Ranma, Sailor Moon 1. Inner Thoughts

You know it's funny. I've read so many SailorMoon / Ranma1/2 crossovers that the urge to write one has hit me. Savagely.

But then an obstacle appeared before me: The fact that I don't know the first thing about Sailor Moon, having never actually watched the series. But I'm not about to let that stop me. Oh no.

Forget everything you know about Sailor Moon. It's not going to help you here. In actuality, calling this a crossover is a misnomer. This is a fusion.

* * *

Eclipse: The Dark Side of the Moon.

Prologue: The (incoherent) inner thoughts of Ranma Saotome.

_The way I see it, there must not have been martial arts in the Senshi's era, let alone martial artists. Not by my standards anyway._

_It's kind of sad, in a way, to know that an entire civilization could be so entangled with the whims of a single person that its only means of protection rested in those who were specifically appointed by that very same person and those affiliated with her. Those that could be called chosen._

_The gifted._

_From what I hear, in the Silver Millennium, no civilian had any combat potential whatsoever. Their fight-or-flight response had, for all intents and purposes, been surgically modified, leaving them as little more than harvestable resources in the eyes of the youma and their ilk._

_Really, it isn't at all surprising that the Senshi never even considered asking for official help in their shadow war as they subconsciously associated non-senshi with helpless prey, and if I think about it, their own past as regular untrained human beings probably had something to do with it. The sharp contrast involved in the sudden passage from normal to extraordinary must have crystallized the difference even further._

_I have nothing against them as people, because regardless of their status as vigilantes, their hearts are in the right place. They are loved by the general populace for a reason._

_However, I do have a problem with their abilities. Magic… heh. The way I understand it, their rise in the food chain could be described with a simple analogy. Start with a tall building, stairs and a VIP express elevator. Everyone could take the stairs, but not everyone could make it to the top, because it took effort, determination and time. Those three elements were all variables that depended on one another as well as the individual himself. It was possible to reduce the amount of time required by increasing the two other variables: effort to produce results and determination to maintain the level of effort. Also, because people weren't physically or mentally equal, certain people required less time, effort and determination to get the same results as others._

_Still, even if it wasn't feasible, theoretically any human being could become a martial arts master with enough time. The same can't be said for magic._

_That fact was dangerous because it opened the possibility for segregation, in spirit if not in practice. Because their magic made them different from everyone else. Because it made them believe that their magic made them special, which was true. But what wasn't true was their belief that since their magic was what allowed them to fight, the same could be said for everyone else._

_The logic was simple, if horribly wrong. If magic is what let people fight, then those without it couldn't fight and therefore had to be kept out of dangerous business. For their own safety. You don't have to be an expert at reading people like Nabiki to figure this out. I can still remember the worry in their faces as they adamantly refused to let us help. Refused to let us fight for our own lives. Again, their hearts are in the right place, but being underestimated was irritating. There are still some issues between some of the original members of T-MAG and the Senshi because of that first meeting._

_So they routinely and deliberately withheld information about the enemy when it could've helped others learn to defend themselves. The human race was not helpless, regardless of the Senshi's experiences in the past. This was not the Silver millennium. We would not lie down and die, waiting for to be saved from the darkness. Even if our saviors happened to be pretty girls in miniskirts with ancient vendettas._

_But maybe I just have a problem with authority figures. After all, the Sailor Senshi at the very least behaved like they had some form of authority._

_And that's another point of contention between me and them, just like it was between me and the Amazons before… well before everything. I am a martial artist and they are warriors. On the surface, the two paths could seem to be very similar, but there was one major difference between the two of them. Warriors worked for a government of one kind or another, while martial artists loathed doing the same. They had different methods and beliefs, Offense as opposed to self-defense, and..._

_And… and…_

_I'm fishing for excuses. In the end, I don't really have anything against the Senshi. I just needed to blame someone, anyone… just for a little while. But I know whose fault it really is. The fact of the matter is that the Senshi did their best to keep their war from going out of control and had managed admirably until those monsters got a hold of Happosai. The old freak is a damned fountain of life energy, especially as he is able to draw it from his own perversions._

_With that massive source of energy at their disposal, the youma wasted no time in opening a massive gate in Juuban, where their enemies most frequently appeared. The senshi were massively outnumbered and the armed forces were completely unprepared for the magnitude of this newest threat._

_Juuban was quickly overtaken and it was only through the quick intervention of the Amazons stationed in Nerima that the greatest disaster was averted._

_Cologne, alerted by her many artifacts and sensing that she needed to act quickly in order to avoid the worst, called the swiftest of the Nerima martial artists together: Shampoo, Mousse, Konatsu and myself._

_The elder directed us towards four strategic points with identical potted bonsai trees and refused to explain her plans, claiming that there was no time. She was right, but it didn't change the fact that it was just a convenient excuse. But, sensing the urgency in her voice, we obeyed and hastily did our parts._

_I__ arrived at my assigned intersection and shattered the asphalt to reveal the earth below. Then I quickly dug up an appropriately sized hole and carefully lifted the tree from its ceramic container before setting it down inside the opening. For a few seconds I anxiously stood there, puzzled and waiting for something to happen. I wasn't disappointed._

_Up until then, the tree seemed as though it was a perfectly normal, if miniaturized plant but all of a sudden, the green leaves of my bonsai glowed white before settling to a light pink. And then the thing began to grow. By the time it finished, it towered over the buildings that surrounded it and thick roots had sprung up from the ground, destroying everything around it._

_It turns out that the __plants we were carrying were the focus points for a barrier that targeted foreign energy. Anything from this world could go through without problems, but everything else would find their own energy drained and used against them. Since the barrier was self-sustaining, it was a great defense against the invading army._

_There were four trees for the four seasons. I had received pink spring, Shampoo had gotten green summer, Mousse had gotten brown autumn and Konatsu had gotten white winter._

_Unfortunately, setting up the wall required a tremendous amount of energy. We were later told that the people setting up the barrier usually ended up falling into comas after the fact._

_Cologne rerouted all the pathways directly to her. She took up work meant for four powerful Amazon warriors by herself._

_By the time we got back to the Cafe, she barely had enough energy to speak. With her last breaths, she explained the workings of the barrier to us and appointed her successor._

_Shampoo was now Matriarch of the Amazons, a position she was definitely not ready for, but Cologne had her reasons and apparently they were very good ones. Somehow, she managed to her convince her peers in China of the validity of her request and the suitability of her granddaughter, all in the single hour between our departure and our arrival. Shampoo was now directly responsible for over five thousand women, men and children._

_In all fairness, the position wasn't very time-consuming. The Joketsuzoku were a race of Warriors and mostly managed themselves. However, the newest Matriarch was also the liaison between the newly formed Tokyo Martial Arts Guild (T-MAG), the JSDF and the Sailor Senshi._

_In terms of outright usefulness, when taking everything and everyone in consideration, the Amazons were definitely the most powerful force battling the youma, followed by the Senshi, T-MAG and the JSDF. _

_So Shampoo is pretty much responsible for the entire war effort. Scary thought, huh?_

_It occurred to me one day that with Cologne gone and Happosai captured, I was the premier martial artist in Tokyo._

_Funny… winning by what amounts to disqualification feels a lot like losing. Anything Goes huh? Not really._

_What am I doing? Wasting time thinking about the past… avoiding what I really came here to think about. The art is changing inside me, in all of us really except the Amazons. Martial artists don't participate in wars. We are wanderers, hermits and monks. Fighting in wars is the business of warriors and I fear that I am turning into one. _

_The art is to be used solely for self-defense or the defense of others. That is our creed, our gospel. It is the one aspect of our general beliefs that no self-respecting martial artist would betray. Death may come as a result of our actions but we never fight solely to destroy another. Even my old man and Mr. Tendo didn't break it when they trapped the old freak in that hole. They fought to wound him in order to seal him (like they would any other dangerous facet of the art), but they didn't kill him outright. _

_Some of my friends have broken (or tried to break) this rule in the past, but that's different. Happosai has no self-respect, the Amazons are warriors, Ukyo is a cook, Kuno a wannabe samurai and Ryoga a brawler. They can fight like any martial artist, mimic the movements perfectly, but fighting was never what the art was about. They never managed to glean off the intention. To protect life above all else._

_And that's what worries me the most. The art is changing. From defend, disarm and defeat to counter, damage and destroy. Fighting these monsters… fighting with intent to kill, I don't like it at all. I don't like what I'm becoming. I'm scared. I'm scared that one day these new lethal instincts will be unleashed on another human being by accident… or worse. _

_I don't really have a choice in the matter. None of us do, not anymore. Win or die, that's what it comes down to. But hey, I gotta look on the bright side._

_At least I don't have to go to school anymore._


	2. Homecoming

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to comment. Really, it means a lot to me.

Lerris, you're right. I did use recounting to shorten the length of this fic, but is that so bad? There is such a thing as being concise. One of the things I've noticed with fanfiction is that the authors rarely make the attempt to keep things short and sweet. Their fics just drag on endlessly. Reading something like that is tedious and boring. Quite frankly, I'm not looking to waste your time here. I'm looking to entertain. After I'm done writing this fic, I might write a prequel (along with the sequel I have planned) but only if it is needed.

If you hang around Hawk's fanfiction forum, then you've already seen most of this. Back then, the title was 'Art of War.' What you see here is simply the polished version of what is posted there. In a few days, I should be able to post the last of what I had prewritten.

By the way, the plot of this story is pretty much set in stone. Everything that comes after that has yet to be determined.

* * *

Eclipse: The Dark Side of the Moon.

Chapter 1: Homecoming.

_I was told that the Sailor Senshi were all princesses in their past lives, but I didn't believe it until I met them in person. I can't deny that there is something regal about those girls, especially the Outers. They all seem to act with intuitive dignity, without coming across as overbearing. Someone once told me that they behaved like ambassadors, like they were on a diplomatic mission on friendly soil. _

_Honestly, I find it remarkable to see just how normal they can be when they're not in uniform (and when they don't know they're being watched) but I also think that it makes them particularly unfit for direct combat. As part of the ruling class, they are, by necessity, too preoccupied by the big picture to see the small details, even when they are right in front of them (or hiding behind the drapes).  
_

_I'm not saying this out of envy or anything, since there's nothing they have that I want. After meeting Kuno, I can't really feel any particular attraction to nobility. In all my life, I've never wanted compulsory obedience. I'm no leader. _

_I've never been more than a single man... and sometimes not even that, so maybe it's just that I don't understand._

* * *

It was horrifying in a way he'd never contemplated. Standing alone amidst the battered husks of modern buildings and on top of shattered streets, fully aware of the stark absence of sound made him feel like the last man alive in the entire world.

The further he walked without encountering human life, the more worried he became. The disappearance of the white noise that heralded human activity was almost maddening, and he found himself strangely focused on locating evidence of their untimely fate. Here, a torn piece of colourful cloth impaled on some jagged concrete. There, a patch of rust that looked suspiciously like blood… but maybe that was just his imagination.

Nabiki once told him that silence did things to people, that in the quiet, the mind would find ways to stimulate itself in order to avoid atrophy. Since it couldn't create new information from scratch, it would only use what was already available to it.

In other words, the ghosts and demons that haunted nightmares could also rise in the stillness. If so, then it explained why the sound of the wind passing through narrow openings could sound so much like the death throes of his enemies and allies.

Having spent so much of his childhood in isolated areas, Ranma was used to tranquility, but not like this. He had always been surrounded by the sound of the wind passing through leaves and branches, by animals going about their business and even rushing water when they were lucky. It had been quiet, but not silent. This was different.

This quiet was the quiet of a dead city. Of human hopes and dreams falling into despair. Of peace falling into war.

It was ironic, that a city could be quieter when it was at war than otherwise.

Even if just for a moment.

"**World Shaking."**

Still, hearing the sky piercing sound of Uranus' special attack relieved him, because it meant that he was in the right place. As long as someone was still fighting, there was hope. He was jumping on top of the rubble and beyond before he even realized it.

Close to three years had passed since his journey ended and he began living with the Tendos. Approximately half of that time was spent fighting in the war. Now, he was nineteen years of age and mostly unchanged. He'd gotten a little taller and a little stronger as he neared his prime, but his last growth spurt didn't make much of a difference in his technique. The greatest alteration was mainly cosmetic. His penchant for Chinese silks remained largely untouched, though he'd recently gained a preference for longer sleeves.

The only real difference was in his hairstyle. He had allowed his distinctive pigtail to grow into a tight, waist length braid. He got the idea from certain portrayals of martial arts heroes such as Wong Fei Hung in old Chinese movies, though he wasn't about to shave the front half of his hair. Most of the time, the actors playing the part didn't have the ability to manipulate ki. This held them back from the higher levels of the art, but that didn't necessarily mean that they couldn't look the part or that they weren't skilled at what they did.

In any case, he had looked at his reflection one day and spontaneously decided that a change was in order, as a way to commemorate his climb to adulthood. Letting his hair grow out longer wasn't very significant, but still seemed oddly appropriate.

The woman idly wiping youma dust from her uniform was a member of the exclusive fighting force known as the Sailor Senshi. Ranma was forced to hold back a smirk every time he saw this particular Senshi, mostly because of what she was wearing.

Haruka Tenoh was dressed in the traditional Senshi uniform, which consisted of heeled boots, a microscopic skirt, a white top adorned with a multitude of bows, a pair of gloves, a tiara and accessories. Naturally, her uniform had a few personal modifications, the most prominent being her navy blue and yellow colour scheme and shorter gloves, but it was called a uniform for a reason. In that getup, no one would ever mistake her for anything but a Senshi.

The laughter that was desperately trying to dig out of his chest at the sight wasn't caused by its inherent capacity to induce humour, far from it. Uranus was a beautiful woman with short blonde hair, a pretty face with a lean figure and curves and bulges in all the right places. It was just that his knowledge of her preferred style of clothing made seeing her in this ultra feminine outfit a source of extreme hilarity.

Ranma shook his head as he pondered Ukyo, Konatsu and Haruka's mystifying ability to convincingly cross-dress. He couldn't understand it. He was a man from birth, and yet when he turned into a girl, he wasn't even able to convince someone as blind as Mousse of his manhood. It was kind of annoying.

The Saotome heir's light observation of the scene below him deepened as a he became aware of a discrepancy.

_Huh? Where's Michiru?_

The absence of Neptune sent chills down his spine, because it meant that he was alone with Haruka. Without the calming influence of her lover, a meeting with Uranus in a place where collateral damage wouldn't matter would be exceedingly ill-advised. That girl was certainly pretty, but she could hold a grudge like Ryoga and he had no interest in fighting magical girls.

The young martial artist sighed deeply as he thought about missed opportunities and stupid mistakes, before rising from his crouch and turning to leave, picking up his duffel bag in the process.

Of course, it couldn't be that easy.

"Aren't you going to say hello? After all, it's been such a long time," her voice cut and burned its way through the stillness with the fury that marked her relationship with him.

Though he'd planned to sneak away unnoticed, he wasn't about to run away from her now that she'd seen him. Executing an expert back flip from a straight position, he quickly judged the distance between him and the jagged asphalt and easily manipulated his trajectory so that he landed in a spot free of debris, face-to-face with the magical girl, duffel bag still in hand.

"Show-off," she murmured.

He didn't bother to respond to that accusation. It was a particularly mild insult coming from her. So he merely dropped his bag and shoved his hands in his pockets and glared mirthlessly into her equally unamused eyes. "What do you want, Uranus? You know we're not allowed to be in the same place without supervision. I doubt that's changed in the month since I left," he pointed out, hoping to put a quick end to this travesty of a conversation.

She clenched her fists and glared back with at least twice the heat, hissing her words at him, her voice heavy with accusation. "Don't be shy Saotome. We've known each other long enough for you to call me _Haruka_."

His eyebrows raced to the shadows of his fringe as his eyes widened in shock. A second later, a cringe settled on his face as he dug up his right hand from his pants' pocket to rub the back of his neck. It appeared that she actually had a legitimate reason to be cross with him this time. "How'd you find out?"

Amazingly, that question seemed to calm her down as the Senshi's sharp glare relaxed into a mere unfriendly look. Ranma was instantly put on guard, since a calm Haruka couldn't mean anything good for him. The race car enthusiast was only calm when she got what she wanted and since she, by all appearances, wanted him dead…

"Don't play games with me Saotome. You know exactly how we found out," she said.

"I'm not sure I know what you're talking about," he responded evasively.

"Nabiki told us."

_Damn you Nabiki!_

"Imagine that. I had no idea she knew," he said, with badly faked surprise.

His attempt at concealing information would've likely failed even if she hadn't known otherwise. "She also told us that she was the one who told you in the first place, so you can drop the act."

Doing just that, Ranma decided to try and protect his friend, who apparently hadn't sold him out. "Fine, but you should know that she didn't tell me anything specific. She just pointed me in the right direction."

"You didn't tell anyone else?" she asked as though she already knew the answer.

The cursed youth turned his head aside. Her judgmental eyes were getting to him. "I needed to know if I could trust you guys to do the right thing, so I asked Nabiki. Of course, she charged me for the info. If anyone else wants to find out who you are they'll just have to find out by themselves. One thing I've learned over the years is that information isn't free, and I can't be bought with money. No, I didn't tell anyone else," he said truthfully.

Unfortunately, she didn't seem inclined to believe him at his word. "Not even your wife?"

The automatic glare he levelled at her saw her flinch and quickly step away.

"Alright, alright, I believe you! No need to glare at me like that!" she complained.

Ranma forced himself to calm down and squeezed his eyes shut, bringing his right hand to his face to massage his forehead. But his previous reaction didn't stop Uranus from opening her mouth again.

"I still can't believe it though," she mused. "An entire village of skilled warriors offer their help in our darkest hour and the only thing they ask in return is you? That wife of yours needs to…" Uranus abruptly trailed off.

Wife. He still flinched whenever he heard that word.

"You know," he heard her begin to say, with softness atypical of her in regards to him. "When I heard about it and after I actually saw Shampoo… it never occurred to me that you'd be against it."

He opened his eyes to see the great Senshi of the sky looking at him with pity of all things. The Saotome heir nearly started laughing. "There's more to marriage than a pretty face, Haruka, but that doesn't matter anymore. I didn't have a choice. We needed… still need their help. 'Sides, it's not so bad. Shampoo isn't a bad person."

Awkward silence spread in the deserted remains of a neighbourhood as a moment was shared between two mismatched people. Neither of them knew what to do or say around the other in this situation, so they did nothing. All the while, the wind whistled to mark its passage and carried the remains of dead youma in its arms. In the end, the only thing those monsters left behind to mark their existence was dust. Dust, memories and destruction.

Suddenly, Uranus tired of the silence and decided to change the subject. "How exactly did you find out anyway? If, as you say, Nabiki didn't actually tell you?"

The answer was so clear in his mind that it just slipped out of his mouth without warning. "Spying. You and Michiru need to learn to keep your curtains closed by the way."

"You _pig_!"

He probably should've kept his mouth shut, but it might have been better this way. At least now, they were back on familiar ground.

All in all, his meeting with Uranus wasn't a total waste of time. Once he managed to get her in the 'you'd be better off cool and collected' position, which took all of five minutes, Haruka, who was getting pretty familiar with this sequence of events by now, knew that the best way to get her arm back to a more comfortable position, her face off the ground and his knees off of her back was to stop trying to gouge his eyes out and cooperate.

* * *

_According to the Uranus, the JSDF soldiers finally managed to impress the magnitude of this conflict on its highest ranking officers. In the weeks following my departure, most of the areas surrounding the sealed zone were evacuated of all civilians. The Minato special ward had been abandoned for over a year, ever since the Azabu Juuban district was taken over by the Dark Kingdom and subsequently sealed off._

_Shinagawa to the south, Meguro and Shibuya to the west and to the north, Shinjuku, Chuo and even Chiyoda, home to the imperial palace, were evacuated of their inhabitants. Seven of the twenty-three special wards were now deserted. Millions were displaced, but at least this act increased the validity of our claim internationally._

_In the beginning, the western countries were… sceptical of the threat. Monsters have taken over Tokyo? They believed that we must have watched too many Godzilla movies. Well, except for the Vatican. They never doubted us for a second._

_But that's not very important right now. At least, to those of us not part of the JSDF. It might mean more food and supplies, but we'd always had enough to suit our needs. The increased interest from the west didn't matter at all compared to the other consequence of the evacuation. _

_Now that the brass was fully aware of the danger, they wasted no time in covering their collective asses. The problem was that they recognized that their chosen methods were the least effective in dealing with the enemy._

_So with the approval of the Prime Minister the Tokyo Martial Arts Guild and, to a lesser extent, the Sailor Senshi became officially sanctioned Japanese agencies. Of course, it wasn't that simple in execution, but thanks to Nabiki and Setsuna, it was agreed that we could only be called upon to deal with the inhuman and that we could retire during times of peace. Personally, I think everyone liked it better this way. We didn't have to kill other human beings and the JSDF didn't lose any of its actual authority. The Prime Minister couldn't have been too happy about it, but he's up against the wall. He's lucky Nabiki understands the situation and didn't try to clean him out. _

_Anyway, now that we had gotten an actual budget, it was time to find a better HQ than the Tendo dojo. And apparently that's when the Emperor got involved._

_

* * *

  
_

"Saotome!" A vivacious call erupted from behind him, interrupting his stride.

