Hi all -

All right, I finally got my butt into gear and cleaned things up.  I'm sorry it's so terribly late.  Many thanks to my wonderfully tolerant prereaders and editors, and to all those who wrote to me with support and suggestions.

This is newly collected, and the final draft of Fragments will only have three (*large*) parts.  Beware, this section is dreadfully long. =)

All comments are welcome. =)

-ling

^*^*^

DISCLAIMER: Ranma 1/2 is property of Rumiko Takahashi, its use in this work of fiction generates no profit and no infringement is intended.  "Babylon", property of David Gray, and "Shimmer", property of Shawn Mullins, have lyrics that are reproduced and used here without permission.  No profit is being generated from their use and no infringement is intended.

ARCHIVE: Phu, Reddeath, and Rakhal have my express permission; everyone else, please ask at echonymph@msn.com first.

RATING: PG-13/R

SUMMARY: Twelve years after a death at the hands of honor, the spell is broken and the curse released � Nerima had never been the same after Ranma's arrival, and it hasn't been the same after his death.

^*^*^

FRAGMENTS

- by ling

^*^*^

(From 'The Storm of Souls', an anonymous collection of stories and poems)

They'd met in June,
Under blossoms rare,
While the wind whistled,
Like song in the air.

He who was loved and cherished
He who slept and dreamed
He who was wise and childlike
He who was more than he seemed.

She who reached the heavens,
She who shined with spark,
She who loved and lived and laughed,
She who slew the dark.

Wild and pretty youths were they,
Their family's shining pride,
Their minds were swift; their love was deep,
Belonging side by side.

The engagement made,
And the families proud,
Their children were happy,
Content and avowed.

But to live is to err,
And one misplaced step,
Sent the girl tumbling,
Into unknown depth.

The boy tried to save her,
Knowing he'd fail,
And he held her gently,
As her face grew pale.

The families were shamed,
Angry and broken,
Cruel fights were exchanged,
And cruel words spoken.

And a hate was borne,

From the truest of loves,

Like pitch-black ravens,

From floating doves.

^*^*^

The hustle of the street distracted her for just a moment.  And in the length of a second, her brown eyes were drawn to the masses of people that strolled along the sides of the streets, smiles on their faces, their voices loud, and hands rapidly pantomiming or hefting packages.  She sighed to herself; it had been too long since she had shared in their carefree life.

She focused herself on her original purpose.

No one could ever claim that Tendo Nabiki lacked willpower.

No, no one had dared to comment as such for the past twelve years of her life.  Ever since she had turned eighteen and headed for college, she'd shown her true colors.  Her minor extortion and cruelty-for-cash attitude had not changed; it had only escalated to a much grander scale.  Which may have accounted for why Tendo Nabiki, at the tender age of nineteen was the youngest ever trader ever admitted into the prestigious firm of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, or at the very least, the youngest ever hired for their Tokyo branch.

She'd been deliriously pleased with herself.

She had everything she had ever wanted in life, wealth, influence, her family was well.

All save for ...

Initially, after the ... incident, Nabiki had to admit that she'd been happy, guiltily so, for her little sister.  Akane had always protested her engagement to the Saotome boy, and he likewise, it was only a matter of time before one of them did something drastic about their predicament.  Nabiki had been plotting a way to break up the engagement, herself.

The incident could not have come at a better time.

Nabiki winced.  'Of course,' she thought, 'death is never something to celebrate, but the ends justify the means, baby.  Of course Akane mourned, deep down, those two were friends, whether or not they could admit it, but it was better for all involved that they never got married.'  She was distracted by a whisper of a voice she had nearly forgotten in her years, shaking her head, and admonishing herself, she murmured aloud, "Nabiki, you're dreaming," and even with this, she looked around twice, just to make sure that she was, satisfied, she finished, "You're paranoid."

The sound of the city started to overwhelm her again, and the flashing lights of the street and neon glitter of a Tokyo nightscape started to blur together to create an altogether unpleasant confusion that had her feeling faint.  She placed a hand on the side of a wall, steadying herself, trying to breathe.

She inhaled deeply and held it as the world came back into a somewhat muddy focus.

It was only then that Nabiki noticed the familiar flash of nearly incandescent red that filled her vision.

And after the shock filtered away, Tendo Nabiki, known for her killer instinct on the Tokyo trading floor, started to follow a figment of the past.

^*^*^

"I'm home!"

The sound of the lilting greeting echoed through the darkened apartment, and the woman who had called out the words frowned deeply.  She kicked off her stacked heels and shrugged out of her coat, hanging the rich, midnight-colored clothing onto a hanger in the hall closet.

She wriggled her toes for a moment, delighted to be freed from her self-imposed torture.  She'd never become used to high heels, there was just something elegantly wicked about them, every time she saw a pair in a store window, her mind automatically switched into, 'what would they look like on me' mode, but when she started walking around in them during work, her brain shifted back to, 'why on earth did I buy these?'

The red-headed woman padded softly across the hardwood floors of the large apartment, not bothering to turn on any of the lights, she headed toward the kitchen.

The light above the breakfast table was turned onto its dimmest setting, a used plate, fork, and half-empty can of soda were bathed in its yellow glow. The woman rolled her eyes and gathered up the dishes, placing them in the sink, and throwing away the can after emptying it herself.

She rinsed her hands off, staring into the expansive darkness that the open floor plan allowed her to see.  Frustrated, she headed toward the bedroom.

Opening the door to the cozy chamber softly, she muttered, "That idiot better not be late, it's November 14, and he knows what I'll do to him if he misses this �" the woman stopped short as she came upon the sleeping form of the man in question.

She released an affectionate sigh as she sat down on the bed next to his prone body.  Her blue eyes were soft, and her mouth was pulled into a tender smile.

"Happy Anniversary," she whispered to herself, sifting her delicate fingers through his thick, soft, black hair.  "What am I to do with you, Soichi?"

^*^*^

She had to have been seeing things.

Tendo Nabiki decided that in her old age (after all, she was very nearly thirty-one) that she was slowly, but obviously, very steadily loosing her mind.

She had to have been seeing things.

Tanakawa Yuki had been blown away more than twelve years ago.  Hence, Tanakawa Yuki could not possibly have just brushed by her in the street.

Which brought Nabiki back to her original point:

She had to have been seeing things.

But if it was one thing that Nabiki had learned, it was to verify her suspicions, regardless of how inane or insane they seemed.  Nerima *was* a ward of Tokyo, the craziness quotient could still be suffering the aftereffects of the Saotomes and all the weirdness that they had brought.

So Nabiki had watched as the redheaded woman had disappeared into a tall glass and steel apartment building.

She made a mental note, and called a cab.

Grimacing to herself as she neared her own home, she thought, 'This could get ugly.'

^*^*^

"Kya!"

There came a loud rumble of shattered concrete and splintered wood, falling to the gleaming floors of the dojo with dull thuds and soft, sad noises.

"Akane, do you really think that you should be doing that now?" Kasumi's soothing voice broke through her distracted haze.

The youngest Tendo girl looked around the partially destroyed dojo and saw the frightened expressions of seventeen five and six year old beginner martial artists.  She blushed in sudden embarrassment.  A quick glance at the clock revealed that it was ten past eight o'clock, her students must have trickled into the dojo, and she, in her raging state, must not have noticed.

"Sorry, Students," she stuttered.  She took a deep breath, and spoke, "Today we'll be learning the most basic aspect of Martial Arts," her voice was measured, "how to fall."

She grinned momentarily at the shocked ripple of whispers that went up around the room, and several students called out:

"Hey, isn't martial arts about *not* getting hurt and stuff like that?"

"Yeah, since when did martial artists learn how to get hurt anyway?"

"I bet Jackie Chan never did this!"

With a sweep of her hands, Akane silenced them all.  "Children, you must understand, learning to fall is a function of *not* being hurt."

'The irony is killing me,' she thought with mild amusement.  She bit back the wave of memories that assaulted her and began to teach, as her father had always hoped she would.

^*^*^

"Good evening, Kimiko," the soft, masculine voice said.  Kimiko opened her blue eyes slowly, adjusting to the dim light of the room, and yawning widely.

"Good evening, Soichi," she paused, eyes looking toward the clock on the nightstand past Soichi, she moaned softly.  "God, it's 9 o'clock already, Soichi, why didn't you wake me up earlier?"

Her eyes finally focused.

Soichi, she had to admit, looked good enough to eat.

The man was nearly thirty, but still possessed the lithe sensuality of his youth.  His slate-blue eyes still sparkled with good humor, and his mouth was still set in a familiar smirk.  She grinned to herself and allowed her fingers to trail along his handsome face, stopping only at the thin, barely noticeable scare that ran down along the left side of his chin.  She couldn't remember how he had gotten it, and doubted that he did, either.

Soichi grinned, murmuring, "You looked beautiful sleeping, Kimiko."  She flushed softly in reply, and grew quiet, content in the silence.

^*^*^

"Hello, Sanii-san, I need a favor."

"Anything, Tendo-san."

Nabiki bit her lip and grasped the receiver tightly in her right hand, eyes turning toward the evening skyline of the city.

Yuki was out there somewhere.

That couldn't be good.

That meant there was still danger, which meant that Ranma had met a foe that he couldn't defeat.

And that his death had been a waste after all.

"I need you to run a residential check," she said as calmly as her voice would allow.

There was a brief silence on the phone.  "Tendo-san, I respect you and everything, you know that, but what's the relevance?  I can only get so far before someone catches me hackin', medical records are harder than ever to - "

"No, Sanii-san," Nabiki said with quiet exasperation.  "I wouldn't ask you to do anything that would get you arrested."

A relieved sigh ran through the phone line.  "Okay, Tendo-san, I don't think my parents would be too hyper about breakin' their eighteen year old out of jail."

Nabiki allowed herself a chuckle, it was funny really that her best and most trusted informant was only two thirds of her age.  "Okay, Sanii-san, I need you to get a tenants listing of everyone who lives in the Sakura Towers apartments, 117 on 45th street.  Got it?" she breathed, her fingers tapping busily on the mahogany top of her massive desk.

"Got it, Tendo-san.  I'm faxing it to you as we speak.  Pretty long list, if you ask me."

Nabiki let out a bark of laughter.  "That building's got to be at least twenty stories tall, Sanii-san, I would imagine the list would be long."

"Actually, Tendo-san, it's twenty-five stories."

"Details details, Sanii-san," Nabiki chided, watching her fax machine suddenly come to life.  She pushed the balls of her feet into the lush carpet of her floor, and wheeled her chair over to it, grabbing the top corner of the paper hastily, hoping that maybe holding onto it would hurry the process.

Sanii continued to speak, "I've been to Sakura Towers before, they're luxury apartments, only the first five floors are like normal apartments, the rest of the building is made up of floor-sized apartments.  Like, eleventh floor, the Hino residence, twelfth floor, the Sanii Kuzio and Tendo Nabiki residence ... " he let his voice trial off hopefully.

Nabiki thought about his words, and replied, "You can dream, Sanii; you can always dream."

"That's all I can ever hope for, Tendo-san, all I can ever hope for.  Goodbye, Tendo-san."

"Thanks, Sanii-san."

^*^*^

Soichi awoke alone in bed, his eyes adjusted to the watery light of the morning, and stifling a yawn, he rolled out from under the covers.  Grabbing a pair of clean boxers from the pile of fresh laundry he had forgotten to put away, and some jeans and a t-shirt, he lurched into bathroom.

He let the water run till it steamed up the entire bathroom, releasing a sigh, Soichi stepped under the stinging water of the shower, blinding groping around from a bar of soap, and finding only the chamomile and lavender body wash that Kimiko always smelled of.

He grinned to himself, opening the top of the bottle and taking a deep breath of the stuff.  The scent of it was intoxicatingly sexy to him, all he had to do was get a whiff of it from across a room, and the urge to grab her and amoral things to her was nearly insatiable.  He suspected that she knew, and that his inability to resist it was the only reason she even bothered to shell out the 1000 extra yen for it at the Bath and Body store, anyway.

His fingers finally located the bar of soap, lying in its proper place in the ceramic soap dish on the side of the shower.  Undoubtedly, Kimiko had taken a shower before him, and undoubtedly, she had almost slipped and died on the soap again, and undoubtedly, she had muttered curses as she put it back where it belonged.

He scrubbed until he was well lathered and let the hot water sluice down his body, washing away the last remains of sleep.

Soichi leaned against the side of the shower stall and sighed deeply, an unhappy frown creasing his face.  There was a deep and unpleasant fear that still lurked in his heart.  It had been twelve years, almost thirteen, but someone *must* have noticed something by now.  They couldn't have been *that* seamless in their escape.

"Soichi, come on, don't you ever get sick of getting stuck in traffic?" cried a lilting female voice.  He saw her curved outline against the steamed glass of the shower, and with a grin, he slid open the door.  With a firm tug, Kimiko, in all her perfectly pressed glory fell whooping into his wet, warm arms under the unrelenting water.

"Damn it, Soichi!  I'm going to be late for work!" Kimiko protested vainly as he started to unbutton her navy-blue shirt, which was currently doing a very good impression of being a second skin as a result of being soaked.

"Aw," Soichi teased, "is Kimiko upset that she's going to be tardy?"

"Yes, I am!"

"I can help you with that," he murmured.

"S-S-Soichi, that's not helping ... "

As Kimiko melted into his touch, he grinned, "Yeah, but it's making playing hooky seem so much more attractive."

^*^*^

An hour and a half later, Fugikara Soichi bolted into the richly decorated offices on the twelfth floor of the Ryo Towers, cursing himself softly.

"Good morning, Dr. Fugikara."  Kagome smiled with a knowing expression.  Dr. Fugikara was one of the most popular people in the building, she made it her business to know his comings and goings, and she'd noted over the past five years that he came in to work late at least two days a week, and it didn't seem to have anything to do with *sleeping* in.

He smiled wryly at her, saying, "Morning, Kagome-san, has anyone called this morning?"

Kagome picked up a small pile of notepaper, and said, "Well, first three are from patients wanting to reschedule, two are from prospective clients who want to meet you, it's on your calendar in your office by now, and one from Kimiko thanking you for making the reservations for dinner tonight."

Soichi looked up at Kagome, a startled panic on his face.  "Reservations?"

Kagome grinned impishly.  "Of course.  Just as a note, the reservations at Catacarina's; it's an Italian place down by the Tokyo business complex, very high-class, she'll love it."  Kagome watched the relief spread across her boss' face.  "Should I arrange a hotel room, too?"

Soichi narrowed his eyes at his secretary as he headed toward his inner office.  "Very funny, Kagome."

She continued, "And bail for when you two don't make it up there and get arrested for public indecency?"

Her only response was the door closing.

^*^*^

"Tendo-san?  I found out something else interesting, of all the tenants that live in Sakura Towers, only ten apartments have full VIP privileges."

"What do VIP privileges do for someone who lives in Sakura Towers?"

"Hell if I know, but I have a way for you to find out."

"You're too good to me, Sanii-san."

"Only for you, my misguided love."

"Sanii, you're not even legal."

"Age of consent is twelve in Japan, besides, I'm eighteen, think about it, Tendo-san."

Nabiki sighed.  "I think about it too much already."

^*^*^

"Akane, Ryoga is back!"

Akane let out a soft groan.

It was only after Ranma's death that she'd discovered Ryoga's apparent long-time obsession with her.  At first, it had been nice to have someone be there for her 24/7, well except for the times when he would mysteriously disappear for months at a time, she had needed a friend desperately.  She's turned to him at her darkest hour, after her fiancee had died, her friends had abandoned her, and even P-chan had gone missing.

Regardless of what she had forced herself to believe before, she cared for Ranma, had perhaps even loved him, and his abrupt passing left her with a void that needed to be filled by someone, *anyone*.

Which led her to the unfortunate condition she was in now.

She'd been stupid and led Ryoga on.  At first it was nice to feel loved and needed again, eventually, she just didn't want to see him hurt.

For the first time in her life, she was starting to understand why Ranma had been so wishy-washy with all his fiancees; unfortunately, it came after it was too late for her to tell him.

"All right, Kasumi!  I'll be there in a second."

Akane sighed and went out to meet her fiancee.

^*^*^

"Kimiko, come on, we're going to be late!"

"Shut *up*, Soichi!  Do you want your date to be ugly?"

Soichi sighed and tapped his foot impatiently, and pushing his silver wire-rim glasses higher on his nose, he said, "Kimiko, you couldn't be ugly if you *tried*.  Can we *please* just go?"  His vision had started to go bad about a year and a half ago.  He'd protested the glasses vehemently in the beginning, but once he realized that Kimiko seemed to have a predilection for them, he'd stopped fighting it so viciously.

"FINE!  But if we're not allowed into the restaurant because ... "

Kimiko's voice trailed off as she saw the expression on Soichi's face.

She had stepped out of their bedroom in a sleeveless, strapless black silk dress.  It clung to her curves and was patterned all over with black, embroidered dragons.  The dress was long, with two matching slits up the side that exposed generous expanses of leg.  Her feet were strapped into a pair of black, high-heeled sequined sandals, and her hair was unbound and hanging freely to her uncovered shoulders.

Kimiko reminded herself to take a deep breath as her eyes took in Soichi's appearance.  His handsome features were perfectly complimented by his glasses, and his dark-colored suit fit him with a loose grace that was uniquely his.  She fought the urge to run her hands through his hair; the soft, black tendrils that had been bound into a pigtail had been cut short, and were cropped close at the ears.  All in all, Fugikara Soichi had maintained his delightfully handsome appearances.

"Well," she stuttered softly, regaining her composure, "see, I told you."

As she turned to go back into the bedroom, Soichi caught her hand.  "Beautiful," he murmured, kissing her cheeks.  "Sexy," he breathed spinning her around before him.

She blushed bright red.  "Liar," she replied.

^*^*^

Nabiki had infiltrated the Sakura towers annual tenants party, and found no sign of the redhead there.  She was starting to grow frustrated.  Either Yuki (or could it have been ... Ranma?) knew that she was being sought out, or had she simply decided not to come?  There weren't even solid guarantees that she *lived* in the building.

Nabiki pouted a bit longer, and decided to Sanii's original suggestion was probably better; she'd start reviewing security footage first thing the next day.

^*^*^

"This place is lovely, Soichi," Kimiko said softly, watching as the twilight slowly crept toward their table.  She grinned at him.  "We really ought to give Kagome a nice present, after all, she goes to so much trouble to make these fabulous reservations for us."

Soichi nearly choked on his tortellini.  He eyed Kimiko for a moment before a shy smile spread across his face.

"Why didn't you say something if you knew that I wasn't the one making them?"

Kimiko shrugged.  "It didn't really bother me, you have a lot on your mind, you work hard," she grasped his hand in her own, "we have each other," he smiled at her gently, "I'm not going to sweat the small stuff."

Soichi brought up his free hand and cupped her cheek, murmuring, "Right, Kimiko, don't sweat the small stuff."

She blushed prettily.  It was amazing, after twelve years, he was still able to pull this number on her.

He was silent for a moment, and although his touch was loving, and his expression devout, she knew in her heart that his mind was a million miles away.  Allowing herself a secret grin, she wondered what other women did when their husbands seemed far away, luckily for her, she needed only to ask to pull him back to her side.

"Soichi, what's on your mind?"

He sighed, pulling away from her, he stared out a window, saying, "Remember, remember before, Kimiko?"

He watched as a shadow of pain danced across her lovely features.  "Why?" she asked softly.

"Because," he replied firmly, "because Yomada Naka came in again today, and I finally realized something about the boy."  Kimiko looked toward him, an expression of curiosity on her face.

"Go on, Soichi," she urged.

"He," Soichi paused, searching for a word, "he's torn.  His family wants him to do one thing, he wants to do something else, and everyone in the world expects something different from him."  He looked at Kimiko for a long, time before speaking again.  "I just don't want to see what happened to me happen to anyone else."

Kimiko gave him a wane smile.  "Soichi, with you, I doubt anything bad will happen to him."

He laughed softly.  "Thanks, Kimiko, what would I do without you?"

She smirked this time; letting her fingers trace slow circles on his thick arm, she said, "Probably die looking for your socks and a matching tie."

^*^*^

"Naka, what would you like to talk about today?"  Soichi's soothing tones woke the teenager from his dreamlike state.

Yomada Naka was a sixteen year-old freshman at an all-boy's Tokyo high school.  His grades were pretty much below average, and his interest in them steadily decreasing in a manner that was parallel to his marks.  His parents originally thought it was because he was too interested in girls, and placed him in a boy's school.  His grades had only gotten worse.  Soichi had taken him as a patient not out of necessity, but out of pure, unadulterated interest, but that had been a year and a half ago.  The interest was wearing thin, and his hope for the child was, too.

"What, Dr. Fugikara?  I'm sorry, I wasn't really paying attention."  Soichi observed the youngster carefully, his dark brown hair fell in unruly bangs over his face, and his eyes were flashing with some unspoken rebellion.

Soichi let out a smile.

It was just like looking into a mirror.

He decided to try something new.  "Naka, do you have a hobby, something you like to do more than anything else in the world?"

Naka's eyes lit up, "Martial arts, definitely."

Soichi raised an eyebrow, an amused expression appearing on his face.  "Really, Naka?  I thought it wasn't cool for kids to spend so much time on something so traditional nowadays."  Naka blushed to the tips of his ears as he often did during their sessions.  Soichi chuckled, "Sorry, Naka, I did not mean to embarrass you.  Do you know, I did a little martial arts when I was young?"

Naka looked intrigued.  "Really, what kind?"

"An- Kempo, actually."

Soichi kicked himself for the slip-up.

Naka seemed not to have noticed.  "That's awesome, Dr. Fugikara.  I'd love to spar sometime!"

Soichi grinned.  "I would enjoy it, too, however, I have to make a deal with you, if you bring home an 'A' before our next session, I'll spar with you, if you don't," he shrugged, "I can always go over Jungian psychological theory," he grinned wickedly, "in painful detail, just like my professor did to me in college."  Naka turned pale and got out of his chair, hurrying to the door, Soichi interrupted, "Hey, your session's not over for another ten minutes!"

"I know," the teen called back.  "I've got a test Wednesday, and I'd rather study than hear about Jungian theory!"

Soichi smiled to himself as he started to gather his notes, whispering, "Naka, you have no idea."

^*^*^

"Wow, Kimiko, we're actually on time to work today?"

"Shut up, Ryoko."

"And, amazingly, you don't smell like you just had sex, either!"

"Ryoko, I'm warning you."

"Sorry, sorry, your ten o'clock is waiting for you."

Kimiko grimaced as she saw what name was written on the computer screen.  "Do I have to go in?"

