Hello, Ranma Fans.....

Just like millions of other people, I must admit that this is my first work of fanfiction, and like them, I have to say that I’d appreciate all C&C on this. I also have to include the usual disclaimer that says that all of the characters of the Ranma ½ universe are the creation and possession of the one and only Rumiko Takahashi.

Now having said that, I’ll admit to a tiny little lie; this isn’t my first fanfic. But it is where it counts. Let me explain; it’s simple. I’ve written a fanfic before, but it never got out of its infancy stages, and died of a terminal case of SIDS before I ever thought of posting it. But, to a true writer, no piece of [fan]fiction ever really dies, and so, I intend to resurrect my original fanfiction, but it won’t be quite the same as it was the first time around. One of the reasons for that is that, every fanfic I’ve ever read by anyone has left an indelible mark upon my brain, and to some small extent, that means that, no matter how much I try to say that this is completely, 100% original, one is bound to find elements in this story familiar with elements in other stories. Let me say now that I am not a plagerist, and any similarities between this fanfic and others, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

My Ranma universe picks up at a point just before Nodoka is supposed to learn of Ranma and Genma’s curses, before Ranma’s epic battle against Saffron, and before the ill-fated wedding attempt by Ranma and Akane. To be quite honest, I still haven’t reached the point in the manga where Nodoka appears; being a struggling college not-quite-dropout, working in the professional world, I have even less money to spend than your average college student, so I haven’t had the funds to collect the last four Ranma collected volumes. Y’know, got those pesky bills to pay.

And, of course, what fanfic would be complete without the author throwing in a character of his or her own creation? Yes, I’ve decided to introduce my own character, but, unlike a lot of other authors, I don’t intend for my character to be able to overpower everyone in the Takahashi universe. Powers galore there will be-how can you survive in Nerima without them?-but not so much that they outshine everyone else.

Now, I hope you’ll all forgive me for my rather gregarious writing style; I’m a writer by talent and hobby, so sometimes I get a little long winded in the details and such. I only hope it will add to the overall flavor of my story. And this is my story; as I’ve said before, I’m sure that elements of other stories will appear in mine, but only because they appear in nearly every Ranma story. You know what they say about great minds.

Oh, and one more thing before I let you go. I’ve decided to put a little lime into this fanfic ( just in case you aren’t familiar with what that means, it’s when the author puts hints of overt sexual acts in his/her story; sometimes it’s called lemonade ), and maybe even a little lemon ( that’s the overt sexual acts w/o the hints ), but if I do, it’ll be tasteful, not very graphic, blessfully brief, and will further the story line (I hope). Keep that in mind if you’re under the age of legal consent wherever it is that you’re reading this.

And now, hopefully without further ado, here is my story. Enjoy!

>^_^<

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

Ranma was trying to occupy his mind, to do anything, to quell the nausea that threatened to bring him to his knees in the garden hedges below. He was lying on the roof of the dojo, gazing up at the stars, thinking of how beautiful they were tonight. He began to smile at the thought, which widened considerably- and unconsciously- as he thought of Akane, and the way she’d looked when he’d last complimented her on her improvement in martial arts. She’d smiled, and he remembered how it had nearly taken his breath away, how he’d fought to keep her from seeing how her smile had affected him. She didn’t really like him; she’d said so many, many times. Sure, she was used to having him around; after nearly two years, who wouldn’t? But she didn’t care about him, not like he-

He pushed that thought away. He couldn’t let himself be weak like that, allowing himself to care about someone who obviously didn’t care about him. Why else would she hit him so much? Why else would she call him a jerk, pervert, baka, so much? Why else would she inflict her cooking on him?

That line of thought brought him back to the events of the earlier evening, and wiped the smile from his face.

First it had been dinner; Akane had demanded the right to kill- er, ah, cook, again, and when Ranma had protested, in his usual way,

"Your cooking is so bad that it eats the lining out of the bottom of the pan! Your cooking nearly killed us last time, when it tried to climb out of the pot! Your cooking is so bad, it oughta be illegal to-"

By that time, Akane had responded in her usual way, her battle aura flaring up bright and blue, her mallet appearing out of hammerspace in its usual form,

"RANMA NO BAKA!" *Wham!*

and had stunned Ranma long enough for Akane to begin cooking. And, with no one to stop her- Soun and Genma pled to a "previous dinner engagement", practically fleeing the scene, and Nabiki uncharacteristically offering to take Kasumi out to dinner,

"My treat, oneechan,"

leaving Ranma alone with her and her cooking. He’d been torn- he most certainly didn’t want to eat whatever poisonous concoction Akane cooked up-the worst of her cooking had had him, after putting up a brave front, rushing to Doctor Tofu to have his stomach pumped- and he was certain that both Ukyou and Shampoo would be more than willing to feed him, but he didn’t want to leave her, either, since she wouldn’t have anyone to inflict- er, give, her cooking to. And though she was a horrible cook, Ranma know that if he disappeared, she would think that he didn’t care-

He’d stopped that thought rather quickly. He didn’t care, not like that, anyway; he just didn’t want her to cry because no one wanted to eat her lethal cooking. So, once again, putting up a brave front, he’d suffered an entire plate of the evening meal-which Akane swore to him was sushi dipped in soy sauce and wrapped in spinach, dim sum, and a light salad-and promptly keeled over, groaning, trying not to be sick.

At that point, everything had stopped being normal, or at least in that moment, things were not normal. Instead of her usual concern-tinged with anger, but concern, nonetheless-Akane accused him of acting.

"You jerk! It’s not that bad! And I followed the recipe straight from Kasumi’s cookbook! Stop acting like it’s so horrible, and eat some more, like you usually do; I made enough even for your huge appetite!"

"Ohh, no!" he’d replied, gathering enough strength to push himself away from the table, "I’m not eating another bite of that! Look at it- it’s trying to move!" He pointed at the....meal, in the center of the table. It was, very slowly, rising and falling, almost as if it were breathing.

