Stand Me Now and Ever

Bye bye!”

“See you!”

“So what are you doing over break, Akane?” Yuka asked.

Akane winced as she stuffed her swollen foot into her street shoe. “Staying off my feet as much as I can.” She limped painfully down the steps. “It’ll be strange having Ranma around for the whole break. He usually goes off training with his father, but…”

“What did happen, Akane?” Sayuri asked. “There’s all kinds of rumors, but…”

Akane shook her head. “I don’t know. And I probably wouldn’t talk about it much if I did.”

“Ah, Akane Tendou!” cried a well-known voice. “Until you recover from the injuries so foully inflicted upon you by the cur Saotome and his honorless father, I, Tatewaki Kunou, the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High School, will assist you.”

Sayuri and Yuka scuttled back from the backswing of Akane’s mallet. “Drop DEAD, Kunou!” she exclaimed, and brought the mallet down. In her anger, she forgot her injury, and as she shifted her entire weight onto her right foot pain lanced up her leg straight into her brain. The stroke went wide and she crumpled to the pavement with a cry. Gray-red haze obscured her vision.

“Oh my love, you cannot bring yourself to harm me!” began Kunou.

“She said drop dead!” Something like a piledriver or maybe a lightning bolt slammed into Kunou’s jaw and lofted him high into the sky; with the last of his fading consciousness he realized it had been Ranma’s fist. “You okay, Akane?”

Warm fingers probed her ankle. She remembered how to breathe, and the world came back into focus. She nodded, with a shaky smile. “Thank you, Ranma.”

“I don’t think you wrecked it any worse, but whaja think you were doin’ anyway, tomboy?” he growled.

“Sorry. Kunou was spouting that you were the one who hurt me and I got so mad I didn’t think.” She glanced around. “Where’d he go anyway?”

Ranma grinned and held up a fist. “I sent him home express.” He picked Akane up, bookbag and all, oblivious to the staring eyes of Sayuri and Yuka. “C’mon, sensei needs to look at that.”

“I’m fine, Ranma! I can walk!” she protested.

“I know.” He sprang over the wall and took to the rooftops. “Not today, Shampoo!” he called as he cleared her bicycle.

Akane didn’t protest too much. The episode had left her more shaken than she really wanted to admit, and anyway, it was impossible to stay mad at Ranma when he grinned at her like that. It was really sort of nice to feel the wind of their passage, the power in his strong body as they soared from roof to roof. And to her amazement, he had actually avoided Shampoo!

“Aiya,” Shampoo murmured as she watched them disappear on the other side of the roof. “Airen change since father go ’way.”

“Tadaima!” he called.

“Welcome home, Ranma-kun… oh my.” Kasumi stared as Ranma, still carrying Akane, cleared the stairs in two bounds.

“You didn’t have to do that, Ranma!” Akane exclaimed, exasperated but giggling, as he finally set her down in her bedroom.

“I know. I wanted to.”

She looked up into his eyes, intent and serious, and so very, very blue… twin Springs of Drowned Akane… in another moment she would fall in and be changed forever…

He looked away, blushing. “Gotta go work out,” he said hastily, and was gone. The rapid tattoo of his fists on the striking post drifted up through her window.

“Baka,” she murmured, but whether she meant Ranma or herself she wasn’t sure. Balancing carefully on her good foot, she began the laborious process of changing out of her school clothes.

“Are you all right, Akane?” Kasumi asked as she limped downstairs.

“I’m fine, Oneechan.”

“Ranma was carrying you… I thought you might have gotten hurt.”

“Not really. I just forgot and tried to pound Kunou, but Ranma took care of him, and then he took me to see Toufuu-sensei.” She took one of the zabuton from around the table and hobbled onto the engawa to watch Ranma practicing.

He grinned at her and began a kata she had never seen him do before. It was slow and deceptively simple, with flowing, circular movements. For balance, she thought. Balance and control and maybe something else but I can’t tell what. Two or three times he hesitated, stopped, and began over again from the beginning. Finally he had it down to his satisfaction and did it from beginning to end, gentle and inexorable as water. When he was finished there was the sound of a single pair of hands clapping. They belonged to Nabiki, who uncharacteristically had come out to watch.

“Sugoi, Ranma-kun,” added Kasumi, who was coming in with a tray of lemonade.

“That was really beautiful, Ranma,” Akane said. He dropped to a seat beside her, taking off his tank top and fanning himself with it. “I’ve never seen you do anything like it.”

“Yeah, well, I wanna teach it to you when your foot’s better, so I gotta dust it off first. I don’t do it much any more, but… I picked it up from the monks at some monastery Oyaji and I stayed at when I was about twelve. Their style was so different from anything I’d seen before… Oyaji said learnin’ it was a waste of time, but… that abbot, he was a little old guy, looked like he’d blow away in a stiff breeze, and Oyaji started in about the Way of the True Martial Artist – you know how he gets – and well, that abbot just ’bout wiped the mats with him. I think that was when I first knew that, well, that I didn’t really want to be like Oyaji. Not as a martial artist… and not as a man either.”

Akane stared. Ranma never revealed his thoughts this way. She had never gotten more than the briefest glimpses of the confused, uncertain boy he kept so carefully hidden under his facade of cocky arrogance. But he had been different this past week, quieter, more thoughtful… his insults weren’t as biting and she could feel a rough affection behind them. The way he had carried her home this afternoon, and afterwards when she thought he might actually say something… might actually kiss her…

“Ranma? Did you… do you l… do you miss your father?”

“Huh?…”

Fish sausage cold against his skin and smelly and musk and catpiss and the rumbling purring meowing and the glowing eyes and then the claws oh please Touchan it hurts I don’t wanna learn this technique please Touchan lemmeOUT…

“No WAY!” Ranma’s snarl was as savage as the haunted glare in his eyes. If that bastard ever hurts Akane again I’ll… He thought of the things he’d done to Saffron and then wrenched himself back to present reality. As lightly as he could, he went on. “It’s just that with him gone, Ryouga hasn’t been around for a couple of weeks and you’re laid up… I’ve got nobody to spar with and I’m gonna lose my edge.”

“Otousan, why don’t you spar with Ranma-kun?” Kasumi suggested.

“Oh, Kasumi, it’s been too long,” Soun began to protest.

“That’s a great idea,” Nabiki chimed in. “Come on, Otousan! We haven’t seen you in action in ages!”

“Nabiki…” Soun threatened to go off into another crying fit.

“Pleeeeease, Otousan?” Akane said in her most wheedling voice.