Ryoko smiled sympathetically.  "I'm afraid you have to, Kimiko-san.  You've already had the Asian flu, tuberculosis, been in labor, arrested, and violently mauled.  He told me he didn't care if you had been freshly dismembered; he wants to see you."

Kimiko groaned aloud, and stepped into her office, a prayer in her heart.  Forcing a smile to her face, she said, "Good morning, Tokoya-san, how may I help you this morning?"

^*^*^

"Tokoya-san, I apologize, but the layout you were presented with is exactly what you asked for," Kimiko said calmly.  She hated Tokoya Maskaki, in her opinion; he was an insane, redundant, very, very stupid waste of cells in general.

Unfortunately, he was also the biggest client she had for her firm.

"I understand that you *think* that you've fulfilled the obligations I put forth, Yoshida-san, but the truth is that your ads - "

"Which ones?" Kimiko uttered through gritted teeth.  She feared that if she gripped the armrests of her chair any tighter, they'd snap off and get ground into sawdust.

"All of them," he said matter-of-factly.

'Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe,' Kimiko coached herself.  'He's old, he'll die eventually, please, God, let this meeting end.'

"Of course, Tokoya-san," she found herself saying aloud.

He nodded and continued, "Anyways, before I was interrupted, I was saying how all the ads you did for my corporation lack a certain - I don't know - zing," he gave her a dark look, "I'm actually thinking about changing companies."

Kimiko steeled her nerves and said in as calm a voice as she could muster, "Tokoya-san, you've said that a thousand times before, but you do realize that if you had any problems with the ads before, you could have told us, and I'd have gladly reworked all of them."  She crossed her arms as she stood up and walked across the room to the enormous window that was one side of her executive office.  "Why do you keep coming back to us if you hate us so much?"

There was a blank space of silence.

"Do you want to know the truth, Kimiko?"

She whipped back to face him in confusion.  In their six year-long business relationship, he'd never so much as acknowledged the fact that she had a first name, much less called her by it.  "Yes, Tokoya-san," she whispered softly, "I'd like to know."

His face grew suddenly aged in the light of the office.  "Kimiko-san, the truth is, I like you.  I like *you* and not your company."

Kimiko blanched visibly.

It was going to be a bad day.

^*^*^

"Moshi moshi," Ryoko chirped into the phone.

"I'd like to speak to Ms. Yoshida Kimiko, please, is she available right now?"  The woman's voice on the other line was very businesslike, and Ryoko got the impression that she was one of those people who hadn't tripped up since they were four.

"I'm sorry, she's in the middle of a meeting, would you like to leave her a message?"

"Thank you, but that won't be necessary."

^*^*^

"You know, Soichi, the neighbors are going to start thinking that we're weird, we never go to any of the parties they throw," Kimiko murmured as she idly stirred the pot of stew.  She watched as he made a face, and said, "Come on, Soichi, tell me why you don't like going."

He sighed and muttered, "I always feel out of place there, you know, Kimiko?"

"No, I don't, because you won't tell me."

He groaned softly and started, "It's just that they're all talking about wine and boats and the stock market.  I don't know anything about wine and boats and the stock market.  I feel stupid there, like I don't fit in and they don't want me."

Kimiko rolled her eyes.  "Soichi, I don't know anything about wine and boats and the stock market either, I don't feel out of place."

He grinned, turning off the oven as the timer trilled, he leered, "That's because you're beautiful, and when they talk to you, it's usually to your breasts and not your face."

"Soichi!  I'm being serious."

He took out the steaming hot loaf of bread, a pair of matching pink oven mitts on his hands.  Furrowing his brow, he said in all seriousness, "So am I, Kimiko."  He stopped for a minute, dumping the bread out onto the cutting board before he spoke again, "You know, about that, I'm starting to get really irritated."

Kimiko raised an eyebrow, turning the range down to a simmer.  "Irritated at what?"

"Those guys in our building, Kimiko, they spend at least forty minutes ogling you every time we spend any time with them," he frowned, "haven't they figured out that I may not like that?"

Kimiko shook her head and turned back to the soup.  "No one *ogles* me, Soichi."

"Yes, they do!" he insisted angrily.  "And I'm sick of it!"  She was startled by the harshness in his voice.

Kimiko jumped.  This sudden anger was unsettling.

"Soichi," she whispered, "what's wrong?"

He lowered his head wearily.  "I love you," he whispered, looking back up at her just in time to see her face sparkle with a beautiful smile.  "I can't find words half the time to tell you.  You're my best friend, the only person who ever really listened to me."  He stopped, forcing his next words out of his mouth.  "You gave up everything so I could have *something*, *anything*."

Kimiko winced at this, and unconscious reaction to whenever he talked about ... it.

"I can't help but think," he went on, "that one day, you're going to see through me, and find out that I'm not what you wanted, and then you'll be angry because I've led you on."  The words came out in a rush of previously unreleased insecurity, and Kimiko walked toward him as he spoke.  "And then, soon, you're going to find one of the guys in this building that *does* know about boats and wine and the stock market, who can make you happy and keep you well, who *didn't* drag you through hell ... "

His voice trailed off, and Kimiko couldn't speak as she saw the tears rise in his slate blue eyes.

"And I won't have you anymore," he finished, his voice barely audible.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, and with her face buried in the folds of his old t-shirt, she murmured, "Soichi, you're everything that I've ever wanted, everything that I've ever needed, everything that I've ever dreamed of having."  She looked back up at him, a blissful smile on her face, "How could you ever think that I did anything that I didn't want to?  How could you ever think that I'd leave you for someone else?"  She cupped his face in both hands.  "I love you, never forget that."

He nodded, and embracing her tightly once again, he rocked them back and forth in the kitchen, content with her words.

^*^*^

"So what *do* VIP privileges do for one in Sakura Towers, Sanii-san?"

"You're going to be surprised, Tendo."

She grinned wickedly.  "I like surprises."

"Okay, VIP gives you exclusive rights.  Such as you're allowed to *buy* the apartment as opposed to renting it; you have twenty-four hour maintenance at your beck and call.  Also, cleaners come buy once a week and do the entire apartment top to bottom for free."

Nabiki whistled.  "Nice set-up, ain't it, Sanii-san."

He chuckled over the phone.  "I think so, too, Tendo, what have you got in mind?"

^*^*^

"Damn it!"

"What?  What happened?"

Ryoga stared around himself hopelessly, somehow, instead of quiet, comfortable Nerima, he found himself suddenly in the screaming rush of the Tokyo business district.

How did that happen?

Akane looked around her, and gently easing herself from Ryoga's hold, she hopped onto the ground, thinking to herself, 'Geez, this is insane, I don't mind him carrying me places, God knows I've gotten used to that, but this is ridiculous, the fourth time in a  *week* we've gotten completely lost!'

Swallowing her annoyance, she smiled at him.  "It's okay, Ryoga," she said, giving him a reassuring smile, "I wanted to do some shopping anyway."

His grin was like a million light bulbs coming on simultaneously.  She could only give him a wane shadow of it in return.

"Okay, Akane."

"Yeah," she murmured wearily, "Ryoga."

^*^*^

"This is illegal, Tendo-san," Sanii Kuzio muttered unhappily, and glaring down at his clothing, he added, "and embarrassing."

Nabiki rolled her eyes, sifting her fingers through her hair, she said, "Kuzio, I've known you since you were fifteen, give it up and call me Nabiki."  She handed him a feather-duster, and went on, saying, "Besides, this is at least partially your fault."

Kuzio bristled.  "*My* fault?  How is this my fault?"

Nabiki grinned wickedly, grasping the handles of the cleaning cart, she said, "Hey, you mentioned the cleaning privileges."

^*^*^

"Yo, Akane, do you like this one?"

Akane sighed wearily for the thousandth time that day, it seemed that nothing could put Ryoga off, not one iota.

He'd never seemed this brash and careless before, he'd always been the sensitive one, the one who cared about her feelings and *wanted* to hear what she thought.

Ryoga had always been so *nice*.

Of course, that was before she had been engaged to him.

Sure, Ryoga was still *nice*, but it had only recently occurred to her how *disgustingly* nice he was.  Not only was he worse than Ranma about some things (remembering birthdays, getting words out of his mouth), he was absolutely dreadful at most everything else.

Akane sighed.

After Ranma's death, the weirdness hadn't stopped, though it did manage to slow to a trickle.  Nabiki had Cologne and Shampoo deported.  Ukyo left, heartbroken, followed by both Konastu and Tsubasa.  Kodachi had been formally institutionalized, and Genma did nothing but stare out the windows. Soun Tendo had stopped crying.

All in all, Nerima had changed quite a bit.

Her senior year had been hellish.  Not only did the male population of Furinkan not care that her fiancee had just died, they took the news with gusto and celebration.  The morning fights began again with Kuno as the leader.

Though she'd rather die than admit it, she'd felt incredible relief when the arrival of Ranma had stopped the battles.

She winced, she'd never have admitted it to anyone, but she had loved him.  Since his thought had reasserted itself in her mind just a few days ago, she'd managed to let herself say it.

"Akane?  WHERE ARE YOU?!"

Of course ...

Akane was engaged to Ryoga now, and Ranma was dead.

She sighed and trudged over toward the sound of her fiance's voice, wishing desperately that she was looking for Ranma instead of Ryoga.

Then again, she was almost thirty; it wasn't time to be choosy.

^*^*^

"Soichi, what did we agree on about those shirts?" Kimiko chided softly.

She knew this was a sore subject for him.  They had been forced to abandon everything.  Not one thing could have been taken.  Money, clothes, and sentimental items inclusive.

She always knew that he missed his shirts.

It seemed like he used to have an endless supply of them, blue, white, red, black, and gold-embroidered, in every color of the rainbow.  He'd always unbuttoned the top collar-button, had his sleeves loosely rolled up, and the loose sides tied haphazardly at his waist.

But she hadn't been able to let him get any of them.  Sure, they had cut his hair short, been able to change their names, but some things would give them away too easily.

"Please, Kimiko, like you said, it's been twelve years."  He shot her a grin that he knew melted her resolve every time.  "What are the chances?"

Kimiko sighed softly, "Soichi ... "

"Please?" he whined.

"Fine," she huffed.  "Get it, see if I care."

He grinned a mile wide.  "I love you, Kimiko."  He bolted toward the cashier.

"I know," she sighed again, "I know."

^*^*^

"Akane, I'm going to the bathroom, can you wait for me?"  Akane forced herself to smile at Ryoga.  This was getting pathetic.  She wasn't seventeen anymore, she had hoped that Ryoga would have had some measure of maturity, either intellectually or emotionally by the time they were both thirty.

This hope would not be realized.

As she sat outside the men's room, waiting, she heard oddly familiar voices.

"Kimiko, you look beautiful, are you going to get it?" the male voice uttered breathily.

There was a soughing sound and the rustle of cloth before a softer, higher female lilt replied, "We're out here just to window-shop.  Besides, how could I afford to get something like this?"  There was a pause.  "It is lovely, though."

"You should get it," the man said earnestly.

"Yeah, and I should also be the Empress of Japan, but neither of those things are happening now are they?"

Akane wracked her memory.  Where had she heard that tone before, soft, gentle, perhaps a little higher, but the same resonant timbre and sound remained.  Where?  The woman's voice was lyrical, round, teasing, almost, her memory flittered angrily as she tried to retrieve the hint of remembrance.

It was gone.  She couldn't place it.

And then she saw her.  A brilliant red, perhaps a few shades darker than it had been in its better days, carefully cut and let loose to fall over gracefully curving shoulders.  Shoulder's that led to a slender, curved figure.

Akane bit back a gasp, reached out her hand, and with a firm tug, whipped the woman around.

Tendo Akane stared in absolute shock.

It was Ranma.

^*^*^

'SHIT!'

Kimiko's mind whirled in confusion and terror.  'Oh, God, NO!  What if, what if, OH NO, WHAT IF SHE SAW SOICHI?'  Kimiko studied Akane's shocked face for a minute, 'No, she couldn't have, had she, there'd be blood, there'd be tears, no, no, we're okay, we're okay.  God, please don't let him come back from the cash register yet.  Please.'

She pressed a cupped hand to her lips and started to back away before she realized that Akane still her a firm grip on her arm.

'BACKPEDAL!' a voice screamed in her mind.

"Excuse me, Miss," she started, barely repressing the stuttering fear, "is there something wrong?  If you're looking for someone ... " she released a nervous chuckle.

"No!" Akane hissed, her eyes as big as dinner plates, and suddenly, the (now long-haired) brunette threw herself into Kimiko's arms.  "Oh, RANMA!  I thought you were dead!  I, I was so worried!  God, I thought you were dead for so long!" she sobbed.

Kimiko's eyes grew wide for just half a beat before a bark of laughter escaped her lips.  Ranma?  She had to have been kidding.

Akane suddenly pulled away from her, eyes now flashing with anger, "YOU JERK!  WHY DID YOU LET ME THINK YOU WERE DEAD ALL THIS TIME!?"

Kimiko watched in dread as Akane reared her arm back and prepared to let loose one of her patented punches.

'Hey,' a voice in her mind consoled, 'it can't get any worse.'

"AKANE!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"  She whipped around to the sound of Ryoga's outraged voice.  In her shock, her fingers loosened their grip of Kimiko's shirt, and the redhead took off, uncaring of the screaming, raving woman she left behind.

^*^*^

Kimiko ran.

She didn't care that the entire mall stared at her as if she was a lunatic, she ran toward the store Soichi had disappeared into with a desperation that came only with death and war.  Soichi was just stepping out toward her as she slammed into his chest.  The speed and strength of the impact would have knocked over and out anyone else, but it hadn't fazed Soichi a bit, a result of years of training.

But nothing could prepare him for the expression on her face.

"Oh, shit," was all he managed to say.

^*^*^

"Come on, we have enough time to get back to the apartment, and I'll break out the stash, we can leave and-"

"No," he replied firmly.

Kimiko was shocked speechless save but one little word.  "What?" she demanded softly.

He sighed wearily.  "I'm sick of running, Kimiko, we've been hiding for so long, so afraid of what would happen to us."  He grasped her shoulders and pressed his forehead to hers.  "Let's stop."

Her eyes grew wide.  "Soichi, this isn't the place, we can discuss it, yes, but now, not now, Soichi, we can't-"

"Stop it, Kimiko, you're tired," he whispered, running a finger along the line of her cheek, pausing at her still open lips.  "I hear you cry at night.  You're tired."

Kimiko bit back tears.  "We can't, you'll have to give it all up; I'll have to give you up."

"No," he assured her, his voice more confident than he felt.  "We're not going to give anything up."

"How can we not?" she whispered.

"We are masters of our fate," he stated confidently, and cupping her chin in his hand, he brought her face up to his.  "Masters do not run."

She was hopeful for a moment.

It was enough.

"No more running," she breathed.

"No," Soichi answered, "no more running."

^*^*^

"Akane!  What do you think you're doing?  Attacking an innocent woman?" Ryoga cried angrily, eyes flashing with rage as he stormed up to her.  Something else Akane had noticed about Ryoga, he had a terrible temper.  Although Ryoga could never, ever lay a malicious hand on Akane, his voice was frightening enough to make her shake.

"Ryoga," she managed, "that, that was Ranma, Ranko, whoever."  She stared in the direction the woman had run, "She was *here*."

Ryoga's eyes grew wide.  The four thousand doubts and fears that had not emerged since Ranma's death rapidly resurfaced.  Each of them a ghostly spectre of his youth; all of them raising memories that he preferred not to recall, each more vivid than the last.  All the times that he'd seen that look in Akane's eyes when *that boy* had been around, all the times he'd heard her whisper his name with ... such longing ...

He spun around crazily, looking frantically for any hint of red hair, anywhere.  "WHERE?!"

^*^*^

"WHERE?!"

Kimiko jumped in the air, she whipped around to the direction of the anguished voice, just in time to miss the wry smile that made its way across Soichi's face.

"What the hell is that?" she said in a hushed tone.

"Good ol' Ryoga," Soichi chuckled bitterly.  "Should have known."

Kimiko turned toward Soichi again, "Are you sure, are you positively sure?"

He smiled at her weakly, and tightening his hand around her own, he said, "*Nothing* will break me.  Nothing will break *us*."

She nodded, took a deep breath, and grabbed their shopping bags.  "Come on, Soichi, just because we're staying put doesn't mean we have to stay in here."

Soichi grinned, and stepped toward the city with her.

^*^*^

"Nabiki, I think this is the place."

Tendo Nabiki looked around the apartment.  She had to admit, Yuki had certainly done well for herself.  It was elegantly furnished, understated, and altogether comfortable.

Nabiki's blood boiled.

After Ranma's disappearance, Tendo Soun had fallen apart entirely, what little income he generated teaching a few classes at the dojo disappeared.  Nabiki's drastically reduced budget (due to Ranma's sudden passing) could barely hold the family above water.  Needless to say, they had suffered until she had gotten a real job.

While here, Tanakawa Yuki was living in what could only be called ... opulence.

A cream and amber striped chair and stool were in her immediate vision, and with her trained eye, Nabiki instantly priced it at about two notches above what she could ever afford.  The floors were pieced together with broad pieces of hardwood, smooth and newly-waxed.  Thick curtains fluttered in the evening breeze, and the glitter of the city shone into the darkened apartment.

Obviously, Tanakawa Yuki, now Yoshida Kimiko, had made a comfortable living for herself.

And that was when Sanii heard the door opening.

^*^*^

"Nabiki-san," Sanii stuttered.

She gave him a death glare and hissed, "I dare you to talk, Sanii, I dare you."

The two of them tried to ignore their physical closeness in the tight confines of the broom closet.

^*^*^

The electric nightscape of Tokyo streaked across her window as Kimiko stared to the streets that surrounded her.  She'd grown accustomed to the light and sound after years of living in the rush of the city.

She could literally taste the tension that cut through the front of the car cabin.  Soichi's hands were tensed on the steering wheel, and his eyes stared straight ahead, serene, blue, thoughtlessly driving the car toward their home.

She wondered how he did it.

And while he paid attention to the road, she turned inward and started to remember.

^*^*^

Nerima
14 Years Previous

Oddly enough, though it was a well-known universal invariant that nothing that could happen in Nerima could happen anywhere else, everything that did happen in Nerima happened often, and even more commonly, at the exact same time.

This might have explained why two teachers on opposite ends of the tenth grade hall both ordered two children out of their sight at the exact same time.  This might also explain why instead of standing quietly in the hallway, the two teenagers chose instead to make faces at the kids inside the classroom.  Of course, this lead to a simultaneous condemnation into detention.  At this point, the two were silent and wary, who knew what punishment would come next, they might even be forced to listen to Kuno's poetry!

The dark-haired boy only rolled his eyes as he waited quietly until Miss Hinako was through eating her candy before she banished him to the auditorium to clean, as it had happened a least a hundred times before.

The girl however, hung her head in flushed shame.  What type of person managed to get themselves detention on their first day at a new school?

It so happened that the first of the two teenagers arrived in the auditorium, it's chairs overturned and floors scuffed from a fight that had broken out early that morning during an assembly, and with a long-suffering sigh, the girl put down her things and started to sweep.

She had blue eyes the color of brilliant skies, and her hair was a startling red that was known to draw more attention than an actual stoplight.

Just as she had started to sing to herself as she swept, a set of silent feet descended upon the floors of the auditorium, and setting his bookbag down, the spectator looked and listened, enjoying the song as much as he was enjoying the view of the shimmering red hair.  Only after the girl had finished two or three songs did he make his presence known.

Clapping, Saotome Ranma grinned, "Bravo, Encore, that was very well done."

And fast as a whip, he found himself face to face with a mirror image of his female form, and Saotome Ranma, for the first time in his life, was without words.

His initial reaction was to believe that this was all part of some intricate plot Cologne had put together to either humiliate him or to marry him off to Shampoo.  But the earnest and confused expression on the girl's face told him that this was definitely something different.  Ranma honestly couldn't think of anyone other than the old Amazon freak that had to the capability to pull something like this off.

The girl's surprised expression became sheepish, and then angry.  "Who are you to skulk around and peep in on other people anyway, you, you," Ranma's temper flared as he prepared for the 'pervert' comment that he knew must have been coming, "skulker-arounder!" she finished unhappily.

There was half a beat of silence where the girl and the boy both held dearly to their stoic expressions, and then they both broke out into gales of laughter, unable to contain themselves.

"Tanakawa Yuki, at your service."  The redhead smiled holding out her hand, and as Ranma grasped it firmly, his heart still fluttering at an unhealthy rate, and his mind still screaming from the unpleasant insanity of their similarities, he replied:

"Saotome Ranma, likewise."

He looked at her closely for a few seconds more.  Aside from her hairstyle, they were exactly the same in physical appearance.  The same eyes, the same pale skin, the same red hair.  This was *too* weird, even for him.

He wondered for a moment why he hadn't seen her around Furinkan before, her hair alone would have pulled droves of men toward her like sailors to their deaths, why had Hiroshi, the school's most notorious repressed-pervert, not even mentioned her before?

"Um, I don't mean to be rude or nothing, but I've been here for a while, and I've never seen you around before - " he started awkwardly, a hand on the back of his head.

She nodded, "We just moved to Nerima, it's my first day."

Ranma nodded.

Somehow, when one entered the Nerima city limits, these things just happened.

But she seemed normal enough, and Ranma had no intention of freaking out some poor girl who didn't know half of the craziness that followed him around, and he endeavored not to act weird around her.  Something in which he was certain he would fail miserably.

They glanced around the auditorium and shared a sigh, Yuki looked up toward him and said, "Well, I've got sweeping covered, how about you start stacking chairs?"  He nodded and headed toward the chairs, pausing every so often from his labor to stare at her oddly.  And when she finally grew tired of this treatment, she spoke up.  "What?  What's wrong with me, Ranma?"

He looked surprised, and stuttered, "What?"

She sighed and dropped her broom, "You've been giving me these frightened, confused expressions ever since you got into this room; it must be something about the way I look.  Spill, Ranma."

He groaned, and looking at the clock, he said in a resigned tone of voice, "Come on, Yuki, it's four thirty, we can leave, I'll explain it while we walk."

^*^*^

Nabiki seethed from her hiding place in the closet.

What were the chances that the *actual* cleaning crew would arrive to show up to tidy up the apartment the same day that they decided to?

With any luck, they would leave soon, without anyone else arriving.

She glanced to her left where Sanii was currently fighting a mop for more space in the closet, and losing at that.  She allowed herself a soft smile, and wondered for just a moment what it would be like if she let herself like him, and then, maybe to *love* him.  She was certain that her heart was more than ready to shower him with her affections.

Over their three-year business relationship, their friendship had deepened and ebbed, she knew things about him that his parents didn't, and he knew things about her that no one did.