Recognition of his surname involuntarily forced him to pay closer attention to his immediate surroundings. In his experience, war cries featured it far too often. Then, recollection of the voice itself brought more pleasant feelings to the fore and an innocuous grin gradually softened his features. He quickly turned to face the intersection he just passed through and found his impression confirmed.

The woman casually walking closer to him was the Sailor Senshi he respected the most, aside from Setsuna. The priestess of fire, Senshi of Mars, Rei Hino. Out of all the Senshi, Rei was the one best suited to handle her power. She wasn't trained in the art, but she was a genuine, qualified priestess and that took just as much effort, determination and will as being a martial artist. It was a _lot_ more boring, but nonetheless very difficult.

Mars' uniform was just as uniform as the rest of the team's, aside for the colors. High heels, elbow length gloves, small skirt, white top, bows and accessories, it was all there, coloured in purple and red. Rei was classically beautiful. Long, straight black hair, with creamy skin and long legs, combined with a face that could tug at heartstrings and never let go. Mars was the kind of woman most men would gladly fight over.

The problem was that she knew it.

"Long time no see, Saotome. It's good to have you back," she said, nodding to him and smiling warmly.

"It's good to be back, Mars," he answered as he copied her greeting. "Are you guys out on patrol or something?"

Rei raised an eyebrow at the curious question. "Why do you ask?"

Ranma waved his open hand in the general direction he had just come from. "I ran into Uranus on the way here."

The priestess` other eyebrow matched its partner's elevation as she gave him a once-over. "And you're still alive and well?"

Ranma shrugged before eying his surroundings with badly hidden distaste and beginning to stroll in his original direction. He didn't intend to stay in the abandoned section of Tokyo for much longer. "I've got plenty of experience in dealing with assault," he commented.

Mars picked up on his silent cues and matched his pace before she could fall behind by a single step. She'd always been observant. Most of the other girls weren't really suited for combat, but Mars was different. Sort of like Uranus, but without the arrogance. Rei had something that couldn't be taught. She had the self-confidence that only came with dedicated training, a deep knowledge of her own abilities. Kind of like him, but not as unwavering or necessary. After all, if she failed, she could always count on her friends to pick up the slack.

Rei demonstrated that assurance when she spoke next. "So you know?"

He knew just what she was talking about. "Yeah, I know."

She nodded, and that was that.

Or maybe not.

Her right hand sneaked in to grab her naked elbow as she stared at the ground. "It's weird. You're the only normal person to ever discover our identities," she revealed.

Ranma snorted. "Sorry to burst your bubble Mars, but I don't exactly qualify as normal." That had been true even before the curse.

She looked at him and spoke so softly it was almost a whisper. "You can call me Rei, if you want."

He laughed for a moment, caught up in the dissimilarity of the requests. "Haruka said the same thing."

For some reason, silence he hesitantly qualified as 'awkward' enveloped them for a moment before dissipating as if it never was. Caught off guard by the sudden offset of discomfort, he was quite surprised when Mars said the one thing that could make him even more ill at ease.

"How's Shampoo?"

_Huh? When did Rei, of all people, start to care about Shampoo's well being?_

Slightly confused, Ranma shrugged and decided to take the question at face value. "I dunno. I haven't seen her since I went training with my old man so you'd probably know better. Is the compound still in the same place?" he asked, attempting to change the subject.

She nodded absently, visibly preoccupied by something. "Yeah, though they were offered a new headquarters closer to the sealed zone."

He wasn't surprised. "Makes sense. They tend to work better in the forest."

"Say, can I ask you something?" All traces of indecision vanished from her countenance. It looked like she'd finally come to a decision.

_Not really. _"Sure."

"It's… pretty personal," she warned.

Ranma rolled his eyes and shook his head. "If it's about anything I would want to hide, Nabiki would probably wind up telling you eventually, 'cept she'd make you pay for it. So you might as well ask. No sense in paying for something you could've gotten for free."

"Right," she nodded with conviction and immediately forced him to regret opening his mouth. "How do you feel about Shampoo?"

_That's it. _The martial artist stopped his advance and crossed his arms, a frown born of annoyance contorting his features. "Alright, what happened?"

Her eyes gravitated towards the ground as her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, a small grimace on her face. "What… what do you mean?"

"Shouldn't I be the one saying that?" he pointed out. "Look, both you and Haruka brought up my relationship with Shampoo when neither of you have ever shown any interest in any of the conversations we've had before. I know Nabiki calls me an idiot all the time, but this is just too obvious."

The fact that Shampoo was a sore spot certainly helped him notice the number of times people talked about her in his presence.

"Funny you should mention Nabiki…" Mars nervously murmured.

_Damn you Nabiki!_

Ranma brought his palm to his forehead in a motion that was quickly becoming familiar. "What did she tell you?" he moaned.

"Well, it was during one of Uranus'… rants about you…"

* * *

_We were just sitting in the basement of our headquarters discussing Senshi business when she stormed in, complaining about your latest indiscretion. This was right after the monthly meeting, so Moon and Pluto weren't back yet._

"I can't _believe_ that guy!" Haruka grumbled as she walked in the room.

_We were all pretty used to her little tantrums by then, so no one was paying her much attention._

Michiru was the only one to respond, though even she didn't bother to look away from the strategic map provided by the JSDF that was spread on the large round table the team was surrounding. "What happened?" she distractedly questioned.

Uranus huffed as she threw herself on top of a couch. She stared at the cracked ceiling for a moment before growling in irritation and throwing herself off of the shortly employed piece of furniture. Then the pacing began, as it always did. "That… that self-righteous bastard!"

Very few of the Senshi were content with Haruka's ongoing feud with the roguish martial artist. Even Neptune thought that the whole situation was getting out of hand. They were allies after all. "Ah, so this is about Saotome. Again. Just what did he do to offend you this time?" Clearly, the Senshi of the ocean didn't think that the cursed heir had done anything to warrant this level of irritation.

"He's _leaving_."

_When Haruka informed us of your upcoming journey… well, we were honestly surprised. _

Shouted exclamations of shock and frantic inquiries filled the enclosed space with a sort of distressed cacophony as the four inner Senshi swarmed around the tall blonde. They all had different reasons for demanding this knowledge but the fact remained that this news was significant to all of them. Ranma Saotome was a very important part of the fight against the Dark Kingdom. Putting aside his prowess in combat, he embodied the alliance. Without him, it simply wouldn't be possible to have such cordial relations between all four groups, especially the Amazons.

"He's going on a training journey with the senior Saotome, now get away from me!" Haruka blurted out as she sought to recover her personal space.

"For how long?" they asked of her.

"I don't know, about a month!" Sailor Uranus yelled as she decided to simply force her associates back. Unprepared as they were for the desperate shove, it wasn't particularly surprising that Minako would trip over Makoto's legs and bring the rest of the Guardian Senshi down into a noisy bundle of tangled limbs and painful contortions.

Haruka Tenoh closed her eyes and breathed deeply as she worked on recovering her ransacked composure. Sadly, her efforts were completely undone by the simple act of opening her eyes. Without the wall of Guarding Senshi blocking her line of sight, she saw the most skilled of the Earth's senshi sitting calmly on a couch, looking horribly amused by their misfortune.

"Sounds like you're going to miss him," the oldest woman in the room commented teasingly.

In spite of her irritation, Uranus merely scoffed at the remark, having long since discovered that calm and reason were required when speaking with Soun Tendo's second daughter. "Very funny Nabiki," she responded insincerely. "It's just a waste of time. What can he do in four weeks that he couldn't have done in nineteen years?"

_I don't remember what prompted it, but Nabiki started talking about martial artists in general and you in particular._

The twenty year old magical girl watched silently as her downed colleagues moved the center of their focus off of yelling obscenities and onto the more productive activity of increasing their comfort level. She seemed content to continue ignoring Uranus' question, thereby angering her further, while smiling enigmatically until Neptune spoke up.

Michiru Kaioh was the second Outer Senshi and she held dominion over the seas and oceans. At nineteen years of age, she and Haruka were the oldest of the planetary Senshi, being two years older than the Guardians. Sailor Pluto was technically older, but didn't count as she existed outside the time stream and therefore had no real age. Her uniform was coloured in deep blue and sea-green that enhanced her more remarkable features. Sailor Neptune's hair barely reached the area beyond her shoulders and was naturally aquamarine while her eyes resembled polished turquoise gems. Along with a gorgeous face, a slender body and an otherworldly demeanor, those characteristics made Michiru into one of the most beautiful Senshi, but one that was decidedly unapproachable.

"I forgot that you used to live with him. How long have you two known each other?" asked Neptune from her position above the forgotten map.

Nabiki eyed Haruka's lover for a moment, before deciding to answer her question. Uranus she could handle with ease, but her partner required a little more caution. She had a feeling that trying to trick this woman wouldn't go over well. "I've known him for three years and he and his father lived just across the hallway for a little under two. It's funny to think about now, but for the longest time I didn't see them as anything more than freeloading freaks."

Surprised over getting an honest response, Michiru's attention moved off the original purpose for the meeting in order to concentrate on her oddly forthcoming associate. "Really? And what made you change your mind?" she questioned.

Nabiki leaned over the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling's cracked concrete, giving the appearance of someone reminiscing on days gone by. "I used to think that the Saotomes had no marketable skills. I believed that martial arts were obsolete and that Ranma had wasted over a decade of his life, his entire childhood to learn something that would never be truly useful. I believed that everything productive he could do could also be accomplished by something else that also required less effort."

A small, unbidden smile appeared on her face and lightened her features remarkably in the eyes of those who knew her well, seeing as her expression was usually set in a poker face that hid foul intentions and emotions behind a thick veneer of amusement and cordiality.

Soun's daughter had come a long way from the cruel teenager she'd been in high school. Now, she was a cruel woman. Her hair had grown longer and she was a little taller and physically mature, but her overall appearance had changed about as much as her personality did, which is very little. Nabiki was a brunette with shoulder length hair and a pretty face that was often considered as a stopover on the way to her large, expressive and oft misleading eyes. Unlike her younger sister, she was a great actress and a consummate liar.

But she knew better than to lie before Michuru's eyes. After all, she had no idea just how deep Neptune's precognitive senses extended. It was always better to reveal minor secrets than to keep them all and risk losing everything. When dealing with the Senshi of the Ocean, she would be honest… or at least, she wouldn't tell any outright lies. In this case, it was better to redirect than to conceal.

Her stomach clenched uncomfortably as she revealed her most intimate thoughts about the most significant period of time in her life. "It was all made worse by the fact that Ranma was naturally intelligent. He's hopelessly clueless, but that doesn't make him stupid. Dumb yes, but not stupid. He's the type of person that excels at everything he applies himself to, but that talent is totally consumed by his focus on martial arts."

Haruka raised a slender eyebrow and crossed her arms suspiciously. "How does that answer the question?" she inquired impatiently.

Nabiki took a moment to roll her eyes in distaste before answering with the amount of condescension she had previously reserved for Ranma and his various hangers-on. "How else? I was proven wrong when the youma appeared. The Saotomes and all the troublesome martial artists that hovered around them fought and succeeded where other methods failed. A handful of men and women defended us when an entire army retreated. I don't think you guys know about this since you were stuck in youma central at the time, but even though they sealed the gate off pretty quickly, enough of the horde remained outside the barrier to overwhelm the JSDF," she explained.

Sailor Mercury, a seventeen year old woman with short blue hair and similarly coloured eyes and uniform, called out excitedly. "Wait a second. You know how many youma escaped the seal? I thought that information was never recorded!" she exclaimed.

The unexpected and somewhat reluctant well of information shook her head negatively. "It wasn't, at least not officially, but I had Ranma work on it with me. He spent an evening in deep meditation detecting their auras and general locations so I could draw a map and we ended up estimating their numbers at over fifteen hundred. The JSDF only managed to evacuate and isolate the affected area because Tokyo's martial artists were the ones doing the actual fighting. They were caught with their pants down. The majority of their forces and equipment was located near the borders. The enemy basically popped up in the worst possible location. It took hours for them to get on scene and even then, they had no idea what they were facing. When they saw… they panicked. It was bad. Real bad.

"Right now, the T-MAG has over ten thousand members, but less than 10 percent could handle a youma in a one-on-one fight. Back then, they barely even had thirty. They had to destroy fifty on average to exterminate them all and some had problems beating just one. It was during those few days that I learned the difference between masters like the Saotomes, my father and the Amazons and fighters like Ryoga… and my sister Akane."

The storyteller paused for a second, passing her hand over her forehead and through loosened hair before continuing. "It's not just a difference of skill or strength or speed or even courage. Ryoga is powerful but he'll never be able to beat a youma. Not without help. Likewise, Akane likely could've held her own if it weren't for her anger and insecurities. It's not something that's easy to understand for us because of our protections, but for the others, fighting youma is just as much of a mental battle as a physical one."

Mercury's entire body betrayed her confusion, so unused was she to the feeling. "What do you mean?" she asked.

Nabiki stared at the younger girl who, in all her genius, failed to take the obvious into account. The girl could work through cold, hard facts like no one she'd ever met but she definitely wasn't a people person. Simply looking around the room confirmed that not one of them knew what she was talking about. It was times like these that truly revealed why Usagi was their leader. She and Pluto were the only ones who had looked beyond the surface in order to understand. "This is exactly what I was talking about. The Senshi see what martial artists do and think of it as magic, but it's not. Intellectually, we know that it isn't, but we still treat the art like it was. Tell me Mercury, what is the difference between Ranma's art and Happosai's?" She had picked her target carefully. Mizuno's acclaimed intelligence would serve well to make her point.

Ami answered quickly and decisively, as she always did. "There isn't any. Aside for a few idiosyncrasies preferred by the individual users, the core of Anything Goes martial arts remains the same."

The impromptu interrogator nodded in one measured movement. "That's exactly right. There is no difference between Happosai's art and Ranma's," she confirmed before asking an easier question. "Where is Happosai right now?"

"He is currently being held in the Dark Kingdom's capital city and is being used as a source of power for Beryl's special forces."

Once again, Tendo's second daughter bobbed her head in accord. "That's correct," she said.

Mercury frowned in minute uncertainty. "Where are you going with this?" she asked.

Nabiki wasted no time in fostering Ami's endless quest for knowledge down a more fitting path. "We have just established that Ranma and Happosai's abilities are, for all intents and purposes, identical. We have also established that youma can and are draining Happosai's energy to bolster their own powers. Since Ranma and Happosai possess the same abilities and youma are actively draining the old man of his energy, why haven't they done the same to Ranma?" she questioned rhetorically. "Keep in mind that Happosai was the Grandmaster of Anything goes and kept his position by force of body and not character. Everyone hated him, including me, but there wasn't anyone more skilled in the art. Not even Matriarch Cologne."

Mizuno's entire body stilled as her formidable mind struck a dead end at full speed. "I… I don't know," she whispered with wide and low eyes.

As the gathered Sailor Senshi gradually came to understand that they were missing a large piece of the puzzle, their teacher allowed a slight grin to manifest on her expression. "The answer you're looking for is self-control," she revealed. "The Tokyo Martial Arts Guild does not take skill into account when selecting its members because skill can be acquired with more or less effort and is therefore a secondary requirement. T-MAG is composed entirely of martial artists that possess enough control over their bodies, minds and souls to resist the youma's energy drain. That is why my sister, Ryoga and the Kunos were denied membership, regardless of their prowess. The youma are dangerous enough without having them use your own strength against you.

"What's ironic is that their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness, depending on who they're up against. The youma feed on life energy, which means that they have no defence against it whatsoever. After all, why would they? That's why ki-based attacks can be so effective. As long as the attacking martial artist can keep his focus and control over his emotions, he will win. It's a double-edged sword because every single one of their attacks can either destroy the enemy or make it stronger."

Mercury, whose downed head hid eyes that narrowed and gleamed as the speech went on, jerked suddenly, startling the riveted Senshi beside her. "I understand now!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Youma can drain life energy when it is negative or unfocused, but positive and focused energy is completely beyond them. It would destroy them from the inside which is why they never attempt to drain it… but if it was forced into them…"

Nabiki localized smile expanded brilliantly and conquered her features. "Exactly. Youma don't have conventional bodies. No organs or anything like that. All they have are muscles and bones connected with a core that controls it all. I thought about it for a long time and I realize now that they are not so dissimilar from us after all. They're just like a ki blast. Ranma's Moko Takabisha is just his confidence given form. Ranma is so self-assured that he can take a portion of his life energy and force it to manifest in the physical world as an avatar for that abstract concept. The more confident he is, the bigger the blast he can create."

The young woman shook her head in wonder. "What's amazing is that he also gives it physical properties prior to its inception. Those ki blasts of his come into existence with predetermined volume and velocity and they also seem to have actual mass. Of course, they only exist temporarily and are nowhere near as stable as the youma, but the similarities are unavoidable… and the possibilities mind boggling." Judging by the way her eyes were jumping to and fro without focusing on a single thing, Mizuno seemed to agree.

In any case, it was time to land the final blow.

"In the end, those monsters are composed of negative ki encased in a form that at least loosely complies with the rules of this dimension. It's the reason why conventional methods are so bad at destroying them. The only way to do any real damage is to attack the core, and those things are notoriously resistant to kinetic energy, not to mention hard to find. Negativity towards yourself or others such as anger, depression, fear and arrogance gives them strength while positive energy weakens them. Love, happiness and self-confidence have all been used to great success.

"What weakens us gives them strength. What strengthens us annihilates them. Youma are our natural enemies, the very opposite of human beings."

Sailor Mercury's eyes were like a December sunrise as she stared at her most recent colleague. Bright, and yet so cold they almost they nearly sent shivers down their target's spine. "Are you saying that youma were created by a human being?"

Nabiki answered grimly. "Maybe he wasn't human, but he was definitely a being."

_It was right after that she began talking about Akane and… what happened to you. Both of you.

* * *

  
_

Ranma's expression seemed to have been carved out of granite as he stared unabashedly at his skimpily dressed friend, trying to digest what he had just heard. Nabiki eventually managed to convince him that his attempts to lie were all pathetically easy to see through and that he would be better off showing nothing instead of trying his hand at deception. He'd taken her advice to heart and tried to adapt the soul of ice to suit his needs, but found that he couldn't get in the proper mindset outside of combat. Therefore, all he had was a good old-fashioned poker face that threatened to shatter under the weight of his disbelief.

One thing he had learned about Nabiki over the years is that unless she was plotting something, she never deviated from her behavioral patterns. He couldn't even imagine a single reason why she would volunteer information like that, especially information that had heavily influenced her own self. Nabiki Tendo didn't talk about herself. Period.

There was something wrong with this picture. Maybe the Senshi had done something to her? If they had done something magical to coerce the truth out of her, then the Guardians probably wouldn't be in on it. Haruka was probably kept as far away from Nabiki as possible, so that left Neptune, Pluto… and Serenity.

Unfortunately, he was prematurely knocked out of his deliberations when Mars tired of the silence and decided to prod the pink elephant into action. After all, it was much harder to ignore a subject if it wasn't ignoring you as well.

Rei took a deep breath and held it in while unconsciously shifting to an aggressive stance and said, "You know, I couldn't believe it when I found out."

She sounded like Kasumi just then, kind and understanding, only her posture was all wrong. Ms. Hino was expecting a fight, or at least an argument and that put him on guard. That was another thing Nabiki taught him. She didn't teach him to read stances because he was actually much better at it than she was and always had been, but rather to consciously realize that he was doing it. She had told him then that the art held more control over his body than he did, and she was right.

It also helped him realize why he'd never been able to feel at ease around Shampoo before everything. Her body's position always advertised her intentions and that automatically put him on guard. In his world, actions spoke louder than words, so as long as her body advertised her status as a huntress, he could never relax around her, no matter what she said. It didn't help that the transition from would-be assassin to would-be wife didn't change her stance one iota, though the same couldn't be said for the conversion from would-be wife to actual wife.

Taking a moment to ruminate over her statement, he quickly decided that getting her to drop the subject would be in his best interest. Of course, he would also have to make sure she never ever brought it up again.

Ranma exhaled slowly and forced his muscles to relax, losing all signs of tension. "What? That Shampoo would go so far?" he asked.

She shook her head. "That you would've gone along with it."

He shrugged casually. "It was bound to happen eventually. Frankly, this is better than drinking a love potion and waking up naked, strapped to a bed in the middle of China," he joked.

Naturally, Rei missed the joke. "You really think she would have done that?" she asked softly.

The martial artist rolled his eyes and muttered, "I don't have to think."

Unfortunately, she actually heard him. "You don't mean…" she said with narrowed eyes.

Ranma hid a wince as he worked on damage control. "I always managed to keep the Amazons at bay before, but I guess everyone runs out of luck sometime," he remarked.

Narrowed eyes shifted into a full blown scowl as indignation was brought into play. "How can you just…"

Thankfully, Rei's outrage was predictable. After all, there were a lot of people who felt exactly the same. He raised a hand with his palm held forward and interrupted. "Easy, this isn't as bad as it could be. Technically this is my fault, and Shampoo is a lot less annoying than she used to be."

Somehow, Mars managed to pick up on sexual connotations in that last statement that he himself hadn't been aware of. "You pervert," she accused.

Instead of the fervent denial he had used in times past, he simply raised both hands in a defensive gesture. "Hey, I didn't exactly have much of a choice in all of this," he reminded.