Soun Tendou sighed. Not for the first time, he thought it might be convenient to have a Jusenkyou curse of his own. His old friend had found it so easy to be uncooperative as a panda. However, he was stuck as a man, and faced with his united daughters, he gulped and prepared to be slaughtered.

Ranma, however, treated the match as a training exercise. It couldn’t be the kind of all-out combat he was used to having with Ryouga, or even his father. Instead, he paced himself down to Soun’s level, always keeping just enough ahead that he forced the older man to stretch to his limits. Soun found himself enjoying the match as he had enjoyed nothing in years. He dredged up moves he thought he’d forgotten, and actually managed to surprise Ranma once or twice. Against Ranma, however, there could be only one ending. Soun made the fundamental mistake of launching himself in a flying kick, when Ranma was between himself and the pond. All Ranma had to do was sidestep. He did. And Soun Tendou found himself taking an unexpected cold bath.

“Oh my,” said Kasumi, her hand to her mouth.

Nabiki sighed and shook her head. That’ll teach me not to have a camera on me.

“Good match, Ojisan,” said Ranma, grinning and extending a hand to pull the older man up.

Soun’s eyes glinted as he took Ranma’s hand. His arm tightened, and there was a splash. “Yes, a very good match, Ranma-kun.”

Akane applauded. “Nice move, Otousan!”

“You… are… so… UNCUTE!” Ranma fumed, standing up, dripping.

“Biiiii!” Akane pulled a red eye, though the effect was somewhat marred by the fact that she was possessed by a fit of giggles.

Soun gulped. Pulling (shirtless) Ranma into the pond had perhaps been a slight tactical error. With some difficulty he tore his eyes from the redhead’s bosom. “I think I’ll take a bath and get changed,” he said, and fled into the house.

“Man, I can’t remember it bein’ this hot in April,” Ranma answered, taking a glass of lemonade and dropping to a seat beside Akane. She fanned herself briefly with her discarded top again before pulling it back on.

“The news said that a lot of restaurants and movie theaters are already turning on their air conditioning,” Kasumi observed.

“I believe it. Hey, that’s an idea! How about goin’ to a movie tomorrow, Akane?”

“Oh, Ranma-kun, how wonderful! Taking your fiancée on a date!” Ranma found herself in the frantic clutches of Soun Tendou.

“Not if I… can’t breathe…” she gasped. Where’d he come from? I thought he was takin’ a bath!

“It’s not a date, Otousan,” fumed Akane in exasperation. “We’re just trying to find someplace air conditioned. Honestly!” She looked at Ranma with a resigned expression. “I suppose now you won’t want to go?”

“Sure. Long as it ain’t a date or nothin’ like that.”

“MOUKO TAKABISHA!” Ki, golden as sunfire, blasted from his cupped hands, striking the shadowy opponent and turning it into a living torch.

What’s with this nightmare? Ranma wondered. I had the same one last night. And maybe before that. He stared at the dim patch of sky outside his window. I’d do it again, to Oyaji or anybody else that hurts her. What’s Oyaji ever done for me anyway ’cept messed up my life?

Gave you life, an inner voice answered. Taught you damn near everything you know.

Dunno if it’s worth it, he argued back. Nekoken, Jusenkyou, Kaori, Ucchan, that stupid promise to Mom…

Akane. If it wasn’t for Oyaji you wouldn’t have Akane.

And then he went and hurt her.

He was still awake when the patch of sky brightened to rose and then blue.

“That was fun, Ranma. Thank you.”

They walked along slowly. A few small children ran toward an ice-cream vendor, but otherwise most passers-by moved almost as slowly as they did. It was like the hottest part of summer, even though it was only April.

“The heat almost feels good after that theater.”

“Yeah, they were overdoin’ it just a little.” It had been chilly in the dark auditorium; he had even put his arm around her for a while and she had accepted it, not complaining, not pounding him, acting like… like a girl. Like other guys’ girlfriends. It was nice, but it felt… unstable and slippery, like the poles at Jusenkyou, and he wasn’t sure what he’d turn into if he fell off. Still, it was nice… “Wanna get somethin’ to eat?”

“Okay.”

“How ’bout Ucchan’s? Y’know she got that old AC last fall.”

The heat hit them the second they stepped in front of the open shop door, struck with nearly the force of a ki-blast. Akane gave him The Look – the one she saved for when she thought he was being especially idiotic. “I thought you said she had an air conditioner?”

“Jeez, me’n’Konatsu spent a whole afternoon puttin’ it up.”

“Ranchan!” Ukyou called. “I haven’t seen you in a week! Hungry? Oh, hi, Akane-chan.” Her brilliant smile faded a little when she saw that Ranma wasn’t alone.

“Hi, Ucchan.” He selected a table that caught what little breeze there was from the open back door. “What happened to the monster?” The air conditioner was on the floor next to the largest table in the dining area. A short, skinny guy was poking around in its innards, with the assistance of a couple of girls, one a teenaged gaijin with a strange blue “third eye” mark on her face.

“Puts out more noise than cold air,” the cook replied. “Want anything, sugar?”

“Usual, and a coupla sodas.”

Ukyou served them herself, contriving to brush against Ranma in the process. Akane turned away in cold fury and looked around the dining room. In spite of the heat, she and Ranma weren’t the only customers. The air-conditioning repair crew was part of a larger party, two of the biggest guys she’d ever seen and two more gaijin women, one a voluptuous white-haired beauty and the other a slender woman with long brown hair and a gentle expression, like a foreign version of Kasumi. Both women had marks on their faces like the girl’s. The gentle-eyed woman gazed intently at Ranma – but it wasn’t the kind of look women usually gave him. Intense interest, yes, but not attraction – and quite the opposite of predatory. Akane blushed and turned back to her okonomiyaki, slightly puzzled.

“Yo, miss! Can we get some more okonomiyaki here?” called one of the huge men.

“Hm?” Ranma jerked his head slightly in their direction.

“They’re from some tech school,” Ukyou explained. “Came in to use my phone and then said they could fix the air conditioner in exchange for all they could eat.” She shook her head. “If they do it’ll be worth all they’re eating – I haven’t had a customer all day except those girls, and they’re just stretching their money so they can gawk at poor ’Natsu-chan.”

Akane turned around. The kunoichi had shed his usual kimono in favor of shorts and tank top, making it impossible to hide his true gender. It wasn’t the heat that made his face pink, though. The girls that Ukyou had mentioned occupied the corner table, whispering and giggling to each other and apparently taking turns making small orders in order to bring the beautiful young ninja to their table more often. He didn’t seem to know how to handle the admiration his bishounen good looks attracted, and the more he blushed the more the girls giggled.

“Here’s the problem, sempai.” The youth doing the repairs held up a burned-looking metal object.

