[Ranma][FanFic] Freaks4

[Doug Wood]

Based on Ranma 1/2 by
Rumiko Takahashi. Used
without permission.

Freaks4
A Ranma Wrong-Half
Fanfic by Doug Wood
===================

After Ranma and Nabiki entered her room, the middle Tendo
sister suddenly turned around. She folded her arms across
her chest, her eyes going flat and hard, while her face bore
a determined countenance, refusing to betray whatever she
was thinking. An uncomfortable silence stretched out between
them then, as she studied Ranma's face with an intensity
that caused the pig-tailed girl to gulp involuntarily.

When Nabiki was like this, all Miss Unflinching Business and
nothing else, she was more than a little scary to behold.
Anything could happen now. Anything at all. What could she
be thinking? Or planning? And, since she was now privy to
the secret, if it was blackmail that was foremost on her
scheming little mind, could Ranma meet the demands? Worse,
could she even *conceive* of the demands? Dreading the
answer, the pig-tailed girl quickly broke out into a sweat.

"Okay," Nabiki began, breaking that unsettling silence at
last, "how much money do you want?"

Ranma facefaulted. "W-what!?" she exclaimed, as she started
to rise.

A barely restrained tone of quiet desperation had crept into
Nabiki's voice. "You know...money? Moola? Cashola?
Dinero...yen, yuan, dollars, lira, pounds, pesos, francs,
deutschmarks, rubles, rupees, kopecs, filthy lucre, the root
of all evil? How much do you want, huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? So
how much already, huh?"

*Barely restrained* being the operative phrase of course.

All the way back from the dojo basement to her room, Nabiki
had maintained her composure. The effort had been supreme,
for just beneath that cool mask of neutrality had lain a
screaming child afraid of the dark and the boogiemen under
the bed. Seeing what had happened to Shampoo and Mousse and
most especially...*big stomach rumble!*...Ryoga, after their
latest escapade to find a cure for their curses, had
assaulted her confidence in a rational universe in a way few
things ever had before. And that was saying a lot,
considering.

"Despite what a lot of people might think," she said,
opening a dresser drawer and pulling out a cardboard shoe
box, "I don't have a lot. But whatever I do have...is
yours." Lifting off the boxtop, she pulled out a small wad
of cash, bound with a loose red ribbon, and started counting
out bills onto the top of the dresser.

"We'll just call it an unsecured loan, okay?" Nabiki
continued. "No wait, scratch that. We'll just say it's a...a
friendly little gift. Yeah...how about that? Or...or maybe
even how about instead of that a pre-wedding present, huh?
You're practically family, right? So...so you won't even
have to worry your pretty little head about paying it back!"

Ranma's eyes nearly bugged out of her sockets. She would
have face-faulted again, but since she had been doing that a
lot lately, she was a little tired from all the excerise.
"Nabiki...are you feeling all right? Why are you offering to
*give me* money?"

"So you can get back to Jusenkyo," she replied, a little too
hastily. "I mean, that's where you're going right? To find a
cure for...whatever has happened to you. You and the
others?"

Her cool slipped ever so slightly. Frayed nerves, on top of
a fluttery stomach, were a strain that was beyond her
ability to hold in check for very long. Normally, in a
situation like this, she would try to find an angle and work
it. But this time there were none, or at least none that she
wanted to pursue. What had happened to Ranma and the others
was just so *wrong* she didn't even want to contemplate how
to turn it to her advantage. That would have been pushing
her karma just a wee bit too much for her taste.

"Ranma," Nabiki said, still somehow managing to keep her
voice even, "please tell me you're going back to find a
cure! I...I don't ever want to look at Ryoga like that
again!"

Outside, a faint high-pitched noise interrupted their
conversation.

Nabiki looked at the window askance. "Uh...that wasn't...?"

Ranma sweatdropped. "His...uh...his new ears are
surprisingly sensitive."

Nabiki almost stepped toward the window to apologize when
she caught herself and paused. She blinked; she had been
about to say "sorry" to some grotesque apparition with the
head of a piglet on his shoulders. Instead she spun around
and flung herself at Ranma's legs, pressing her head tightly
against the pig-tailed girl's thighs

"Please, please promise me you'll go back and find a cure!"
she begged openly now, all pretense cast aside. "I don't
think I'm gonna get any sleep tonight because
of...that...that thing...on Ryoga's shoulders..."

As her head accidentally brushed up against the bulge in
Ranma's pants, Nabiki paused, looking up through the spread
of the other girl's chest and at her face. In much the same
way that she had once poked at Ranma's breasts to confirm
they were real when they had first met, now her index finger
probed inquisitively at the other's girl's groin. A curious
mixture of dawning suspicion and fear spread across her
face.

"Ranma," she said slowly, "if Ryoga has the head of a pig
and Shampoo has the body of a cat and Mousse has duck wings
for arms, then what happened...to you?"

Ranma smiled weakly, a sweatdrop running down her brow, and
tried to lighten the mood. The tenseness in the room was
rapidly flying out of view. So in a voice that was an octave
too deep for a girl, but a close approximation of her normal
boy's tone, she said: "Oh, this and that...heh heh
heh...shu-wing!"

Nabiki fainted.

Ranma sighed. "I really wish people would stop doing that."

***

Somewhere in a dream, Shampoo loped through the eternal
catnip fields. Rolling hills stretched there to a distant
and misty far horizon. Lush with the low green and a gentle
murmuring in a soft breeze, the air was suffused with an
utterly intoxicating aroma. It wafted over everything,
senses driving her mad with an unspeakable ecstasy.

She dove with joyous abandon into a shallow gully. Lolling
through the deep emerald green there, tickling her nose and
ears, she rolled over and over. The willing hostage of her
senses' rhapsody, she tore at the catnip leaves with her
claws; until she reached the bottom and was covered from
human head to pink cat tail tip in a deep, aromatic
exhilaration.

Shampoo would have gladly stayed there forever, lost in the
eternal catnip fields and lost in her own little dreamworld.
But then, when she was almost at the trembling cusp of
forsaking reality altogether, to live for nothing more than
a vision of green fields and sun and sky, Ryoga chose that
exact moment to clomp clomp clomp by her resting place in
the basement of the Tendo dojo and roused her from slumber.

Ryoga liked pacing. Whether he knew it or not, he liked
pacing a lot. Whenever he was lost deep in his own thoughts,
he would often resort to pacing back and forth, usually
without even knowing that he was doing it. It was a natural
enough thing to do, especially when there wasn't much else
*to* do. Yet while most people in his situation would pace
to keep active and/or to avoid boredom, it never seemed to
help him much. Pacing only seemed to accentuate his brooding
apprehension. Still, whether it helped him deal with his
situation or not, it sure seemed to be his preferred mode of
*trying* to deal with it. Convoluted, ain't it?