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow with incredulous scepticism. "You mean she just _forces_ you to sleep with her?" The force of her disbelief nearly knocked him back, but he had the perfect response ready.

"She doesn't have to," he revealed. "My…" Here he hesitated. It may have been the best excuse ever, but that didn't make it any less embarrassing. Still, it was better than the alternative and it was the truth, after all. "My mother takes care of that."

Rei's other eyebrow joined its counterpart in the lofty heights of her forehead and both rose together, dreaming of reaching the paradise that started at her hairline. "What did you just say?" she asked.

Ranma waved his hand air in front of him in dismissal. "It's a long story and I don't really like to think about it," he admitted. "In short, I have to perform my husbandly duties to the best of my ability or kill myself. Honorably. The choice wasn't exactly hard to make."

The priestess stared at him for a long moment before deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt. Normally, she wouldn't have bothered but she had met Nodoka Saotome and that woman left an impression on everyone. Regardless, she wasn't about to let him off the hook. She shook her head in disappointment as she began to pace around him and made an interesting comment. "And I'm sure your wife's full figure had nothing to do with it."

The martial artist smiled when it became clear that she couldn't see it. It wouldn't be too long now. Rei was too confrontational to dance around a subject indefinitely, especially since she was the one who brought it up and clearly wanted to talk about it.

Ranma's smile became a teasing smirk when the Senshi walked back into view. "Not at first, no. I resented her too much to take that into account in the beginning. It certainly became a factor afterwards though."

Mars' pacing stopped abruptly as she turned to glare at him. "You pervert."

He shrugged the derogatory comment off, long used to having that particular accusation levelled against him. "I kind of think I'm allowed to be, aren't I? After all, I'm just a married man talking about his wife," he pointed out.

Rei's glare melted into a surly pout. "Aren't you supposed to be all broken up about losing your one true love?"

Bingo.

The Senshi were all hopeless romantics. A situation like the one he was in wasn't one they could keep their noses out of so he had to do it for them. All he had to do now was discredit the source and he'd be home free. "You know Rei, you really shouldn't pay that much attention to what Nabiki tells you. She tends to embellish things to make them more interesting, especially when it comes to me. Besides, I try to look for the silver lining in most situations."

It was perfectly executed, misleading the victim without telling a single lie. In your face Nabiki! It was all in a day's work for Ranma Saotome.

"I'd noticed," she growled. "It's horrible how you con those poor deluded boys out of hard earned products and services."

He blinked. "Products and services? Is it just me or are you starting to take ice cream as seriously as your leader?"

She looked at him blankly. "It's just you."

"Right," he said, nodding slowly. "Anyway, now that you know to watch out for Nabiki's tricks, I think I'm going to pay my mother a visit. You know where I could find her?" he asked congenially.

Rei smirked darkly before answering him. "I think she mentioned something about spending some quality time with her new daughter. I see now that she wasn't talking about you."

That was unexpected. His previously pleasant expression dipped into a frown as he idly shoved his hands into his pockets. "Why do I get the feeling that you're mad at me?" he wondered.

"Possibly because you're not quite as dumb as you look," she said, flipping her hair over her shoulder and turning halfway around. "I should get back to my patrol. I'll see you later Saotome."

He could have just let her go but if he left things off as they were she might bring this up again when there were more people around. Fending off more than one person at a time was still beyond him. This absurd interest in his personal life had to die now. Of course, the urge to respond to her barbs with similar insults was strong but he managed to hold it back, if only barely.

Ranma nodded to himself in a thoughtful fashion as he spoke to Mars' retreating form. "Okay, a little heavy on the cheap insults, don't you think? You've insulted my manliness, my looks and my intelligence, none of which have anything to do with what we were talking about. Let me guess, you're upset that you believed Nabiki about my supposedly hidden inner pain and you're taking it out on me because she's just too dangerous to risk tangling with. You could defeat her physically, but you know that she'd just retaliate in some horrifyingly unexpected way that'd make you wish you never bothered. In the end, you just suck it up and accept the fact that your best bet is to do nothing. Am I right, or am I right?" he asked, before bowing mockingly. "Welcome to my life. I hope you have a pleasant stay."

By the time he rose from his travesty of a greeting, Rei was looking at him with an unreadable expression. Her stance was guarded, defensive, which only increased his awareness when she said, "Your life sucks, Saotome," in a conciliatory tone. Her body was telling him something that her words were directly contradicting… or maybe he was reading too much into it.

As he was unable to uncover enough information about her current state of mind to formulate a proper plan, he could do naught but be himself. So he took her statement at face value and grinned. "It grows on you after awhile," he contended. Seeing that he wasn't going to discover a weak point to capitalize on while doing nothing, he decided to cautiously broach the pertinent subject in the faint hopes that he would stumble across one. "You're not going to disagree with me?"

"Why? You're kind of right after all," she shrugged. "Was it that obvious?"

What was that? Mars wasn't the type to give up on an argument, even when confronted with the truth… unless she had something bigger to hide. Alarm bells awoke the blood hound lurking within. Rei Hino was trying to hide something. "Not really," he dismissed. "I just spend a lot of time around Nabiki."

A curious expression affected the Senshi's face as she tilted her head. "Why is that again? You spend more time around her than you do around Kasumi, and she actually lives in your village."

On the edge of his awareness, a faint feeling of absence flitted in and out of existence and instantly commandeered the lion's share of his concentration. "It's Shampoo's village. The Amazons just tolerate me," he answered distractedly. Talking without thought was one of his more unfortunate specialties.

"Which is still more than they'll do for anyone else," she countered. Mars didn't seem to notice anything untoward, but then again, she wasn't exactly paying attention. "You're the only outsider that's welcome within their walls for more than a half hour."

Still intently searching their immediate surroundings without tipping his hand, he decided to keep the conversation going by giving short rebuttals. "And what about Kasumi?"

Immediately, Rei replied, "She is an Amazon."

Closer… Closer… "So am I."

"You know you're not. Not like she is."

There! "Is that right?"

"Kasumi joined of her own free will and was accepted just as freely. You are just their leader's consort. Also, you're not a woman."

Ranma grinned sardonically and mentally prepared himself for battle, waiting for the best moment to break the news to his clueless ally. "Funny, you didn't seem too sure of that fact a little while ago. Anyway, you're about to miss it."

"Miss what?"

Youma. Five of them, Happosai bred.

Incoming.

"What else? My welcoming party."


	3. Welcome Home

Lerris, the reason I don't use email is because multiple people often ask the same questions and I'm not going to be bothered to type it out more than once.

Regardless of what we actually spent most of our time discussing, the discussion wasn't actually about the effectiveness of modern weapons. The discussion was about the effectiveness of modern soldiers. Besides, most of the technology available isn't used here because of the risk of friendly fire. Close quarters combat wasn't a factor when the weapons were created. Dropping a bomb on something that's fighting hand to hand with something else is a sure way to destroy both of them, questions of accuracy aside.

That's not to say that no modern weapons will be used against the youma. Just that Ranma probably won't run into many of them.

Neef, Shampoo's cat form isn't an inconsistency. In canon, she just used it to punish Ranma when he wasn't doing what she wanted him to do and everyone did that in canon. Quite frankly, that isn't any worse than what the other girls did. She just had a way to do it that was quick, easy to access and effective. And about her not caring... well, to be fair, none of the Tendos seemed to care about it either. In fact, they pretty much thought it was funny. Check out the original ark again.

Just to make it clear, I never said love potions were being used to enforce anything. And finally, if you think the Amazons are more evil than Happosai, then you might want to read the manga again.

And Jet Black. About Ryoga, fighting skill and pride have nothing to do with it. This is all mental. No way is Ryoga able to fight without feeling depression, anger or some other negative emotion. That isn't something you can learn or unlearn. It's part of his personality. A large, _large _part of his personality.

And yeah, Setsuna = Nabiki? Where did you get that?

Anyway, thank you all for the comments and here's the next chapter.

_

* * *

_

Eclipse: The Dark Side of the Moon.

Chapter 2: Welcome Home.

_I don't think anyone realized just how powerful Happosai was until about a year after the invasion, when the newest breed of youma made its first appearance. It was quickly realized that the youma formed with his energies were different from any other type seen before. _

_Happi's Angels are stronger, faster and smarter than the old youma in every single way. It was like comparing the fighter aircraft from the First World War with the ones available now. They are both aircraft with similar functions, but that's where the resemblance ends. Pretty much everything else is different, from the engine to the fuel, counting the actual material composing the planes. Thankfully, they seem to be restricted to attacking very specific targets. Other than that, their main purpose seems to be gathering information on our abilities._

_The old freak's youma are all part of the same mold. They always take the form of blue eyed, busty, beautiful women clad in sexy lingerie and nothing else. Of course, what really disturbs me is the fact that their hair is the exact same shade of red as my girl form. Each and every one of them. _

_I always knew he was infatuated with my cursed form, but I wish I never found out just how obsessed he was. Anyway, the fact that the youma reflected Happosai's perverted fixations isn't the biggest problem with them. The fact is that these new youma inherited two of the old man's biggest influences, his perversions… and his art.

* * *

  
_

They came from the shadows of a broken city's detritus, streaking like leopards and leaping like gazelles with grace, swiftness and bloodlust unmatched by the beasts. They moved through the streets on bared feet, unmindful and unaffected by the scattered flecks of concrete, shards of glass and other assorted debris.

Unlike conventional youma, these creatures always hunted in groups, never under three and rarely over eight. Though their power source differed, they inherited the ability to conceal their atmospheric signatures from their 'Father', making them undetectable to most means of extrasensory perception.

The instinctive ability to detect magical energy inherent in all Senshi was no exception and thus left them susceptible to surprise attacks. Ranma's own ability to detect auras from living creatures was also compromised, but he had the advantage of a decade and a half's worth of assault under similar conditions by various allies and enemies. Genma Saotome, the most prominent of the offenders, regularly took pleasure in spontaneously beginning unplanned sparring sessions without any sort of provocation and took great pains to keep from indicating his intent. Eventually, his son learned not to rely on his passive senses alone, but also to actively search for incoming threats in his immediate surroundings.

So while Sailor Mars whirled about in a frantic scramble for her scattered wits, he coolly stared into eyes that mirrored his own, save for the unholy light and cruel intentions. He listened to the laughter of infernal sirens, their joyful giggling bearing the likeness of childish senselessness. He reminded himself that these were golems, and that ending their existence only amounted to destruction and not murder.

He prepared his opening gambit and filled his lungs to the brink.

_Wild bull moves the land._

The cornerstone of the art was breath control, because controlling one's ki was heavily influenced by the act of breathing. Inhaling allowed one to gather it and exhaling allowed one to release it. The kiai was a basic technique that accompanied the majority of attacks in martial arts. It was the act of breathing out in order to fuel an attack with ki and it usually took the form of a piercing and intimidating shout. This particular technique was slightly different.

Ranma brought both fists at his waist face up and bent his knees slightly before raising his right knee as high as it would go. His nostrils flared like an upset bovine's and released a torrent of air as he brought his foot down with everything he had.

When his foot was reunited with the land, it brought with it the force of a powerful seism. The surrounding buildings shook and trembled for a few seconds, not long enough to topple or demolish any of them, but more than enough to force the approaching enemies into missing a step or several. He had bought them a few seconds, a minute at most.

While all five youma operatives crashed to the ground and rolled to a painful stop, he grabbed Mars' arm and drew her back to her feet in front of him.

"So!" He yelled so as to draw her attention, clapping his hands onto her shoulders to steady her. "What's the plan?"

Rei's glare reminded him that he would never be appreciated for his efforts. "Why the hell didn't you warn me?" she complained as she brushed dust and grime from her uniform and bare legs. "And what the hell are those things?"

He grimaced. "Guess you've never gone up against Happi's Angels before." Her inexperience would probably make things significantly harder. Still, he was relieved that he wouldn't have to waste time convincing her that those cheap imitations weren't human, possessed or otherwise. "Alright then, just follow my lead. How long can you keep that bow of yours up?"

Her expression told him the answer long before she opened her mouth. "I'm not sure," she said sheepishly.

It didn't take much effort for him to smother his irritation at this display of ignorance. After all, this was business as usual when fighting with Senshi. He didn't bother asking if she knew the maximum range and velocity. In the end, he decided to improvise. "Well, we're about to find out. Watch yourself. These harpies are a little different from what you're used to. Don't try to close in and don't let them get too close either, and they _will_ try to get close. I'll keep them occupied and you take them out once they stop moving."

"W-wait a minute," Mars stammered as he walked past. He didn't stop or even look back. Their minute was already over. In any case, Rei wasn't helpless. She could take care of herself for a few minutes.

Ranma felt his trademark smirk twist his features as his adrenaline followed its usual, well-worn itinerary. Suddenly, the world seemed sharper than it did even a second ago. The ground was firmer, the air fresher and the sound of footsteps especially meaningful. In fact, it was all he could seem to concentrate on.

Information about himself and his surroundings was either processed and archived or discarded as irrelevant in moments, until his conscious mind was emptied of everything but the art of war.

This was how he cleared his mind. This was how he focused it. This was his form of meditation. This was him. In a way that went beyond the visible, in a way most could never understand.

The first step of all his encounters was always the same. Know your enemy.

* * *

Her grandfather had told her once that a martial arts battle between masters was like an irregular game of chess.

In combat there were two factors of import: the body and the mind. The body represented attributes like strength, speed, agility, flexibility, toughness, stamina, technique, special moves, etc… things that could only be gained by intense training. The mind simply analyzed, controlled and coordinated everything.

In a regular game, each player starts with the exact same pieces. The mind is the player and the pieces are the body. In a regular game of chess, the player with the greater mind wins.

Combat differed from a game of chess in that both sides were never equal. It is very likely that one body will have an advantage over the other in some way.

In a fight, a sick man with no arms and legs plays with one king. No possibility of victory.

The strongest of gods plays with sixteen queens and no king. No possibility of defeat.

On the whole, Happosai's Angels were skilled martial artists. Their bodies were perfectly built for Anything Goes style of martial arts and they drew their knowledge of the art from the Grandmaster himself. They were strong, quick and flexible. They had no ki but their black magic more than made up the difference. In short, they were extremely dangerous.

Her ally was faster and stronger than the harpies, but not enough to put victory out of their reach. All things considered, the playing field was relatively equal. And yet, even when they outnumbered him five to one, Ranma was still the likely victor.

Ranma Saotome was the best martial artist in Japan, bar none. Some were stronger or faster or even both but no one had a mind for the Art like he did.

He was only two years older than her. Just nineteen years old, the reluctant Amazon King.

The Joketsuzoku were a matriarchal society but they respected martial arts prowess above all else. Ranma was Shampoo's husband for a reason. He proved that every day when he crushed the various Amazon challengers that dared to face him.

The Chinese Amazons spent their entire lives working on their combat skills. They held more techniques and lore than anyone else. Growing up, Shampoo received personal instruction from the strongest warriors in the village. She had access to hundreds of sparring partners, each with their favored style. She also had a great body made by centuries of selective breeding. She was strong, smart, resolute and well educated.

Her husband was almost her exact opposite. Growing up, his only constant was his father. Genma Saotome was his only regular sparring partner, his instructor and sole companion. Ranma was ignorant, brash and stubborn but he was a great martial artist. The fact was that after nearly two years of instruction in Amazon techniques, the elders could no longer defeat him. Chances were that he was in the top five worldwide and it was guaranteed that he was the youngest of all the candidates.

He was a prodigy. Like Michiru and her violin, Haruka and her racecars, Ami and her intellect.

And, like all the other prodigies she knew, when he was in his element, he was resplendent.

In her experience, fighting multiple opponents involved standing her ground and saturating her surroundings with firepower. While her approach could be likened to a Gatling gun, Saotome was more like a whirlwind.

A lazy grin marked his features as he slid and spun by the battlefield with a cocksure swagger, his long braid slicing through the air like a whip through water. His expertise showed in the way that he made everything seem simple. None of his movements were showy or complicated. There were no gravity defying leaps and no acrobatic flips. He simply leaned around punches, jogged or ducked past high kicks and hopped above leg sweeps. He was always moving, always dodging and analyzing and putting events in motion.

He was precise, efficient and entirely on the defensive.

A month ago she would have thought of this as an act of unfathomable arrogance and foolishness. Fortunately, time and information could change anyone's perspective. Thanks to Nabiki, she realized now that he was actually accomplishing something by playing around.

He was building up his confidence. He was establishing his last and most vital layer of defense against the youma. His grin grew with every maneuver he executed perfectly and every mocking gesture he managed to sneak in. When it reached wide and toothy status, he burst into action.

His relentless dodging brought one of the harpies to his right side with a slicing backhand towards his face. Keeping with the flow of the battle, Ranma dodged, this time by widening his stance and bending his knees, lowering his head just enough for the blow to pass above him and leaving him with the perfect opportunity to counter.

Without missing a beat, he slid his right foot closer and buried his elbow in her naked midsection, lifting his left arm simultaneously to improve his balance. The force of the blow forced her back and sent her stumbling for her bearings. Before the other youma could reach him, the martial artist straightened both arms and aligned them like a scarecrow.

Mars barely had enough time to make out the sudden presence of a long bulge in his sleeves before it shot out towards the unbalanced youma. The steel spearhead easily passed through the conjured flesh, spilling vile black ichor and dreadful screams equally. The exhibitionist's allies rushed to save their comrade but she knew they wouldn't get there in time, even though they were only a few feet away.

Spark.

Her will called forth contained blaze above her gloved palm.

Ranma hopped back to remove the aluminum rod from his sleeves, grasping the end strongly as his hand slid to it. His left hand flew forward to clutch at the pole a few feet beyond its counterpart and a quick thrust pushed the spearhead past the youma's back, spilling more of the monster's inky blood over her beautiful expanse of uncovered skin.

The flames expanded aggressively, forming a curved bow four feet in length instantly. Her left hand rose into position alongside her chest and summoned a large intangible arrow that glowed like white hot metal.

Her associate eyed the incoming enemies and flipped forward to escape them, dragging the metal shaft along with him. The impaled youma was forced off its dainty, manicured feet until it was nearly horizontal. At that point, Ranma used his strength to imbed the weapon into the asphalt.

_*****__**Crack!***_

It was trapped. It was by no means incapacitated or fatally injured, but its ability to move was severely compromised. Rei needed no clearer invitation.

"**Mars Flame Sniper."**

The magical projectile quickly shot out towards its intended target and imbedded itself halfway into its chest. The demon did not have time to scream as its flesh sizzled and burned before the arrow exploded into a roaring conflagration that consumed it entirely and blew its fellows off their feet.

A grey cloud of rock and youma particles emerged in its place, obscuring the battlefield from sight. Ever expanding, it approached like a ravenous beast, forcing her to jump back in order to avoid its lunging maw and the obscurity beyond.

One down, four to go.

After several moments of anxious waiting, she noticed a figure emerging from the dust fog. Her companion dashed into visibility a moment later. She shot him a quick grin but noticed that he seemed determined, focused. He seemed far too serious considering that they took out one of the strongest youma in the Dark Kingdom without sustaining a single blow.

"Alright, playtime's over," he said, raising his voice over the grinding sound of his shoes skidding to a stop.

She raised an eyebrow, as his meaning wasn't immediately clear to her. "You mean you're finally going to get serious?"

He shook his head slowly, keeping his eyes on the churning mass of dust before them. "No, I mean they're about to shift into high gear."

"What?"

He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. "You didn't really think it was going to be so easy, did ya?" His words chilled her, in spite of his light tone. "The Angels have Happosai's arrogance. They don't get serious until one of them gets injured." He shrugged. "Or, you know, dead."

His meaning was now obvious, but she asked for clarification anyway. "You mean they weren't serious back there?"

Fortunately, he didn't have any particular issue with repeating himself and answered her without any sign of annoyance. "Of course they weren't. We were just playing around. They didn't even use any magic."

It was with that last statement that the truth sunk in. She was outmatched here. The harpies' abilities in physical combat already outstripped her own by a significant margin. The addition of magical abilities put the final nail in her coffin.

The Senshi's bodies were strengthened by the magical energy they contained. It was practically identical to the way martial artists used their ki to become faster, stronger and tougher… to go beyond the limits of human bodies.

But there were some things that couldn't be improved by eldritch energies such as ki or magic. Magic had no real effect on dexterity or agility because they were, for the most part, determined by the mind and not the body. Ki couldn't improve a person's technique or intelligence for the same reasons.

The only thing eldritch energy could improve automatically was the performance of the body, its capacity to do work. In other words, ki and magic changed the way an object affected the world around it. It did not change the object itself.

The presence of eldritch energies would not give someone increased flexibility. To do such a thing would require direct manipulation… a special technique of one kind or another that was probably too complicated for anyone to use easily. Even if Tatewaki Kuno could chop down a tree using a wooden sword, it did not mean that his weapon couldn't burn as it was still made out of wood. If someone who wasn't a martial artist or a magician were to take that very same sword and try to do the same, he could not, no matter how hard he tried. There was no machine in the world that could let someone cut a tree using wood.

The bottom line was that the Sailor Senshi were strongest at long range and weakest at close range, even though the physical abilities of the Senshi were mostly indistinguishable to that of their allies and enemies. They had all the pieces, but they didn't know how to play the game. They were vulnerable and it had never been quite as clear to her as it was then.

"So, what happens now?" Personally, she was leaning towards calling for backup.