There wasn't a soul in the world who could touch her heart or make her laugh as quickly as Sanii Kuzio could, and that was precisely why she was so afraid.  The age factor wasn't a true issue for her, so what if he was younger?  It wasn't as if she was a decrepit old woman seeking sexual release in a young, virile thing.  She was genuinely attracted and fascinated by him.

She was afraid that she would end up losing him.  Sanii was only eighteen, and at eighteen, hormonal impulse ruled above all; what if his affection for her was just a transient thing?  What if all the passes that he had made were fueled by nothing more than testosterone?

While she was certain of the emotion behind her rather subdued responses, she couldn't be sure that Sanii's feelings were genuine.  And to take advantage of his momentary fixation would be wrong, something she'd learned painfully in years passed when a certain pigtailed martial artist died.  She didn't get the chance to apologize for her crimes.

"Nabiki!  Nabiki, get this mop away from me!  I can *feel* the dust mites on my skin!" Sanii hissed urgently, fear in his dark eyes.

Nabiki sighed, then again ...

^*^*^

After finally returning home and tipping their cleaning crew as they left, Kimiko and Soichi had retreated to their bedroom, tired and contemplative.  She was lying on the bed, her eyes closed and her heart still pounding.  Kimiko could feel the mattress depress under the weight of her husband, and she instinctively knew that his touch was coming.

"Kimiko," Soichi started softly, brushing a tendril of hair from her eyes, "do you ever wish that we hadn't left Nerima?"

She stared at him for a moment before standing up, and then from where she walked to her closet.  And as she watched him, images flashed through her mind.

... Meeting a grinning boy in after-school detention one rainy Friday afternoon, and trying to find out what about her appearance shocked him so much.  A mystery that she'd been intrigued by, at least until they were caught in a sudden shower walking back home.

... Dragging Ranma to her house in the snow.

... Finding out about their family's blood feud, and being forbidden to ever see her friend again.

... Being forced to challenge each other.

... Being alone, being so terribly alone and frightened.

... Running, running and not stopping, collapsing under Ranma's dead weight as she lay gasping on the floor of the forest, praying to God to save them both.

... Freedom, with each other.

"Kimiko," Soichi said softly again, concerned by her long silence.

She turned her back on him as she walked toward the bathroom, "Never, Soichi, never a doubt in my mind."

^*^*^

Nabiki and Sanii slipped out the apartment quickly after the couple fell asleep, both their faces flaming from the extended contact.

^*^*^

"RYOGA, STOP!" Akane cried at the top of her lungs.  It was the only way she could get him to listen to her.

He'd been running around downtown Tokyo for nearly three hours, trashing every store and ripping through every diner and McDonalds looking for his old and most hated foe.

For two years of his life, Ryoga had been filled with fear, fear of discovery, fear of rejection, fear of losing.  And all of his worries were rooted in one Saotome Ranma.  The boy who was just a bit more handsome, the boy who was just a bit more charming, the boy who was just a bit more skilled in the art, the boy who was just a bit more than he could ever be.  The boy who had possessed the only woman he could ever love.

And that woman's voice finally permeated the thick cloud of rage that surrounded his conscious mind.  He looked around at the damage he had left in his wake and felt his face turning bright red from the enraged stares of all the shoppers and businesspeople on the block.

"Oh, sorry, I'm, I'm so sorry!"

Grabbing Akane by the waist, he took one mighty leap and headed back toward Nerima.  Well, either that or Hokkaido.  They were pretty close together, weren't they?

^*^*^

"I saw him, Kasumi!  I'm serious, I'm not losing my mind, and I guarantee you: *he was there*!" Akane cried, tears streaming down her face.  Her older sister was glad that she had sent Ryoga out for groceries.  It would give them at least a week before he returned, and he would be saved from witnessing this, this pre-wedding *delusion*.

"Akane, Ranma *died* twelve years ago, don't you remember?  He died defending the Tendo and Saotome families.  You were there."

"I know!" she yelled.  "I know!  I saw the building collapse and I saw the fire, and I was there when the rescue workers said there was no chance of survival!  But I saw him today, with my own two eyes!"  Akane threw herself face-down into her pillow, shoulders shaking from sobs.

"Lots of girls in the world have red hair, and many of them have blue eyes.  It's become a fashion trend in Tokyo.  You probably just," Kasumi stopped, looking for a careful word, "overreacted to someone who looked like Ranma's girl side."

"Are you sure?" Akane breathed.  Her eyes held the same unconditional trust in her older sister as they had when she was just sixteen years old.  She would believe if Kasumi believed, that was always the way it had gone.

Kasumi took a deep breath, but before she could speak, her mind ran through the list of the impossible that Ranma had accomplished, and she stopped.  The rescue crew had never recovered the bodies of either Takankawa Yuki or Saotome Ranma, and mostly it was believed that they had become part of the darkened ashes that littered the floors after the fire had engulfed Furinkan High School.  There was never any conclusive proof that Ranma was dead.  But, anyone with a good sense of logic and two brain cells to rub together could come to the conclusion that he had bit the dust along with Yuki.  Sure, he was a brilliant martial artist and everything, but no one could have survived that fire!  As it was, Mousse died and Ryoga had almost followed the Amazon to his grave.  There was no way that Ranma could have survived!

But then again, there was no *way* that Ranma could have defeated the Seven Lucky Gods, and no way he should have beaten Kirin.  Ranma had done lots of things that normal people were incapable of.

And then Kasumi looked once again into the pleading eyes of her youngest sister, and felt the desperation there.  "I'm sure, Akane," she said softly, kicking herself internally for killing her hopes, it was for Akane's own good.

Akane had been engaged to a ghost for far too long, it wouldn't do to have her walking into a marriage with the same dark imprint on her heart.

^*^*^

Two Weeks Later

^*^*^

"Yoshida Publicity Incorporated, how may I help you this afternoon?"

"Actually, I want to make an appointment to meet Ms. Yoshida; I like to meet people before I hire them."

"Of course.  How about ... is tomorrow afternoon at three okay for you, Ms ... ?"

"Oh, Tendo, Nabiki Tendo.  And tomorrow afternoon is fine.  Actually, I have a request of you, please, keep this meeting a secret.  See, Kimiko and I were friends in high school, I'd like to surprise her."

"I'm sure she'd love that.  No problem, see you tomorrow, I'm sure that you'll have a lovely reunion."

"Absolutely lovely."

^*^*^

"Morning," Soichi murmured as he drifted into the breakfast room.  His feet slapped against the cool tile of the floor, and the sound of water rushing down their building distracted him from the sound of one redheaded woman sighing for a moment.

Turning away from the coffeemaker as he poured himself a mug of Kimiko's favorite Jamaican Blue Mountain espresso blend, he nodded toward the picture window.  "It's getting pretty heavy, isn't it?"

It had taken a while and several thousand mishaps, but he'd gotten his curse under control, at least enough so that he could get along in life without the interesting number of questions.  Their first tactic had been simply not to get wet, and then they'd sent away for the Amazon's waterproof soap, which worked rather well for a year until they realized that people built up a resistance to it after continued use.  They'd finally settled on just carrying an umbrella at all times, and being as careful as possible.  Accidents still happened.  Accidents that usually occurred when Kimiko thought it might be fun to break out a watergun and chase him around the apartment.  Soichi was fast, but sometimes, not fast enough.

But he didn't mind, he still had half a crate of Instant Nannichuan, and while he used it sparingly, he timed it well.  Kimiko had had more than one interesting surprise last April first.

Still haunted by the sound of water falling, she sighed, and nodded dreamily, her eyes captured by the play of light against the opposite wall.  Her fingers tapped softly against the heavy, honey-colored wood of the table, and strands of her hair fell across her face, covering her eyes.

Soichi raised his brows, and ventured once again, "What are the odds that I'll make it to work today without a problem?"

She shrugged, and in a soft voice, replied, "Oh, I don't know.  If you take the subway," she left off, biting her lower lip.

And suddenly she blinked and heaved a great sigh, stretching her arms upward and pointing her toes against the floor, releasing a mewling sound she stood and turned toward him.

Soichi couldn't help but smile.  Her morning routine was still a wonder to him, even after many years spent together.  She had a series of actions: first, she'd roll out of bed, her hair adorably puffy from sleep, then, she'd wander around the apartment slamming into walls and stubbing her toes like a zombie for ten minutes.  Sometime between the moment where she finished brushing her teeth and finding the coffeemaker, Soichi would steal a kiss, most times, several.  He loved the way she'd respond in that confused, overjoyed manner when he embraced her.  There was something deeply touching about how she faced their relationship with the same childlike wonder and amazement that she had when they had met years ago.  She'd stretch, and come awake.  And Soichi's fun would be over.

"Morning," she said, and walked over to the coffeemaker and poured herself a mug, taking a deep breath of its heady smell before she drank.

"Welcome to the world of the living, Kimiko."

"I was thinking."  She walked into the bedroom, and to the background sounds of clothing being discarded, Soichi heard: "I've got some time between my eight o'clock and my ten fifteen, you want to drop by and have brunch?"

Soichi flipped through his mental calendar quickly.  "Sorry, Kimiko, I promised Naka that I'd spar with him today."  He grinned at himself, "So I was going to ask you about that, too, should I fake ineptitude, or should I kick his butt, but good?"

Kimiko stopped for just a second as she was zipping up her skirt, remembering how intensely painful it was for her husband to fake ineptitude at anything.  There a brief spout of twinkling laughter, and Kimiko asked, "Is he seeing you for self-esteem issues, or is it something that you wouldn't crush by crushing him physically?"

"He hates his family."

Kimiko appeared, and a wicked grin on her face.  "Kick his ass."

^*^*^

"Akane, you look lovely," Saotome Nodoka murmured, smiling as she tied the obi around Akane's waist.  She'd spent years of life waiting to be able to prepare her future daughter-in-law, get her ready to walk out to her wonderful, manly son and marry and be happy in a way that she and Genma had never been able to.

But instead, she'd settled for preparing a woman for her wedding to a former friend of her son's.

She hid a sigh and found a cheerful expression, one that reflected the half-deadened look on her charge's face.

Akane smiled bravely, praying that it didn't falter.  At the ripe old age of twenty-nine, she didn't understand the mysteries of the world, she hadn't answered all the questions she asked about herself, even.  But she knew one thing to be true: she did not want to marry Hibiki Ryoga.

But she'd said yes five years ago when he'd finally popped the question; she'd kissed him back as he tentatively reached toward her that night.  And she had responded like any lonely woman might as he had nervously unbuttoned her blouse later that evening, yearning for someone's loving touch.

"Akane, I want to tell you," Nodoka started, tears welling up in her eyes, "I know he never let on that he cared about you, but Ranma did love you, a lot."  Akane felt her shoulders sag.  'Anything, anything but this conversation,' she thought miserably.  She had been expecting it, she had coached herself for it, but nothing could truly prepare her for it.  And yet, relentless, Nodoka continued to talk, tears flowing freely down her too-pale cheeks.  "I don't want you to go into this marriage with any baggage.  I am happy for you, and he would be, too."

"Yes, Auntie, I'm sure he would be."  Wiping away the stray teardrop that had made its way down her face, she added, "For all we know, Ranma's spirit may be there at the wedding."  Akane cursed herself quietly, why had she said that?  'Oh, yeah, because Kasumi said it a month ago, and it was very sweet.'  The youngest Tendo girl tried to hide a scowl.  Instead of the words being reassuring and gentle, they sounded lame even in her own mind.

Nodoka smiled warmly, running her hand across Akane's cheek.  "What a lovely thought, I'll be sure to tell him that he's invited when I visit him later this week."

Akane hesitated, and said very quietly, "Auntie, if it's okay with you, I'd like to come with you, when you go to ... see Ranma."

For the longest time, Akane had found something terribly wrong with Nodoka's weekly visits to Ranma's grave.  It wasn't that she still longed for her son, that was to be expected and understood; but how the woman characterized her pilgrimages to the cemetery ... "I'm going to go talk to Ranma now, Akane, would you like to come with me?" and "Ranma and I will have a long conversation today."  There had been something eerie about it.  The dead did not speak.

But then again, ever since her son's death many years ago, Nodoka had always been rather fragile.  Genma watched over her now, in a way that he'd never bothered (or needed) to do so while their child was still alive.  For the most part, Nodoka was shielded from what problems arose in their now much-simplified life.  She was quiet, domestic, and tended to visit the dojo often, happier in conversation with Kasumi regarding dinner plans and menus than at home in the emptiness.

'Maybe it's time I try,' Akane thought slowly, 'to talk to him, too.'

"Of course, Dear.  I'm sure he'd love to see you."  Nodoka smiled too-brightly and said, "Excuse me child, I've got to go check on the miso soup," and quickly left the room.

She turned to watch the three Akane's in the mirrors mimic her actions exactly.  A soft smile spread across her still-lovely face.  "Who's uncute now, Ranma," she said softly.  Sliding down to her knees in the wedding kimono, and lowering her head, she stared at the woman in the mirror.  There was no remnant of the girl from many years ago, the one with short hair and bright eyes; the face was still attractive, softly so, but now the eyes glittered with experience.

She wondered for just the briefest moment, if, in fact, Ranma had ever loved her at all, would he still, if he knew her now.

Akane narrowed her eyes, berating herself silently.  That didn't matter anymore!  *Especially* not at the crossroads she stood!

T-minus two weeks until wedding bells rang for Akane and ... Ryoga.

^*^*^

The sound of two people fighting alerted Kimiko's ears, and with a kind smile, she crossed her arms and wandered into the far exercise room open in the local gym.  It was only a five-minute walk from Soichi's office, and she knew that he dropped by occasionally to work out when he had the time.  A hunch had told her that if he were to spar with someone, it wouldn't have been in his plush and expensive office space.

She turned a corner and saw something that still made her heart flutter: Fujikara Soichi in action.  He'd stripped down to a gray t-shirt and his khaki pants.  Though these clothing items did little to disguise the still sleek and muscular physique of her husband of many years.

She listened to the sound of strikes being passed from one martial artist to the other, and with a practiced eye, she looked at the younger man she deduced was 'Naka', and carefully analyzed him.  Tall frame, buff but not grotesquely muscular, good flexibility, and sufferable ki flow.  With a good Sensei and a little semi-obsessive training, the kid had potential.

She decided it was time to stop their fun.  "Hey, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, gimme a second of your time, will you?" she called out playfully.    Immediately, both stopped their blurred arms and smiled, one lazily, the other shyly.  She walked up to the sweaty men, and extended her hand to the younger of the two, watching as a bright red flush appeared over his face.  "You must be Naka," she said kindly.

"Yeah," he replied, his eyes drifting upward to see her face clearly for the first time.  His face suddenly turned very red and he fell unnaturally silent.  Kimiko could only guess at the reasons why (she'd never been very good at reading pubescent boys; their hormones seemed to jam any empathy-signals their minds were attempting to send) his hand started to shake.

Kimiko raised her eyebrows and tossed an amused glance toward Soichi, who covered his mouth in an attempt not to laugh out loud.  "What is it, Naka-kun?" she asked gently.

"Well, it's just that you're," he paused, seemed to choke, and shut up again.  There was another long silence before he muttered hoarsely, " ... very pretty ... "

Kimiko busted out laughing; Naka looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole, and set about digging his heel into the ground in an attempt to create one on the spot.

Kimiko finally stemmed her laughter and taking Naka's hand softly, she said, "It's okay, Naka-kun, I take it as a compliment," seeing the boy's spirits lift, she grinned and said, "So, this is the Naka that Soichi hasn't stopped talking about.  If it wasn't about how much he wanted to spar with you," she shared a chuckle with the boy.  "Then it was about how much you reminded him of himself."

Naka blushed liberally and looked down.

Naka looked up to see Soichi grinning like an idiot.

Needless to say, Naka was angry that his therapist was laughing at him.

Working quickly to think of a way to reassert his manhood (especially in front of Kimiko...), Naka blurted out the first thing that came to mind, "I want a rematch!  Just because you beat me-"

"I *destroyed* you," Soichi corrected.

The boy turned sixteen shades of red.  Kimiko wished silently that she had a camera.  These were Kodak moments.  "I want a rematch!"

Soichi gladly agreed, scheduling it shortly after exams.  "I'll only fight you if you pass all your classes, Naka."

The boy was stunned, and in a moment of dumbfounded stupidity, he cried, "We're never going to get to spar again!"

Kimiko laughed, and she hesitated as a memory washed over her.

^*^*^

Nerima
14 Years Previous

"How'd you get detention?" Yuki asked tentatively, her eyes sneaking looks at the more quiet than calm boy that walked by her.  She'd been surprised when no one offered to make friends with her that day, and more than a little disappointed.  Transferring in mid-way through a school year during the freshman year of high school was rough, Yuki had been praying for companionship.  She repressed the urge to smile brightly at Ranma, he had no idea how grateful she was that he'd offered to walk with her; Nerima was a pretty confusing place.

He shrugged, fighting an embarrassed flush and muttering, "Oh, you know, the usual, sleeping in class, eating in class, not paying attention in class, making faces at the class from the hall."

Yuki laughed out loud.  "I thought I was the only person in the world to ever get detention for that!"

With an embarrassed smile, he put his hand behind his head.  "Well, if you had Miss Hinako, you'd understand.  The urge to mess with her in class is just too strong."

She giggled in return, closing her eyes and breathing deeply, she replied, "So I've heard.  You know, this explains a lot for me."

Ranma glanced at her from the corner of his eyes.  *Very carefully*, he asked, "Explains a lot of what?"

"Well," she started, her tongue resting on the edge of her lip for half a beat, "this guy named 'Kuno' attacked me at least three times today, declaring his eternal love for me, and calling me his 'Pigtailed Maiden', and yelling about how I'd finally been freed from that sorcerer 'Saotome's' grasp."  Ranma groaned as Yuki continued, "He refused to call me 'Yuki' even though I told him that was my name.  That guy's as thick as a wall."  She turned toward Ranma, frowning as he laughed out loud.  "I'm glad you think it's funny; it was very disgusting, you know."

"No," he gasped, "it's not that, it's just, well, it's hard to explain, but I'm sure you'll find out eventually."

Yuki eyed him for just a few more seconds, and just as Ranma was ready to brace himself for a good, hearty beating, she shrugged and walked on.  There was a space of comfortable silence, as they walked past the canal, Ranma and took serious study of the girl next to him.

However, it was at this moment that a certain myopic Amazon warrior rushed onto the scene, crying, "SAOTOME!  You shall pay for stealing my Darling Shampoo!"  The purpose for the declaration was unknown (as it was ninety percent of the time, at least to Ranma).

Unlike most days, where Ranma just growled and punched the Amazon boy away with little more regard than one would have for a passing distraction on the other side of a busy street, Ranma was annoyed today.  Today, he had a friend with him, a *guest*, a new girl who knew nothing of his wretched reputation and didn't seem to want to marry, kill, or molest him; Mousse's behavior before Yuki would not be tolerated.

Of course, red is a far more alerting color than black, and considering that Yuki looked exactly like Ranma in girl form, it wasn't surprising that Mousse attacked *her*.

Releasing a battle cry, he lunged, and Ranma in sudden alarm realized that his defensive stance was for naught because he was lunging at Yuki.  There was a sudden panicking fear in his heart that an innocent, untrained girl would be harmed because of Mousse's blind stupidity and their similarities in appearance.  Ranma felt the weight of guilt already.

What he saw next drove him insane with curiosity.

Yuki screamed as Mousse grabbed her chest to fling her against something painfully blunt.  Unfortunately, it was not to be, because with one powerful fist, she slammed him hard against the pavement.  And after flipping over the quickly-recovering Mousse, she landed on his head and kicked his solar plexus, hard.  It seemed to be a rule that regardless of how well-trained or strong a martial artist might have been, once within Nerima city limits, and caught in the middle of an act of perversion, any girl with a quick enough temper could bring said martial artist to his knees.

"YOU PERVERT!" she screamed, stomping on Mousse's prone form with righteous female rage.  Finally satisfied, she wiped the dust from her hands and patted down her clothing.  Picking up her discarded books, she turned back to Ranma.  "HONESTLY!  What is wrong with this place?  If it isn't a lunatic trying to kiss me, then it's someone trying to *kill* me!"

Ranma stared at her for half a beat.  "Um, are you okay?"

"I'll live," she muttered.

He was still stunned, his jaw lay somewhere in the vicinity of the ground.  He had watched her motions carefully; her body was well trained for battle, lithe, and flexible.  It was like she had practiced the art every moment of every single day of her life ... just like he had.  "Uh," Ranma managed, "does that happen a lot, you don't seem very surprised."

She laughed, glancing at Mousse's bruised carcass.  "If you're wondering if I was randomly attacked before, the answer is 'no'," she stopped, looking at him thoughtfully, a light dawned in her eyes.  "Hey!  He yelled 'Saotome', isn't that you?"

Ranma turned bright red with embarrassment.

"Geez," she paused once more, "personally, I don't see the resemblance."

"Well, he's very near-sighted," Ranma said, an odd, 'oh, of course' tone in his voice.

"Is that so?" Yuki replied, staring at him in bemusement.

After a nervous chuckle, he asked, desperately seeking to change the subject, "So you study Kempo?"

She grinned, "Yeah, but Kempo's boring by itself, it's like Kendo, without the bokken.  I study several schools, but family-wise � the Tanakawa School of the Rising Phoenix."

Ranma whistled, looking up at the sky warily.  "That's a mouthful, how does it compare to Anything Goes?"

Yuki shrugged.  "I don't know, I've never fought anyone who practiced Anything Goes before."  She raised an eyebrow at him.  "Let me guess, you're one of the few and the proud who study it?"

Ranma grinned, not a trace of arrogance in this truly happy expression, "Yup, since I was four years old."

"Then maybe we could spar sometime."  She smiled at him, and it was only then that he realized how truly beautiful she was.  They were walking home right during the sunset hours, and her delicate features and brilliant hair were framed by a background of orange and yellow flame in the sky.  And with a soft sigh of appreciation, he wondered, 'Wow ... my girl side looks like that?'

Giving him a soft smile, she asked, "Whatcha lookin' at?"  The way her lips curved up told Ranma that she knew *exactly* what he'd been staring at, and the twinkle in her eyes enforced this.

Stuttering from embarrassment at being caught, he muttered, "Nothing much.  Just the sun," he paused, "it's nice."

She turned to look, and sighing, she answered, "Yes, it is, isn't it?"  Turning back toward him, she asked, "Well, are you going to be straight with me?  Come on, why were you staring before?"

He stopped and turned bright red from embarrassment, for a moment, Yuki had a horrible thought, 'Oh, God, he's not going to confess his eternal love for me or something?  Kuno is bad enough!'

"It's actually hard to explain," he started.