"Ranma! If you don’t eat some more of--" Akane began, her battle aura beginning to flare up.

"You’re just trying to kill me, aren’t you!?" Ranma shouted over her, hopping to his feet; if Akane had had any idea of just how much effort it had taken for him to make himself appear to be alright, she would have been awed with his stamina. As it was, she—as usual—had no clue.

Her next words were all too normal, as Ranma watched the table suddenly jump up from the floor, and start an equally sudden descent upon his head.

He’d managed to crawl up to his room, where he’d spent a exhausting half hour trying to convince his stomach that it could defeat her cooking, once again, when Ryoga, as P-chan, trotted into the room. He took a look at Ranma holding his stomach, and the rather large bruise purpling almost exactly center in the middle of Ranma’s forehead, and gave him a look that was a cross between a glare, and a smirk. It was almost as if he were saying "Damn you Ranma, how dare you insult Akane and her cooking? You got what you deserved." And then he laughed... as much as a little black piglet could laugh.

Somewhere, Ranma found the strength to chase after him, and just as he caught him, from hammerspace came Akane’s mallet again.

"You leave P-chan alone!" she cried, flattening Ranma with her hammer. The exertion, combined with his anger, and his disorientation, made him forget about the riotous churning of his stomach.

"Fine! You go ahead and play with your little bandanna-clad P-chan! You’re worried more about him than you are about whether or not I’m dyin up here!" And with that, he’d stomped down the stairs, and out the front door.

No, he decided, Akane didn’t really care about him, and if he allowed himself to care about her- ‘to continue to care about her’, a part of his mind whispered-he would end up leaving himself vulnerable to her words, words which already affected him when she used them, affected him more than he cared to admit.

"Stupid baka!" Akane grumbled softly, as she absent-mindedly pet Ryoga. For his part, he had indeed been laughing at Ranma. He knew better than to sample Akane’s cuisine voluntarily, but for her, he would suffer her cooking in silence. Ranma, on the other hand, wasn’t so smart, and regularly stuck his foot in his mouth, which gave Ryoga a great deal of amusement.

When he’d first come to Nerima, he’d been intent upon killing Ranma-actually killing him-but when he’d met Akane, he’d settled for simply defeating him and humiliating him in front of Akane. Ranma didn’t seem to care all that much for Akane, but he hated being humiliated in front of her. Maybe in some small way he cared for Akane, and didn’t want her to see him as weak. Ryoga knew Ranma was weak, and the fact that he cared about how he appeared to Akane made him even weaker, and he was determined to play upon that weakness. The only thing stopping him, which, ironically, made him all the more resolute to make Ranma’s life miserable, was that Akane obviously had feelings for him. Ranma could hardly care about her, but she definitely cared about him, and Ryoga was sorely pissed. She didn’t seem to show the same feelings for Ryoga, who felt that he loved her more than anyone else he’d ever known, but she only seem to care about a inconsiderate, insensitive baka who didn’t have the decency to show her any care and kindness in return. Although Ryoga didn’t like being used, this was Akane, and if the only way he could receive her affections was by being P-chan—which he eternally blamed Ranma for—and having her cry out her heart holding onto him instead of the person she seemed to most want, who was he to deny her? He’d take what he could get from her.

"Why is he such a jerk?" Akane half-whispered to herself. Why couldn’t Ranma ever be nice to her? Yeah, he could do some nice things, but it was rare that something like that happened. Sometimes she wondered if Ranma really cared about her; she remembered way back, not long after they’d met for the first time, during the martial-arts skating match they fought in.

"If you try that again, I’ll kill you!"

That was just one of many examples of Ranma coming to her rescue; nearly always, he pointed to it as being the responsibility of all martial artists, to protect those weaker than themselves. Which had always angered her to no end, often resulting in Akane slamming Ranma over the head with her mallet, or her punting him into the stratosphere. There were plenty of times when he made her so mad that she swore she could see red, but there were lots of times, too, when she wanted to think about it, when he’d been nice to her, too. For a moment, she smiled, thinking about the many times that Ranma was being nice to her, even when it didn’t involved him saving her life. A few number of times, they’d almost kissed, and she blushed with both the memory, and the remembrance of just how much she’d wanted him to kiss her. Did she care about him? She thought for a moment, and admitted to herself, that yeah, she did care. But a baka like him couldn’t care about anyone except himself and his stomach. That made her remember the night’s events, and her mood soured.

"There was nothing wrong with my cooking!" she snarled to herself in a whisper; though if she had to be truthful, she’d turned a little green herself after tasting a spoonful or two of the dinner she’d prepared for him.

"But it wasn’t that bad!" she insisted to herself, trying to block out the picture of the neighbor’s kitten being chased by her dinner, after she’d set it out for the kitten in the first place. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t the world’s greatest cook; sometimes, she hesitantly admitted, she wasn’t even halfway good. But she wasn’t as bad as Ranma made her out to be, and the fact that he never showed her any appreciation for her efforts just confirmed for her that he just didn’t really care about her.

Even though it was nearly summer—when school would finally be out for a month, and he could stop struggling with school-- and juku, as well—it was night, this was the Nerima district in Tokyo, Japan, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Consequently, it was cold, and Ranma was starting to feel the cold.

‘I should probably go back inside and apologize to her,’ he thought to himself. Many people would be surprised by just how much Ranma thought—usually—before he opened up his mouth to speak. Having been on the road with his father since he was six had given him plenty of opportunities to learn that lesson the hard way. Only with Akane, he seemed to revert to type; that is, he simply had to say something before it was too late. Actually, to be honest, it happened mostly whenever he felt pressured into something he wasn’t prepared for...which, to say, was almost always around Akane.

‘Well, it’s best to get this over with, already,’ the thought continued, and he stood up to hop down off of the roof.

Now, normally, whenever danger presented itself and took aim at Ranma, he was well aware of it, and usually was mounting a defense against it. However, for some strange reason that danger sense of his never reacted to the presence of his fiancées, who in some cases were as dangerous as any other enemy, physical or spiritual.

