DYNASTY - BOOK I: COURSE OF EARTH
A Ranma ½ Fanfiction
By Sydney Kyle

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Chapter Thirteen: Deviations in the Plot

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“Heaven sustenyne thy course in quietness
To abound and rise as mountain hill and range
Constant as the rivers flow that all augment
Steady th’ increase in ever cyclic change.”

—Book of Songs (Shih Ching)

* * * * * *

      It had always been the assumption of the majority of Nerimans that Shampoo usually accorded Mousse with less dignity than she would an insect at tT mercy of her dainty little Chinese slippers. At the moment, however, those aforementioned Nerimans would be dumfounded at what was unfolding in the attic room of the Nekohanten that served as Mousse’s living quarters.

      The room, though modest both in size and appearance, looked like cross between a hostel space and a weapons repository. Along with the neatly arranged assortments of chains, blades, projectiles, and ceramic armaments, there were small clay sculptures, Chinese ornaments, and other related items. Squeezed into the midst of this were a rickety table, a dilapidated stool on which Shampoo sat, balancing a bowl of cool water on her lap, and a squalid bed on which Mousse was sprawled.

      In the wake of his manifestation of a magatama, Cologne had been forced to alter their plans: instead of their journeying to the Tendo residence, the former Jusenkyoites would have to come to the Nekohanten instead. After checking and rechecking Mousse’s symptoms, she’d ordered Shampoo to see to him while she contacted the others. Her granddaughter had been too stunned by this newest turn of events to object.

      With shaky limbs and a sick heart, she’d slung Mousse over her shoulder and trundled him up to his bedroom. After tucking him in the best she could, she’d stomped back downstairs for water, ice, cold compresses, and various medicinal concoctions—for Mousse had suddenly developed a high-grade fever—all the while eavesdropping on bits and snippets from her great-grandmother’s phone conversation.

      She shouldn’t even be up here. This magatama business was Mousse’s fault, after all—she’d told him he didn’t have to follow her into that cave, didn’t she? Only her husband-to-be was worthy of her ministrations, but now here she was tending to Mousse while somewhere out there, that hoyden of a girl Akane Tendo had probably tended to Ranma when he’d been sick...

      There it was again—that customary surge of resentment that always seemed to accompany matters concerning her unlucky suitor. But since he was already out cold, she held her emotions in check. Mousse was out cold, so beating him up to relieve her stress was obviously out of the question.

      So here she was, attending to a boy she resented at times for cramping her style, for stalking her every move like a veritable second shadow.

      She smiled ruefully. Had this played out back in their native Joketsuzoku, her village sisters would never let her hear the end of it. It was sacrilege for Chinese Amazon of her rank to extend this sort of simpering clemency toward any lower-caste male, especially one who had not defeated her in combat. She could hear their jeers now: the great Shampoo, reduced to a nursemaid for her would-be paramour! She’s supposed to be tough as nails and apathetic as they come, but she’s gone soft; she’s settled for Mu Tsu, that blind weak idiot, because he’s worn her down and she can’t find anyone better...

      A few drops splattered onto her wrist, alerting her to the white-knuckled grip she had on the bowl. She relaxed her hands and kneaded listlessly at the curve of her exposed shoulder, chastising herself for allowing a couple of imaginary taunts to vex her like this.

      Still, the derision of her Amazon sisters would always weigh heavily in her mind. Cologne would tell her great-granddaughter repeatedly to disregard their behavior; they were simply jealous because she was the favorite of the elders, who were ecstatic over the fact that they might finally have a bona fide Joketsuzoku contender for the Chinese Amazon throne. But it was difficult for Shampoo to simply brush it off; it was always the same old cycle—fair-weather friendships, back talk, and subterfuge from her peers and the rest of the townspeople. In fact, the only non-elder who hadn’t treated her like that had been...

      Mousse.

      As if responding to her silent mention of his name, the Chinese Amazon youth stirred underneath his blanket. The sudden motion was enough to startle Shampoo out of her reminiscing, and she swept a critical gaze over the figure on the bed.

      With his round rimless spectacles lying askew on the top of his head and glossy black locks strewn every which-way over the shabby pillow, Mousse seemed to maintain an aura of earnest haplessness about him even in repose. The tranquility in his features was marred somewhat by the indentation between his brows, as though he were being confronted with some subliminal riddle. His mouth was half-open, but she couldn’t hear him breathing—not a hitch, not even a snore.

      By the gods, he was quiet. Too quiet.

      Uneasily she reached out and positioned her finger underneath his nostrils. His respiration was steady, but that was the only testament to his being alive. Aside from that brief movement a minute earlier, he’d been completely motionless. For Shampoo, who was accustomed to the young man’s nervous, eager presence fluttering ceaselessly about her, it was quite an unsettling turnaround.

      “Mousse, wake up.”

      Her half-command, half-plea sounded loud and intrusive in the tiny garret space, but it was effective nonetheless in breaking that onerous spell of silence.

      Predictably enough, the Chinese boy did not comply, which marked another deviation in the graph of what passed for normality in Nerima: to Mousse, every syllable that flowed from his beloved Shampoo’s lips was gospel. Had she asked him to count the grains of rice in all of the Nekohanten’s rice bins, he would gladly do so.

      But he wasn’t listening to her now, was he?

      “Mousse, you wake up right now! Is not like you to be so still!”

      It was an exercise in futility and she knew it, but that didn’t deter her. Berating Mousse was safe and familiar territory, and if there was anything she so desperately needed at this particular impasse in time, it was the return of routine.

      “Mousse...”

      Shampoo let her eyes wander toward the back of the sleeping boy’s hand, where they lingered over its newest accessory: the blue-green stone that seemed to have risen from the skin, bright and buffed and eerily beautiful.

      She hated it. Hated the fact that it was there and hated it for what its connotations forebode for her—and for its host.

      “Stupid magatama,” she hissed at the gem. “You not supposed to pick Mousse. He weak, not strong warrior like Ranma. He no able to fight Dynasty! Mousse just get stupid duck behind killed, you see!”

      Suddenly, the possibility of losing Mousse—losing the daily myopic episodes, the over-solicitousness, the bungling romantic overtures—frightened her. From childhood on he had been a constant—albeit chafing—factor in her life; aside from her great-grandmother, he was the only reminder she had left of her old days, insufferable as they had been, and if he up and disappeared on her she wouldn’t know what to do—

      “Oracle say there only one Chosen-Born. Magatama make mistake when pick Mousse, yes? So you go away now, okay? Shoo! Stupid rock, you go away now, you leave Mousse alone. He no survive if he go to Takamagahara, he no come back...”

      There was a low whine as the bedroom door swung open, and Shampoo jerked her head toward the noise, feeling strangely guilty at being caught at a moment that teetered on vulnerable.

      To her consternation, the intruder wasn’t even human. It was the Nekohanten’s newest “mascot” of sorts: her former feline alter ego, which she’d taken to calling “Neko”—it was simple, straightforward, and didn’t sound nearly as ridiculous as Akane’s “Muu Muu Chan” brainstorm.

      Speak of the feathered devil, Shampoo thought, as a familiar white fowl—complete with miniature spiral-tinted glasses—waddled in after the cat. Admittedly, a Chinese restaurant wasn’t the ideal locale for a duck, but Mousse had been loathe to part with the animal, and for some reason, neither did Shampoo—though of course she didn’t tell him that.

      As it were, the two animals lingered near the entryway, giving no indication of advancing any further. Shampoo placed the bowl of lukewarm water on the nearby table and placed some distance between her and the dozing young man. The two animals’ heads moved in perfect unison as they watched her, their eyes troubled, and the Amazon girl felt her stomach clench in embarrassment.

      “Neko, Muu Muu Chan, you no look at me like that! Is no Shampoo’s fault that Mousse like this! Is his fault...”

      At this, the pastel-furred cat slunk forward, leaped easily onto the bed, and proceeded to meow. Muu Muu Chan had to suffer a few collisions with the bottom headboard, causing Shampoo to forget for a couple of seconds that that Mousse no longer inhabited this form, before finally depositing himself on the the bed beside Neko. Once done, he quacked disconsolately at seeing his “master” in such dire straits.

      Shampoo dropped her gaze, letting her fingers massage her shoulder. There was something infinitely melancholy about a cat and duck wailing, threnody-like, over the afflicted young man. Neko and Muu Muu Chan harbored very strong attachments to their former counterparts, and were very sensitive to either one’s moods or conditions.

      Then Muu Muu Chan stopped, glanced towards the purple-haired Amazon, and wakked plaintively. In spite of herself, Shampoo patted the bird on its downy head.

      “Shampoo know,” she said, and touched Mousse’s cloth-covered brow. “Shampoo worried, too.”

      Surrealistically touching scenes such as this occurred rarely in Nerima, and when they did, they usually did not last long. Case in point: Cologne’s voice drifted up from downstairs, causing Shampoo to yank her hand away from the young man with whiplash-inducing speed.

      “Shampoo! Ranma’s here!”

      “Airen!” gushed the Amazon girl, leaping to her feet and knocking over an unfortunate Muu Muu Chan over in her excitement. The mention of her betrothed was enough to banish all traces of gloom from her mind—and subsequently dispel whatever tentative rapport she’d been building with Mousse.

      She stole a glimpse at her unconscious would-be suitor and flushed, thinking how crazy she must’ve sounded talking to him while sympathizing with a cat and duck. It was the stress of the past few days getting to her, she reasoned, nothing more. Thank goodness for her airen’s arrival; it had provided her the proverbial thump on the skull, jolting her back to her senses just as she was being weak, being anything less than the paradigm of a Chinese Amazon...

      Ignoring the combined stares of Neko and Muu Muu Chan, Shampoo bounded out of the room without so much as a backwards glance—because Mousse was fine, she told herself stubbornly—and bolted down the stairs. Already she could detect voices tangled in conversation, among them her great-grandmother’s, the senior Saotome’s, the Crazy Violent Tendo Girl’s—though Shampoo could not fathom why she had elected to join a Jusenkyo-exclusive gathering—the lost boy’s, and yes, Ranma’s.

      Ai-yah! It’s true, he’s awake! she exulted to herself, straightening her short sleeveless Chinese dress in anticipation of their reunion. She’d been averse to leave Ranma after he’d collapsed, but he had remained inanimate all throughout the night. It was only after extracting a firm promise from his father to inform her the second his son woke that Cologne was able to coax her great-granddaughter to get some rest back at the Nekohanten.

