniformed girl had exchanged, but it was not one of
familiarity or even recognition. She was not his girlfriend. Pity. She
rather liked the other girl’s looks and manner. She turned her head and
shouted, “Hey, Ranko! Would you show this nice lady to a table?”



“On the way.” Ranma-chan came hustling over, having been in the back
delivering some food to other guests. But when she saw who had come in, she
paused for a moment in surprise. She then slowly walked up to where Kasumi
stood, dressed in a tailored Security Directorate uniform. She pasted a
smile on her face and gestured with one hand towards an empty table. “Right
this way, Miss.” She then led Kasumi to sit alone at the table for two,
which happened to be right behind where Yu was seated against the wall at
another such table. She handed the eldest Tendo daughter a small menu and
gave her a nod. “I’ll be back in a minute to take your order.”



“Thank you,” Kasumi replied graciously. She promptly busied herself with
the menu, looking over choices without really seeing them. Her heart seemed
to be beating a trifle fast, and she chastised herself for having such a
visceral response towards a strange man for the second time in a week. She
felt like such a wanton woman lately for noticing men other than her
husband like that, and she was grateful that she was seated with her back
towards the younger man at the next table.



First Lieutenant Godai and now this young man, she thought, feeling a
slight blush arising on her cheeks. What was wrong with her? She was a
married woman! She quickly consoled herself that her latest lapse was
simply a momentary physical response, some combination of things that
prompted her to feel this way. She forced herself to pay more attention to
the menu, meanwhile berating herself internally. Besides, she had never
been interested in younger men. They were so... young.



Yumi-kun took a sip of his water, feeling the cold savor of an ice cube in
his mouth. He crunched it absently between his back molars as he thought
about what to do about Ranma. 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. He took another
swallow of water as Ranma-chan walked past.



“So, what can I get you?” he overheard her ask behind him to the girl
seated at the next table.



“Um, I’ll try a shrimp special,” Kasumi replied. Ranma-chan made a few
quick scratches on the order pad and headed off to give it to Ukyo.



Yumi-kun was grateful that his back was to the girl in the gray uniform.
Staring at women was not something he normally did, since he was one
himself much of the time, he mused. The hormones of his male body tended to
make him more easily aroused, as they would any teenaged boy. It was a
distraction he could have done without more than once. Luckily, he was
saved from further thought on this by the arrival of Sakura Sakuranbo, but
then he blinked at the sight of how she was dressed when she opened up her
overcoat.



Sakura looked around, grateful to finally get into a warmer place after
enduring cold, wet gusts outside, and she quickly met with Yumi-kun’s
startled gaze. She slid her dripping umbrella into the stand near the door
and slipped off her overcoat to hang it up. Underneath it, instead of her
usual shrine priestess garb, she wore a trendy, short-skirted cotton dress
in white with a matching, wide, loose leather belt resting down low on her
hips, the outfit showing off her feminine charms quite well. The skirt
barely came down to mid-thigh, exposing a generous view of her long,
shapely legs. Light tan hose, a small black leather pocketbook and
ankle-high black leather boots with modest heels completed the ensemble.



Ukyo studied the strange woman as she sat down at the table her cousin was
seated at, surprised to see him involved with someone several years older.
But it confirmed her suspicions that he had a date. No woman would wear
something like that to meet someone who was just a friend. She wondered
idly if Ranma would like seeing her in such an outfit.



Yumi-kun realized belatedly that his mouth had been hanging open and he
hastily shut it. He looked at her in puzzlement.



“Uh, Sakura,” he said eventually. “That’s quite an outfit.”



“I was out on a date,” she said simply. “But it wasn’t going well. I’m
actually a bit glad you called.”



“You are?” Yumi quickly glanced over at Ukyo and the pigtailed girl, seeing
Ukyo hastily look away from observing them. Ranma-chan, on the other hand,
was currently busy with some customers. “Uh, I see.” He shrugged. “I have a
need for your services.”



“I’m listening.” She set her purse down to one side and leaned in a bit.
Her gaze became all business. “What do you need me to do?”



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.



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



“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.



Kasumi was blushing as well, seeing the boy going off with a woman who was
quite obviously several years older than he was, to conduct their
transaction in private. She took another drink of water and tried not to
think about what was likely about to happen upstairs.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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.



“What was that for?” he said, holding a hand against his sore cheek.



Sakura felt her anger seethe within her. “You don’t call me for well over a
year, and when you finally do, it’s for business.” She tried to slap him
again, but he caught her wrist well before the blow could land. They held
that tableau for several moments, their gazes locked.



“I’m... sorry, Sakura,” Yumi-kun said quietly, finally releasing her hand
and looking away. “I never meant to hurt you at all. I’ve just never been
good at dealing with the complexities of relationships, and ours was pretty
complex.”



“Well, you did hurt me,” she huffed then sighed. “But I’ve gotten over it,
mostly.” She stepped away from him to look over the room. “I didn’t even
know you were living in Nerima.”



“Well, after what happened between us,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “I
thought it best to give us some distance apart, so I came here about a year
ago and set up my restaurant.” After a moment, he then added, “Cherry
visits me every few months to deliver me my supplies. He told me you’d gone
to Europe on an assignment for the Institute.”



“Yes, I needed a change of scenery as well and just returned to Japan
recently.” Sakura stood in front of the window overlooking the street and
turned to face him. She crossed her arms in front of her. “You must have
known that, or you wouldn’t have called. So, why did you call me,
Kuonji-kun?”



“The girl, downstairs,” Yumi-kun said. “The redhead. She’s really a boy
with a Jusenkyo curse. I need your help to set up an identity for him in
his female form, one that will stand up to fairly heavy scrutiny, as well
as an ID card that works like mine, one that switches when he changes. I
also need to update my Yu Kuonji identity.”



Sakura shrugged. “Those are simple enough things. Why not just go to the
Institute directly? Why call me?”



“I’d prefer to keep this quiet and deal with it myself.” Yumi-kun came over
to stand next to her. “I’m the only one who understands what it’s like for
him. I’m his best hope to help him deal with what he’s going to go through,
until a chance at a cure shows up. So, will you help me?”



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 curse similar 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 blinked, her observations cutting a little too close for comfort.
“He’s engaged to my niece, Ukyo, the girl who was at the counter,” he said
a bit defensively. “She doesn’t know about their curses or mine, by the
way, and I’d like to keep it like that.”



He paused for a moment before speaking again, and his tone was softer.
“Now, while you’re right that he’s attractive in both forms, setting aside
the fact that he’s engaged to my niece, he also happens to be less than
half my age. I’m not about to rob the cradle, Sakura.”



“It’s difficult to tell a difference in your ages when you’re like this,”
Sakura said solemnly. She stepped a little away from him and kept her eyes
averted from his face. “I’ll help you, Kuonji-kun, on one condition.”



“What sort of condition?” Yumi-kun studied Sakura. He had never been very
good at figuring out women, even having been born one, and that was still
true.



Sakura lifted her gaze to meet his. “I just want us to try again,
Kuonji-kun. All I’m asking for is another chance for us to be a couple
again.”



“I-I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Sakura,” Yumi-kun said, his gaze
breaking from hers to look out the window. “We had our share of troubles,
and I don’t think Cherry would approve.” In fact, he was pretty sure his
mentor would not.



“Not all of it was bad,” said Sakura as she laid her right palm flat on his
chest. She felt his heart skip a beat at the contact and smiled slightly at
feeling such a response from him. “There was a lot that was good between us
too, and I think there still is, even more so now after we’ve both had some
time apart to think about things. As for my uncle, I’m a fully grown woman,
and he does not dictate my life.”



Yumi-kun met her gaze again and considered her offer for several long
moments. His social life as a woman was basically non-existent, and it
would be nice to have a relationship again, even with another woman. Sakura
understood his curse and accepted him in both forms. While she preferred
him to be Yumi-kun rather than Yumi, the two of them enjoyed a certain
level of comfort together when he was in either form. And while he didn’t
want to admit it, he had also missed her a great deal, despite the fierce
arguments they sometimes had.



Finally, he nodded. “All right, Sakura. We’ll give it one more try, but I’m
not promising anything. Let’s just take it one day at a time and see how it
goes.”



“Very well,” she said, looking at him seriously. “Kiss me then, to seal our
little bargain. Do this small thing right now, and I’ll help your young
protégé.”