Just as he said the words, the heavens rumbled and rain fell hard on the two teens, and before Yuki's very eyes, she watched a curse activate.

"My God," she murmured, too shocked to continue.

Ranma rolled her eyes, reaching out a tentative hand.  "Hi, my name is Saotome Ranma, did I mention that I have a Jusenkyo curse?"

^*^*^

"Hey, Kimiko-san, your three o'clock is here."

Kimiko glanced at her calendar, and frowned when she realized that she didn't see any three o'clock written down, but she sighed and made a mental note to hit Ryoko next time she had a chance.

"Send them on in, Ryoko-san."

She grabbed the stack of files on her desk and turned her chair toward the row of low, squattish, black file cabinets behind her desk.  Using the rollers on her chair, she moved over to the left six inches and started to put the files in their rightful places.

She heard the sound of a door opening, and said with her back still turned, "Morning!  I'm sorry; I'll be right with you, okay?

"Oh, take your time," there was a pause in the sound of a cultured voice, "Yuki-san."

And the world froze for Yoshida Kimiko.  Her hands shook as the files fell from her fingertips, and the unstoppable fear that gushed from the dark place inside her refused to ebb or slow.  This was her doom.  This was her end.  She could taste the loss on her tongue, and she could very nearly feel the loneliness in her bones.

She slowly turned the chair to come face to face with one Tendo Nabiki.  She didn't speak for a long time, and was able to force her mouth open only when the silence became more oppressive than the situation.

"Hello, Nabiki-san, it's been a while, hasn't it?" she managed breathily, still desperately trying to steady the rhythm of her heart.  She remembered Soichi's words.  No one could drag them back to Nerima; no one could force them away from the lives they had built.  They were masters, and masters did not run.

Nabiki sat down the luxurious leather chair reserved for clients.  Glancing about the office, she nodded in appreciation.  "Beautiful decorating, Yuki; my boss' office looks a little like this."  Crossing her legs at the knee, she said matter-of-factly, "I must commend you, Yuki-san, you did a masterful job hiding.  More than a decade, and I thought you were dead the whole time."  She smiled in a fashion that was not at all cheerful.  "Kind of sad, though, proves that Ranma's death was a waste after all."

Something clicked in Kimiko/Yuki's mind.

Nabiki didn't know.  Nabiki only knew about *her*.  Nabiki had no clue that Ranma wasn't dead at all � Nabiki only knew a half-truth.

And for a second, her heart sang hopefully as her mind started formulating a battle plan.

She chuckled softly, newly collected after the shock of a lifetime, she said, her voice only slightly shaky, "I hope I'm not being presumptuous if I ask you to please address me as Yoshida-san, or if you please, Kimiko.  The name 'Yuki' and the life she had were all left behind ages ago."  She looked at Nabiki hard, tapping her fingertips on her desk.  "Why are you here, Nabiki-san?  You never waste time or words; there must be a purpose."

Nabiki shrugged.  "Actually, Yu-" Nabiki stopped abruptly, frowning as she tried to reconcile the redheaded image before her with the new title, "...Kimiko-san, it's half curiosity."

"Curiosity?" Kimiko repeated, her tone low.

Nabiki nodded, cocking her head to the side.  "Are you him?" she asked very seriously.  "Are you him or are you, are you the other one?"

Kimiko stared at the woman before her for a moment, trying to decipher her cryptic inquiries, fumbling with the unspecific pronouns, wondering what Nabiki might have meant, and what she'd be giving away if she answered unwisely.  She narrowed her eyes in concentration, watching at the tension in Nabiki's stance seemed to build exponentially with every passing moment.

"Oh!" she finally cried in understanding.  "*Oh*!  You mean if..."

Nabiki grew impatient.  "Yes!  I mean *that*!"

Kimiko felt massively insulted.  "I'm 'the other one'," she said coldly, her feminine hackles weeping somewhere deep inside, wondering if she'd started to lose what wiles she'd managed to collect in her lifespan.  She breathed hard.  "Ranma is dead," she whispered.

Nabiki's eyes grew hard.  "You killed Saotome Ranma, Kimiko-san, changing your name and running away does not change that.  You never paid for the cruelty you dealt my family."

Kimiko raised her eyebrows, keeping her cool exterior intact and folding her hands carefully over her lap, she asked, "What damage?  To my recollection, Saotome Ranma was in no way officially affiliated with your family when he died.  Why the personal vendetta?"

"He was Akane's fiance, and regardless of what she refuses to admit, she cared for him.  Our family cared for him, when he died, we suffered a terrible loss," Nabiki said, parroting what she'd muttered at the martial artist's funeral many years past.

Kimiko's eyes grew dark.  "Really?  A loss?  The Tendos treated Ranma with nothing short of utter and complete disrespect."

Nabiki flinched, taking the words as a verbal slap.

"I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did under those conditions.  Besides," Kimiko added in a cool tone, "it was a matter of family honor, his death was an accident with no connection to me."  Saying these words, she almost believed herself.  Kimiko snarled at Nabiki.  "You have nothing to complain about.  And I would appreciate it if you left my new life alone."

Nabiki scowled, "No such luck, Kimiko-san, you may have moved on, but I haven't.  I have my ways.  Do not be unprepared, there may well be retaliation."

Kimiko smiled serenely.  "Go ahead, Nabiki-san, I'd love to see you try."

^*^*^

Stepping out of the air-conditioned interior of the business complex, Nabiki pulled cell phone from her jacket pocket roughly.  Hitting speed dial 2, she waited for the ring.

"Yo, Nabiki, what's up?"

For half a second, she was stunned.  "How did you know it was me, Kuzio-kun?"

"You're the only one who ever calls me on this line, what's up?  Calling to ask me on a date?"

Nabiki sighed in half disgust and half amusement.  "You're never going to let that drop, are you?"

"Never, the will of the heart is not stilled, Nabiki."

"Look," she said hurriedly, flagging down a cab and rushing toward the curb as she spoke, "something *big* just happened.  I need all the information you can possibly get on one 'Yoshida Kimiko'; she owns an advertising company.  I need *everything*.  I don't care how personal, or how embarrassing."

There was a space of silence.  "Nabiki, what are you planning?"  There was a worried tone in Kuzio's voice as he asked, "What are you going to do to her?"

Frustrated, Nabiki slid into the backseat of the cab, and in an overly-harsh tone of voice, yelled, "Why do you care?  I'm paying you aren't I?  Just do it!"  She hung up her cell phone abruptly.

She'd been right.  It *was* Yuki.  There had been initial doubts, maybe just a similarity of appearances, maybe it was even Ranma!  But Nabiki had been skeptical; the Ranma she had known would have rather been caught dead than female in public, besides, the redhead had possessed 'the walk'.  That graceful tilt of the body that was deeply feminine in nature, something ingrained at birth or in the genes, something that could not be imitated, something not even Ranma could learn.

"Take me to Nerima, *now*."

And as men usually do when a woman uses *that* tone of voice, the driver complied.

^*^*^

"So, was that Mrs. Fujikara back there, or was she just a friend?" Naka ventured.  Soichi raised an eyebrow and turned toward him in amusement, wondering briefly at the obliviousness of young men.  He had half a mind just to sigh and ask the if fact that his doctor wore a wedding ring had ever registered.

"She prefers to be called Ms. Yoshida, if you don't mind."  He repressed a grin, and pushing his glasses a little higher on his nose.  "Why do you ask?" he pressed onward.  "Interested?"

Naka grew flustered once again, and put his hand shyly to the back of his head like one nervous, confused youngster had in days gone by, he said, "Aw, Fujikara-sensei, you know I was just curious."

Soichi chuckled.  "Yes, Naka, she is my wife, we got married about ten years ago.  Why do you ask?"

Naka frowned, his eyes clouded for a moment, "Well, you two seem so happy together.  More like teenagers than an old married couple."  He scowled.  "My parents are *never* like that."

Soichi looked at his patient thoughtfully.  He'd once believed that Naka's lack of interest in school was entirely rooted in the fact that the boy had no real motivation to do well in his studies.  He had no plans for college, and his goal in life was to own and teach at a dojo.  His actions in high school were helping him well on his way to doing so, but his grades were seriously suffering.  Despite logical arguments that owning a dojo was more than martial arts, the boy had refused to listen.

"How long have your parents been like that, Naka?" he asked softly.

"Oh, I don't know, since I was born, maybe?"  He chuckled and went on, "Ever since I can remember, they've been like that, always arguing and carrying on.  Most of it's because my mom works, and my dad thinks that they don't spend enough time together."  He blinked, hard.  "I'm sorry, Fujikara-Sensei, can we talk about something else?"

"Of course, Naka, whatever you feel comfortable with."  Soichi decided that he and Naka's parents needed to make an appointment.  He would not press the boy any further that day.

"Well, then I'm going to have to pick *your* brain."  His patient grinned wickedly, and Soichi felt a little tremor in his stomach.  Ambitious youths were always more dangerous than their elders.

"By all means, try, we've only got five minutes left, anyway."

Naka's expression brightened.  "Will you be honest?"

Soichi laughed.  "Sure."

"Fantastic!" Naka cried.  Soichi couldn't help but to smile.  Naka was a mirror image of his younger self, with a little more tact and a few extra opportunities.  Soichi hoped sincerely that Naka's life wouldn't come to the nearly disastrous climax that his had.

"Alright," Naka started, squinting his eyes and thinking hard, "when did you start practicing martial arts?"

"When I was four years old.  Next."

"Wow.  Oh, okay, next, right.  Um, When did you lose your virginity?"

Soichi rolled his eyes.  "That's *hardly* an appropriate question."

"Come on, you promised that you'd be honest."

'Damn,' Soichi thought.  'And I can't even lie; that would be hypocritical, and I'm supposed to be a model of integrity and mental health.  Damn.'  "Alright," he sighed, "I was seventeen and a half."

"Details," Naka said eagerly, wondering if the girl in question had been some fly-by-night, an ex-flame, or Kimiko.  "Gosh, Kimiko-san," he'd say to her next time they met, "*I* sure didn't know that Fujikara-sensei had done *that* sort of thing with a girl before *you* married him!"  He got a devilish grin on his face, payback indeed.

Soichi frowned but complied.  "I was seventeen and a half, no alcohol involved, and it cold outside the dojo.  Happy?"

Naka raised his eyebrows.  "You lost your virginity in a dojo?"

Soichi shrugged and laughed softly.  "Only place we could get any privacy, yeah."

"How long had you known each other before?"

"Oh, a while, by my memory," he replied softly, and before Naka's very eyes, Soichi drifted through the years the beginnings toward a still-questioning end.

^*^*^

Nerima
14 years previous

"SHIT!" Yuki cried, stepping back quickly and falling into a seasoned defensive stance.  One Ranma recognized immediately from years of battle.  "Where'd Ranma go?  What did you do to him?  And above all, *why the hell do you look like me*?"

Ranma almost laughed, it was hard to repress the nearly girlish giggles that threatened to rise in her throat, but somehow, she was able to silence them in the absurdity of the moment.  "That's touching, Yuki.  But Ranma didn't go anywhere, I *am* Saotome Ranma."

"RANMA IS A BOY!  AND YOU LOOK LIKE ME, NOT LIKE RANMA AT ALL!" Yuki screeched at the top of her, feeling the panic welling up inside.

"I noticed, and I noticed that, too.  Believe me, no one knows that better than I do, but trust me for just a second, from one martial artist to another."  Ranma took Yuki's hands softly and placed them on her own cheeks. "I am Saotome Ranma."

"But," Yuki stuttered, her eyes wide in disbelief, "how is that even possible?"  She lifted a hand to Ranma's braid, and gently pulling her toward herself, she pressed her hair next to her own.  "It's the exact same color!  No hair-dye company can even recreate this color, my friends have tried!"  She turned Ranma around, looking at the shape of her hips and the way her features were set, blinking hard in the rain, wondering if maybe there was LSD in the water.

"We're, we're," she paused, breathing in hard, "we're duplicates!"

"Do you see why I was staring now?" Ranma replied softly, embarrassment evident on her features.

The rain still fell thickly around them, and Yuki's soaked hair was plastered to her face as the two teenagers stared at one another in wonder and confusion in the rain.

"Weren't," Yuki said in a hushed voice, "you a boy just a second ago?"

"It's a curse," Ranma explained.  "Follow me, there's a restaurant near here where we can sit for a while.  And, I think there's someone there who can explain this to us."   She grabbed Yuki's hand, and with a soft tug, the girl was shaken out of her stunned state and followed, mystified still, the carbon-copy of her own image toward a small cafe near the end of the street.

"SHAMPOO!" Ranma yelled, seating the still-awed Yuki in a chair softly.  "SHAMPOO!  We have a problem, and it's HUGE!"

Shampoo grinned cheerfully, and fluffing her thick, lavender hair, she bounced into the dining room, "Airen come to date with Shampoo!  I so happy- [WHO THE HELL IS THAT??]"  Shampoo had been making a brave attempt to speak more grammatically correct Japanese, but sometimes, the informal, soft language was not enough to convey emotion.  And for this, she lapsed back into her mother tongue.

Ranma stared. Shampoo stared.  Yuki stared.

All in all, there was much staring.

"Uh," Ranma started, "did you say 'what the hell water?'"

Shampoo stared at her Airen for a beat, and then back at her Airen's (apparent) twin.  There were two Ranma's sitting in the dining room of the Nekohanten, and she was more concerned with learning Chinese than explaining this entire situation?

After a great deal of yelling, some screaming, and a pinch of bellowing, Cologne finally arrived on the scene, turned Mousse into a duck, locked him in a cage so he'd stop throwing himself at Yuki to be stomped on, and restored some semblance of order.

It was a curious thing, she concluded, staring at Yuki pointedly, her old eyes squinting as she read the girl's ki lines.  There certainly was more than one surprise under the feminine appearance of the girl before her.  "Tell me, Yuki-san, have you ever studied martial arts?" Cologne asked, her voice slow and careful.

Yuki frowned, what was the relevance between her studies and why she looked *exactly* like Saotome Ranma?  She answered in as polite a voice as she could, "Yes, I've studied both Kempo and the Rising Phoenix School of Martial Arts since I was a child."

Cologne narrowed her eyes, and murmured, "Yuki-san, is it?  Have you ever heard of 'ki' before?"

The girl before her looked terribly insulted, "Of course I have!  What kind of person calls themselves a martial artist if they don't know ki?"  Yuki scowled, and added, "Besides, what does that have to do with why *I* look like his cursed form, anyway?" she pointed at Ranma to emphasize her point.

Ranma had been forced to demonstrate his curse at least twelve times before Yuki had seen enough proof to persuade her not to run screaming from the Nekohanten.

"That," Cologne murmured, "I do not know, though I do have a theory."  Balancing on her staff, she hopped over to a cabinet and retrieved an   ancient-looking book, it's pages yellowed and leather cover stained.  "It's an odd thing, Child," she started, touching Yuki's cheek softly, "I've never heard of a Jusenkyo curse *mimicking* someone before, nor do I believe that anyone else has ever heard of it."  She paused, hoping to find a trace of reincarnated spirit in Yuki.  Certainly, the soul in the girl was old as light, but the appearance, the character, the personality and flair were all new of this life.  The ancient Amazon sighed in frustration.

Yuki had closed her eyes and started breathing in and out rapidly, calmed only by (the now restored male) Ranma's smiles.  Ranma, between offering helpful grins of encouragement, was starting to dig through his endless memory for a whisper of something that he knew was terribly relevant to the situation.  'What was it that the Jusenkyo tourguide said about the Springs of the drowned girl and boy?' he wracked his brain for remembrance until he was hit rudely upside the head.

"OW!  Stupid old mummy!  What did you do that for?" he yelled, rubbing his newly developing bump.

Cologne looked irate.  "Son-in-law, I said for you to take her home, this will take more time and research than I can do right now; I will contact you once I know more."

Yuki looked around the room.  At the boy who turned into a duck and who was locked in a cage, at the shapely, lavender-tressed Amazon who'd been barely restraining herself from both speaking and molesting Ranma, at the shriveled old woman who hopped about on a staff, and at the boy, who, in a way, looked exactly like her.

"Man," she said softly, "this should be interesting."

^*^*^

"Sensei?  Come on, you were going to tell me more about her!" Naka complained, shaking Soichi with his voice and pleading expression.  "Come on!  How am I going to know how to make a move on a girl?" he asked desperately.  'I need dirt on you!  Keep talking!' he mind yelled.

Soichi glanced at his watch in a distracted manner.  "Oh, I'm sure you'll manage until Wednesday, Naka.  I'll see you two days, okay?"

Naka sighed, and grabbing his bookbag, he started back out of Soichi's office.  "Sensei," he said nervously, "I'm really glad that I've been coming to see you."

Soichi smiled.  "Same here, Naka, same here."

^*^*^

Kasumi frowned angrily at the middle Tendo daughter.  "They don't need this, Nabiki," she said warningly.

She had been pleasantly surprised when Nabiki had arrived at the dojo, out of breath and tired, but happy to see her younger sister none the less.  After having engaged in polite conversation with Tofu, Nabiki had asked quietly, "Sorry, brother-in-law, but can I steal your wife for a moment?"  Tofu had planted a soft kiss on Kasumi's cheek and said jokingly, "Sure, just remember to bring her back unharmed."

And Kasumi had been happy to have the time to talk to her sister, but then things took a turn for the worst.

"I don't know how it happened, Kasumi, but I was walking down the street and I saw Yuki!  But she's not Yuki anymore!  She's changed her name, runs her own company.  She's moved on completely," Nabiki huffed, looking down at her hands.  "Even after everything that she did to us, she moved on!  I can't believe her!"

"*Nabiki*!" Kasumi interrupted, her voice more harsh than usual, and it caught Nabiki's attention.  "Akane is getting married in two weeks, Father was *just* released from the hospital, and his heart's still weak from the surgery.  Saotome-san is *still* heartbroken from years ago!  They do not need this!"

Nabiki stared at her older sister in admiration.  There weren't that many people who could force her to shut up.

"If you must pursue this," Kasumi added, "please, do it discreetly, and don't let on about what you are doing, okay?"

Nabiki stared at her older sister for a little while, and in a hesitant, slightly confused voice, she murmured, "Sure, Kasumi, if you think it's for the best."

^*^*^

Soichi rolled over from his side of the bed and through squinted eyes; he looked at the clock on the nightstand.  'Geeez,' he thought, 'It's three in the morning!  What the heck is Kimiko doing?'  He rolled around again toward the piercing brightness of the bathroom light and saw his wife bent over the sink, shoulders slightly shaking.  'Shaking?  Kimiko doesn't shake!'

And in one broad leap, he jumped out of bed and toward the bathroom.  He crouched down next to her still trembling figure and stroked her back gently, murmuring, "Kimiko?  Are you okay?  Do you feel sick or something?"

"I-I-Oh, shit!"

She bent her head over the sink again and threw up (for, what Soichi would later discover, was the sixth time that day).  She coughed, running the tap, wiping the sick from her face; she turned toward her husband weakly.  "I'm fine," she said, breathing softly, "I probably just caught the flu or something."  Stepping carefully, she started toward the bed again, but only made minimal progress before her legs gave out and she almost ended up sitting on the floor.

"Aw, man," Soichi said softly, "you really *are* sick."  Picking her up carefully, he carried her to the bed, and tucking her under the covers, he said, "This is probably stress related.  It *has* been a messed up couple of days."  He frowned.  "Though, this degree of negative reaction is weird, for you anyway."

Kimiko frowned from where she was snuggled deep in her pale blue down comforter, feeling more comfortable already.  "And what is that supposed to mean?"

Soichi shrugged, and sitting Indian style next to her on the mattress, he answered, "Nothing really, just that you usually handle stress pretty well." He paused.  "Is there something going on that you're not telling me about?"  He asked this question just out of psychiatric habit, it was how he ended most sessions; she'd never kept anything from him after that ... first time, and he doubted she had reason to conceal information from him, anyway.

Kimiko looked deep into his eyes and evaluated her options.  She could tell him about Nabiki's unwelcome exploration of her life, she could warn him that the most volatile of the Tendos was on the warpath and would probably find some way to prove conclusively that Saotome Ranma and Tanakawa Yuki had not died.  Theoretically, she could mention that she was still scared witless about what would happen if the Tendos or the rest of the Saotome's discovered them.

But seeing that underlying peace in his eyes, the deep, unquestioning happiness and calm, she couldn't bear to break it.

And breathing in deeply, she replied, "I've got a confession, Soichi," the words were said softly, and Soichi started to worry, "I-I-I'm having an affair with the Miroku, you know, the priest from that anime, Inu-Yasha?  I know, I know, I always say that you're the only person for me, but, he's just so delish."

And she waited for a reaction.

Which she got.

There was much carrying on and threat of death before the last couple of words in that sentence sunk into Ranma's mind, and after a few sheepish, "You are evil"s and "I hate you"s, Ranma discovered there was something very wrong with how pale his wife's face was.

^*^*^

Tokyo General Hospital was deathly quiet at nearly four a.m. that morning, and save for the yelling voices of one terrified male and one irate woman, everything else was calm.

"SOMEONE!  Someone help!  Please!"

"Goddammit!  I was probably just dehydrated or something!"

"SOMEONE, PLEASE!"

"Oh, God, if you embarrass me any more, I swear - "

^*^*^

^*^*^

As it happened, the calm was broken by two events that night.

Approximately two hours after Kimiko and her nearly spastic husband were carted into the hospital, an ambulance screamed down the circle and the doors were thrown open.

"SHIT!  What the hell happened?" Sato Hiroshi had been an emergency room surgeon for nearly six months, and he had seen all sorts of tragedy, but he'd never seen this much blood so liberally draped all over a person before.

"Auto vs. bus.  Three people in the car, two were pronounced on the spot.  This one's got extensive lacerations and probably a couple of broken ribs.  Collapsed lung.  We tubed him on the spot," the EMT yelled, still holding a pressure bandage on the boy's leg.  "He's holding pretty steady."

The other EMT ran alongside the stretcher as they hoisted it up the ramp and into the hospital, "Yeah, betcha he's going to wish he was on the road to terminal though � both parents are dead, pretty shitty reality to wake up to."

Hiroshi bit his tongue and tried not to hate Takano, the EMT who wouldn't know tact if it crawled down his pants and bit him on the butt.  He was a bastard, a heartless, insensitive, weenie-dicked bastard, but he was also the best EMT in all of Japan.

Hiroshi was determined not to say a word.

But then Takano came up with, "Damn, looks like one hell of a recovery, that's a fucker, from the build, bet he plays some kind of sport, gonna have to shit that away, too."

"Fuck you anyway, Takano, just because you don't get any doesn't mean you have to be a piss to everyone else who isn't dead," Hiroshi seethed.  "We'll take it from here."

