Chapter Seven

Kaoru Matsushima was a drama queen.

Not just any drama queen, she was a teenage Drama Queen Martial Artist or was that teenaged Martial Artist Drama Queen, she was never quite sure and this small matter could occupy many hours of high drama as she soliloquised about how this only added to the many difficulties, nay, dramas in her life.

That she attended school at Furinkan High for most teenagers would be drama enough, but as the representative of Nerima’s only family of Martial Arts Drama Queens or Drama Queen Martial Artists this was but a small stage to build the dramas of her life upon.

Her parents didn’t understand her, perhaps they did, for they to had been teenaged Martial Arts Drama Queens, but where is the drama in that, unless they used that knowledge against her to oppress her.

‘Did she feel oppressed?’

Kaoru pondered a moment.

‘Yes she did’ she decided and filed that thought away for later so she could make a scene when arriving home.

Her homework had been mauled by the family hamster, her bento was never as fresh as it should have been and it was hard work making a drama out of everything.

But worst of all, the one she adored.

‘No loved, loved with a passion as big as…’ she paused in her thoughts ‘as big as something really big and.…… is there a word bigger than loved. Worshipped maybe?’

‘Yes worshipped! Worshipped from afar. For he never saw her never noticed her with sunlight gleaming of her silken hair, the sun streaming through the trees around the grounds of Furinkan High surrounding her in a delicate nimbus of light.

‘Oh how she longed for him to see her there.’

Kaoru knew with certainty what a pretty picture she made there, she had tested the light, even trimmed some of the trees to provide just that little bit of extra contrast and in a dedication to her art that bordered on obsessive she had painted the wall behind where she habitually waited to reinforce the perfection of the scene.

She sighed heavily.

‘Why does he not notice me, why does he waste his time with those hussies and why has he been absent since the start of Chapter Five?

‘Oh noble Tatewaki-sempai’ she cried silently to herself ‘why can you not love me as I love you/’

She sniffled a little as the unfairness of life threatened once more to reduce her to emotional roadkill on the highway of life.

“Hayfever” guessed a passing student.

“Peasants!” Kaoru muttered nastily.

Mousse started school at Furinkan on Monday causing quite a stir as various parties expected violence to erupt between him and Ranma at any time.

Ranma and Mousse had seemed however to declare a truce and expected fight never started.

By the end of Monday Mousse was accepted as part of the student body and school life carried on as before

Except for one student.

Sayuri.

Sayuri was smitten. It wasn’t that she had never seen Mousse before, she had. But never in school uniform, never as a real person. Before he was just another one of those people who showed up every few weeks to be beaten to a pulp by Ranma.

But on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday she gazed across the school grounds at Mousse with that vacant eyed and slightly glazed looked of those recently struck by cupid’s arrow.

So it was on Friday that Sayuri, driven by the encouragement of her friends, excluding Akane who insisted that Mousse was a pervert who used his lack of vision to take advantage of sweet innocent girls, crossed over to where Mousse was sitting with Ranma discussing some esoteric martial arts manoeuvre with a great deal of animation.

In hindsight Sayuri would note that whatever it was that sprung half formed from her lips could only generously be termed an invitation to go out Saturday night as a confusing mish-mash of syllables punctuated by rapid arm movements.

Somehow the intent of what Sayuri was trying to convey was received by Mousse after some somewhat helpful comments from Ranma.

If Sayuri’s invitation was near incomprehensible then Mousse’s response was as close to non-verbal communication as the vocal chords can produce. It was only the violent nodding produced by Ranma holding the back of Mousse’s head and nodding Mousse’s head for him was the date accepted.

Accepting the date while it had not been the furthest thing from Mousse’s mind was certainly not at the forefront. His mind at the moment he had realised what Sayuri was asking him was more awash with primal fear, confusion and an argument between his fight or flight response.

Instead with some unwanted assistance from Ranma Mousse found himself fully booked for Saturday night. Once again primal fear, confusion and an his fight or flight response rushed to the fore. Mousse’s knowledge of the mating rituals of the Japanese teenager was of a depth and completeness that if asked to write all he knew he would have found that a postage stamp was all he would have needed, just one side, one of the very thin sides.

His knowledge of Chinese Amazon mating customs went no further than ‘ Me Jane, you Tarzan’, Tarzan gets clubbed over his head and drug off. While this may be entirely satisfactory for Chinese Amazons Mousse was certain this was not how the whole thing worked in Japan.

