OK.  I'm depressed.  It takes me 4 days to get an echo of my
larger posts, like the reposting bits, and I've gotten nothin'
done in quite a while.  So here, I'm posting, hot of the press,
no pre-readers, full of the errors in an initial work (something
both writers and programmers face each time they sit down in
front of a computer and touch the keyboard), and waiting for
those familiar with the fic to torch him.  S'okay.  I'm cool
with it.  C&C with be needed by the fanfic and its writer.

So, without further ado, with the improper disclaimer:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
* FIRST FIC * FIRST FIC * FIRST FIC * FIRST FIC * FIRST FIC * FIRST FIC * 
------------------------------
A Ranma 1/2 Fan Fic
------------------------------
Switch: Herbs and Spices Day 2
by Nikholas "Switch" F. Toledo
------------------------------
Please do remember that Ranma 1/2 is a trademark and a copyright of and 
by some big name people and companies I am not even worthy to introduce.  
Anybody who says that I took any of their stuff better not find me 
hiding.  Also, great thanks to whoever reads this and likes it, good 
thanks to whoever reads it anyhow, and teeny-weeny thanks to whoever else 
even saw this. 
------------------------------



                 Eighth Hour's Sleep and a Moment's Dream



	In an almost perfectly rectangular district of Tokyo, it became 
quiet.  It was quiet only because it was almost three in the morning;  
even perverts weren't around doing their jobs at this time.
	In the silence, a town slept.
	While those awake rested from having fought forces of perversion 
and insanity at their strongest (whether having made jackasses of 
themselves or having inquired lodgings in the nearest mental institutions 
they could locate), those asleep dreamt.
	After exactly two-hundred-and-twenty-nine seconds, chaos returned 
from recession.

	Happosai blinked.
	He had been lost in thought over the beautiful white that 
surrounded him on the top of Fuji-yama.  He clapped his hands three 
times, and meditated for a while longer.
	After that, he opened his icebox, and began enjoying life's more 
pink pleasures.

	Gosunkugi sat up, fully awake.
	It never bothered him that for as long as he could remember, he's 
only had three minutes and forty-odd seconds of sleep every day, at 
exactly the same time of night, just before three in the morning.  Too 
bad that no one really needed to be awake this awkward hour:  he was more 
reliable than any alarm clock.
	It had been useful, at times.  During the school time, for example, 
he could brush up on past lessons.  During vacations, though, he could 
get some work done on any of his little hobbies, like witchcraft.  One 
could never read enough of the lore.
	"Happens every time," he muttered, looking for three candles (one 
for the table, two for his head), the oil, and his five-inch nails.  One 
also could never be prepared enough, either.

	On a bed in the second floor of the Ucchan's, two intertwined 
bodies rolled over one another, switching their positions.  Ryoga, being 
the one on top, was the first to react.	
	Many people could attest to the fact that the senses worked better 
before dawn, past midnight.  In fact, Ryoga could immediately make out 
the form and figure of one ninja-cook below his own.  As a result, he 
went against step one:  he panicked like a headless chicken.
	"AAppht-," he nearly shouted, before he had a mouthful of long 
brown hair.  He sputtered;  he jostled.  He tried to disengage their 
arms, and failed.  He tried to avoid the fragrant scent of her just below 
him, and to avoid touching any part of her, clothed or not, as though 
contact was acid.  But, he couldn't;  and her skin was not corrosive, in 
any way.  In fact, it felt... soft.  Ohhhh... OK.  This was it.  He was 
going to lose it, now... think cool thoughts...
	He thought of the bed.  He thought of Ukyo.  He saw himself, and 
Ukyo, on a bed.  Oops.
	He thought that it wouldn't be nice if he bled all over Ukyo and 
her nice bed, with her on it, so he tried to roll off of it.  He forgot 
that he was twined with the young lady, and almost fell on her as they 
fell off the bed.
	Luckily, she carpeted her floor.  Unluckily, she carpeted the 
floor.

	Nabiki rolled in her sleep.  Had she woken, she would have 
remembered all the nuances of her dream.  She didn't want to;  she 
soundlessly continued her slumber.
	
	"Aaaagh!"  Ranma shook himself out of the dream.  They were still 
on the last and longest train ride they would take before hiking to the 
top of Mount Fuji.
	It was amazing that they caught the train this early, which would 
take them within ten kilometers of the foot of the mountain in the next 
five hours.  He couldn't really remember a train that traveled this 
route, but they were lucky to catch it anyhow.  Hopefully, their luck 
would hold in their oncoming match.
	It was imperative that they catch the evil master before he could 
do his mischief, because they were the only ones who could.  A summer 
ago, it took the Californian coast guard a whole month to nab the old 
freak and his spirit friend (or fiend), and a week for the havoc to start 
again.  That was also the week classes started again, he recalled.
	His mind wandered back to his dream.  He had come back home, with a 
present for Akane.  But, in the dream, he had fallen into a hole, 
dragging Akane along with him.
	What did it mean?  He drew a hand from within the blanket he was 
wrapped in to scratch his hand.  Was Akane's birthday coming up?  He knew 
it wouldn't come up quite yet.  His stomach gave a small motion:  it 
didn't quite sit well with decidedly hostile dreaming.
	He allowed himself a star and a moment to think of Akane by, before 
he gave in to the night.

	"Aaaagh!"  Akane woke with a start.  She sat up quickly in the 
dark.  Having checked her flower-motif watch, she knew that it was merely 
a few minutes past three. 
	A knock on the door was followed by an inquiry:  "What's wrong, 
Akane?"  
	"Oh, nothing, Kasumi."  A silence in the dark wanted to the filled.  
The younger one fixed herself in the dark, suddenly aware that her hair 
was such a mess.  "Can-... can you...?"
	The door opened soundlessly.  Although she couldn't discern the 
colors, she knew that her older sister was wearing her lavender silk 
pajamas.  It showed her maturity on her, the way it flowed slowly from 
her shoulders, like her hair, like the rest of her... slipping, sliding 
into the floor of the house.  She blinked.  A little hesitantly, the 
keeper of her home sat down on the foot of her bed, and she held her 
blanket to her below her chin.
	"Care to talk about it?"  Kasumi started with a smile that closed 
her eyes.  Her younger sibling looked confused, and she realized that, 
for her, it was a very prying question.  
	"I-... it was a ring."  
	She turned to the girl in yellow pajamas, who turned her eyes to a 
point approximately a foot from the edge of the bed.  She spoke without 
looking at her listener.  "He-... Ranma-... he gave me a ring.  Then 
he...," followed by a loss of words. 
	This troubled Kasumi for several reasons.  Akane was not prone to 
being excessively talkative about her and Ranma's engagement, or her 
dreams.  It had to have been a dream, and a rather disturbing one, 
because she had the exact same one, with Ranma giving his fiancée a shiny 
ring, and the two of them being sucked into the ground.  She had just 
woken up from it.
	But, most important yet, it had hit whatever had been troubling her 
sister squarely on the head.  She needed to talk to him, not to her.  But 
she was the only one there.
	"Shhh... it's okay."  She motioned to approach her distraught 
sibling, but stopped a short distance later.  She took the hands that 
wrapped themselves on shaky knees into her own, and squeezed slightly.  
She didn't really know for whom the gesture was for.  Akane then looked 
her in the eyes, and she gave her best impression of quiet confidence.  
	"I... what does it mean?"  It was a desperate question, one she had 
to answer.  It meant a lot of things, things she wasn't going to reveal.  
Not yet.
	Kasumi thought she knew.  "Nothing," she lied.  "Nothing at all."