The two EMTs stood stunned behind a set of swinging doors.

Hiroshi looked down at the unconscious boy on the gurney, and almost as an afterthought, he looked up toward the medics still outside, and called, "What's his name?"

And the one who wasn't an asshole replied, "Yomada Naka!"

Hiroshi looked down to his patient, and with a more-confident-than-he-really-was smile, they ran through another set of doors.

"You're going to be just fine, Naka-kun."

^*^*^

Kimiko sat silently on the exam room bed, her shapely legs swinging slowly to and fro from the edge.  Her arms were bare, and gooseflesh raised all along her back, paper hospital gowns weren't the warmest things in the world, but this degree of sensitivity to cold was not characteristic of a trained martial artist.  Her eyes were downcast and her face was pale.

"Ms. Yoshida?  Are you all right?"  Sato Aiko looked at the woman before her in deep concern.  In her years, no one had ever quite reacted that way to the news she had just shared.  There were tears of joy, tears of horror, shouts, yells, happiness, and shame.  But never just plain silence.

"I'm fine," Kimiko murmured, her legs still swinging.  "Just confused."

"Confused?" Aiko asked softly.

"I," she started softly, "I was told that I could not conceive years ago.  It's, it's kind of a shock."

Aiko smiled.  "Had you and your husband wanted children?"

Kimiko shied away, and turned to face a wall, painted rosy pink in an effort to be cheery in the gloomy surroundings of a hospital.  "We, we always wanted children, desperately, but we knew we couldn't have any," she stopped, "and even if we had been able to conceive," her voice trailed off, "we had a delicate family situation."  Kimiko looked up, her expression much happier now.  "I'm sure that my husband will be thrilled."  She coughed.  "Is, is the pregnancy why I blacked out?"

Aiko sighed and clasped her hands together.  "Actually, Ms. Yoshida, the reason you passed out is from the extremely low sugar content in your blood."  She eyed the other woman for a second.  "Had you skipped a couple of meals, ma'am?"

Kimiko blushed.  "I had a lot on my mind."

Aiko raised her eyebrow.  "I'm sure you did.  Be sure you don't do that again.  The little one might not be too happy about it."

"Right," Kimiko said, a pretty blush coloring her face as she looked down once again, and finally glancing back up at Aiko, she asked, "Can I get dressed?  I know that Soichi would be worried out of his mind by now."

"Sure, let me write out some prescriptions for prenatal vitamins while you're doing that, okay?"

^*^*^

"What's wrong with her?  Please, God, just tell me, I can handle it, really," Soichi demanded, begged, really, whimpered, more honestly.  He was ready to get down on his knees to get the doctor to tell him what Kimiko had come down with.  And for half a second, he shuddered at the thought that if he threw a few tears into the equation, he would have been exactly like Tendo Soun.

Dr. Sato Aiko only shook her head at the man before her, his eyes watery, his hair wild, and his face pallid in terror that something might have been off with his lovely, wonderful wife.  "Nothing is wrong with your wife, Fujikara-san, in fact, according to what she's told me, it seems that everything is right for the first time in a long while."  Aiko smiled.  "Have you two ever thought about having children?"

Soichi looked confused for half a beat.  "Well, yes, a long time ago, but we couldn't get pregnant."

"Well," Aiko commented mildly, "it seems that you've finally succeeded, congratulations, Fujikara-san, you're going to be a father!"

He stared at her for a solid minute before his eyes rolled back into his head and he tipped over, falling with a solid 'thud' to the floor.

"Fujikara-san?  Fujikara-san?  Oh, God, can someone get me some smelling salts, please?"

^*^*^

Kimiko was in line at the hospital pharmacy, her coat and prescription slip clutched tightly in her hands.

She couldn't believe it.

She and Soichi had wanted children so badly when they had gotten married.  They had tried everything, from special fertility clinics to Shinto Priestesses.  After hundreds of sleepless nights, endless hours of crying into pillows so Soichi couldn't hear her as she wept, she'd finally surrendered to the reality that they'd never have a child.

But now they had another chance!  They were going to have a baby!

She almost laughed out loud from the sheer joy of it, and she wondered how Soichi would react.  Would he yell?  Would he cry?  Would he simply smile at her before taking her into his embrace, so gently and so warm, because they would finally be complete?

"SHIT!  HE'S CRASHING!" someone cried.

The panicked sound of surgeons and the wheels of a hospital gurney being rolled quickly along a tile floor interrupted Kimiko's joyful wanderings.

Sound is second only to smell for bringing back the most vivid of memories, it's no wonder that Kimiko was suddenly pulled through her years back to another place, where there was the heavy, distant sound of wheels far away, acting as a backdrop to a very important conversation.

^*^*^

Nerima
13 years 9 months previous

"Conics," Yuki sighed in disgust, "stupid, useless, hateful conics.  Whoever came up with these ought to be shot."  She kicked a rock viciously along the sidewalk and glared at the sky, glowing a fiery red that was doing a fair job of copying the color of her hair.  "God take me now," she added, a fatalistic tone in her voice.

"Come on, Yuki, it's not that bad," Ranma muttered, balancing carelessly atop the fence.

She scowled at him.  "Maybe not for you, Ranma, but the teacher likes you, and for some forsaken reason, you can zip through math like a whiz."

"Well," he started arrogantly, "some of us are gifted, and others just aren't."

"And some of us are passing English," Ranma glared down at her as she spoke, "and some of us aren't," Yuki finished smugly, crossing her arms more tightly across her chest, warding off the cooling winds.  "Hey," she said, bemusement in her voice, "why are you walking with me today?  Don't you and Akane usually go home together?"

All she got in response was a jumbled mesh of various obscenities.

Yuki raised her brows, "Never mind."

Ranma's eyes stared toward something far away, but his mind was further still.

Things were not going well at the Tendo Dojo.

It wasn't that he wasn't accustomed to being blamed for any and everything that happened to go awry during the day; it was that he wholly disliked the oppressive feeling of guilt.  Especially since his logical mind knew he had nothing to feel guilty about.

It had all started out with Akane's curry nearly three months ago, about two days after he had first met Yuki.  His fiancee had decided to try out a new recipe, one that sounded fantastic in the magazine and looked great in the photo, but turned out to resemble something more like nuclear waste.  So naturally when he'd declined to consume it ("IDIOT!  Uncute tomboy!  Who in their right mind would eat that steaming pile of garbage?"), Akane had gotten upset ("RANMA YOU JERK!  I can't believe you!  I spent all afternoon making this for you!  Can't you at least *try* it?), so Ranma had decided to give her a reasonable excuse ("HELL NO!  Besides, Yuki and I went to Ucchan's and ate already, okay?  Feed it to P-chan or something!"), to which, there was a rather unpleasant reaction on Akane's part ("YUKI?  WHO IS YUKI?  DID YOU GET *ANOTHER* FIANCEE YOU JACKASS?").

He didn't understand.  Was there something terribly wrong about having lunch with a friend?  Was it a capital crime to enjoy someone's conversation?  God knew it had been too long since he'd been able to sit down and talk to someone.

And after that, it had just been downhill all the way.  He didn't even bother to talk to Akane anymore.  Just straight to his room after school, and straight to bed after homework.  There was no explaining things.  "But Akane!  She's my friend!  We've got a lot in common!  There's nothing wrong with having a girl for a friend!" he'd protest.  "I knew it!  Shampoo, Ukyo, Kodachi, and me aren't enough, you had to go and get another girlfriend!  PERVERT!" she'd accuse, seemingly deaf to his reasoning.  "SINCE WHEN DID I SAY SHE WAS A FREAKIN' GIRLFRIEND?" he'd finally yell.  "YOU DON'T NEED TO SAY IT, I CAN ALREADY TELL!" was her answer on every such occasion.

He frowned to himself.  When did it become this way?  He remembered the first time he had ever met Tendo Akane, a funny, smiling creature with bright eyes and a forgiving heart, quick to welcome and friendly.  Then she'd realized that he was in fact a 'he'.

But even then, there were moments of tentative romance, the fumbling motions of two people forced into intimacy at an age where they didn't know what to do.  Times where they had almost kissed, times when she'd say something, or do something that just screamed of her devotion, or her love.  And he had been so sure, so terribly certain that he loved her back that he was willing to lay down his life for her.

There had been times when he had wanted her so badly, wanted to kiss her and embrace her as one lover holds another, and to whisper quiet words in her ear...

But those moments had grown fewer and further in between.

There was an undeniable chill in the air wrought by the onset of winter, and he shivered lightly, clenching his teeth.

"Hey, are you okay?"

An all-too-familiar voice broke him out of his deathly calm.  Ranma looked down from his place on the fence to Yuki's concerned face, her eyes narrowed and her brow wrinkled.

He shrugged, and kept on walking.  "I'm fine, Yuki, don't worry about it."  He could feel the smirk on her face.

"Of course not, Ranma, because Mr. Super-kick-ass-Martial-Artist isn't vulnerable to emotion."

He did his best to frown at her.  And she just grinned back up at him.

It was a well-known throughout Nerima by then that Tanakawa Yuki did not know how to be unpleasant.  In reality, that was not the case, but it was true however, that it physically pained her to be angry with anyone for a long time, she was naturally bubbly, happy, and reconciliatory.  "Aw, come on, Ranma, just tell me what's up, please?" she flashed him a cute expression that Ranko-chan had used on more than one occasion to get free food.  "Aren't I your friend anymore?"

Ranma growled and shook his head, hopping off the fence and landing gracefully next to her on the sidewalk.  Falling into step, he muttered, "That's not fair, Yuki."  He closed his eyes for a beat and said, "I'm worried about me and Akane."

Yuki drew to a quick stop, grinding her heel into the ground as she spun back to face him, "Oh, Ranma, why didn't you say so earlier?"  She grabbed his hand.  "Come on, I'll take you out for noodles, we'll talk over food!"  Her eyes were bright and she was nearly breathless with excitement over *something* that Ranma didn't quite understand.  "Oh, maybe Cologne will have found something about why we look alike, too!"

She started running, dragging Ranma behind her at a steady pace.

It was at this moment that he realized something that would hold deeply important in his soul for the rest of his life.  With all the women who chased him, out of all the girls that flocked toward him, he'd always in a roundabout way reached toward them for love, for understanding.  Of course, Ucchan had always reached toward him, seeking to give him haven from the world, as did Shampoo.  Yet both of them wanted something of him, wanted him to change in one way or another.  Ucchan wanted nothing more than for him to quit Nerima altogether, to live their lives of okonomiyaki away from memories of a less-pleasant past.  Shampoo wanted to take him back to the Amazon village, where he'd be treated like human chattel and used as breeding stock.

Yuki was the only one who asked for nothing but *him*.

"Ooo!  I remember now!  I heard they're introducing a new noodle dish, fried spicy beef strips and veggies tossed over cold ramen!  I can't wait!" Yuki giggled, still running toward the Nekohanten.

He rolled his eyes as he was tugged along by the small, redheaded girl, 'Man,' he thought, 'a woman after my own heart.'

^*^*^

Kimiko was almost broadsided by a nurse running after the gurney, and she frowned until it passed by her, finally allowing her to see the poor soul lying atop it.

Her breath caught in her throat.

"Naka-kun," she whispered, and reached out a trembling hand after the doctors and nurses had disappeared behind the doors of the surgical ward.

Her heart fluttered in her chest the way a contained butterfly flapped its colorful wings against the sides of a jar � painfully.

She knew what Naka meant to Soichi.  She could see his personality and his self-confidence bloom under his watchful eye, and over the period of nearly two years, from a confused, unhappy boy sprung a smiling, pleasant man.  He still had his fallacies, but Naka had changed a great deal from the sullen child who had accidentally knocked her over the first time he'd ever visited Dr. Fujikara, not even muttering a 'sorry' as he bolted from the office.  But he had grown, and she had grown to love him.  Though she'd only heard stories about his actions and antics till very recently, she'd started thinking of Naka as a little brother.

"Oh, God," she murmured, "please, watch over him for me.  For Soichi."

Numbly, she slid the thin prescription slip to the pharmacist, and with a wavering hand, she received the white, waxy bag the bottles on bottles of vitamins were in.

Kimiko walked unsteadily toward a plush chair near the doorway of the surgical ward, and laid her head against the back of the seat.  She waited, a deep, trembling fear filling it heart like water from a broken dam.

She had lost many people in her short lifetime, and she would wait to see if she would lose yet another.

^*^*^

"Hello, Ranma, the weather is lovely, isn't it?"  Saotome Nodoka spread a soft blue blanket over the bright green grass before the grave, and motioned Akane next to her as she sat down.  "I've a surprise for you today, Son!  I brought Akane!"  Nodoka cast a sidelong stare at Akane, an encouraging look in her eyes.  "Go ahead, he can hear you."

Akane stood before the headstone, perhaps three feet from where Nodoka sat, her eyes trained on the epitaph:

"Saotome Ranma (1980-1998)

"He who was loved and cherished
He who slept and dreamed
He who was wise and childlike
He who was more than he seemed."

She remembered the verse from somewhere.

And her memory suddenly clutched it, that whisper of something that wrenched her from the present and flung her toward her past.

^*^*^

Nerima
13 years 8 months previous

"Akane!" a voice cried, "Akane!  Hold up, wait for me, please!"  The dark-haired girl furrowed her brow, this voice was familiar, irritatingly so, but the words and their tone were not.  Usually, when she heard that lyrical voice, the words that tumbled in its sound were rough and very much grammatically incorrect.  If not that, at least they were rude.

She turned toward the source and saw a redheaded girl sprinting toward her, a shy smile on her face her bookbag flying by its straps behind her.  She waited for the girl to catch her breath.

"Thanks, Akane-san!  For a moment there, I didn't think you were going to wait for me!" the redhead smiled brightly, and closing her eyes for a brief moment, she inhaled deeply; cold weather cleared the air, and it tasted deliciously crisp that day.

Akane scowled, kicking a rock as she started to walk at a brisk pace, feeling a hint of anger as the redhead fell into step without so much as a moment of hesitation.  She'd been expecting Ranma to show up for a while now; they'd had a flaming row that day before third period (one which, despite the wildly inaccurate opinions of many witnesses, was in no part her fault), and she felt that an apology was in order.

"What do you want today, you pervert?" she muttered.  "And why the hell are you dressed up like a girl, anyway?"

The blue-eyed girl was wearing a sky-blue Furinkan High School uniform, a dress jacket over it, indicative of the cold weather.  Her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail and bound with a sky colored ribbon.  The whole ensemble was topped off by white tennis shoes and lacey ankle socks.

'Yes, indeedy,' Akane surmised grumpily, 'there is definitely something wrong with Ranma today.  Maybe he accidentally ate something that Kodachi gave him.'

Instead of a snide remark or inelegant stuttering as he tried to explain why what he had done this time *wasn't* wrong, Akane got instead: "Who're you calling a pervert?  And for your information, I *always* dress like a girl because that's what I am," the blue eyes sparked with anger, "And I'll have you know that it's *not* polite to verbally accost someone you've never met before!"

Akane stared at the redhead and blinked.  'Yep,' she thought to herself, 'Kodachi's back to using the hallucinogens.'

"Ranma," she started cautiously, touching the redhead's forehead, forgetting her earlier anger as her concern grew, "are you feeling okay?  You didn't eat anything Kodachi gave you, did you?"

The girl sighed in frustration and her shoulders slumped.  "Geez, Akane, that's what I'm trying to tell you.  My name is Tanakawa Yuki."

Akane raised and eyebrow.  "Yeah, that's it, Ranma, come on, I'll take you to Tofu-Sensei's, he's gotten pretty good at dealing with stuff like this by now - "

"Akane, listen!  I AM A REAL GIRL!  A real girl named Tanakawa Yuki, I just *look* like Ranma's girl-side!"

It would take several rather embarrassing pop-quizzes regarding biological cycles only women were privy to (Akane knew for a fact that Ranma had never stayed female long enough to deal with her period) before the Tendo girl would believe it.

Akane felt confused, who was this girl, where had she come from, was she who Nabiki had been yelling about for the past month?  Kuno's pigtailed girl, the one who had finally escaped the grasp of the 'foul Saotome'?  The new martial artist in town?

"Yeah, Tanakawa-san, I'm very sorry, it's just that - " she was interrupted by her new acquaintance.

Yuki waved a dainty hand in the air between them, "Eh, it's all right, happens, it *is* sort of odd situation, right?" she paused for breath and continued at the still-stunned expression on Akane's features.  "Oh, you're wondering about the look."

"Well," Akane murmured, "it is ... unusual."

Yuki grinned, saying, "Cologne thinks it's something about reincarnated souls or something like that, but she's not sure yet, so Ranma and I are just waiting it out."

Akane smiled thinly.  So, Ranma had been out cavorting with some girl while she was alone at home, cooking dinner for him.  That bastard.  And then, the little voice in the back of her mind finally broke through the wall of resentment she'd built up around it.  'Idiot!' it cried, 'Ranma was *not* out cavorting!  He probably met Yuki by accident, they look *exactly* alike, hell, if it were you, you'd be freaking out, too, they're just trying to figure things out!'

Yuki grinned, nearly exuding friendliness, and Akane was shocked by the warm sensation that built up inside her.  'No wonder Ranma spends so much time with her nowadays,' she thought morosely, 'she's pretty and nice *and* the friendliest person alive.'  Akane looked at Yuki, who was still smiling her thousand-watt smile and sighed to herself, fighting the instinctive urge to plot the redhead's death in an attempt to protect her own territory.

"Akane, I think we need to talk, badly.  It's important, okay?" Yuki whispered, glancing around her.  "How about the bridge?  Ranma showed me a great spot down there."

Akane turned red.

"Hey!" Yuki cried out in surprise, "Cool!  Your face matches my hair, how do you do that?"

^*^*^

And in that familiar explosion of anger that had ended the peaceful afternoon, so, too, did it end her memory.

Akane lowered her head slightly and whispered, "Hi, Ranma," her voice shook like a child's.

Graveyards were not pleasant places; she did not like them.  Her first memory of them was shortly after her fifth birthday, a year after her mother had died.  All she recalled was the soft green grasses below her feet, the unhappy, looming headstones, and the pretty flowers that had been laid on the ground.  She had not understood that it was the resting place of the dead.  She had not understood that it was where her mother was buried.  "Mother is here, Akane," Kasumi had explained tearfully, eight-years-old and bravely holding her younger sister's hand.  "Mother is under all this lovely grass you're standing on, her life is feeding the beauty of this place, do you feel her, Akane?"

The five-year-old Akane had then finally realized something truly horrifying: they had put her Mother under the *dirt*.  They had covered up her shining eyes and her smiling face and laid her under all that earth and mud.

She'd dropped onto her knees before her Mother's grave marker, and with her chubby hands wet with tears running down her flushed-red face, she had started dig through the soil, yelling all the while, "Mommy!  I'm sorry!  I'm sorry!  I'll get you out of the mud, Mommy!"

And then it had started to rain.

"Akane," Nodoka interrupted softly, "Akane, please, feel free, talk, he can hear you; I promise."

Her eyes focused and the memory cleared.

This was not the cemetery where her mother had been buried; they had closed the doors to that one long ago, having filled the ground with the souls of the dead.  This was a relatively old place, one that was quiet and catered the to the likes of ancient titles, with wide, expansive plots reserved for each family.

Ranma had once joked about the place:

"Hey," he had laughed as Ryoga missed him by a mile, "P-chan, if you ever get the best of me, just promise that you'll bury me at the old Garden Cemetery," he had ducked just in time for Ryoga's kick to miss decapitating him, "on second thought, never mind, the place is huge, you'd never find my headstone!"

He probably liked it there.

"Sorry, Ranma.  My mind wanders," she started.  Slowly lowering herself to her knees before the headstone, and she began to speak, to tell him of things she'd denied herself, and to unlock the secrets of many years passed.

"It's been a long time, hasn't it?"  She paused.  "I apologize for not coming to visit you more often, but I'm told that Ryoga drops by every once in a while," she smirked, "turns out that he doesn't hate you so much after all."

Nodoka felt anger rising in her chest.  All that time Akane and her son had been engaged, all that time her boy had been alive, the affection and kindness in the Tendo girl's voice at that moment had never appeared.  She couldn't help but to think that maybe if Akane had been a little nicer, maybe she and Ranma would have married.  Maybe that would have changed everything.  Ranma wouldn't have ever met that Tanakawa girl.  She stifled whatever careless words might have wanted to slip from her lips and chose to leave, never noticing that Akane didn't even bother to look as she stumbled from the cemetery.

Akane glanced up toward the sky, a slate-blue shade that evening, a sad imitation of the color of Ranma's eyes, eyes that had danced with humor and filled with determination.  Eyes that had entrapped her and bound her to his side, eyes that told her things his lips could never say.

"Did your mom mention it?" she asked softly, letting her fingers trace the inscription on the headstone.  "We're getting married, Ryoga and I."

She stopped, hearing the footsteps of a ghost behind her.

Her dark head whipped around to see a familiar face, one frozen forever in her memory as an eighteen year old man, with a teasing grin and a deadly touch, when he wanted it.  His hair was still bound in a braid, and his arms were crossed over his chest, his blue-cotton Chinese shirt doing nothing to hide his musculature.

And she could see straight through him across the street.

There was a low, sad whistle as the wind threaded through the brush, and the rustle of dried, dead leaves fluttering in the early winter cold.  The sounds of life in Nerima did not stop.  The car horns still honked, children still cried, and the sound of bicycle tires and bells didn't mute.

They faded ever so little.

Ever so little.

And then they were gone.

And so was the outside world.

She was frozen in place of fine slate-blue, headstones, and wandering, a place were the dead could rise and smile, where the living could disappear from existence.

'Or,' she reasoned to herself, still staring at the ghost before her, 'I've just lost all perspective on reality.'

"Aw, Akane," the ghost said, his voice echoing in the dead silence of the graveyard, "cheating on me with pig-boy?"

"You're dead," she murmured, her hand still on the cold surface of his headstone, grasping it as a tether to the Earth.

The ghost shrugged.  "Of course I am, Akane."  He was quiet for a moment.  "You're really marrying Pig-Boy aren't you?"

"Yes," she said clearly, firmly.  "Why do you call him that?"

The ghost stared at her for a moment.  "You still don't know?"

"Know what?" she replied, breathless, mindless, without conscious thought or logic.  She didn't believe in ghosts, she'd never seen one, she'd never spoken to one or touched one, and she'd given up on the concept of blind faith years ago.  She knew he was dead, she knew he could not be speaking to her.

But in her years with him, she had seen too much to write this off.