      Shampoo was halfway down the stairs when she identified a sixth voice: it belonged to Girl-Ranma—Ranko, her brain supplied for her.

      It was true that yesterday she had been moderately genteel toward the little redhead. But now that Shampoo had been able to review the situation at her leisure, she realized that the Yasakami body-splitting procedure had presented her with an inimitable opportunity. Once she fulfilled her original mission to kill the female outsider—Ranko, in this case—and married the one who had triumphed over her—Ranma—then surely no one would dare contest her title as the champion of Joketsuzoku, not even her envious Amazon sisters...

      Totally absorbed in her ruminations, she reached the first floor and barreled into the Nekohanten’s kitchen.

      “Ah!”

      The scrape of a bare shoulder against a wall should not have been enough to warrant a gasp of pain from a Chinese Amazon, but in this instance it was. Shampoo slowed to a stop and scrutinized the reddening patch of skin, genuinely perplexed at the acute spike of pain that had accompanied the contact.

      Then she scoffed at herself. It was just a bump and that was the end of it, and it was pointless to devote any more time to the matter...but she wished like hell that it didn’t feel like someone had drilled a hole into her flesh and sealed it with smelting iron...

      Though she tried her very best to be horrified, the most she could dredge up was a sort of bemused dismay. Her hand flailed outwards, seeking purchase, and found it on one of the catering tables. Utterly disoriented and panting harshly, she struggled to keep the world from pirouetting around her.

      A second later her body spasmed as the agony in her shoulder flared to near-intolerable levels. Temporarily robbed of muscle control, she fell, taking the table and its contents—trays, plates, bowls, and miscellaneous utensils—with her.

      All that metal raining on her defenseless torso and crashing to the linoleum floor might not have registered inside Shampoo’s rapidly deteriorating consciousness, but the commotion was apparently enough to summon the congregation out in the dining area into the kitchen.

      Suddenly she was surrounded by blurs, the smallest of which sounded like her great-grandmother, and Shampoo slowly craned her neck toward her right shoulder. Through the haze that clawed at the edges of her darkening vision, she could recognize the telltale blue-green twinkle of an emerging magatama, alive and vivid against her blanched, clammy skin.

      Her last coherent thought was that either the oracle woman had not considered the probability of multiple Chosen-Born, or everything the former Jusenkyo-afflicted knew about their replacement curse was a lie.

* * * * * *

      Noon brought with it the advent of the first of the spring showers: fine needlelike rain pit-patting the cement and cinderblock edifices of urban Nerima, while the canary-yellow sun shone on in the blue pastel sky as if in defiance. Out on the streets, pedestrians clutched newspapers over their heads and sprinted for shelter or strolled on, oblivious to the minimal downpour. Now and then a passerby, presumably one of the lunchtime crowd, would scamper over toward the Nekohanten, only to shuffle off in disappointment after spotting the “Closed” sign tacked up on the door.

      Such was the tableau that greeted Ukyou upon exiting the café, her mind still reeling from what she had just learned inside. On any ordinary day she wouldn’t be caught dead frequenting the Nekohanten—an accredited rival of Ucchan’s—but this occasion was different: this concerned her Ranchan.

      Earlier that morning she’d raced all the way here from the Tendo dojo, demanding to know just why her Ranma-honey, upon waking, had lost his mind and gone to see Shampoo’s straightaway—what had her fiancé been thinking?—instead of mollifying her first; she’d practically worried herself sick over him, after all. Needless to say, she had discovered soon enough that the mandatory cat fight with Shampoo would have to be postponed today—the Chinese Amazon girl was all but dead to the world, and it appeared that her tour of La-La Land was going to be an extended one. Her symptoms were comparable to those of Ranma’s and Mousse’s: the outbreak of fever, lengthened slumber, and the manifestation of a perfect blue-green gem on her skin.

      At any rate, the dramatic increase of magatama wearers had opened up a whole new economy-sized can of worms on the how the “Chosen-Born“ clause actually worked. There were so many loopholes, so many questions, and all Ukyou could think was...

      Great. Now she and Ranchan get to have matching accessories.

      So caught up was she in her cogitation that she bumped into and nearly tripped over the figure hunched over, ostensibly asleep, in front of the restaurant.

      “Whoops! Sorry about tha—”

      She didn’t think anyone yanked out so abruptly from the arms of unconsciousness was capable of reacting that fast, but that assumption was refuted an instant later when the dozing form vanished, only to materialize at her back to lock her in a painful half nelson.

      Her panicked mind scarcely had time to register the possibility of the Dynasty going on yet another kidnapping spree when the arms slackened, then released her. She stumbled forward, gasping, more than a little rattled by the suddenness of the assault.

      “Ukyou! I—I’m sorry...I didn’t see—I’m so sorry, I—”

      The young chef’s initial indignation at his maltreatment of her person abated somewhat with his stammered apologies. That didn’t mean she was going to let him off easy, however.

      “Can it, you big lug. You nearly took my head off, you know.” Thus saying, she made a show of massaging her neck.

      “I’m so very sorry, Ukyou-san.” He switched tactics by reverting to formalities, hanging his head contritely as he sought her forgiveness.

      It worked. Her stony façade melted, and she sighed. “It’s all right, sugar. Care to tell me why you’re acting nuttier than usual?”

      Ryouga regarded her through his heavy tousle of bangs. “Everyone’s acting nuttier than usual, Ukyou,” he pointed out in a monotone. “I’m just going with the flow.”

      “Point taken.” Ukyou assessed him more closely. His pupils were cloudy with the last vestiges of sleep, his movements fluid and languorous, giving her the impression that his entire skeletal structure was on the verge of liquefying. “You’re looking a little woozy there, Ryouga-hon. I think you better sit down.”

      He slumped gratefully back down, and the young chef crouched at his side, her expression one of wary curiosity.

      “So,” she began mildly. “Do you usually practice your death-grips on people who accidentally trip on you, or was I a special case?”

      “N-no, that’s not it!” The lost boy scrubbed at his lids with the heel of his palm. “You—it wasn’t your fault. I was asleep, and when you touched me on my back, I thought you were her—” He stopped in mid-sentence, and his demeanor became guarded. “Forget it.”

      “Her?” pressed Ukyou.

      “I said forget it. It’s nothing.”

      The girl shook her head, undecided on whether to feel amused or annoyed. “Look, hon, this is me you’re talking to. You know I’m gonna find out eventually. So just save the both of us the trouble and ’fess up.”

      Ryouga turned toward her, the movement stippled with nervous nuance. Her insinuation had only provided his already fertile imagination with the needed fodder; Ukyou could see his fears churning in his wide green irises, and she smiled angelically at him. She knew she really shouldn’t be torturing the poor boy like this, but damn if it wasn’t fun doing so.

      “Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “I thought you were the Ranma-girl.”

      Ukyou shaped her mouth into a perfect ‘o’. She’d expected him to name Tenkei or maybe even Cologne, but certainly not Ranma’s now segregated and sentient cursed half. “Ranko? You attacked me because you thought I was Ranko?”

      “Uhm, yeah.”

      “You’re kidding.” She drew in her toes as rainwater splashed down from the eaves of the Nekohanten.

      “No.” Ryouga buried his face in the cradle of his folded arms.

      “Let me get this straight. You were about ready to decapitate me—”

      “I was not.” His voice came out muffled. “It was just a precautionary move.”

      “Whatever. Anyway, you tried out your precautionary death-move on me because you thought I was Ranko? Geez, I know you and Ranchan don’t get along very well most of the time, but that’s no reason for you to take it out on her—”

      He cut her off sharply. “You don’t understand! That Ranma-girl—she’s not...right. There’s just something...I don’t trust her.”

      “Gee, I wouldn’t have guessed,” Ukyou commented sardonically. “But seriously, Ryouga, if it makes you feel any better, I’d say the feeling between you two’s pretty much mutual.”

      The boy studied her intently, debating on whether he should confide in her about a certain red-haired loon and her disappearing light-saber. Okay, so the contingent back at the Tendo household hadn’t bought the light-saber shtick—much less the idea of sweet, unassuming little Ranko running around performing neck amputations—but what about Ukyou? She could almost be classified as a friend. Plus, she was fairly open-minded, and reasonable, and—

      “Ryouga,” Ukyou breathed.

      “Hm?”

      “Remember what I told you two nights ago?”

      It was as through she’d pitched a pebble into his pool of thought, causing them all to scatter, and he tuned back in to her. “Uh...no?”

      “Figures. All right, here’s a memory check. If you’re gonna creep me out by staring at me like that—you know, all dark and intense and stuff—just...don’t, okay, sugar? You look like you’re gonna propose.”

      This prompted an explosion of bright crimson underneath the lost boy’s wind-tanned skin, and he glanced away abashed. “Sorry.”

      It took the klop-klop of wooden clogs on the sidewalk across from them to alert Ukyou to the fact that she was dealing with a major lull in the conversation. She cleared her throat.

      “So, um...I didn’t see you sitting here when I first came over. Are you supposed to be the Nekohanten watchdog now, or do you actually have a good reason for staying out here all alone?”

      Ryouga chuckled, a terse, caustic sound. “I’m out here for my health.”

      And, in truth, he was; all throughout Cologne’s narration of the events that encompassed Mousse and Shampoo’s recent “manifestations”, the Ranma-girl had ogled him in a very unappetizing fashion, like he was a bug she wanted to squash underfoot. During the discussions that ensued he’d tried to immerse himself in the body of walking bliss that was Akane and ignore that penetrating, noxious blue stare, but even then it was no use. It didn’t help, either, that she punctuated every other statement of hers with a jab directed toward him, or that every time he turned his back on her it felt as though she were sizing him up for cold cuts. His temper dangerously close to the boiling point, Ryouga had vacated the restaurant and planted himself out on front, finally surrendering to a restless slumber.

      “Huh?” Ukyou surveyed her companion, looking thoroughly stumped.

      “I just didn’t want to stay in there with her any longer,” he clarified.

      Comprehension struck. “Oh, I see...that Ranko thing again.”

      “Yeah, yeah, the Ranko thing,” grouched Ryouga. Irritated at the okonomiyaki chef’s breezy dismissal of his misgivings regarding Ranma’s less-than-stable girl-half, he decided to change the subject. “What’re you doing out here, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be surgically attached to Ranma’s hip or something?”

      She responded by tossing her hair reproachfully over her shoulder, causing the end of her long locks to clip Ryouga vengefully across the nose. “For your information, part of the reason I came out here’s ’cause Ranchan and Akane’re squabbling again.”