That was the case this time, as well.

Ranma suddenly sensed a presence behind him, but before he could even think to act, a pair of strong arms wrapped themselves tightly around him, coincidentally pressing uncomfortably around his already uncomfortable stomach.

"Nihao, Ranma," rang out the voice, belonging, of course, to Shampoo. She then spun him around, to face her. That action made Ranma’s already upset stomach even more upset. He groaned.

"What matter, airen?" she asked, concerned. Though most wouldn’t know it, Shampoo actually cared about Ranma. Now, that wasn’t the surprising part, since she acted like she couldn’t stand to be away from him. What people would have been surprised about was that, while she did care about him, she didn’t love him, as much as she led Mousse and Cologne, her great-grandmother, and even Ranma, to believe. However, she was an Amazon, and she had to abide by the laws of the tribe until she came of age to make her own decisions; that day would come very soon. She also had a heart, something she also didn’t show very often; Ranma’s typical foot-in-mouth approach to conversation often ended up hurting her feelings, no matter that upon reflection she realized she deserved his response. With those two things usually under wraps, they now came to the surface, as she watched Ranma’s face turn pale, then tinged with a bit of green.

"Akane cooked dinner again," Ranma said; it was explanation enough.

"Will you be okay?" Shampoo asked. Another thing that people didn’t know was that firstly, although she didn’t have any formal schooling, she was quite smart. Secondly, she knew more Japanese than she often spoke; it was often, however, a great task to remember to mentally translate from her native mandarin Chinese characters to the slightly different, but worlds-apart, Japanese kanji. The result: Shampoo spoke broken Japanese because it was faster than speaking correct Japanese.

"Hai," Ranma said; then his stomach began to revolt-Shampoo could see it in his face, as he turned a couple of shades darker green-and then amended his words with "Iie, I think I’m gonna be sick."

With what Shampoo knew had to be a phenomenal amount of restraint, Ranma forced himself to contain Akane’s lethal food, and stood straight. Then he bolted in the direction of the new park construction area. Shampoo watched him go, deciding this one time not to follow him, as she was tempted. Although she didn’t love him, she did find him very attractive, and desirable, enough that she was able to pretend to want him for love, though her driving force was more lustful than loving. She sat down, and waited for him to come back.

Ranma returned about ten minutes later, still looking pale, but much better than before. He sat down on the rooftop with a little less grace than he would have liked, but at the last moment, his legs went all rubbery on him, and he couldn’t stop himself from falling the last foot onto his behind.

Shampoo giggled.

Ranma groaned. "Someone should teach that kawaikunai tomboy how to cook," he mumbled.

"Why you don’t teach her?" Shampoo offered. Occasionally, she offered these little tidbits of insight and information to Ranma, though if her great-grandmother heard her giving Ranma advice about how to be nice to Akane, she’d do a few unpleasant things to her.

"I’ve tried," Ranma replied, "but she doesn’t listen; she thinks she knows everything." And he had tried to help her, on occasion; he’d watched a couple of times as she would examine the recipe, and then reach for something completely different. Then he would point out her mistake, which would then result in Akane pounding Ranma over the head, calling him a baka, and then insulting him for not helping her. After the third time, he’d given up on helping her out in the kitchen.

"You want Shampoo bring you ramen?"

Ranma was tempted- very tempted, in fact- but the fact that his stomach was vigorously complaining about even the thought of food at the moment, and the thought that Shampoo might try to use some of her Amazon potions on him through her ramen, made him reconsider.

"Iie, Shampoo, you don’t have to do that. But thank you for the thought."

Most of the people Ranma knew didn’t know that he could be a thoughtful, considerate person. True, he didn’t have a lot of social grace, but when he wasn’t being a jerk—which, unfortunately, was most of the time, considering that he wasn’t often in a position to be calm and gracious, with three fiancées, a diabolical witch who called herself his fiancée, a anger-driven rival who was nearly a match for him, a bokken-wielding idiot who alternated between cursing him and coveting him, and a near-sighted hidden weapons expert who wanted him dead for "claiming" his fiancée—he was a nice person.

"No problem," piped up Shampoo, "you want ramen, you only have ask." Ranma didn’t respond immediately, but after a moment, he did.

"Well," sighed Ranma, "I suppose I should go inside and apologize to Akane."

"Shampoo help you down," she said, springing to her feet, watching Ranma stand unsteadily. He began to protest, but she ignored him, helping him to the edge of the roof, and leaping off, her arm around his shoulders. As she leapt, she felt Ranma slip his arm around her waist, committing himself to being helped off of the roof.

They both landed softly; neither noticed the door opening on the front porch.

Akane had been fretting for nearly an hour. Ranma hadn’t come straight back after he’d stormed out of the house, and though she wouldn’t openly admit it, she was concerned. Had he gone to see Dr Tofu? Was he with Ukyou at her Okonomiakyi shop, or with Shampoo at the Nekohauten? The thought that he might be with either of those two hussies changed Akane’s concern to anger. How dare he go out and eat someone else’s cooking? She was supposed to be his fiancée, wasn’t she? And even more, how dare he go running to them? She just knew that he was leading them on, letting them think he was going to choose one of them as his fiancée, all in order to get something to eat. And if Shampoo and her crazy old hag of a great-grandmother didn’t somehow trick him into dating—or even marrying—that Amazon bimbo, Ukyou would try to win him over by being sugary sweet and feeding him until he burst.

And even if he did go somewhere else to eat, even if he didn’t want to eat her lovingly prepared- no, scratch that, she thought for a second- her diligently prepared meal, he could have had the common decency to say thank you, to thank her for what she tried to do.