The ghost rolled his eyes and cocked his head to one side.  "Never mind, Akane," pausing, it added, "You miss me, don't you?"

"Yes," she answered, too quickly perhaps.  "Yes, I do, every day, every hour.  I guess I'm just making up for lost time."

"Well, you did spend an awful lot of time hitting me, you know," the ghost smirked.  "I hope you feel really shitty about it."

Akane scowled.  "Jackass, you're dead and you're still being a jackass."

'I'm insane,' she decided, 'I've become a total fucking lunatic; I'm nervous about marrying Ryoga, and I've turned inward toward some mad psychological manifestation to satisfy some deep guilt-complex that I haven't yet dealt with.'  She sighed silently.  'Dammit.'

The ghost didn't look guilty; he just looked translucent, as all stereotypical ghosts tend to do some time or another.  "The sad truth of the matter is, Akane, you still love me, don't you?"

"You aren't him, he can't even say the word love without stuttering, and no, I don't," she replied angrily, her fists clenched.

"I am Ranma, and you do love me," the ghost insisted.  "I've grown up, I've changed; no one ever stays the same.  I mean, look at you and Ryoga, he used to have a nosebleed every time he saw you less than fully dressed..." the ghost trailed off, and in a much softer voice, asked, "Do you really love him?"

Akane opened her mouth to say 'yes'.  And closed it because she knew it would be a lie.  "I'm fond of him," she finally decided.  "We get along well together; we'll have a nice marriage."

The ghost shook his head.  "That's not enough though, is it, Akane?"

"No," she whispered, her eyes intent on the ghost's face, "No, it's not enough, because - because I still - "

"STOP, Akane," The ghost commanded harshly.  "You can't have me, and it isn't because I'm dead, either."

She hesitated, studying the stony expression on his face.  "What do you mean?"

So consumed was she in her conversation with a dead man, she did not hear the rumble of thunder, but she did see the rain.  As the water fell and drifted through the ghost, it reshaped and resized, growing thicker and thinner and curvier until the man became a woman with faint, damp, red hair, pale blue eyes, and a hinting expression.

"You always doubted, and therefore, you always knew," the ghost whispered before disappearing.

By some unseen force, a dripping wet Tendo Akane pushed herself from the soggy ground, and brushing her bangs from her face, she followed the line of her heart toward another cemetery plot not so far away.

Toward a gravestone set underneath a large, shady tree.  Toward a secret that desperately wanted to be revealed.

^*^*^

"AKANE!"

Her sister had gone to the cemetery with Auntie Nodoka hours ago.  While Nodoka had turned up at the dojo a few hours later, tired but no worse for wear, Akane could not be found anywhere.

Very few people in the history of time had ever seen Tendo Kasumi in a panic, but those brave souls who ventured out into the storm were in for a surprise.

Kasumi had grabbed an umbrella, now useless because the winds had blown it inside out.  She 'hrmmph'ed in frustration and threw it to the ground, and looking around the Garden Cemetery, she ran toward the Saotome's private burial area, where Akane should have been.  She found only a bouquet of wilted daisies, a muddy picnic blanket, and a shred a blue cloth.  The color was hauntingly familiar, yet the origin of the memory escaped her, dancing just out of her grasp.  Growling quietly, Kasumi rebuked herself for wasting time.  There were more important things to consider.

Her sister was nowhere in sight.

"AKANE!  AKANE!"

Still the rain poured down, and still it drowned her cries.

Desperate, she circled around, her dress sticking to her body and her hair plastered to her face, the rushing sound of water filling her ears and hurting her head, the pressure of it falling stinging her skin.

Where was Akane?

The wind screamed, and the heavens roared.  Nerima was not a stranger to storms, but this was a gale the likes of which none had ever seen.  It was not unnatural; it had not magic woven into its thick, red venom.  It was the simple function of hate, of shame, and of a human concept called 'feud'.

Kasumi heard a whisper, and then a scream.

^*^*^

It was dark where Akane was crouched, her legs splayed rudely beneath her, squelching quietly in the mud and grass mixture at the roots of the ancient tree.  She was covered in a thin film of dust and water, not quite mud, and not quite nothing.  Her eyes were empty, her mouth was open.

Kasumi bent down to shake her little sister, sobbing and screaming for her to wake, slapping her cheeks and pinching her arms.  She tried everything in her power to break the trance, until she saw the grave that Akane had collapsed before, until she read the poem.

It was, in comparison to the other stones in the cemetery, rather new, and would probably remain that way, being afforded the protection of the willow tree's branches and leaves.  The rhyme was familiar, childlike in its innocent cadence, friendly in its words:

"She who reached the heavens,
She who shined with spark,
She who loved and lived and laughed,
She who slew the dark."

Kasumi's hands gripped Akane like steel as she finished reading the inscription.

"Here lies Tanakawa Yuki, beloved daughter and master of the Tanakawa School of the Rising Phoenix.  Proud as she was strong.  (1981-1998)"

So the two sisters sat there on the sodden earth as the rain washed them clean of their lies and inhibitions, staring at the words carved onto the stone, an eternal shrine to something neither of them had quite understood at the time.

"Kasumi," Akane finally asked, her voice quiet in the sound of the rain, "why did she kill him?  Why did she kill him?"

And Kasumi stared still at the rock, letting her fingers trace the names, her mind finally remembering where she had seen that blue before, many, many times.

^*^*^

Nerima
13 years 8 months previous

"Akane, I'll have some tea out in just a se- Oh!  Pardon me, I see you've brought a friend!"  She bowed politely at the redheaded girl.  "And what's your name?"

Yuki looked impressed, so far, this was the only human being who came in contact with Ranma to recognize that she was biologically female.  "Oh, hi, my name is Tanakawa Yuki, pleased to meet you."

She looked exactly like him, Kasumi observed.  The exact same blue eyes, the same perfectly satin skin, the same startling red hair.  'The dress, though,' Kasumi thought with a smile, 'Ranma has never been able to pull of that school dress with any measure of feminine grace.'

But Yuki seemed far more complex than she let on.  Beneath that exterior of glowing smiles and perfect, polite friendliness, there was a quicksilver glimmer of something pained.  While Ranma shared the same darkness inside of himself, he reacted differently, with anger, with words, and instead of hiding it underneath a proper showing, he took it out in his martial arts.  'Two such similar people,' Kasumi thought softly to herself, 'two such sad people.'

"My name is Tendo Kasumi," she said politely, smiling again.  "Please, come in, I'll have tea and cookies out in just a second."

Akane led the girl into the house, saying, "I'm sorry we couldn't talk under the bridge, the rain was coming down pretty heavily."

Yuki shrugged and sat down.  Setting her elbow on the table and leaning her cheek against it, she started, "Alright, this is serious."  Her tone of voice promised Akane that it was.  "You and Ranma have been engaged for a year now, right?  And with between fighting with each other, and being stolen away by mystical princes and whatnot, you two ought to be pretty close, right?"

Akane narrowed her eyes.  Ranma had told this girl *everything*?

"Maybe.  Why?" she asked suspiciously.  If Yuki was trying to find a way to weasel into Ranma's heart, that little hussy had another thing coming.  The *last* thing Akane needed was yet *another* fiancee bursting into the dojo at all hours.

Yuki reached out her hands, clasping Akane's tightly.  There was a serious, sober expression on her pretty face as she said, "Do you care about him at all?  Even the tiniest bit?"

Akane stared, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.  Yuki's expression was completely earnest, lacking self-interest (at least, none that *Akane* could detect).  'What on Earth is Yuki trying to do?' Akane thought frantically.  'Embarrass me to death?!'

Kasumi, from where she stood near the open doorway of the kitchen, hearing every word being spoken, was fairly certain that Akane would have answered honestly in her own time.  After the shock wore away, her sister could be quite assertive.

But as it always happened in Nerima, there was a momentary distraction that ruined the moment.

"DAMN IT!  DAMN RAIN!"

Akane felt a growl rising in her throat and Yuki only rolled her eyes.

There was much stomping, and a hiss of hot water.  Then, a male voice cried out. "Akane?  Are you here?  Hinako-sensei found your notebook, do you want it back now?"

Yuki sighed and leaned back on her haunches, frustrated that she hadn't gotten an answer.  Running toward the entry-way, Akane yelled, "Yes!  Of course I want it back!  You didn't read it, did you?"  The last part was asked in an almost nervous tone.

As the Tendo girl disappeared from vision, Yuki heard Ranma reply, "Why?  Writin' love letter to Ryoga in it?"  She grimaced, thinking, 'Ranma, you have a death wish.'

"Give it back!" Akane yelled.

"Nope, you have to tell me what's in it first, come on, Akane, it can't be *that* bad, you haven't been keeping a diary, have you?"

"RANMA!  GIVE IT BACK NOW!"

"Dear Diary, today, I saw Ryoga, oh, he's just *so* dreamy!  I can't wait to marry him and have tons of little porker children!"

Yuki closed her eyes and counted to three.

There was a boom, and then a low thud.

" ... ow ... "

"Serves you right, stupid jerk!"

There were rapid footfalls, and a red-faced Akane returned to the calm of the family room.  Upon seeing the blank expression on Yuki's face, she grew slightly sheepish.  "I'm very sorry," she murmured, lowering her head and clutching the notebook she'd just liberated in her hands.

"Oh," Yuki said slowly, "it's okay, he was asking for that one."  There was a pause.  "But still, Akane, answer my question."

Only Kasumi and Akane would ever understand her answer the way it was meant to be said.

"That idiot?  He could dry up and die for all I care!"

^*^*^

That blue, that haunting blue color.  The same cerulean hue as Ranma's shirt had been that afternoon, the same texture of the soft cloth, the same feel of it against her fingers as she hung up the laundry.

"Kasumi?" Akane ventured again, eyes still trained on the headstone.  "Kasumi?"

The older woman started to speak.

"It's odd, isn't it, Akane?  She seemed so lovely, so terribly nice."  Her voice died in her throat for just a moment.  "She loved him; did you know that, Akane?"  The wind grew louder and the rain fell faster.  "Did you know?"  Kasumi continued, "I know you were too busy hating him for spending time with her; I know you were too jealous to see it.  But underneath all that, she loved him."

"No," Akane whispered, her hands curled into fists, her knuckles white from anger, "she killed him, why would anyone hurt the person they loved?"

"Why did you hit Ranma?" Kasumi murmured, remembering Yuki.

Remembering her friend.

^*^*^

Nerima
13 years 8 months previous

"Yuki-san?" Kasumi murmured, wandering into the family room.  "Akane said that she had to go 'talk to Ranma'."  Yuki winced at the mere thought, but Kasumi just smiled.  "Would you mind a little company?"

Yuki grinned shyly.  "Of-of course not, Kasumi-san."  As she looked around the room, she murmured, "Your mother does a wonderful job of keeping house."

The oldest Tendo's face darkened for just a fraction of a second, and her hands clutched her apron just a little too tightly.  "Our mother died when we were very small, Yuki-san."

Yuki lowered her eyes.  "I'm sorry, Kasumi-san, I didn't know."

Kasumi resumed smiling.  "Oh, it's all right, you didn't know."  Pausing, she continued, "You're Ranma's new friend?"

"Yes, we met in detention, and then," Yuki giggled, "I found out about his curse.  Pretty rough for a guy like him, huh?"  Yuki looked solemn, and her palms rested facedown on the tabletop, her tea forgotten.

Kasumi raised an eyebrow. "'A guy like him'?"

"Well," the other girl started carefully, "you can tell that he tries to be macho."  Kasumi nodded eagerly.  "And you can see that he tries to be emotionless, it's hard enough for him already without," her voice softened, "without his stupid curse."

Kasumi stared at the girl before her.  "Yuki-san, do you know *why* you and Ranma's girl side look exactly alike?"

Yuki looked uncomfortable.  "I have a theory."

Kasumi raised an eyebrow.  "Does Ranma know about this theory?"

Yuki smiled.  "Of course he does, but he doesn't think it's true, he says it's two convenient; that nothing goes according to Occam's Razor in Nerima."

Kasumi blinked.  Ranma used the phrase 'Occam's Razor'?

Yuki looked confused.  "Yeah, he did, why?  Is that weird?"  It was only when Yuki answered that Kasumi realized she had said the words aloud.  She flushed in embarrassment, and looked for a way to answer that question.

"Well," she started slowly.  "It just doesn't seem like Ranma to say something ... like that," she finished awkwardly.

Yuki's face hardened.  "You mean 'Ranma's too stupid to know what Occam's razor is'."

Kasumi turned an even brighter shade of red.  "I-I didn't mean that, Yuki-san," she whispered, looking down at her hands.

There was a sigh, and Yuki's voice was soft and apologetic as she spoke again, "Sorry, Kasumi-san, it's just that - " she stopped short, eyes searching the room.  "Since I've gotten to Nerima, all I've ever heard was how terrible Ranma is."  She sighed.  "He's been nothing but nice to me."  She shrugged, saying, "It's not that odd to believe that Ranma has a deep interest in theories regarding chaos."

Kasumi released a short, embarrassed chuckle.  "Ranma is far from stupid.  It just happens that he spends more of his time practicing martial arts than studying for tests."

Yuki raised an eyebrow.  "Don't we all?"

Kasumi cleared her throat and asked, "So, what was this theory of yours?"

"Oh," Yuki breathed, "that.  It's pretty simple.  My thought was that one of my ancestors was the girl that drowned in the spring that he fell in."  She rolled her eyes.  "Ranma claims that nothing that easy ever happens in Nerima.  By his thinking, it involves death, a feud, some great battle he's going to have to fight, and an incredible new technique he's going to be forced to learn."

The two girls shared a soft laugh to a backdrop of loud, painful noises as Akane continued to bash Ranma over some body part with some large, blunt object.

Kasumi could tell that she would grow to like Yuki, perhaps even become friends with her.

It had been ages since she'd had a true friend.

Yuki smiled at her, and Kasumi found herself smiling back, not the vapid, empty smile she used for everyone and everything, a genuine grin.

^*^*^

The rain droned on.

And the past snapped cruelly to present.  Where Kasumi's truest friend was laid to rest in the mud; where Ranma was dead.  Where her youngest sister was being deceived for her own good.

"She fought Ranma for family honor, because she had no other choice."  Kasumi said gravely, her voice breaking, not seeing the expression on her little sister's face; it was just as well, because if she had, she was certain to feel guilt raining down harder than water.  "Did you ever see the way she used to laugh when he was near her?  The way her eyes shined and the way her face lit up like fireworks on New Years?"  Kasumi turned to Akane.  "His death hurt her more than anyone Akane, that's why she followed him to her grave."

A knife of some dark, fierce emotion slipped through Kasumi's eyes.

"I won't let you blame her, Akane."

And there was silence save for the sound of the rain.

^*^*^

The surgical ward was quiet.

And so was Kimiko.

And so was Soichi.

It was an odd thing.

They'd wanted a child for years, yearned to hold the product of their flesh for ages.  And now, they had it, they had created, there was a child between them, a string of genetic data that bound them like no marriage certificate or vow of words could.  It was a union of blood.

But instead of celebration, instead of laughter and kissing and dancing, they sat still, they sat quiet, holding each other's hands tightly, awaiting word on a child that wasn't their own.

It had been hours, an entire night, actually.  There had been complications during surgery; what should have been a two-hour process to patch up some bone and flesh became an all-nighter of touch-and-go flatlining.  Technically, Naka had died three times.

Kimiko stared at the doors, feeling a keening cry build up inside her stomach.  "Why," she whispered, her voice hoarse from disuse.  "why would this happen to poor Naka?"

"I don't know," Soichi murmured, tightening his hold her fingertips.  'It was a car accident,' he wanted to say to her, 'you know, one of those flimsy metal things that you love to drive too fast in?'  He wanted to shake her.  'Don't ever step into a car again!  What if I lose you?  What if you turn out like Naka's parents?  We're not immune, Kimiko!'  But he didn't say anything like that.

He instead turned inward and started to think.  They drove around in their little four-door sedan every day like there wasn't the slightest harm to it. Speeding sometimes so they could get where they were going three minutes earlier, changing lanes, forgetting to turn on their blinker, and laughing all of it off later from the safety of their beds.  It hurt to think about what he could have lost.

And the two of them sat, half filled with joy, and have filled with sorrow, because the cup wasn't half-empty, it was full with brightly-painted grief.

^*^*^

"Tendo here, go," Nabiki barked into the receiver.  To the casual listener, it would have seemed that Nabiki was just unhappy about being at the office so early in the morning (it was, after all, barely six A.M.), but to someone who knew her, her voice sounded harried, panicked.

And by all means, Nabiki had a right to be.  Though Yuki was not as crafty as Nabiki in any right, she was intelligent, and she was clever, and she was nothing if not very, very thorough.  'Damn,' Nabiki had thought in wonder, 'she put more than a lot of energy into this, this charade!'

In the entire world, there is only one type of personal file that you cannot access through regular, legal means if you are not normally allowed.  Usually, there are ways to get around it, medical transcripts, for example, would be thrown out, and sorting through garbage, though disgusting, was still moderately legal.  You can get your hands on just about anything if you know the right people.

Except for adoption records.

Which proved to be Nabiki's downfall because Sanii was unreachable for hacking purposes, the paper files had 'mysteriously' disappeared from the registrar's office, and the past history of one Yoshida Kimiko was sealed by the state.

Nabiki, therefore, was very unhappy.

Luckily, however, the person on the other end of the phone conversation knew Nabiki well enough to watch what he said.  "Nabiki," came the soft, solemn voice.

Raising her eyebrows, the mercenary Tendo leaned back in her office chair.  "Ryoga, what a pleasant surprise.  Why the phone call?"

There was a growl over the line.  "Cut the crap, Nabiki, something's up and if you don't know about it, no one does."

"Aw," she teased, her mood improving rapidly, "brother-in-law, you give me too much credit, why would little ol' me know something that little ol' you *didn't*."  She could see it in her mind, Ryoga, turning seventeen different shades of red.  She wished that she were there to witness it.

"I'm not kidding, Nabiki," Ryoga said, a thick unhappiness in his voice.  "I tried to believe that Akane was just seeing things, but she was spooked, and now, so am I."  He was silent for just a second.  "She thinks she saw Ranma, alive, in Tokyo."

Nabiki raised her eyebrow.  "When?"

'So,' she thought slowly, 'Akane thinks she saw Ranma?  Good thing she didn't know it was Yuki, there would have been a homicide.'

Ryoga was a little bit surprised.  He expected something more shocked than a simple 'when'.  But then again, it *was* Nabiki.

"Just a couple of days ago.  Nabiki, do you think you could - "

"I've got it covered, Ryoga-kun, just keep my little sister sane and happy, and I've got it covered."

"Good, I'll pay you next time I'm in town."

Nabiki smirked, cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder.  "Hm, in town?  Too unreliable.  Tell you what, Hibiki, this one is on the house, just remember the favor, it may come back around."

There was a soft groan over the phone line, "Why do I always feel sick when you say things like that?"

^*^*^

As it would happen, Ryoga had good cause for feeling sick when Nabiki said things like that, because a mere four hours later, the Dojo phone rang.  All that was said was this:

"Sakura Towers, twenty-second floor.  Not Ranma � Yuki.
Watch your step, she hasn't got Ranma's sense of mercy, and you two have nothing but blood in your backstory.  Twelve years may not have dulled her senses enough to get you out of this unharmed."

^*^*^

"Caffeine isn't good for pregnant women, Kimiko."

"Yeah, and I'm sure that getting kicked in the groin isn't good for men in general," she growled savagely.  "So, if you ever want to enjoy the pleasures of flesh again, hand over that cup!"

Soichi had to admit that his wife in a rage was a very scary scene.  The way her eyes glowed an iridescent blue, and how the air around her seemed to spark with electricity were all indicative of severe pain in his near future.

But this was Soichi, the former heir to the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts.  And although the name had been abandoned, and the cause denied, the mule-headed stubbornness remained, much to Kimiko's distress.

"No," he stated plainly, holding the coffee cup high over her head, "you're not getting any of this, if you want something to drink, have some orange juice.  A, it'll power you up, B, it's got vitamin C, which is good for the baby anyway, and C, it has no caffeine."

Kimiko stared at him for a good long minute before she replied, which was probably a good thing because it gave the people in Tokyo General's cafeteria time to cover their ears.

"YOU ARE SUCH A PAIN!"

Three seconds later, Kimiko was sipping a mug of decaf coffee, and Soichi was sitting very sullenly across from her, rubbing the growing bruise on his shin.

Ten minutes passed before he ventured to speak again, "Hey, do you think he's out of surgery yet?" Soichi's voice was soft, worried.

Kimiko set down her cup, leaning her cheek against her palm.  She murmured, "I hope so."  Her eyes grew sad.  "What is he going to do when he wakes up?  He's going to be devastated."

Soichi frowned.  "I'm here for that."

Kimiko shot him a skeptical expression, "You're not working for free you know, without parents, who's going to pay for his sessions?"  She paused.  "Besides, he's not eighteen yet, he's going to become a ward of the state; they've got their own staff psychiatrists."

There was a pensive silence.

"Kimiko," he whispered, a touch of hope in his heart, "I think I have an idea."

^*^*^

Akane had awoken in her bed, somehow having gotten back to the house following her afternoon encounter.  While the events of the day seemed to have slipped from her mind like water from a sieve, Kasumi's words would not leave her.

Had Yuki really loved Ranma?

She stared at her ceiling, and then she slept.

^*^*^

Somewhere in the far valleys of China, where rolling hills protected the last Amazon tribe from the government, and shielded Jusenkyo from prying eyes, an old woman awoke to the sound of ki whispering through the air.  It sounded crimson, tainted with the blood and anguish of too many years on too young a person, she blinked, and she tasted the fear and panic.

'HELP!' it cried soundlessly, wordlessly, aimlessly.  'HELP ME!'

It had been over a decade, but Cologne recognized that ki, she recognized that color, she could recognize the soul that screamed it.

'It has to be something big,' Cologne marveled, 'something enormous if the it is coming in this strong, even after death,' she paused, frowning, even more wrinkles appearing on her face.  The lingering energies of those who had passed still made the occasional call for help, desperately wishing for someone with magic to rescue their former vehicles from their biological ends, but those were always faint, sad cries.  'No, it couldn't be, death weakens a ki scream tenfold, at least, regardless how strong she is, was, it couldn't be this powerful unless - '

Cologne's eyes opened wide in shock.  'Unless she's still living.'

She focused, searching for that line of ki energy again, reaching out to taste that panicking cry.

And when she touched it, she gasped, it was not pure crimson, instead, she found it to be deftly colored by patches of gold.  A tone of gold she had only ever seen on one other human being.

"[Tamade!(1)  Ranma and Yuki...]"

She started laughing slowly, softly, and as it grew louder, so too did the memories that came with those names.