“Lessee.” The wider of the two giants held out a beefy hand. “Yup. It had a long hard life, and now it’s out of its misery.” He mimed a gesture of respect for the dead. “Nobody makes these suckers no more neither.”

“What?” Ukyou wailed. “You mean you can’t fix it? After all you guys ate? How am I gonna keep my place open in this heat?”

“Hey, calm down, lady. Nobody said nothin’bout can’t fix it. Ootaki’n’me, ’n’Morisato here, we never met nothin’ we couldn’t fix. Yo Ootaki, you gotta…” he slid into technic-ese. The tall blond giant began taking metal objects out of his leather vest and lining them up on the table.

“Where does he keep all that stuff?” whispered Akane as the big blond ran out of room on the table and started lining things up on the floor.

“Uh, same place Mousse keeps his weapons?” Ranma speculated.

The gaijin girl pounced on the shiny objects. Her fingers flew as she fitted pieces together. “Here, Keiichi, try this.”

Keiichi, if that was the skinny guy’s name, did mysterious things to the air conditioner’s innards. “I think that’ll work,” he said. “Bell, can you plug it in for a test?”

The brown-haired woman plugged the cord into a wall socket and bent her head as though praying. The air conditioner hummed and put out a blast of cold air. There was a round of applause and congratulations.

The two giants earned their okonomiyaki by effortlessly putting the heavy machine back in its place, where it hummed quietly as it lowered the temperature back to comfortable levels. Konatsu fled upstairs to change back into his customary feminine garb, and his fan club, deprived of their ogle-object, left.

“Here you go. Three deluxe specials, for the best fix-it experts in Furinkan-cho,” Ukyou congratulated Keiichi and his assistants.

The brown-haired woman gave Ranma an intent look. “Sometimes what seems to be the problem may not truly be what needs to be repaired,” she said quietly. “Just as sometimes a seeming attack may hide other motives.”

Ranma blinked. “Nani…” he began, but glanced up as a shadow fell across him.

“Excuse me, could you tell me the way to… Ukyou! When did you move to Okinawa?” Ryouga Hibiki stumbled toward the counter and dropped his backpack on the floor. The vibration could be felt even at the techs’ table; the two giants gave him a startled look.

“This ain’t Okinawa, sugar,” Ukyou chuckled.

“Nope, it’s hotter,” the dark-skinned giant put in.

Ukyou plunked a can of soda down in front of her newest customer. “You’re just in time to enjoy a cool-off, though.”

“Aww, just give him some mud to roll around in, right, P-chan?” jeered Ranma.

“Who’s P-chan?” Ryouga growled.

“Ranma, stop picking on Ryouga!” Akane snapped.

“Hey, you two! Anybody who fights in my place gets this over his head!” Ukyou put her hand on the giant spatula hanging over the cash register. “That includes you, Ranchan.”

The white-haired gaijin woman was staring at Ryouga with intense interest. She turned to her brown-haired companion and murmured something. Brown-hair shook her head and indicated Ranma with a gesture. White-hair looked again, then her gaze traveled to Ukyou and a smile spread across her face. She murmured to the other woman again, and this comment seemed to meet with approval.

Those two seem awfully interested in Ryouga, Akane thought. They were interested in Ranma too. She glared at the brown-haired woman. The woman gazed back, and Akane blinked. What was I thinking? She’s no more after Ranma than Kasumi is. Maybe I am too jealous.

“Everything okay, Ranchan?” Ukyou came over to the table and contrived to brush against Ranma again.

Or maybe not, Akane fumed.

“Fine, but we’d better be gettin’ back home. Ready, Akane?”

She stood up, and slowly they made their way out to the street.

“MOUKO TAKABISHA!” Blazing ki blasted from his hands, striking the shadowy opponent and turning it into a living torch…but the white-clad figure wasn’t Oyaji at all, it was smaller, it was…

Then he was sitting up, covered in sweat, his heart pounding from something even more terrifying than all the cats in Tokyo…

Silence from the rest of the house. Guess I lucked out and didn’t yell and wake anybody up. Jeez, I’m soaked. Only reason I’m still a guy is it’s so damn hot. He got up and rummaged in the drawer for a pair of fresh boxers, then padded downstairs for a quick bath. Even if the furo’s cooled off it’ll be better bein’ a girl than bein’ this sticky. Yuck, I hope this weather breaks soon.

She sank into the cool water. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of the night on the roof. Jeez, I keep havin’ the same dream over’n’over. ’Cept last night I woke up ’fore I threw the blast. They’re gettin’ worse. And what’s weird, that ain’t the way Mouko Takabisha works. It doesn’t set people on fire like that. That didn’t happen to Ryouga or Herb or Touma… what’s with this dream?

“Sometimes what seems to be the problem may not truly be what needs to be repaired.”

That gaijin lady in Ucchan’s. It was like she was tryin’ to tell me somethin’ but she wouldn’t say straight out what. Maybe… maybe I should talk to her. Yeah. Maybe I should. Ucchan said they went to some tech school… what was the name? Nekomi. Three pretty gaijin girls with marks on their faces… even if it’s a big place, somebody there’s gotta know them. I should go talk to her. Ranma got out of the tub and padded into the kitchen to heat some water. While she waited, she checked the telephone directory. Nekomi Technical University… take the train to… okay. He went back upstairs to see how much money he had. It would be a lot better if he didn’t have to borrow from Nabiki.

“Ranma? What’s going on?”

Akane was standing in the doorway, dressed in her jogging shorts and a tank top.

“Nothin’.”

“I heard you moving around.”

“I keep havin’ this weird dream, the same one over and over, and it woke me up. Akane, did you… notice anything about the lady in Ucchan’s yesterday?”

“The one who talked to you about things being broken? It was almost like she was trying to give you some kind of advice.”

“Yeah. Ever since Oyaji… ever since that night I been havin’ these dreams. Every night they get a little worse. I’m not sure why, but… I want to find her, ask her what I gotta do to stop these nightmares. I was just lookin’ to see if I had enough money for train fare.”

“I have some if you don’t.”

“You… you ain’t jealous? And you don’t think I’m weird, chasin’ some stranger halfway across Tokyo on account of a stupid dream?”

She took hold of his hands. “Ranma, I… I’ve seen your instincts be right too many times. If they’re telling you to talk to that lady, you should talk to her. I’m not jealous of her anyway, she’s too much like Kasumi. Now the other one, the one who was falling out of her clothes… maybe I should go along to keep you out of trouble.” She gave him an impish smile.

“I really wish you could go with me,” he said. “Somethin’ like that… I’d feel a lot better if you were along. But I’m gonna be on my feet all day, most likely.”