	Kuno should have woken up;  he usually did when he had such a 
nightmare as he had just had.  He would have then blamed it upon the fact 
that Sasuke had neglected to continue the shadowplay he had not concluded 
the other night.  That would have resulted in such a foreseen disaster, 
relayed to him by his subconscious as the earth engulfing his two true 
loves.  But he did not.  He was content to lay where he was until the 
dawn broke, sweating.

	The trio on the top of the Cat Cafe was content to roll around on 
the roof.  The two that were locked in a vise-like grip (or, the one 
locked in a vise-like grip by the other) merely rolled slowly from side 
to side, with the female on top.  (One would have assumed that the 
particular female that was on top of the particular pair on top of the 
particular roof would have wanted to be particularly on top, and would 
have been wrong for thinking so.)  
	The third just rolled off the roof, and ended up two stories below 
on a side street.  The fact that the figure was in a sleeveless shirt and 
boxer shorts could not predetermine the events resulting from the 
discovery of only two not-so-primly-dressed people on the rooftop.
	
	Dr. Tofu mumbled incoherently into the flat of the desk in front of 
him.  Because the desk was hard, and he was wearing glasses, he had lain 
his head sideways.  Many of those who sleep in the middle of classes 
would find that, given a prescribed amount of time, a certain amount of 
homeostatic imbalance would occur.
	He startled himself awake by realizing that he had slept for four 
hours.  The desk lamp was still open, though his books had been arranged 
rather neatly on the head on the table.  What he was holding in his left 
hand was a pencil, and that he only used... then he saw the letter.
	It had a huge wet stain on it.
	He patted the right corner of his mouth.  He took out a 
handkerchief and patted that at the offending trail.  He then took a look 
at what he had written, and found that the saliva had made the paper 
translucent, and that the lead could not be made out, from the white 
background.  He crumpled the paper, and threw the wad into a wastebasket.  
He then went in search for a basin to wash his hands in.
	He left the handkerchief on one of the beds, then thought the 
better of it, and took it to the back, to the clothes hamper.  Wouldn't 
want to be a messy bachelor.  He wondered why the laundry bin was so 
full, though.  Didn't I just do the wash yesterday?  He shook his head.  
All this out-of-schedule sleeping was giving him some jet lag.  Bad for 
the body.
	He went to the desk, and sat in front of it, out of habit.  Or was 
it that he was tired?  He rubbed the bridge of his nose, having taken his 
glasses off.  No... just drained.  He reversed the direction of rubbing, 
and put on the glasses again.  He thought about the reverie he had.  How 
Kasumi would look when she was older.  How he still felt the same about 
her.  How she had forgotten about him... 
	No.  There wasn't any need for regret.  There was time, time enough 
to spare.  And letters, letters to send.  He took the books and began to 
return them to their shelves.  
	He put the books straight in, each in their proper slot.  He 
noticed that the book of acupuncture poems had mysteriously returned, but 
the book which was entitled "365 Days of Herbs and Spices:  Proper Gift 
Preparation" was now missing.  It wasn't in its place alongside its 
supplement, "Leap Year Seasoning", and he couldn't recall having needed 
it today.
	He couldn't remember hanging the phone up, but the receiver was off 
its cradle, and it hung limply along the side of the low cabinet.  He set 
it back, hoping that he wouldn't be called in for an emergency in the 
next three hours.  In that case, he pondered, Ranma and Akane should put 
off arguing among themselves or with other people for a short while.
	He fixed some bedsheets, potted plants, tables, and low-lying 
overhead lamps.  He supposed that most clinics across Nerima had the same 
state of dishevelment, due mainly to the nature and the breeding of the 
clientele.
	Finally, before he closed the desk lamp, he considered very 
carefully whether or not he would redo the note he had ruined earlier.  
He couldn't help but think back to that other letter.  It was still the 
best he'd ever written, but it was still... off.  It was still lacking.  
He wondered if he'd ever make it good enough for... for what it was 
written for.
	He picked up the envelope, one like hundreds before it.  He sighed.  
Maybe he should just send them to his mother.  Maybe she'd know what to 
do with them.  He didn't.

	Nodoka slipped from the dream into the still sleep.  She knew 
better than to wake up before she had to.  And there was at least two 
more hours before that.

	Ryoga was almost able to disentangle himself from the knot that he 
formed with Ukyo and her blanket.  He tried to keep his bearings straight 
to form a coherent picture of what exactly he was doing in Ukyo's bedroom 
while Ukyo was in it, and, if worse came to worst, if there was something 
memorable about it.  He thought blindly into the concept.  Then he felt 
the need to donate some blood in the bathroom sink.
	He stood up, took a few quick steps, then fell face-first into the 
floor.

	The man shifted unnaturally in his sleep.  If he dreamt tonight, he 
was sure that no one would have understood the dream.  

	Ryoga had sat down, carefully trying to remove the vise-like grip 
Ukyo had on his left ankle.  He rubbed his nose, and made sure that there 
wasn't any blood spilled from that jolt.  If he lost any more blood, he'd 
probably be in shock for at least a week.  So he just closed his eyes and 
promised not to take advantage of the precarious situation made by Ukyo, 
the light, and the not-so-absence of clothing in several places of Ukyo's 
body.
	He concentrated.  He returned to the training he once had done for 
the Breaking Point Technique.  He sifted through his memory for some 
"inner self" katas, and promptly got lost.
	He found, instead, some memories of Akane.  Her smile, her graceful 
form, her aura of compassion.  He saw her sitting down to his left.  
"Ryoga," she said.
	"Akane," he murmured, keeping hard to his focus, his Atman, his 
soul, his inner child... he was lost again.
	She took his left hand in hers, and he tried not to flinch.  
"Don't," she said.  "Just don't."  She patted his hand with hers.
	He almost went completely out of his mind, when he heard a tongue 
clicking.  He turned his head to see Nabiki.  "My sister AND me?  You 
know how that would make her feel..."
	He thought about it.  He didn't.
	Nabiki made a theatrical hand-to-chest movement, accentuating her 
traditional tea-ceremony sitting position.  She looked like a perfect 
lady.  "You men are all alike."  She gave him a deceptively meek 
expression.  "Do you know how that makes me feel?"
	No, he didn't.  But he didn't need to say that, did he?
	"I know what you make me feel."  That one wasn't from Nabiki 
though.  It was from the Ukyo sitting in front of him, wearing her hair 
askew, enrobed in her blanket.  She gave a sleepy expression, and ran a 
hand self-consciously through her brown tresses.  She actually smiled, a 
small simple smile.
	He blushed uncontrollably, but forced his position.  His brow 
furrowed deeply, and he tried to confront this specter, amongst the 
others.  "What am I doing here?  Why... why...?"  His forefingers met, 
and they pushed against each other in an pseudo-isometric exercise, 
making rusty squeaking noises.  "I... I mean...?"
	Ukyo, who wasn't quite awake, but was quite disheveled (what were 
they doing on the floor?), just wondered what was wrong with Ryoga.  But, 
after clearing her head a bit, she recognized the nervous bit.  "Yes?"  
she asked, after arranging her position to edge towards the traveling 
artist.
	Ryoga, not quite aware that he was out of his trance, forged ahead.  
"Why am I here?  In your bedroom?  Did..."  He faltered for a moment, 
assessing the impact of his statement.  "Did we DO something last night?"
	It took Ukyo a few moments to digest the actual gist of the 
question.  She giggled a bit after that.  Then, she giggled some more.  
She stopped just before a snicker.  "No, we did NOT do something," she 
lightly replied.  "I'm not that kind of girl, silly."
	Ryoga was starting to wonder where this was leading up to.  "What 
am I doing here with you?  The last thing I remember seeing, before the 
bedroom, was Nabiki, and..."
	"Nabiki," Ukyo echoed.
	"... we came to have lunch coming from the bank," he finished.  He 
paused.  "Don't... don't tell me that... that I..."
	Ukyo started to wonder why Ryoga was caught nonplussed at all.  
"No, you didn't walk in on me.  I took you in after she..."
	"... kissed me."  He was surprised to have remembered at all.  
He... he sort of wanted to remember.  He couldn't.  But... he remembered 
a tree.  Being up in a tree.  And Ukyo was there.
	"Yes," she said, and felt silent, sullen.
	The hand on his ankle went cold, and Ryoga had no idea why.  Ukyo 
wanted to kill the silence, but kept the tone neutral.  "You passed out.  
I... I wanted to take care of you...."
	The Freudian slip went flying past Ryoga's keen sensibilities.  He 
kept trying to remember details of his dream, in an effort to clear his 
latest set of confusions.  It really didn't matter that he kept on mixing 
in elements from yesterday's bizarre events;  they completely coincided 
with each other's facts, overall.  Besides, he was used to confusing 
situations.
	Ukyo simply couldn't believe the change in heart Ryoga had.  One 
moment, there was a certain passion (towards her, she had thought, but 
she rectified her opinion), but now he was... cold.  Dissociated.  She 
wanted, badly, to know.  But, also, she realized as a shiver shook her 
slightly, that she needed...
	Ryoga hugged her, hard.  She almost wasn't able to breathe, but 
then he changed his grip to a lighter one.  He held her, his arms meeting 
in the middle of her back, under her own arms.  She had held on to him 
involuntarily when he had hugged her, and felt the way his shoulders were 
nudging her arms.  She closed her arms tighter, and closed her eyes, 
smiling.
	The wearied wanderer noticed the change in external body 
temperature.  Namely, the cold hand left his ankle, and a hot, ragged, 
stream of wind beating somewhere on the junction of his neck and his 
body.  This, at last, withdrew him from his trance.
	He was holding his arms loosely around someone's back.  This 
someone was likewise wrapped around him.  He knew without wondering that 
it was Ukyo, and was glad, because he was a friend, and she needed a hug.  
When she had hugged him tighter, and had virtually jumped into his arms, 
which, because he was sitting, caused them to lean backwards, he felt a 
kind of bounciness he had only dreamt of.  He was unconscious before he 
hit the floor.
	Ukyo just whispered into his ear, "I love you."