^*^*^

(1) The Chinese equivalent of SOB

^*^*^

Nerima
Thirteen years 7 months previous

It had taken Cologne five months of research, study that had consumed her days and nights, fueled by a dread curiosity that rose from the depths of her, but she'd found it, she knew why.  She didn't like the answer, and she knew that the Tendos would not be too happy about it either.

But Ranma, well, she wasn't certain how Ranma would respond to such a discovery.  For a boy at the nubile age of sixteen, he'd grown rather accustomed to the insanity that plagued his life, having fiancee after fiancee forced upon his person.  Cologne was sure he'd handle this as he would any other situation of the like: with an infamous knack for shoving his foot as far into his big mouth as his pipes would allow.

She'd finally pinpointed the origins of the Spring of the Drowned Girl, and the tourguide was right, there *was* a terribly tragic story behind it, though, the version he told was so vague that it was, essentially, true.  In ancient lore, it had been called the Lake of the Drowned Lovers.

A boy and a girl who had been engaged to marry had been training on the grounds, having stuck the sandy bottom of the lake full of sturdy bamboo rods, they were hopping from rod to rod, tagging each other gently and generally enjoying their lives.  The details were sketchy from there on out (she'd gotten the entire account from some partial diary of an old, schizophrenic woman who'd off and on rant about chickens worshipping the devil), but she knew for certain that the girl had lost her footing, and had drowned in the lake below before the boy caught her and dragged her to shore.  It was then that the girl's family, a proud, Chinese clan had discovered the lovers there, one dead and the other sobbing.

It was said that the boy had cried so hard and so long that the lake had overflowed to fill the entire valley, creating spring after spring from his endless grief.

Cologne smirked.  His passion had not touched the girl's family, though, and they'd pulled him away from his dead fiancee and had drowned him in the same waters from which his lover had perished.

Needless to say, the boy's family had not been pleased, and hence, the blood feud had been started between the Yamato Clan and the Fujiwara Clan, both too proud and too heartbroken from the loss of their children to realize the damage that they would deal because of it.

Of course, Cologne knew that the crying boy was not the origin of Jusenkyo, but the other things, the enchanted lake that was there originally, and events that led to their deaths, they were all plausible, honest.

Over years, people had forgotten the true purpose and cause of that spring.

Cologne was beyond certain now that if a woman fell into the spring, a phenomenon would occur, she'd become a man.

Since most often, it was only men that were taken on training trips and that fell into the Lake of the Drowned Lovers, turning into women, people had roundabout come to the conclusion that it was the 'Spring of the Drowned Girl'.  Cologne knew better.

The Spring of the Drowned Lovers was not vicious in nature, not cruel or laughing as the other pools were.  It held the spirit of longing, the soul of love forever bound to those deceptively gentle waters.  Falling into the Spring of the Drowned Lovers did not turn you into a man or a woman at random, it showed you the face of someone you were destined to love: a soulmate.

Yuki didn't look like *Ranko*; Ranko looked like *Yuki*.

Cologne turned around quickly at the sounds of the door to the Nekohanten being opened.

"Nihao, Cologne," Yuki cried out cheerfully, dropping her bookbag on a table.  She sat down across from where Cologne balanced on her staff.

"Yo, Cologne," Ranma said, his voice placid, but curious.  The Amazon had to bite her tongue to keep from exclaiming in surprise, in the months that she'd known Ranma; the boy had never greeted her with anything but disrespectful epithets.

"Nihao, Yuki, Son-in-Law," she started, watching the irritation grow on Ranma's face.  "I think you're going to be surprised when I tell you what I've found."

She was right.  They were surprised.

Which was odd because Cologne lied through her eyeteeth, her false words spilling from her lips even as her aged fingers covered a passage written in worn Chinese characters, a prophecy the old woman had declared somewhere between detailing how to exorcise poultry.

[The waters will part, and the heavens will weep, because in due time, the families will once again find their blood against blood.]

'Blood against blood,' Cologne mused, staring at the two teenagers before her, entirely focused on words, believing her, having faith that her explanation was true.  In the back of her mind, she was spinning lies, something about the pool being polluted with ki from Yuki's ancestors.

[But in that feud from times far future, the line will have dulled, and two who start as friends will end as lovers, dying as they were borne, cursed by their existence, and blessed by their passage.]

"Told ya!  Told ya!" Yuki cried triumphantly, poking Ranma in the stomach, giggling as he poked her back, a peevish expression on his face, muttering:

"I tell yah, you old Mummy, it's too damn weird to be a stupid coincidence."

Cologne hit him over his head with her staff hard, yelling, "Do not doubt me, foolish boy, it'll be a hundred years before you have earned that right!"

'Friends,' she wondered silently, watching the two of them tease smiles out of each other, carelessly enjoying the other's company, 'they are friends, and something simmers below the surface on that boy.'  She watched them carefully, 'Trust, belief, safety ... perhaps even the first embers of love...'

[Both will have a warriors spirit, both will be strong and sound of mind and body.  But one will be two, and the other a half.  Flame red and midnight black, two bodies, one blue.]

"Admit it, Ranma, you were just being paranoid!"

"Oh, shut up already, Yuki, I get it, I get it, alright?  No new technique, no fighting, I lose, you're right, okay?  SHEESH!"  While Ranma's face was almost always twisted into an expression of supreme pain when admitting error to anyone, especially a woman, he didn't seem to mind being wrong, at least, not when it came to being wrong against Yuki.

'Warriors spirit,' Cologne could see the sparks materialize in the air.

'One will be two,' Ranma's curse.

'And the other half,' Yuki's heart, broken by something that happened long ago, something she'd never tell anyone about, leaving only a dark red patch over her chest where her ki faded painfully.

'Flame red,' Yuki's hair, Onna-Ranma's hair.

'And midnight black,' Son-in-law's hair.

'Two bodies, one blue,' and then Cologne realized with a terrible shudder the color of Ranma's eyes, so uniquely blue, gray like stormy skies, but tempered with a good natured azure that seemed to radiate simple happiness.  A color, had she not know better, she would have sworn could not have been reproduced in any other human being.

She did not dare look into Yuki's smiling eyes, but the knowledge was there already; Cologne knew that their irises would mirror each other.

[The waves will roar and the thunder will strike, burning down pretense to reveal the truth in its broken ashes.  And the world will mourn the passing of two skilled as they are kind, two bound by their blood, two ultimately killed by distant pasts.]

Cologne waved weakly toward Yuki as the two left her restaurant.

'I've denied them perfection,' she realized with a start.  'I know, I could have told them, could have given *two human beings* perfect happiness ... and I denied them.'

She excused herself to her room for the afternoon, trying to reconcile her conscience with what she'd just done.

^*^*^

Cologne steeled her nerves and hopped from the bed, pulling things from her drawers and throwing them to the floor.

A sword, an amulet, three feathers.

'Where is it?' she thought frantically.  'Where is it?'

Finally, she came upon those tattered sheets of paper where she'd tossed them in the bottom of a chest.  She sat down on the sawed board floor of her house, surrounded by clothes and ancient artifacts strewn carelessly about her.  She flipped through the pages and came upon that weary passage again.  Her aged eyes scanned passed those words she'd read before, and came upon those final lines that she hadn't understood so many years ago:

[But the fight in the two will force them to survive, they will outlive, they will outlast.  But the feuding families will end in the deaths of their heirs, and the birth of a new line, one with no history but one all their own.]

"[Unbelievable]," Cologne murmured, slipping carelessly into her native tongue.  "[Still alive after all this time.]"

She started to cackle, and murmured, "Good," this time, she spoke in Japanese, the words old and familiar, "It will be nice to see Nerima again."

^*^*^

"Mom," he whispered, his throat scratchy and hoarse; it hurt to breathe, "Mom, where are you?"

There came a soft voice, and an even gentler touch, the sensation of someone's palm against his forehead, warm and weighty on his skin.

"Sleep, Naka-kun, sleep."

It was not his mother, but his mind did not bother to realize this, and he followed the directions, flittering back off into his fevered dreams.

^*^*^

Soichi sat quietly in the hospital room, feet tapping soundlessly against the cold, tile floors.  Her hair was cropped short and she played with a lock of it out of nervous habit, wondering what she looked like as a girl with such an obviously male haircut.

She was certain that Kimiko had meant for her presence to be a comfort to Naka if he woke.  Soichi found herself smirking, 'Man, I bet the kiddo is more likely to scream and faint over what 'she' did to her hair than feel reassured.'

Kimiko had been sent home, protesting and pouting the whole way, but she'd been gone nonetheless, Soichi would not have her be anywhere else.  She'd been awake for almost two straight days, and after finally falling asleep in the waiting room, she'd awoken gasping in terror.  He'd looked at her in deep concern at the moment, but it was only later that he realized that the aura of ki that she carried with her wherever she walked had grown thinner, lighter, weaker, as if she'd just been in a massive battle, and had lost.

Once he'd stumbled upon this discovery, he'd done as any normal Father-to-be would have, ordered her straight to bed where she belonged, and then proceeded to fall apart in worry.

She'd called once she'd reached the apartment, and yawning lazily, she had whispered, "You were right, Soichi, I think I'll take a nap."

All was right in his world.

Well ... almost all.

He smiled sadly at the child who slept fitfully, unaware of the horrors of life that awaited him.

^*^*^

"Go home, Kimiko," she muttered under her breath mockingly.  "You need your sleep, Kimiko," she added, "but don't take the car, you might get hurt, Kimiko."  Kimiko stripped off her t-shirt unhappily.

She'd heeded his advice, but not without a great deal of glaring.  And finally, she'd poured a glass of cold water of his head, saying, "Stay with Naka-kun, he'll want to see a woman's face when he wakes up."

It didn't bother her that he was concerned for her well being, it *had* been nearly forty-eight hours since she had slept.  It did bother her that he felt like he could order her around, and she really resented that he was right.

Grunting, she slipped out of her sweatpants.

She wandered in front of her bedroom vanity mirror, dressed in nothing but her black panties and bra.  She stared for a moment at the gentle lines of her waist.  She'd never been skinny, she always knew that.  But she was physically fit, with a trim midsection from years on years of training endlessly.  She traced her belly and stared at its flatness, a former sign of her infertility.

But now...

She grinned.  Soon, very soon, the angles would be replaced by fullness, she'd be able to feel their baby kick inside her.  Giggling, she twirled around happily, falling gracelessly on the bed; she closed her eyes and sighed, content in her existence.

But even in her bubbling happiness, her mind dredged up a dark memory, a sad thing that she'd kept from many years ago.

^*^*^

Nerima
13 years 5 months previous

Yuki cried.

It was rare that she did such a thing, seeing as she had spent much of her short life mastering the art of calm and deadly precision, this loose, bubbling psychosis was altogether new and wholly unlikable.

But nevertheless, Yuki cried.

It wasn't that it was Kuno, per se; his presence had never really bothered her overmuch, and aside from the occasional scraped knuckle she received from punching him when he decided to wear some sort of padding under his robes, she remained unscathed.  Irritated by his commentary?  Yes, massively irritated, but never afraid, never panicked.

But today was different, today was...

Today was bad.

He'd jumped her on a bad day, when she had too much of a headache to really pay attention to anything other than the pounding agony that seemed endless between her ears.

If he had hit her, fine, she could take it.

If he had read poetry, she'd cover her ears and walk away, trying to ignore him.

If he had tried to, God forbid, kiss her, she'd hand him a knuckle sandwich, special-made, and he'd be out of her hair for the afternoon.

But...

But Kuno had pinned her.

His thick fingers wrapped around her wrists, and holding them up high against the heavy brick walls that surrounded Furinkan High School, where greenery kept them from view.  He was pressed against her, and she, in turn, was forced to the hard, cold surface behind her.  She could feel his face get closer and closer to her own.  And there was an unmistakable arousal that rose in Kuno, manifesting itself in the action of forcing one knee between Yuki's paralyzed legs, whispering passionately, "Ah, yea, my sweet, virginal flower.  The foul sorcerer Saotome hath released you, and you sought to be near me, the Great and Masterful Kuno Tatewaki."  He practically growled in ecstasy.  "Oh, Yuki-sama, please, let me educate you in the ways of love!"

In some distant part of her terrified mind, a small voice pointed out, 'Well, at least he's figured out that you have a name ... '

This was drowned out by a screaming nine-year-old girl deep inside of her, her school uniform dirty, her shoes missing, and her legs streaked with dried blood.  A nine-year-old that kicked and bellowed and stamped her feet, shaking her fists and crying, "LET GO!  NO!  NOT AGAIN!"

She was dizzy, her vision started to swim, and her legs grew weak, unintentionally giving him the invitation that he was looking for, she slumped down into his unwanted embrace.

Kuno's tears flowed impressively as he whispered, pressing his face into her bosom.  "OH!  YUKI-SAMA!  I knew that you would eventually succumb to the charms of the Great Kuno Tatewaki, no woman can resist!"

"No," she whispered softly.  She couldn't move, she couldn't move a muscle, her fingers were frozen, her legs were immobile, and her heart tore at her ribcage in horrified, sporadic bursts.

And all of it came tumbling back to her, rushing her like waves on a rocking, stormy ocean, black and cold, bitter and salty, choking her with their intensity:

Confusion, the cold stone wall behind her, Hiyomata-sensei, the nice teacher, the sweet teacher who told funny jokes during history class.  The only one who had said that her red hair was beautiful, that *she* was beautiful.  Hiyomata-sensei, mean, rough, calloused hands, pushing her to the back of the school, a weird look in his eyes, a funny expression on his lips.  "Won't hurt," he'd said.  The sound of a zipper.  Cold stone as her head was slammed back against it.

What, what was he doing?

Wait, wait, stop!  I'm just a little girl, what are you going to do?

Pain, God, endless pain.  Thrusting, pushing, tearing, she was shattering, but she couldn't call for help, someone's heavy hands covered her small mouth, and her nine-year-old legs were once again frozen from the searing pain between them.

Dirty, used, broken.

The doctor's office, frowning, tears, shame.

"So sorry, Yuki-san, so sorry."  Why was the doctor sorry?  "No babies, Yuki-san, you'll never have babies."  What?  No babies?  But - but she was going to grow up!  She was going to get married and have three of them!  Yuri, Nerri, and Kaneda, they had names!  They already had names!  "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

Sorry wasn't enough.

And it never would be.

The memories screamed through her mind as she started to cry softly, the useless numbness still racing through her body, all as she whimpered that same one word.  "No," she pleaded, quietly, infinitely desperately, "no."

But Kuno was too wrapped up in burying his tear-soaked, overjoyed face into her flesh, his clumsy fingers now working on the tie at the back of her school uniform, muttering all the while.  "Oh, you won't regret this, Yuki-sama, I'll make sure you never regret this!"

It was over, she knew it, she couldn't move, too frightened and too useless to force herself to defend herself, too sharp in memory to gloss over it until she could panic in quiet at her own home.

She was lost.

Now, now, Kuno ...

She'd be twice-used garbage, the type of thing you found at rummage sale and tossed aside, thinking, "How disgusting, how can anyone try to sell that, do you know how many people went through that before?"

Her tears flowed as she felt his hand crawl harshly up her leg, finding the lace edge of her panties, she heard him groan, and he pressed himself yet closer to her.

'God,' she thought, 'please.'

And then she was free.

Her body fell away from the cold wall, suddenly released from the confines of Kuno's embrace and his lecherous touch.  Her head still spun, and she landed gracelessly on her hands and knees, legs wobbling, face still marred by tear tracks, both dried and newly made.

But she could hear quite well.

The sound of early spring birds chittering in the background, their voices appropriately lowered as if they were attending a funeral, the whistle of the still-chilly wind, the rustle of new leaves.

"YOU JACKASS!  PERVERT!  RAPIST!"

'Ranma...' she found herself smiling dreamily, eyes still confused, she could hear his voice, so familiar and so soothing.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!  I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!"

"You don't understand, Saotome!  Yuki-sama agreed, the tears were merely of joy - "

"I'LL KILL YOU!  I'LL KILL SO SLOWLY YOU'LL PRAY FOR DEATH!"

"Ack!  Saotome," the sound of a bone-shattering punch, "please, calm thyself," kicking sounds, "you misunderstand!"

And Yuki blinked away the tears and memory long enough to see something she would not soon forget.

Saotome Ranma glowed and eerie red color, not his battle aura at all, it tasted purely of rage, of endless malice that promised eternal and inextinguishable pain.  His hands were wrapped tightly about Kuno's throat, so tightly that the upperclassman's face was turning an unnatural shade of pale, and the only sounds he could make were gurgling, choking noises.  Ranma's eyes were wild, not the comforting blue she usually sought from her seat across the field during lunchtime, and not the happy, excited sky-color she glimpsed while they sparred, a dark, turbulent fury had tainted them with a purple-black ultramarine.  His muscles were tense, bulging, ready to put that last burst of energy to good use and crush Kuno's windpipe like his fingers so desperately wanted to.  The small pebbles that littered the ground were floating at least two inches in the air, and the larger ones were starting to levitate, too, so powerful was Ranma's anger.

While most of Nerima didn't bother to take him too seriously, Yuki knew better, he was more than well-prepared to dish it out, and the day he lost control was the day that the heavens would weep for the first person who he disliked and with whom he crossed paths.

"Now," Ranma hissed, pulling Kuno's terrified face toward his own, "you die."

It was a promise, and Ranma never broke promises.

Somewhere, she found it in her broken self to say something, the one word that could diffuse the situation, save a life, give an answer and pose a question.  The one word that hadn't worked the first time around.

"NO!" she screamed as loudly as she could.

It was barely heard above the quiet.

Ranma turned toward where she lay sprawled out on the grass, his fury suddenly evaporating like mist, dropping Kuno bodily.  His eyes cleared as he ran toward her, gently pulling her off the ground and cradling her in his arms.  "Yuki," he said softly, his voice hoarse, "Yuki, are you okay?"

She nodded her head and bit back the nausea as the world lurched.  "I-I'm fine, Ranma, don't," she added painfully, "don't kill him, Ranma, don't kill him," she gasped weakly, pressing her palms against the ground, trying to steady the rumblings of her earth.

His face grew hard again, and throwing a repulsed glare toward where Kuno lay gasping for breath a few meters away.  He muttered, "Why not, he deserves to ... he was ... he was going to - " he stopped abruptly, unwilling to say the word.

"Don't," Yuki said, eyes closed tightly, as if to deny Kuno his end caused her physical pain, Ranma suspected that it did.  "Just don't."  There was a pause where the only things that existed in the universe were the wind, her, and Ranma, all in their own plane where they were immune from life.

"Take me home, please," she said quietly, desperately, clinging to him with a need he'd never seen in her before.

And soon, as he leaped from rooftop to rooftop, a contemplative look on his handsome face, Ranma glanced down toward Yuki, asleep and yet, still-weary in his arms.

Once again, it was just the wind, him, and her.

If only for one blink of never.

^*^*^

Ryoga cursed, it had been hell enough getting to downtown Tokyo and past Sakura Tower's rather large and angry doorman, but now, he had to break and enter?

He picked out the handy-dandy lock pick he'd discovered in Genma's things a while back and kneeled down to the handle.

He grinned as a satisfying click came to his ears.  With that sound, came also a memory, long-buried and guilty, but recalled like the first time you he saw beauty and felt it.

Ryoga shook his head in horror; he'd forced himself to forget years ago, when he'd awakened in the bright, blinding, white hospital room, wrapped in gauze and unable to speak.

But it came, and it simmered, filtering into his thoughts like a black-winged butterfly, deceptively beautiful, unendingly dark.

^*^*^

Nerima
13 years 5 months previous

Hibiki Ryoga had been the world over, most of it by accident, and had managed to learn a few useful phrases in various different languages.

"Where is Japan?"

"Say again?"

"YOU JACKASS!  DIIIIEEE!"

"Would you like the nymphomaniac squid-monkey to greet you in a sexual manner?"

All of these and more were written deep into his mind in at least a dozen different languages.  While "Where is Japan?" and "Say again?" make perfect sense when we take into account Ryoga's fabulous sense of direction, and the rude phrase can be understood, no one quite knows where he learned the last one.  All we *do* know about it was that he picked it up shortly after bumping into a Chinese exchange student on the commons of a New England University, pity Ryoga never bothered to verify whether or not what the student told him actually meant "Which way is the bus station?"

But that wasn't the point.

The point was that Saotome Ranma was leaping across the roofs of Nerima with a woman in his arms, undoubtedly, Akane once again, hurt and disoriented because of his villainous actions.

For the moment, Ryoga chose to stick to English, and the second to last of his most commonly used phrases, because after all, if you're going to scream profanity at someone, it sounds and feels so much better to do it in the lingo of a culture that celebrates the dirty-minded.

"RANMA!  [YOU JACKASS!]"

This time, he had decided to forego the 'Die', what with his throat being rather sore after all the [Where is Japan?]s that he'd been tossing around much of Eastern Europe, having 'toured' the Balkans for several weeks.

He reared his arm backwards and poured all his energy into it, grinning to himself as he realized what an incredible strike this would be, how fantastically quick Ranma would have to move to avoid it.

It was only then that Ryoga noticed that the girl in Ranma's arms had red hair, long, gleaming locks of it.  And that she was sobbing, clinging to Ranma as if her very life depended on his being there, being there for her.

But it was too late to stop his fist.

Ranma turned around just in time to see Ryoga's fist fly toward him, and made a quick decision.

He was atop the Yamaguchi family's one story house, and they had a pool, a lovely one with glittering turquoise water and a pretty tile design along the bottom that looked like waves from high above.  From where he was, he wagered that it was about ten feet deep on the far right end.  Making two calculations in his head, he reached a verdict.

Just as Ryoga's fist made impact, Ranma threw Yuki from his arms, vaguely hearing her screams as she fell through the air.  He fell hard, his head smashing hard against the rooftiles, and the world blurring in front of him before he lapsed into blessed darkness.

Yuki, the sudden shock knocking some semblance of conscious thought into her mind, curled her body into a ball, preparing to hit the water with a splash.

On the roof, Ryoga waited for Ranma to get up, to glare at him and curse at him and call him stupid names.  Ryoga waited for Ranma to hit him back.

But he didn't.  Instead, he just lay face down on the roof tiles, his pale cheek pressed against them.  His fingers did not move, and his hair moved a little in the afternoon breeze.  A thin trickle of blood started at his lip and ended in a growing pool of it beneath his face, drying quickly against the intense heat of those clay tiles, baked hot in the afternoon sun and shattered from Ranma's impact.

Ryoga wasn't sure how long he stood there, staring at Ranma's still form, waiting, just waiting for a reaction, waiting for him to recover from the blow.