So perhaps one could say that he *did* like it, after a
strange fashion. Unfortunately what he liked happened to
make Shampoo a little annoyed. Since out of necessity they
had been around each other a lot lately, she had discovered
that his predilection for, and uncommon skill at, obsessive
back and forthing conflicted with *her* two favorite
activities...sleeping and...uh...more sleeping. With an
occassional break to clean herself. When no one was looking.
Just to keep things from getting too tedious. Or something
like that.

The art of the cat nap, she reflected with a drowsy sigh.
Was there anything more sublime in this world than finding a
warm place, preferably in the sun, and lying down for a nice
snooze? Before her transformation by the enchanted waters of
the Null Pool, she would not have thought so. But just
lately, she had felt some new insight into the way of the
cat, some new appreciation for that ancient feline wisdom
which impelled them to sleep eighty percent of the day.

Sleeping was good, Shampoo had found, it was a very good
thing, indeed. In the warmth of the sun, it was a soothing,
luxurious experience unlike any she had ever felt before.
All the piled-up cares and inconveniences of the world were
swept away in the sybaritic sunlit basking, almost as if
they had never been. And what about stretching after a nice
long nap? Oh bliss! Thy name was stretching! There could be
no mistake about it -- stretching one's limbs in the warm
dappled glow of gently falling sunlight would have been
illegal for minors if their elders but suspected the carnal
rapture that it engendered.

Unfortunately, while each activity might have their merits,
sleeping and pacing, particularly when they were being
performed by two people and occuring in close relative
proximity to one another, mixed with all the success of...oh
say...pigs and cats. On a good day. Not much, in other
words.

And while Ryoga could have cared less what Shampoo was doing
as he blindly paced across the cramped dojo basement
(sleeping being a rather passive passtime after all, that
did not interfere much with anything or anyone, unless there
was loud snoring involved), the same alas could not be said
for Shampoo, whose passive passtime required certain pre-
requisites before it could be considered even a marginal
success.

Namely, a welcome concatenation of quiet, sunlight, and no
obsessive pacing Pig Boys to wake her up every ten freaking
seconds after she closed her eyes. A bit closer to the
point, Ryoga was really beginning to get on her nerves.

As he reached the end of his short pacing route and turned
around to start the second leg, he suddenly squealed at
Mousse, who was leaning against a wall in a dimly-lit corner
of the dojo basement, also trying to rest.

"Bwee?" He pointed at his wrist. *Time?*

Mousse looked up with a sigh. "It's five minutes later than
the last time you asked," he replied. "Look, Ryoga...why
don't you just relax? You must be a little tired after being
chased around Furinkan High School by the entire female
population. So why don't you get some sleep?"

"Bween!" *No!* He resumed his stolid pacing.

Mousse shrugged and rolled over, his white-robed back to the
Lost Boy and his face hidden by shadows. He sighed again,
but couldn't stop a bit of testiness from creeping into his
voice. "Fine. Whatever. Do what you want." *Jerk.*

The Chinese martial artist closed his eyes and tried to
rest. But as much as he wanted to, and needed to since they
probably would be departing Nerima later that night, sleep
would not come easily that afternoon. He found his mind
wandering over what Shampoo had said earlier that day, when
they'd landed in the suburban clearing and Ranma had gone
off to get his bearing, leaving the two of them alone.

*I say let's just leave Pig-Boy and go back to Jusenkyo by
ourrrrselves. What you thinking, Mousse?*

At the time, he'd just dismissed it. Shampoo had been mad;
that was all. And despite whatever differences they might
have, they had all gotten into this mess together, so it was
only right that they should stick together all the way back
to Jusenkyo to find a way out. But now, after seeing what
had happened at Furinkan only a few hours before, he wasn't
so sure anymore. Maybe Shampoo had a point about Ryoga. His
predilection for trouble had become more than a mere
annoyance; it had become dangerous, not only to himself, but
to everyone else.

The first time had been in Shandong, on their way back to
Nerima. Going back was itself not the wisest of choices to
begin with; they should have just stayed in Jusenkyo to find
a cure. He had argued as such, but was convinced otherwise
by Ranma. Even now, he still wasn't sure how he had come to
agree with the pig-tailed girl's reasoning. Maybe the shock
of the whole ridiculous situation had yet to sink in.

But Ryoga had gone out foraging for food and, stupidly, had
been spotted by a Chinese farmer. That could have been
bad...very bad. Although there was no reason to believe the
authorities had paid him any heed, the farmer had spouted
off to a reporter about what he had seen. Apparently the
reporter hadn't particularly cared if it was true or not; he
had an interesting story for his byline and ran with it.

Fortunately, it had not been a reputable newspaper; just
another supermarket tabloid specializing in UFOs, rice paddy
crop circles, women claiming to be impregnated with the
love-children of the ghost of Zhou Enlai, Lower-Yangste
Loess Bigfoot sightings, and articles about a strange race
of winged beings in the Bayankala Mountain range.

Geez, Mousse thought, how likely was *that?*

Oh wait...nah!

So, for what it was worth, a strange tale of the "Horrifying
Genetic Mutant Pig-Boy" had fit right in with all the rest
of the crap they published. And since it was rather unlikely
anyone would take it seriously, he had given Ryoga the
benefit of the doubt when it came to Shampoo's allegations.
After all, nothing really bad had come of it, and they'd all
had a good laugh. Except for Ryoga, of course, whose
pessimism and downright morbidity at times refused to let
him see any humor in their situation.

Well, who could blame him? Aside from Shampoo -- who seemed
to be coping rather nicely with her change after the Null
Pool, and who could still somehow manage to look cute no
matter what had happened to her -- Ryoga had definitely
wound up with the short end of the stick. However it wasn't
exactly a pleasant experience for any of them, yet every one
seemed to be dealing with it in their own way -- Shampoo
slept alot more now, Ranma was the de facto leader and
seemed to lose herself in that responsibility. Even he,
Mousse, had learned to make the best of it.

Okay, so he didn't have fingers; that was an annoying
drawback to be sure. But with scarcely the effort it took
others to walk, he could spread his wings and fly, really
fly. Feeling the wind rushing through his hair, while far
below the landscape unfolded in gorgeous patterns of brown
and green and reflective blue was an experience unlike any
he had ever had before.

Although Mousse had told Ranma that the flying part was a
hoot, it was far, far more than that. It was
almost...religious, for lack of a better word, in the
intense feelings it engendered. Sometimes it felt as if he
had been born to ply those swirling thermals, to soar high
over mundane human concerns, the lord of all he surveyed...