“Mmm. I think walking on it yesterday helped some. It’s not as swollen and the bruise is fading. It doesn’t hurt as much either.”

“That’s good. But you don’t want to push it.”

“I know. It’s just so boring, not being able to do anything. Maybe I’ll go see Toufuu-sensei this afternoon.”

“Good idea. And don’t worry about that lady with the white hair. I’m pretty good at avoidin’ grabby females, y’know.”

Akane thought about all the times she had seen Ranma with Shampoo or Kodachi or Ukyou draped all over him. “Sure you are. Oh well, I guess she didn’t pay that much attention to you yesterday. She was much too busy ogling Ryouga.”

“Ryouga? I didn’t notice.”

“It was really funny. She looked at you once, but then it was like you didn’t interest her. Then she was watching Konatsu, but as soon as Ryouga showed up she started staring at him really hard. Of course, Ryouga is really cute… and he’s got a great bod,” she went on, unable to resist the chance to tease him.

“Hey, what am I, mackerel jerky?”

She started to nod, but it turned into giggles. Honestly, Ranma looked so funny when it dawned on him that she was teasing.

“Kawaikunee,” he growled, but he was starting to laugh too. “I gotta get goin’. No tellin’ how long this is gonna take. I really wish you could come, but I dunno how long it’s gonna be, and most of it’s gonna be walkin’…”

“I understand.” She limped back to her own room, then returned. “Here’s the money.”

“Thanks.” He stared at her a moment. “Akane…”

She lowered her eyes. “Ranma… this whole week… it’s been really nice. Us mostly not fighting, and… and everything.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and for one stomach-dropping instant she thought he was going to kiss her. But instead he looked away. “I… I gotta find this out. Till I do…”

“I think I understand.” She had to blink hard for a moment. “I hope… I hope this works.” She listened to his soft footsteps on the stairs, heard the back door close.

“Where’s Ranma-kun?” Kasumi asked as she brought out the tea and cups for breakfast.

“He had someplace he needed to go today. It’s pretty far, so he wanted to get an early start. He asked me to tell you he won’t be here for lunch and he wasn’t sure about dinner.”

“Akane?” Kasumi knelt on the cushion next to her.

“What is it, Oneechan?”

“Things seem… different… between you and Ranma-kun lately.”

“Not really,” Akane replied defensively. “It’s just that, well, I can’t fight, and…”

“He hasn’t been insulting you as much, you haven’t been getting as angry, he’s been staying away from the other girls…”

“I don’t know, Oneechan!” Akane turned away, pink-faced. “He’s changed somehow, but I don’t know if it has anything to do with me. He’s… there’s something bothering him, something about his father.”

“Yeah, what exactly did happen that night, Akane?” Nabiki sauntered downstairs. “First Ojiisama picks a fight and hauls Ranma out of here, then the next morning Ranma comes back carrying you, and the bickering between you two comes to a grinding halt. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, especially about the drop in repair bills, but I’m getting this weird feeling that the books aren’t balanced. I’m not seeing something, and it’s going to come around and bite us on the butt.”

“What a haul! What a haul!” The tiny figure of Happousai bounded through the living room, panties escaping from his sack. “Where’s Ranma?”

“He had someplace to go today,” Akane told the wizened master.

“I don’t see Genma around. Did he take my student on another training trip?”

“Nope. The freeloader moved out for good,” Nabiki drawled.

“What!? I didn’t train him to walk out on a sweet deal like this! Not unless he had something better!” His voice trailed off as he bounded toward the dojo, leaving the three girls silent.

“And speaking of getting bit on the butt,” Nabiki began.

“It is strange that Ojiisama would leave here when he has his best friend, a warm place to sleep and enough to eat,” Kasumi added.

“I don’t think he had another fiancée for Ranma-kun at all.” Nabiki’s eyes narrowed. “This whole business stinks like last week’s fish. Akane, you’re the best at getting stuff out of Otousan. I want to know everything you can find out about Genma Saotome.”

Ranma was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t in over his head.

He had never been on a college campus before, and he had pictured it as a bigger, grander version of – well, maybe not Furinkan High, but possibly Kolhotz or St. Hebereke. Instead, he found blocks of buildings, most of them ugly pale brick with bands of windows, a few slickly modern steel and glass. Students rushed back and forth in little groups, in such a bewildering array of clothing styles and hair colors that maybe a pretty gaijin girl with blue marks on her face wouldn’t stand out.

“You look lost. Do you want the admissions office?”

“Huh?” Ranma blinked. He saw a short, plain girl with straight hair and freckles, her arms full of books.

“Are you looking for Admissions?” the girl repeated.

“No. No, I’m looking for somebody, I think she goes to school here.”

“She? Not a lot of girls at Nekomi. I probably know her. What’s her name?”

He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know. She told me somethin’ yesterday and… I gotta ask her about it.”

“Well, what does she look like?”

“She’s a gaijin with long brown hair and real pretty, sorta gentle.” There was something else, but he couldn’t quite think of it at the moment.

The girl’s plain face lit in a smile. “Oh, you mean Belldandy! You might try the Auto Club, or she lives with Morisato-sempai in an old temple a few kilometers from here. I’ve got a class now, but if you can stick around for an hour I’ll take you.”

“Okay, I guess. Thanks.”

She stuck out a hand. “I’m Sora Hasagawa.”

“Ranma Saotome.”

“Otousan?”

“Yes, Akane?”

She twisted her hands together nervously. Nabiki was wrong, she was not good at this kind of thing. Nabiki was the one who excelled at getting information out of people. And even though they had never talked about that night, she knew that Otousan was still deeply hurt by his friend’s betrayal. She’d always tried to protect her father from things that upset him – it bothered her to have to confront him about this.

“Otousan, do you have any idea why… why Ojisama might have… might have pretended to pick a fight with you?”

Soun’s eyes became tiny specks in a sea of white amazement. “Pretended?”

“That’s what Nabiki-oneechan thinks. And Ojiisan thinks something’s funny too.”

Pretended? Soun thought. Those hateful, hurtful remarks… some kind of act? For what purpose? But he knew his middle daughter to be a shrewd young woman, and if she thought so… and his evil master agreed…

“Otousan… how did you and Ojiisama get to be such good friends? Do you know anything about his family, where he came from before you and he started training together?”

Waiting got boring after a few minutes, so he started doing what he usually did to kill time. Before long his kata had attracted an audience, mostly female. One expensively-dressed brunette in particular was watching him with ill-disguised hunger. Ranma was doing his best to ignore her; she reminded him of the worst features of Kodachi and Nabiki in one lethal package. Still, he was getting decidedly nervous when the building doors opened and a horde of students spilled out. He caught sight of Sora Hasegawa, who waved and hurried toward him.