	Kasumi entered her room quietly, and faced away from the door to 
close it.  She let out a low sigh, and wondered how her mother would have 
dealt with ths situation.  She sent out a prayer to her mother, thanking 
her for keeping watch over all of them.
	She turned on the light, knowing full well that she would never get 
any sleep in the hour she had before she was scheduled to wake up.  She 
had to get her mind off of... things.  But everywhere she turned, there 
was some sort of distress.  If you can save the world by helping each and 
every one...
	She went over to her bed, and found the book she had borrowed from 
Dr. Tofu.  She could read that.  She opened the book up to the page for 
the 18th of April, and perused that the best gift was a herb called 
Demon's Kiss.  Never on a Sunday, she thought, as she listed it down, 
recalling that she had a few friends who have their birthdays on that 
date.
	As she turned to the next page, her marker fell open on the ground.  
As she turned to pick it up, she had noticed faintly the clean scribbles 
of the chiropractor's handwriting.  It was so faint, that she hadn't 
noticed it before.  She probably wouldn't have bothered with it, and 
would have returned it without incident later today, but that's not how 
these things were to work out;  she had read the first line.
	She picked the letter up, absent-mindedly closed the book, sat, and 
read.
	And read.
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Well?  Need to let off steam?  Reply now!  

							Switch
							Keeper of the Zoo
							Nikholas F. Toledo Zu


PS  Happy Birthday, Mako-chan!  Demon's Kiss comin' up... NOT!