And he could survey it now, couldn't he? Although he had yet
to let on to the others, another side-effect of their last
trip to Jusenkyo was even more profound than the joy of
flight: His eyesight was steadily improving.

At first it had been barely noticable and he had dismissed
it; his eyes had hurt a little and things looked a bit
weird. It was only when he realized that it wasn't his eyes
but the intense prescription of his glasses that was causing
the problem that he understood what was happening. Even now
his vision was far from perfect, but it was getting better.
It was an odd sensation to wake up each morn and be able to
see...well, more than just indistinct blurs. Perhaps in a
week or two, he might actually be able to do without his
glasses. Scratch that, he would have to; by then he would be
able to see better without them.

If all of this was a result of the Null Pool, the loss of an
opposable thumb or two seemed less and less like a life-
altering disaster. A downright bargain, in fact, Mousse
thought. Opposable thumbs were probably overrated anyway.

Although he had doubted at first, probably due to the shock
of what had happened, when they got back to Jusenkyo maybe
they *would* find a cure. And if they didn't, then they
didn't. That was all. But things didn't seem so bleak as
they once had, not once he got some perspective, not once he
counted the positive aspects. Whatever had happened he was
learning to deal with it, just as all of them were trying to
in their own way.

All, that is, except for Ryoga.

Maybe it was just a matter of personality, but he was not
taking it well. And when he wasn't out being spotted, or
almost spotted as the case may be, he was becoming more and
more taciturn and aloof and angry. Downright disagreeable to
be around, if one didn't want to mince words. It hadn't been
that noticable at first, but one couldn't deny it now. Maybe
it would be better in more ways than one if they *did* lose
him somehow.

But now that he had taken that unthinkable step and admitted
to himself that Ryoga might be a problem, a hindrance in
their attempt to find a cure, the question was, how to break
it to Ranma?

***

Ranma checked Nabiki's pulse and determined that her heart
was still beating. Steady or thready, she couldn't tell the
difference, just that it was in fact beating. However since
Nabiki's breathing was regular too, Ranma supposed it meant
that the other girl had just fainted. At least, thank
goodness, she hadn't had a coronary thrombosis or something.
Not knowing what else to do in such a situation, she scooped
up the unconscious Nabiki and laid her down on the bed. And
then, taking a moment to fluff the pillow because it seemed
like the right thing to do, she put the other girl's head
down on it gently, brushing the brown bangs from her
sleeping face, and stepped back.

Maybe the fainting spell was a blessing in disguise, the
pig-tailed girl thought, a bit sadly but breathing a sigh of
relief all the same. Toward the end there, before she had
collapsed, Nabiki had seemed on the verge of hysterics.

Still it was quite obvious that if she'd hoped for any
assistance in getting back to normal it wasn't going to be
forthcoming from the middle Tendo sister. The money she
would take gladly; it was not absolutely necessary, since in
Mousse they had their own means of transport and they could
live off the land if they had to; in that regard, it was
like any other training expedition she had ever been on.
However the money might come in handy if they got into a jam
and had to grease some wheels.

But when she finally rose to leave the room and go back to
the dojo basement, to check in on the others waiting there,
her expression was still downcast. Money had not been the
kind of help she had been looking for in the first place,
Ranma realized suddenly. Maybe without even knowing it, she
really had been looking for someone to talk to, to get out
all the crap that had been festering inside her since the
moment they had emerged from the cave of the Null Pool and
grasped the magnitude of what had happened.

After all, it was all her fault in the first place things
were the way they were, wasn't it? If she had just gone by
herself when she'd received the Jusenkyo Guide's letter, and
not dragged the others into it, they would all be normal
now. Er...well, at least as normal as they ever were, what
with the curses and all. At the very least they wouldn't be
the freaks that they were now.

How had this all come to pass? She'd only wanted to do
something good for a change, to make up for the fact that
she was pretty much to blame for everything. The bread feud
had given way to the Spring of Drowned Piglet; the Kiss of
Death had given way to the Spring of Drowned Cat *and*
eventually the Spring of Drowned Duck -- talk about a big
fat red X on the Karmic Report Card that all was.

It wasn't all altruism, though. The Null Pool would have
cured her as well, so there had been a stipend of self-
interest involved. Maybe that was the reason why it had all
gone wonky, Ranma thought glumly; maybe she had been too
selfish. Whatever the reason was, the pressure of the whole
messed up situation was starting to have its way with her.
Powerful emotions were surging too near the surface. There
were times when if she dwelled on it too long, she just felt
like curling up into a fetal position and balling her eyes
out...

Ranma shook her head. What the hell was she thinking?! Yeah,
things were pretty messed up right now. Probably the most
messed they had ever been. However Jusenkyo was still where
it had always been, waiting patiently with the cure she
was...well...reasonably sure it possessed. It was just a
small matter of getting back to that place and rooting it
out.

And in the event that it didn't, she thought, suddenly
gloomy again, the wild and unsullied reaches of eastern
China were as good as any place to get lost permanently. It
was not as if a freak like her could ever come back here and
try to lead a normal life. Better to just go far away,
better to just disappear forever and forget about arranged
marriages and dojos and parents and home...

Ranma shook her head again. What the hell was she still
thinking?! She was losing it, getting all weepy and mushy
like that. What the heck was that all about? Things would
work out somehow, they had to. Focus, that's what she
needed, focus. Focus on Jusenkyo, focus on the cure, focus
on making things better for everyone. Keep things in
perspective. Don't sweat the small stuff. Just keep moving
forward to the goal and don't look back.

But still...that pendulum of emotion, that sudden see-sawing
from positive to negative thoughts, preyed heavily on her
mind. As she put her hand on the knob to the door, Ranma
sighed deeply. It had been a very long and trying day.

"I don't know, man," she said. "I just don't know how this
mess could get any worse..."

***

How could things get any worse? Silly boy...er, girl...or
whatever...this is how!

Nerima on a typical day was a pretty boring place. After
all, on a typical day it was merely another suburb, a
bedroom community of the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. It
was on a typical day not much different from any other,
really. While that might seem like a strange thing to say,
what with all the whacked-out stuff that went on in Nerima
from time to time, the challenges, the duels, the panty
theft, the occasional wandering martial artist, the
supernatural spookiness, the panty theft, the thing that
most outsiders could not comprehend was that the seemingly
frequent martial arts insanity that made the otherwise
unassuming Nerima ward an interesting place as opposed to a
boring place was actually *a*typical.

And while when the craziness did happen, it seemed to go on
and on ad nauseum, ad infinitum, nothing really goes on
forever. Normalacy is the necessary oil in the machinery of
kookiness, and so there is not much that can continue
unabated without at least a small tea break to allow people
caught up in it to catch their breath.