Her mind switched tracks for a moment. What if he hadn’t been joking around? What if he had been sick? If that were the case, then her anger would have been for nothing. He could be at Dr Tofu’s clinic right now, laying on his examining table— Akane blushed for a second as she thought about Dr Tofu’s examining table, and how he’d given her her first examination as a young woman; she shook her head, pushing those borderline hentai thoughts out of her mind. If Ranma was sick, then he would be at Tofu’s; if he wasn’t, she was going to kill him. Akane picked up the phone, and called.

"Moshi moshi," Tofu answered; he sounded as though he’d rushed to get the phone.

"Doctor Tofu? This is Akane," she began; though she was in love with Ranma, she still got a little flutter in her lower tummy whenever she spoke with Tofu—though she’d never admit to either of those things, "Is Ranma there? He told me that he wasn’t feeling well."

"Iie, Akane," he began, "I haven’t seen Ranma since yesterday, when I patched him up after he landed at my door."

Akane blushed a little at that; she’d punted Ranma up into the stratosphere the night before, after an argument they’d had, over his fiancées, and what place they held in his life. Ranma thought that Ukyou deserved to remain in his life as a friend, while Akane thought her presence, especially now that she wanted to be more than a friend, was inappropriate.

It was kind of funny how, whenever she got really mad at Ranma and kicked him to the sky, he almost always landed at Dr. Tofu’s clinic. It was only kind of funny because, of course, this was Nerima, and lots of coincidental, weird, and outright impossible things happened in Nerima.

"Well," said Akane, breaking out of her reverie, "If you happen to see him, please tell him that I think I’m going to order dinner, and give the rest of the food I cooked to the neighbor’s pet."

Tofu face-faulted. Akane cooked dinner? again? Tofu liked Akane a great deal—not the least of which was because she was Kasumi’s sister—but her cooking was very nearly life-threatening, and in more ways than one. He had managed to get some of Akane’s food one night, vowing to take some home for later; he had yet to finish cataloging, let alone analyze, the compounds that resulted from her cooking.

There was silence on the other end of the line; Akane took it to be Tofu, simply being patient, waiting for her to continue.

"Well, thank you, Doctor Tofu," Akane said, feeling the first stirrings of anger.

"Thank you for calling, Akane," replied Tofu, unaware of Akane’s gradually increasing agitation on the other end of the line. He continued, "If I do happen to see Ranma, I’ll send him back home."

"Okay…bye," she said, and hung up the phone.

So Ranma hadn’t stumbled off to Tofu’s. Now, the only thing was to figure out which of the two bimbos—the purple-haired Amazon or the spatula-wielding tomboy—that Ranma was with. And so, with righteous anger, and ki flaring, she stormed to the door.

The first thing she saw, as she pulled open the door, was Shampoo, glomming all over Ranma, and that fact alone pushed her anger up a notch. Then she saw Ranma’s arm around Shampoo! That Ranma wasn’t pushing her away was bad enough, but that he was encouraging her was just too much! Of course, she didn’t seem to notice—or care, if she had—that Ranma appeared to be quite unsteady on his feet. Shampoo was wrapped around him, and he had his arm around her; that was all that mattered. She stormed off the porch.

Shampoo saw her first, but didn’t have time to warn Ranma, as Akane shouted, "RANMA NO BAKA!" and slammed her mallet into his head. Ranma slid limply from Shampoo’s grasp.

"Why violent tomboy hit Ranma?" Shampoo asked, irritated. Of course she could beat Akane, but the idea hadn’t been to get into a fight this evening. But, if Akane wanted a fight...

"You stay out of this, Shampoo! It’s none of your business."

"You hit airen, it become Shampoo business!" Her aura began to swirl around her.

Akane’s aura flared even brighter in response.

"I can do whatever I want with him!" she growled, "it’s not like he belongs to you!"

"Ranma is Shampoo husband!" said Shampoo, nearly shouting, "Ranma no belong to you!"

"Enough!!"

Both of the young women jumped at that. Ranma slowly, though still somewhat unsteadily, rose to his feet. He appeared to steady himself, focusing on his center, and then he looked up at the two young women.

"You don’t quit, do you?" he said. Neither Akane nor Shampoo was sure of who he was addressing, but each assumed that it was to the both of them. He continued. "You both fight over completely stupid things! I mean, fighting over who gets the right to beat me up? I’m not gonna sit here and see who wins." The young women watched as Ranma seemed to gather up his strength, and then leapt for the rooftop. Shampoo relaxed, preparing to jump up to the rooftop after him, as did Akane, but as they both reached the roof, they saw Ranma almost vanish from sight, as he moved away from them so fast.

Akane face-faulted.

"Well, he certainly moved fast enough," she huffed, "for someone who isn’t feeling well!"

What he’d actually done was to hop down off of the other end of the roof, and swing in through the open window to Nabiki’s bedroom. Being that she wasn’t home yet, it was an okay route to take to getting back into the house.

He didn’t stay in Nabiki’s room for long; he knew from experience that she had ways of telling when someone had been snooping through her things, so he knew better than to even think of satisfying his curiosities about her.

After closing her bedroom door, he quickly walked down the hall to the guest room, the one he shared with his father, put together a small bundle of clothes, and wrote a quick note to his father. He wasn’t staying in this house for one more minute- not tonight, anyway; Akane was angry with him, and because she was angry about nothing, simply angry at Ranma because she could be, it made him angry. And he wasn’t about to stay around and listen to Akane yell and complain at him when he was like this. He knew that he would only end up saying something else hurtful, something sharp and cutting, all because he couldn’t keep his wits around her, and figured that it would be better to sleep elsewhere, even if only for one night.

Akane and Shampoo had hopped down from the rooftop, and were just getting started with their arguing, their voices getting louder and louder, and each pulling their respective weapons from hyperspace, when a voice spoke up behind them.

"Excuse me, honorable young ladies, but can you tell me if this is the Tendo residence?"

It took a moment for the words to penetrate through Akane’s anger. Shampoo, for her part, wasn’t any quicker on the draw; it took Akane’s silence, and her apparent lack of attention to her words, to get her attention.