He misunderstood her question, or at least the intent behind it. She'd forgotten that, while her confidence faltered under the force of his careless admission, he'd never stopped envisioning the path to victory.

Ranma's examination of their surroundings increased as he related his findings. It seemed like he was having difficulty locating their enemies, not that she could blame him. "One of them was leaning pretty heavily into Hung Gar tiger claw, so she's probably going to try to rip someone's face off. It won't be as effective against you 'cause she'll be coating her fingers in black magic, but that doesn't mean she won't be able to draw blood. I'll try to keep that one occupied."

His eyes moved off the dust cloud and onto the buildings surrounding them. "One of them was looking a little off. I think she might conjure a close range weapon. She wasn't fluid enough for a blade so she'll probably be looking to use a mace or a warhammer. Something blunt and simple. I'll keep her away from you."

His head turned slowly, following a concrete wall at their side. "The third one was itching to get airborne and I know it was going to use Saotome style Anything Goes. I'll tap dance all over that one in a minute." He hesitated for a moment. "The last one's… tricky."

Naturally, it had to be the one he wasn't going to fight. Of course, she shouldn't complain. She certainly wouldn't want to trade. "I'll probably regret asking, but what do you mean by tricky?"

He shrugged and finally turned to look at her. "Well, if you weren't here then she'd stick back and pepper the area with magic to try and corral me somewhere. Since you just killed one of them, she might try and rush you to finish you off as soon as possible so they can focus on a single opponent."

"Huh." Well, that was reassuring. After all, it wasn't like she doubted her ability to kill them on her own. Not at all.

He smirked widely. It seemed that the grimace on her face managed to properly convey the condition of her self-assurance.

"You'll be fine," he said, shaking his hand dismissively. At that moment, the fact that she understood and accepted his self-confidence for what it was, that is a weapon, didn't stop her from resenting it. She turned her glare onto the battlefield, lest she burn him with her stare.

Who knew? Maybe one day she will have that ability. Now certainly wasn't the time to find out.

"And by the way…"

The following events were truly confusing for her, seeing that they more or less happened at the same time.

She leisurely turned to face him in response to his paused sentence.

She felt what must have been Ranma's leg sweep her feet from underneath her.

She was overwhelmed with vertigo as her upper body obeyed gravity's call.

Her eyes opened wide and a sharp yelp escaped her lungs as her view of the sky was temporarily obscured by a huge rectangular hammer made of the darkest obsidian.

The breeze it provoked cooled any trace of anger as it passed centimeters above her eyes. She would take a little fall over a large blunt instrument any day of the week.

"…don't blame me for this later!"

* * *

The echoes of his enthused shout reached her ears and brought a melancholic smile to her face. He would never change.

Somewhere along the way, that became a good thing.

Her hand moved blindly into the pouch strapped to her right thigh and quickly removed an aluminum container. Inside were ten gas spring auto-injectors, tightly upheld to the black interior with elastic straps.

She reached for one of the pen-sized devices with her free hand and brought it before her eyes, while closing and replacing the container in one smooth movement. The clear, colorless liquid insulated inside looked exactly like water but she knew better. Kodachi's concoctions were always deceptive in appearance and this was no exception. She loathed using any of that lunatic's creations but she understood the necessity.

She promptly brought the cylindrical vial to the juncture of her neck and applied pressure. A pained grunt partially covered the sound of air passing through a narrow opening as the drug was shoved into her blood stream by the internal mechanism.

A moment of darkness passed before she opened her eyes and threw the used dispenser aside. In another minute, the effects would take hold and her emotions would crumble under a thousand feet of ice. She looked over the edge of the rooftop and spared him another, sweeter smile, though he would never know of it.

Even if it was aimed at him, it was a smile for herself, in remembrance to the days where she could have done so face to face.

Within seconds, her gentle smile became nothing more than a collection of stretched and contracted tissue. Soon after, the muscles relaxed and wiped all expression from her face. She was ready to engage the enemy.

Lying on the concrete behind her was a peculiar weapon. Its most distinctive attribute was its size as it was over six feet long, a few inches taller than its operator. The weapon was made mainly of titanium and steel and weighed around six hundred pounds. The business end was formed by two parallel silver rails with approximately six inches of empty space between them. The rest of the weapon resembled an oversized rifle that had been assembled with slabs of blocky metal.

Like all new technology, it was huge, loud and grossly inefficient. It was the JSDF's prototype railgun.

She knelt down onto a knee, picked it up, aimed and caressed the trigger. Immediately, the weapon began to hum and rumble as it slowly gathered energy.

Considering the speed of the combatants, she couldn't afford to shoot wildly, even if she hadn't been constrained by limited ammunition and battery power. Ranma wasn't aware of her presence, mostly because he was preoccupied and she wasn't trying to hide. Unless they made an effort to communicate, he usually ignored neutral units while engaging the enemy. Consequently, he made no effort to stay out of her line of sight.

Targeting Mars' opponent should have been much easier but unfortunately, Mars and the final youma were currently buried under a two story building.

Seeing no other alternatives, she settled down and began to wait.

* * *

If one could use a single word to describe Anything Goes martial art, one would use the word liquid.

When Ranma first learned that his friend Ukyo had spent a decade training by the sea to defeat him and his father, he had been surprised. Everything about that series of events had confused him, except for one detail. The location Ukyo had chosen for her training had been the only thing that he had easily accepted. If his art was the sea then a master could be likened to the moon.

A master and his art needed to be separate and yet inseparable, like the moon and the sea. The perfect martial artist had to be as untouchable as the closest heavenly body and his art unfathomable like the deepest recesses of the ocean.

When it came down to it, the only thing a martial artist could control during a fight was the tide. At that moment, if his conscious mind was a sandy beach under a gibbous moon, his tide lurked along its farthest ebb.

His feet hovered a few inches above ground as he leapt away from a charging tackle and smoothly initiated the transition into a high backflip the instant purchase was found. Seconds later, his hands shot out and clutched at his pursuer's flying roundhouse for the instant he needed to redirect his momentum.

His foot forced the youma's lovely visage to contort around its presence as it arrived uninvited. Instantly, his intuitive mind screamed suggestions that he emphatically obeyed. He writhed and leaned in midair like an acrobat, attempting to get out of the way of an ill-defined threat.

His mind finished playing catch-up a split-second too late.

_What the hell kind of impact was that?_

The Saotome styled harpy must have managed to weaken the blow and would likely fail to fly through the wall he'd targeted. Aiming for the chest would have guaranteed a successful hit but it wasn't anywhere near as satisfying as a direct blow to the face.

Manicured fingers reached out to grab at his twisting form and in short order wrapped themselves over the fabric of his pants. His eyes followed the arms into the face and stared into a feral, toothy grin impassively, hiding a wince over the pressure she was exerting onto his leg.

He needed to pull her off quickly. In the art of war, it was the equivalent of a basic arithmetic. Multiple opponents plus reduced mobility equalled pain and anguish. It was as basic as two plus two.

A quick look around revealed that the harpies weren't even going to give him enough time to land. The hammer harpy was going to catch him with a vicious lunging upper in about two seconds and the other one wasn't far behind.

_Bastards got me in a corner. Can't block, can't dodge… well, maybe I can dodge. _He toyed with the thought of trying it for a second. _No… no. That's stupid. _There was really no reason to take such a risky path. Attrition wasn't a factor in this fight. Also, he was supposed to serve as a meat shield for the currently buried Senshi. It wasn't a glamorous job, but somebody had to do it.

Finally, his conclusion was made all too clear by the fact that the Angels only managed to reduce his mobility by sacrificing their own. He couldn't really help it when his enemies left themselves wide open.

Decision made, he snapped both arms towards his chosen targets with opened palms. In his mindscape, the ocean of his technique obeyed his moon's call and sent a large wave to overtake the land of his enemies. And, for an instant, his mind was beset by visions of promised victory.

This surge of thought and emotion completely overwhelmed the sensibilities his father painstakingly instilled into him through years of merciless instruction. For one single moment he truly, sincerely believed that this was a fight he could not lose.

The source of this belief did not lie in the inherent weakness of his opponents, now or at anytime before. Ranma Saotome believed in his strength above all else. He was selfish and self-absorbed in that an opponent's actions meant nothing except for how they related to him. If he won a contest, his strength was responsible. If he lost, it was not because his opponent was stronger. It was because of his weakness, his foolishness or his unluckiness.

It was ironic that he fundamentally believed in the equality of all human beings. As such, he felt that everything could be disregarded aside from his own choices.

He believed that no one trained like he has. His belief in himself was based on the rigorous training he has endured and the opponents he has defeated.

To Ranma Saotome, there was no opponent he could not defeat. No challenge he could not overcome. He believed that with enough effort, he could defeat anyone. At times like these, he felt that he has already put in enough effort. He was not always correct in this belief and he knew it most of the time.

For the duration of the technique, he utterly violated one of the principal tenets of his father's art. For a short time, he was blind. He doubted nothing, because there was no place for doubt in such a pristine world. He was submerged in genuine happiness because he was convinced that he had reached his and his family's greatest desire. He was a man amongst men, the greatest martial artist in history.

In his heart, he sheltered his mother's love and admiration. On his shoulders, he carried his father's pride and respect.

His soul surged. His grin grew soft and complacent.

This was one of his most dangerous techniques, more towards himself than his opponents. His confidence sometimes grew to the point where it was hard to follow through. The problem with assured victory was that it made it seem as though he had already won. It was like he lived in the future and the present was nothing more than a memory. Sometimes that made him sluggish and predictable, because the link between future and present could never equal the one between present and past.

This wasn't one of those times.

His palms glowed with ethereal light of the purest azure. His lips moved to form the syllables of his technique. His throat released the breath needed to fuel it with the dull growl of a sated tiger.

"**Moko Takabisha."**

An orb of luminescent nebular matter swelled from each of his palms. The cerulean spheres billowed rapidly, growing to mammoth size near instantly.

The lunging youma slammed into it head first and jerked to a brutal stop as it found that the substance was far more solid than it looked. The harpy holding on to his leg dug her nails into his flesh to try and increase her grip as the orb's growth shoved it away.

Its efforts were rendered useless when he completed the technique. The ki blasts suddenly gained a massive increase in velocity and carried both youma away from him and through abandoned buildings. The resulting cacophony tore through the air with the force of a hundred drums.

He landed a few feet away from the remaining youma, panting slightly and feeling somewhat diminished. Already he could feel himself returning to his preferred mental state: a carefully measured mix of confidence, wariness and aggression. Silently, he lamented the technique's wasted potential.

While the technique was quick, easy and served to buy him some time, he knew that it probably hadn't been enough to kill them outright. The Moko Takabisha was a basic technique. It was the equivalent of picking up a large rock and throwing it. It could do a lot of damage but it was still simple.

One would think that it would be more useful against youma, seeing as it was just a ball of pure, positive energy. However, it was also an extremely focused ball of positive energy. The fact that it was no longer connected to his body meant little. Since the youma weren't trying to absorb it, the technique could only damage them through kinetic force unless it came into direct contact with the core.

So really, for a huge ball of positive ki, it was a lot less useful than he'd originally imagined.

The last Angel standing did not hesitate to close the distance, hoping to catch him unprepared as the sound of shattering wood and concrete masked the sound of her approach. Her assault began a split-second after his landing and consisted of dangerous open hand strikes, her fingers widely separated and curled at the first joint to imitate the tearing power of a tiger's claw.

Wispy miasma clung to all ten digits, foul, venomous and black as onyx. Despite having the consistency of vapour, the claws could tear through most substances with frightening ease. If used on a living being, the tainted energy was designed to gain entry and attack the respiratory system through the smallest of flesh wounds.

When used on skilled martial artists, the toxin was much less effective. Ranma could remove all traces from his lungs with a few seconds of concentration. However, unlike the Senshi, he didn't possess any natural defenses against magic. If he wasn't careful, a single swipe could rip half of his throat out.

The youma attacked with wide sweeping hook strikes and quick jabs designed to cut off his escape routes and maximize her opportunities to grapple. He made sure to avoid those with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. When the opponent was armed with claws, grappling became an extremely painful experience.

Ranma aimed his blocks and deflections towards the opponent's wrists and forearms, bringing the claws much closer to his face but otherwise managing to evade damage. He took his time, waiting for an opportunity and memorized his opponent's timing.

After failing to strike with a left handed hook, the youma quickly moved her right foot forward and executed a hooking elbow strike. He leaned backwards to avoid it and immediately ducked under the predictable extension. Now slightly off balance, he had automatically moved his right leg backwards to widen his stance before noticing his opponent's follow-up: a fierce leaping left knee strike.

_Shit! _He immediately realized that dodging beyond her reach wasn't feasible in his current position. He had enough time to block, but that would also leave him vulnerable to having his head sliced open by the far more dangerous claws. That left him with one option.

_Damn it!_ The knee slammed into his chest with more than enough force to wrench every last molecule of oxygen from his lungs. He grimaced as the impact forced him back until he could bend his knees and neutralize it.

The youma reached for his head, confident that he wouldn't be able to throw her off in time. She was way too close and he had far too little time.

_Oooh. __It's on now, bitch. _His chest would likely hurt all day. He couldn't let that go.

The Angel's claws sliced through thin air as he moved to counter. His head buried itself between the cups of a lacy black bra with far more force than he usually employed.

Ignoring the pain, the youma quickly moved to complete its attack before it was blown away, only to find that both its arms were trapped in Ranma's grasp. The Angel struggled frantically and screeched in pain as his feet proceeded to methodically stomp into her torso.

His legs blurred out of sight, pushing his feet fully into the space where organs should have been, crushing muscles into useless paste and grinding its bone structure into powder.

With one last kick, he pushed his foot between her now misshapen breasts and held it there. He then used his crushing grip on its wrists and pulled it into his foot.

For a second, the body warmth that enveloped his foot invoked an acrid taste in the back of his throat that he was forced to swallow back.

_That's really disgusting._

Its feet were hovering limply a foot above ground. He'd destroyed her hips and abdomen and it could no longer use its legs to attack… or stand. It was healing quickly, judging by the shifting canvas of red and blue that was her body but the damage was too intensive for it to matter. It was at his mercy.

Dispassionately, he noticed tears sliding down its bruised cheeks. He felt nothing beyond his nausea.

With his captive injured, immobile and in desperate need of recovery, he focused on his aggression, the hatred he harbored towards these creatures. He focused on memories of the artificial beasts that forced him to make a choice.

_You ruined everything. My friends… they've changed and it's all your fault._

Immediately, the drain began. The youma in his grasp ceased its feeble struggles as it felt its supplies replenish. The ki was trickling through a miniscule crack in his disposition and it desperately focused on attempting to stretch the crack into a chasm.

Meanwhile, he concentrated on his ki, even as it escaped his control. The easiest, fastest way to kill a youma was to attack its core and the largest issue with that course of action was that it was very well hidden. Ranma's plan was quick, dirty and generally very risky but he was more than good enough to pull it off.

A youma's core was designed to attract, absorb and alter unfocused neutral ki and negative ki into dark magic. Any martial artist with the ability to manipulate ki naturally possessed enough awareness over it to recognize when their reserves were being looted. While it was no longer in his direct control, the aggression tinged ki he was losing was still his, at least until it was absorbed and converted. Until then, it still carried his distinct signature.

To find a thief, all one had to do was follow the trail of stolen goods. To his fine-tuned sixth sense, the figurative marked bills were heading right between the thief's blue eyes.

The Angel wailed as her salvation was torn away. After all, learning the location of an enemy's weak point certainly helped his confidence.

He let her arms go, because the path to victory was wide, straight and unencumbered. It no longer had the means to impede him. He'd ascertained the depth of its sea.

He hopped back, because his most destructive techniques were most effective at mid to long range.

Everyone liked to indulge in things that weren't good for them (or others for that matter). Some people smoked. Some people drank. Ranma liked challenges. He liked them because they allowed him to wallow in his own greatness, which was what he was really after.

Without any embellishment whatsoever, one could honestly say that Ranma was great at what he did, now and at any time before. He knew it and everyone around him knew it, even if they said otherwise. His need for victory was his most vicious form of self-indulgence by far.

In his mad quest for perfection, Genma Saotome taught his son to think like a champion. You were either the best or you were nothing. There was no in-between. Considering that Ranma spent over a decade _being_ nothing, it wasn't surprising that he liked to revel in his strength every now and then.

In short, Ranma liked to win. Ranma needed to win. A large portion of his mental makeup rested on the fact that he was a winner.

However, Ranma also managed to develop some measure of dignity over the years. He took no pleasure in defeating the weak, the defenseless and the innocent. Defeating Akane meant nothing to him because she was beneath his notice as a martial artist.

The same held true for youma, Angels included. Defeating the Dark Kingdom's army wasn't a challenge. It was a chore. It was repetitive, predictable.

The Angels had Happosai's art, but that was it. They had none of his spark, none of his creativity. They were soulless golems, no better than robots. Very advanced robots, but still.

The Angels knew all the best ways to respond to various situations, but they could only respond in those specific ways. Part of what made Happosai so difficult to handle was that even if you genuinely gave him the opportunity to inflict massive damage, he might do something completely different just to fuck with you. He was unpredictable. He was creative. He was human.

To fight Happosai was to fight a moon and an ocean. To fight his freakish fantasies was to fight a large body of water.

Fighting martial artists gave him a full workout, body and mind. Fighting the Angels was like going to the gym. It was Boring. With a capital B.

It was thoroughly unsatisfying.

But, Ranma was never one to give up. If something was tedious, it was up to him to _make_ it interesting, and thus satisfying.

At this point, he could destroy the angel by stepping on its head. As soon as his ki-infused foot met her core, it would absorb the positive ki, collapse unto itself and dissolve into dust.

_But that's just too easy. Consider yourself lucky, youma. Not many of you get to go out in a spectacular expression of skill. You're about to become one of the few recipients of the most pointlessly destructive technique in the world. _

It was as he prepared himself to utterly ravage his defenseless enemy and mock its paltry remains that he was knocked off the road to victory by the sudden appearance of a proverbial wind storm.

* * *

She had fallen unconscious.

This realization was brought to the forefront of her thoughts as soon as her mind managed to reestablish its hold on reality.

Normally, when speaking of natural occurrences, one starts at the beginning and finishes at the end. In other words, one follows the conventional chronological order. Past, to present, to future.

However, reality doesn't follow that order. Not really.

Reality exists in the present. The past no longer exists and the future does not exist yet.

The same holds true for human beings. Rei Hino, seventeen years old, Senshi of Fire exists in the present. To think about the future, all she has to do is examine the past.

Present to the past which flows into the future. The concept of Time could be said to function in that order. From _what exists_ to _what used to exist_ to _what does not exist_.

What existed in Rei Hino's present was darkness, pain, silence and warmth.

_What… what happened?_

The last she remembered… was a situation much like this one. It was dark, silent and painful. She remembered… she couldn't move.

Liquid fire shot through her veins at the memory, rendering her stillness virtually unbearable. Instantly, she began thrashing around on the ground, screaming in desperate, frantic anger, hoping to dislodge or rip apart whatever restraints held her.

"He…ke…!"

She felt the warmth shift around her and recognized the feel of unyielding arms hugging her into immobility.

"Wake up!"

Her eyes shot open. She gasped and her body stilled in rigid tension as she was overwhelmed by the sudden influx of sensory information, so much so that it took her a few moments to actually begin working through it.

Her muscles loosened as she relaxed and realized her position. She was on the sidewalk near the shattered, smoking remains of the building she had been trapped under. She saw a marked increase in the amount of debris that lay scattered on the street. She couldn't see any sign of their enemies and could only infer that Ranma must have either killed them or chased them away. As far as she could tell, they were alone. And he was close.

Very close. So close that his body took up over half of her line of sight. So close that the warmth that he exuded completely offset the asphalt she was sitting on. So close that she could hear the steady beat of life emerging from his chest.

_*Babump*_ …_ *Babump* _…_ *Babump* _

He was holding her up, she realized. His right arm went straight across her upper back and his left curved around her waist, with both hands holding her arm in place. As the ground was far from comfortable, she looked up to ask him to let her go… and paused.

He was still close, but for the first time she realized that he wasn't _too_ close. And that was a problem.

He raised an eyebrow in silent inquiry as she stared him down. She didn't answer his call. She didn't know what to say.

_This is going to get complicated, isn't it…_

Finally, after a few moments, of silent contemplation, Ranma resorted to one of his favored tactics: direct confrontation.

"Something on my face?"

She blinked and the moment was gone.

"No. Could you let me up?"

Gone, but not forgotten.

"Oh, right. Sorry about that," he mumbled.

He let go of her arm and drew his hands to her waist to lift her up. She bit her tongue to stay silent. Ranma had obviously spent little time in close contact with women and paid very little attention to where he put his hands. He was a martial artist. Efficiency was his business and the most efficient path between two points is always a straight line.

At that very moment, the last thing she wanted to focus on was the feel of his fingers as they trailed along her side and across her abdomen.

She was brought back to reality when Ranma snapped his fingers before her face. "You okay?" he asked concernedly. "You look dazed. Try walking in a straight line."

She shook her head and waved him off. "I'm fine. What happened?"

He looked at her skeptically for a moment before letting it go. "Well, not much. You blew yourself up and I kicked ass."

She winced at his wording. "Yeah… not my best idea."

He shrugged at that. "Actually, it wasn't as bad as you'd think. You wanted to keep that harpy the hell away from you and you did."