And that's just the way of things...unless of course one
includes in that estimation the neighboring town of
Tomobiki, which was *sui generis,* a class unto its own; and
was generally perceived among the international community of
nuclear physicists and other higher-order dinkum thinkums
not to adhere to the conventional standards of the
space/time continuum as defined by Einstein, Hawking, or
Dirac...or Newton. Or Euclid. (Hell, maybe even Galileo
would have recanted on his own volition, without any
Inquisition cattle-prodding necessary to make him see the
error of his ways. Tomobiki, you see, had that kind of
effect on people.)

However such a comparison would be grossly unfair to Nerima,
so we won't indulge it. In fact, it would be a grossly
unfair comparison to...oh let's say...the *Bizarro World,*
but that's an entirely different story for another
space/time altogether.

But in Nerima, to get back to this story, most of the time,
it was -- surprise, surprise -- a pretty mundane place. Now
make no mistake about it, when something did blow through,
usually with all the subtlety of a class four typhoon, it
was most definitely a place on the map, a place to be
reckoned with. But without anything of undue interest
happening, it quickly and quite gratefully reverted back to
the status quo, just another nice, quiet place to raise some
kids, a city with a good school system, non-existent crime
rate, a decent public library, a zoo, clean streets, lots of
smiling, happy people, a bit congested traffic-wise at
times, but hey! nothing's perfect, etc etc etc. And this was
actually considered a good thing, too.

And that's pretty much how it had been in Nerima since Ranma
had departed the scene to who knew where. Nice. Quiet for a
change. A respite of *typicality*. And as one day led into
the next with no let-up, memories of the martial arts weirdness
that made for atypical days had slowly begun to fade. And it
was as if there was a great proverbial sigh of communal relief.
Cautiously at first, and then with a kind of crazed abandon,
for a few weeks, the citizens of Nerima gorged themselves on
a steady diet of...normalacy.

And it made Happosai want to puke. He was squatting on the
edge of an apartment building, a full bag of panties and
other silky unmentionables by his side, looking out over the
vast spread of Nerima's shingled rooftops and narrow roads.
The sun's golden presence had dwindled in the sky, and now
twilight spread evenly, the shadows growing. The black
handerkerchief wrapped about his head and tied beneath his
nose could barely conceal the dejected expression that
creased his wizened features. Everything was all so *normal*
and *nice* now that Ranma had disappeared.

Normal.

Nice.

Bah, normal! Happosai thought vehemently. Bad cess on nice!
If he wanted *normal* and *nice,* he could get that in an
old folk's home, eating oatmeal porridge with a plastic
spoon, soaking in too-hot baths, comparing medication, and
staring out a picture window at a squirrel scampering around
a dead tree with the other senile citizens. Normal was
boring! Normal sucked! And Nice? Nice was a kissing cousin
to normal! What he craved most of all was the old sense of
excitement, the capital *a*typical feeling that *anything*
could happen. And lately there just hadn't been any to be
had.

And the reason? It had taken a while to admit it to himself,
but the truth was plain to see and hard to ignore, no matter
how much he hated to acknowledge it. Simply put, he missed
having Ranma around. Missed the frequent rooftop chasing,
the taunting, the challenges to his authority. He had the
most annoying habit of sticking his nose in at the most
inopportune moments. And it was true that the boy's martial
arts skills, while admittedly flashy and even sometimes
downright surprising in their ingenuity (but all the same
limited compared to his own) could still ruin his plans with
a bit of luck. Really more an annoyance than a true
challenge to someone of his ancient wisdom and skill, there
were still times when Ranma had gotten under his skin.

But with him out of the picture, there was no one to even
*try* to challenge him. True, some still did -- Nerima did
not lack for moral outrage. But it was not the same. Oh, it
was the same game, perhaps, played by the same rules, but
all the same not the same, if you but caught his drift. It
had not the same spirit.

And so with no one to get in the way, with free reign over
the clothes' lines and lingerie hangers of the city's
thoroughly-outraged female populace, the old lecher had
discovered a very strange thing. The thrill of stealing
panties had become somewhat lackluster, somewhat lacking.
Er...not enough to actually stop him from *doing* it, let's
not get crazy here, but the bloomer, so to speak, had
definitely fallen off the rose. Or the clothes' line. Or the
lingerie hanger. Or whatever.

No, not even the latest issue of *Butt Naked Bi-Weekly,*
which he was currently holding with two sweating little
wrinkled hands, could break him free of his bored malaise.

Surely, Happosai thought, dogearing a page and putting down
the magazine, that was the worst sign of his decline. He
turned his face to the sky, his eyes going very large and
glistening with star-like tears. Oh what a sad and tired end
this was to what had been really, when he stopped to think
about it, one heck of a terrific life, what with the
underwear stealing and skirt-flipping and female frisking
and all.

He sighed wearily, an old man sigh. There were so many bras
and panties and silk teddies out there in that great big
world, so many lovely ladies to ogle and drool over...and so
little time left. And now a small portion of the joy it had
once given him was gone.

And it was all Ranma's fault of course. Ranma...ungrateful
whelp...always trying to stop him from indulging in the
finer things in life. Ranma whose Jusenkyo curse and magnet-
like attraction to all kinds of trouble definitely made a
typical day in Nerima atypical by any standard. What a
strange and cruel joke it was that had been played on him.
Even when the stripling wasn't around to get in the way, he
was still proving to be a thorn in Happosai's side.

Ranma Saotome was good, an almost-ideal student in whom to
pass along the skills of the Tendo school. Certainly he was
not as respectful as he should have been most of the time.
And when he went meddling where he shouldn't, the little pup
sometimes needed to be dealt with a harsh hand to remind him
who the Master of the School of Indiscriminate Grappling
really was. But despite all his incivility and ingratitude
and overblown opinion of his skills, grudgingly, there were
times when Happosai thought that he might even be very good,
nearly equal to the task of learning all that he had to
teach him.

Well, he supposed, nothing was meant to last forever, was
it? All good things and all that prosaic crap, right?
Another deep sigh escaped his thin lips, and he stared down
at the bag of purloined panties by his side.

"Ah well," he said, "it was fun while it lasted." And then
he scooped up the bag, hefted it over his shoulder, and
decided there was nothing left to do but go home for the
night. He leaped out into the cooling twilight air...and
snapped up a nice little red silk, flower-patterned teddi as
he passed a window on his down.

"Haachaa!" he said, grinning. "Nightcap!"

"EEEEKKKK!" The scream filled the twilight. "PANTY THIEF!"