Before the both of them stood a very tall man, easily Kuno’s height of 180cm, if not more, but with a heavier build. His skin was more darkly colored than that of any native Japanese, but his look, and his manner, not to mention his excellent—if slightly accented—japanese, he could pass for a Japanese man… just one who’d spent entirely too much time in the sun. He was dressed in a full-sleeved chinese shirt, black with white piping; a pair of simple fabric-blended pants, of a dark blue color; and sandals. Actually, Akane noticed, they weren’t Japanese sandals- they were American; she saw the velcro just peeking from behind the three straps that crossed over his feet.

His eyes, as dark as the night surrounding the three of them, seemed to burn into the girls like fire, with an intensity that surprised them both. Akane gasped; Shampoo whispered in Mandarin.

"I am Akane Tendo,"Akane stammered, afraid for a brief second, "and th-this is the Tendo residence." Telling him that he’d found what he was looking for, she thought a split second later, might not have been a very smart idea. What if this man had bad intentions?

"Arigato. My name is Mogadishu Yokara. I am looking for Saotome Ranma."

‘Oh, great,’ thought Akane, ‘just what we need around here: another challenger.’

As if she’d read Akane’s thought, Shampoo blurted, "You here to challenge Ranma?"

Only Ranma, or maybe Ryoga, would have noticed it. As it was, neither of them was there, and so there was no one to notice the very brief but unmistakeable hesitation in Yokara before he spoke. "Yes. I come to announce a formal challenge to Saotome, tomorrow in the park."

Akane was silent for a moment, then she spoke. "Yeah, well, when I find that baka, I’ll tell him."

"Arigato." Yokara said again, bowing before the girls. "I will take my leave of you now." And almost as silently as he’d appeared, he left again.

The girls waited for a moment, then began to speak.

"That was weird," said Akane, "even for Nerima."

"Shampoo know," agreed Shampoo, "he not come crashing into yard, screaming for Ranma death."

"I know."

"Ranma no worry," Shampoo continued, "he take guy who just left easy."

"I dunno," said Akane absently, "he looked like a fighter of some kind."

"But no martial artist," chimed Shampoo, "can tell by stance, by walk."

Akane had nothing to say to that. Shampoo took that, and the relative peace of the neighborhood, to be her cue to depart. Ranma was gone now, so sticking around made no point, unless she wanted to fight Akane, and she hadn’t come for that.

‘Akane doesn’t know how often I’ve had the opportunity to kill her,’ thought Shampoo—in Mandarin, of course—as she leapt up and over the fence surrounding the Tendo estate, ‘and if I felt like Great-grandmother, I would have many times over by now. But I haven’t. I believe in the laws of my tribe, but killing an opponent, especially someone weaker, just isn’t my style.’

The momentary subject of Shampoo’s musings, Akane, was just turning around to roundly blast her for glomping onto Ranma, when she noticed that she was the only one standing in the yard. Having no where to vent her anger, Akane simply stomped her way back into the house.

‘A challenge, huh?’ thought Ranma from his perch upon a rooftop two houses away, ‘well, I should be up to it for tomorrow. But first, I need to get some rest.’ He hopped down onto a nearby fence, and sped off to his destination.

The Tendo estate, as it was called, was called thus not because the Tendos were rich, like the Kunos—and the Kuno estate really was an estate—but because, like any well-known family—or any family with enough money to afford an estate—they possessed land. Their land consisted of the Tendo house, already large by American standards, was nearly humungous by those of Japan; each of the Tendos had their own room-- a phenomenon not common among lesser-known Japanese, who often lived in apartments—and still had two guest rooms to spare, all in addition to their full kitchen, dining room, living room, and what by American terms would be called a den. The Tendo estate also possessed the dojo, nearly as large as the house, with a second floor that was used as storage and office space. And, of course, the estate possessed a fair amount of land, about an acre or two, upon which the house and dojo sat.

The Tendo family had acquired their current estate almost a century before, well before Soun Tendo was even a child of a child of his grandfather, then himself a child. They prospered by passing along their special brand of martial arts, namely the style of Indiscriminate Grappling, which relied heavily on close-quarters combat, and which, while becoming more of a rarity in then-modern-day Japan, with the preference for feudal combat by katana or other weapon rather than by fist and foot, was something that the ‘priviledged’ felt that their children should be trained in. As the years rolled on, the Tendo School of Indiscriminate Grappling, as it was called, began to incorporate katas and techniques of other styles, drawing from many different versions of karate, kung fu, judo, and not a little bit of jujitsu and aikido. The Tendo School didn’t take on the name of Anything Goes until just before Soun took over the title and the training of its students. Like Saotome Genma, he trained in the Anything Goes style of martial arts under his master, Happosai, and blended the original Tendo School with this new style when he decided to settle down.

Soun—and Genma, now—still taught classes; Nabiki helped bring in a lot of money with her ‘business’, but she still only managed about half of the monthly expenses, especially now with Ranma, the human demolition company, and his father Genma, the human food disposal, living as guest underneath his roof.

The Tendo estate wasn’t pretentious-- unlike the Kuno estate—and in part because of that was a excellent reflection of—and a beacon of safety to—the neighborhood that they were a part of.

And with all gone for the evening, with the notable exception of Akane, it promised to be a quite night in Nerima.

And, for this night, at least, that promise held true.

Well, mostly, anyway.

"He what?" Akane shouted; fortunately, Nabiki had had the entire house soundproofed after the arrival of the Saotomes, both to keep down sound within the house for any sleeping occupants, and to cut down on any sounds that drifted outside to the neighbors. Initially thinking it to be a nuisance investment, she’d come to appreciate the sound baffling, realizing it now as an excellent long-term investment in the estate. Thus, neither Soun nor Genma, both dead to the world in their drunken stupors, were awakened by the sudden excitement in Akane’s voice.

"It says that he-" Nabiki was cut off as Akane snatched the note from her hands. "Hey! That’ll cost you 2000 yen, plus another thousand; I think you gave me a paper cut." Akane absently placed 3000 yen in Nabiki’s hands as she read the brief note.