She stared at him, unamused. "I dropped a building on top of both of us."

He nodded in complete agreement. "Yeah, you did. Doesn't matter. It might be a pain in the ass to get out from under there but there's no way a stupid little building is going to seriously hurt either of us," he affirmed. "It wasn't going to kill the harpy either, but it did keep it away from you. The only problem is that the next time you try to blow your way out of rubble, you might want to try focusing the blast in one direction. Not only will you get to keep consciousness, you also won't throw as much debris around without warning."

_Hmm…_ "Did I hit you?"

He shook his head. "No, but you probably spooked her into firing prematurely."

"Her?" she asked. He jerked his head over and to the left. She looked over his shoulder…

And there she was.

She stood on the edge of a flat rooftop, looking down at their conversing figures impassively. Ranma Saotome's ex-fiancée.

Akane Tendo.

Right then, the familial resemblance couldn't have been more obvious. The cast of her features spoke of the kind of indifference that characterized her older sister.

The youngest of the three children finally caught with her the rest of the family, at least in terms of beauty. At nineteen years of age, her figure was every bit as shapely as Kasumi's. She had allowed her hair to grow past her shoulder blades and was currently tied back with a long strip of white bandage.

Clad in a grey ensemble consisting of combat boots and gloves along with a full body, form fitting suit adorned with a dozen detachable pouches, she looked every inch the member of a Special Forces unit. Only not, considering that Japan was deprived of any official military forces after the Second World War. On paper, Akane was just a special civil servant specialized in threat removal under the purview of the Ministry of Defense, same as any other member of the Japanese Self-Defense Force.

Rei didn't know much about it, but even she knew that the situation was incredibly complicated. The only reason they'd managed to get away with half as much of what they had already put into effect was because the changes made weren't intended for use against human beings.

Of course, she shouldn't complain. The JSDF's questionable legal status was the only reason why the Senshi and T-MAG weren't facing some serious legal issues.

"So yeah. I'm going to head out."

_Wait._ "What?" She looked at him incredulously. "This is a perfect opportunity! Aren't you even going to go say hi?"

He looked right back at her, a perturbed look on his face. "Hell no! And just what kind of opportunity are you talking about?"

"This is the perfect opportunity to rekindle your—"

He cut her off, sharply. "Who said I was looking to rekindle anything?"

She didn't have anything to say to that.

He sighed, and took a moment to gather himself, eyes shut and face closed off. When his blue eyes faced the world again, they seemed placid… like a deep pond on a hot summer day.

"Look," he said. That one word was enough for her to know. He wasn't going to go over there and she wasn't going to make him. "Mars, I like you and all," and damn if that didn't please her just a little too much, "but I'd appreciate it if you didn't, you know, pull the whole Romeo and Juliet thing."

"And just what is so wrong with Romeo and Juliet?" she questioned. That wasn't the point she'd meant to address, but his derisive tone forced the question out of her.

Ranma rolled his eyes and she had to hold herself back from snapping at him. That wouldn't get her anywhere.

"Yeah, yeah. It's the greatest love story ever. Whatever. That's just my point. It's a story. Not only that, they both _die_ at the end."

_Oh yeah… That's… that's a good point. _

But it was kind of odd that he knew about that.

"Anyway, even if I didn't care about having a few hundred women out for my blood and even if our relationship was kept on a strictly platonic level, I _still_ wouldn't go over there to chit-chat," he claimed, supremely confident in his affirmation.

She stared at him in silence as he walked across the street to gather his things, shocked at his vehement outcry. This wasn't what Nabiki had said…

_Actually… __Did she ever…?_

Well, at the very least it wasn't what she had insinuated.

Still, all those concerns fell by the wayside as she watched him pick up his duffel bag and realized that he wasn't going to turn back around. There was still something she wanted to ask him.

"Why?" she yelled at him.

She didn't understand. She wouldn't have asked any questions if Akane had been mad at Ranma, but it didn't make sense for the reverse to be true. She knew from Nabiki that the two didn't talk anymore, but she had assumed that Shampoo had been to blame.

This… was totally outside of her expectations.

He stopped at the nearest intersection and turned back to face her, his face unreadable, bag slung over one shoulder and his long braid over the other. She saw him turn his head away from her before thinking better of it, and understood that what he would say was meant for both of them.

He raised his hand to his mouth and shouted, "The Akane I knew was a martial artist, or at least trying to be. That right there is a soldier!"

And with that last remark, he turned on his heel and walked out of sight around the corner. She stayed immobile for a moment longer, trying to decipher his meaning without success.

When she turned to face the woman in question, she found that she was alone. She sighed, and looked up at the clouds.

_Definitely complicated…

* * *

  
_

Had he been able to examine his situation more objectively, he would have been amazed at the widespread gamut of emotions he'd experienced over the last half hour. He'd gone from playful certainty to dismal reminiscence, from feigned indifference to concealed resentment.

Now, now he was just frightened, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it.

_Was it an accident, or did she do it on purpose? _

He ran. He escaped from the battlefield and dashed across the city, fleeing without an enemy to chase him. Thoughts trickled down his consciousness, desperately trying to avoid surfacing but only succeeding in lengthening their stay.

_No… s__he knew I was winning, that I had _already_ won… why would she even take the chance?_

_Akane… were you aiming for me?_

If she had been trying to hit him… he wasn't sure how to deal with that. He hadn't seen much of Akane since his marriage, but her sisters always kept him well informed.

Kasumi had been the one to tell him of her decision to join the JSDF. That had sparked a… disagreement. They didn't talk much after that.

Even after he read the report Nabiki had managed to track down on Kodachi's little serum, he'd made the mistake of approaching Akane when she was on duty and therefore under the effects. After that debacle, he'd done everything he could to avoid her.

He figured that she had plenty of reasons to be angry… but were they enough to try and kill him? He didn't know. There were many things about other people that he didn't understand. His history with Mousse, Ryoga, Shampoo and a hundred other examples of paltry reasoning muddied the waters considerably and explained why he wasn't feeling too optimistic.

_No… it had to have been __an accident. It had to be. _

It could've been. Honestly, he couldn't really put too much faith in the tomboy's aim. Of course, the problem with that thought is that it worked both ways. She could've wanted to aim further away… or directly at him.

And Rei's little explosion probably did shock her into firing prematurely. He just… wasn't sure about where she had been aiming before that point. All he knew was that a foot long, inch thick metal projectile passed right beside his head. It did manage to destroy the youma he'd been planning to annihilate, but that didn't reassure him.

If she'd fired before she was ready then he couldn't count on her hits to determine her aim. Especially since he knew where his head had been a second before the explosion.

_Maybe__ she just thought about it, just a little. Maybe she didn't mean it. Maybe she wouldn't have gone through with it. _

_Ah damn it. How did everything get so fucked up?_

In the end, short of going straight to her and asking her outright, there was nothing he could do about his suspicions. So he was going to put it out of his mind and try to forget about it. It was probably an accident anyway.

When he first saw the balcony door of his destination, he breathed a sigh of relief. It was the one place in Japan where he could relax and not be bothered. Not because no one could find him, but simply because no one would dare.

In his younger years, he could've never imagined what the woman inside that apartment would come to mean to him. She was his best friend, because she was the only person in the world who wasn't asking for something he didn't want to give. She was also the only one around who had the self-confidence to withstand his trash talk without feeling the need to bash his head in.

Ironically, she was also the only person who didn't have to hear it from him. After all, if it didn't work, what was the point of doing it? Funny how no one else ever seemed to catch on…

In any case, Nabiki's apartment on the fringe of Tokyo's dead zone was one of the only places where he could enjoy himself, no questions asked. And right then and there, there was nothing he wanted more.

It shouldn't have surprised him when his plans were irrevocably wrecked, but it did.

_Well, __this day is officially ruined._

There was little point in trying to avoid it. She knew he was there and she'd obviously been waiting for him. So he squared his shoulders and slid the third floor balcony door open.

Sitting on one of Nabiki's leather recliners, drinking a cup of her host's mediocre tea was a vision of beauty. She wore a beautiful sleeveless cheongsam with a very short hemline that left most of her sculpted legs completely uncovered. The form-fitting red dress was embroidered with pink flowers and did very little to hide her curvaceous form.

Distinctive purple hair spread out and framed a face that haunted his nights and it was staring right at him with small smile.

He didn't shy away. He stood firm and stared resolutely into the face of pure evil.

"Hello, Husband."

Pure evil rarely ever sounded so good. The words were abhorrent, but the voice… the voice was a reminder and a promise all at the same time.

Past experience filled in the blanks. He had heard this voice at both ends of the range, from a fevered whisper to a shallow scream. The promise it held was often repeated and rarely ever unfulfilled.

It said: 'We are going to have sex, very soon, and you are going to like it.'

It was so much easier to hate her when she wasn't anywhere near him, because she always managed to distract him with inconvenient things like fabulous sex.

"Hello, Shampoo."


	4. Truth and Dreams

Wow. This chapter is just one, long, never ending scene. It introduces so many important concepts that I had to rewrite it over and over again. I had planned on adding another scene to this chapter, but no. It was supposed to be a huge fighting scene that's going to take ages to write, so I'm just going to post what I have for now.

On a side note, the reason why I call this a fusion is because I don't just copy and paste characters from one fandom into the other. Even if the characters remain different, the world they live has been effectively fused. You'll understand what I mean once you finish this chapter. And it won't stop there. Not even close.

Anyway, on with the show.

* * *

Eclipse: The Dark Side of the Moon.

Chapter 3: Truth and Dreams.

_Somewhere along the way, I realized that, out of all my fiancées, I knew Shampoo the least. I__'m no__t sure when it happened exactly but I'm pretty sure that I figured it out about a month into the siege. Just enough time had passed for things to settle down after the invasion, and I had just begun to understand that I was off the market. That__'s what prompted me to realize that __I had no idea who my wife was._

_I learned. Quickly.

* * *

  
_

Shampoo's lithe figure looked far too relaxed as she lounged in Nabiki's living room. It couldn't mean anything good. Not for him, at least.

She took a small sip of the undoubtedly third-rate beverage and smiled. Another bad sign.

In his experience, Nabiki's tea brewing skill effortlessly invoked a very different reaction. Plus, there was the fact that she was nowhere near the hostess her elder sister was. Kasumi always did her best when she prepared something, even when she did so for someone she didn't particularly approve of. On the other end of the spectrum was Nabiki, who was a petty, vindictive bitch when she wanted to be.

When he considered that Shampoo's cup was still virtually full and that the unappetizing liquid didn't look anywhere near fresh, he realized that this particular brew was one he would have to avoid ingesting.

Her voice brought him back to reality. "I had a feeling I'd find you here."

Ranma frowned in indignation. "Still having Mousse follow me around?" He didn't care about the surveillance. Not really. It just annoyed him that he had to ask. The blind bastard could be damn sneaky when he wasn't trying to kill someone.

She waved him off. "Nothing so complicated. Just a bit of guesswork."

He crossed his arms and walked two steps closer, prodding her. "What are you doing here Shampoo? You wouldn't come here for business and this sure as hell ain't a social visit."

Shampoo took the time to set her cup down onto the table before answering. She was still smiling. Very bad sign. "Most would find it alarming… that upon his return from a month long training journey, a man would prefer to spend his time with another woman, rather than his wife."

She didn't sound angry. In fact, she sounded amused. "Intimidation, is it? You know, a Matriarch can't afford to be so inflexible. You can't seriously expect me to reject all forms of female companionship that don't come from you."

The smile didn't budge. "I just wanted to make sure she knew what she was getting into, or rather, who she was letting in."

The insinuation wasn't lost on either of them. Immediately, a memory of Nabiki's lessons, spoken in this very room, streaked through his mind.

_Redirect, don't contradict. A well placed truth is just as misleading as any lie. _

Ranma raised an eyebrow and spoke the truth."We're just friends."

"I know," she said, and he got the feeling that her words were more than worthless reassurances. A passing thought observed that her voice was lighter than what he remembered. She didn't sound as preoccupied as she normally did. He didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing. "This isn't something that needs to worry your pretty little head. You already know the rules. Nabiki was the one who needed to be informed."

Ranma found himself frowning again, something he did often around his wife. "Don't call me that."

Shampoo giggled as she sensually slid her limber body off the seat. "Oooh, you have something against being pretty? What are you going to do about it, handsome?"

_Okay. This is getting creepy. _Shampoo's unusual behaviour was throwing him off, badly. Her manner was almost… playful.

For the first time since the beginning of their conversation, it occurred to him that the young Matriarch might be smiling because she was honestly happy to see him again. No strings attached.

Sometimes, it was easy to forget that no matter how much he disliked her, the feeling wasn't mutual.

Now cautious and drained of belligerence, he decided to try and bring the conversation to its natural end. "Better, but I'd appreciate it if you called me Ranma."

"Alright… Ranchan."

And caution was thrown to the wind.

His wife stalked closer, unfazed by the intensity in his glare. He stood firm and spat out, "Why do you always have to try and provoke me?"

She tilted her head, looking contemplative. "Well, I don't know about you, but I think the sex is much better when you get all worked up."

_Oh god._

One thing he'd learned being around Amazons so much was that modesty wasn't all that important to them and for good reason. When you spent most of your time fighting, especially at higher levels, clothes tended to become useless very quickly. It wasn't a problem for him now, but it had been a real issue when he'd been younger. It was one of the reasons why Genma spent so much time teaching him how to dodge… as well as how to repair his own clothing.

Still, it didn't make hearing her bring this up in public any less embarrassing

"I mean, I don't bruise easily but I couldn't tell you the number of times your fingers left marks on my thighs, my waist…" Shit, he was starting to blush. "…my breasts, my throat. Did you like that?" she asked. She pressed herself against him and brought her mouth to his ear. "Having your strong fingers curled around my vulnerable throat, did that make you feel strong? It gave me such a thrill. I didn't know if you were going to squeeze the life out of me. I knew you could."

Her whispers tickled the edge of his ear, urging him to put some distance between them, but he stood stock-still, lost in the memories.

He remembered.

He recalled thinking about it, in passing, indulging in morbid fantasies… but he hadn't realized she'd been aware of it.

"And I think you did too. Do you remember? I was on my back and you were moving so strongly that I had to close my eyes and scream. But you didn't like that, did you. No, the noise was bothering you so you cut it off at the source. Forcefully. Decisively. Do you remember?" she asked.

He did. The scene played out in his mind like he'd gone back in time and possessed himself.

"Did you see how quickly I stilled? Did it please you? And right then, you looked at me. **Looked at me.** And I came. Right. Then. And there. Even if you missed everything else, you must have felt me convulse. So, did you enjoy it, Ranma? Did you enjoy making me helpless?"

Most of the time, when they were having sex, he automatically avoided looking her in the eyes. He didn't know why. He knew that she spent a lot of time trying to goad him into it, but she rarely succeeded.

It was weird. He had tried to think of Akane while he was doing it, which was actually pretty creepy now that he thought about it, but he never managed to think about other women while he was in bed with Shampoo. He didn't know if she was aware of that and he certainly wasn't planning on telling her, but he very much remembered the scene she was describing.

And it wasn't right. Not entirely.

"You're never helpless," he mumbled.

A pause. And then another.

"If it weren't for you…" she whispered. "That would be true."

She stepped aside and walked for the open balcony door, kneeling down and putting on her shoes before putting a foot up on the railing. Not once did she turn back to look at him… or show him her face.

"I'll see you soon, Husband."

And then she was gone.

_What the hell just happened?_

"…I think I liked her better when she couldn't speak Japanese."

He stared at the place where Shampoo had stood for a second more, before turning to face his best friend.

"Truer words Nabiki… truer words."

They lapsed into silence fed by hesitation, both of them wondering what to say, what to do, what to think.

A discomforting miasma seemed to propagate like a disease from the area his wife had occupied. It was only natural. She had forced her way into an area directly opposed to her presence without taking the proper precautions and therefore violated the household's harmony.

Actions have consequences. Strong actions have strong consequences. Stronger actions have stronger consequences and so on and so forth. But that is not the end of it. The weight of the consequence is also dependant on the actor. A powerful man's actions are not equivalent to a weak man's actions. Even if the action is constant, the consequence is not invariable.

The actor commits an action which invokes a consequence. Actor, action, consequence. Beginning, Middle, End. Birth, Life, Death. The trinity of causality.

Most human beings went through their entire lives without meeting anyone truly powerful. At best, they saw others with seemingly infinite monetary power. Celebrities, politicians, businessmen, royalty… a thousand personalities deemed important and plastered over televisions and newspapers.

It is easy to forget that money is only borrowed power. Its strength exists only in the minds of other human beings. Money is an idea, a concept that one can exchange for actual favours. It is even easier to forget that a favour is the only thing money can buy. If no one can or will grant the favour, money loses all utility.

Case in point. On a sinking ship, all the money in the world would not buy another man's lifejacket.

Shampoo was a powerful young woman. If a leader of men could be likened to a Queen Bee, she would be a lioness.

Something significant had happened here. He could feel it in the air. He could smell it. He could taste it, and it was no accident.

Shampoo had to have known about the consequences. Nabiki probably wouldn't even consciously acknowledge it, but there was no way he could have missed this.

So it was a message. One he couldn't quite decipher.

The greatest martial artists in the world all had one thing in common. They all had the aptitude and the training to utilize their ki as they saw fit. They spent their entire lifetimes establishing, training and cultivating life. They strove to find new methods to use it efficiently and to gain it in greater quantities.

In the simplest of terms, martial artists are more alive than other people. Their link with the world is much stronger than the norm. If a human being is composed of a body, a mind and a soul, then a martial artist's goal is to merge all three into one. To merge Birth, Life and Death into one singularity. Their ultimate goal is to surpass all three and become something more, whatever that may be.

A master of the art is almost like a fixture of the world as he intertwines his soul with reality. Martial artists are stronger, faster and live longer than would otherwise be possible. Every breath they take gives them more energy than they can actually use while living a normal life.

It is said that the greatest masters can survive on oxygen and ideas, food enough for the body and the mind.

Happosai proved that it was possible. He spent an ungodly amount of time sealed inside a cave, thinking only of his perversions. It is a testament to his corruption that he emerged virtually unchanged.

The Amazon elders said that Cologne once spent an entire year on an isolated mountain top in deep meditation. Ranma had no idea if he could do it or not. He knew his father couldn't do it or at least never wanted to.

Shampoo wasn't yet able to perform such a feat, but her soul was very much entrenched in the world around her, just like any other martial artist of any merit. If she wasn't careful, she could… leak into the surroundings. That is to say, that her soul could expand beyond the limits of her body and contaminate everything in her immediate vicinity.

He could feel shadows of her intensity lingering in Nabiki's apartment. It was like she was standing right behind him in her cursed form, staring and plotting. It was making him supremely uncomfortable.

He couldn't tell what she had been thinking or what she had been feeling. She wouldn't let it be that easy, which all but proved that this was a planned act. All he could really feel was a sense of unpleasantness, which didn't really help him at all as it was probably his reaction to something he couldn't consciously grasp.

_Guess I'll have to avoid this place for a while. Damn it, you won't get away with this Shampoo. I won't let you do as you please._

It was almost depressing. It was as if everyone he knew conspired to make his return absolutely unbearable. The possibility wouldn't have been so credible if they hadn't been so opposed to his departure. It certainly wouldn't be the first time a group of people conspired against him.

It was funny how things changed. A few years before, Nabiki would have been a prime suspect in any suspected conspiracy. Now… now…

_Hmm… _

Nah. He was being paranoid. This wasn't a conspiracy. They were probably giving him a hard time just on principle.

"You look uncomfortable."

Nabiki stepped away from the kitchen's threshold and into the wider area of the living room. His eyes followed her figure and he noticed that she seemed a little preoccupied. She was dressed for comfort, in loose cutoff shorts and a large T-shirt. Her face was empty, but her hair was dishevelled, like she'd passed her hands through it one too many times.

"So do you," he pointed out.

Nabiki nodded absentmindedly as she took a seat on her couch. "Yeah, but I have an actual reason for feeling discomfort."

Ranma raised his eyebrows and waved towards the balcony door. "Oh, and that right there isn't a good reason?"

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Of course not. I know you, Ranma. You don't feel guilt."

He blinked a few times and rolled the thought over in his head for a few seconds. "Isn't that a little much?" If it had been anyone but Nabiki speaking, he wouldn't have even considered it. He wasn't the nicest guy in the world, but he wasn't amoral either.

She looked up to him. It took a second, but she seemed to realize what she had said. Odd. Nabiki rarely made mistakes. "Hey, I'm not saying you don't have a conscience here. I'm just pointing out the fact that you never regret anything," she amended.

"What?" he objected. Again, he failed to agree. "I regret things."

"No you don't." Nabiki shot him down. Instantly. "You lament the way the people around you react to what you do. You don't actually feel bad about the actions themselves. It's why you always repeated the same mistakes with the fiancées. Those girls never figured out that you weren't the one who had to change."

He couldn't blame them. He didn't get it either. "What do you mean by that?"

There was a moment of silence in which she took the time to cross her legs and rest her hands on top of the uplifted knee.

She was making herself comfortable. This was probably going to take a while then.

"I mean that your lack of regret isn't necessarily a bad thing. The reason why you rarely feel guilty is because you rarely make mistakes. You just don't do things that would soil your dignity. It took me a while to understand that."