      The boy swabbed petulantly at the bridge of his nose. “I thought you liked seeing them squabble.”

      Ukyou offered a casual shrug, which indicated that it was anything but. “Well, not this time. They had this weird vibe going—I mean, it was obvious that they were quarreling, like they always do, you know, but at the same time, they weren’t. Like they were actually being nice while they were doing it. I’ve never seen them that way before.”

      “I have. Dozens of times,” mumbled Ryouga. To this his brain attached a mental footnote: While I was P-Chan.

      “Well, I don’t like it. Not one bit,” fumed Ukyou, slamming her fist against her folded lap. “I bet Akane’s just being nice to Ranchan because of this whole Chosen-Born business. She must’ve struck some kind of truce with him or something back at the dojo after he woke up. Well, weirder things’ve happened, right? Especially in the past couple of days.”

      He snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

      The girl pursed her lips. “Yeah...now that you mention it, the last few days didn’t exactly fit into the range of our everyday brand of weirdness, huh?”

      “We have brands now for our different kinds of weirdness?”

      “You know what I mean!”

      “Yeah. I know.” The lost boy looked up, his attention momentarily snagged by the brightly-colored vertical banners lining the entrance of the café, each one extolling the superior palatability of the Nekohanten’s menu as they flapped under the onslaught of zephyrs. “How’re Shampoo and Mousse doing?”

      “Snoozing like babies. Sick babies, actually. Their fevers’re still high, but Cologne’s mixing up all sorts of Chinese herbs for them. She says they’ll won’t be out as long as Ranchan was.”

      “That’s good.” Ryouga lowered his gaze to brood on this.

      So Shampoo and Mousse had joined Ranma in the ranks of Chosen-Born, or whatever weird, overly dramatic label Tenkei had attached to them. Still, perhaps the term ‘Chosen-Born’ was a fitting one; they were Chosen to have jewelry pop out of their skin and Born to defend the earth from all evil. Right.

      What was it that the oracle had told them? Oh, right: whoever got the curse of Yasakami had to go find the Dynasty, defeat them on behalf of mankind, and live happily ever after.

      It sounded so straightforward. So convenient.

      And so very abstract, like a fairy tale in a grade-school storybook.

      The plot was there, laid out all its step-by-step, cut-and-dried glory. But that was all it was: a framework. The whole Dynasty-Yasakami premise was like a skeleton—a crisscross of coincidences and connections without any metaphorical meat to bridge the gaps.

      “I guess this means that Mousse and Shampoo’re Chosen-Born, too, huh?”

      “Hn?” Ryouga roused himself out of his woolgathering. “Um, yeah. They’ve got all the Chosen-Born qualifications: came into contact with the Yasakami water, got separated from their Jusenkyo froms and marked with those jewels. Same as Ranma. Which means that they’ll probably have to go with him and look for a way to get rid of the Yasakami curse.”

      “Go where?”

      He exhaled. That was just one of the many gaps he’d been pondering. “I don’t know.” There was a peculiar tilt to her question, and he watched her with half-lidded eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re going with them.”

      Ukyou started, astonished that the lost boy had correctly interpreted her intentions. “Uhm, well...”

      “Do you even know what kind of danger Ranma and Shampoo and Mousse could be walking into? You’re crazy if you think you aren’t going to run into the Dragon clan again when you’re accompanying those so-called Chosen-Born on a trip to shut the Dynasty down permanently. Besides, it really is none of your business.”

      “Hey, that never stopped me—I mean, you—from interfering in anything before!” sputtered Ukyou. “Besides, since when’re you so concerned ’bout what my well-being, anyway? Ranchan’s going, and it’s my duty as his fiancée to accompany him.” She pointed this out as though that were explanation enough.

      “Hah. Why am I not surprised? Do you follow him when he goes to the boys’ locker room, too?”

      Her answering glare was frigid enough to make his teeth want to chatter from pure reflex. “Akane’s going.”

      “What?” In that instant, the whole soporific nature of the conversation dissipated, and the lost boy’s posture snapped up, ramrod-straight, as though a steel bar had been unceremoniously shoved down his spine. “But...b-but wh-whuh...why?”

      “To keep an eye on Ranchan, what else?” retorted Ukyou, rolling her eyes at her companion’s cluelessness. “The thing is, she’s paranoid about Ranma-honey going off with me and Shampoo, so she decided to tag along.”

      Ryouga squeezed his eyes shut and balled his fists, feeling the usual river of denial coursing through him whenever he was confronted with the possibility that his beloved Akane might actually lo—have feelings for his rival. But the notion was too painful to bear further consideration, and so he chalked it up, as usual, to one of Akane’s many admirable qualities.

      “Oh, Akane...of course she’d have to go with him. She’s so caring and guileless that she might not even had a choice in the first place! She might’ve overlooked the fact that Ranma might be already preoccupied enough with you and Shampoo and being the Chosen-Born or whatever to be able to look after a hard-boiled egg, much less her...”

      Ukyou peered at him out of the corners of her peripheral vision, recognizing with some satisfaction signs of the lost boy’s inner struggle. “It really is none of your business,” she parroted for his benefit.

      He whipped his head toward her, seemingly horrified at what she was implying. “But—but...”

      “Look, if you decide you wanna expose yourself to danger along with the rest of us, what’s your reason for that gonna be, huh? Ranchan’s my reason, and face it, sugar—it isn’t like you’d actually tell Akane that she’s the reason you’re coming along.”

      Her logic was incontestable—at least, to him it was—and his shoulders drooped in a crestfallen manner. “Y-you’re right. It—it would be as if I were forcing myself on this trip...”

      “Mm-hm.”

      “...making Akane think that she isn’t capable of taking care of herself...”

      “Uh-huh.”

      “...even though she needs someone to defend her honor and purity and innocence while that accursed Ranma’s preoccupied with other things...”

      “Right.”

      “...and even though the Dragon clan could come after her and spirit her away to God-knows-where and I’ll never see her again—”

      “I’ll tell them you’re coming along for the heck of it.”

      “Would you?” He stared at her, his face a billboard for hope.

      “Of course. That’d fit in just perfectly with my plan!” she proclaimed, rubbing her hands not unlike some stereotypical mad business mogul. She sent a smirk in his direction. “That’s one of the few things I like about you, Ryouga-hon. You’re so predictable.”

      “Thanks...I think,” he replied crossly, then paused. “Um, what plan?”

     * * * * * *

     “Do you even have the slightest idea exactly where Heaven is?”

      Ranma did a double take at Cologne’s brisk, bordering-slightly-on-the-metaphysical question. “Heaven? What does Heaven hafta do with this mess?”

      Tilting her head to the side, the ancient Chinese Amazon uttered matter-of-factly, “That is where you will be heading, is it not?”

      The pigtailed youth looked down at the futon beside him. Tendrils of lush periwinkle hair cascaded over the sides of the pillow, framing a face rosy with fever. Far from being peaceful, Shampoo’s features were pinched and taut in repose, and Ranma wondered if she was currently in the grip of dreams that had been loosed by onset of the Yasakami curse.

      “You are worried about Shampoo, son-in-law?”

      Startled, and the youth wrenched his eyes back toward the Amazon matriarch. “Naw...yes. Of course I’m worried ’bout her. And Mousse, too.” The gleeful half-smile that had been snaking across the old crone’s countenance froze at that, and he added: “I mean, if Tenkei was tellin’ the truth—and I ain’t necessarily sayin’ that she was—then me and Shampoo and Mousse just signed our souls over to the Dynasty. That’s kinda a bad thing, ain’t it?”

      His attempt at levity hung grimly in the air for a moment or two.

      At last Cologne spoke. “You can feel it, can’t you? The siphoning of your soul. It’s beginning, is it not?”

      “I don’t know what ya mean,” the pigtailed boy said evasively, trying to ignore the resonating chord her words had struck inside of him.

      “Oho, but I think you do.” The old woman regarded him piercingly, as if she were trying to isolate the lie from the young man’s psyche. “It is nothing now—hardly a nibble at the borders of your being. You probably won’t even fully notice for a month. But as long as you have that...” She extended her staff and knocked the coiled end decisively against the magatama that garnished his forehead. “...the Dynasty will have a means to drain your soul right out of your body without laying a finger on you.”

      Ranma jerked his head out of her reach, appalled by the clunking noise the wooden stick had elicited from the object upon his brow. On impulse, he filched another glimpse of the sleeping girl, this time toward her exposed right shoulder. That was where Shampoo’s magatama was—a curved slice of blue-green exquisiteness that was every bit as maddening and immutable as his own.

      The torrent of guilt that swept through him was crippling, and Ranma hunkered down, dropping his head into his hands. “I never shoulda led them to that damned cave,” he murmured. “The guy who showed me the way was one of the Shoryuu; I shoulda known it was a trap. But all I could think of was that I could finally be free of that Jusenkyo curse, and I was willin’ to take any risk.” He let out a short, self-effacing laugh. “Just didn’t think the risk was gonna involve somethin’ like this.”

      “You had no way of knowing. In a way, it is I who you should blame; had I not taken so long in consulting with the other Amazon elders, I would have been able to prevent you from seeking out the Yasakami cure.” There was nothing condescending or reproachful in the old woman’s tone; it was only a prosaic observation that needed to be said. “In fact, I might even be so bold as to say that if we are to take the oracle and the ancient writings of the Chinese Amazons at face value, then you might not have had any choice in the matter at all.”

      This only earned her a distinctly skeptical look from the pigtailed martial artist, and so she expanded with, “There have been many things that we, even as humans with our knowledge and tools, have never been quite been able to grasp. This is simply one of those things. If it has been maintained for centuries that there will be a Chosen-Born, then there will be a Chosen-Born, regardless of how that comes to be. It just so happens that you, Shampoo, and Mousse fit the requirements. Who are we, then, to say that this might have been avoided in the first place?”

      “Are you sayin’ this’s fate?” Ranma interjected crisply, his brain reeling with the implications.

      Cologne shook her head. “No. But it is tempting to think of it that way, isn’t it?”

      He didn’t get a chance to answer to that, because a moment later the bedroom entrance slid open, and in crept Akane and Ranko. A quick scan of the vicinity around their legs revealed, mercifully, that Neko had elected to keep Muu Muu-Chan company back at Mousse’s garret quarters.

      The Amazon matriarch addressed the girls. “How is he?”

      Akane took a seat to the left of her fiancé, also right next to Shampoo’s futon. “He’s better. I think the fever’s breaking.”