“If that’s what it takes.” Yumi-kun smiled slightly in amusement as he
moved to rest his hands lightly on Sakura’s hips. She demurely closed her
eyes and tilted her face upwards slightly, and he lowered his lips towards
hers. They met in a soft, rather tentative kiss, one that began deepening
within moments. His arms went around her waist as Sakura’s arms moved up to
encircle his shoulders, clutching at him tightly, familiar passions surging
up within them both from the kiss. They eventually ended up with Sakura’s
back pressed against the wall, one of her legs lifted and partly wrapped
around him to lightly pin them together. Their hands roamed on each other
familiarly, driven by their powerful desires.



After a while, Yumi-kun reluctantly pulled back from the embrace.



“S-satisfied?” he asked her, his breathing heavy, stepping back with a
twinge of regret. He saw her take several quiet breaths and then open her
eyes again to look at him.



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.”



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Nabiki sighed as she walked home alone in the darkened streets. It was a
quiet night, the streets slick with rain. After helping Yohko home, all she
wanted to do was get home, take a long soak in a hot tub and then curl up
in bed and go to sleep. She wasn’t far from her house now, and she was
walking past a vacant lot when she noticed Cherry camped out there. The
rain had stopped a little while ago, but there were still cold gusts
blowing, with the promise of more rain to come from the dark skies.



She walked over and noticed he was cooking dinner, a small rice cooker
sitting close to the flames of his small fire. The smell was enticing, and
so was its warmth on such a cold night. It reminded her that she was late
for dinner at home.



“Hello, Cherry,” she said, kneeling down next to him, her eyes on the
flickering flames. They reminded her of what she had undergone in training
for the Amaguriken. “It’s been a while, old man.”



“And how are you this evening, young warrior?” Cherry responded with a
solemn nod, looking over at her and pulling the end of the long pipe from
his lips. The smell of tobacco smoke it gave off reminded her a bit of the
blend Cologne always smoked, a stray memory coming from her analog’s life.



“Hurt. Tired.” Nabiki’s tone of voice was a touch sarcastic as she knelt
down. “How about yourself?”



“I am well,” he replied, his eyes occasionally studying her as he puffed on
his pipe. “It has been a most interesting day.”



“Yeah, tell me about it,” she grumbled, touching a spot on her ribs where
one of Ranko’s fists had connected. “I’m glad it’s about over.”



Cherry pulled his pipe from his lips again. “Would you care to talk about
it? It appears we both have some free time.”



“Damn, but you’re a strange one, Cherry,” Nabiki chuckled, looking at him.
“What makes you think I’d want to talk about what’s going on in my life
with a total stranger?”



“I’m a priest. Helping people is part of what I do.” He gave her a smile, a
truly ugly sight. “After listening to the words of the kami in the winds,
the water and the subtle movements of the trees, listening to people
becomes far easier.” He studied her. “I sense great anger in you tonight.”



“Anger, huh?” She shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right. I was in a fight today.”



“Did you win?”



“It was just a setback today,” she grumbled, not quite answering him. “The
fight’s not over yet.” She curled her hand into a fist. “Next time, I’ll
win,” she swore. While she had dropped a few fights to Ranma, the losses
had not been important. She had won the match that mattered though, and now
she was the best. And she would beat that little redhead to a pulp when she
saw her again. “I don’t lose.”



Cherry laughed. “Such a fierce attitude you have. It is gratifying to see
in one so young.”



“My name is Nabiki Tendo,” she said, calming herself.



Cherry gave her a nod. “Nice to know your name, Tendo-san. Do you happen to
know a young man in the area named Ranma Saotome? He’s a martial artist
like yourself, with the same pride. Perhaps you’ve met.”



“I know him,” Nabiki grunted, her gaze solemn as she looked into the fire.
“He’s sort of my fiancé.”



Cherry looked surprised for a moment, then he nodded sagely. “It must be a
bit difficult for you, with both of you being warriors.”



“Ranma’s not a problem,” she said. “He and I have come to a sort of
understanding together.”



“Have you two ever fought each other?” He took a puff on his pipe, his gaze
far away.



“A few times,” she said with a shrug. “I’ve beaten him.”



“I see. And how did he take that? Losing to you, I mean.”



“Probably about as well as I would,” she said, shrugging again. “But he’s
going to have to get used to it.” She curled her hand into a fist and held
it up in front of her. “He’s never going to beat me now.”



Cherry grinned. “So certain of that are you?” He looked away from her and
into the fire. “Well, perhaps he’ll surprise you. It is the way of a
martial artist to strive for victory over rivals.”



“What do you know of the martial arts, old man?” Nabiki asked with a
chuckle. “You some kind of ancient master?” she teased him.



Cherry gazed at her solemnly. “I know a little something about the martial
arts, Tendo-san. I wasn’t always the monk you see before you, you know.”



“Well, even if you are some kind of master,” she said, standing back up.
“You’re not like the one Ranma’s got now.” Her eyes glittered with envy as
she looked at the old monk. “He’s become the student of Master Jun Fan Lee,
the Dragon.”



“A great master indeed, I am told,” Cherry acknowledged. “He was quite the
sensation when he arrived upon the Arena scene years ago.”



“Yeah, he’s Ranma’s new master,” she said, a bit bitterly. “And even though
I beat Ranma squarely, Lee-san didn’t pick me as his student. He said I had
too much of an attitude.” She snorted. “That’s a laugh. My attitude’s just
fine.”



Cherry stood up and grinned at her, nodding. “I’m sure you will be a great
warrior, Tendo-san. Your future shines brightly before you. If you ever
need any advice, feel free to look for me.”



“Thanks, Cherry,” Nabiki replied, grinning back. “You’re no Happosai or
Cologne though. I need a great master to teach me, even a pervert like he
was. But I’m glad we talked.”



“As am I, Tendo-san.” He looked up at the clouds. “But you had best get
home now. There is a storm coming.”



“See you later, Cherry.” Nabiki gave him a quick bow and ran off in the
direction of home, her step feeling oddly lighter.



The elderly monk watched her leave, his expression troubled as rain began
to pour from the skies again. He picked up his rice cooker and left his
fire to be extinguished by the rain, ducking into his small tent. He set it
down on a towel and relaxed, taking another puff of his pipe.



“Yes, Nabiki Tendo,” he said softly. “Your future does shine brightly
before you, as it does for young Saotome, but I fear it leads to a very
dark place for you both. A very great storm looms in the distance.”



Rain began slashing wetly at the outside of his tent. He listened to it and
frowned, feeling the agitation of the elements.



“Yes, the storm comes. But there are still players yet to appear. Who will
be the one to gather them?” He took a puff from his pipe. “And how do you
know of Happosai, let alone Cologne? I wonder.”



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



“<Look at her go! She’s going to win again for sure.>”



“<Of course she’s going to win. She’s too strong. None of those weaklings
they put up against her will ever defeat her.>”



“<Oh! That was brutal! Wherever did she learn _that_ combination?>”



The twilight air was cool and rather still as a figure emerged from the
council chambers of the Joketsuzoku, the sounds of a fierce combat almost
drowned out by the comments made by those watching a television set that
could briefly be seen past the figure in the doorway, sitting in the center
of the main hall. The door closed, shutting off the light and sounds
trailing after the figure, who stepped out into the dim illumination of the
sun now fallen behind the mountains and sighed.



“<Shan Pu,>” murmured the girl. She ran a hand back through pink hair woven
at the back into a loose braid that fell between her shoulders and down to
the small of her back. Her athletic figure was clad in a snug silk blouse
and pants that showed off her femininity without being obvious, the cloth
dyed to match the color of her hair. It was a simple but sturdy outfit, and
variations of it were worn by most women in the village. Tough but flexible
shoes covered her feet as she began walking away from the building, still
muttering to herself. “<How strong you’ve grown these past months.>”



Her name was Peh Fum (although the outsiders that visited their village
would always mangle her name into Perfume), and she was a Joketsuzoku
Amazon.



A second figure emerged from the council chambers a few moments after
Perfume, the door closing quickly once again.



“<That should be you in Japan, Peh Fum,>” said the new arrival, dressed in
a similar sort of outfit to Perfume, the woman’s face and figure almost
identical to hers. “<That should have been you.>”



Her name was Peh Yin, a Joketsuzoku Amazon and Perfume’s mother.



The words were the refrain to an old and familiar song, one that Perfume
had grown more than a little tired of hearing. “<I know, Mother. I know.>”
Her feet continued making their way towards home, the other woman’s step
keeping pace easily with hers.