He still didn't get it and he was honestly starting to lose interest. She needed to get to the point. "Well, the important thing here is that one of us gets it."

"I'm talking about your mouth, dumb-dumb," she said softly. His frustration managed to get a smile out of her. It was a tiny thing, but it was the first sign of success on his part. He was tired of looking at her poker face. "You see, everyone lies Ranma, but when you first got here you didn't. And when you did, you did it badly. When you were sixteen, you just said what was on your mind. You had no tact. You were brutally honest and that wasn't something anyone around you was used to. The reason why most of what you said annoyed so many people is because no one was on your wavelength."

Nabiki paused for a moment and passed the fingers of her right hand through her hair. "Back then, I thought you were some idiot hick who didn't know any better. I don't know if you noticed, but you were doing it on purpose. You like to find out what makes people tick and once you do, it's only natural for you to use that information against them. So you threw jabs. They stung a little, but they didn't do much damage. Of course, your targets didn't like it much and always attacked you in response, but you were more than strong enough to handle the backlash so you didn't care.

"After all, you were doing what you were supposed to do. How do you help someone improve if you don't show them the flaws in their technique? And what does it matter if they get a few bruises in the process? It's just a spar and the pain will give them incentive to improve anyway, right? I'm guessing that's how most of your lessons went."

"What the hell did you and Shampoo talk about?" he mumbled under his breath. Still, he kept his ears open and his mind focused. Nabiki's insight was interesting. She usually told him to figure it out on his own. He didn't see why he should. It seemed to him like she spent more time thinking about his life than he did.

Nabiki seemed oddly introspective, considering that she was talking about him. "Not one of your fiancées and rivals thought like you do. They still don't understand. You're a martial artist. You poke and prod at all weaknesses because that's what you do. The difference between enemy and friend can only be measured in the force behind your blows. It's not a career for you and it's not a hobby either. It's a way of life. A religion. A characteristic. The art affects everything that you do. Every move, every thought and every perception. All day, every day. You never stop being a martial artist. You have no idea just how hard it was for me to understand that."

She huffed in self-disgust and leaned onto the backrest, staring at the ceiling. "Back then, my sister was what I based every martial artist on. That was a mistake and a stupid one at that. Akane was only a martial artist in a dojo, or in a fight. When she was at school, she was a student. When she spoke to me, she was my little sister. When she hung out with her friends, she was a teenage girl who happened to know martial arts. It's not like that for you. Your father taught you one thing and one thing only. And he taught it very well.

"You've been a martial artist for as long as you can remember. You will be a martial artist for the rest of your life, no matter what happens. You have some issues functioning in society, but it's not you that has a problem, it's everyone else. I used to think that you expected everyone around you to be perfect… but now I think that you just expect everyone else to either be comfortable with who they are or working to reach that point. Before coming here, you must have never spent much time around people who didn't like who they were and did nothing about it."

_Actually, back then I didn't spend much time around anyone aside from Pops._

"To tell you the truth, now that I know you better… I can honestly say that your relationship was doomed from the start," she mused. "The only reason you two got so close is your curse. Now that you've accepted it, there's nothing she can use to bring you down to her level."

That caught his attention. "You mean Akane?"

For a moment, he thought that his interruption would bring Nabiki out of whatever mood she was in, but she only nodded inattentively. "My little sister is very insecure, you know. She practices martial arts but she doesn't live it like you do."

Ranma sighed. He didn't like to obsess over people's actions like Nabiki did and she was starting to lose him. If she didn't start elaborating soon, he was going to get a headache.

Well, if they were going to have a lengthy conversation about it, then he might as well make himself comfortable. He turned around and headed for the kitchen, raising his voice as he walked further away. "I'm supposed to know what you mean by that?"

Once inside the small room, he traveled the few steps that remained between him and the fridge and opened it with the casual swagger of a frequent visitor. He buried his head into the chilly crevasse and split his attention between his auditory and visual senses. Nabiki had learned to raise her voice so that it could be clearly heard over the sound of shuffling groceries. She made full use of that skill as he hesitated over her selection of canned beverages.

"Idiot! I mean that the art comes before everything else to you. Your self-esteem is based on how good you are and that's it. School grades, material possessions and concern over your place in society all lag far, far behind. On the other hand, my sister spent most of her life comparing herself to Kasumi. You can probably guess how that ended up."

A faint smile was etched onto his features as he emerged from the large kitchen appliance. Reminiscing over his ex-fiancée's many domestic failures never failed to get a reaction out of him, good and bad. Adjusting his hold over a can of chilled orange juice, he shut the refrigerator door and walked out of the kitchen.

The subject matter was beginning to get to him. The cadence of his steps slowed down as he stared into the open space. "Say, Nabiki?" He looked at her and saw that she was watching him closely. "Why did Akane start to learn the art?"

Her response was immediate. "Why did you?"

Ranma grinned in recognition. That was the Nabiki he knew. "You'll think this is funny but… I wanted to be like my old man."

She leaned forward, wide-eyed in disbelief. "You're kidding?" He ignored her scrutiny and brought his fingertip to the can's tab and cracked it open. "You're not kidding."

He raised an eyebrow. "You got an answer for me?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. You'll have to ask her. Why in the world would you ever want to be like Genma Saotome?" she asked.

Ranma shrugged with feigned indifference. "Well, you didn't really answer my question, so I think I'll keep my mouth shut until you find one."

Nabiki stared at him crossly. "You're going to have to stop avoiding Akane one day, Ranma."

He had to nod, because she was right. "That's true. But that's no reason to give you the answer for free. You know me so well already. I wouldn't want to be completely predictable."

Nabiki maintained the intensity of her stare and crossed her arms. "You know I'm going to find out."

He took a sip of juice to hide his smile. A while ago, he would have fallen for that one. Nabiki wasn't really interested in his relationship with Akane. She was just using it to find out what he was refusing to tell her.

Now was the time to change subjects. "Of course you are. You're just not going to find out now. Haven't they heard of patience on planet Naboo?"

He relished in the expression of disgust that graced her face. "Urgh," she groaned. "I should've never let you see that movie."

He held his eyes wide open and feigned incomprehension. "What? You should be proud Naboo. You have a planet named after you."

"I will hurt you."

A threat that involved physical violence? From Nabiki? He was on a roll. Hmm… come to think of it, maybe she was right about him. "Aw come on, don't be like that!"

The irritation was washed off her face as she unfolded her arms and brought her hand to her face. She stared at her nails dispassionately and said, with perfect sincerity, "Fine. Forget it." And just like that, his fun was over. "How did it go?"

He managed to get her to change the subject, but that didn't mean that he was out of the woods. He needed to make sure she was interested before she took advantage of his rapid-fire mouth… and his inevitable inattention.

"What? The training trip?" He shrugged. "It was alright."

She glanced up from the apparently mesmerizing sight of her own fingernails. "What do you mean by that? Did it work?"

Look casual. "Of course it did." _Hook…_

Nabiki looked… unamused. "Ranma." He almost winced. He was pretty sure that he twitched. He'd have to work on that. "You spent over three days telling me how stupid you thought my idea was."

…_That long? Time sure flies by when you're having fun._

He didn't bother trying to deny it. He just nodded in acceptance. "Yeah, and it's still a stupid idea. You just misunderstood why I thought it was stupid. I never said it wasn't going to work," he revealed. _Line…_

She seemed sceptical. "And you knew this how?"

_And sinker._ "Hasn't Soun told you about the elements?"

"What?" She paused for a moment, thinking. "You mean Fire, Water, Wind, Earth and Heaven?"

For a quick guess, that was pretty accurate. "Yeah, but your version's kind of incomplete."

"I don't follow."

He moved to take a seat and sat his beverage down on the coffee table. This was going to take a while.

But on the plus side, he had successfully managed to divert Nabiki's attention.

"The elemental system is basically something some people came up with to identify what the users of mystical power could do with it. They made up a few symbols and useless pictures that don't really mean anything a few thousand years ago," he said. "Most of the methodology was set up by a bunch of self-important old men who weren't skilled enough to use the techniques themselves. The Amazon scrolls aren't as cluttered by useless bullshit, but they like to write in riddles, which is just as annoying.

"I'm not totally sure, but I think you guys have the full elemental system. That's Air, Water, Fire, Earth and Wood under nature, Metal under humanity and Heaven, Void and Ether under spirits."

Nabiki took a moment to digest the information and nodded thoughtfully. "Okay. Well, most of those are pretty obvious… but what's ether?"

Ranma took a sip of his juice as he searched for an answer. He finally set the can down and tried to explain. "It's complicated. Think darkness and light. Something and nothing at the same time. It's the neutral element."

"Darkness and Light are grouped to together?" she asked.

He shrugged. "They're the same thing. Think yin and yang. My point is that martial artists have their own system of elements called the Five Steps. Ki can be transformed to five different elements, Water, Fire, Earth, Wood and Metal."

Nabiki quickly held up a hand. "Wait. You mean you can't use your ki in any other way?"

He shook his head. "Nope."

"What about the Hiryu Shoten Ha? Isn't that wind manipulation?" she questioned.

He looked at her oddly for a moment. "What? No. What gave you that idea?"

"A giant tornado," she answered drolly.

"Which is the end result," he countered. "I never actually use my ki to manipulate the wind directly. I just use the soul of ice and my opponent's battle aura to create a field where a tornado is created."

"So you use Water and the other guy's Fire?"

He nodded. "That's about it."

Nabiki brought her hand to her head and began massaging her forehead. "I see… so what happened on the training trip?" she asked distractedly.

He observed her carefully as he gave his report. "I did what you asked for. I managed to make some physical fire and move some water. I tried making some but I really have no idea how. It's a lot harder to conjure than fire. I did manage to freeze some though. I could already—"

She quickly brought her hand back up and interrupted his explanation. "Wait. Stop. That doesn't make sense," she said, shaking her head.

"What?"

"I'm just thinking about what you said about the five elements… What about the Umisenken? Isn't that a Void technique?" she questioned.

He shook his head. "Nah. It's just a very difficult Water technique, even if there's no actual water involved," he explained. "There's more to elements than the physical. It's the kind of technique Ryoga would have a hell of a time learning."

"Why?"

Ranma blinked in surprise. He would have thought it obvious. "Because he's a knucklehead. He's never been able to concentrate on anything. You think he'd be able to learn something like the Soul of Ice?"

Nabiki was undaunted and continued her interrogation. "What about the Yamasenken?"

"Advanced Metal."

"Hidden Weapons?"

Ranma grinned in rueful appreciation. "That's actually really clever. See, the technique is just an aura trick. You know that the more light there is, the deeper the shadows are, right?" He waited until Nabiki nodded before continuing. "Well, auras emit light, even when you can't see them. So we just wrap our auras around us and hide the weapons in the shadows inside our clothes. That's the reason why we can't use the technique while naked."

Nabiki grit her teeth in frustration and tried again. "Have you even tried to use other elements?"

"Hell no." He was tempted to ask her what the hell she was looking for, but she probably wouldn't answer. In any case, there was something he needed to make her understand.

"Nabiki, it's not that it can't be done, because it's probably possible. It's that no one is stupid enough to try it. It might be fine for the Senshi to use whatever element they want but that's only because they're not using their own energy. I have to directly manipulate every scrap of ki that's available to me. If I try it, it's going to have an effect on me. A system isn't absolute. It doesn't really outline what is or isn't possible. It's just…"

He floundered and hesitated, looking for the best way to explain himself. Eventually, he sacrificed his pride and used the established symbolism.

"Picture a pentagram," he began. "A five pointed star with six empty spaces, a pentagon in the middle with a triangle at each side. Martial artists breathe in Air to make ki. That ki goes in the pentagon. That's the ki that is used for basic techniques. It's definitely possible and perfectly safe to take that ki and transform it into one of the Five Steps. Try to use one of the others and all bets are off. You might be fine or you might open a gate and summon an atrocity from the depths of hell. Or worse, an atrocity might summon you into hell."

He leaned forward and stared into Nabiki's eyes. "Using the elements is all about your state of mind. When I convert ki to fire, it's not ki in the shape of fire. It's just fire. When I use my ki to make a fireball, I lose part of myself to that fire. There's a reason why certain elements are forbidden. You don't want to find out what happens to people who lose part of themselves to things that aren't of this world, good or bad. Face it Nabs, Ki isn't like magic."

They stared at one another in silence for over a minute as Nabiki worked through what he had said.

"No."

His head fell slack. A weary sigh escaped unstrained.

"You're wrong. Ki is exactly like magic," she said.

He slouched into the couch and released a guttural groan. "This again…"

She took this to mean that he wasn't paying enough attention to her idea. "Look, I know you don't believe me, but at least listen."

He didn't bother to adjust his posture, but he still waved her on. "I'm listening."

She stared at him for a moment but didn't really have any option but to continue. "I don't have any real proof, but these results really increase the possibility. I mean, ki and magic may have different sources but they can be used to do similar things."

"What's the point of all this?" He was more than tired of this subject. "Even if you're right, what does it matter? They may be completely similar or entirely different, the point is that they're handled differently."

"You don't know that," Nabiki pointed out. "From what you told me, I think we can assume that ki fits into Ether. I mean, it has to be one of the elements, right? And Light and Dark is exactly what I would describe the Moko Takabisha and the Shishi Hokodan. As a martial artist, you have perfect control over that one element and I think that you would have to possess rudimentary control over another to be able to convert it and since magic is nothing but the control of elements…"

Ranma sat like a steel rod was rammed into his spine. He looked at his friend in disbelieving shock. "Wait… you're not really suggesting…"

"Ranma, just give it a chance." Nabiki attempted to pacify him. "All we have to do is get you a planetary binding. There's no reason why you wouldn't be able to…"

He shot to his feet. "Whoa, whoa whoa, slow down. You want me to do what?"

Nabiki knew that the situation was getting out of control and didn't hesitate to give her side of the argument. "With a binding you could have an unlimited supply of energy! Just think of the possibilities! We could just drop you off behind the barrier, come back in three days and the war would be over!"

She was playing his ego but it wouldn't be enough. Not for this. "I think you're overestimating what I can do. Three days is a little much."

"I think you're underestimating the amount of power we're talking about."

No, no, he wasn't going to play this game with her. "Look, I don't care. I'm not going to beg at Serenity's heel for one of her trinkets."

"I know you two don't like each other." Understatement. "I'm not asking you to go up to Serenity and I'm not asking you to join the Senshi. Look, the Sailor Senshi rely on three pieces of equipment to do what they do. The Henshin stick takes care of the transformation and contains a symbolic set of obfuscating armor. The tiara holds and transmits knowledge of a specific set of spells. And the Sailor crystal holds all the power. You don't need to wear the armor and you don't have to know the spells.

"All I want you to do is to keep your mind open so that if something comes up, we won't have too much trouble implementing it."

In other words, she had something planned and all he had to do was go along with it. "What kind of game are you playing?"

"I don't play games, Ranma. I do business," Nabiki clarified.

For some reason, he found that statement particularly hilarious. It took a few seconds, but he managed to control his convulsive laughter long enough to make a comment. "So I'm business now?"

A satisfied smirk was born and ruled over her features uncontested as she joined him on her feet. "You were always business, baby. Always."

Her words failed to faze him. He knew how to distinguish between wishful thinking and reality. "Heh. Sure doesn't seem like it."

"That's just because you don't like business."

Ranma cocked his head as he thought over Nabiki's unique interpretation. "And you do?"

"Is that a surprise?"

He shrugged. He also knew the difference between liking something and liking what that something brought you. "I just thought you liked power. Being in control. That kind of thing."

Her smirk softened into something a little more honest and she nodded, almost reluctantly. "Well, that too."

Ranma looked into her apologetic smile and was overcome by a feeling he could only qualify as passionate, though it was different from what sometimes he felt with Shampoo. It was softer and much less volatile.

He tried to put it into words but could only gesture about and babble uselessly. He looked helplessly into Nabiki's bewildered face and silently asked for her aid.

Of course, since she couldn't know what he wasn't talking about, there was no possible way for her to help. It was almost like a game of charades, only much more frustrating.

In the end, he decided to try something he'd seen other people do in situations much like this one. And maybe, if he was lucky, she would understand.

He stepped closer to her, so close that the heat from her breath would warm his sore chest if it weren't for the fabric of his shirt.

She looked up at him in that special manner of hers. Cool, detached and expectant. Kind of like she knew what he was going to do long before he did it and that the only thing left for her to do was to watch it play out. Her smile was gone and her face was blank, but she didn't move away.

He raised his arms and hesitated for a few seconds before wrapping them loosely around her waist. They stood in this awkward pose for a long moment, trapped in indecision and uncertainty. Finally, just as he was about to let go and apologize, he felt her lean into his embrace and wrap her arms around his neck.

He smiled and tightened his hold on her, his best friend.

He had a thousand allies, rivals, enemies and fiancées. But he'd only ever had one friend.

Ukyo had been his buddy before all that nasty fiancée business, but they never had the time to get to know each other. They were acquaintances at best. They had been friendly, but they hadn't been friends, which is why he'd forgotten her over the years.

He didn't think he'd ever forget Nabiki. No matter how much time passed.

And that feeling he could not find words to describe? He got it now. He was just happy to be back.

He turned his head towards her ear and whispered, "It's nice to see you again, Nabiki."

She nodded, once, slowly and mumbled, "Right back at you, Ranma."

They stayed together for what seemed like a long time, neglecting conscious movement, enveloped in each other's warmth and presence and almost revelling in the experience. Both of them held on for their own selfish reasons. They tried to ignore the outside world as best they could, save for the pleasant feeling of proximity.

Eventually though, the pressures of the outside world reminded him that he couldn't afford to sit still. So, with marked reluctance, he relaxed his grip and slipped his arms out of their position, resting his hands onto Nabiki's hips.

She didn't budge. That brought a hint of a smile to his lips. Her behaviour was very familiar. It was like this every time he tried to wake her up. Nabiki often had great difficulty moving once she found herself in a comfortable position.

There were plenty of ways to get her going again, but he found that the easiest was simply to ask her a question.

"How's your old man?"

He felt her bosom shift against his chest as she took a deep breath and released it as a shuddering sigh. She slid back half a step, looking down and hiding her face from view, with her hands settled on his shoulders.

Before he could do anything at all, she looked up and seemed perfectly fine. "He's alright. He and the others have just about finished settling into their new facilities. And that reminds me…"

She turned and walked away with a steady gait, and he could only watch as she slipped into the depths of her apartment. He'd been observing carefully and saw no sign of distress or preoccupation. And yet, he just couldn't shake the feeling that there was something…

_Weird. Just… weird. What have you gotten yourself into Nabiki? I hope you know what you're doing. But I gotta say, the Sailor Senshi? You sure know how to pick your marks…_

A delicate hand carrying a rectangular piece of plastic entered his field of vision. He looked up into the face of expectancy and awaited his instructions.

"Here."

He looked down again but did not move to take what was offered. "What's this? A debit card?"

"Yeah, now that they finally have a budget, Dad figured that you would need one if you ever needed to buy anything."

"But I'm not a member of T-MAG," he protested.

Nabiki rolled her eyes. She probably couldn't even understand the concept of refusing money. "Technically, you're not an Amazon either and you're definitely not a Sailor Senshi or a JSDF soldier. If you're not careful, you're going to wind up being the only one who's not getting anything out of this. Besides, you've done more for them than anyone. Take it."

She looked annoyed now, so he decided not to push it. He took the card and slipped it into his sleeves.

"I noticed that you didn't ask about the rest of the family."

He shrugged. "The Amazons wouldn't let anything happen to Kasumi and I'll see her later anyway. I already saw Akane."

Nabiki jerked and started examining him closely, seemingly realizing that his clothes were slightly ripped and rumpled. "When?"

"Just before I got here. I ran into Happosai's freaks."

It was only now that he noticed just how backwards their conversation was. They'd started with the heavy stuff and they were only now handling the greetings and small talk.

"So she was on duty."

He nodded. "Yeah."

She didn't bother hiding a faint wince. "Well, that couldn't have ended well."

"Actually, nothing happened," he refuted. "Rei was there. Speaking of which, what the hell did you tell the Senshi about me?"

Nabiki didn't seem to react overmuch to his sudden question. "Nothing much. Just what they needed to hear," she answered, as if they weren't talking about anything of importance.

He looked carefully. As if she was a challenger. As if every twitch was a prelude to an attack he wouldn't be able to block or deflect. And even then, the only thing he noticed was her shifty eyes.

"Oh I see," he said mockingly. "You were working on your so-called plan."

Nabiki's poker face rarely revealed her emotions, only lies and half-truths.

She smiled tightly and crossed her arms. "I hope you know that when this all pans out, I'm going to take every opportunity to rub it in your face."

He smirked. That had been the truth. "I'll take my chances. Anyway, I've got more rounds to make. I'll come by in a few days."

She blinked, surprised. "You got something planned?" His visits were usually quite a bit longer.

"Nah. Shampoo soaked this room with her presence. It feels like she's standing right behind me. It's really annoying."

Nabiki looked around her, absently rubbing the skin of her right arm. "Is that what that is? I think I can just barely feel it. Is it going to go away?"

That comment brought his eyebrows up. He hadn't expected her to detect it. "It'll be a few days," he admitted.

She thought it over for a second before nodding in acceptance. "Good. I wouldn't want to move."