      “Yeah, he should be waking up soon,” seconded Ranko, stepping in front of them to claim the space next to Cologne. As she did so, Ranma couldn’t help fixating on the glittery pink-and-purple butterfly motif that had been embroidered over the rump pocket of her hip-hugging denim cutoffs. Surely those pants weren’t hand-me-downs from Akane, because if they were, he should’ve noticed them before...

      “I see the Kuonji girl has already left. But where is the Hibiki boy?” demanded the old crone.

      “He went outside a while ago,” volunteered Akane. “I guess he just needed some air. This Chosen-Born thing must really be bothering him; he’s so sensitive, you know?”

      Impulsively, Ranma caught the eye of the redhead sitting across from him, and was amused to see that Ranko looked as though she were suppressing her urge to gag, just as he was. He acknowledged her efforts with a wink; he knew exactly what she was feeling.

      “I see,” was all Cologne said.

      Her deadpan response only succeeded in inciting a sense of trepidation from the youngest Tendo daughter. “Why? Should...should I call him back in?” A dreadful thought occurred to her. “He’s not in danger from the Dragon clan, is he?”

      To her amazement, the old woman burst into a series of hearty chortles. “No, no...of course not. I was merely curious as to his whereabouts. I doubt that the Dragon clan would be interested in any of you now.”

      “Oh.” Akane twisted her fingers together on her lap. “I’m...glad. I know you said they would leave us alone after the Yasakami cure, but I was still afraid that they—the clan, I mean—would be breathing down our necks for the rest of our lives.”

      The corner of Cologne’s crinkled mouth quivered upwards. “Ah, yes...that. Four days ago, that was what you were all most concerned about, was it not? The assumption that the Dynasty would be shadowing you for all time?”

      Ranma scratched the back of his neck. “Just four days? It felt like a lifetime ago.”

      “It does, doesn’t it?” The crone rubbed her chin, a meditative gesture. “Four days ago, you got your first taste of the Dynasty when you were kidnapped—for no apparent reason other than the fact that you carried the Jusenkyo affliction—and—for a reason less known to us—they let you go. Three days ago you challenged the Dragon clan to a rematch, and they led you to a place where you believed you could find the cure to your dual-body curse. As a result of this so-called cure, you”—she inclined her staff toward Ranko—“were born.”

      Akane studied the redhead with a touch of wonder. Though Ranko had been with them for an eventful two days and two nights, she remained as much of an enigma as she had been when they had first laid eyes on her throttling Ryouga in the bath. It was because the girl resembled Ranma so much, at least in appearance, that it was all too easy for everyone to forget that she had entered their lives only three days ago.

      “And two days ago, you arrived at the Tendo household, bringing with you the rest of the cursed forms, and everyone else had a visitor—an oracle of the Dynasty, no less—bringing a prophecy with her regarding what she referred to as the Chosen-Born. That is when son-in-law here”—she indicated Ranma next—“manifested his magatama. Yesterday, he awoke, and in the evening, before Shampoo and I could leave the Nekohanten to see him, Mousse collapsed and showed signs of also being a Chosen-Born. Then it was my great-granddaughter’s turn.” So saying, the Amazon elder gazed soberly at the slumbering figure of her great-granddaughter, swathed in thin cotton blankets. “Who, indeed, would have imagined that it would all turn out like this?”

      Who indeed? Ranma ran a hand through his hair, realizing for the first time how things had changed from that one crucial interruption of his history class, not even five days ago, when he’d spotted Cologne and Soun Tendo from his classroom window and realized that something was very wrong.

      And from that morning on, everything had snowballed into something he doubted even he had any control over: now everything revolved around dragons, curses, dreams, yin-yang jewels, clans, and centuries-old kingdoms of half-gods that he had to defeat...

      Until four days ago, his world had been so concrete, so unequivocal. Convoluted, maybe, but otherwise tolerable. And then the Dynasty had dipped its scaly fingers into his life, causing it to come crashing down around him even as he scampered around hysterically struggling to keep it intact.

      Until three days ago, he had been a transsexual of the most convenient order—one gifted with the dubious talent of being able to walk that precarious tight-line between the genders, bouncing between each one as easily as one would flick a light switch on and off.

      Until two days ago, Ranko didn’t exist.

      Until yesterday, he was just Ranma Saotome, sophomore student at Furinkan High, heir of the Anything-Goes Martial Arts, and the most proficient fighter in Nerima—and probably anywhere else.

      Now he was Ranma Saotome, Chosen-Born, Yasakami-cursed, jewel freak, someone in danger of losing his soul unless he stood up to the Dynasty.

      “So...where do we go from here?” ventured Akane, her voice uncharacteristically subdued.

      Cologne contemplated this. “From here,” she said at last, “we go to Heaven—Takamagahara. That is where the cure will be. Not to mention the Dynasty of the Dragon.”

      “But...but that’s...” the Tendo girl hesitated, seemingly apprehensive about the magnitude of the journey they were about to undertake. “That’s...um, how’re we even supposed to begin searching for a place like that? If we don’t even know where Heaven is, how’re we supposed to know where Takamagahara is?”

      The wrinkles etched across the old woman’s forehead deepened as she mulled over this. “That is still the conundrum, I’m afraid. We shall have to pore over more of the old Amazon scrolls; perhaps there are clues as to where—”

      “You won’t find any clues. Not in those scrolls or anywhere else.”

      Ranma’s abrupt declaration was met by three curious stares, and he blinked, looking for all the world as though he hadn’t intended to say that out loud.

      “And why is that, young man?” prodded Cologne.

      He frowned down at the floor, then dragged a finger absently over the pattern of the grass mat. “Well...I ain’t no expert in old writings or nothin’, but I’m willin’ to bet anythin’ that you ain’t gonna find any directions to get to where we’re goin’ to. If you actually found Heaven—or somethin’ pretty close to it—you wouldn’t come back and write ’bout it for other people to read. I mean, would you want to come back?”

      Akane opened her mouth to protest, but nothing came forth. What Ranma had said made too much sense, and the fact perturbed her. “Are you telling us that...we don’t have any way of finding it?”

      “Well...I didn’t say that.” Ranma looked up at her, and she was flabbergasted to see the edge of his lips curling subtly in a classic Saotome smirk. “We’re gonna find it, Akane. I’m sure of it, ’cause I think I know how. And if I’m right, when Mousse and Shampoo wake up, they’ll know, too.”

      “They will?” The shorthaired girl gaped at him, unable to latch onto whatever train of thought he had embarked upon. “What...what’re you talking about?”

      He didn’t answer her right away; he’d been momentarily caught off-guard by the look in Ranko’s eyes: the blue orbs were brimming with what seemed to be a sort of muted understanding, as though she already knew exactly what it was he was getting at.

      “Do you remember,” he began slowly, “back at the school, right after we fought those clan members out in front? They left one of their own, and when I talked to him, he showed me the way to the Cave of Yasakami by making me see the path to it in my mind. That’s how I knew where to find it. Well, it’s almost like the same thing here. I don’t know how it works, not exactly—it ain’t like I got a picture of it in my mind, like the cave—but what I do know is that we’re going to go wherever it is we’ve gotta go.”

      “How can you be so sure, Ranma?” persisted Akane. “How can you know?”

      “That’s ’cause I got the directions to Heaven, Akane.” Ranma smiled—a brief, ironic smile—and gave the magatama on his forehead a meaningful tap. “They’re right in here.”

* * * * * *

      One of Ukyou Kuonji’s most prized possessions, obviously, was the Über-Spatula she carried with her at almost all times. Her father had used to joke about her being born with the cooking utensil clutched in her hand, which might have been the case, since she couldn’t remember a time when she had been without one. As a child, she’d toted a smaller, palm-sized model, but as she grew she laid claim to the one she used now: a keepsake of her dad’s, it was of a make that seemed to be more for show than for actual cooking. Consequently, it was also the most useful possession she owned, ideal for disposing of cross-dressers disguised as mailboxes and potted plants, or for combating a certain purple-haired Chinese Amazon’s pair of bonbori. And sometimes, it was just a handy thing to have around to wail the tar out of forgetful, dim-witted boys.

      “You jackass! I spend the last couple of days telling you that I’ve got the break-up plan to end all break-up plans, and when I remind you of it, the best you can sputter out is ‘what plan’? You sure you don’t have a sieve in place of your brain, hon?”

      Ryouga extracted his skull area from the broad end of her oversized utensil, resisting the urge to reduce the thing into scrap metal. “Did it ever occur to you that I might’ve been distracted by everything else that’s been happening around here?”

      “Details, details. Personally, I think you’re just down to your last two brain cells or something.”

      “Yeah, well, that’s because I think you just killed the rest of my brain cells with that damn spatula of yours!” snarled her would-be conspirator. “Besides, since you so obviously don’t think that much of me, why do you even want me in this newest master plan of yours, anyway?”

      “That’s ’cause I’ve been thinking this through for a long while—even way before you stumbled back into Nerima—and I came to the conclusion that you, sugar, were my best shot at getting Akane away from Ranma. Because, for reasons totally beyond me, Akane tolerates you better than, say, Kuno or Gosunkugi.”

      “She does?” He sounded wary, excited, and disbelieving all at once. Then again, reflected Ukyou, that was Ryouga: the boy wore his emotions on his sleeve, trotted them out for all the world to see, and then acted all dumfounded when people used them to manipulate him.

      Which, coincidentally, was exactly what she was doing right now.

      Ukyou pushed the discomforting thought away. “Of course! I mean, when you guys came home after that cave thing, didn’t she give you this great big hug in front of everyone and whisper in your ear...” She paused, her brow crinkling. “Hey, just what was she whispering to you, anyway?”

      “Um...”

      She nudged him with her shoulder, her disposition suddenly tilting toward playful. “C’mon, you can tell me. I bet it was something romantic, wasn’t it? Huh? Huh?”

      He riveted his gaze on her then, and the unexpected, abyssal sadness she saw reflected there took her by surprise.

      “She...she, uh, she said...” He trailed off and mumbled something incoherent.

      “She said what?” In spite of herself, the young chef felt a surge of sympathy for the boy. He really was pathetic, all sad-eyed and slouched over and twiddling his fingers like that...whatever it was Akane had told him, it must have been heartbreakingly, earth-shatteringly, stomach-turningly—

      “She said thank you.”

      It took all her self-control not to face-fault. “And this was a bad thing?”