“<You won the village’s tournament this year, soundly defeating every
opponent, but it’s still her they watch,>” Peh Yin grumbled. “<Shan Pu’s
nothing special, not like you, my dear daughter. Yes, she’s a talented
warrior. But talent in wielding one’s fists and feet against barbaric
outsiders in that brutal spectacle back there does not equate to leadership
potential. Despite your abilities, they would relegate you to becoming that
girl’s advisor. Her advisor!>” She hastily calmed herself.



Peh Yin studied her daughter and lowered her voice. “<We’ve both seen the
revealing clothes she wears, the pictures of her in those lurid magazines,
the way she prances about and basks in the roars of the crowds - of _men_.
Ko Lon refuses to see it, but the outside world has corrupted Shan Pu,
rendered her unfit to ever lead us. You would never have fallen so, my dear
daughter.>”



The two continued on, and Peh Yin kept on speaking to Perfume in low tones.
“<You must destroy her, Peh Fum, for the good of our people. If she isn’t
dealt with, her corruption will eventually obliterate us and our way of
life. I have raised you up and trained you to be at least her equal in
martial skill, and your intellectual brilliance far, far outshines her
feeble mind. Yet the talk in the council chamber nowadays is always of Shan
Pu and bleated praises for Ko Lon, for her ‘vision’ in embracing the
Japanese barbarians in this way. How neatly that old woman managed to
maneuver things, sacrificing all of our traditions to further her own
ambitions for Shan Pu.>”



The cool air of the fading day brushed across Perfume’s face, and her flesh
ached a bit on one side. She brushed back the hair which artfully covered
half her face, her flawless features fully unveiled for a moment. Talk of
Shampoo always seemed to awaken an ache there that she felt at times like
this. Her teeth clenched slightly as she paused in her walking.



It wasn’t fair! She had spent months preparing to face Shampoo again, and
she had overcome many trials that would have broken a lesser woman. But
now, after finally returning to the village of her birth, even more
powerful than she had ever been before, she had learned that Shampoo had
been gone for months. It was beyond frustrating.



“<What would you have me do, Mother? Matriarch Ko Lon has forbidden any of
us unmarried women to leave the village until Shan Pu returns to us.>”
Bitterness laced her words.



“<There are fewer and fewer of those left,>” Peh Yin replied, a tinge of
bitterness in her own tones as well. That was one of the few good things to
come out of Shampoo’s ascension to the elite in the Arena, through her
seamless string of victories that had yet to see a single defeat mar its
length. A fair number of outsider men from far and wide had sought out
their humble village, after seeing Shampoo fighting on television or in one
of the lesser arenas on her path to Tokyo. Some were simply curious about
the Amazons, but others were eager to test themselves against the legendary
martial arts prowess of the women of Shampoo’s birthplace.



Most of them failed, the strength of a Joketsuzoku woman proving to be too
much for them to overcome, but a growing number of couples had begun
swelling the ranks of the village, due to a flow of men who were strong
enough to win brides. That was increasing Shampoo’s favor with the tribal
elders even more, something Cologne must have certainly foreseen. And such
new blood was already strengthening their people. A few of the newly
married girls, even several that were Perfume and Shampoo’s peers in age,
were already pregnant with the next generation of Joketsuzoku.



Peh Yin welcomed such new strength being added to the bloodlines. But at
what price? Shampoo’s career in the Arena had awakened the world to the
Joketsuzoku, but the outside world only saw them as quaint relics and a
source of single women, as if each warrior of their tribe was just waiting
around to be conquered by some man, ignoring the three thousand years of
history that had forged the Joketsuzoku into a nation of heroic women.



The girl was far too much like her mother, Ko Em (which outsiders like the
other woman’s husband wrongly pronounced as Comb). Comb was also a very
talented warrior, a former champion herself. For years, she had been tasked
to be the Enforcer, the one who carried out the collective will of the
Council of Elders. It was a position of prestige among the Joketsuzoku that
Peh Yin had long desired for herself, but politics had given it to Comb,
not victory in battle. It was infuriating.



However, despite Comb’s prowess as a warrior, the lavender-haired woman had
failed in her role as an Amazon, refusing to subjugate her husband into
becoming a proper Joketsuzoku male. For that reason alone, she should have
been disqualified to be the Enforcer. She had even let him pass his family
name to their daughter, calling her Shan Pu instead of Ko Pu, as a sign of
the love she had for her husband.



Peh Yin shook her head. That wasn’t love. It was weakness. Men were only
good for three things: taking care of a household, companionship and
providing strong seed to father healthy daughters. While she loved her own
husband fiercely, enjoyed the pleasures of their shared bed with great
relish and deeply treasured him as her prize possession, her will was the
law of their household, not his. She had instilled that value into her own
daughter as a dutiful mother should, even as her own mother had once taught
her, so that Perfume would understand the proper roles for women and men.



However, after her defeat by her new husband, Comb had followed a different
path with her man. While she had gone to her marriage bed with him the same
night that Peh Yin had gone to hers with her new husband, she had failed to
begin instructing him as to what his proper place was now to be as the
husband of an Amazon. Defeating a woman of the Joketsuzoku did not
subjugate her to him, only proved his seed worthy of her. Most outsider men
did not understand this, at first.



Peh Yin smiled at the thought of how fiercely her own husband had resisted
her, not understanding his new role. His victory over her had given him a
false impression of how their life together would be lived. Like a proud
stallion, he had bucked and fought her at every turn. It had taken her both
tender coaxings as well as numerous painful and even brutal beatings given
him by her and by her aunts and female cousins before her husband had been
properly broken in, the carrot and the stick. But nowadays he was like a
trained warhorse, still strong and worthy of her love, only now obedient to
her will.



Those were the proper roles for men and women, not the perversions of the
outside world, where women submitted themselves to men like chattel. While
a lesser heresy, Comb actually believed herself to be her man’s equal, an
attitude she had passed on to her daughters, but that only demeaned her.
Women were not the equals of men, but their superiors. After all, three
thousand years of history had forged the Joketsuzoku into steel, beautiful,
strong and quite capable of besting any man in battle.



However, Shampoo had rendered her people’s cultural heritage and pride into
mere commodities that she then bartered to the ignorant masses in order to
fuel her own popularity and aggrandize herself, and Peh Yin hated the girl
for that with a fierce passion, almost as much as she had long hated Comb.
The old ways that had shaped their people into proud warriors were in
danger of being swept away on a rising tide of regard for the new way of
life Shampoo exemplified, one out amidst the Empire and its patriarchal
order. That could never be allowed to happen, not ever. Fortunately, her
dear daughter would end that threat when she broke Shampoo before the eyes
of the council and their people, ending the danger the girl’s example posed
to their very way of life.



It helped that Perfume had her own reasons for hating Shampoo. As the
number of single girls who were of marriageable age began dwindling,
Perfume found herself being challenged by more and more men visiting their
village, men who had such confidence in their skill to think their strength
sufficient to best hers. Even though she was built much like her nemesis
was, with a bosomy, athletic figure, the fact that men saw her as some kind
of substitute for Shampoo was aggravating, filling the girl with a growing
resentment of her nemesis’ popularity. She had nearly killed the last man
she fought, who had unwisely told her she was ‘just like Shampoo.’ The
village healers said he might someday walk again, but Perfume had finished
him as a fighter.



“<The numbers that remain have grown stronger,>” Perfume finally said in
observation, her tone of voice calm once more. All of the weaker single
girls were now married. “<I’ve grown stronger. Far stronger than I was
before.>”



“<Strong enough to defeat Shan Pu when she returns to us, covered in glory
and fully steeped in her corruption by outsider men?>” Peh Yin asked
acidly. “<Her stupid cow of a mother will likely pass to her the title of
Enforcer, with the full blessings of the council. But that honor should be
yours, as it should have been mine. You deserve it, not Shan Pu. You’ve
trained far too long and hard for it to be given to one like her.>”



“<I _will_ defeat Shan Pu, Mother,>” Perfume declared. “<A repeat of our
last battle will not happen.>” Shame and anger at her rival burned within
her. The memories of holding her face and screaming in agony as Shampoo
calmly walked away from her at Cologne’s side were still vivid. She could
still feel her own life’s blood pouring out from between her fingers,
flowing from the wound that had nearly taken her eye and could have easily
disfigured her for life. It hadn’t, luckily for her.