“Thanks for waiting,” she said. “That’s my last class for the day, so I can drive you over to Morisato-sempai’s place now, before I have to go to my part-time.”

“Can’t find a man so you’re picking up boys now, Sora-chan?” the dangerous-looking beauty purred.

“Oh, stuff it, Sayako!” Hasegawa pushed past the brunette and led Ranma in the direction of a nearby parking lot. “As if she’d know a real man if she saw one. She’s only at Nekomi to pick up a bright husband to boost the high-tech end of her family’s business – it worked so well for her cousin that she decided to do it herself.”

“Huh?”

“She’s a Mishima. You know, Mishima Heavy Industries? Here’s where I’m parked.” She indicated a small red car. Ranma got in, a little confused. He wasn’t sure what she was talking about – he’d seen the trucks drive by, but had never really paid attention to them. The girl drove out of the parking lot, threaded through a maze of streets, and pulled onto the highway. “Her cousin married some robotics expert who made them a fortune designing control systems, so she figured she’d pick up a tech-brain for herself – probably so’s she can grab a bigger share of the company.”

“So just what makes Belldandy special anyway?” Ranma asked, watching Hasegawa drive. He had only been in a car once or twice in his life. There seemed to be a lot to keep track of at once – it was almost like when Oyaji had thrown those bees at him.

“She just is, is all,” Hasegawa replied, never taking her eyes from the road. “If you’ve got a problem, you talk to her about it, and well, it mostly seems to fix itself. You’ll see.” She pulled off the highway, halfway around a residential block, and through a gate into the grounds of what appeared to be a temple.

The pretty brown-haired woman was sweeping the courtyard. “Ah, Sora-chan. If you’re looking for Keiichi, he and Skuld took the new bike out to test it.”

“Actually, Belldandy-san, we came to see you. This is –”

“Ranma Saotome,” he introduced himself with an awkward, sketchy bow.

“The boy from the okonomiyaki-ya yesterday. Won’t you come in? Sora-chan, would you like some tea?”

“No thanks, Belldandy-san. I have to get to work. Bye!” She got back in her car and drove off, leaving Ranma alone with the strange woman.

“Ranma-san? Please come in and have some tea. My name is Belldandy. I’ve been expecting you.”

“When we realized we had to escape from our master if we were ever going to have any kind of normal lives, it was Saotome-kun who did all the planning. He thought of scheme after scheme. Once he had us both dress up as women. That didn’t work, so he tried baiting a booby trap with a lot of food. For six months we tried. I almost gave up, many times, but Saotome-kun never did. Then finally he hit on the idea of stealing a lot of sake. I think we took about eight kegs. The master drank it all and went to sleep, and then we put him in one of the sake kegs, wrapped chains around it, tied a bomb to it and threw the whole thing into a cave. We plugged the cave mouth with a big rock, and that was that.”

“Then what happened?”

“We came back to Nerima. I married your mother and took over the dojo. Teaching kept me busy, and then Kasumi was born, and well, I didn’t see much of Saotome-kun for a couple of years. Then one day, not long before you were born, he came over. He told me that he was married and that he had a son. We talked for a while…”

“And probably drank a lot,” Akane added.

Soun laughed. “Yes, we did. Anyway, the end of the matter was that he and I agreed to unite our families. And I never saw or heard from him again until he brought Ranma.” He gave Akane a rare hug. “I’m sorry, Akane-chan. Your mother and I had such dreams for you, for the school… I wanted to see it passed on. I never thought that Ranma would come with so many… complications.” He took her hands. “I know that you and Ranma don’t get along very well. If you truly don’t want the engagement, I won’t hold you to it.”

She stared in shock. “Otousan…” Then she looked away. “It’s all right. I… I don’t think I really mind any more. I… no decisions now. Please, Otousan?”

“Akane…”

Akane fled upstairs. Suddenly, the idea of not being engaged to Ranma any more seemed almost scary.

“That was really good, Belldandy… san.” Politeness didn’t come naturally to Ranma, but something about this gentle lady seemed to demand it.

“Thank you,” she smiled. “Now perhaps you can tell me about this trouble of yours. Is it to do with the girl you were with in the okonomiyaki-ya?”

“Sorta. Partly. It all comes back to Oyaji, though. Everything that’s weird in my life is on account of my pop – and believe me, there’s a lot of weird in my life. Somebody like you could never understand.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said with a smile. “I’ve seen some pretty strange things myself.”

“Ever see anything this weird?” He picked up the glass of cool water and dumped it over his head. “How can I ask any girl to marry this?” she demanded bitterly.

“Jusenkyou,” Belldandy murmured. “So that was what I sensed about you. But that isn’t all…” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh no! Did your father do that to you too?”

“What, get me cursed? Yeah, trainin’ at Jusenkyou was his bright idea.”

“No, the terror. Cats? He trained you in Nekoken?”

Ranma blinked. “You can tell that too? You’re… readin’ my ki, ain’t ya? You’re good, lady. Feh, readin’ me cold like that you’re better’n Cologne. Where’d ya learn?”

Belldandy got up from the table and went into the kitchen. Ranma could hear the sound of water hitting metal, the hiss of gas. Her voice floated back to him. “Cologne, that sounds like a Joketsuzoku name. You encountered them when you were in China?”

Ranma made a very unladylike noise. “You could say that. You see, we were real short of food, and we found this village where there was a whole pile of stuff to eat, and Pop started chowin’ down and, well, I joined in, and it turns out the food was the prize for some big martial arts tournament the Amazons were havin’. I was like this, so I figured what the heck, I win, no problem, right?”

Belldandy came back in with the kettle. “I have heard something of their customs.”

Ranma, once again male, went on. “So Shampoo, that was the girl I beat, followed me all the way to Japan, and then she found out I’m a guy!”

“And by her law you are her husband – but you do not want this?”

Ranma shuddered. “No way! I mean, Shampoo’s okay, she’s friendly and cute and sexy and a great cook and just ’bout everything a guy could want in a girlfriend, but she, she ain’t…”

Belldandy just watched him with calm blue eyes, expecting nothing, demanding nothing.

He slumped. “She ain’t Akane,” he admitted.

“So you are engaged to two women, both against your will…”

“Three,” he interrupted.

Her eyebrows went up. “Three?”

“Yeah, Ucchan, the girl who owns the okonomiyaki-ya. My dad cut a deal with her dad to take her and their yatai, only Pop only wanted the yatai and he ran off and left her. She quit bein’ a girl after that, lived as a guy for ten years, just to train and get back at us. I owe her somethin’ for that, and she’s still pretty much my best friend, but… I can’t be what she wants.”