***

Ranma quietly closed the door to Nabiki's room. Then she
turned and headed for the stairs. As she turned the corner,
consumed with her thoughts and hardly paying attention, she
almost ran headlong into Kasumi.

"Oh hello, Ranma," the eldest Tendo daughter said in her
usual pleasant tone of voice. "Have you seen Nabiki by any
chance? I wanted to ask her something."

"Uh..." Ranma thought hard. "Actually, I think she's lying
down in her room. I, uh, don't think she's feeling too good
at the moment."

"Oh no," Kasumi said. "Maybe she's coming down with
something. Did she say she felt sick?"

Ranma thought back to when Nabiki got her first glimpse of
the new and improved Ryoga Hibiki. Her first act post Pig-
Boy had been to heave her lunch into a wastebasket...which
sad to say, now that Ranma thought about it, was pretty much
standard operating procedure for anyone who did see him.
Either that or screaming at the tops of their lungs. She
still wasn't sure which was worse.

"Well, not in so many words," Ranma said. "But, yeah, I
think she's come down with something. I think she probably
just wants to be left alone right now.
She's...uh...sleeping."

"Poor Nabiki." Kasumi looked concerned. "It's been so long
since anyone's gotten sick around here. I'd better go check
the medicine cabinet to see if we need anything."

Ranma grumbled to herself. "Yeah. Better stock up on Swine
Flu vaccine."

Kasumi's eyes widened. "What? What did you just say?"

"Oh nothing." Ranma sweatdropped. "Just a little joke,
that's all."

"Really, Ranma," the older girl scolded, "I'm surprised at
you. It's not nice to make fun of other people's suffering."

As Kasumi turned to the bathroom to check on the medicine
cabinet, Ranma sighed deeply and thought to herself: Truer
words were never spoken. Then she went downstairs to see if
she could scrounge more food for the secret freeloaders in
the dojo basement.

As she was walking past the family room, Akane came inside
from the direction of the koi pond. In her hand was a small
packet of fish food.

"Hey," she said. "I thought you took a bath before. So why
are still a girl?"

Ranma tried to think of a plausible excuse, but she was just
too tired and disgusted with the whole situation to think
that quickly. "Well...um...you see..."

Akane's gaze softened. "Ranma, if there's a problem, will
you just for once tell me what it is? Maybe I can help in
some way."

The pig-tailed girl wondered where she had heard that line
before, and then she remembered. It had been right before
Nabiki had hurled into the wastebasket. No matter what
happened to her or the rest of them, she made a vow to
herself that Akane would never find out. She would rather
die than let that happen. A fleeting mental image passed
before her eyes of Akane, her face twisted and contorted by
a horrified expression, and Ranma cringed before casting it
away roughly. No way. Even if she had to lie through her
teeth, she decided, there was no way that she would let on
the real nature of the problem.

Akane looked away with an embarrassed expression. "There's a
problem with your curse, isn't there?"

Ranma facefaulted. Getting up, she offered a somewhat feeble
smile. "Y--yeah..."

"You're stuck as a girl again," Akane said. "Am I right?"

Ranma laughed nervously, all too aware of the thin ice of
truth upon which she was treading. It was as if she were
daring it to crack."Um...er...uh...just a little bit."

"So, when you came back that one night," Akane asked
solemnly, "is that why you were so adamant you had to go
back to Jusenkyo? Something happened there, right? And it
messed up your curse?"

Ranma bobbed her head in amiable agreement.
"Yeah...something like that." She didn't feel too bad about
deceiving her. After all, it wasn't exactly a lie. More like
a half-truth for a statement that was half right to begin
with. There wasn't anything wrong in that, was there?

"I knew it," Akane said, but there was nothing triumphant in
her tone. "I could just feel it. I knew something had
happened." She hesitated. "Well then...I guess you have to
do what you have to do." Her eyes went sad and downcast, but
then just as quickly they flared with anger. "You know, you
could have just told me, you jerk! Instead of running away
with hardly any explanation! I didn't know what to think!"

"Hey! I tried to!" Ranma cried. "But...what the heck was I
gonna say? I run off to find a cure and then I haveta come
back like this? I felt..." She faltered, but Akane was not
about to let her get away without a good explanation.

"You felt...what?" she demanded.

"I felt..." Ranma began. Her face got all scrunched up with
the effort to blurt it out. "I felt...stupid, okay? I felt
really stupid!" And ashamed, embarrassed, humiliated. And
scared? Had she been scared? Hardly -- terrified was more
like it. Not knowing how she could fix things or even if
they *could* be fixed. But that she would never divulge;
that she would keep to herself. Those feelings were also a
part of the secret, in a way even more intimate than the
unfortunate physical aspects of her brush with the Null
Pool. "So you happy now? Can I go now?"

Akane's expression became contrite. "Ranma, I...I'm sorry.
It's just..."

"What?" she said. "Come on. Now it's your turn."

Akane rocked from foot to foot for a moment, unconsciously
grinding the bag of fish food in her hands.
"I...I...just..." A moment later, the bag exploded, sending
powdered flakes all over the floor.

Neither of them said anything. They just stared at the mess
on the floor for a long quiet moment. Finally Akane said, "I
guess I better clean this up before Kasumi sees it."

"Yeah," Ranma said. She didn't know why, but the distraction
came as a welcome relief. "You want a hand?"

"No, that's okay. I can get it. Were...you going someplace?"

"Oh." She shrugged. "Just the dojo. Wanted to clear my head
with a little exercise."

"When are you going to leave?" Akane asked softly.

"Tomorrow," Ranma replied. "Ain't no point in putting it
off, right?"

"Ah." Akane nodded. "Right. Well, I guess I..."

"Yeah, I'd better...too..." Ranma turned to leave. As Akane
started in the opposite direction of the kitchen, she
paused. "Akane?"

She turned back. "What?"

"Why did this happen to me?" Ranma asked. "I mean...am I a
bad person?"

Akane looked at her strangely. "Uh...Ranma are you feeling
all right?"

"Sure. Never better." She smiled a bit weakly. "I just...was
thinking about stuff, that's all."

Akane's knees looked like they were about to buckle, but she
caught herself. She placed her hand on Ranma's forehead. "Do
you have a fever or something?"

"No. Why?"

"You said you were thinking about stuff."

Ranma slapped her hand away. "Come on, Akane. Get serious
for a moment here. Answer the question, please?"

"No. No, of course not. You're not a bad person. How could
you even think of something like that? Sometimes stuff just
happens. This is just a temporary thing. You'll find a cure
for it." She paused. "Ranma, is there more to this than
you're telling me?"

"Naw." She smiled disarmingly and shrugged. "You're right.
It is just a temporary thing. I'll head back to Jusenkyo
tomorrow and in a couple of weeks, everything'll be back to
normal. Maybe I'll even find a cure for the real curse,
huh?"