She had left the village that same night, taking to the road on a long
training journey, her only goal to return and defeat Shampoo. While away
from the village for those many months, the injury had eventually healed
without leaving even a hint of a scar, as her body had always healed, just
like her father did whenever he was injured. But the vivid memory of it
remained, driving her onwards to train and keep training until she was
satisfied she was ready. It was a wound inside her soul that would never be
soothed, not until Shampoo lay twisted and broken like a rag doll and dead
at her feet.



As her mother kept saying of late, it had to be done, for the future good
of their people. Shampoo had betrayed them all. She had to pay for her
crime, and her sins could only be washed away in copious amounts of blood.



Perfume gazed solemnly at her mother. “<When my opportunity arrives, I will
show everyone in the village Shan Pu’s weakness, that she has been
corrupted and is no longer a true Joketsuzoku. I will show them all that
she is not the one who is destined to lead us.>”



The pink-haired girl turned her gaze upwards towards the heavens, an almost
religious fervor filling her. “<I am.>”



Off to one side, Peh Yin smiled. How proud she was of her daughter.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Asuka felt her body fold over the fist slamming into her gut, and then her
world spun as a follow-up punch snapped her head to one side. She lost her
balance and sat down with a heavy thump. Her eyes glazed over for a moment.



“Get up,” Nanashi, her master, said calmly. “We’re only just getting
started, Saginomiya-san.”



Growling, Asuka felt her vision steady. The blows had not been at full
power, or she would not still be conscious. She glared at him.



“Very well.” She bounced to her feet and stalked towards him, even as he
unfolded his arms and waited for her. Her gi-clad body leaped into an
attack.



The next thing she knew she slammed face down into the mat that covered the
floor. Had she hit him that time? She could not recall. The impact did not
hurt much, but it knocked the wind out of her a bit. Even so, she rolled
over to one side and came to her feet once again.



“Good.” Nanashi waited a moment for her to regain her bearings and then he
launched into a series of attacks on his student, forcing her to defend
while still off-balance. One of his strikes sailed past her face, missing
by millimeters. “Very good.”



Asuka grabbed the limb before he could retract it and then she stepped in
to drive her fist into his ribcage. She was disappointed when his free hand
stopped the blow, his palm interposing and capturing the fist for a moment.
She sprang back before he could respond, moving without thinking.



Nanashi stopped and nodded. “You felt it, didn’t you? The moment of no
thought. I could sense it.”



“I-I think so.” Asuka wiped her nose on the sleeve of her gi, and it came
away flecked with some of the blood oozing from her nose. She glanced at it
and shrugged. “I just let it happen.”



“That is one of the key tenets of the martial arts, Asuka,” he said
solemnly. “Acting without thought.” He smiled grimly. “Some disciples have
based their entire lives around that single principal, existing in the
moment and responding without a single thought about consequences. Thought
creates hesitation, and hesitation can lose a fight. But in that moment of
no thought, the body is free to respond in an instant, guided by instinct
alone.”



“Instinct, huh.” Asuka considered the notion.



“Where is your boyfriend?” Nanashi suddenly asked. “He should be here for
this lesson. He is not usually so late.”



Asuka’s gaze narrowed. “Mikado Sanzenin is _not_ my boyfriend,” she huffed.
“As if I would have anything to do with such a womanizer.”



“How odd,” he said in reply, his gaze a bit mocking. “I could have sworn I
heard his voice when I passed by your room the other night.” He dipped his
head down for a brief moment. “My mistake.”



Asuka’s cheeks flushed for a moment. “That is no concern of yours!”



Nanashi started to reply, but then he felt a familiar pain surge up from
within his skull. He felt pressure building within it, and he groaned,
caught off-guard. He dropped to one knee, his fingers already pressing hard
at pressure points on his skull and upper body.



Asuka did not move closer, only watched with a certain fascination as her
master’s face bulged out slightly on one side, a vein in his temple
throbbing. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. What was wrong with him?



“Nanashi-sensei?” she asked, when the worst of it seemed to have passed.



Nanashi stood. “It is nothing,” he grunted, feeling the swelling of his
face receding, the sound of blood that had thundered in his ears fading
back to nothing. “A reminder of something I must take care of someday.”



“You looked to be suffering some kind of attack,” Asuka observed. She knelt
down in front of him. “Are you well enough to continue with the lesson?”



“Continue with your practice, and I will return shortly. I just need some
fresh air and a few moments alone to compose myself.” Without another word,
he left the dojo area.



Asuka silently watched him leave, wondering what had just happened to him.
She then shrugged. He would tell her, or he would not. Men were like that.
However, so long as his teachings gave her the power to crush her rival,
Kodachi Kuno, he could be as mysterious and enigmatic as he cared to be.



Speaking of mysteries, where the hell had that womanizing idiot gone off
to? Where was Mikado Sanzenin? Her hands curled into fists at her sides.
And why did she even care?



Nanashi stepped out into the cool night air as he emerged from the mansion
on to a balcony, sliding the door shut behind him. He walked a short
distance, feeling the trembling in his muscles gradually fading. He jabbed
at a few pressure points on himself and groaned with relief as the pain
finally faded.



“This is a nice setup you’ve picked out for yourself,” drawled a female
voice from above, speaking Japanese with an accent.



Nanashi turned around as a figure dropped down quietly next to him. It was
a girl, wearing a plain, brown Chinese outfit, and a broad-brimmed hat on
her head that was tipped down, hiding her face above her nose. Blonde
tresses could be seen flowing down to her shoulders. When she suddenly
tilted it up, beautiful, Caucasian features were revealed, with deep blue
eyes which held a hint of venom in them. She was very well-built in a leggy
sort of way, with an ample bustline swelling the confines of her shirt, in
her early twenties, if not late teens.



“What are you doing here, Colt?” he asked, frowning.



“Is that any way to speak to me?” she replied, looking up at him, the venom
in her eyes fading slightly, replaced by a playfully malicious glint. “You
should treat girls with more kindness.” She rose up on her toes and gave
him a kiss on the cheek.



Nanashi snorted. “Did my father send you?”



“No,” Colt replied, stepping back to look him in the eyes. “I was simply in
the area, and I had heard you were, too. I don’t think your father
particularly cares one way or the other what happens to you.” Her tone was
matter of fact, as if commenting about the weather.

Nanashi turned away. “So much for the favored son,” he growled. “I see you
still do his bidding.”



“After a fashion,” she said after a moment. “He knows better than to try
and control me.” She looked around at the Saginomiya grounds laid out in
front of the balcony they stood upon. “But I see you’ve bounced back after
your fall from grace. I heard about it only recently. But, as I said
before, this is a nice setup you’ve got here.”



He shrugged. “It will do for now.”



“You’re just like your father, Ha-” She was startled when he clamped his
hand down on her mouth.

“That is not my name anymore,” he hissed, releasing her. “I am Nanashi now.”



Colt ran a hand down her jawline, looking thoughtful. “I see. You have
changed.” She laid a hand on his arm. “There is a new strength in you now.
It’s quite appealing,” she said in rather sultry tones. Her gaze slid over
to look towards the dojo where Asuka continued with her practice. “I’m sure
that girl has noticed it too.” She slid her hand up and down his arm and
smiled. “Yes, you are quite strong.” She continued to feel his arm.

“Stop that.” Nanashi pulled away from her grasp. “I must get back to my
student.”



Colt nodded. “I’ll be in touch.” With a powerful flex of her leg muscles,
she leaped up to land on the roof. She turned around and grinned down at
him. “So long, my son.”



“Goodbye,” he said softly. “Mother.” They exchanged a rather intimate look
and then she vanished off into the night.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



“I’m sorry that my husband is not here right now,” said Nodoka as she set
down a cup of tea on a small coaster. “He went out with one of his friends
after teaching his last class for the day.”



“That’s quite all right, Saotome-san,” said Hinako, smiling at her as she
sat comfortably at the main table, her legs folded beneath her. “I think
this will give us an opportunity to discuss your son’s future, woman to
woman.”



Nodoka bowed slightly. “I am honored that the Security Directorate feels
that my son has such great value that they would assign you to assist him
in furthering himself in the Empire, Ninomiya-san. But I’m still a little
uncertain as to what that entails.” She saw the other woman lean forward as
she spoke and was grateful that Genma was not around, as her unexpected
guest was quite beautiful.