“She isn’t Akane?”

“You got it.”

“So tell me about Akane.”

“Well, she’s… the first time I met her, I was a girl. Everybody was freakin’ out ’cuz they were expectin’ me as a guy, and Akane just asked if I wanted to be friends. She was glad I wasn’t a guy, see, on account of she didn’t want to get engaged either, and well, most of the guys she knew were real… uh… well, let’s just say she didn’t have much reason to like guys. Then she found out I was a guy and it just sorta went downhill from there.”

“She dislikes you as a man?”

“Well… she says she does, but she’s like crazy jealous too, if I go out with anybody else she follows me around and stuff. She’s got a temper like fireworks, more guts than sense, her cookin’s mostly somewhere between bad and toxic, she’s always getting’ into some kinda trouble, and she attracts kidnappers the way honey draws flies. And when she smiles… anyway, ever since we first met I’ve wanted – I’ve needed to protect her. Half the trouble she gets into’s on accounta the nutcases that’re after me. And then Oyaji…” He took a sip of his forgotten tea. It was cold and bitter. “’Bout a week ago, little more, Oyaji’n’Akane’s dad had some kinda fight. I dunno what it was about. But that night, all of a sudden Oyaji just up and announces that we’re goin’ back on the road. He’s makin’ some kinda noise that Akane’s… that I can do better’n her. I didn’t wanna leave. I fought back, but Oyaji knocked me out, and the next thing I knew we were in the park and Akane was fightin’ Oyaji. She got hurt, and I… I used Mouko Takabisha on him.”

“Mouko Takabisha…?”

“It’s… my strongest attack. A real powerful ki blast that works off my self-confidence.”

And you’ve got that to burn, Ranma-kun…

“Anyway… I ain’t seen Oyaji since. But I keep havin’ this dream where I’m in a fight, I think I’m fightin’ Oyaji and I use the Mouko Takabisha. He burns up like paper – which ain’t what happens with that attack, but in the dream I don’t know that – and that’s when I… I always wake up, but every day a little later, and this morning… it wasn’t Oyaji I hit with the blast.”

He was silent for a long moment, holding the cup in a white-knuckled hand, corded muscles standing out along the length of his trembling arm.

“It was Akane.”

The cup shattered.

There was a long moment of silence. Then Belldandy spoke. “And you think this dream is… a warning?”

“Same dream over’n’over? What would you think?” He stared down at the table. “I have nightmares all the time. ’Bout learnin’ Nekoken, ’bout gettin’ cursed, ’bout the weird stuff that happens ’cuz I’m cursed. ’Bout gettin’ kissed by guys and likin’ it. But this… this is different.” He shuddered, then raised haunted eyes to meet Belldandy’s compassionate ones. “I was wrong, wasn’t I? When I took down Oyaji?”

She didn’t answer.

“I can still see it in my head, y’know. She slammed into a brick wall an’just slid down like some kinda doll… she’s been a doll. Twice. The second time I thought she’d died. I just lost it… no.” Something about Belldandy compelled total, brutal honesty. “I didn’t lose it. I went ice inside. I hated him so much I didn’t care. And that – it left me open, didn’t it?”

“Open? To an attack?”

He tugged on his pigtail. “Not ’xactly… feh, I’m better with my fists than I am with words. To… ’cuz I did that I’m turnin’ into the kind of guy who can – who can turn on the people he cares about.”

“You care about your father? After all he’s done to you?”

Ranma looked down and started picking up the pieces of his broken cup. “I dunno… I thought I hated him. But since that night… yeah, he put me through hell, trainin’ – but everything I can do he either taught me himself or put me where I could learn it. The other day I was goin’ over a kata I wanna teach Akane when her foot heals… I didn’t learn it from Oyaji, he didn’t even want me to learn it, but I’d never have heard of that monastery if him and me hadn’t been bummin’ around trainin’ so… che, I’d never even have met Akane if Oyaji and her dad hadn’t cooked up their little engagement deal!” He scowled. “But that don’t mean I forgive him. You know I hadda hide from my own mom? He’d made some stupid promise to her that if I wasn’t a ‘man among men’ we’d both slice our guts out, so when I got cursed…”

Belldandy smiled behind her hand. “I can see you had a little problem.”

“Yeah. Oyaji… y’know, I was pretty happy when he disappeared. He ain’t the biggest problem in my life but I got so many that even one gone is… well, it was great, y’know? And me’n’Akane, we ain’t been fightin’ as much and it’s been real nice, so I figured I won…” He broke off, comprehension and outrage almost choking him. “Why that… he set me up! That old panda… he’s been yankin’ me around like I was some kinda puppet! He set the whole thing up just so’s me’n’Akane would get together!”

“So now you will…?”

Ranma exhaled and slumped in an attitude of defeat. “I dunno. I gotta find him… but when I do… I dunno if I should thank him or pound the crap outta him.”

“I honestly don’t know very much about your father’s family,” Nodoka Saotome said with a little frown. “His parents had already passed away when we met, at least that’s what he told me. I remember that when he first brought me to this house, I was surprised at how few keepsakes of them he had. There were no letters, no photographs, not even a memorial tablet – only the household furnishings and his mother’s clothing. He never speaks of his parents. I have a vague impression that he and his father didn’t get along, though I don’t really know what makes me think that. I don’t even know where they’re buried; they’re not at the local temple and we’ve never visited their graves.”

“I wonder what he’s hiding,” Ranma growled.

“Ranma…” Akane protested.

“He don’t tell nobody nothin’!” Ranma exploded. “He’s always goin’ off and doin’ somethin’ stupid, and he’s never the one payin’ for it! He hurts people, Akane. Mom, Ucchan, me… Like this whole business, I figured out he was settin’ us up to get together, and look at ya!”

“I’m all right, Ranma. And I probably would have come off a lot better if I’d trained harder and did more running around on roofs and stuff.”

He relaxed a little. “Yeah. Well, we’re gonna fix that, right?” He turned to his mother. “So you got no idea where Oyaji mighta gone to?”

“Not really. There was one thing… but it’s probably nothing.”

“What’s that, Ofukuro?”

“After you were born… oh, your father was so proud! He could scarcely wait until you could sit up by yourself so he could start training you. But when you were just a few days old, I suggested that your father should introduce you to your grandparents. And he said something I thought was very strange, he said ‘That’s no place to take your wife or your child.’ I never brought the subject up again, but shortly after that he disappeared for several days. When he came back, he smelled like cigarette smoke and cheap shochuu. And he’d never say where he’d been.”