      His eyes grew even more despondent. “She said, ‘Thank you for bringing him home for me’.”

      “Huh? Who hi—oh.” Ukyou affixed her gaze downwards, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.

      Well, wasn’t that an eye-opener. Ryouga had come back from the jaunt at the Yasakami Cave with Ranma and the others, and had been greeted by Akane in a most enthusiastic manner. Naturally, everyone else had assumed that their intimate-looking exchange might have been of the romantic variety. Ranma had thought so. Hell, even Ukyou had thought so; she’d been quite thrilled at the whole display, convinced that this just proved what she’d suspected all along: if anyone had a chance of winning over Akane so that she stayed away from her Ranchan, it was Ryouga.

      So it was quite the gyp to hear that the hug, the kiss on the cheek, and the whisper in the ear had been all for Ranma’s benefit, not Ryouga’s.

      Must’ve been crushing for the guy.

      She stole a glance at Ryouga out of the corner of her eye.

      The poor dummy.

      Before she could allow herself to expend any unnecessary compassion for Ryouga and the bleak terrain that was his love life, Ukyou hastily jammed a hand into her shirt pocket and withdrew an object. “Um, listen...I was gonna give this to you earlier, but, you know...I got sidetracked by the whole Shampoo and Mousse thing.”

      The boy raised his head, his misery giving way—at least temporarily—to curiosity as she tossed him something. Catching it nimbly in his hand, he spread his fingers to reveal a tiny white cardboard box emblazoned with fine print. He regarded it perplexedly for a span of three seconds before blurting out, “Uh...what’s this?”

      Ukyou huffed, irked that the significance of her little offering had flown completely over his head. “They’re contact lenses, you idiot. You do know what contact lenses are, don’t you?”

      “Of course I do!” shot back Ryouga, peeved by the fact that she persisted in her belief of his having the IQ of a yaki-soba noodle. “I’ve seen these around in my travels. But what the heck am I supposed to do with these? My eyesight doesn’t need any correcting!”

      The scowl she hurled his way told him in no uncertain terms that her opinion of his level of intelligence had just sunk from yaki-soba noodle to a grain of sand. “I didn’t get ’em for your eyesight, sugar. They’re colored contacts. Specifically, they’re blue-colored contacts—Ranchan’s eye color.”

      Ryouga stared at her, aghast. “You got me contacts with that jerk’s eye color—” He trailed off as he saw her exasperation, then dropped his gaze back to the package in his hand. Ukyou could almost swear she could see the metaphorical light bulb go on over his head. “Does this have anything to do with that plan you were talking about back in the dojo? Is that what this’s about?”

      “No, I was thinking that I could wear one on my left eye and you could wear one on your right eye and we could freak everyone out,” Ukyou retorted, her tone saturated with more than a little bit of sarcasm. “Of course it’s part of the plan! In fact, you were the one who gave me the idea for this, remember?”

      He frantically tried to think back to their conversation two nights before, but the best he could come up with were recollections of himself trying to tell Ukyou about his observations vis-à-vis a certain dragon-lady, only to end up snarling at her when she’d begun insulting his purportedly creepy green eyes and burbling about how pretty Ranma’s own eyes were, and then she’d suddenly exclaimed that he was a genius and that his input had just given her the finishing touch to her plan—

      Uh-oh.

      “Wait—you said something about practice,” he murmured slowly.

      She smiled, peeking up at him from under a fringe of thick tapering lashes, and this incited within him a colossal impulse to either jump up and flee out into the pouring streets, or stay and invite death by coronary.

      “Well,” drawled Ukyou, “I figured that we might need some brushing up on our wooing skills since...well, face it, sugar—they haven’t been all that effective in the past. So when you said that thing about how if only you had eyes that were more like Ranchan’s, I thought: hey, there’s an idea—you could try winning Akane’s heart by practicing to be like Ranchan...”

      The boy’s eyes bugged out alarmingly. “You mean...you want me...to practice being like Ranma?”

      “Hypothetically speaking...yeah.” She promptly launched into her spiel before he could protest. “Ryouga, this trip could be just the thing we need to separate those two! I know, I know—this trip’s supposed to be grueling and dangerous, and God knows what could happen along the way. But that’s the point, you see, ’cause it’s gonna be hell on them; it’s gonna test their emotions, make them frustrated, and they’ll be sure to be sniping at each other even more than before...and that’s where we come in.” She gestured animatedly as she spoke; there was no stopping her now. “And this time around, we are not going to be the same weak-willed, wishy-washy idiots they’re used to—no, wait, that’s just you...”

      Ryouga smoldered.

      Ukyou went on. “Nope, this time it’s to be different. This time, you’re not going to be as depressing or tongue-tied or pathetic—”

      “Is there a point to all this?” he growled.

      She didn’t miss a beat. “—because you are going to take a few pointers from Ranma.”

      “You’re not serious,” gasped the boy, but even as the words left his mouth he knew she was.

      “Why not?”

      “Because I—I refuse to look like Ranma!” His treacherous mind sketched a mental picture of himself with a pigtail, blue contacts, and trussed up in one of his rival’s oh-so-fashionable orange Chinese shirts, complete with a little ruby bowtie...

      He choked down on the bile bubbling up in his throat.

      Ukyou emitted a small, impatient sound. “Look, I don’t think you quite understand what I’m telling you. This could be our best chance to have the ones we want! This could be it, Ryouga! You could make Akane notice you by showing her that you can be charming and confident and...and...almost decent-looking...once you have some of Ranchan’s style. I mean, what’ve you got to lose?”

      “My pride,” countered Ryouga, but she could tell that he was weakening.

      “I always thought Akane kinda liked Ranchan,” she drawled slyly, pretending not to notice the flush of antagonism her little statement had evoked from her companion. “Even if she does hit him a lot and call him names. So there’s gotta be something he’s doing right—don’t ya agree, hon?”

      “Like what? He’s an egomaniac!” he pointed out angrily.

      “At least he’s got self-esteem!”

      “He’s a pervert!”

      “Oh, and I suppose this’s because he doesn’t get paralyzed or get a nosebleed every time he’s near a girl?”

      “But...but...you’re asking me to be like him, for God’s sake! That’s insane!”

      “That’s genius!” she argued.

      “That’ll never happen!”

      “That’ll get you Akane!”

      “That—”

      He promptly forgot what he was going to say; the cogs in his mind were already spinning toward a different direction.

      Could it be that he could really and truly have Akane, and all he had to do was be more like Ranma? Ukyou certainly seemed to think so. The notion was both tantalizing and revolting: tantalizing because this was Akane they were talking about, and revolting because this was also Ranma they were talking about as well. And if it did succeed, he speculated, it wouldn’t really be him who had won her affections.

      But then again, if he could adopt some of the pigtailed boy’s more charming—Ryouga blanched—traits while maintaining his own, the task might almost be bearable. And besides, he had done far worse things for Akane’s sake, such as eating her cooking...

      “I’ll do it,” he said finally, trying to shove away that sensation of impending doom. But before his companion could rejoice in her easy little victory, he added: “On one condition.”

      The elation promptly withdrew from the girl’s features. “What’s that?”

      “You practice being more like Akane.”

      She looked at him as though he had just agreed to her sarcastic suggestion that they each wear half of the pair of contacts. “Have you lost your last two brain cells? Why would I want to be more like that—that uncute, bad-tempered—”

      “There’re lots of guys who’d disagree with that description,” Ryouga told her through gritted teeth. “Including me.”

      “But she...she’s so violent!”

      “And you have an oversized spatula and I have these lumps on my head after a couple of minutes of sitting here with you. What’s your point?”

      “She’s a tomboy!”

      “At least I don’t forget that she’s a girl, which is more than I can say for you!”

      He’d been itching to pay her back for all those unflattering comments she’d assailed him with earlier—and for the past few days, it had seemed—and this had been the perfect opportunity to do so. But he hadn’t meant to sound so callous, he really hadn’t, but telling her that was a lost cause; judging from the look in her eyes, he had just signed his death certificate.

      “Why you...how dare you forget that I’m a...”

      The Über-Spatula appeared in her hands, almost magically, and Ryouga, choosing to utilize the escape option the males of Nerima tended to neglect when confronted with incensed females, fled out into the street, cardboard box still in hand.

      Ukyou vaulted after him, weapon swinging vigorously. She was faster than he, no doubt there, but her speed was nothing compared to Ranma’s.

      And any speed lesser than Ranma’s, Ryouga could handle.

      He dodged over two swipes and leaped over a third, and when she came at him with a fourth he evaded it, but his hair had acquired the distracting habit of flopping wetly into his eyes and his clothes were suddenly acquiring a dampness that had nothing to do with perspiration and damn it all, he had forgotten that it was still raining...

      He froze, his brain recoiling even as it braced itself for the change: spouting a snout and hoofs where there had been a nose and hands and feet, his insides shrinking and realigning themselves, his now-oversized tunic descending upon him like a swathe of heavy canvas, his entire range of sight narrowing down to a world of sidewalks and ponderous human feet.

      A semi-second later the realization that he no longer suffered from the Jusenkyo curse sandbagged him in the face, and his body relaxed. A few days of being cured were embarrassingly easy to forget when one had undergone a year of transforming at any contact with cold water.

      But now he was standing there in the torrent with an uplifted face, and there were rivers of cold water meandering down his face and throat, down his limbs and fingers. He’d almost forgotten how that felt like, not having to wriggle his way out from under his oversized, waterlogged clothes, having water dripping down fingers and not hooves, down a neck bare of his bandanna, and the sensation was so strange and so alien and so utterly wonderful—

      *CLANG*

      His view of the cloudless, pouring sky was suddenly, and rather rudely, obscured by steel: Ukyou’s battle spatula, which had taken advantage of his unexpected state of rapture to apply itself liberally to his scalp.

      “What the...” Ukyou removed the cooking instrument, her brow wrinkling in puzzlement. One moment he was dancing away from her, eluding her blows, and the next he’d just stopped, standing right there with his eyes closed in the middle of the street like an idiot. “What the heck d’you think you’re doing, you moron?”

      Ryouga oscillated slowly to face her. To her surprise, his mouth was stretched out to an almost-smile, and his pupils were glazed over with some potent emotion. She might have been tempted to identify it as happiness—except that was out of question, because, after all, this was Ryouga she was looking at.

      “I almost forgot,” he said softly.

      “Huh?” Ukyou gawked at the lost boy, wondering not for the first time on the precarious status of those last two brain cells.