“It’s quite simple, Saotome-san,” said Hinako as she picked up her teacup.
She inhaled the vapors and took a brief sip, finding it to be quite
flavorful. She looked at Nodoka. “Your son is an asset to the Empire, his
mind one that comes along only once in a generation, maybe even longer. I
would be remiss in my own duties to the Empire if I did not do all in my
power to foster his growth, to safeguard him and teach him how to avoid the
pitfalls his inexperience would put him at risk of.”



“Pitfalls?” Nodoka sipped at her own tea.



“Despite its high-mindedness, even the Ministry of Science has politics to
contend with. So who better to assist your son in navigating through the
perils facing him than someone who has been through them herself? I offer
myself as your son’s instructor in politics, having survived one of the
sternest places to learn such things myself.”



“I don’t know,” Nodoka said thoughtfully, setting down her tea. “There is a
strong possibility that Ranma will be engaged to someone who can assist him
in that way, as his wife. Actually, there are two such young women in his
life right now.”



“You speak of Kodachi Kuno and Nabiki Tendo?”



“Why, yes. But how did you know of their names?”



Hinako smiled. “It’s my job to learn such things, but it’s my pleasure to
do so when it involves a personal interest in a subject.”



“A personal interest?” Nodoka studied Hinako.



Hinako waved a hand in negation, chuckling. “No, it’s nothing sordid,” she
lied smoothly. “I came across your son’s file, and what I saw of his future
potential intrigued me. I want to be involved with him, to help him as a
teacher and a mentor.”



“And what do you get out of this, Ninomiya-san, assuming I approve of this
arrangement?” She picked up her tea and sipped it.



“Well, I get the satisfaction of passing on my own knowledge as his
teacher. I plan to instruct Ranma to the best of my abilities, teach him
all that he must learn to succeed. He has not spent very much time around
his peers, has he?”



“Well, no,” Nodoka said, studying her guest. “Ranma spent most of his time
growing up around older men, scientists of various disciplines who had
something to teach him. He hasn’t been around people his own age very much.”



Hinako nodded. “So he’s never experienced the petty rivalries and
jealousies of his peer group.”



“No, I imagine not,” she said, suddenly wondering at the fights he had been
getting into. “Do you think you could help him?”



Hinako smiled, showing teeth. “I’m sure I can.” She handed Nodoka a card
with an address and telephone number on it. “Have Ranma contact me or come
visit me at my home some evening. He and I will talk, and he can decide for
himself if I have anything of value to offer him.”



“I understand,” said Nodoka, bowing slightly as she took the proffered
card. She suddenly felt silly at her earlier concerns, that the woman
seemed to have a predatory interest in Ranma, rather than a genuine concern
for his welfare. “I’ll have him contact you, for your advice.”



Hinako bowed low. “I promise to do my best to help your son.” She lifted
her face. “Until Ranma decides, why not keep this a secret from your
husband? Your son should not feel pressured in any way as to whether or not
to accept my offer, and I’m sure he would seek out his father’s opinion.
The choice should be Ranma’s alone, as it involves his life and his future.
Consider it a first lesson in what I shall teach him.”



“I suppose that will be all right,” Nodoka replied. She stood when Hinako
did. “Thank you for offering to assist my son.”



Hinako smiled again and bowed low. “It will be a pleasure to teach him,
Saotome-san.”



Hinako left, her smile not fading until well after Nodoka had closed the
door behind her, becoming something far more predatory. She walked to her
car with a graceful step, her high heels clicking on the cement. She got
into her vehicle and then permitted a sultry laugh to escape her throat as
she started it up and drove away.



“Yes, Saotome-san, it will indeed be a pleasure to instruct your son.”



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



“Oh, that feels wonderful. Could you move just a little to your left and
keep going like that? Uhn- Maybe push a little harder?”



“No problem. Hmm- Like that? You feel so tight. I guess you’ve needed this
for a while. You should have just said something earlier. Uhn- I think I’ve
got the spot. How’s it feel now? Better?”



“Ohhhh- Oh, yeah- Just keep going right there. Don’t stop. You can keep
doing that to me all night long. Uhn- Yes- That’s so good.”



Yumi-kun grinned as he slowly worked his strong hands against the tense
muscles in Sakura’s shoulders, kneading and massaging them. Gradually, he
felt them beginning to loosen, their hoarded tensions releasing. He stood
behind her as she sat in a chair, her head bowed. Every now and then, she
made soft grunts of enjoyment.



Off to one side, a printer was spitting out sheets of paper. After several
hours of work, they had finally finished creating the identity of ‘Ranko
Kuonji’ as well as updating ‘Yu Kuonji’ with suitable birth information and
school records to match his apparent age. While they waited for their
creations to finish in their filtering out across the Imperial Datanet and
into the proper Ministry archives, he had decided to thank her for her
efforts in this by giving her a backrub. Even he had been impressed at the
level of detail that Sakura had put into it.



“Congratulations, Kuonji-kun,” Sakura grunted with a smile as the last of
the pages printed out and dropped into the tray. The printer then whirred
to a stop. “You’re now the proud parent of an eighteen year-old son and a
sixteen year-old daughter.”



“Thanks,” he replied dryly. “I always wanted children, especially without
having to go through changing diapers.” He rubbed her shoulders with his
palm, and then began digging his thumbs harder into another tight knot of
tension he came across in his explorations, even as Sakura groaned deeply.
A muted grunt escaped her lips as the knot seemed to dissolve, the
tightness loosening.



There was a ding, and a blank plastic card emerged from a small device on
her desk. It sat there for several moments, gleaming dully.



“The identity card is done,” said Sakura absently, her eyes closed as she
reveled in what Yumi-kun was doing to her. She had certainly missed this
all right, feeling what seemed like a year’s worth of tensions flowing out
of her. A sigh escaped her lips as he stopped his efforts, and she slumped
a bit in relaxation. “Be careful to only touch it on the edges when you
pick it up. It’s ready to key. There’s a carrying case on the desk.”



“Gotcha.” Yumi-kun moved away even as Sakura relaxed, looking a bit
boneless after his ministrations. He reached out and picked up the plastic
card by its edges and slipped it carefully into the small black case.
“Done.”



“Good,” said Sakura, opening her eyes and looking up. “I’ve imprinted all
the data and both pictures you gave me into the plastic. Simply have
Saotome-san take a firm grasp of the card in either of his forms, and it
will key itself to his astral pattern.”



“Thanks, Sakura.” Yumi-kun slipped the case containing the prepared ID card
into a pocket. “I really owe you one.”



She turned from the small computer desk she sat at in her apartment and
smiled. “And I intend to collect on that debt.” She stood up. “Would you
care for a drink?”



“Just one, and then I’ve got to get back.” He sat down on the small couch
that was against one wall of the apartment. “I’ve never left Ukyo in charge
of the restaurant for so long before. It would be just my luck that those
two kids end up burning it down or something.”



Sakura returned with a beer in each hand. “I think you worry too much,
Kuonji-kun. I’m sure they’re fine.” She handed him a beer and sat down next
to him, before opening hers and taking a shallow sip from the can.



“Well, it’s my livelihood we’re talking about,” Yumi-kun said as he popped
the top open and took a deep drink before leaning back and sighing. “Ahh,
that’s good beer. Thanks for the drink. It’s just what I needed.” He rested
one arm along the back of the couch and held the beer in his other hand,
smiling at her.



Sakura smiled back and moved closer to relax against him, leaning on him
slightly, her legs moving to curl underneath her. “I’ve missed you,
Kuonji-kun,” she said suddenly, her voice softer.



Yumi-kun moved his arm to rest it on her shoulders, feeling her sigh and
snuggle a bit more against him. “I missed you too, Sakura-chan. I guess I
didn’t realize how much until you walked into my restaurant.”



“When you left me, I was so furious with you,” she said, before taking
another drink of her beer. “But I couldn’t tell my uncle or anyone else
what was wrong. A week later, I accepted an assignment to Europe, copying
some old records in the Vatican’s archives for the Institute, but mostly
just enjoying the sights. It gave me plenty of time to think.”



Yumi-kun took another sip of his beer. “Come to any conclusions?”



“Well, for the first three months, I just thought you were a jerk,” she
replied, smiling slightly. She held her can of beer against her lips and
took a deep drink.



Yumi-kun chuckled. “I won’t deny it.” He felt Sakura lean her head against
his chest and snuggle up more warmly against him, her free hand dropping to
touch his thigh and move gently on it. He suddenly felt a bit nervous. “Uh,
I think I really should probably be getting going.”