He needed help. Who did he know who knew more about girls than anyone else he knew?

Ranma.

So it was that on Saturday night a double date was arranged.

Mousse and Sayuri.

Ranma and ?

When Soun found out that Ranma had been volunteered for a double date there was no doubt in his mind that only Akane would be or should be permitted to be Ranma’s date for Saturday night. Unfortunately for Soun Tendo’s plans Akane refused to cooperate.

Dark mutterings of perverts and being drug off into the bushes by perverts punctuated the unintelligible response to Soun’s pleadings. So it was that Nabiki accompanied Ranma, solely for the purpose of making up the numbers.

This resulted in a period when the two couples met where an uncomfortable silence threatened to overwhelm proceedings. Nabiki’s reputation as both the Ice Queen of Furinkan and mercenary seemingly destroying the mood of the evening. However, Ranma’s casual acceptance of Nabiki and Nabiki’s casual and uncharacteristic openness soon overcame Mousse’s and Sayuri’s misgivings and the four found themselves enjoying the evening more than any of them had anticipated.

When it came time for the two couples to part at the end of the evening all four found that somehow during the evening they had come to see the others as friends regardless of how they saw the others before the night commenced and wished the evening could last longer.

Ranma and Nabiki walked home in companionable silence, at some point one, neither could remember which had taken the others hand in theirs, so when Ranma suddenly stopped he pulled Nabiki to a halt as well.

“What’s wrong” Nabiki asked.

Then turned to see what Ranma was looking at. Nabiki smiled wickedly causing Ranma to blush when he realised she had caught him looking at some bushes.

Ranma was still a little off balance when Nabiki still smiling pulled him off the pathway.

When Ranma later asked Mousse how he went walking Sayuri home Mousse had blushed furiously and told Ranma that “women don’t use clubs in Japan” and then blushing even redder added “they don’t need to.”

Bright beams of sunlight crossed the silent room. The only movement was the flitting of dust motes fluttering softly to the floor and the only decoration was a portrait painted on black velvet.

In the middle of the room stood Nodoka Saotome and as was usual she was surrounded by an almost preternatural aura of peace and calm, in this instance it was slightly incongruous as she casually held a katana in her hand at a low guard position. To the casual observer it would have been impossible to determine if Nodoka was alive or merely a mannequin posed for a window display, her breathing was so shallow that the rising and falling of her chest could have been mistaken for the wind blowing across her clothing.

This was not to last, as without warning she exploded into a dazzling display of swordsmanship (or swordswomanship if you prefer) that would have stunned any there to see it.

Like lightning her katana flashed and snapped.

The virile scarlet tapeworm stroke, the divine whirling outboard propellor blow, the Honda whipper snipper mulching flurry, all these devastating strokes and more combined into a single kata. A style of swordsmanship that supposedly had died with it’s last exponent, Miowara Tomokato the Samurai Cat.

After the destruction of Nagashino Castle and the slaughter of Lord Nobunaga Miowara Tomokato had scoured the world and beyond to avenge his lord’s death, when his vengeance was complete the remnants of Nobunaga’s clan had given shelter to the greatest of the samurai. This was Nodoka’s clan and the Samurai Cat had trained the children of the clan since that time. Exactly how he kept popping up, sometimes older, sometimes younger no-one knew, only that the clan owed Tomokato a debt they could never repay.

Nodoka, his latest student continued her kata, her blade moving too fast for the eye to see.

Nodoka was lonely, her son, her husband they had been away too long, it was time for them to come home, she had been alone long enough.

The dance continued.

‘Besides’ she thought ‘it may make it easier to solve Ranma’s fiance problems if there is a little distance between the parties.’

Then she was still, it took a moment, no longer, for her kimono to once again settle softly about her and the silence and the mannequin had returned.

A single fly buzzed lazily though the air.

A snap, a blade travelling fast enough to create it’s own miniature sonic boom.

Silence.

Akane was worried.

Not the ordinary kind of worry she usually had. Was Ranma cheating on her or who is Ranma cheating on her with or even if Ranma is really engaged to all those other girls is he cheating when he was with her and did he ever stop cheating? But a more serious kind of worry .