Ranma stared at her in bewilderment. "Nabiki, you're the only person living on this block. Everyone with a brain moved away ages ago. You don't pay rent and the city keeps the facilities in these parts open so that everyone involved in the war effort can use them free of charge. Technically, this apartment is just as good as any other in this building."

"And your point is?" Seeing that he was unconvinced and looked ready to continue with the tiresome subject, she smiled. "Let me put it this way. If I have to move, you're going to be the one moving all my appliances."

Suddenly, his urge to continue along this line of conversation was severely diminished.

His reluctance wasn't driven by the idea of physical work. Nabiki didn't own anything that would require real effort for him to carry. It was just that she was likely to goad him into rearranging her furniture until she was satisfied.

He knew from experience that reaching an acceptable level of satisfaction could take an entire afternoon. Unfortunately, that kind of mindless repetitive work became extremely tedious after the first five minutes or so.

"Right," he mumbled. Oddly enough, Nabiki seemed to be moving further and further away from him, all without taking a single step. Then he realized that he was the one moving and forced himself to stop. "I think I'll go pay your old man a visit. They moved to Chiyoda, right? Near the palace?"

Nabiki shook her head, smiling.

"Trust me Ranma, you can't miss it."


	5. The Guild

Eclipse: The Dark Side of the Moon

Chapter 4: The Guild

_The Tokyo Martial Arts Guild Headquarters is a building designed to exemplify the virtues of the martial artist. As far as headquarters go, it__'s actually __closer to a monument than a fortress. Of course, this is by design._

_Should an attack occur, we, as martial artists, will not seek protection behind barriers of steel, wood or stone. We will not invoke power that we have not earned, power that does not belong to us, power that does not weight upon our very shoulders to save what is close to us._

_In the west they have a saying. All roads lead to Rome. What matters is that you get there._

_The ends justify the means. Nationalist dogma at its finest. _

_We do not agree. We are individuals before we are citizens. I am a human being before I am Japanese and I always will be. I refuse to sacrifice my humanity for the sake of country, duty or honour because my soul is more precious than my life._

_We will stand and we will oppose our enemies using only that which is not beneath us to use, win or lose. This building was built to showcase this._

_It will stand the test of time and it will fall when it can no longer endure. It may be destroyed and it may someday be forgotten, but never will it lose its dignity. _Never.

* * *

It was difficult for him to admit, seeing how he'd been totally excluded from the design phase, but he was very much impressed by the results of the Guild's architectural endeavour.

The Guild's center of operations was built just north of Tokyo's Imperial Palace, in the Fukiage Gardens of the Imperial Palace Grounds. The building itself was surrounded by carefully maintained plant life and loomed over the entire area, as it was over four times as tall as the garden's tree line.

The Tokyo Martial Arts Guild Headquarters was a massive six-sided and six-storied tower with eaves extending from the edge of each floor in addition to the roof. The design of the building was shamelessly stolen from ancient pagodas, which traditionally served as temples for various religions.

No one would ever mistake any of those morons for monks or priests, but since most of them could handle a spirit or two, demonic or otherwise, he guessed that it was okay. Besides, religious pagodas ceremonially had odd numbered floors. The use of even numbers for their HQ must have been intended as a distinction.

The clear glass that served as the building's windows were arranged as distinct characters knitted in the wood. The kanji for Water encased in a circle was inscribed on each wall of the first floor. Arranged symmetrically on the second floor was the kanji for Fire, followed by Earth on the third, Wood on the fourth, Metal on the fifth and finally Heaven on the top floor.

Ranma couldn't help but scoff at that. _The five elements under Heaven? And you call me arrogant._

There wasn't a single person in that entire building that deserved to stand on that last level. That he knew for certain. Not even Happosai had completely overcome the shackles of his mortality.

Still, the building was magnificent. He couldn't wait to see what was inside.

* * *

Ranma stood with crossed arms, nodding his head thoughtfully as he mulled over the situation. An impasse had appeared before him, a sphinx with a riddle.

Steadily, he eased his lungs open, letting a gust of wind settle deep inside. He paused for a moment and let his thoughts come to rest before loosing a tranquil sigh. He was relaxed, at peace with himself and the world around him.

His eyelids peeled back, gently revealing an idyllic world that he viewed in a state of complete placidity.

"Could you repeat that?" he asked nicely.

In contrast, the baby-faced boy that stood before him shook like a leaf in the wind. "Um, I'm sorry Mister Saotome, but I can't let you in here."

His eyebrow began to twitch as the child's impressively firm and steady voice crashed through his placid demeanor like a rocket through a brick wall. He quickly took another breath but found that he could only release it in the form of an annoyed grunt. "One more time," he grumbled.

"I can't… allow you to set foot in this building… sir." The boy looked so scared and unsure of himself that Ranma took pity on him and decided to give him some help.

He took a stab in the dark and thought of a possibility that wouldn't end in violence. "Are they in a meeting or something?"

The boy only shook his head in response.

The other possibility was nowhere near as likely, but he felt that he had to ask. For the boy's sake if no one else's. "Have you started denying access to non-members?"

"…no…" The whisper was so soft he probably would have missed it if he hadn't seen the boy's lips move. Ranma closed his eyes and thought about his next move.

He could walk away. He should walk away. This wasn't his place. It might have been, once, but not anymore. He needed to let it go.

However, he could also bust the door down and make his way to the top by force. Technically, sneaking in was also an option, but that wasn't exactly true as he certainly wasn't going to sneak back out.

"Heh." He chuckled.

But then there was a third choice.

"Um… sir?"

He could think for a second.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't just go through you?" he asked. He made sure to make his question as non-threatening as possible.

"Um… Um…" It didn't help.

However, if they really wanted him gone, they definitely wouldn't have asked this runt to give him the news. Maybe they were counting on his usual reluctance to hurt small children as they couldn't have anticipated the amount of crap he'd had to deal with throughout the day, but still. They couldn't possibly expect him to take this lying down.

Unless, of course, they had nothing to do with this.

"Who put you up to this?" He had to ask. There were so many candidates. But, on the other hand, if he had to guess… "Akihito or Souichiro?"

"I… I don't know what you're talking about." The child, who'd watched him scrupulously for the entire duration of their conversation, now chose to avert his gaze. And just as suddenly, his fear seemed to dissolve into hesitation tinged with apprehension.

Ranma couldn't ask for a more obvious sign. "Tell me, or I will go to both," he said.

The threat seemed to have the desired effect. The boy seemed to crumple into himself as he gave his answer. "It was… Akihito."

"Right. So where's Souichiro?"

Wide-eyed, the boy tried to protest. "What? But I…"

Ranma crossed his arms and glared down. The protests died down and the boy looked away once he realized that he couldn't even lie properly.

Regrettably, Ranma had enough experience with intimidation and blackmail to know the how to tell the difference between fearful acquiesce and outright guilt. "I know. I scare you, but I don't live here. The only thing I can do is beat you down while he can make your life miserable. It's self-preservation. Now, where is he?"

The boy still hesitated. "He…"

"Look at me, kid." Ranma demanded. The child looked into his eyes, trembling slightly. "I am not going to repeat myself. Where is he?"

"He's…" The boy shut his eyes and clenched his fists tightly. "He should be teaching inside the dojo."

"And where is that?"

"It's inside. As long as you don't take the stairs, you'll get there. The entire first floor is a training area."

Ranma smiled grimly and tapped the tensed child on the shoulder, feeling the immature muscles loosen on contact. "Thanks kid," he said. He moved beyond the poor opposition offered by the young martial artist, but stopped just before opening the door the child had guarded.

Ranma closed his eyes and quickly searched inside of himself. There, he found a great well of dissatisfaction.

He turned back. He couldn't leave things like this. "What's your name?"

The child answered listlessly, without turning or moving in any unnecessary way, "Taichi." He slouched like someone who had suffered crushing defeat.

Ranma crossed his arms and leaned against the closed door, smiling strangely. "Let me give you some advice then, Taichi. Don't let anyone just walk over you like that."

Taichi's body began to tense up again under the weight of his words. That was good. It meant that the boy still had some fight left in him. "Easy for you to say," he grumbled. "He's not stronger than you."

Ranma raised an eyebrow. _Actually, I was talking about me._

"What's your point?" Ranma asked.

Taichi turned to face him, wearing his disbelief like face paint. "I can't win." The boy presented that statement like one of the universe's fundamental truths, like it was so obvious that no explanation should have been required.

So caught up was he in the blatant obviousness of his dilemma that he managed to miss the point.

"Who said anything about winning? I asked you to fight."

Taichi found himself puzzling over an enigma. He stood with his mouth primed and ready to deliver an answer that did not involve cowardice. He was surprised and disturbed to find that the search was taking longer than he had expected.

"Sometimes Taichi, it isn't about winning or losing. Beware of excess, beware of greed and take only what you need. Here, the only thing you need is respect." Ranma straightened up and waved the boy closer, "Come with me."

Ranma looked on approvingly as the younger martial artist, plagued though he was by profound disquiet, still had the presence of mind to doubt. He was a little less pleased by Taichi's indecision.

The boy was visibly hesitating. He initiated movement and interrupted the motion before it reached completion. Repeatedly.

He opened his mouth and shut it without saying a word. He brought his foot halfway off the ground and sat it back down without taking a step.

If Taichi wasn't careful, this could become a huge hindrance to his combat ability. Doubt was useful when carefully contained. Hesitation was a whole other animal.

Left alone, the boy might have stalled for much longer before committing to a course of action but thankfully Ranma didn't need to hear the question to answer it.

"I'm going to do you guys a favor. Today, you kids are going to learn the difference between a strong martial artist and a respectable one."

With that last statement, he swiveled towards the entrance and pulled the thick wooden gates open. Just inside was a long hallway of dark brown and beige that held no decorations save for several identically stylized lanterns.

It seemed to him that the passageway followed the outside perimeter of the building, until he looked up and realized that the corridor actually reached the ceiling hundreds of feet above. T-MAG's HQ was a circular tower inside of a larger hexagonal tower. As he watched the edifice that stretched far above him, he saw several spiraling staircases end on the third floor.

For a moment, he wondered how the residents were supposed to reach the upper floors until he noticed a series of two meter long thick wooden poles sticking horizontally out of the interior walls, getting further and further apart as they gained in height.

Facing such a spectacle, Ranma could do nothing but watch stupidly. When his nerves began to function again, the first thing that came to mind was a feeling of relief. All of a sudden, he was very glad that he had no part in designing this building. He'd forgotten exactly what kind of people had designed it.

Ranma Saotome could have been the poster boy for martial arts, but he was never one to sacrifice practicality in favor of exoticness, unlike his father and many of his peers. He could certainly indulge in both, but he believed that the simplest solution was the best.

Shaking his head in disbelief, he turned his attention back to the ground floor and focused on his self-imposed mission. Directly before him was an opened doorway the size of a mammoth. It had been the first thing to catch his eye when he stepped inside the building. At the time, he'd chosen to ignore it in favor of his immediate surroundings but now that he examined past the surface, he saw hundreds of children, little boys and girls that were carefully executing drills, techniques and exercises designed to perfect their art. They worked alone, in couples or in groups, practicing hand strikes, kicks, throws and holds belonging to completely disparate styles, clothed in simple achromatic garbs.

It was only then that he noticed the sound. The dull sound of skin to skin impact intertwined with the whoosh of the wind as bodies and limbs sliced through still air. Above that were the shrill cries of soulful kiais, and below were the guttural grunts of pain and exertion.

He recognized some of the children by face, others by technique. There were always a few dozen orphaned or abandoned children being harbored in the Guild's enclaves around Tokyo. T-MAG taught them to take care of themselves. Those teachings included rudimentary training.

Gathered before him were the best of them. The ones with the spark. The ones that loved martial arts. The ones with the talent needed to become masters and the learning curve needed to do it quickly.

It was by far the most diverse collection of martial arts styles he'd ever seen, gathered and executed in a single place. It was awe-inspiring just standing there, reaching a dawning realization of just how much he had left to learn.

He watched. He observed, he noticed, he witnessed. He analyzed and memorized the movements he didn't know and admired the execution of those he did for what seemed like years, at least in terms of content and experience. Realistically, he knew that he couldn't have gotten any stronger. But that didn't mean that it didn't feel like he had.

It was hard to believe, but he may just have gotten a little more confident. Smiling, he slipped his shoes off of his feet, pushed them aside and walked a few steps into the massive dojo.

One of those sets of eyes turned outwards when their exercise was completed and caught sight of him.

"RANMA-SENSEI!" A scream, a yell, a cry that, like a magnetic force, attracted all eyes to his position.

In no time at all, he was swallowed by the immense volume of the fearsome flesh tide. He was buried underneath a litter of sweaty, smelly children. And he smiled, because, for a moment, there was nowhere else he would rather be.

Throughout his childhood, he couldn't recall a single instance where he had spent an extended amount of time around or interacted with children of significantly younger age. For some reason, whenever he and his father settled down long enough for him to get to know other people, it was always around people his age or older. As a result, pretty much every single one of his personal relationships included competition in one way or another.

His friendship with Nabiki was no exception. The only real difference between her and everyone who had come before was that she wasn't inclined towards penalizing failure. They were friends and so their competition was naturally friendly. It was different here. For the first time, his talents weren't an obstacle to bypass on the road to his social prosperity.

Over the years, he had bested a great number of opponents. However, he could count on one hand those who had freely acknowledged his superior ability and all of them were female. Humility was trait very few martial artists possessed, himself included. In the end, he became very much accustomed to disregarding the jealousy and resentment his skill attracted. It became almost natural over the years.

So it was somewhat of a shock when he first encountered the Guild's trainees and the emotion known as hero-worship.

In any case, as glad as he was to be there, he would very much appreciate being on his own two feet. "Get off of me!" he bellowed.

One after the other, the human bricks that he was buried under moved off and stacked themselves into a neat wall right beside him. He peeled himself off the ground, brushed himself off and smiled to himself. Instant unquestioned obedience. It was kind of nice every once in a while, especially after a day like today.

As soon as he got his legs under him, he was bombarded by a salvo of frenzied questions and jumbled briefings. Half of the children wanted to tell him a story and the other half wanted to listen to a story. It was the same story really. A story with one subject and a few billion perspectives. A story about yesterday.

But that would have to wait. He brought his hand up, facing forward, "Sorry kids, we'll have to talk later. I need to take care of something and I want you to pay attention to what I'm going to do. You just might learn something important."

He could literally see them begin to memorize his every movement. It was almost eerie how they just stopped moving, their wide eyes following everything he did until he stepped off and they scattered to spread his word.

Sure-footed, he stalked towards his target, Souichiro Tanaka, heir to one obscure martial arts style or another. He didn't really care to remember which one. It wasn't really important.

They'd crossed paths once before, months ago. The Tanaka family's oldest son moved to Tokyo for the express purpose of joining the Guild and helping with the war effort. While his intention had been noble, his attitude was anything but.

In short, Souichiro had believed himself to be one of the biggest fish in the ocean and quickly found himself disabused of that notion. After everything was said and done, Ranma remained very much unimpressed.

The guy had some nice, useful moves, but no real idea on when to use them properly. He specialized in striking techniques, he was fast, he was strong and he was skilled in the use of ki, but Ranma could have beaten him when he was thirteen. Not because he had known more techniques or because he'd been stronger or faster at that age, but simply because he had mastered every technique that he had been taught up until that point.

Souichiro's basics were sloppy, to say the least. He showed every mark of an impatient, spoiled student. He must have been the kind of kid that went straight to the end of the training manuals and never got around to reading the beginning. Since the jackass was talented enough to actually learn the harder techniques, his teacher, who must have been an utter idiot or a complete patsy, must have thought it okay to let him focus on them.

In comparison, Genma had spent the entirety of their decade long training journey focusing on his son's basic skills. Ranma didn't learn a single advanced ki manipulation technique until after he settled down in Nerima at the age of sixteen, even if he was more than talented enough to learn one.

There was a reason for that, and he was going to take the opportunity to make sure every one of these kids knew it by heart. By the time he was finished, he may have earned himself another enemy.

But it would be worth it. It always was.

He might regret it one day, but today was not that day.

Smiling and raising his hand high above his head, he delivered an informal greeting that was entirely unnecessary. "Oi! Souichiro!" he called out.

The man was already looking straight at him, a surly glare twisting his handsome features. No surprises there. No one could have missed the brouhaha his arrival stirred up.

Approaching at a sedate pace, he raised his voice and spoke loudly, "I hear you've got a problem with me being here. Since I'm free right now, I'd like to take the chance to settle our differences." His words were cordial and his tone pleasant.

Souichiro tensed immediately.

Ranma smiled graciously, completely relaxed. The stage was set. It was opening night at the theater. The house was packed and the lights were dimming.

Souichiro was reading from the script he'd written himself. Ranma never got a copy.

* * *

Ukyo Kuonji was obsessed with Ranma Saotome.

Or at least, that's what Nabiki liked to call it. But then, Nabiki was a cold-hearted bitch with no friends who'd likely die cold and alone in a ditch somewhere.

Aside from her worrisome… association with Ranma, there was nothing really remarkable about her. And that association wasn't even all that disturbing, seeing as it was almost unavoidable.

Shampoo was more paranoid than a bank robber hiding with his loot in a dusty basement after a botched heist, which was certainly understandable. Substitute the basement for a small shack outside the city and the picture was largely accurate.

Thanks to her paranoia and her complete inability to trust the man she professed to love, Ranma was forbidden from interacting with those she perceived as competition. Namely, Akane, Kodachi (god knew why she even had to add her to the list) and, of course, Ukyo.

Ukyo was particularly proud of the way Ranma had told her to shove off.

It only took a few days of marriage for the cunt to stumble upon the obvious. It wasn't going to be any easier for her to make Ranma Saotome do what he didn't agree with. He may have wilher, but he wasn't about to become Mousse Mk II. He wasn't about to stop seeing his friends just because his wife felt insecure.

Unfortunately, Shampoo didn't give up. Even worse, she didn't do anything Ranma could justly object to. Her plan was simple, if deadly. She assigned him an honor guard.

An Amazonian honor guard consisted of a contingent of four elite female warriors who escorted their target for an indefinite amount of time.

In this case, it was for a year.

For over four hundred days, they followed him everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. And while Ranma wasn't easy to track, they outnumbered him four to one. They also learned quickly. Within a week, it became impossible for Ranma to lose them for longer than twenty minutes. At least, without leaving the city limits.

It was hard to have an intimate conversation with someone when one was surrounded by hostile witnesses. Even worse were the times Shampoo herself decided to tag along. At least the honor guard tried to keep their distance, if only to avoid provoking Ranma. But Shampoo… Just remembering it made her want to break the bitch's face in. She would never forget the torment she (and just about everyone else aside from Nodoka) had endured after they started sleeping together.

Eventually, the length and frequency of his visits began to die down, until he only stopped by once or twice a month. Evidently, Shampoo found that to be acceptable, as her grudging husband was allowed outside without supervision for the first time in a dozen months.

At first, Ukyo had been overjoyed. She had believed that they could… She had been foolish. Ranma's visits… didn't increase in frequency.

Thankfully, he maintained his refusal to spend his free time in the Amazon village. He hadn't given up. He just found new ways to occupy his time, new people to hang around. Or rather, a new person.

Ukyo didn't ask questions. She already knew the answer.

She closed her restaurant, but she kept the hired help. She joined T-MAG and started training under some of the best martial arts masters the country had to offer. She ditched the spatula and picked up something a little more appropriate.

Spatulas were good for cooking, but they weren't all that good at separating heads from their shoulders. She hadn't picked an easy target. In all likelihood, she would only get one opportunity so she had to be prepared. She had to make it count. As if things weren't hard enough, she quickly realized that she was on a time limit.

In times of war, the Amazon warrior women consumed a birth control potion to make sure that they wouldn't be inconvenienced by unexpected pregnancy. Also, depending on the enemy they faced, it also served to make sure the worst didn't happen if their warriors were ever captured.

Ranma told her on one of his monthly visits that most Amazon women were beautiful by design. After all, if an Amazon warrior ever found herself at the mercy of an enemy it was likely that the enemy would be male. It was a fact that a man was more likely to capture a beautiful woman than kill her.

Of course, a man was also likely to take great pleasure in violating his beautiful captive. Depending on the enemy, the man may not do so alone.

Once the warrior recovered from whatever injuries plagued her, she was free to make her escape… after she collected whatever vengeance she felt appropriate. Few things in this world can hold an Amazon warrior. Shackles and prisons rarely count among them.

The potion saved those warriors from having to return to their village carrying a child of dubious or unsuitable parentage. Apparently, this small piece of information served to clear up a few of Ranma's questions about the Amazon's marriage laws. They made sense, kind of, once it was considered that the laws were created under the assumption that, after a man defeats a woman, he would have his way with her.

It also explained why Shampoo never had any problems with marrying a complete stranger. Her first impression of him was that he was strong of body and of spirit because he'd beaten her, but he hadn't raped or molested her while she was unconscious. And getting to know him only seemed to make her like him more.

Ranma became a lot less friendly towards Mousse once he realized that his rival would not have done the same. Trying to kill him was one thing. Wanting to take advantage of a defenseless woman was another. But then, Mousse was an Amazon and those rules only applied to outsiders. He could have beaten Shampoo a thousand times and she still wouldn't have married him, voluntarily or otherwise and Cologne would have killed him if he even thought about touching her without her consent.