“When will I see you again?” she asked softly. She sipped her beer some
more, almost spilling it on him as she shifted position.



“Why don’t we have dinner together tomorrow night?” He looked down at her
head nestled against his chest, feeling her warm body against his, her hand
in a dangerous location.



“I’d like that,” Sakura replied. She looked up at him. “But come as Yumi,
not Yu.”



“Are you sure?” Yumi-kun met her gaze.



Sakura nodded. “We can make it a girl’s night out sort of thing for our
first date.” She settled her head against his chest again and listened to
his heart beating. “We haven’t done that in a long while.”



“All right,” he said with a smile. “It sounds like fun.” She moved away
from him, so he could stand. She remained sitting, her legs curled under
her as she sat on the couch. On a whim, he bent down and gave her a kiss on
the forehead as he set down his empty can of beer on the coffee table in
front of it. “I’ll see you then.”



After he left, Sakura stared at the discarded can, watching droplets of dew
accumulate on the bottom few centimeters or so. She set her own can down
next to it, still half-full. Suddenly, she sprawled out on the couch, lying
out along its entire length. She draped her arm over her eyes.



“I must be an idiot,” she muttered ruefully.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Kodachi sat on the edge of her bed and tried without much success to quiet
the surge of butterflies in her stomach as she gazed down at the telephone
receiver in her hand. She was dressed in a white silk robe covering a
black, sleek negligee. It was almost time for Kaoru-kun to call her and
feelings of nervousness quivered within her. She looked over at P-chan,
resting on the pillow she had given him and watching her.



“I shouldn’t be worried about going out on a date with Kaoru-kun, should
I?” she said with a smile.



P-chan blinked. Date? Kaoru-kun? There was another rival for the love of
his angel in his way?



“Oh, I know I’m being silly,” she continued, reaching over and giving her
new pet a scratch on the head. “It’s only a dance at Ohtori, and Kaoru-kun
is an old friend. I shouldn’t read more into it than that. He just wants to
renew our friendship.”



The telephone rang on her private line, and Kodachi swallowed once as she
pulled her hand from P-chan, gathering her courage. She picked it up,
activating the cordless telephone’s handset and holding it to her ear.
“Hello?”



P-chan watched with narrowed eyes as Kodachi happily chatted with this
mysterious boy on the other end of the line. He heard her call him nothing
but ‘Kaoru-kun’ throughout the whole conversation, a name that showed a
great fondness for him and a closeness that bespoke of them being very dear
friends. The warmth of her tones, and the occasional sparkling laughter she
bubbled with, made his feelings of jealousy grow ever more intense.



“Until then, Kaoru-kun,” Kodachi said at the end, setting the receiver back
in its cradle and looking at P-chan with a smile. The sight of it took his
breath away; she was so beautiful to him.



“Bwee?” the small pig inquired.



“Oh, that was Miki Kaoru, a dear old friend,” she said with happiness,
reaching over to give him a pat on the head before turning down her covers.
Memories of another world filled her, pleasant memories of Sukeban-Kodachi
within her, of deep and passionate kisses as well as more pleasurably
intimate things she had shared with the Miki Kaoru of that world. “I’m
going to a dance with him at Ohtori Academy.”



P-chan grunted. He was just going to have to spoil that date now. As she
continued to scratch his head, he pondered the matter. Being her pet pig
was already proving useful. As time went on, he was certain he would learn
everything necessary to win her heart. But his immediate concern was
figuring out a way to be there at that dance somehow, to keep a watchful
eye on Kodachi.



Oh, yes.



A name suddenly dredged itself up from his memories: Nanami Kiryuu. She
attended Ohtori and was another one of the well-bred young daughters of
nobility his family insisted on trying to match him up with. She was indeed
attractive enough for his tastes, and she would do most nicely for this,
even on such short notice. His family and hers would bend over backwards to
arrange it, so eager were they for him to marry a girl of the peerage.
Perhaps he would even reward Nanami by bedding her sometime, after he
reached his goal of a hundred seductions. But in order to do that, first he
would enjoy the considerable charms of the older of the two Tendo girls his
friend Tatewaki was so enamored with, and finally those of sweet, angelic
Kodachi.



After the young noblewoman removed her robe and laid it on the bed, she
picked him up and got under the covers of her sheets. She reached over
briefly to shut off her lamp and then rolled back on to her side, her warm
hands snuggling him to her bosom.



Held pressed up quite comfortably against her breasts, P-chan grinned a
piggish sort of grin and settled down to sleep. Life was pretty good.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Tenchi lay on the roof of the shrine and watched the stars overhead. It was
quiet in Nerima this time of night, and he liked being able to relax and
think. He was leaving in the morning for his survival course in the
Australian outback, but he could not seem to sleep yet. So he had come out
to look at the stars instead. Everyone else in the shrine had gone to sleep
by now, leaving him alone with his thoughts.



He studied the patterns of stars overhead, wondering if any of those
distant points of light had worlds like his own around them. He liked to
imagine so. Sometimes he even fantasized about some beautiful alien
princess coming down from one of them and falling in love with him,
bringing adventure to his rather dull life, like in one of the manga
stories he sometimes read. Other times, he imagined himself as a great
samurai, as in days of old, serving the Emperor with honor and slaying the
enemies of the Empire, his sword bright with blood in his hand.



However, he knew in his heart that he was an ordinary young man, albeit one
training to be an Imperial Bodyguard, and that alien princesses falling in
love with humans was a fantasy. Still, he enjoyed dreaming about such
things, even though he never mentioned any of his imaginings to his
fiancée, Rei Hino. She was princess enough for him in all the ways that
counted, and he was happy to have her.



Lately he had started fantasizing about Belldandy, a goddess that lived
here now, watched over by his aged grandfather and a shrine priestess
assigned by the Mobius Institute. He knew it was a foolish, one-sided
attraction, but she was so sweet and kind it was difficult to ignore the
tender feelings she awoke in him. She was a creature of spirit, and he was
a being of flesh and blood. A romance was out of the question, especially
since he was already engaged to a wonderful girl. Still, he could enjoy the
fantasies.



Ryoko was staying there now as well, for reasons she had not explained. She
had just shown up after dinnertime, looking a little wild about the eyes.
He shivered a bit, remembering that look, like she wanted to kill someone
and do it with extreme prejudice.



It was while he lay there thinking about the day’s events that he spotted a
stealthy figure moving from rooftop to rooftop in long, low bounds. He
watched in wonder for several moments, thinking he had spotted a ninja
operating in the middle of Nerima. He then chastised himself for his vivid
imagination.



Ninja? In a quiet suburb of Tokyo like this? That was ridiculous. The
shadow warriors served the various noble families, spying on each other and
sometimes assassinating people. But the only ninjas in the area belonged to
the few noble families dwelling in Nerima, like the Kuno household, and he
could not imagine why one of them would be prowling around this
neighborhood of all places.



Even so, he took out his binoculars, the ones that he used to help him in
stargazing, and he focused in on the figure when it paused on a nearby
rooftop. He was startled when he saw that it was a girl and a really cute
one at that. She agilely clambered down the roof of the house she was on,
one just on the other side of the wall separating the shrine from that
property, where the Saotomes’ lived.



Tenchi had met his mother’s best friend only a few times over the years,
usually being too busy with his studies and his training. He had heard his
mother say that her friend’s husband and son had returned from travelling
overseas several months ago. He wondered who the girl was. She was heading
for Ranma’s bedroom. A girlfriend perhaps? A late night rendezvous?



He blushed at the thought and decided to keep what he had seen to himself
for now, enjoying the notion of a little mystery for him to try solving on
his own. Still, she had been really cute, something he could tell even from
the rather brief look he had gotten. After she finally disappeared inside
the window, he set down his binoculars and then he put his hands behind his
head as he laid back and considered the matter.



His mother had suggested some time ago that he strike up a friendship with
Ranma, but the guy was supposed to be some kind of genius. What were they
going to talk about? Other than his training in martial arts and other
skills necessary for a prospective member of the Imperial Bodyguards, and
his duties tending the shrine and helping out his grandfather, he didn’t
have many other interests.



Still, it would be nice to make a new friend.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



*** Earth +4.612, +4.509



Ranma stared at the ceiling of his room, his hands resting behind his head.
The wind blew gently through the trees outside, filling his room with a
faint rustling sound. Normally, he would be sound asleep at this time, but
not tonight.