After her conversation with her conscience the other week her regular poundings on Ranma with whichever gold club or piece of furniture took her fancy had become so common that Ranma had taken to hiding and eating in the kitchen rather than risk Akane’s wrath.

This decidedly psychotic behaviour from Akane had reduced her father to tears, Ranma, as previously noted into hiding and the rest of the household to distraction.

Something had needed to be done and so Kasumi had taken Akane aside for a sisterly talk and it was this that had frightened Akane.

After divulging to Kasumi her reasons for her current campaign against Ranma, Kasumi had sighed sadly, dismissed Akane’s revelation about the visit from her ‘conscience’ as a delusion and decided that Akane was merely troubled by the pressures of teenage life.

Then laying a sisterly hand upon Akane’s knee and proceeded to give her The Talk.

Now Akane had received the lessons at school, where do babies come from, the changes your body goes through during puberty and all of the other courses on biology and the birds and the bees, but never in quite the same terms Kasumi used.

Heaving bosoms, throbbing manhoods, raging hormones, rampaging desires driving her irrevocably into the arms of her suitor where he would make her a woman. It was not only the vivid imagry that kasumi conjured with her talk it was the glazed expression, reminiscent of Nodoka Saotome in the midst of one of her ‘my son is so manly’ dialogues. Now if Akane was more widely read she would have recognised some of the more lurid phrases used by Kasumi as coming from the particular historical romance novels, sometimes called bodice-rippers, that Kasumi devoured like Genma or Ranma for that matter would devour anything edible.

By the time Kasumi had finished her little talk Akane was frozen with fear

It was not only Ranma and boys she should be worried about but her own body, it was conspiring against her as well. Insidious hormones and cruel primitive instincts and desires driving her into the masculine arms of her beau, where he would crush her to his manly chest, his strong arms would encase her as his hot breath on her face and his dominating kisses lit a fire deep within her very soul and would cause her to swoon and open her to the raging passions that would soon consume them both!

Akane had never understood so completely Dr Tofu’s problem with Kasumi.

She also now understood she had to get rid of Ranma.

Happousai was not a pretty sight.

This is not unusual, some would say and many did that Happousai resembled nothing more than an oversized garden gnome with anorexia who had spent twenty years too long in the bath. The fact that he was at his happiest at the moment, due to the fact he was rolling in a days worth of stolen panties, did nothing to improve his looks

Happousai was not a complicated creature, he only wanted three things;

Panties.

2.To be acknowledged as the world’s greatest practitioner of the martial arts. control over all the women in the world, especially the good-looking ones and their panties.

If pressed he might add a fourth, that the whole world fall down on their knees and humbly worship him, after all if he got the first three the fourth shouldn’t be too much to ask for.

So oblivious to the world around him Happousai rolled lost in his own perverted world of bliss where pretty ladies cuddled him to their bosoms and showered him with their panties that the unaware that the eyes of a vicious predator were upon him.

A-chan was the pervert avenger or more correctly the revenger upon perverts for all of their perverted doings.

Or even more correctly the pre-emptive revenger upon perverts for A-chan had decided that Nerima was so full of perverts that if she restricted herself only to those perverts who she actually witnessed performing perverted acts the vast majority would go unpunished. A more proactive approach was called for and thus A-chan created a broad description of what a pervert looked like and how they behaved so that she could deliver her righteous justice upon their filthy carcasses.

She even wrote it all down on a piece of paper;

Item 1. Sex – Male.

The End

A-chan, after she made the list was mightily pleased with herself, certainly the list was short, and the description was broad but she was certain that even if, in the unlikely event she should punish an innocent male.

‘As if!’ she snorted to herself.

If she did punish an ‘innocent’ male it would probably only be because he had not yet had the opportunity to engage in perverted behaviour and maybe because of her punishment he would not succumb to those base male urges that she’d heard about. Not that she was completely sure what base male urges were but they sounded pretty horrible to her and besides males had it coming to them anyway.

This did not mean that A-chan did not actively seek out the worst offenders and just randomly pummeled male passersbys into unconsciousness. She was, just the tiniest bit, selective.

One subject she had heard of and considered to be the No.1 most wanted pervert in all of Nerima was the notorious panty thief.

She had tracked him all week.