It wasn't until he heard it, a scream that tore his line of sight from the motionless body on the ground to the horrified blue eyes of a redheaded girl that he realized that any time at all had passed.  Her face was white, paler than fresh-fallen snow, and her lips had become a strange, unhappy purple color; chlorinated water was gathering in a puddle underneath her dripping clothes.

And suddenly she turned to him, blue eyes burning a hole into his soul, and she whispered something that sounded like a cry, reminding Ryoga of a time long ago when he heard a funeral procession.  There was something foreign in this woman's eyes, a broken sort of light that never shone from Ranma's, at least not before.  But that wasn't what surprised him.  It was the way her tears started spilling from her eyes so softly, how her lips trembled and how she shimmered grief.  So saddened for a man who didn't deserve her tears, didn't deserve her concern � it was just Ranma � why did she need to cry?

"Ranma?" she whispered, her voice trembling like a leaf.  Kneeling down at his side, she whispered again, "Ranma?"  With the softest touch, she brushed his hair from his face, grasping his deadened fingers tightly; she moved his head to lay on her lap, stroking his cheek so gently, as if she feared he would shatter from the contact.

Ryoga's throat was dry, constricted, and a horrible screaming guilt raged in his mind as he stuttered, "Yuki-san, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to - "

Ignoring him and stroking Ranma's hair gently, as a mother to a wounded child, she whispered, "Don't worry, Ranma, you're going to be just fine, don't worry."

"Yuki-san," Ryoga started, stepping toward her.  He never finished because the girl in question looked up to him once again, those soulless eyes vacant and cold as ice, saying only:

"Call the hospital, Ryoga-san," her voice was disconnected, far away from this hot afternoon where the air smelled of blood and pool water.

Ryoga did not protest, and he did not speak.

Ryoga hopped to the ground, and pounding on the Yamaguchi's front door with nearly primal desperation, a thousand guilty thoughts screamed through his mind.  He'd killed Ranma, he'd killed the one boy who had helped him and he'd killed Akane's fiance who she loved and oh God he was going to burn in hell.  He'd never killed anyone, and for all the times he'd wished death upon Ranma, he'd never truly had what it took to kill a person.  But now, now there was a very real possibility that he had taken someone's life.

It was only after the ambulance was pulling away from the sidewalk, only after he saw Yuki's profile lined in the fragile gold of the sunset that he saw the bloodstains still blooming on her clothes, and the pale still on her face.

"Yuki-san," he started slowly, wringing his hands together, "I'm so sorry, I didn't know that he was holding onto you, it was an accident, I swear," he paused, an insane, odd little thought fluttering into his mind.  Strange how he should be explaining this to the girl who was just the freakish mirror image of Ranma's curse, instead of the pigtailed boy's fiancee.

Yuki turned toward him, an expression on her face that told him that she was tired, exhausted, spent.  "It's all right, Ryoga-san," she murmured quietly, walking toward him, eyes averted toward the ground, "I'm sure Ranma will forgive you."

Ryoga found sudden relief bubbling up through himself, and nervously putting his hand against the back of his head, he babbled, "Oh, that's great, Yuki-san, I was so afraid that you'd be angry at me!  I mean, I know that you're too logical not to know it was an accident, could have happened to anyone - "

A delicate fist shot out toward his nose, filed nails pressed so hard into pale flesh that he could, briefly, see bright red blood seeping from the broken skin.

Then all he could see were sunbursts of pain, and all he could feel was his nose shattering into a thousand pieces and how the blood gushed down his face.  A sudden 'whoosh' of air as the fist was reared again and struck more certainly this time, with a resounding thud against the side of his head, and Ryoga swore his brain ruptured right there an then.  His legs were kicked out from underneath him, each having been dealt a vicious spike to the knee, and he found himself laying a bloodied pile on the ground, surprised and in pain.

There came a soft voice, somewhere above him, a floating mass of red shimmer visible through the involuntary tears that had filled his eyes.  "I'm certain that Ranma will forgive you, Ryoga-san, he's an awfully nice person."  Yuki, Ryoga realized, was the owner of that lyrical voice, and she was the one causing the pain, too.  He received a vicious kick in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him and making him feel like the entire world was fading out of view, and in the background, Yuki kept speaking, "In fact, I'm *positive* that he'll forgive you, he's very kind."  She kicked him again, harder and aimed at his kidney, left unguarded and upturned, a dark hiss came into her voice, "But I never said that I would."

The blows rained down, and Ryoga started to realize that perhaps Ranma had not been joking about what he'd conferred to him months ago.  "Watch yourself around Yuki, Ryoga, I know you mess up and attack her a lot because she looks like me, but we're very different people," he had paused, "I still have friendly memories about you, Ryoga, to her, you're just a stranger, someone to be dealt with and put out of her way, don't start anything you can't finish."

And Ryoga was wishing fervently that he hadn't started this.

Yuki's hand grabbed him up by the collar, and shaking his body out straight, sending another scream of pain through him, she yelled, "Do you know what could have happened to me if he hadn't been there today?  Don't you get that he's your friend?"

Tears started to run down her face.  The Tanakawas bred strong women, but everyone has a breaking point.  Everyone has a flaw.  It was too much, the anger and shame of a summer afternoon shattered by memory's trauma, and then the sudden terror of a friend in pain.

Still holding him by the collar, she slammed him bodily against the brick wall surrounding the Yamaguchi's backyard.  'One, two, oh, yeah, three," Ryoga thought slowly.  'Three broken ribs, pretty good for a chick.'  She slammed him into the wall again, this time harder than before.  'Five,' Ryoga added weakly.  'Definitely five.'

"Why?" she started slowly, her voice drowned in tears and her face red with anger and hurt.  "Why would you do that to him?"  Her arm started to tremble, fingers loosening their hold on the cloth of his shirt.  Ryoga found himself slowly sliding to the ground, lazily watching her back away from him, hair clinging to her tearstained face as she whispered, "He's just a boy, Ryoga," she paused, turning around for just a moment before glancing back.  "A boy with too many problems and no one to talk to, why would you hate him so much?"

Suddenly, Ryoga felt inclined to talk, and she felt inclined to stop and listen.  "You're an idiot," he gasped, grasping his chest tightly, trying to breathe without sending more pain coursing through his body.  "Why do you always protect him?"

She turned back around, flame in her eyes, like two candles that had been dropped into a bonfire, intense, unmerciful, furious.

"Because I love him," she whispered, voice hoarse.  "I love him in a way that you'd never understand."  She stopped herself, expression aghast at having revealed her secret, at having given part of herself away to a stranger who didn't deserve to know her.  She ran, an air of desperation surrounding her, and Ryoga lay there in the puddle of his own blood and wondered painfully of her words.

It was hours later when he was lying in the quiet hum of the hospital when he realized the error in her thought:

He was the only person who could ever understand.

^*^*^

Ryoga shuddered at the memory.

He didn't fear it because of the brutality of her assault, though it had shocked him.  The wounds inflicted were too cruel, too savage, too harsh to have been dealt by a *girl*.  Much less the smiling redheaded child who had always forgiven his mistakes, or, at the very least, treated him politely.

Maybe it was that she loved him, loved Ranma in the same way that Ryoga had loved Akane, touched but never held, but Ryoga had kept her secret.  All those times thereafter that he had wandered into Nerima, seeing her on the street walking next to Ranma, laughing or yelling or humming a tune, he'd never uttered a word.

But that wasn't why he bit back a groan every time he remembered the incident, it wasn't the humiliation or defeat or the yawning pain of a long recovery that tormented him.

It was what he had done to her in retaliation.

Something that could not be forgiven, and would never be forgotten.

Kicking himself for wasting time, Ryoga gave the door a firm push, listening to it creaking inward.

"Watch out, Yuki," he whispered, "you'll never know what hit you."

^*^*^

It had been years since Kimiko had been on high alert for danger of any kind, and as such, it took her a little over ten seconds to realize that there was an intruder in her home.  It was a sad comparison to her instantaneous danger sense from years gone by.

Silently rolling off of the bed and falling to the ground in a catlike crouch, she walked toward her living room.  Hiding in the shadows of her bedroom door, she narrowed her eyes and spied a male figure lurking about her house.

The scent was unfamiliar, musty, tired.  And his ki vibrations were much too full of turmoil to be Soichi's.

But as a musician who has long since stopped playing picks up an instrument and feels the tingle of notes and melody through their soul, the profile of the lurker struck a chord in her.

Her eyes snapped, and she covered her mouth to hide the gasp of surprise.

Of all the people in the world, it just had to be Hibiki Ryoga, didn't it?

^*^*^

He felt a soft twinge of something, but dismissed it, turning back to his work.

He wandered toward the mantel, fascinated by a shining photograph that stood there.  He brushed his finger along the stainless-steel frame, biting his lip as he stared at it in the dim evening light.

Imprinted on that thick paper were two people, happily oblivious in the comfort of each other.  The woman's dark red hair was pulled into two loose braids that framed her pretty, peach-shaped face.  Her eyes were hidden by a pair of sunglasses, but her smile and the 'victory' sign she made with her fingers was enough to let Ryoga know that this was a pleasant memory.  The man was grinning, though much more softly, a kind of a gentle, awed look on his face.  His eyes were covered by sunglasses, too, but his dark hair was cut so the bangs hung rakishly across his forehead and covered the tops of his ears.  His left arm was wound tightly about the woman's waist, and his right mimicked the woman's action, the first and second fingers making a 'v' at the camera.

Ryoga held that frame tightly, staring at the image.

There was something so terribly familiar...

The woman was Yuki, he could tell immediately, the way she smiled and the light she exuded, Ryoga could feel her life pulsing even through that photograph.

But the man, he was a mystery.  He looked vaguely familiar, same dark hair and cocky expression that Ranma used to carry around like a badge of honor - but there was a much more tempered look to this person.  Something more tired, almost weary, learned, and wise.  Ranma would never look like that, not in a million years.

Could it be that she had just forgotten about Ranma?  Forgotten that she'd killed a man that she'd loved?  Had she been able to move on, to find another?

Had Yuki been able to...

'Damn it all,' Ryoga thought angrily, 'doesn't matter at all if she decided to whore around; he's dead, isn't he?  She ran away, I guess she isn't anyone's property anymore.'  But there was still a dark betrayal in his heart, knowing that the woman his best friend had loved so desperately had just decided that she'd mourned long enough, and that she was ready to give her heart to someone else.  Ryoga shook his head harshly in the blackness of the apartment.  'Stupid harlot,' he thought hotly.  'So what if Ranma died � it was at your hands, and as if that wasn't bad enough already � you have to disrespect his memory?'  He growled quietly, 'You're going to pay for this, Yuki.'

The sudden sound of a refrigerator humming caught his attention, and he drifted toward the kitchen, drawn to its windows, each filled with a million pinpoints of brilliant light.  Standing before the counter, his fingers sifted through the letters and newspapers scattered there.  And he stared next to the cookie jars, lovingly inscribed in someone's handwriting.  On the table set near another large, welcoming window there were scattered letters, photographs, forgotten plates, some chopsticks, and a pair of coffee cups.

The cups were not the pretty, slender type with the stylized handles that they sold in the Starbucks down the street with the four-dollar java.  These were the stout, sound ceramic mugs with the thick bottoms and liberal coffee stains ingrained into the inside walls.  One was a dark mahogany red, the words 'Yoshida Inc.' across it in small, neat, white letters, a hair-thin crack breaking the solid color with a lighter pink.  The other was dark blue-gray, a kitten playing with a ball of thread decorated it, and there was a medium-sized chip on the handle.

They were comfortable, familiar, completely at ease sitting there alone in that house, giving it a cozy, lived-in feel.  They fended off the stark emptiness of a place without people.

Ryoga stared, reaching out a tentative hand to touch the cool surface of them, but pulling back as if someone had shocked him, a horrified expression on his face.  He could not have felt guiltier if he'd accidentally set a shrine on fire.

There was something sacred about those cups, so comfortably set about each other, knowing, expectant.  They belonged there, side by side.

Ryoga slid into a seat at the table, eyes still trained on the two mugs.

He'd been engaged to Akane for near five years, they lived in the same house, ate the same food, and they even shared a bed, much to the consternation of Tendo Soun.  But when he was with her it didn't feel right, like a pair of brand new shoes, still uncomfortable after years of wear.  The awkward discomfort of not being able to have good conversation, being too distracted by his shyness or her temper, the nearly foreign way that she treated him when her family was around, almost as if they were back on old terms, friends instead of lovers.

So Ryoga sat in that kitchen, distracted, enchanted, jealous of ...

Of two coffee cups that sat next to each other, casting two shadows that became one on the surface of the wood.

He and Akane weren't even as close as those two coffee mugs.

Throughout their courtship and engagement, there had always been an odd uneasiness surrounding the two, an inexplicable awkwardness that should have worn off weeks after their first meeting, and instead, it hung in the air and stained their relationship dark gray.  There were no rich tones of love beneath their friendship, in fact...

Ryoga sighed.  It was starting to become apparent that beneath their friendship, there wasn't any love to begin with, at least not the kind that he wanted, the kind that he deserved.

He wasn't a masochist, his parents had never abused him as a child; in fact, he'd grown up in a practically perfect way.  This mother and father had been supportive and loving, trying to help him cope with his horrible sense of direction in practical ways, buying him maps, hiring people to lead him places when it was absolutely necessary.  He knew what love was, and he knew that he, being the good and decent human being he was on the whole, was deserving of it.

So why was he engaged to Akane?

Because she was beautiful, that was why, because in his eyes, she was perfect in every way, flawless and delightful to the soul.  Because she stirred feelings in him that he couldn't bear to resist, and because he needed her like a plant needed the sun or the rain, because his existence depended on her approval.  'Is that even love, though?' his mind questioned softly.  'Isn't that more like obsession?'  Ryoga grunted darkly, leaning forward enough to see a note on the refrigerator more clearly:

"Four, you were late, weren't you?"   It was written in loopy, graceful hand, though hasty and a little bit smudged, it was easy to see that a woman had penned the note.

"Eight, I wasn't, remember, two to one odds."  This next line was scrawled messily, and Ryoga smirked as he realized that some gender stereotypes did remain true to form even after years of being politically correct.

"Four, I called your office, don't lie to me, you'll go without for longer than you could possibly imagine."  Loopy again.

"Candy's in the jewelry box.  New rule: threatening me with the lack of sex is an unfair advantage and therefore barred."  Ryoga grinned, it didn't take handwriting analysis to figure out exactly which gender wrote *that*.

For a brief moment, he wished he was anyone else in the entire world.  Anyone else who had love and knew they possessed it.  He would have even rather been that man in the picture holding Yuki, because at least he seemed to be able to touch love, instead of just yearning for it.

He wanted to be anyone except for Hibiki Ryoga, the lost boy who was engaged to Tendo Akane, the lost soul

^*^*^

Kimiko hid in the doorway of the kitchen now, staring curiously at the man at her kitchen table.  He'd wandered into the room, read a few notes on the refrigerator, and then started staring rapturously at her coffee mugs, as if they held the secrets to life.

She rolled her eyes.  This was getting twisted.

'Damn it' she thought angrily, 'our cover's been blown to hell anyway; Nabiki came to my office for crying out loud!  Can't they just call and ask what the hell is going on instead of breaking in?'

She took a deep breath and decided that enough was enough.  Ryoga had to be dealt with; everyone had to be dealt with.  Kimiko was raring for a good fight.  It had been weeks since she'd had a good sparring session, and she'd felt antsy for quite a while.  Usually, if Soichi had time, they'd meet down at the local gym and work out for hours at a time, forgetting everything and just focusing on the liquid beauty of the art.

In her current state, Soichi would sooner impale himself against sharp rocks than lay a hand on her.

She was feeling a little bit bloodthirsty, and Ryoga was the perfect candidate: a violent, utterly dense blockhead who would not think twice about striking at full-force.  So in a moment of excitement, she stepped out and walked toward Ryoga.  Putting her hands at her waist, she stood with her legs slightly apart, set in a firm offensive stance.

Ryoga looked up at the sound, and saw skin, lots of pale, cream-colored skin, broken occasionally by the rise of a bust covered by black lace and a triangle of the same material in between the legs.

There was blood, and there was fainting.

Yuki looked down at herself, noticing she still only wore her underwear.  Narrowing her eyes in disgust, she dropped her stance and glared at Ryoga's twitching form, muttering, "Damn."

^*^*^

"Kimiko-san?" he whispered weakly, his voice still hoarse from disuse, and his eyes were blurred from sleep.  Naka recognized that hair, though, the brilliant red color that sometimes clouded his thoughts when he didn't mean for it to, and a peaceful smile that made him blush.

The redheaded woman on the chair next to his bed opened one eye quickly, focusing on Naka, awake and aware in bed.  She broke out into a bright smile and leaned forward, whispering, "Naka-kun!  You're up, boy!  Knew you were more resilient than that!"

Two things occurred to Naka at that point.

The first was that sometime between when he'd fallen asleep/passed out/went unconscious/whatever the hell happened to him, Kimiko-san had butchered her beautiful red locks into something that would make a hairdresser weep.

And the second was that she was speaking roughly, like a man.

He didn't like either of these things, so he reacted as anyone who had just gotten out of a coma would typically do, and slipped promptly back into unconsciousness.  Once again blissfully safe from the horror of his new reality.

^*^*^

"Hello?"

"Hey, how are you doing?  I didn't wake you, did I?" Soichi said, keeping his voice low and avoiding the venomous glances that he'd been fielding from the nursing staff for the past half an hour.

"Nah, I've been up for a while, how's Naka?" Kimiko asked, her voice oddly distant, as if her mind was a million miles away, on the other end of the phone.

"He was sort of conscious a few minutes ago, but I think he saw 'your' hair and then decided to pass out again.  Can I change back to a guy now?  I'm pretty certain if the kid sees that you butchered your 'do again he'll die on the spot."  He fought the grin that wanted desperately to surface.  It was certainly mean to find enjoyment in the frightened, flabbergasted expression that had emerged on Naka's face upon seeing 'Kimiko's' hair - but he couldn't help it.

"Fine," Kimiko replied, slightly annoyed.

"Oh, yeah," he said quickly, changing the subject, "I talked to a social worker this afternoon, one that works closely with my office, she said we have a good chance."

"Are we talking about adoption here?" she asked, her voice hopefully bright.

"You of all people should know that it's not that easy, Kimiko.  We've only got temporary guardianship, but it's better than nothing, besides, they visit us every few months, if we're doing a good job, we can opt to sign permanent papers."

There was a sad pout heard over the line.  "I suppose that's better than nothing.  Poor Naka, I wonder how he's going to handle this."

Soichi sighed.  "The same way all of us do, Kimiko, slowly, but he's got us, and that's more than we ever had."

Kimiko cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder.  She decided that tying a good, sturdy knot with just one hand would be too challenging, what with Ryoga struggling against the rope like his very existence depended on it.  Good thing she'd gagged him, God knew what type of horrible thing he'd be screaming if his mouth was uncorked.

She pushed her foot up against Ryoga's thigh and tugged hard on the cord, determined to tighten the knot as much as possible.  It wouldn't do to have him wandering around her apartment � again.

"Right," she said.

Through the phone line, Soichi could hear the sound of impatient struggles in the background, the rough sound of woven ... something, and Kimiko's occasional grunt of exertion.

"Um, Kimiko," Soichi started nervously, "what are you doing?"

She paused her labor for a moment, thinking about what she should tell him, and finally concluded that it was absolutely, positively vital that she lie. "Nothing much."

"You sure?  You sound sort of busy on that end."

"Yes, I'm sure." she said, keeping her tone light.  She pushed her foot against Ryoga's stomach, and used the hold to lever her weight as she pulled the ropes harder around his midsection, all the while ignoring his deadly expression and attempts to speak around the gag.

Ryoga stared at this strange woman in contempt, and glared at the phone in her hands.  Mentally, he kicked himself.  'Dammit, Hibiki, didn't Nabiki tell you that Yuki was dangerous?  You didn't even bother to check the premises before you busted on in!'

"All right, whatever.  Don't hurt yourself."

"Oh, I won't.  Bye, Soichi."

^*^*^

Soichi stood mystified in the hallway of the hospital, and slowly, he took the cellphone away from his ear, pressing the 'end' button.

There was something very wrong with that conversation.  She'd been up to something; her voice had sounded guilty.

It wasn't that he didn't trust her.  He trusted her more than anyone else in the world, and it just hurt him to think that she'd been keeping problems to herself.  He could have helped her; he could have helped her think things through, figure out a plan.

But he supposed that she had a reason for doing what she did, Kimiko always did, even when they were younger, and more rash, she'd always had a plan, always knew exactly what she was getting herself into.

But there *was* something going on.

He'd started to suspect the night when he had Kimiko had discovered she was pregnant.  Sure, she was under a lot of stress recently from her job, what with her biggest client leaving and all, but there was some sort of deep panic in her eyes he had not enjoyed seeing.

Shaking his head, he wandered back into Naka's hospital room, there would be plenty of time for questions later.

^*^*^

Ryoga knew now without a doubt that he was in a very bad place.

Had it been anyone else in the world, he would not have bothered to stay tightly controlled in the weak bonds of those ropes.  He would have broken out of them in a second and beaten the daylights out of whomever had tied him up in the first place.  Unfortunately, this was Tanakawa Yuki he was faced with, a girl who had her fair share of experience with lethal techniques, incredible speed, and an utterly merciless gleam in her eyes.

None of this made Ryoga any happier to be gagged and tied, bonded and stuck on the cold tile floor of her kitchen.  Especially since she was sitting casually on her countertop, a ruthless expression on her pretty face.

It bothered him even more that she was currently caressing the blade of a long, painful-looking knife.  It really worried him when she started to grin.

"Ryoga-san," she purred, pressing the point of the blade to his throat, hard enough so it drew blood, but not enough to cause any real damage, "it's so nice to see you again."  She idly twirled the knife handle, twisting the point that dug into his neck and making Ryoga wince from the stinging sensation of flesh being broken.  She raised an eyebrow at the sight of a single droplet of blood sliding down his neck.  "It's been, why, near twelve years now, right, Ryoga-san?" she giggled softly, and hopping from her perch, she flipped the knife expertly, the handle landing in her hand again, but the long blade was now snuggled tightly against Ryoga's quivering throat.  "But that doesn't really matter does it?" she asked innocently.  "Because I'm certain I still know exactly what you think of me."

Her eyes darkened.

Ryoga's eyes flooded with a black, ink-colored hatred, tainted with undeniable fear.  The tone in her voice alone was enough to make him remember what he'd done to her, done to the woman that stood before him with a knife at her throat.

His memory was enough to remind him that she had no reason to spare him an ounce of mercy.

^*^*^

What'd you think?




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