Pop,

Akane’s mad at me over nothing. I mean, it’s not like I’m lying when I tell

her that her cooking can kill people. Literally! Do you remember last week

when her ‘Peking Duck’ tried to eat the serving bowl? Anyway, I figured that

I would give that kawikune tomboy some time to cool off, so I’m gonna go

sleep at a friend’s tonight. I’ll be back for breakfast, and if you eat my share,

I swear old man, I’ll pound you into next week!

Ranma

"That baka!" Akane exclaimed, reading the letter again, "my Peking Duck was perfectly fine!" Nabiki cocked an eyebrow in Akane’s direction—she was oblivious to the condescending expression—and even Kasumi—who throughout the entirety of the time she and Nabiki had returned from dinner, had simply sat on the couch, looking more relaxed than she’d looked in months-- looked a little less than agreeable with that statement. Akane continued, "Even if it was a little strangely colored. And that’s besides the point- who’s this ‘friend’ he’s talking about?"

"Well, I can find out for you-" began Nabiki. Akane intercepted her statement.

"How much?"

"Well, since you are my sister," said Nabiki, doing the arithmatic in her head, "I’ll say, about 5000 yen. Well, that, plus an after-hours fee of 2500 yen, to cover the cost of rising some of my associates from their nightly activities."

"Hhrmph!" groaned Akane, and handed over the money, saying, "I hope you know, that’s the last of my money for the week."

"Well, sis, I’ll tell you what: if I don’t find him, I’ll give you back your 5000 yen." For Nabiki, this was generous, even for family.

Akane was silent for a moment, seeming to realize this. Then she said, "So what about the other 2500 yen?"

"Well, as I said, those are after-hours fees," said Nabiki, as if this were the Simplest Thing In The World, "and those are non-refundable."

Akane "hhrmph!"ed again.

After talking just a bit more with Akane, Nabiki went back upstairs—where she’d happened to notice the note when she walked past the guest room, and saw it taped to the door-- with the expressed intention of calling her associates, taking a bath, then going to bed, in that order.

She and Kasumi had had a pleasant enough time, chatting about nothing in particular, so much so that Nabiki couldn’t for the life of her remember what exactly they’d talked about. Dinner itself was a great affair; Nabiki had gone to a very good and very inexpensive American bistro style restaurant, where everything was fixed the way she’d liked it. The only problem with that place, she thought upon a moment’s reflection, was that they gave way too much food with one’s meal, and neither she nor Kasumi had felt that they could manage to eat the rest of their meal, even if they’d brought it home in those, "puppy" bags? ‘Is that what they’re called?’ she wondered for a second; the translation of that completely American term didn’t blend into kanji as well as she thought it was supposed to.

Akane told her about Ranma’s challenger almost as soon as she’d come in the door. Actually, she’d told everyone in the household, since Soun and Genma came in almost right behind she and Kasumi. Kasumi uttered her typical "Oh, my!" while Soun and Genma both loudly boasted of Ranma’s prowess and abilities, just before they went upstairs and promptly passed out. So, in addition to pondering just how she was going to find Ranma, she was also planning how to set the odds for this challenge. It was just too bad that Akane didn’t think like Nabiki—she might have been able to take a picture, so that Nabiki could see what he looked like, and what he seemed to be made of; figuring out the odds on this fight would be haphazard at best, with the limited knowledge she had, and she wouldn’t make as much money off of it as she might otherwise. But, from what Akane had told her, it seemed, at least on the surface, that this new person wouldn’t be much of a match for Ranma. Which meant that she had to set preliminary odds, and then get a glimpse of this guy, so she could finalize them.

In truth, Nabiki wasn’t a cold-hearted bitch—just about everyone thought that she was, including Akane. She mostly liked it that way; if people thought she had no heart, no feelings, no emotion, they tended to stay away from her. It kept them from getting too close. Ranma, as thick-headed as he seemed sometimes, would occasionally look at her, and the way he looked at her made her wonder just what he was taking note of. Over the past year and then some, she’d learned, little by little, that Ranma wasn’t stupid; he was just socially inept. When she’d first met him, she’d been pleased to learn that Ranma wasn’t what he’d seemed to be, namely, a male. If she dared admit it to herself, though, she’d also been a little disappointed; even if she detested the idea of an arranged marriage, it would have been interesting to see what it would have been like. Then, when she learned that he was indeed male, she was confounded to learn that she’d had a small desire for the both--

She’d cut that thought off, right there; she wasn’t a "lesbian"—that word she’d picked up from her American literature, both in and out of class; there wasn’t a word in japanese that fit as well; yaoi came very close, though —especially since she wasn’t attracted to any other women. But, no matter that she denied it; it was there, and whenever she’d glimpsed Ranma-chan, or Ranko as s/he was sometimes called, she’d usually find somewhere else to be, if it could be helped; for some reason, she thought Ranma himself was "cute" and maybe had potential, if he weren’t so arrogant and insecure at the same time, but Ranko… there was something about her that Nabiki couldn’t consciously think about; but in her dreams, sometimes she found herself alone with the smaller redhead, kissing her, softly, holding her next to her own body, and feeling both herself and Ranko responding to the touch-- Nabiki usually woke up from those dreams with her lips tingling, and a spot between her legs itching. Occasionally, she masturbated, but on the mornings after having one of those dreams, she didn’t dare; it could make the dreams more frequent, or more detailed; she could become a lesbian by thought; it might make her desire worse; this was Ranma she was dreaming about; she might explode if she touched herself; s/he was Akane’s fiancee; for any of those reasons, she didn’t.