However, from that point on, Ranma made damn sure that every single Amazon male that accompanied the war party to Japan knew the Japanese laws regarding such things to the point where they could recite them in their sleep.

Several of the unmarried men complained.

Several of the unmarried men lost the ability to function without assistance, and the rest of them understood for the first time exactly why he was the Matriarch's husband.

Apparently, Shampoo and the elders hadn't been too happy to learn that a portion of their work force was incapacitated, but none of them did anything serious about it. They didn't even complain when he insisted that they let the injuries heal themselves naturally. No drugs or potions of any kind were to be administered. And that included painkillers. Every one of the Amazon warriors quickly understood that there would be no compromise on this matter and no one wished to take him to task over it.

This level of vehemence was surprising. It was rare that Ranma exerted such force against anyone, especially against someone who hadn't actually done anything wrong yet. So she had asked him to explain.

His answer is what truly convinced her to assassinate his wife.

"Let them suffer," he had said. "Let them bear the scars of their selfishness."

He had looked at her then and spoke of something they rarely addressed, "You know Ukyo, sometimes my old man was a thief, but he didn't like taking things from those who couldn't defend themselves. He always said that we had to protect the innocent. If you weren't a martial artist, he'd treat you fairly. He'd pay for what he could afford and we'd do without if we couldn't. Hunger builds character, he used to say."

He chuckled fondly for a moment, "But, if you were a martial artist, then he'd take whatever he could get his hands on because you should know better. You ever see him and old man Tendo play games? They cheat like you wouldn't believe, but they never call each other out and they never complain. The way they see it, if they couldn't stop it from happening, then it's their own fault. They should have been stronger, more vigilant. It's why he asked for your forgiveness and not your father's. You were a child. Your father was a fool.

"That's why I can't forgive those Amazons. Their mentality… it disgusts me. The women aren't all that bad once you get to know them, but the men… The men need a solid ass kicking. And my foot is primed and ready to deliver."

That was what worried her. He cared. He wasn't supposed to care.

Ukyo needed to act before Shampoo took the antidote. She knew Ranma. If Shampoo became pregnant with his child, then he would protect her with his life, regardless of everything. Once that happened, even Genma would consider her family. And it would be too late. Shampoo will have won.

She could feel him slip away again. The first time around, he was taken by a shifty old man who cared for nothing but blood. Genma Saotome was a family man. If you weren't family, then you were practically nothing in his eyes. Years ago, he'd looked at her, taken what she had and tossed her away.

She knew why. She wasn't stupid.

She hadn't been good enough. Her family hadn't been good enough. Even then, Genma had chosen Tendo blood over hers.

She couldn't let that happen again. The first time had cost her over a decade. This time, she would prove herself. Not even Genma could find her wanting once she's taken Shampoo's head.

Years ago, when she finally caught up with the Saotome vagrants in that equipment shed surrounded by curious students, she had told them that okonomiyaki became her life after they left her behind. At the time, that was what she had believed.

However, the truth was that her entire life was focused on Ranma from their meeting onwards. That meeting had changed the course of her life. She couldn't even imagine what it would have been like without him in it, without his very existence driving her in one form or another.

She'd been chasing him for so long now that he had become the only thing she really cared about. She realized this when she found no difficulty in trading her treasured spatulas for blades. She hadn't cooked okonomiyaki in months now. These days, she only fired up the grill when Ranma needed a snack.

She found that, for his sake, for their sake, there were very few things she was unwilling to do.

So when Ranma stepped into the Guild's new training area for the first time, Ukyo watched carefully. She watched as he was swarmed by a few dozen children and watched as he quickly sent them away. She watched as he approached another man and watched as he talked the man into an offensive stance.

Then, she noticed a few things.

She noticed how the children and instructors seemed to clear a space for them, so that no one was within fifteen paces of either of them.

She noticed how Ranma's clothes sported rips and tears and how the skin underneath burned crimson.

She had previously noticed that Ranma aggressiveness tended to intensify if he was under any sort of pain. She wondered if she should do something to help that idiot Tanaka. It didn't seem like anyone else was going to.

She noticed just how much respect he garnered in this place. Ranma was going to fight and likely injure a relatively significant member of an exclusive organization and it seemed like not one of that member's allies was going to interfere or even complain. Their blank faces basically told Tanaka that he was on his own. She knew that this was the source of Tanaka's furious jealousy. These people were supposed to be his friends, his comrades. They lived, they fought, they ate, they learned and taught together and yet they wouldn't back him up against an outsider.

She noticed that this thought was where perspectives differed and where conflict was born. This was something Souichiro may never understand, simply because he simply hadn't been there at the time. Ranma might not be an active member of the Tokyo based martial arts guild, but he was one of its founding influences. That fact carried a lot of weight in many people's eyes.

Ranma would always have a place in the Guild. He may not be able to sit in it for a long time, but the seat would be there regardless.

She noticed it often. It was always there at meetings, right between Soun Tendo and Genma Saotome.

She noticed them start to inch closer together, and made her decision.

"Konatsu," Ukyo muttered as she stood amidst her fellows.

She noticed a shadow creeping along the edge of her senses before a sweet voice caught her attention, "Ukyo-sama?"

She turned towards her pretty companion without taking her eyes away from him and said, "Watch over this, will you? And make sure they don't start without some protective gear, gloves at least."

"I understand."

She didn't notice him leave.

Konatsu immediately made his way through the crowd and swiftly arrived at Ranma's side, where she saw him inform the martial artist of her request.

She watched Ranma mull it over for a moment until he nodded in acquiescence, and that was it. Her part was over.

Now, all she could do was bear witness.

Her ninja sent a few of the children to gather the necessary equipment and waited calmly beside Ranma's composed figure. The two friends conversed quietly for the minute it took the children to return. Neither one seemed to pay any particular attention to Tanaka, which would probably lead the man to believe that he was being underestimated.

The students hurried back, carrying a black duffel bag that they unceremoniously dropped in front the male kunoichi before running back for the sidelines.

Konatsu sighed in disappointment and grumbled at the lack of the discipline as he straightened the container and dragged the zipper open. After rummaging inside the heavy-duty bag for a short time, he picked out two pairs of fingerless leather gloves sporting half an inch of padding over the back all the way past the knuckles and tossed a pair over at both participants. Then, he picked up the bag and stepped to the side, without stepping out of the loose circle formed by the members. He was going to referee this unscheduled bout.

Souichiro showed obvious impatience as he wrenched the elastic that held the gloves together off and hastily pulled them on.

Ranma took his time. He carefully examined the red pair of gloves Konatsu had handed him and then spent a long moment fixing his opponent's black pair. Seeing nothing of note, he sighed in distaste and pulled the elastic off.

As Ranma squeezed his hands into the equipment, Konatsu began to lay down the rules of the fight, raising his voice to a shout so that everyone in the training center could hear his melodious, feminine voice clearly, "This will be a single round engagement, lasting no longer than eight minutes. A winner will be declared only when one of the fighters gives up, is knocked to the ground three times or is deemed to be no longer able to continue. Blows aiming to maim or kill are strictly prohibited."

The ninja took the time to stare at each combatant until he received a sign of their agreement.

"May the best man win. Begin!" The enthused shout hung in the air as everyone held their breath in anticipation.

If Ranma was conscious of his audience's enthusiasm, he didn't show it. He even failed to react in any perceptible way to the start of the fight. He merely frowned at his fist as he formed it repeatedly.

It soon became apparent that this contest was going to develop in a somewhat different manner than she'd envisioned. When she considered the amount of precision and dexterity his technique required, she could almost make sense of what he was doing. It was important that he try to memorize the amount of resistance the gloves would provide to his actions. Ranma was used to fighting with bare fists and the equipment could potentially throw him off during the fight.

But still, Konatsu had given the go-ahead! The time to prepare was long over and he had to know that.

Ranma normally took challenges very seriously, especially if they were formal in any way. It wasn't like him to disregard an opponent like this. But then again, Tanaka wasn't Kuno, or Ryoga, or Mousse, or any one of Ranma's self-proclaimed rivals. Case in point, he hadn't attacked yet.

He hadn't attacked yet?

For the first time since the match began, Ukyo took her eyes off of Ranma and actually looked at the other man.

Ah. Of course.

Tanaka really wasn't like Kuno, or Ryoga, or Mousse.

Ranma's three rivals only had three things in common. They were all attracted to one or another of their rival's fiancées, they were tremendously talented in their respected fields and they were all complete idiots.

Maybe she was a little too used to their brand of reckless idiocy, but it never really occurred to her until that very moment that someone might come to fear Ranma after fighting him. Usually, his opponents weren't anywhere near that perceptive.

Ranma didn't believe in excess. He always tried to use the least amount of force needed to accomplish a task. This habit had the unfortunate side effect of making everyone he defeated believe that they could have beaten him with only a little more effort. Most of the time, they couldn't be more wrong.

She had looked over Tanaka's actions since he last clashed with Ranma and she had taken him for another oblivious idiot. From the way he constantly antagonized Ranma without any sort of restraint, she had assumed that this willful opposition was born of ignorance.

But as she eyed Tanaka's closed stance as he stood opposite her childhood friend, she was fiercely struck by an impression of anxious anticipation.

Fear. She looked at him and she saw a fearful man.

She was unable to pinpoint where she got the idea, but she was almost bursting with certainty. Souichiro Tanaka feared Ranma Saotome and Ranma Saotome knew it.

Ukyo looked up just in time to catch the braided man bash his gloved fists against one another a few times, spreading the sound of cushioned impacts over his surroundings, stomping over murmurs and whispers as it seemed to signal his readiness. His preparations complete, he deliberately advanced towards his opponent, holding both hands behind his back.

Tanaka's solid stance was in no way relaxed by Ranma's casual approach. If anything, his muscles seemed to expand under his loose gi, constricting and hardening, sacrificing flexibility for rigid resistance, trading mobility for protection.

Ranma seemed to notice this as his lips pursed in distaste. He entered Souichiro's attack range without incident and stopped well into the man's striking range. He stood there, motionless, for interminable seconds, staring the other man down. Tanaka stared back, unflinching.

Ukyo found herself anticipating an attack that never came. The challenger looked fearless, but it was only skin deep.

Though normally neither martial artist towered over the other, Souichiro was currently maintaining a defensive position, bending his knees and arranging his legs for optimal stability, thereby lowering his centre of gravity.

It was just a slight difference. No more than a few inches. However, Ranma could now truly look down at his opponent.

More importantly, Tanaka was forced to look up.

Once this little detail made its way past her consciousness, she found herself reasonably certain of one thing. Ranma didn't choose to get this close to his opponent because he wanted to intimidate him.

As if to reward the accuracy of her observations, Ranma promptly burst into action. His naked foot gently peeled itself off the hardwood floor before his entire leg broke apart into a blur of color and slammed into the inside of Tanaka's bent knee.

Souichiro's face showed a pained grimace as he was forced off balance. His arms instinctively stretched out as he pulled his bruised leg back and pushed his chest forwards, successfully maintaining his balance.

Ukyo winced. Dumb move. It may have been a reflex, but he really should know better.

Ranma's left hand reached out and grabbed a hold of the white cloth over his opponent's left shoulder before the man even realized that he'd left himself defenseless. By then, it was much too late. In a blur of motion, Ranma took a step back and sharply pulled his outstretched limb back towards himself, taking his unfortunate opponent with it.

Souichiro's previous efforts to keep his balance meant that he was in no position to resist and was easily pulled off his feet. With no legs under him, Ranma's arm was the only thing keeping him from hitting the ground. Knowing that it wouldn't last, his arms quickly extended under him to cushion his fall.

Ukyo shook her head in disappointment. That was a rookie mistake. That idiot was too reflexive. Ranma wasn't going to let him hit the ground.

Ranma's right arm blurred out of sight and emerged above his head. He squeezed his fingers into a tight, pulsing fist, releasing a fierce wordless cry filled with aggression and ill intent as he hammered his elbow down into Tanaka's exposed back with the force of a meteor.

Tanaka crumpled. He did not get up.

She saw Konatsu sigh and watched his shoulders slump down a little. She sympathized. It was embarrassing to have one of their members defeated in such a fashion, beaten in less than five seconds. Not because she took pride in the Guild's successes and failures, but because she had taken it upon herself to watch over it in Ranma's absence.

If Ranma couldn't be part of the organization he was born to join, born to _lead_, then she didn't want him to have to worry about it. What he had seen today certainly wasn't going to help with that.

She saw him turn towards her ninja and say a few words before the feminine man waved him off.

She heard him clear his throat a few times before he spoke, raising his voice to make sure everyone could hear him, "Alright children, listen up!"

Ranma carefully began pulling his fingers out from the stretched material of his gloves as he paced in a circle around Tanaka's prone form, "Now that I have your attention, I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss something that has come to my attention over the past few weeks. It seems that some of you have complained about the quality of the instruction provided by your elders. Apparently, some of you feel that you are progressing too slowly, that you are somehow too good for the basics. I thought I would take this opportunity to show you just how wrong you are."

Ranma finished taking the equipment off and carelessly dropped his pair of gloves on top of his downed opponent. "Some of you already know me and some of you may have heard of me. In case there's someone in this crowd that doesn't know me, allow me to take the time to introduce myself.

"My name is Ranma Saotome. Most of you already know my father, Master Genma Saotome. I am the heir of all branches of the Anything Goes School of martial arts. I haven't reached the rank of Master yet, but that's mostly because I don't have the time to take students. Some of you might find this hard to believe, but I am the best martial artist in Japan."

Ukyo found herself smiling as she listened to his introduction. He still had no idea. It was almost starting to get ridiculous. Ranma wasn't exactly the most technologically advanced person in the world, but still! How could he not know? It was all over the place!

In order to make sure the media didn't do anything too stupid in their search for answers, Nabiki decided to provide them with some unclassified information… for a hefty fee of course.

Unfortunately for Ranma, Nabiki had plenty of material concerning his life and no good reason to keep them to herself.

In the two years since the invasion, Ranma Saotome became one of the most recognizable people in the entire country, along with the Amazons and the Sailor Senshi, thanks to a series of broadcasts and reports about them.

His introduction was entirely unnecessary. They all knew who he was. Every single one of them. That was the reason why they stood so silently, eyes and ears wide open. She knew these kids. The only time they were ever this quiet is when they weren't conscious.

Ranma probably could have saved Tanaka a whole lot of humiliation and done this without the physical presentation. He never needed to prove himself. He had their full attention from the moment he walked in.

A few hundred faces watched on as he lectured, "Souichiro here is powerful, but that doesn't make him a good martial artist! He is strong, he is fast and he has some very effective techniques. His fist is strong, but I probably could've beaten him when I was as young as you and I'll tell you why."

Hearing Ranma talk about his passion was always a treat. His voice took on such strength and resolution that it was hard to stay indifferent. It was almost impossible not to believe in him. She wasn't close enough to see it now, but he always had this look in his eyes that made her feel like she was looking at someone special, someone larger than life, someone unforgettable.

His stride seemed to grow heavier and heavier until each step pounded through her mind like a drum beat. He waved his arm towards the unconscious man lying beside him, "I hit him exactly twice and that was all it took to knock him out," his tone revealed his disappointment, "More importantly, my kick was strong enough to break his stance! A tree, no matter how big or small, that stands with rotten roots cannot endure the wind. His body is weak.

"When he lost his balance, he tried to recover it. Unfortunately, he didn't think things through. He failed to keep his concentration on me. On some level, he must have decided that the ground he was falling towards was more dangerous than me, simply because it was right in front of him. He couldn't keep himself together, couldn't focus. His mind is _weak_."

She saw him stop his pacing to look at his downed opponent and watched him shake his head, "Worst of all though is that he didn't attack. He committed to this fight but he wasn't willing to follow through. He wasn't willing to take a chance. Souichiro knows that I'm stronger than him, that my defense is better than his offense, so he didn't even try to attack. He figured that he could just let me attack and counter while I was otherwise occupied. It could've worked…" he paused for emphasis, "If he was someone else! But Souichiro's School never taught this kind of technique, and if it did then he hasn't practiced in forever. It was doomed to fail because he never trained for it. The truth is that Souichiro gave up on his fist because he no longer believes in it. He was scared of me and that fear removed any possibility of victory.

"His spirit is weak!" Ranma's shouted declaration burst through the training hall and seemed to push his audience an inch away.

The silence held for a long minute as she watched him take the time to lock eyes with each child. When he was done, he found reason to grin.

She knew why. Sometimes they annoyed the hell out of her, but she knew that they were strong, willful children.

When he spoke again, his voice seemed to cover the entire room without effort. "Souichiro may know how to fight, but he is a weak martial artist in all the ways that count. In the body, in the mind and in the soul."

He took a quick, sweeping glance of the crowd around him and something in him seemed to relax, "Who here can tell me the basics of the art?" he asked.

Ukyo blinked. She hadn't expected him to involve his audience and found herself incapable of focusing on the question.

After a few seconds of uneasy silence, Ranma took pity on them and continued, "No one? That's not unexpected. Depending on your school, the answer changes all the time. But I've studied from many schools of martial arts and I can tell you that they all have one thing in common. Defense. The basics of all martial arts is defense. Before you learn to strike others down, you must know how to protect. If you cannot protect yourself then you will never achieve anything."

Once more, he waved towards Tanaka's still form, "Souichiro here knows a dozen powerful, useful techniques and I'm sure he shows them to you kids all the time, but he never got the chance to use any of them in our match because his basics are lacking.

"Protect yourselves and defend those around you! That is the duty of the martial artist. You must learn to receive a punch, before you learn to throw one. That is the essence of what you are here to learn. You are here to learn the basics. You are here to master the basics. Once you have done that, you won't need teachers anymore. Once you've mastered the basics, you will be able to learn and develop more advanced techniques on your own. You will be able to learn not just from tutelage, but also from scrolls and simple observation. Once you've mastered the basics, no opponent will ever be beyond you."

Solemn silence enveloped the room as Ranma finished his address and took one last look around the room, before he turned to her ninja, pointing at the unconscious man beside him, "So uh, Konatsu. What am I supposed to do with this guy?"

* * *

_Sometimes__… sometimes being the best martial artist in the country is a pain in the ass. Not often, but sometimes._

_Well, no. That's a lie. I guess it would be better to say that being the best in the nation while under the hold of a Jusenkyo curse is less than ideal. But, then again, being cursed sucked just as much when I wasn't the best, so maybe that doesn't have anything to do with it._

_I admit, I've kind of gotten used __to it over the years. I realize now that the curse doesn't change who I am. The only thing that changes is the way people see me, and I never really cared about that anyway. It isn't the bane of my existence anymore, but that doesn't make it any more fun to have. People tend to treat me differently when I'm in my girl form, even when they know who I really am. Sometimes it can be useful, but most of the time it's just annoying._

_Being the best means that people who don't consider themselves competition tend to look up to me, kids especially. I like them, I really do, but sometimes they can really grate on the nerves. I get along with the boys just fine, most of the time, but the girls are a little more complicated. They tend to like me better when I'm about a foot shorter and walk around with huge, bulging protrusions hanging from my chest._

_It's kind of __irritating to think about, but according to Pluto, Jusenkyo curses are magnificent pieces of magic. The way I understand it, the curse is like a funhouse mirror. It's powerful ether magic, and doesn't really have anything to do with water as an element. It's all about the reflection, the mirror image. It explains why the curse changes with temperature. Hot and cold are basically determined by body heat. Anything above it is hot and anything below is cold. Darkness and light, hot and cold, yin and yang are all two sides of the same thing._

_Pluto believes that the main curse was created by accident and that some__ asshole later added a few minor curses to the grounds. Apparently, to create new curse springs, all you really have to do is fall unconscious underwater in the Jusenkyo curse grounds. The curse basically copies a part of what you are, depending on how important it is to you and imprints it in the reflection._

_She managed to break the weaker __curse, but breaking the main effect was apparently somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible. She said that it would be easier to resurrect the dead. Whatever. At least I don't get splashed at random these days, though it doesn't really help when people try to do it on purpose. _

_Like a bunch of little girls that want to spend some time with their '__elder sister'. Selfish little brats…_

_Anyway, o__ut of all the Senshi, Pluto is probably the only one who really knows what she's doing. She's a full-fledged witch, no doubt about it. Still, she isn't exactly the kind of opponent that would give me trouble. I could beat her inside of a minute if I had to, and I'm not just bragging here. Pluto__'s the kind of person that likes to gather information about everyone and I'm sure she thinks that she's got my number._

_But the truth is that there's only one person on this Earth who really knows what I can do, and that's my old man. Old Saotome family secret: Always keep people guessing. I've done it for so long now that I don't even feel guilty about lying to Nabiki. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I'm not about to change._

_If I've learned one thing about the Senshi over the years, it's that every __single one is unique. I have seen, examined and evaluated them all, and none of them could stand against me. _

_However, there's one Senshi out there that can make me hesitate. A Senshi that could probably take me down if we ever came to blows. A Sen__shi that isn't really one of them, as she stands above them all. _

_Unfortunately, that one Senshi just happens to be the only one that __seriously tried to kill me. _

_Usagi Tsukino. Sailor Moon, the white witch, master of holy magic. _

_Queen Serenity, leader of the Sailor Senshi.

* * *

_

Finally, I've reached the end of the introductory chapters. The story truly begins after this. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to review. It may not seem like it, but it really helps me write faster as I get more motivated. Thank you.


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