Ranma tugged on his pigtail. “That’s kinda weird. I can see the shochuu, Oyaji’ll drink just about anything… but one thing he don’t do is smoke, or even hang around much with guys that do, ’cept for Ojisan. I wonder where…” He stopped. He had a pretty fair idea of the general area where his father had gone. And Oyaji was right, it wasn’t a place to take anybody you cared about.

The end of break interrupted everything – settling back into the routine of school, where little seemed to change even with their new status as second-years. The hot weather brought out the worst in Principal Kunou, who booby-trapped the entrances with exploding pineapples in an effort to make the students late. Ranma, having seen his friends Hiroshi and Daisuke get nailed, simply picked up Akane and jumped through the open office window. With a little fast-talking he even managedto escape Hinako-sensei’s ever-hungry five-yen coin.

Akane still wasn’t cleared for gym class, but Toufuu-sensei gave his cautious approval for Ranma to begin her training. He started her on a program of stretching exercises that were more like hatha yoga than any martial arts training she’d ever done. It puzzled her at first – she had always trained for power – but as she found her flexibility and balance improving, she started to get an idea of how much more there was to the Art, and all that lay behind Ranma’s phenomenal skill. The swelling and discoloration in her foot went down rapidly, and while she still had to avoid anything that would make her ankle twist, she could walk with only a slight limp.

And the heat continued. It blanketed Tokyo under a haze of humid smog, made school a torment and sleep all but impossible. Businesses that had air conditioners, like Ucchan’s, did fantastic trade as customers flocked in for a brief escape from the heat. Businesses that had opted to do without, like the Nekohanten, sat virtually empty. Cherry blossoms withered and fell as soon as they bloomed. A whole month early, cicadas began crawling out of their burrows, and their buzz-saw whine filled the evenings.

Ranma was still having nightmares, and Akane was losing sleep from worrying about him. Sometimes she wanted to go into his room and hold him, to comfort him the way a mother or a lover would do, confident that in her arms he would be able to sleep. She didn’t dare, of course. The new, hesitant closeness she and Ranma shared these days was scary enough; she was afraid to take it any further – and she sensed that Ranma was too. Not to mention that if Nabiki found out, she’d never hear the end of it. As for her father, he might have said that he wouldn’t force her to marry Ranma… but she wasn’t sure how far to believe him, especially if he found her in Ranma’s room.

Nabiki didn’t seem to be sleeping much either. Akane could see a faint light coming from under her door, too dim to be her desk lamp, and sometimes she could hear the click of computer keys. Obasama’s hints hadn’t been very specific, but Nabiki had thought they might be enough to go on.

“I think I found it,” Nabiki said.

“Found what, Oneechan?” asked Akane.

“It’s a temple in Adachi-ku, the Ekou-in.”

“You think that’s where Oyaji went?” Ranma tugged on his pigtail.

“Well, I figured that a lot of men who want to disappear end up in San’ya. There’s a lot of undocumented workers and it’s really hard to trace anybody there. And he told your mom that his parents’ graves were in a place he couldn’t take a wife or child – which again sounds like San’ya.”

“Yeah,” he replied slowly. “I think we lived there once when I was a little kid. I remember livin’ in a rundown kinda place with a lotta real tough men. Oyaji worked on a construction crew and he used to take me up and spar with me on the beams – till the foreman caught us and he got fired.”

Nabiki shook her head and sighed. “Why am I not surprised?” Many men on the margins of society supported themselves by construction work – and Genma, with his martial artist’s strength and balance, would be an ideal tobi, one of the “flyers” who worked high steel. “Anyway, I lucked out on the Web. Found a homepage for some Toudai history professor who’s reconstructing a prewar neighborhood in Taito-ku, and turned up a Saotome Dojo. The last master was a Kouma Saotome, and that “ma” caught my notice, so I tried following his records. There wasn’t much – the neighborhood was bombed out in the war and the dojo was never rebuilt, and Kouma disappeared. But I did find a couple of things that seemed to indicate the Saotomes belonged to the Ekou-in, and their cemetery includes a Saotome family grave, with the last burial being in 1969.”

“And that’s where you think Oyaji went?”

“Well, I haven’t found any better ideas, short of physically combing through the place – and I’m not about to do that.”

“Guess I’m gonna hafta,” Ranma acknowledged. He glanced out the window. “Hope the weather doesn’t decide to break while I’m down there. It’s about the last place I want to be caught as a girl.”

“MOUKO TAKABISHA!” He watched his opponent go up in flames, stepped closer…

“AKANE! NOOOO…!”

Footsteps in the hall, quick and light and slightly uneven, and the shoosh of the fusuma sliding open. “Ranma? Are you okay?”

“Akane,” he whispered – part acknowledgment, part reassuring himself that she was all right. “It’s okay, just this stupid nightmare again. Sorry if I woke ya up.”

“You didn’t,” she told him.

He wasn’t looking at her, but he could hear the slide of her feet on the tatami, feel the mats give slightly under her weight, sense the difference in air pressure as she knelt beside his futon. She was nervous about something – he could tell that from her breathing.

“Ranma?” she asked in a hesitant whisper.

“Yeah?”

“I… I’m going with you tomorrow.”

“Baka!” He rounded on her. “Listen, dummy, Oyaji’s right about one thing. San’ya ain’t no place to take a girl! It’s full of drunks and gangsters and guys who don’t even see a woman from one week to the next! There’s no way I’m lettin’ you tag along!”

“And what if it rains, Ranma? What if you turn into a girl there?”

“Feh. I can take care of myself.”

“I know. But so can I – men like that can’t be any worse than the guys I used to fight my way through every morning, can they? And there’s less chance of trouble if you go with somebody. That’s one thing they always tell girls – never go anyplace alone. Sometimes guys think that if a girl’s by herself she’s… well… the kind they can bother.”

Ranma said nothing. She was right, sort of. He’d been worried about that himself, not that he’d ever admit it to Akane. Not that it scared him, exactly – but things had a way of getting out of hand even in safe, respectable Nerima. “Okay,” he said finally. “But stay close to me. And we’re not goin’ pokin’ around. Just to the temple, and if he ain’t been there, we come straight home. Okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“I don’t much like it, but…”

“I’m glad,” she murmured. “I had a really bad feeling about you going by yourself.”

He laughed. “You? Havin’ feelin’s ’bout stuff?”

“Well excuse me for worrying about you!” she huffed, and flounced out.

Ranma put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. Sheesh. It was kind of scary to have somebody worrying about him. He wasn’t used to being… tied to another person that way. It would be so much easier to just take off, to chuck the whole thing and live like Oyaji, working odd jobs for eating money and training on his own.