He had disappeared into neighbouring Juuban for a while, but Juuban was out of A-chan’s territory, sacrifices must be made in the fight against perverts and A-chan had decided to sacrifice Juuban. A-chan had in fact done some research on Juuban and decided that it may warrant a visit, she had heard after all of some girls running around in obscenely short sailor suits and while her list did identify male perverts exclusively there was something suspicious about those girls’ morals.

‘Maybe’ A-chan had mused ‘they are secretly trying to create a plague of perverts by wearing suggestive costumes which would then flood across into Nerima in an orgy of, of….. Well if it mentioned orgy anywhere in it, it had to be bad.’

A-chan was justifiably proud of her reasoning and it was reasoning like this that kept her happily burning away like a little raging furnace of proactive retribution.

It was this raging furnace of retribution, or the aura generated by it that woke Happousai from his own private vision of Nirvana.

He barely had time to roll out of the way before the ‘Mighty Mallet of Mutilation and Justice’ descended on the spot he had been lounging.

Where a moment before Happousai had been lost in bliss he now faced a doll that looked vaguely familiar wielding a mallet that looked even more familiar. What was most disturbing was the fact that the little figure and the mallet were ablaze with ki so hot it was beginning to singe his pile of panties.

This, he decided, would not do.

‘Mess with my silky darlings will you! Happousai shrieked as he threw a happoudaikarin bomb towards the small figure, his face contorting into what could only be classified by those of a very generous disposition as a grin.

Happousai’s grin however did not last.

A-chan with dexterity and a previously untapped potential for softball belted the small bomb straight back at Happousai.

‘This is unexpected’ thought Happousai as the bomb struck him in the chest knocking him backwards several paces.

Unfortunately for Happousai it did not end there, the bomb had still not detonated, but it had in fact loosened the remainder of the bombs Happousai had secreted about his person causing them to fall in a pile at his feet.

He only had time for a quick glance at the pile of bombs piled about his feet and not even time to frame the thought that ‘This isn’t good’ before the resulting detonation blasted him to an altitude that gave him a nice view of the Chinese coastline.

As he reached the summit of his impromptu flight Happousai decided it wasn’t all bad.

‘Based on the trajectory’ Happousai figured ‘ I should land on the roof above the Tendo living room.’

So cheered by the thought of his upcoming visit to the Tendos he began his descent.

A-chan cheered by the punishment of the number one target on her hit list dismissed her mallet and continued her search for perverts.

‘A woman’s work’ A-chan mused sagely ‘is never done.’

Soun was beside himself with delight.

At great expense , he and Genma had borrowed money from Nabiki at an exorbitant interest rate, they had managed to acquire a barrel of water from the spring of drowned boy. With this they were certain as Genma explained it ‘to persuade Ranma to overcome any doubts he may harbour about marrying Akane and bring the engagement between the two to a rapid and satisfying conclusion.’

Soun was unsure as to what was meant by this but Genma assured him that this meant they would be married. It had taken six months for the barrel to arrive and now there it sat in the middle of the living room floor, a barrel that symbolised the final step in the path to joining the two families.

All it needed now was for Ranma to be convinced.

It was a disagreement between Happousai and the roof that caused his somewhat precipitous entry to the Tendo living room. He had been hoping to make a light landing upon the tiles before bounding down to the courtyard and then caper through the Tendo house like a geriatric pinball after too many cups of coffee.

Happousai believed that the roof was stable and solid.

The roof believed that it wasn’t.

Happousai only had a moment to reflect upon his and the roof’s difference of opinion before falling to the living room floor and knocking an inappropriately placed barrel towards the front door.

Ukyou had been toying with the idea of being more feminine.

This for most teenage girls would be neither a major change in lifestyle nor a huge step. But for Ukyou, who had made being a male impersonator a lifestyle choice even before she could make a lifestyle choice, this was a step somewhat akin to a tiger deciding to go vegan.

This was not unheard of. A particularly unintelligent tiger, she had found that most herbivores had enough wits to outsmart her, had, for reasons of survival, decided that vegetables, being easier to sneak up upon than her more traditional prey would be a surer way to ensure her survival. Unfortunately her experiment was short lived when she was run over by a produce truck on her first outing.

Ukyou had decided that the first step in becoming more feminine was to adopt more feminine clothing. This however was not something to be leapt into, unless you’re Happoousai, Ukyou had instead decided that she would slowly change, to creep up on the concept and when she felt she was comfortable she would advance to Step 2 and so on.