Something was wrong with his life, yet it wasn't really wrong in a bad way.
It was nothing he could point to in particular, but it was more like a
nagging itch he couldn't quite seem to scratch. There was this feeling he
kept having, that the way things were now wasn't how his life was supposed
to be.



One of the biggest changes over the past few weeks had been Pop, ever since
they had left the Tendo household, but all of those changes had been good.
His father had brought him back home to his mother, and they had brought
Shampoo along with them as well. He'd stopped drinking as much, except for
an occasional beer, and despite Mom's best efforts at trying to tempt him
with her delicious cooking, he was eating less and losing weight.



He'd even gotten himself a job and was working really hard at it. When he
got his first paycheck, he'd brought it home and given it all to Mom like
any other salaryman would for his family. Somehow, his father had become
someone else overnight, someone more like other boys had for fathers, but
it was someone he had trouble even recognizing as Genma Saotome. These were
all good changes, but it also felt weird, like it was a pleasant dream he
knew he was going to have to wake up from at any moment.



He had followed Pop around for a few days, and he had seen him meet with
Mr. Tendo the other day and watched the two of them talking about something
pretty serious. It was probably about the engagement, since that was all
they had ever seemed to talk about when they had all been staying with the
Tendos. But the old man had not spoken a single word about his engagement
to Akane at the dinner table that night. He had asked later, but Pop had
only reassured him again that he no longer had to worry about it. He could
hardly believe it, but the engagement was apparently over and done with. If
so, why had he been talking with Mr. Tendo?



Even stranger, Pop had been supportive of him spending more time with
Shampoo, which his mother had been a little leery of at first due to the
Amazon being a foreigner. Pop seemed to genuinely like her now, rather than
the indifferent way he had used to treat Shampoo, and he had even been
making an effort at talking more with her and getting to know her a bit
better. The old man had even started working with the Amazon during their
training sessions, having them spar with each other while he watched and
gave them both suggestions for improvement during breaks.



Shampoo had been resistant at first to having him as a teacher. But, as she
started to listen to Pop's coaching more, she was beginning to close the
gap that existed between them in their relative skill. After he'd nearly
lost a pretty intensely fought sparring match with Shampoo, Pop had gently
teased him that she was going to surpass him if he wasn't more diligent.
His pride a bit stung by that comment, he had begun working even harder on
his training. While he liked Shampoo a lot, she was a girl, and he wasn't
about to let any girl get better than he was, which was probably why Pop
had done it. Still, training had become more interesting and a lot of fun
nowadays, he thought with a slight grin.



His father had even begun helping them with their schoolwork and that was
another really weird thing for him to do, especially since Pop seemed to
know quite a lot more than he had ever suspected, from math and science to
Japanese grammar. His only weakness was history, where he had mentioned
some odd things the first time he had tried to help them on it. Since then
he had been reading all kinds of books about history in his den each night,
maybe to fix that.



However, as far as he knew, Pop had barely even finished high school. Had
he really always been this smart and just never shown it? Ranma found that
really hard to believe, after some of the messes his old man had gotten
them into over the years.



His reactions to his father, honed by years of learning to distrust the
man, had gradually begun changing ever since leaving the Tendos. It was a
pretty tough thing to admit, even after seeing him meeting with Mr. Tendo
in secret last week, but Pop didn't seem to have any scams in the works. He
had brought home ice cream that night after work and hadn't said a single
word to push the engagement. His old man just wasn't that subtle, so
something else had to be going on that he wasn't seeing. Perhaps he had
really changed, and Ranma found himself wanting to believe that it was true.



It helped that Pop was also being really good to Mom too, doing little
things like sometimes bringing her flowers when he came home from work. He
had even taken her out to dinner a few times, and to nicer sorts of
restaurants at that, just the two of them. He and Shampoo had been left to
fend for themselves at home alone together, which they had spent watching
television and talking. Shampoo had cooked him dinner each time, which was
nice. While she too had been suspicious of the change in Pop at first, she
now seemed to look at him with new eyes, as a friend and maybe even
something of a mentor. It was hard to watch his mother and Shampoo looking
so happy with the ways things were now without feeling a bit happier
himself, like maybe he was finally part of a real family.



However, while worrying about his father's changes was one thing, he was
more concerned with the weird dreams he had been having, ever since he had
left the Tendo household. None of them ever made any sense to him, but
there was always an odd feeling of semi-remembered familiarity to them,
like fragments of memories. If he concentrated really hard, he could manage
to recall a few scattered bits: a park in Moscow (where he had never been,
so how could he even know it was Moscow?); Akane in a gray school uniform
with black piping, a single hash mark on her sleeve; his father dressed in
a suit, gothic architecture behind him; a view of the Earth from space; and
he even saw his mother, her face beaming with pride at seeing him as he got
out of a taxi.



Then there were the blackouts and periods of disconnectedness. There had
been a single blackout at first, maybe for an hour or so. That one he had
experienced while they were still staying at the Tendos. Then there was the
day Akane was kidnapped by Mousse and Kodachi, the day his father had
brought him back home to his mother after dealing with that situation. The
last thing he remembered was going skating with Shampoo. And then more
recently he had experienced another blackout, finding himself in his
father's den with no knowledge of how he came to be there.



Ranma rested his arm across his face. He knew he was going to be a zombie
in the morning if he didn't get any sleep, and he had a major math test to
contend with. However, as he lay there, he began hearing distant sounds
coming from somewhere else in the house, like someone was in pain or
something. It was a woman's voice, and it took him a few moments of
listening to the rising and falling cries to realize it was his mother. He
lay there feeling confused, wondering what was going on and then he heard
his father's name being called out by her, followed by more of those
strange sounds.



As he was trying to decide what to do, the door to his room suddenly
opened. The silhouette quickly resolved into a familiar-looking shape as it
stood there for a moment and then came slowly into his room after shutting
the door. It was Shampoo! What was she doing coming into his room in the
middle of the night? And what was going on with his mother that was causing
her to cry out like that?



Shampoo grumbled sleepily under her breath as she snuck into Ranma's room,
running on autopilot. It was just her luck that the walls in this house
were so thin, and her small room shared a wall with the master bedroom.
Unfortunately for her, practically every single night for many days now had
been filled with the sounds of Nodoka exercising her spousal rights upon
her husband. So Shampoo was again doing what she had been doing since the
first night it happened, leaving her room to go to the quietest place she
could find in the house to sleep in, which just happened to be Ranma's
room. After all, he had never even noticed her presence, since he slept
like a rock.



Barely awake, Shampoo slipped in next to him to share his covers, laid her
pillow down and was already well on her way back to sleep as soon as her
head rested upon it. It had been a long day, she had a test in math
tomorrow and she was tired from all the studying. Fortunately, her internal
clock always let her get up early enough to sneak back to her own room,
even before Nodoka got up to fix breakfast. Otherwise it would have been
awkward for her, even with the recent improvement in Pop's attitudes
towards her. She rolled over on to her side, facing away from Ranma, sighed
once and was sound asleep again within moments.



Ranma lay there in his futon, frozen like a statue, wondering what he
should do, if anything. Shampoo was in his bed! The last time this had
happened was when Happosai had first shown up, but they had both been in
male form at the time and Ranma had only agreed to it in order to protect
Shampoo from the little pervert.



If this had been the Tendos, and with both of them in their natural forms,
he could just see Akane come bursting into his room at any moment and
accusing him of doing all kinds of perverted things with Shampoo, even
though he only had the vaguest ideas what those things might even be.
Afraid to wake her, he tried to remain as still as possible.



Grumbling softly in her sleep, the Amazon suddenly rolled over again and
resettled herself, this time facing up against Ranma. Already fast asleep,
she snuggled up against him for warmth, pressing herself up against Ranma's
shoulder. Her right arm flopped lazily over him as she began snoring
quietly.



Ranma did not move. The situation was just too strange for him to deal
with, and he could feel his brain shutting down from shock. While it was
true he had been enjoying her company and spending a lot more time with her
ever since leaving the Tendos, he wasn't sure what to make of this. Maybe
Shampoo was sleepwalking or something, to come get in bed with him like
this. After a fair while, his mother stopped making those disturbing
sounds, and the Amazon didn't seem concerned. So with the gentlest of
sighs, he resigned himself to the situation. He closed his eyes and somehow
managed to fall asleep himself, eventually.