There wasn’t anyone Nabiki had let get close to her, especially after her mother’s death. Kasumi had retreated into the kitchen, both figuratively and literally, and Akane, once she had understood her mother’s death and what that meant, had turned to the dojo, and demanding all of her father’s attention, both for the Art, and because she was afraid of losing him, too. Which had left Nabiki to her own devices. They’d left her alone, and she’d had to fend for herself, emotionally speaking. So she’d made sure that no one else could leave her like that; they had to "come in" to her heart, in order to leave it, so she simply made sure that no one got in. The fact that Ranma had that much of an effect on her, even if he was a she, and even if only in her dreams, disturbed her greatly, and was the reason why—at least, as far as her subconscious could admit; she wasn’t consciously aware of it—she picked on Ranma as much as she did; she had to get back at the person who’d gotten that close to her.

Nabiki placed her calls, as she said she would, demanding some results by morning from the few associates she could count on at this time of night, and went to take her bath.

Kasumi simply sat—for once; sitting wasn’t something she did very often; there was so much that had to be done to keep the house in order, especially with Ranma and Akane being as rambunctious as they were apt to be; in addition to her usual household duties, she’d become a general-purpose fix-it person, handling all the small matters of destruction caused by Ranma or Akane, which helped to keep her quite busy—and tried to relax. Since she wasn’t moving, she was trying to avoid a backache. Moving around helped keep her back from stiffening up, but occasionally, when she stopped moving, like when she was bathing, or almost asleep, the muscles in her back would tense up, and she’d be unable to do anything more than get up and take a few medicinal herbs she’d discovered, before she was relaxed enough to bathe or sleep.

She watched as Akane paced the floor, wondering for the millionth time why Akane didn’t just sit down with Ranma, and tell him how she felt. A small voice inside her head told her about the pot calling the kettle black, about her not telling Tofu how she felt. She countered by saying to herself that it was obvious that Ranma felt about Akane as Akane felt about Ranma; with Tofu, there was no way of her telling if he felt the way she did, and she wasn’t about to risk her emotions without having some idea.

It had taken her many years build up the safety walls that she had up, the ones that let her face almost any adversity with a simple "Oh, my!", the ones that allowed her to hide her shock, her disgust, her anger, her lust, all those things that a proper lady wasn’t suppose to show, locked up for her only to see. No one could know about her sadness, her loneliness, her anger, her depression, her arousal—those were things that she didn’t even acknowledge anymore, until the deep cover of night, when all ones’ daemons came out to play. She knew for a fact that there were a few nights when she couldn’t get to sleep right away, that she’d passed Nabiki’s room and heard a brief, choked sob, and wondered if Nabiki felt the same things that she did, beneath her own walls, if Nabiki knew how alike she might be to herself.

Kasumi was by no means as "innocent" as she let everyone think she was. Oh, she’d never even been touched by a boy in any way that could be thought of as less than ‘ladylike’, but she knew about sex—this was modern-day Japan— she knew what the world was about, and she was just as affected by things that happened in life as anyone else. Showing it, of course, was out of the question; again, it just wasn’t the type of thing a lady would do.

Although neither she nor Nabiki knew it about one another, Kasumi had gone through the same feelings of relief and disappointment as Nabiki had when she’d first met Ranma, and for much the same reasons. But when she found out that Ranma really was a boy, she’d been very curious to know how deeply the magick of Jusenkyo had affected him. In a lot of ways, it hadn’t done anything for him, but in a few other, more subtle ways, he had matured—somewhat—because of it. He still had a long way to go, a lot of maturity to gain, but, then again, so did Akane, and so in lots of ways, Ranma and Akane were the best match for each other; if they could only realize that, together, for themselves, and then have the courage to tell everyone else to go jump in a lake. She didn’t think it was fair for Nabiki to play with Ranma like she did against his other "fiancees", but neither did she think it was fair for Ranma not to say something definitive to the other girls, either, no matter how much he didn’t want to hurt them; someone was going to get hurt in the end.

Akane, of course, was no help; she’d walled herself up in her Art, and did physically what Nabiki did emotionally, by pushing away and beating up the people who wanted to get close to her. If Akane could only put away her anger for just a moment, and try to let Ranma in, and if he could only stop being so scared, and let her in, they could love each other like no one else could.

"Akane," began Kasumi, "why don’t you go ahead to bed? I’m sure that Ranma will return once he’s calmed down."

Akane opened her mouth to speak, but realized, suddenly, that she was almost dead on her feet; the activities of the past couple of hours had drained her more than she’d known.

"I think you’re right," she said, "I should just go to bed. Besides, it’s not like I’m waiting up for that baka, anyway."

"And besides, you have class tomorrow, and juku in the evening," Kasumi spoke-sung, reminding Akane that the next day was Monday.

"Aiiyaahh!" moaned Akane, "sometimes, I wish I could get a day off of school… and juku!" She punctuated the last word with a slight stomp as she headed up the stairs to bed.

And within a few minutes, the house was quiet.

A dark-skinned young man walked down the street.

It was quiet, this night.

Almost too quiet, for someone who had been raised- mostly, anyway- in America.

He liked this kind of quiet better.

Then he heard laughter. Softly, from a distance, but not far. And malevolent.

"Well, look at what we have here," said the voice that owned the laughter of a moment ago. The dark young man turned around.

The owner of the voice, a young man, and his three "associates" walked closer to the dark young man. Each wore dark leather jackets studded with points of metal, dark jeans, and boots. Each had his hair cut very close, and slicked with oil. Each had an air of menace and arrogance surrounding them.

Muggers.

The dark young man almost laughed; it was stereotypically American, stereotypically comical.

"Seems we have a gaijin walking around after dark," said the leader-apparent in Japanese, glancing in the direction of his cohorts. Each smiled knowingly, and with expectation, anticipation. The leader continued, "I would have thought someone would have warned all the tourists about guys like us." He paused to smile, and as if he meant his words to have an affect on the dark young man. He switched over to English. "Don’t you know it’s not safe for gaijin in the streets after nightfall?"

"First of all," replied the dark young man in Japanese, startling the four young men, "I am not gaijin."

"Then you’re a half-breed," blurted one of the other men; the leader’s smile fell from his face, and was replaced with a snarl.