      He gestured vaguely at his surroundings. “This. The...” His voice trailed off, his entire thinking process grinding to a halt so suddenly that he was sure she could hear the squealing of his mental wheels. “...concrete. Er, yeah—concrete. Haven’t traveled over a paved street for a while. Feels great, heh.”

      Ukyou’s left eyebrow climbed up and disappeared behind her bluntly cut fringe. “Ryouga...you are officially the weirdest boy I have ever met.”

      “Officially, huh?” Then again, maybe there was an upside to her thinking of him as nothing but an empty-headed buffoon: he could skip around her in a black piglet costume and have the word “P-Chan” hovering over his head in flashing neon lights, and she would just shrug it off as one of the many side-effects of a mind that was not-quite-there.

      “Officially.” She passed her hand over her brows and flicked off the moisture it had collected. “Oh, great, now you made me forget what I was—oh, yeah...” Her tone darkened as the spatula in her hand began to ascend, a promise of much pain to come.

      Ryouga waved his hands frenetically in front of his face. “Okay, look, I’m sorry about that comment I made. I’ve been sorry the moment it came out of my mouth. Just hear me out for a second. You said we were partners in this, right? So if I have to practice to be more like Ranma—” He paused to shudder. “—you have to put in the same effort by trying to be more like Akane.”

      “You mean you want me to cut my hair short, wear dark contacts, girly skirts, swim like a rock, make radioactive okonomiyaki, and start beating Ranma up at every little thing?” countered Ukyou scornfully.

      “Yes! I mean...no! I mean...” He rubbed his knuckles over his waterlogged eyes; his adrenaline burst was fading fast, and his lack of sleep was catching up with him. “For one thing, Akane doesn’t beat Ranma up at every little thing. You only see that one side of her because it suits you. She can be warm and nice and understanding, even to Ranma. She’s...something else. I know that. And Ranma knows that. Think about it, Ukyou: if she really is as bad as you think she is, then why hasn’t Ranma turned his back on her yet? Whenever she’s in trouble, why does he always go rescue her if she’s so horrible?”

      The young chef lowered her weapon. “I...” she faltered. Maybe Akane was blackmailing Ranchan into staying with her. Maybe she’d cooked up something that had altered his brain chemistry, and now he was drawn only to bad-tempered tomboys wielding disappearing mallets.

      Or maybe, Ukyou thought faintly, he actually likes—likes—

      “I’m not saying that you should cut your hair short or anything like that,” Ryouga went on, sensing that her resistance was buckling. “You could try to be a little more ladylike...”

      “Are you saying I’m not?”

      “Not if you keep talking like a boy, wearing men’s clothes, and binding your...your...you know.” He carefully anchored his gaze to a point somewhere above her head as he nonchalantly plugged up his nose. Being with Akari had accustomed him to the female elements somewhat, but sometimes it was better to be safe than sorry. “And you could try being a little less sarcastic...”

      “What I do with my chest is none of your business!” Ukyou seethed, instinctively draping her arms over the objects in discussion.

      “...and try not to be so clingy...”

      “I am not clingy! You’re probably thinking of Shampoo, the purple-haired leech!”

      “Look, if you’re so damned perfect already, then why isn’t Ranma with you?” Ryouga pointed out forcefully.

      Ukyou didn’t know her jaw was unhinged until she felt raindrops pitter-pattering inside her mouth. She snapped it shut as her brain analyzed Ryouga’s argument, and was horrified to realize that it actually made sense. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if she did change herself a bit—besides, if was going to be for Ranchan’s benefit, wouldn’t it be worth it?

      Sighing, she threw back her shoulders and offered out her hand. “Okay. I can’t believe I’m saying this to you, but I’ll try your advice. But you gotta do the same with my idea.”

      Ryouga hesitated only for a second before transferring the box of contacts to his left hand and grasping her own slippery hand with his right one, sealing their dubious partnership. “Deal.” When he tried to pull back his hand, though, she held on.

      “Ryouga.” She raised her eyes from their joined hands and peered up closely at him. “I’m willing to totally commit myself to this. There’s no turning back, sugar. You gotta promise me that you’re gonna be in this with me all the way.”

      He had never seen Ukyou look so solemn before, even back during all those times they’d agreed to cooperate to break up the dynamic duo. She really did believe this break-up plan was the be-all and end-all of all break-up plans, and she was willing to commit herself fully to it; all she wanted was some sort of confirmation from him that he would do the same. It wasn’t like he was vowing lifetime commitment to her or anything—besides, if it would give him a chance with Akane, wouldn’t it be worth it?

      “Okay,” he said fervently. “I will.”

      “Promise me, Ryouga.” Her teal eyes glittered fiercely from behind the shadow of her dripping hair.

      “I promise.”

      “Partners ’till the end.”

      “ ’Till the end,” he repeated, more to placate her than anything else, and chose not to think about how final the words sounded.

      “ ’Till the end,” she echoed after him softly, as if she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

      There was a brief pause as they regarded each other with utmost gravity and blinked the rainwater out of their eyes. Then Ukyou hastily withdrew her hand from his, seemingly satisfied with his pledge of alliance. Her attitude underwent a rapid about-face as she beamed at him, tucking her arms behind her back and rocking back and forth on the heels of her feet.

      “So!” She clapped her hands together, her tone chirpy and businesslike. “It’s settled! We are going to work at this, and we’re going to be so irresistible and charming that the two of them won’t even know what the hell hit them! We can’t fail, Ryouga!”

      She spoke so confidently that even Ryouga, eternal pessimist that he was, felt as though a ray of sunshine had broken through the gray clouds of his existence. A tentative smile tugged at his mouth as she prattled on.

      “All right, then. Have you got the contacts? Good. I promised that guy at the eye clinic a half-year’s discount at Ucchan’s if he gave me these for free, so you better take good care of them, buster. Yeesh, I guess this means I gotta increase that discount if I’m gonna have to get some darker contacts for myself. Oh, well, it’s a worthy cause, right? Okay...what else...” She evaluated the lost boy thoughtfully, her gaze coming to a rest on the swath of yellow wound around his forehead. “That’s it!”

      “What’s it?” he asked nervously; she was eyeballing his bandanna the way a snake would eyeball a mouse.

      “Sorry, hon, but if you’re gonna work at being more like Ranchan, that bandanna of yours’s gonna have to go.” Without preamble, she reached up, presumably to yank it off.

      Ryouga reared back and away from her eager hands, wearing an expression of utter alarm as he clutched protectively at his bandanna. “H-hey! I’m not taking this off, plan or no plan!”

      “Don’t be such a ninny! It’s just a piece of cloth!” snapped Ukyou, attempting another grab at it. “How are you supposed to become the new, improved, slightly better-looking Ryouga if you’re gonna insist on wearing that ratty old thing?”

      He dodged her attempt. “It’s not just a ratty old thing to me! It’s my bandanna! I never take it off!”

      “Never? Why the hell not? Are you hiding something under there?” She looked suspicious. “What is it? Warts? An unnatural skin color? A third eye?”

      “No!” Ryouga shook his head irritably. “Of course not! It’s just that...it’s a part of me. I’ve had it ever since I was a baby.”

      “Let me get this straight: your parents tied a cloth around your head when you were a bald little infant?” Ukyou muttered. “Geez, no wonder. Your brain’s been squeezed.”

      “You know what I mean! I’ve had this thing for as long as I can remember.”

      “What’s the big deal? Don’t you have a hundred of those things?”

      “Well, yeah, but this one—the one that always stays on my head—is the original. It’s family heirloom. It’s been passed down my family for generations, and I’m not going to let it go! You’re just going to have to find a way to make me a new, improved, slightly better-looking Ryouga with it on!”

      “Yeah, right!” she retorted, diving at him yet again. “You said you were gonna give this plan your all, didn’t you? Now, c’mon! Take it off! Take it off already, you big baby—!”

* * * * * *

      Had the place been anywhere other than Nerima, the scene would have been a bizarre one: a boy and girl capering about in circles, apparently oblivious to the drizzle. The boy appeared to be trying to ward off the girl, while she in turn pawed at him while repetitively shrieking the words “Take it off!” in varying inflections of exasperation and urgency.

      But this was Nerima, and, as such, the passers-by, all well schooled on the etiquette for any such local peculiarity, discreetly altered their routes as they walked by so that they maintained a good ten feet or so from the couple. There was no sense taking risks, after all.

      Nonetheless, the sight, as typically odd as it was, was hard to ignore by the surrounding general public, and Akari Unryuu was no exception.

      “Ryouga-sama?”

      The two of them froze at the sudden intrusion. Akari trotted over, taking in the sight of Ryouga, who had bent back his upper torso so that it was in a nearly perfect ninety-degree angle, and Ukyou, who had bent her own torso forward so that it was positioned parallel to his own.

      “What are you doing?” she queried, deeply befuddled.

      “A-akari!” Ryouga shot out from under Ukyou with impressive alacrity, causing the former to wobble from the whoosh of displaced air. “What are you doing here?”

      “I left school early to help Grandfather with the moving arrangements, and later he suggested that I go see you. But you weren’t at Ranma’s house, and Akane’s father said that you went over to the Nekohanten, so here I am.” Akari looked from one to the other. She recognized the taller girl—Ukyou, her name was—from the gatherings at the Tendo Dojo. Though she didn’t know Ukyou very well, she liked her well enough, even though the latter was slightly high-strung and seemed to be frequently commandeering Ryouga’s attention. Nevertheless, it was really none of her business now, she chastised herself; Akane was the one he had his heart set on. But apparently that hadn’t stopped Ukyou from hanging around him.

      Like now.

      Akari hesitated, then ventured again, “Um...what are you doing?”

      “Nothing,” Ukyou answered at the same time Ryouga said, “She’s trying to take my bandanna.”

      The other girl looked even more lost. “She’s trying to take your bandanna, Ryouga-sama?”

      “Yes,” replied Ryouga, while simultaneously Ukyou snapped, “No!”

      They stared each other down for a moment, before Ukyou hissed vehemently, “You jackass, do you want everyone to know about our plan?”

      “Not everyone, Ukyou,” he told her calmly. “It’s just Akari. I trust her.”

      “What? Are you unbalanced? What’d she think if she found out her boyfriend was making plans to win another girl?”

      “Ex-boyfriend,” Ryouga and Akari corrected her in unison. They exchanged awkward, almost bashful glances.

      “Ex-boyfriend,” Ryouga reasserted softly. “Ex.”