At his side, Shampoo softly snored and continued to snuggle up against him
in her sleep, her face looking rather contented in repose.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



*** Earth 0.000, 0.000



Ranma-chan quietly clambered in through the window to her room, the house
dark and still. Luckily, the window was unlocked, one of the few small
blessings on an otherwise horrific day. She moved into the room, her feet
coming down silently on the floor. She sighed with relief at making it home
without incident.



Sparring with Ukyo after the shop was closed for the evening had been
enlightening, the memories of other lives superimposed over the whole
experience. This world’s Ukyo was a really strong opponent, even better
than her analogs, and the ‘friendly’ match had quickly become quite
intense. In the end, Ranma-chan had won. While Ukyo was definitely no
pushover, it had been a bit easier than the pigtailed girl had expected,
based on the last few serious fights she had been in.



It had also been quite a lot of fun too, reminding the boy turned girl of
sparring matches against the Shampoo of another Earth, where that version
of the Amazon had a curse like Yumi’s. And even though she had lost, Ukyo
was a really good sport about it, treating Ranma-chan like a new friend and
inviting her to come back anytime for a rematch.



Yumi-kun had left for a while, going off somewhere with that woman who had
come by the restaurant and returning later with a new ID card for the
cursed boy’s use. Ranma-chan was curious about who the woman was, but she
suspected Yumi would tell her eventually. She and Ukyo had minded the
restaurant on their own for most of the evening, and it had been fun to
hang out with her like that. It was pretty fortunate that she could draw on
the experiences of another Ranma, one who had done some waitressing at the
Nekohanten on that world, giving her a more polished performance.



However, it was now time to return to her male form, and Ranma-chan slid
the cake of soap from her pocket. She slipped quietly into the hallway, her
step light, ears alert for any sounds of movement from the master bedroom.
Fortunately, nothing happened, and she was able to enter the bath without
any problem.



She sighed with relief as she began removing her clothing. The dark
okonomiyaki seller’s outfit she was still wearing had blended into the
shadows quite nicely. She set the male clothing obtained from her room on
the floor by the door, intending to put on her underwear before going to
bed.



It was at that moment that she caught sight of herself in the mirror, after
reaching behind herself and undoing the somewhat snug sports bra, another
loaner from Ukyo, which had proven to be too small for her. She removed it
with a gentle groan of relief and then she saw herself bare-chested. A
blush covered her cheeks as she hastily looked away from staring at the
sight of her half-naked body, feeling perverse to be turned on like she was
by her own reflection, seeing it through a boy’s perceptions. The
experience reminded her of that first encounter with another world’s Ranko
through the resonator.



“I’m a guy,” she muttered, examining her face in the mirror. “I’m still
really a guy.” She only wished she could sound more certain of that,
memories of Ranko’s life surfacing in her mind. It was actually somewhat
difficult not to think of herself as Ranko when she was like this, when the
image that stared back at her from the mirror was clearly female. Being
Ranma was what seemed less real somehow at that moment. She felt a brief
bout of vertigo and shook her head to clear it.



Ranma-chan hastily pulled off the rest of her clothing and laid them in the
hamper with the other dirty clothes already there. She went into the main
bath area, seated herself on one of the two stools in the room and began
filling a bucket with hot water, eager to return to male form. When it was
nearly full, she swiftly upended it over herself, and felt a slight tremor
run through her as Ranma-chan transformed back into Ranma. He sighed softly
with relief, now that he was male once again.



“That’s better,” Ranma muttered, setting down the now empty bucket and
reaching for the soap. He began lathering himself up with it from head to
foot, his hands moving automatically even as his mind dwelled upon
Yumi-kun’s words earlier that evening. His life had changed, and he was
going to have to deal with it as best he could. The thought of spending
time as a girl willingly was disturbing, especially since there was a part
of him intrigued by the notion. But he had to face facts that ‘Ranko’ was a
part of him, not only his analog’s memories but also her appearance now as
well.



He poured a second bucketful of hot water over himself when he was
finished, still pondering things. After standing up, he eyed the furo,
briefly contemplating a soak. But it was already late, and he had to get
some sleep. Tomorrow was Sunday, so no classes but he still needed to be on
his guard and not risk straining the limited protection of the soap by
getting splashed too much. He also needed to come up with a good excuse to
Ukyo for where he had been. She was annoyed with him, that much had been
clear tonight. Hopefully, Yumi could help him cover.



Since the dance at Ohtori was only a week away, he needed to take some time
off from his regular training to do some special training, which in this
case meant learning how to dance. He wasn’t going to give those Ohtori
jerks the satisfaction of watching him stumble with Utena on the dance
floor. He intended to dominate it, to show them all that he was a great
dancer. He especially wanted Kodachi to see what he could do.



Maybe what he knew of figure skating would help. He then smirked at the
memories that idle thought brought up. At least this time he wouldn’t have
to fight anyone. He doubted that Miki or Touga were going to cut loose on
him with some kind of Martial Arts Ballroom Dancing. This wasn’t some going
to be some kind of martial arts competition, just a demonstration of
graceful movement. He was confident that he could learn to dance quickly.



Ranma carefully picked up the wet bar of soap, noting a slightly fresh
scent coming off it. Whoever was making it had made it more like a regular
bar of soap one would find in a store, and the smell of it was even rather
nice. He carefully patted it dry with an unused washcloth and emerged from
the main bath to grab a towel, starting to dry himself with it. But when he
saw his masculine image in the mirror, he paused.



Something seemed a bit different and out of place. He took another look at
his reflection in the mirror. What was different?



At first, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Then he noticed that his body
appeared to be a few kilos heavier than it had been before, the extra mass
composed of solid, sculpted muscle. He held out his arm and felt one of his
biceps as he flexed it, noting its increased swell. Then he turned and
looked behind himself over one shoulder, seeing a similar change to his
back and shoulder muscles as he flexed them and posed a bit. Testing the
range of motion in his limbs, he discovered himself to be far more limber
now, throwing a kick over his head with his strength smooth along the
entire arc of movement. It was a level of performance that had simply been
beyond him before today, limiting his ability to fully use the downloaded
skills of his martial artist analogs.



Ranma grinned, distracted now from his worries moments ago, realizing that
the dunk in the vat had done something quite extraordinary to his male
form, removing his limiters somehow. His injuries were fully gone as well,
something he’d noticed earlier but had not previously made the connection.



However, another thought occurred to him as he gazed at his physique.
Nabiki had mastered the Amaguriken technique. Since his own body had
changed so much, perhaps he was fast enough now to succeed in mastering it
too. He snapped out a few punches. While they were slower than his female
form’s speed, he was still faster than he had been. Perhaps the Amaguriken
technique was closer to his reach than he had once thought.



He picked up the towel and finished drying himself, feeling tempted again
to indulge in looking at himself but resisting. For now, ‘Ranko’ would
continue on as Ukyo’s cousin, a valuable disguise he was a bit grateful for
now. It would allow him opportunities to get to know Ukyo on a more neutral
basis, without the engagement cluttering up the scenery and maybe it could
work just as well with the other girls in his life. He would have to be
careful though and avoid having it all blow up in his face.



Nabiki and Kodachi’s responses to meeting Ranko were unknown variables.
Keeping such a secret from them would be difficult, especially Nabiki.
However, until he had a better handle on his situation, none of the girls
could know he and Ranko were one and the same person. It would be a test of
wits between him and the Tendo girl.



When he was dry, Ranma slipped on his undershirt and picked up the bundle
of clothing from the hamper, wondering how he was going to get them
cleaned. Giving them to his mother to wash was simply out of the question.
And if he was going to be spending periods of time in female form, he would
have to shop for some more clothes and even feminine undergarments too. He
would have to be careful where he stored them though. The last thing he
wanted was for his mother to find them. She might suspect he was having
secret liaisons with one of the girls. It would also be really bad if the
girls thought he was having liaisons.



Also, he could not let Genma see ‘Ranko’ at all. The old man knew his
cursed form’s appearance, so it would be impossible to pretend to be
someone else. No, Genma could not come into contact with his female form
for any reason. It was going to be tough enough to maintain the ruse of
being Ranko as it was. Complications needed to be kept to a minimum.



Rescuing his father had taken on a new urgency. He had almost finished his
work re-creating his female analog’s device. Building it from scratch was
necessary but annoying. The transponder unit was already completed, and he
only had to test it.



The absolute last thing he wanted to do was risk losing his own world.





xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx





Thanks to DB Sommer for his help in tightening up several scenes.



My heartfelt thanks to all of my usual pre-readers for all of their
comments and suggestions.
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