"And we hate half-breeds," he growled, crouching slightly, and bringing a small length of pipe to view. His friends responded in kind.

The dark young man didn’t appear to be concerned. In fact, he looked almost contemptuous. "When you get to the hospital," he said, and with such certainty and assuredness that two of the four were momentarily hesitant, as if they’d glimpsed a premonition of their fates an hour from now, "make sure that you tell them that Mogadishu Yokara warned you."

The leader attacked, with a swiftness that would have been likely to make a lesser experienced man hesitate, and by result, end up with him being beaten to within an inch of his life.

But Mogadishu Yokara was very experienced.

And he was no normal man. Not by a longshot.

Later, the one remaining conscious young man told the police about the speed and strength of the dark young man, and how he reminded him of Saotome Ranma. Of course, all of the people in the street knew of Ranma. He wasn’t someone you wanted to mess with, not even on a good day, and for this young man to publicly compare this newcomer to Ranma meant that he was a martial artist, a very good one, and just generally someone you didn’t want to mess with. And with that, his name went out into the streets; within an hour, everyone who needed to know about someone like Mogadishu Yokara knew as much about him as did the thugs—don’t mess with him.

"Get him, Chou Tsen!" cried one of the thugs.

Chou Tsen, the leader, swung at Yokara, in an arch that was designed to knock him off of his feet.

He never connected.

Yokara waited until the last possible second, watching Chou Tsen, tracking him; to Yokara, Chou Tsen was incredibly slow. He wouldn’t need to use any of his special abilities with him.

Of course, he wanted very much to use his special abilities, to show these impudent young thug wannabes just who they were dealing with. But, he held himself in check.

As Tsen began swinging, Yokara ducked down, just enough to get under the swing; he wanted to be able to pop back up as quickly as possible. As a matter of fact, to the three thugs on the sidelines, he almost appeared not to move, as if the pipe had simply sliced through him. At the top of Tsen’s swing, and as his momentum compelled him to take a further step forward—normally the follow-through; with the victim lying on the ground, the last step he took would usually pin him to the ground—Yokara simply shifted to the side slightly, and stuck out his foot.

Predictably, it was Tsen who hit the ground.

He turned over slowly, and looked up at Yokara—who hadn’t moved an inch further—with murder in his eyes. "Oh, that did it! I’m gonna make an example out of you!"

"Iie," said Yokara softly, "I’m going to make an example out of you."

Tsen sprung up from the ground almost as if by rocket. But suddenly, Yokara wasn’t where he’d been a moment before. "Huh?" blurted Tsen, just before Yokara seemed to appear right next to him, and a fist pounded into his face.

To the other three thugs, who were just noticing that Tsen wasn’t taking care of business as usual, Yokara was a veritable blur, as he rained punch after punch—one of the men counted more than 50 punches in the space of a second—into the face and chest of the thug, before taking what later seemed to be an almost arrogant pause. One of the young men discovered his loyalty, and was soundly beaten in an intricate dance of kicks and punches, numbering somewhere in the low 200s, in the space of four or five seconds. Another decided that he would join in, too, foolishly ignoring what he’d just seen, and was hit with a massive open-handed punch that looked like it should have caved his entire chest in; the young man in question gasped for air for a second or two, then passed out, collapsing to the ground. Yokara then turned back to Tsen who only now was just beginning to recover from his dazed state. Yokara picked him up, no mean feat in itself, but he did it with one arm; Tsen was built like a football player, and probably weighed 100kgs or so, but the dark young man lifted him off of the ground almost as if he weighed nothing.

"Remember what I said," Yokara spoke, "tell the police that I warned you." Then, with a simple finality of motion, he left go of Tsen, and in a blur, spun completely around, and hit him across the temple with a hammerfist.

Then Yokara looked in the direction of the one remaining thug.

The fight had only taken thirty seconds, from Tsen’s first leap, to Yokara’s last punch.

This last thug was more wise than his friends. He turned and ran.

And promptly tripped in a crack of the sidewalk, knocking himself unconscious for the next five minutes.

The police had set up a network of people, both on and off of the force, who watched for new martial artists to appear in the area, especially powerful ones. This network had been set up shortly after Ranma and Ryoga’s first fight; each time a new martial artist of considerable caliber appeared, they were announced over the network, and a small file made up about them. Nabiki Tendo often made use of the associates she knew within the network, and used them to find out about challengers of Ranma Saotome. She’d done that this time, too, trying to find out about this newcomer.

By morning, Yokara Mogadishu had a file of his own.

By morning, Nabiki Tendo had information she could use.

She sat up.

It was going to be another one of those nights, Kasumi decided; sleep would be long in coming. Sensing another impending backache, she’d taken her medicinal herbs right after Akane had gone upstairs to bed, hoping to ward off the pain. Apparently, the Gods had smiled down upon her, for she’d had no pain, even though she could feel the muscles in her back tightening up more than was normal; it passed after a half-hour, so she was sure, then, that the herbs had done their job.

But that comfort from agony did nothing to soothe her spirit, which for some reason seemed restless, keeping her from sleeping. She sighed. This seemed to happen about three or four times a month, when she couldn’t get to sleep right away, or more rarely, at all. No matter her fatigue, however, there was a house to keep running, and so when the new day dawned, she always put aside herself, for lack of a better way of putting it, and became Perfect. Sometimes it grated on her, that no one could see through her to know that she wasn’t whole inside, that she couldn’t allow herself to show her true side, her true feelings; a small part of her raged against herself, beating and pounding against the wall to the outside, the wall that she’d built up to face the day, the wall that only came down in the deepest darkest of night, when no one else could see, and in that hour, she always felt so alone.

Like now.

She felt something on her cheek, and was surprised to discover that it was a tear. She wiped it away, but with that awareness, that she was lonely, that she felt hollow inside, and that she was crying, there was no way to stop her tears. The weight of her world seemed to suddenly crush down upon her. She slowly sank down into the pillow, and began to sob softly.