      “That’s right.” A trace of sadness wafted by the girl’s features, but was gone the next moment. “We broke up a little while ago.”

      Though the way they’re acting, one would think otherwise, Ukyou thought in annoyance as she observed the blushing ex-couple. Bleargh.

      “I, uh, agreed to help Ukyou try and win Ranma if she, um, helped me with, you know, Akane,” Ryouga explained haltingly to Akari, sounding rightfully embarrassed.

      “Ah,” Akari said. “No potions, no tricks, no magical items, haunted caves, or mind-control?”

      “No. Um, we’re going to try to, uh, improve ourselves instead, and win them without resorting to those things,” he reassured her, rubbing the back of his head.

      “That’s good.”

      “Yeah.” He saw the heart-shaped outline of her face blur, then refocus. Sleep deprivation was apparently taking its toll.

      “Good luck, Ryouga-sama.”

      “Thanks.”

      Ukyou decided now was the time to interrupt their little tête-à-tête. “Ahem. This’s all very nice and well, but this’s supposed to be only between me and Ryouga here.” She regarded Akari meaningfully. “You’d be surprised how fast word travels around here. You better not breathe a word about this to anyone else, sister.”

      Akari nodded earnestly. “I won’t.” She looked askance at the lost boy, who was pressing his palm against the front of his drenched tunic. “Ryouga-sama, are you okay? You really shouldn’t be out in the rain like this! You’re going to catch your death of cold!”

      “I know, I know.” Ryouga managed a lopsided smile for her. “But it’s been a long time since...you know.”

      “Yes...” Akari smiled back, comprehending. “I know.”

      “What, that it’s his first time in a long while on a paved street?” Ukyou shifted uncomfortably; she was getting that third-wheel sensation. “Geez, you guys are freaking me out. I’ve never seen ex-couples act so...so darned nice toward each other. Are you sure you two’ve really broken up?”

      Akari obviously couldn’t grasp the concept of parting with Ryouga just because they had agreed not to see each other romantically anymore. “Just because we’ve broken up doesn’t mean we can’t be friends,” she said.

      Ukyou eyed her with some suspicion. “You still have a thing for him.” Which was all fine and dandy by her, thank you very much, but that little detail could affect Ryouga’s performance in her grand scheme. She needed him wholly devoted to Akane, and not be distracted by his ex-girlfriend, who still harbored feelings for him.

      “Um...I care about him still, very much.” Akari was coloring again. “Ah, why’re you asking me all these questions? Do you have a thing for—”

      “What? No! Of course not!” cried Ukyou, throwing her arms up with considerable emphasis. “It’s nothing like that!” What was it with these kinds of interrogations regarding her and that jackass?

      “Then what were you doing to him when I arrived?” Akari wanted to know. She didn’t sound peevish or skeptical, just genuinely baffled.

      “I—I—well, Ryouga told you—I was trying to take his bandanna.”

      “As a memento?”

      “No! It’s—it’s hard to explain! I...”

      Evidently the two of them had elected to forget that the object of their discussion was standing only a few feet away, but for once Ryouga was glad to stand on the sidelines. There was a ghost of a headache prowling at the back of his head, anyway, and he was starting to feel rather lightheaded. Come to think of it, the gleaming-wet sidewalk was beginning to look very tempting...

      “...seriously, sugar, I wouldn’t go for that jackass even if I’d been force-fed a barrelful of passion spice and love pills and locked with him in a closet with flattering lighting. Hey, is the jackass tilting?”

      “Ryouga-sama!”

      Two pairs of arms streaked out to steady him as he pitched forward. He quickly caught himself and straightened, blinking rapidly. “Uh, sorry. I’m fine. I must’ve dozed off...haven’t gotten that much sleep lately...”

      Warning bells went off in Ukyou’s brain as she saw the flush on his skin that had nothing to do with his character toward the fairer sex. She’d seen that look before on Ranchan two nights ago. And on Mousse, not even a half-hour earlier. And on Shampoo as she lay on that kitchen floor...

      “Uh-oh,” she whispered.

      “You’ve got a slight temperature, Ryouga-sama,” Akari was informing him. “You need to get out of the rain.” She turned to Ukyou, and noticed the anxiety on the other girl’s face. “Ukyou? Is something wrong?”

      Instead of responding, Ukyou snatched up Ryouga’s hands and searched them, dreading what she might find. To her surprise, they were clean.

      “Ukyou?”

      The young chef thrust Ryouga’s right arm toward the bewildered girl. “Here, hold him steady, okay?” she muttered, then proceeded to roll up the long sleeves of his tunic.

      “What are you—”

      Ukyou turned the bared arm around and over, but found nothing on his shoulder or anywhere else. A subsequent check of his left arm proved equally fruitless.

      Wait a minute, she thought. Maybe on his other limbs...

      Akari goggled as Ukyou dropped to her knees and began to fuss with the crisscross-patterned straps of his pant legs.

      “Grrr...stupid unnecessarily complicated leg straps...”

      “Ukyou,” Akari began, “surely you don’t think that he—”

      Ryouga finally gained enough coherence to sense that he was being subjected to a rather odd frisking, and that there was something was agitatedly yanking at his leg. He looked down. “What are you doing?”

      Ukyou stopped and gazed up at him, seized by memory. “Wait a minute...” Ignoring his yelp of protest, she grabbed his head, brushed his damp bangs from his brow, and, with more than a bit of apprehension, tugged down the front of the bandanna.

      And stared.

      “Can you let go of my head now?” groused Ryouga.

      She released him, managing to appear flustered, apologetic, and defiant all at once. “Sorry. Uhm...your forehead really is normal after all, huh?”

      “Of course it is!” he roared, then regretted it as his headache amplified with a vengeance. “What did you think it was like?”

      “Er...I thought there’d be warts. Or some discoloration.”

      “What the heck do you think I am, some kind of mutant?” He winced. “I think I need to go take a nap now. My head’s killing me.”

      Akari took his hand and steered him under her umbrella, safely out of the pneumonia-causing downpour. “Grandfather and I are temporarily staying at a hotel not far from here. You can take a nap there for a while if you want, Ryouga-sama. Come on, I’ll guide you there.”

      “Thanks, Akari. If your grandfather doesn’t mind...”

      “Don’t be silly! He’ll be glad to have you over.”

      Ukyou meanwhile stood discreetly off to the side, chewing at her lower lip. Okay, so she had overreacted a little. In retrospect it was ridiculous to think that Ryouga of all people had a chance of manifesting a magatama, wasn’t it? After all, he hadn’t had the Jusenkyo curse, and therefore hadn’t touched the Yasakami water, right? On the other hand, maybe he’d come into contact with it accidentally; she wouldn’t put that scenario past the bumbling idiot. But that didn’t mean that he would automatically acquire the curse of Yasakami, did it? Like Tenkei had told them, the risk was fifty-fifty...

      “Ryouga-hon, are you sure you’re all right?” she asked.

      “I’m fine. I just need an aspirin and some sleep, that’s all.” His eyes were screwed tightly shut, presumably in an attempt to ease the throbbing.

      “Oh. Okay.” Ukyou nodded tentatively. Even though he was a little warm and was acting all woozy, he wasn’t keeling over or screaming in pain—and she hadn’t found a magatama on him. “Um...look, you guys are gonna be okay, right? I feel kinda bad about this...”

      “Thank you, but we’ll be fine,” Akari reassured her. “We’re going now. We’ll see you around soon, okay, Ukyou?”

      “Yeah. Sure,” replied Ukyou. “You too.”

      She watched as the couple—whoops, ex-couple—departed, and was struck by the sudden impulse to yell, “Remember, Ryouga, the plan!” after the lost boy. The next moment she shook her head at the absurdity of it and jogged off toward the nearest shelter, unable to refrain from darting a quick glance behind her.

      Across the street, Akari held on to Ryouga’s arm as he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, not noticing the soggy cardboard box he clutched tremblingly to his chest.

* * * * * *

      “...and did I tell you, I got the most exquisite pair of panties yesterday! Made of the finest silk with lace lining, and the smell—simply heavenly! Too bad it belonged to that Ichinose woman. That’s right—the one with the legs like tree trunks. But you can’t be picky nowadays. Still, you’d think something that frilly and delicate would belong to some sweet young thing, but no...come to think of it, no wonder those panties were so elastic...”

      Happosai chattered away happily as he positioned the kettle of water over the crackling fire. Keeping him company was his old friend Lukosai, who lay on a makeshift futon on the floor next to the dining table.

      “...in fact, it’s a downright miracle it’s stayed a size six. Well, that’s what happens when the underwear’s top-quality, eh? I’m thinking of having it framed...”

      He trailed off as he realized that Lukosai had still not said anything. The creases in his brow deepening even more, he left the kettle to boil and ambled over to his motionless friend.

      Lukosai was breathing, slowly and steadily, in the manner of one immersed in the deepest of slumbers. All in all, his condition was unchanged from two hours earlier, when Happosai had stumbled upon him somewhere in the forest environs of the city.

      The former had been sprawled in a clearing, completely cataleptic, his traveling pack resting on its side about twenty yards off. Judging from the condition of the rice balls that had been had stored inside, Happosai deduced that they had remained there for two weeks, if not more.

      Without preamble, the master of the Anything-Goes Martial Arts had carted his friend and his belongings to an abandoned decrepit shack some distance away, wherein he had then proceeded to poke at his pressure points, feed him an assortment of petrification remedies, and bellow into both his ears.

      But no matter what he had tried, Lukosai had not wakened.

      At present Happosai had resorted to telling him of his latest panty raid, hoping to rouse the old geezer from his strange catatonia. Lukosai had never let an underwear story go by without one of his patented commentaries. This time around, however, the old man stayed mute.

      In desperation, Happosai dangling his freshly stolen silk undergarments not four inches from the recumbent man’s nose, risking the chance of the latter suddenly coming to life, snatching up the prize and making off with it.

      His fears proved unfounded, however, and Lukosai continued to sleep the sleep of the damned.

      By this time the kettle was steaming, and Happosai allowed his wake-up efforts a temporary reprieve to set out into the forest outside and gather tea leaves while he combed his brain for any other methods he could try on his old friend.

      He was mulling over the rather tempting option of tossing Lukosai into female-Ranma’s chest—preferably while she was in the bath—to incite him out of his coma-like condition, when he became aware of a presence behind him.

      “Hello there...ha...ha...hot-cha-cha-chaaa...”