"Sure," Akane said. But as Ranma winked and walked away, she
wasn't so certain of that. Or anything. That feeling that
she had felt the first time -- that she would never see
Ranma again, boy or girl -- played over and over in her
mind.

***

Ranma was passing by Happosai's room on the ground floor,
heading back outside to the dojo basement, when the door to
said room slid back unexpectedly. She froze, as if rooted to
the spot, her head slowly swiveling around in dawning
horror.

*Oh no,* her mind whispered. *Not here, not now, not like
this! Please oh please, let it be anyone but him!*

Happosai's face suddenly broke out in a wide grin as he
caught sight of the curvaceous red-head. "Ranma m'boy!" he
exclaimed. "You're back!"

Ranma gasped and then tried to make a break for it, leaping
outside into the yard. But the aging pervert was too fast by
far. With trigger reflexes honed by decades of martial arts
training and an appetite of insatiable lust for all things
zaftig and frilly that had been growing for at least that
long, the old man pounced on Ranma's left calf before she
could take another step or utter a sound of protest.
Swirling around then like some lecherous whirling dervish,
Happosai quickly worked his way up her body, joyously
squeezing and patting various pieces parts, giving her a
methodically good frisking as if trying to make up for lost
time.

"Quit it, old man!" Ranma cried, trying unsuccessfully to
bat him away. "Get offa me! I ain't got no time for your
crap!"

"And as a girl yet!" Happosai cackled, gleefully oblivious
to everything. "Oh lordy! You are a sight for these sorry
old eyes of mine -- urk!"

"Urk?" Ranma repeated. "What the hell's an 'urk'?"

But she never found out what an "urk" was, if it was
anything at all. For Happosai had paused in his
unadulterated hedonistic abandon. Paused...actually *froze*
was more like it...at her groin. It seemed that he could go
no further than that general area. The old man simply clung
to her hip, with a fistful of her butt clenched in one hand;
the placement of the other...well...would bring about
99.997% of the male population of the earth to immediate
military-rigid attention. Excluding eunuchs, of course. That
being the missing .003 percent.

"Ah...well...now isn't that...strange," Happosai said, his
eyes going very wide and more than a little surprised. "I
can't quite recall one of *those* ever being there before.
How...odd. Very...odd indeed."

The old man suddenly looked up at Ranma with the quizzical
and confused expression of a child who has just been
informed by his parents that there is no Santa Claus,
Virginia my dear, that the Tooth Fairy is a fraud, that the
Easter Bunny is a figment of his imagination, and that the
precious Great Pumpkin will not be appearing in the pumpkin
patch on Halloween night, so sorry, life is so unfair, learn
to deal.

To Ranma, there was something deep and oddly satisfying
about that helpless look of fear that was slowly inching its
way across the old man's face. She couldn't quite put her
finger on it, but perhaps it had to do with the idea of
poetic justice. Seeing his speechless expression came very
close to making everything about the whole mess with the
Null Pool almost seem worthwhile in some strange and
backward way.

And so she smiled down at him. "What's the matter, old man?"

"Ranma?" Happosai said, his voice sounding weaker by the
moment. "I think...I think there's been some terrible
mistake."

Ranma's smile began to take on an evil glint. "I don't know
what you're talking about."

"But...you..." The old man gulped. "You're a girl...aren't
you?"

Oh this was too rich. This was too good. This WAS worth it!
"If you're lookin' for some cream for your coffee," Ranma
said, grinning from ear to ear, "you're out of luck. All we
got is Half 'n Half."

"Oh...my..." Happosai whispered.

And then he stopped saying anything. His body began to
shrivel up the way it did when he went too long without
touching any underwear. And like saran-wrap exposed to a
hair dryer, drawing tighter and tighter until achieving a
perfect air-tight seal over a bowl of leftovers, his grip on
the pig-tailed girl's clothes grew hard as steel, until he
clung to her like a second skin. His shrinking body made a
sound like air rushing out of a balloon...actually, no, it
didn't sound like that at all. It really sounded more like
gas being passed from a certain orifice, which will go
unnamed so that this story might maintain some sense of
decorum.

The old lech's grip was actually painful enough that Ranma
winced. "Hey!" she cried, "Cut it out! That hurts!"

Happosai said nothing.

"Hey!" She shook her leg, but he didn't react. He was
staring into space with two great big fried-egg eyes, not
blinking, not seeing, just staring at nothing. "HEY!" She
bonked him on the head a couple of times, but his expression
did not change in the slightest. "HEY!!" She started
slamming her foot up and down like a piston; the old man
blurred, but when she stopped, he was still there, clinging
to her hip, refusing to budge, eyes wide and brimming with a
whole lotta nothing going on inside da head.

Ranma rolled her eyes up to the sky. "Ah geez. Why is this
happening to me?"

***

Akane entered her room and flopped face down on the bed.
With soft sobbing sounds that were barely perceptible, she
began to weep into the pillow. Muffled by the fabric, her
face hidden, the intensity of her sorrow was discernible
only by her clenched shoulders and by the balled fists that
beat a futile tattoo on the sheets of her bed.

In the darkness, crouching silently on a limb in the thick
green canopy of the tree outside Akane's bedroom window,
Ryoga was but a black and furtive shape cloaked in the
shadow. His over-large piggy eyes watched her every
movement. Even separated by glass and wood, his nose caught
a faint scent of her clean, just-washed smell and his heart
clenched painfully. Something had upset her, that much was
obvious, and it was probably something to do with that rat-
bastard Ranma.

Yet as much as he wanted to reach out to her, to offer his
shoulder in comfort, there was nothing he could do. In his
current form, he might as well have been lost somewhere a
thousand miles away as squatting on a tree branch, looking
into her bedroom, not a dozen feet from her.

All his short life, he had been an outsider, whether through
temperament or as an unfortunate side effect of his hopeless
sense of direction. In some strange way that realization had
been as important to his training as a martial artist as any
kata had ever been. Being alone had made him hard, forced
him to focus on the Art. And maybe that was a good thing,
although such a path was never easy and he could hardly
imagine a less desirable one.

But now all at once the Lost Boy understood that he'd had no
concept of what being alone, really and truthfully alone,
meant. Being cut off. Being separate. Forced to watch from a
distance as life went on around him. Watching Akane now
through her bedroom window, watching her tear at the sheets
in some private torment, wanting so much to reach out, to
touch her, and knowing that he could not. It was such a
simple understanding that it defeated both the frustration
and the regret he might have felt otherwise when he arrived
at his decision.