Step 1 was to adopt more feminine undergarments. These she discovered were called lingerie, she also discovered there were shops that specialised in the sale of these items. She had further discovered that there was a range of colours, styles and materials that made her head spin. There were even some, shown to her with great delight by the salesgirl, thankfully not modeled, that defied any argument Ukyou could arrive at to explain their existence as they were totally impractical. Ukyou, who had first entered the store looking for something eminently practical had instead found herself leaving the store with a tiny bag that was still many times too large for the items she had purchased.

As the water from the aforementioned barrel flew through the doorway drenching both her and Teri, Ukyou came to a complete and sudden understanding as to why Ranma refused to wear women’s undergarments.

Ranma sat in the Tendo kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. Teri transformed by the cursed water into a six month old baby sat wrapped in a towel in Ranma’s lap, the two of them sat in silence staring at the cup of cursed water that Ranma had managed to save.

It was in this cup of water that the dilemma lay.

There was enough water in the cup to cure Ranma and Ranma suspected if he could figure out how to do it enough to curse Teri again so that Teri would be wholly human. But not both.

Ranma sighed, a few short months ago there would have been no dilemma. Here was the cure, he would use it. But now Ranma had discovered with his newly developed capacity for thought options, choices and consequences.

Ranma dropped his gaze to where Teri lay in his lap. If there was a chance that Teri could become wholly human should they take it. There was no future in being a sentient chicken teriyaki, Ranma and Teri had both agreed upon that.

In the end there was no choice, Ranma poured the water into a saucepan. He only hoped this worked.

Ukyou had been rushed upstairs to the furo, carefully to avoid any contact with any cursed water, no more than two new curses per day was a very sensible policy Kasumi had decided.

Akane hurried along with Kasumi and Ukyou determined to offer whatever support she could, she could not imagine anything worse that could happen to a girl than to be cursed to turn into a boy.

Nabiki stayed in the living room, she could not get over the hurt in Ranma’s eyes when Ukyou had declared she had turned into a freak.

Nabiki was surprised when she entered the kitchen to see Ranma still nursing baby Teri, after all she assumed that Ranma had taken Teri to the kitchen for a quick application of hot water and hey presto instant chicken teriyaki.

“Hey” said Nabiki sitting down across from Ranma “Umm did you save enough water for, you know…”

“Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

Nabiki looked at Teri who was displaying a disconcerting ability, for a six month old baby, to track and follow conversation. Also disconcerting was the intensity with which Ranma was gazing at Teri.

“How are you Teri-chan?”

“Ahh, Teri’s having a bit of trouble getting words out at the moment.” Ranma supplied “Not used to real vocal chords just yet.”

“Oh, OK.”

“Kind of enough water?”

“Only enough for one of us.”

Ranma walked across to the sink and gestured to two containers “Hot water, cold water.”

Nabiki nodded.

Ranma put his hand into the cold water triggering his curse, then did the same with Teri.

“But Teri is already in cursed form?”

Ranma held up a hand to quiet Nabiki and dropped his hand in the hot water triggering the change back to his uncursed form, when he dropped Teri’s hand into the water nothing happened.

Nabiki just gaped.

Ryouga was lost.

This was not unusual.

That Ryouga considered this to Ranma’s fault was not unusual either.

That Ryouga was right in assuming his being lost was Ranma’s fault was unusual.

How it came to be that Ryouga being lost was Ranma’s fault was unusual, though possibly only if you didn’t live in Nerima.

To trace the course of events leading to Ryouga being lost, the first few hours after Ranma received his curse would need to be examined. After the initial shock of Ranma’s first transformation into his female form had worn off, or subsided to the point he was able to sit still without twitching, cursing and plotting pandacide Ranma sat quietly at the doorway to the guide’s hut gazing forlornly over the numerous cursed springs.

In the tradition of boys everywhere Ranma idly picked up a stone and tossed as far as he could across the floor of the valley unmindful of where it would fall. In keeping with tradition it did fall and in a coincidence only slightly less traditional it fell into a pool of water.

Being a the valley of the training grounds of accursed springs it only stood to reason that the water the stone fell into was accursed. If the guide had to describe that particular pool he would have said something like “Aiii….. That is spring of drowned time-traveller. There is tragic legend, very tragic of time-traveller who drown there 800 years from now…”

So the stone fell into the pool of the drowned time-traveller and in another coincidence, it seemed to be the day for it, due to temporal and spatial displacement struck one of Ryouga’s ancestors on the head.