      The stranger was a girl with flowing, near-colorless hair—save for the splotch of bright blue in her crown and long blue earlocks—pulled up in a high ponytail and sultry ruby eyes. She was dressed in an armor-like ensemble with a voluminous cape, and her sleeves, shoulder plates, arm plates, lower tunic, and knee coverings were festooned with a greenish dragon-scale pattern. She was looking down at him from atop a low branch of a nearby tree, her back against the trunk and her arms crossed over her chest.

      Her appearance was certainly strange, even by Neriman standards, but she was attractive and nicely curved, and that was all that mattered to Happosai. He smoothed back the nonexistent strands of hair on top of his head and leered at her in what he hoped was his most fetching manner. “Fancy meeting a lovely lass like you in these parts. Any particular reason as to why you’re spying on me?”

      The girl frowned, her pink-lipped mouth twisting in disdain, but all she but all she said was, “You are from Nerima?”

      Happosai put down the tea leaves, appraising her carefully. Perhaps this was one of Ranma’s many acquaintances, out to kill him or marry him. In any case, she looked like a lot of fun waiting to happen. “Yes, I certainly am.”

      “You know of a Ranma Saotome?”

      It figured. “Yes—as a matter of fact, he happens to be a pupil of mine. We both live in the same house; I’d be honored to escort you there, if you want...” He waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively.

      She leaped down from the branch and landed in front of him. The tips of her ears were pointed, Happosai noted, and he smothered the tickle of warning in his brain.

      “No thank you,” she replied equably. “But I have a message I would like you to take to him.”

      “Why, I’d be happy to, sweetums. And since I’m being nice to you by doing this, I’m sure you won’t begrudge a poor old man like me the warmth of your gratitude, eh?”

      Without waiting for a reply, he promptly launched himself at her mammary area.

      He was an inch or so from his desired targets when she plucked him out of mid-air with a speed that was downright unnatural, then used him to reduce a line of trees into kindling.

      “Pervert! I have had enough of people obsessed with my breasts!” she shrieked.

      Happosai popped out of the Happosai-shaped depression he’d made on the trunk of the farthest tree and sank to the ground, his eyes in little whirls. A couple of seconds later he bounced back to his feet, his uncanny resilience setting in. “Aw, don’t be so coy...”

      He broke off as he saw that the girl had been joined by a second figure: an aloof-looking young man who seemed to be an exact carbon copy of her, down to the unusual two-toned hair and pointed ears. Twins, perhaps, brother and sister? Happosai wondered briefly, then discarded the idea. Something told him that was not the case here.

      “What happened?” the boy demanded of the girl, his icy gaze fixed on Happosai’s diminutive form as he spoke.

      “He jumped at me and tried to grab these,” the girl explained heatedly, shoving her chest out and under his nose.

      The boy reddened considerably and spun toward Happosai, his countenance a mix of embarrassment and fury. His voice was cold and deceivingly placid as he addressed the old master. “How dare you try to assault innocent girls! Have you no shame?”

      “Listen, sonny, I take my jollies where I can get ’em,” Happosai shot back. “Besides, she wanted me to do a favor for her and all I wanted in return was a little happy time cradled in the hospitality of her lovely round...er, arms.”

      “Enough!” The boy strode over, cape billowing impressively behind him. His scarlet eyes snapped fire. “Men like you who have no consideration for the feelings of women don’t deserve to live. You have just made a grave mistake, old man.”

      “Yeesh! Who made you the defender of women’s rights, sonny?” Nevertheless, Happosai readied himself, though to him the boy appeared to be nothing but a pushover in a fancy warrior-wannabe costume. “Oh, I get it. Showing off in front of the lady, eh? Nice one, m’boy, very clever. But I think you’re the one who’s making a grave mistake.”

      One of the corners of the boy’s lips tilted upward, an almost-smile. “We’ll see about that,” he said, and lunged forward.

      Happosai easily vaulted over him and ricocheted off the back of his neck, using his adversary’s momentum to send him hurtling uncontrollably toward a small copse of pines.

      “Well, that was easy.” He turned his back on his dispatched adversary and bounded eagerly for the girl. “And to the victors go the spoils! Come to Hap—*urk*”

      He was abruptly cut off as the boy’s fist connected solidly with the back of his cranium. While he had been drooling over the girl, the young man had twisted in mid-air and used his feet to rebound off a tree trunk, reversing his trajectory right toward the old pervert’s head.

      Happosai shot clear across the meadow, dislodging grass and saplings as he went. As soon as his field of vision stopped wavering, he got up and rubbed gingerly at the throbbing, purplish-red lump that protruded from his skull. “Ow, that hurt!” he whined.

      It did hurt—though his pride smarted more than the swelling. Okay, so the boy wasn’t that much of a pushover, then. So he was faster than he’d anticipated; that was something the old master could counter. If he could find a way past Ranma Saotome’s speed, then he could do the same with this youngster.

      “That’s it! You’ve gotten in my way too many times, sonny! This time, the gloves are off!” A corona of angry dark light burst from his body, lending a reddish tint to neighboring foliage. His two-foot-tall frame seemed to swell dramatically, and he glowered down at his foe. “Happo Battle Aura Blast!”

      A substantial quantity of his battle aura blazed toward the boy, who merely lifted his own arm toward the blast and countered the formidable energy attack with one of his own.

      Crimson and gold light clashed in a spectacular panorama; the collision of the two opposing kis resulted in an explosion that easily leveled the nearest surrounding trees and sent a wall of soil, grass, and fusillade unfurling outwards in a stinging salvo.

      Happosai had managed to escape the shockwave by ascending a tall, sturdy pine not far from the battle site. He hooked himself onto a high branch and gawped at the mounds of upturned earth and charred greenery down below.

      “Hmm...a ki-master, eh? That blast of his was strong enough to cancel out my own,” he marveled, somewhat absently. A further inspection of the smoking devastation below revealed no trace of his opponent. “Eh. Too bad. He must’ve been blown away by the explosion...”

      “That’s what you think, old man!” a voice snarled out from behind him, and before Happosai could fully turn around, something hot and burning struck his stomach, ribs, and lower spine. A split-second later something pummeled into his back, knocking him off the branch he was on and propelling him straight down.

      He hit the ground face first, tasting dirt and razed grass as he plowed a half-mile long furrow across the glade.

      Pain erupted from where he had been hit as he spat out the contents of his mouth and heaved himself up. The boy touched down some yards in front of him, calm as you please and utterly unruffled.

      Happosai wobbled to his feet. He could barely believe that this was happening: here he was, the founder and master of the prestigious Anything-Goes School of Martial Arts, bruised and battered at the feet of a young upstart of questionable fashion sense. Happosai himself was far from a lightweight in the martial arts arena, but the boy was faster than even Happosai’s reflexes, and his ki projectiles were potent enough to cause the old man actual pain. It was as if the young man’s battle pace was operating on a plane far above Happosai’s own.

      He was jarred from his contemplation by the sudden appearance of two more individuals on the field. The one closest to him was a boy, just a little younger than the one in the dragon-scale armor, sporting a sword strapped to his back and a fur mantle with wolf-like ears and a bushy tail on his head. The second boy was taller, broad-shouldered, and muscular, clad in an outfit with a prevalent tiger-skin motif. Their ears were tapered at the tips as well, and their eyes shared the same animal-like quality as the couple with the two-toned hair.

      It was then that Happosai finally realized whom he was up against.

      “Heheh...well, this’s been a lot of fun, but I’m afraid I have to go,” he cackled, reaching into his robes and withdrawing dozens of objects with lightning speed. “Look sharp, boys—Happo Daikirin!”

      The air was filled with the sound of crackling fuses as Happosai unleashed one of his trademark attacks—a deluge of fuse bombs—upon the startled youths.

      The bombs were scarcely airborne when the girl arced her arm toward the incoming barrage. “Hito Ryu-zan!”

      A torrent of blade-like ki streaked outwards, each blade slashing into a bomb and detonating it harmlessly in mid-air. Those without targets went on to slice off tree limbs and the tops of several outlying knolls.

      Happosai gaped at the granite-hued cloud not far above him, a grim testimony to his deflected assault. “What the—”

      He didn’t notice the huge hand that had clamped over his skull until he felt himself being hauled upwards, and paid for his negligence when he was slammed face down with tremendous force into the ground.

      As endurance went, the old lecher was at the top of his league. He’d been pounded by fists, feet, elbows, tables, giant spatulas, two-thousand-pound umbrellas, giant octopus tentacles, and the gods knew what else, but none of those had ever been enough to keep him down for long. It was this resiliency that prompted people to make conjectures on whether the old master really was human, or some immortal oni who had crawled out from his cave to wreak his personal style of perversion upon a helpless mankind.

      If that was the case, Happosai reflected dazedly as he fought to keep his brain from spilling out of his ears, then mankind wasn’t as helpless it was once was.

      He rolled onto his back. His vision was darkening, and his mind rebelled against this realization. He couldn’t pass out now! Not him, not the great nigh-eternal, nigh-invulnerable Happosai, he who had survived a Hiryuu Shouten Ha, explosive-filled caves, lovesick octopi, three days without feminine danties to sustain him...

      Through the haziness descending over his senses, he saw the fuzzy silhouettes of his attackers looming over him, and heard the girl’s honeyed voice calling out to him as though coming from a great height.

      “Can you still hear me, old man? Good. You tell Ranma and his friends that they owe us a rematch.”

      Happosai quivered reflexively toward her soothing tones, desperate for her to invigorate him, to replenish his energy as only sweet young female voluptuousness could, but the best he could do was a feeble little lurch in her direction. All he needed was a touch, a touch of something soft and bouncy...

      “I thought I told you to leave my breasts alone!”

      For a split-second he thought that he had succeeded in getting a grip on the source of his power, but his fingers snagged only thin air.

      His well-honed ears dimly picked up the sounds of female retribution upon the guilty party. Someone else had beaten him to his goal, he realized.

      Not that he blamed them. The girl really was a looker. A bit exotic, what with her hair and ears, but a looker nonetheless.

      Lucky would’ve liked her, he thought with foggy amusement, and then passed out.

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End of Chapter Thirteen

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AUTHOR’S NOTES:

       Eh, so there was a lot of Ukyou-and-Ryouga plotting in this one. Again, I did try to trim down their conversation, but I needed to do that without discarding the essential bits. Don’t worry, though: the next chapter spotlights the inhabitants of the Tendo Dojo and their changing interpersonal relationships. Till next time...

Thanks again for reading,
Sydney Kyle

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Next: Farewell, Nerima

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