*I...am...alone,* Ryoga thought. *I can never go back to the
ways things were. Everything that I knew and loved or might
have loved has been denied. All that is left to me are those
in the dojo's basement. For as long as I am trapped in this
hideous body, they are my only friends and family now, as
pathetic as that might be.*

For some reason, he was reminded of something he had read
once. Perhaps it was something a poet had once written,
Japanese or Chinese he knew not. "The great tragedy of my
life," the poet had remarked, "is that I was born six years
after my best friend died, and that I will die six years
before my true love is born."

Before leaping down to the ground, Ryoga glanced back one
last time through the window at Akane. A stray tear rolled
down his cheek.

*Oh, you poor deluded fool,* he thought sadly. *You knew
nothing of what it meant to be alone...*

***

When Ranma came stumbling down the basement stairs, she made
one heck of a racket. Her left leg was splayed out rigid
before her as if it were in a cast. Off-balance, she bounced
from wall to wall, knocking over cans on shelfs, crashing
into boxes, falling on the floor and getting back up. Mousse
hurried around the lines of crates to see what the commotion
was. And then he paused, adjusting his glasses.

"Saotome," he observed calmly, "there appears to be some
sort of...growth on your leg. If it's a tumor, I would
advise getting it removed."

"It's not a tumor!" Ranma exclaimed. "It's just the old
lech, Happosai!"

Mousse paused again. "In that case, it's probably malignant,
too. You should have it surgically removed."

Ranma ground her teeth in frustration. "I think I might have
to." Then she spotted a short crowbar hanging on the wall in
the tool rack off to one side. Wedging it between the old
man's stiff fingers and her hip, she tried vainly to pry him
off. But his grip was so tenacious, it was like their flesh
had been fused together. Her face going red with the effort,
the crowbar slipped from her fingers and clattered across
the floor into shadow. She looked to the ceiling and cried
out, tears of rage and disbelief rolling down her cheeks.

"AARRGGHH!" she aarrgghhed. "I can't get him off! The old
fart's gone catatonic! And I can't get him off of me!" She
started pounding a complex bongo pattern on his head, but it
did little more than allow her to vent some pent-up steam.

Mousse watched all this in silence, slowly shaking his head.
"I'd give you a hand...but I don't have one to give. How do
you wind up in these odd situations?"

"How the heck am I supposed to know?" Ranma said, by now
totally exasperated. "Maybe it's genetic? All I know for
sure is that this is really beginning to grate on my nerves!
Just when it looks like things can't get any worse, somehow
they do."

"Well, Saotome, tumor or no tumor, I'm glad you're back"
Mousse began. "There's something we have to talk about."

"So spill it already!"

Mousse glanced down at the still-form of Happosai.
"Uh...well...alone. In private."

"Gee, sorry, Mousse. But we seem to be a package deal at the
moment." As if to prove the point, Ranma shook her leg,
noting that Happosai didn't budge. She sighed hugely. The
old man was stuck on her like an annoying burr on her
clothes, or maybe like one of those suction-cupped signs
seen in car windows. Only this one proclaimed: Old Lecher On
Board! "Geez, maybe if I swipe a jackhammer from a
construction site somewhere..."

Mousse bent down to get a better look. "I've seen people
with shriveled skin after a long bath, but I don't believe
I've ever seen anything like this before. Do you think he
can hear us?"

Ranma snapped her fingers in front of the old lech's bulging
eyes. "Nope. Out like a light."

Looking up at her, Mousse asked, "So what happened to him?"

Ranma shrugged. "How the heck should I know? As soon as he
saw me, he started feeling me up as usual. Then he
got...well, where he is at the moment and then just
froze..."

"There is no God..." a weak-sounding voice mumbled.

Mousse looked around. "Uh...did you say something?"

Ranma shook her head and smiled brightly. "Nope. Not me."

Mousse looked at her askance. "You seem to be taking this
turn of events rather well."

"At this point," Ranma said, "I'm just going with the flow,
Mousse, going with the flow. Third floor. Nerima Stupidity
Department. Half Jusenkyo curses. Pig-headed laundry
hampers. Shriveled old lecher leg-warmers. Watch yer step
and have a nice day!"

Mousse sweatdropped. "I take that back. You're starting to
lose it."

"...Mommy..." that weak-sounding voice mumbled again.

"Shut up, old man!" Ranma bonked him on the head, but
Happosai didn't react. He just kept staring at nothing and
shriveling up even more if such a thing was humanly
possible. Returning her attention to Mousse at last, she
said: "Oh yeah, totally, I'm starting to lose it big time.
BIG time!"

"Well, I told you coming back to Nerima wasn't a good idea."

"I'm sorry, Mousse." The pig-tailed girl smiled; it was not
a smile that would engender feelings of warmth and assurance
to whomever it was directed. In fact, it looked a bit
crazed. "Gee, I must have missed your warning about
lecherous, senile octopi when you were telling me that. I'm
sure I would have given it a bit more thought if I had been
listening. Now what the hell did you want to tell me? If
Shampoo's fishin' out koi from the pond, I swear it, you
guys are on your own. I'll blow this joint and I won't look
back."

"Uh...no. Shampoo's over there, sleeping," Mousse said
nervously.

Shampoo opened an eye. "Koi? Rrrranma get food?"

Ranma started to growl and Mousse waved her off, sweat-
dropping profusely. "Nevermind Shampoo! You just go back to
sleep."

The long-haired boy quickly took Ranma by the arm and
directed her around the crates that blocked off half of the
basement as seen from the stairs leading down. It was about
as close as they could get to privacy, without actually
leaving and going outside, which they couldn't do in any
case.

Mousse drew Ranma close, glanced down at Happosai to make
sure he was out, and then said: "What I have to talk to you
about...it's Ryoga."

Ranma looked around and couldn't help but notice the
distinct lack of sullen pig-boys. "Oh no! Is he lost again!
You were supposed to be watching him!"

"No, he's not lost," Mousse reassured her. "Since it's dark
outside, he thought he'd stretch his legs so..."

"So he IS lost!"

"No, he just stepped outside." Mousse sighed. "You haven't
been around him as much as we have today. There's something
different about him. While on occassion I think that he does
get lost still, I don't think it happens as easily as it did
before. I think his sense of direction is getting better
every day."

"Oh yeah? And what's that insight based on?"

Mousse scratched his head. "Well, for one thing, I noticed
that he was pacing for hours down here and he never once got
lost..."

Ranma exploded. "That hardly means anything! You can't get
lost pacing!"

"Uh, Saotome," Mousse said knowingly, "this *is* Ryoga we're
talking here."

Ranma blinked. "Oh. Oh yeah. So you don't think he gets lost
as much, huh? You ask him about it?"