Never to have a nice room like this again. Never to eat Kasumi’s home cooking. Never to know the affection of sisters… never to have friends… never to see Akane…

To sneak and skulk and freeload and be like Oyaji, like the one thing he never wanted to be…

Feh. Even Oyaji’d given that up, at least till he thought up his boneheaded scheme…

Ranma was very quiet on the train the next morning. He stared out the window, saying nothing, just watching buildings and signs go by. Akane wondered if he was still mad at her for deciding to go.

When they changed trains at Ginza, he just stared unseeing at the floor of the compartment. They had the car to themselves; apparently hardly anyone took the train out here.

“Ranma, daijoubu?” she asked.

“Huh?” He looked up, a little startled. “Yeah.”

“You’ve been so quiet ’ you still mad that I came along?”

“Nah. I’m just wondering what I’ll do if we find him.”

“What do you mean?”

“What am I s’posed to do, tell him ‘Come on home, Touchan, all’s forgiven?’ Feh, I still wanna pound him flat! He hurt Ofukuro, hurt your dad, coulda killed you – messed me up again – what do I even want him back for?”

Akane clenched her hands together. “Because of what that lady said,” she replied. “Because he was the only family you had for a long time. You’re doing this for you, Ranma, not for him.” And maybe for us… or at least to find out if there is an us.

A mechanical voice announced their stop. Minami-Senju. They got off on an ordinary-looking platform. Ranma jerked his head toward a pedestrian bridge that crossed a bleak expanse of aging, rundown railroad switchyards. “The real bad stuff’s on the other side of that, but that ain’t where we’re goin.’ He looked around briefly, getting his bearings, then led Akane across a street that still bore the ridges of old trolley tracks down the middle.

Akane could scarcely believe she was still in Tokyo. If this wasn’t the “real bad stuff,” then she didn’t want to know what the “real bad stuff” was. They walked past the grimy windows of empty stores, past walls sprayed with slogans and crude pictures, along weed-grown and trash-strewn sidewalks. Some of the empty doorways had men sleeping in them. If it hadn’t been for an occasional sign in familiar Japanese, she might have thought herself in some movie set in an American slum. She stepped a little closer to Ranma without realizing that she’d done it. Ranma darted across another street and turned south.

They almost missed the temple. Ranma had been expecting a conventional wall and gateway, with the temple’s name on one of the gateposts like the one in Furinkan-cho where the Tendou family dead rested. Instead, only a break in the line of shops warned him. A squat, ugly ferroconcrete building sat back from the edge of the sidewalk, in the middle of what might have been a lawn once, but now was an expanse of pigweed and dandelions. A sheet of paper taped to the front door directed inquiries to a name and telephone number – presumably a priest, in case there were still parishioners who might be in need of a funeral.

“This place got a graveyard or not?” Ranma wondered.

“It’s probably in back,” Akane replied. “See, the path goes around.”

Sure enough, a vague line of weed-choked flagstones led around the corner of the building. Ranma and Akane followed it, and came to a walled enclosure with a low gate. Within was the temple’s cemetery. Worn, leaning monuments could be seen through the tall weeds and saplings that choked the enclosure. One grave, however, was freshly tended. The weeds around it had been pulled; the stone had been set more or less upright and freshly washed. A few wilted, straggling flowers lay in front of the marker.

A cool breeze swept past them. Ranma looked up. A line of dark clouds filled the southern sky, and the air smelled of rain. He frowned.

“Look,” Akane pointed. There was someone in the graveyard – a stocky man in a white gi, a white kerchief tied around his head. He stood before the well-tended grave and bowed his head in prayer.

Ranma stepped back. “That old…” he muttered.

Akane squeezed his hand briefly. “You’d better hurry up,” she reminded him.

“Yeah.” Ranma grimaced, and pushed open the gate.

“Took you long enough, boy,” Genma growled without turning around. “Well, since you’re here, come and say hello to your grandmother.”

Ranma opened his mouth, closed it, and walked toward the grave.

Genma clapped twice and addressed the grave. “Mother, this boy is my son Ranma. He’s not too bright, but so far I’ve managed to keep him from messing up his life too badly.”

Sheesh, Ranma thought. What do you call trainin’ me in Nekoken, you old shit? What do you call engagin’ me to every other girl we come across, just to fill your belly? What do you call Jusenkyou? But somehow he couldn’t fight the old man. Not here. Not in front of this grave.

“You too, Akane-kun,” Genma went on.

She hesitated. This was personal. This was for Ranma and his father, and she was an outsider.

Ranma turned around. “C’mon. It’s okay.”

Slowly, she joined the group.

“This is Akane,” Genma continued. “Ranma’s iinazuke. She’s almost as stubborn as he is, so she’s a good match for him.”

“Hey!” she sputtered.

The air was noticeably cooler now, and the sky had turned a dark greenish gray. Thunder rumbled, and a few fat drops splattered on the hard ground.

“One day they’ll unite the Saotome-ryuu with my old friend’s school, and then…”

They never got to hear what would happen. The heavens opened. Rain poured down in sheets, and where a moment ago a man and his son had stood, were now a red-haired girl and a panda.

“Feh,” Ranma said. “Guess you don’t get to dig yourself in any deeper. C’mon, Oyaji, let’s go home.”

The panda made an unintelligible noise. Akane took him by one paw and Ranma by the other, and the two girls led the panda through the rain-soaked streets, back to the subway station, and home.

NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC.

My husband read Last Gamble and said I had to write a sequel. The opening popped into my head and like a total baka I started writing with no idea where it was supposed to go. The scene in Ucchan’s is one I’d actually thought of when I read an old fic of Alan Harnum’s; my brain refused to let go of the image of Konatsu as a guy, being ogled by teeny-boppers. So I had Belldandy and wasn’t too sure what to do with her. G. L. Sandborn’s “The Cycle” gave me Genma’s mother; the only place a woman like that can end up is in the muck at the bottom of the mizu shobai. Sayako and Akiko really did share a surname before Akiko married; I couldn’t resist doing something with the coincidence.

San’ya is a district peopled by day-laborers, homeless men, and the flotsam of society. But it’s also the labor-recruiting center for much of the construction industry. As flaky as Genma is, he’s pretty reliable compared to a lot of “Yama men” (as San’ya’s denizens refer to themselves) and his martial arts training would make him an ideal tobi, or high-steel construction worker. I can really see him taking chibi-Ranma up in an unfinished skyscraper and having him train on the beams – to the great consternation of the foreman!

Clapping twice is a Shinto practice, but Genma’s religious education would be sketchy at best and I stole this from Tenchi.

The title is from, of all things, James Joyce. “Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.” It’s as good as Genma can expect, and far better than he deserves.