Very hard.

Hard enough to temporarily addle the brains of Ryouga’s ancestor, one Ryoma Hibiki, so that he did not realise he was holding his map upside down and subsequently showed up 3 days late for a battle. By the time Ryoma finally arrived the battle was over and instead of honour and glory all he received was a curse from his lord that “if he couldn’t find a battle field half a days march from his own home, never again would he or his descendant ever be blessed with a good sense of direction.”

Fortunately for Ryouga his ancestor already had three children, as he turned for home and was never heard from again, apart from an occasional postcard.

“Where am I now?” cried Ryouga

“Shampoo” called Cologne reaching for the cooking sake and taking a long drag on the bottle “go rescue your husband from behind the rubber plant he’s scaring the customers.”

Ukyou looked sadly at the front of her restaurant. She couldn’t stay in Nerima now, she had to get away, reflect, forgive herself.

“How could I say something so stupid?” she whispered “Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut or just think a little before I spoke?”

Ukyou turned away from her restaurant and started walking with no real destination in mind.

“Why did I have to tell Ranma I’d turned into a freak?”

Nabiki sat at her desk, her email open in front of her as she thought hard on what information to provide to have Teri registered through one of her contacts in the registry of births.

The name was not a problem, Teri Tendo.

Place of birth, easy, after all her contact would ensure that all supporting records would be completed.

Parents?

A wicked grin slowly crept across Nabiki’s face and she started typing “Perfect!”

Ranma wasn’t sure where he was. The landscape was green and flat, with regular round knobs rising up from the ground in a grid like pattern that looked oddly familiar, but apart from the little knobs the landscape was featureless.

“Hmmph” said Ranma at a loss for anything else to say and uncomfortable with the silence ‘I guess I’ll start walking…hmmmm.. that way.’

Having decided on a direction Ranma started walking, Ranma always a great believer in the only thing worse than doing the wrong thing is doing nothing and could not stand inaction and walking he thought if nothing else would sooth his nerves.

It was only as he started walking that he noticed something else was wrong, his feet felt like they were sticking to the ground and while he usually walked with a fluid grace he felt stiff and awkward.

He bent to look at his feet.

He stood back up straight.

He slowly raised his arms so he could examine his hands.

“Aaaaaargh I’m Lego!”

Ranma’s painted on eyes widened as far as painted on eyes can.

‘I’ve got to be dreamin’, I’ve got to be dreamin’. What do I do? What do I do? I can’t pinch myself’ Ranma tried flexing his fingers, but they stubbornly refused to flex, the only option he think of was the dive face first onto the ground to see if he could feel that.

“I wouldn’t try that if I were you” a voice behind him said “it’s awfully hard to get back on your feet.”

Ranma spun as fast as his stubby little Lego body would allow. There standing before him was a little Lego man, unsurprisingly the same size as Ranma only the colours of his building blocks were different.

“Who are you?” Ranma asked.

“Wu.”

“Wu who?”

“No need to get excited” the Lego man replied.

Ranma tried for a stone-faced look, but unable to achieve that finally settled on plastic, it was more in character at this point.

“This is a dream” Wu explained.

Ranma breathed a sigh of relief, it was nice to have that confirmed at least. “I don’t usually dream in Lego” Ranma said still a little shaky from his Lego transformation.

“You don’t usually dream in colour either” Wu countered “but here we are in glorious Lego-vision.”

Ranma looked at Wu uncertainly.

“This isn’t one of your usual dreams” Wu explained ‘you know the ones where you have the big fight rescue the girl and then wake up before things get interesting.”

Ranma nodded, or tried to, nodding wasn’t something his current for allowed..

“By the way does you fiance know that her sis….”

Ranma blushed a nice shade of Lego red and quickly interrupted “Why are you here? Why are we here? What’s going on?”

“Ki” said Wu and repeated “Ki.”

Ranma looked at Wu not understanding.

“Walk with me Ranma we have much to discuss.”

“Ah Wu, who are you?”

“Bless you and good question. I………” Wu paused for dramatic effect ‘I was the first great martial arts master.”

“Never heard of you” responded Ranma.

“Yeah, well it was a very long time ago.”

Ranma just nodded.

“Something came into your possession recently Ranma, something important.”

Ranma thought back over the last couple of days, trying to imagine what item could be considered important “The little pink rock I found in the street!”

“That’s the one, gave you a few ideas didn’t it.”

“Made me wonder about things, yeah.”

“And what did you think about, what did you decide?” swivelling his head to examine Ranma.

“Well I wondered how did a rock have Ki?”

Wu made waving motions with his arms for Ranma to continue, extremely difficult as Lego.

“Well I thought what if someone put Ki there, or what if it was just like a sponge that soaked Ki up.” Ranma looked at Wu who was saying nothing. “So I looked about, I mean I just looked about for Ki and then I really tried to concentrate on Ki and…”

“And?”

“And it’s everywhere, I mean people leave it everywhere. Wherever you’ve gone you leave a little of yourself behind. Or a little bit of your Ki”

Wu nodded.

“Well I met Nabiki in the park a month or so ago” said Ranma changing conversational tack and warming to his subject “and she said it was her favourite spot because her family used to go there together. But it was nothing special. I mean, there was nothing special about that spot, the view was OK I guess, there were no big trees, or gardens, it was just ordinary. Well, that is, until I went back and really looked. It was like there were traces of all the people who visited that spot were there.

“So when Nabiki visited there she was visiting her family as they were, there were…..”

“Echoes?” offered Wu

“Yeah” affirmed Ranma “and then I just started playing with Ki. Just seeing what I could do and then I realised I could do whatever I wanted with it. It’s just a matter of practice.”

“So you learnt the trick.”

“Yeah that’s it. It’s all just a trick! There’s no great techniques it’s all just using Ki, there’s no Chestnut Fist, there’s no…..” Ranma rotated his head “they’re just training exercises aren’t they, to learn to use your Ki once you can do that you can do anything if you want too, you just gotta figure out how!”

“Exactly!” Wu smiled “Do you know how many people have realised that? Including you and me that is?”

Ranma shook his head or twisted it anyway, it was the best he could do at the moment.

“Three!” Wu crowed “three!”

“Cologne?” offered Ranma guessing at the identity of the mysterious third.

“Oh please” said Wu his painted on nose wrinkling in disgust “an amazon? Those thieves, not a single original technique in their whole miserable existence, stole the lot of ‘em. They don’t even realise they’re just training exercises.

“Did you know” Wu whispered conspiratorially, ignoring the fact that they were currently in a dream and unlikely to be overheard “their whole history is a lie.”

Ranma shook his head or rather twisted it, shaking and nodding aren’t something that really comes naturally as Lego as Ranma was rapidly realising.

Wu gestured to Ranma and they walked away towards the Lego horizon.

“Ki” Wu pontificated sagely “is you own life force. Chi is the life force of the earth itself. Manipulation of the two forces most people call magic.”

“Magic?” whispered Ranma.

“You need not be a martial artist to learn to manipulate these forces” Wu continued as if Ranma had not spoken “it is but one path.”

“But Cologne, Happousai, they use magic?”

“Yes” nodded Wu “by using spells, rituals and focuses to channel power. Not by manipulating these forces directly. As you soon will be able to!

“Practise your focus Ranma, feel, touch the energy about you. Learn to harness it!” Wu smiled broadly “You want incentive why do think it’s called the Training Ground of Accursed Springs.”

“Umm, because…..it’s ahhh…”

“Because Ranma, you learn to control ki and chi you can control your curse or cure it!”

Ranma stood as dumbstruck as plastic can before waking up to the fact that Wu was now several little plastic knobs ahead of him and hurried to catch up.

“You shouldn’t tell anyone about this Ranma, this is very important. Realising that all these Ki techniques are just training to get to the next level is something that must figured out for ones self, not taught.”

Ranma nodded and the two of them continued talking and walking for what seemed to Ranma on waking for hours.

At some point in time the little rock appeared as a small pink block of Lego and floated quietly beside them. Neither Ranma or Wu thought this at all unusual.

I know the disclaimer should be at the beginning but here it is;

Ranma ½ and all characters (except for the couple I created) are the property of Rumiko Takahashi/Shogakukan Inc. and only borrowing them. I hope one day everyone will forgive me.

Miowara Tomokato is the creation of Mark E Rogers.