"Uh...no, not really," Mousse replied. "Just simple
observation. However even if I had, I don't think I would
have gotten a very...civil answer on the subject. And that's
partly what I want to talk to you about. A part of a much
bigger problem."

"Go on." For the moment, shriveled-up old Happosai was
forgotten. But Ranma could see where this was leading and
she didn't like it one bit.

Mousse took a deep breath as if girding himself for what he
said next. "Saotome, I think Ryoga is becoming too erratic.
He's become extremely sullen and very angry. More than is
normal even for him. When you try to ask a simple question,
he snaps your head off..."

"Well DUH!" Ranma said. "I mean, can you blame him? Take a
good look at him! You'd be sullen and angry, too! I'm not
exactly no happy camper either, ya know!"

"This is true," Mousse allowed. "But there is an important
difference between the two of you. You are..." He glanced
down at Happosai again. "...more or less in control of
yourself. It is becoming apparent that Ryoga is not always
in control of his emotions. On some level, I think he blames
us for what has happened." Ranma opened her mouth to say
something, but Mousse quickly held up a feather in lieu of a
finger to silence her protest. "Which is reasonable under
the circumstances. However, Ryoga seems to be walking a thin
line between simply *blaming* us and acting out on that
blame. That's dangerous, not just to him, but to all of us."

"I see yer point," Ranma said. "So does Shampoo feel the
same way?"

Mousse nodded. "Actually she was the one who started making
me wonder about all this. I put it off for as long as I
could. I didn't want to say anything, but now..." He sighed.
"Ranma, I know that you feel somewhat responsible for all
this..."

Ranma's eyes widened, but she didn't say anything.

Mousse continued quickly. "...And that you want to get
*everyone* back to Jusenkyo to make up for it. But you have
to face the fact that you might not be able to do so, or
that it's even desirable to try. Ryoga's a loose cannon. And
he could get us all into terrible trouble."

After a moment's pause to think about what Mousse had said,
Ranma stared hard into his eyes. "So let me get this
straight...you want to abandon him? Just kiss him off and
leave him as he is? That's pretty cold, Mousse, even for
you."

"I'm not saying we wouldn't help him if we find a cure,"
Mousse explained. "But maybe we could, I don't know...dump
him off someplace safe while we go look. If we do find a
cure in Jusenkyo, we can always bring a cask back with us."

"And what if the cure isn't as simple as pouring more
magical water over us, huh? Didja ever think of that? What
if it's a one time thing?" Ranma shook her head.
Unconsciously she reached down to scratch an itch on her leg
and wound up rubbing Happosai's bald head. "Think about what
got us into this mess in the first place -- the Null Pool.
The Jusenkyo Guide's letter said that it was a phenomenon
that happened once every hundred years or so. What if the
cure's the same way? What if we can't bring it back with
us?"

Mousse dropped his gaze. "I...I never thought of that. If it
turned out that way, we would be all but condemning Ryoga to
some grotesque half-life. Ranma, forget I even suggested it.
We'll work out our differences someway."

Neither of them heard the door to the basement opening
behind them.

"Geez," Ranma scoffed. "Take off without Ryoga? How could
you..."

"Bwee...?"

The sound was tiny, but it had the same effect on Ranma as a
gunshot going off right in her ears. She turned around and
saw Ryoga standing on the steps halfway down, looking at
both of them with those piggy eyes that always made her want
to glance quickly away.

*Oh no,* she thought helplessly. Perhaps he hadn't heard
anything. "Oh h-h-hi, Ryoga," she said, trying to smile as a
sweatdrop ran down her brow. "We...uh...that is, me and
Mousse were just talking. And your name...uh...came up.
Sorta."

"Buwheeen?" Ryoga squealed disbelievingly. He braced his
hands against either wall as if he had suddenly lost all
strength in his legs. *You're going to leave me?*

Ranma put her hands up, trying to calm him. "Ryoga, it's not
what you think! We were just talking, that's all it was!"

"Bwee bwee Buwheeee!" *But how will I get back to normal!*
The squealing became more harsh, more desperate, as the full
implications of the betrayal he had overheard began to dawn
on him.

Mousse stepped forward. "Ryoga, we weren't..."

But he was drowned out by terrified sound of the Lost Boy.
"Bwee bwheen BUWHEEEENNN!!" *I'll be stuck like this
FOREVER!!*

"Quiet down, Ryoga!" Ranma shouted. "Someone's gonna hear
you!"

"Bwee...bwee...BUWHEEEENNNN!!" *I'm...I'm...DOOMED!!"

With that final outburst of despair, Ryoga spun around and
ran back up the stairs. The door...he didn't even bother
with the door...he just smashed right through it, shattering
it into just so many toothpicks. And then he was gone into
the darkness.

Ranma started after him and then looked back at Mousse with
anger in her eyes. "Thanks a lot for that, you jerk!" she
said. "You and Shampoo stay here. I'll go after him and
bring him back."

She ran quickly up the steps, jumping over the ruined
remains of the door, and nearly headlong into Akane who was
coming over from the house. Fortunately it was fairly dark
outside; the only light was from the kitchen, ten feet away
and muted. When she landed, she twisted her body in such a
way to keep the shriveled form of Happosai out of view.

"Ranma, what happened?" Akane said, looking around at the
broken pieces of wood lying on the ground. "I thought I
heard P-chan. What was that explosion?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Ranma could just make out a
sliver of shadow as Mousse moved silently back behind the
line of crates, blocking himself from view down below.
"Uh...actually it was P-chan. I went down to the basement to
get a practise dummy and...well...he attacked me. Scared the
crap out of me. I guess I kinda...uh...threw him through the
door." She grinned a bit nervously, wondering if Akane would
buy the story.

"You threw my widdle P-chan through the door?!" Akane
exclaimed.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I was just reacting. Calm down. I'll
go find him and make sure he's all right, okay?"

"And what about the door?"

Ranma sighed. Was this day never going to end? "It was an
accident. Just leave it and I'll fix it when I get back from
finding P-chan." She started away into the darkness, trying
to keep the comatose old lecher clinging tightly to her leg
out of Akane's eyesight.

Yet while the simple ruse was successful in that regard, it
was not very subtle and quite frankly rather lame in not
drawing her attention to it. As the pig-tailed girl receded
into the shadows, a mere silhouette in the night, Akane noted
her strange, stiff-legged gate cautiously, a sweatdrop running
down her face.

"Uh...Ranma?" she said. "Why are you walking that way?"

The other girl didn't even bother to turn around or stop. In
a voice that seemed to Akane uncomfortably close to hysteria,
Ranma shouted over her shoulder:

"HEMMORHOIDS!!"

End4
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