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"His True Love"
by Angus MacSpon

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"Oh, Ranma-sama!" gushed Kodachi.  "She is gone, and you are mine at
last!  How wonderful!"

Ranma cringed away from her.  "What're you talking about, you crazy
broad?  Who's gone?"  He tried, unsuccessfully, to put some more
distance between them.

"Why, that pig-tailed slut of course!  Now my greatest enemy is gone,
what else can stand between us?"

"Gone?"  Ranma stared at her, baffled.  "Whaddya mean, 'gone'? I'm not
-- I mean, the pig-tailed girl hasn't gone anywhere.  She's still right
here in Nerima.  I, ah, saw her this morning."  He wondered for a moment
if her brother's absence had sent her totally mad.  Nahh.  She'd been
totally mad for as long as he'd known her.

"What?"  The Black Rose's eyes flashed.  "Impossible!  Ever since he
transferred to that new school I've been getting letters from him,
saying that his true love is there and he will not return until he has
won her!  If that slut is still here, then what can this possibly mean?"
She waved a piece of paper in his face.  Reflexively, he grabbed it and
read.

"Let me see that.  Umm --"  He read it with some difficulty, amazed
to see that Kuno was as unintelligible in written form as when he spoke.
Then his eyes widened.

"'-- Have found my true love at last,'" he read aloud.  "'How graceful
her form, and what light shines in her eyes: like dew at sunrise.  How
lissome her limbs --'  Oh, geez, he's written it all in haikus and
tankas!  'A noble, mighty warrior, she eludes me yet; but I shall find
her, though she hides her face from me...'  What the hell's that
supposed to mean?"

"So, it is not the pig-tailed wench?" said Kodachi.  "But my brother
says he will not come home until he has won her ..."  She smiled.  "That
means that I shall be all alone, should you wish to visit me ... at
night," she murmured throatily.

Ranma cleared his throat nervously and looked at the letter again.  "I
wonder who he's picking on now?" he muttered.  "Maybe I should write and
warn her.  What school is he at again?"  He checked the return address.
"The Spartan Institute of Higher Education.  Hmm, never heard of it.  I
wonder what the hell's going on there ...?"

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Apologies to Rumiko Takahashi and Go Nagai.


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Angus MacSpon                                                Allen Gainsford
http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon/          http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon/