Sorry guys, I believe Catonfire would describe this chapter as “Damned filler.” It’s needed to set up some stuff later, but I guess it’s pretty lame.

WARNING: I don’t know much about AMG, in fact, I’ve never seen an episode. The goddesses were originally a gimmick used to get Ranma where he is, but they slowly began to worm their way further in. I will make errors, I will bastardize the series, I ask that you forgive me of this, as I warn you in advance. Also, this takes place two years after AMG, so I don’t have to worry about my actions ruining established storylines.

Chapter 11, Relaxation, Contemplation, confrontation and consternation!

Ranma sat gazing at the sheet of paper, her hand firmly resting on her chin in a pose of total boredom. “You sure I always help you with your math homework, Ranko?” She asked, looking suspiciously at her little sister who was studying the paper next to her.

“Yep.” Ranko said, as she scratched an answer next to an equation on the page.

“No, that’s not it.” Ranma said, as she pointed to another number in the set. “Count the number of zeros. It should be four times ten to the fifth, not the fourth.” Ranko quickly changed the sum, and then another thing occurred to Ranma. “And why am I a girl right now again?”

Ranko giggled. “Because you lost the game, remember?”

Ranma sighed. She had been beaten in a game of poker by a twelve year old. Truly, life was unfair.

From the door to Ranko’s bedroom where the two siblings were working on the younger’s math homework, Nodoka Saotome smiled. This was such a cute scene that she didn’t even mind that her son was a girl at the moment, and she didn’t have the heart to ruin Ranko’s plan by telling Ranma that he’d never helped his sister do homework in his life. Carefully closing the door to the room, Nodoka turned and walked down the hall to the kitchen. Maybe those two would like a snack while they worked.

HR

In a small restaurant known as “Ukyo’s Okonomiyaki, the head chef and owner paced back and forth, worriedly clenching and unclenching her hands around the handle of her battle spatula. This was NOT good. Earlier this afternoon, she had been chasing the old freak of the district, who had stolen several sets of her chest bindings, when a swing of her spatula hit a brick wall harder than she thought it could and her bad shoulder had popped out of place, yet again. It was pretty standard for her, actually. Ever since sustaining the injury that had violently dislocated it in Junior high, the thing seemed to come out of joint every month or two, and she usually only had to see Dr. Tofu for about three minutes to get it put back into place.

Today though, things had to go differently. Tofu had come up with this stupid story about Ranma Saotome having changed his ways, as if that slime ball possibly could, related to Genma as he was, and asked her to volunteer in a little test he wanted to conduct to prove or disprove Ranma’s claims.

“Why the hell did the doc have to be right?!” She yelled, in a voice that could probably be faintly heard outside of the restaurant. She was THIS close to being able to go back home without any trouble. Just go and see if Saotome’s son was really worthy of her, and if so marry him. Of course, Ukyo didn’t like that idea one bit, being as independent as she was, but as her father constantly said, given the fact that she seemed to constantly dress as a boy, even to the point of having once gone to an all boys school to avoid the girls uniforms, she had almost no chance of landing a husband any other way.

She had had to live around him for a year to ‘get a feel for him,’ as her father said, and he’d been acting exactly how she’d wanted him to for the entire time, a younger version of the old freak. Of course, her father was going to come to meet him in less than two weeks, and he had to suddenly grow a sense of human decency! Continuing to pace, Ukyo desperately tried to think of a way of dodging the bullet of marriage at seventeen, especially to someone who it seemed she now didn’t even know.

‘I’ll just tell him about the problem, and maybe we can fool my father. I mean, I’m sure he wants to get married to the cross dresser of the class about as much as I want to get married to him, right?’ She thought, before another thought hit her. ‘But what if he’s just faking this so I have to marry him, and he’ll go back to normal after my father leaves?’ She shook her head after this last. There was no way Ranma could have known that her father was coming in such a short time, heck, he didn’t even know they were technically engaged. Deciding that she’d worry about this tomorrow, she hung her spatula over the grill, and went up to her apartment to sleep.

HR

At the Kuno mansion, Tatewaki fumed. How DARE she suspend him, she was just a lowly teacher, and if his father were still at the school… but of course, he wasn’t. He had been carted off to a mental institution by his twisted sister, who had betrayed the entire Kuno clan. Why, If she wasn’t his sister he’d… He shook his head, banishing the always slightly appealing notion of slicing Kodachi to bits with his Bokken.

She had seemed to get MORE twisted since she got out of that accursed mental hospital, always telling him that his fair Akane Tendo hated him, and not making anymore of that wonderful tea that he liked so much. Why, he had to go and buy his own supplies for that now. No, he had to focus on defeating and capturing the beauteous Demon, and nothing else. He would go to Saotome’s home tomorrow and confront her if he had to, after all surely she must follow him there to continue weaving her insidious spell, and thence he would capture and rehabilitate her. Ah, such a lovely plan he had come up with. Throwing back his head, he began to laugh with triumphant glee.

In the next room, Kodachi turned uneasily, having nightmares of her own high, mad laugh and black roses.

HR

In a forest near the Chinese coast line, something that sounded vaguely like a slow firing Machine gun disturbed the dusk air, as a lone Amazon warrior took out her frustrations on a stout tree in the middle of a clearing. The Amaguriken technique that her great grandmother had taught her only a month ago was getting a good workout as the tree began to develop cracks and splinters along her striking surface. Within about thirty seconds, the bark and most of the wood on that side of the tree crumbled, leaving the panting but much less frustrated warrior standing in front of a large pit in the wood.

“Are you feeling better, great Granddaughter?” Came a voice, from out of the darkened shade of another tree.

“”Yes, great grandmother.”” Shampoo said, in her native language.

“Remember what I told you child, you must learn Japanese if you are to go to Japan with us. Please speak it now.” Cologne reprimanded, as she came from the darkness to survey the damage her great granddaughter did to her impromptu punching bag. “Hmm, not bad.” She said, as she examined some of the pits her punches had left. “You may be ready to practice the technique with the fire now.”

Shampoo only nodded mutely, not willing to trust her grasp of Japanese to say much.

“You can’t keep taking your frustrations for what happened out on the trees around here, there won’t be any left.” Cologne laughed, as she recalled that Shampoo had done the same thing last night when she had woken up from the knock on the head that Mint had used to knock her out.

Shampoo sighed. “Shampoo know, but this so humiliating.” She said, looking down at the ground. “Males not supposed to be strong as Amazon warriors, it not right!”

“That is your problem, Shampoo. Although female warriors have more potential than males, ‘At least according to the elder council,’” she thought, considering the towering mass of Chi that the Musk prince, currently princess, in the main camp had, “We must remember that you are not as experienced in battle as the one who defeated you. Take this as a learning experience.”

““A learning experience, but I’m MARRIED to a MUSK!”” Shampoo yelled, forgetting herself and yelling in Chinese in her anger.

“Yes, and not my first choice of Musk either, but who’s fault is that?” Cologne asked, slightly sharply. “This is not the way I would have wanted you to learn this particular lesson, but what is done is done.”

“But great grandmother…” Shampoo said, as Cologne walked away.

“I am sorry child, if I had known this was going to happen I would have picked one of the older warriors.” Cologne said, before pogoing off into the darkness on her staff.

“Grah!” Shampoo yelled, smashing the remains of the tree she was practicing on with her fist, and to her shock, actually knocking it down. Following her great grandmother back to the camp, she spent the rest of the night glaring at Mint. Of course, in the back of her mind, she had to wonder who the Musk her great grandmother would have chosen was.

HR

In Asgard, Urd of the three temporal goddesses stood in Kami-Sama’s waiting room, looking distinctly nervous. She had been called up here rather angrily, or at least as angrily as her father ever got. The lightning bolt that had contained the summons message had hit her before getting to the point. As the door opened, Urd noticed that her father was facing away from her, only his silhouette visible as usual. “I am here as ordered, Kami-sama. “She said, nervously. She was pretty sure she knew what was coming, and it was not going to be fun.

“Sit down, Urd.” Kami-Sama ordered, as a chair materialized in front of her, as well as a desk with a computer. She did so, and clasped her hands in front of her, waiting for what he would say next. “Do you know what you have done?”

She blinked, then went through her memory for things that she had done recently that may annoy Kami-sama to the degree that he would order her up here. “Is this about Project Saffron?” She asked, nervously.

“That is precisely what this is about.” Kami-Sama said, turning to face Urd, revealing his fiercely scowling face, an eye patch over his left eye. “I allowed it to slide with a minor reprimand when you failed to steer the Hibiki couple off course and prevent the conception of the Saotomes’ second child, thinking that you would make some attempt to fix your mistake.”

Urd winced at that remark. It had always seemed cosmically unfair that a life had to be sacrificed to prevent the ascension of Saffron, but she knew that it was necessary, and that she should have done it.

“I let you have TWELVE YEARS to fix this mess, Urd.” Kami-sama said, his voice rising to an actual angry roar for the first time in recent memory, which for a goddess was a pretty damned long time. “What do you do when you can’t avoid the matter anymore? You call for a request from another part of the System, using resources that you as an administrator KNOW can’t be used lightly, and another version of Ranma Saotome’s soul is sent to substitute for the one in this world.”

“Is, is there something wrong with that?” Urd asked, uncertainly.

“Is there something…” Kami-sama sputtered at this, looking purely astonished. “Urd, thanks to your screwing up, it’s recorded that even if Saffron IS stopped, within forty years Ranma Saotome will ascend to god status!”

Urd gulped. She would have to check that with skuld, because she hadn’t seen it coming. In fact, she couldn’t see any reason for that to happen, but Kami-sama knew far more than she did after all. She just waited, ready to face the punishment that Kami-sama would dole out for this kind of failure. The last time something this big went wrong, the poor goddess responsible for it had quietly disappeared for several weeks, and come back quivering in fear, a complete basket case. She had eventually recovered, but Peorth just hadn’t been the same since, what with all that random switching between languages.

Kami-sama turned to Urd, finally calming down from his very rare display of temper. “As you probably have guessed, there are consequences for a failure of this magnitude. Quite frankly, we need to know how Ranma Saotome is going to ascend to godhood, and stop him somehow. Killing him simply isn’t an option, unless his character changes radically in the next forty years. Hild still agrees that we can’t risk a random shuffling of the doublet system, so she’s authorized ONE agent to interfere in this matter. Since we can only send one, it will be you, Urd.”

“Me?” She asked, confused. This wasn’t nearly as bad as she thought it was going to be. A simple babysitting assignment wouldn’t be all that bad. then she noticed that Kami-sama was holding something out to her in one hand. It was a set of limiter earrings, but they were very bulky, and had class 8 etched into them in rune script. “What are these?” She asked, looking at the limiters.

“Those are your punishment. You will perform this mission while wearing class 8 limiter earrings, that you may not take off unless it succeeds.” Kami-sama said, with a grin.

“I didn’t even think there WAS a class 8!” Urd yelled, unbelieving. If this class was proportionally lower from the class 2 goddess she currently was, she wouldn’t have enough power available to light a candle!

“There wasn’t until this morning.” Kami-sama said, with a small smile. “Now go. Transport to the temple where your sister and Mr. Morisato live, and then place those earrings on. Your new identity papers will be transferred to you by skuld tomorrow.”

“But this isn’t fair!” Urd said, loudly, before remembering who she was talking to. After he glared at her, she revised her opinion. “I mean, yes sir!”

“Good.” Kami-sama said, as Urd left the room.

END.

Wow, I Almost feel sorry for Shampoo, and I definitely feel bad about poor Kodachi. Bet you never thought a fic author’d say that, ne?

Question: Why does Ukyo still cross-dress?

Answer: In this universe, Genma was alone on the trip, and bargained Ranma’s hand for something of the Kuonjis. Ukyo hadn’t met him, and when she understood what marriage entailed didn’t want to marry someone she didn’t know, so started cross-dressing in preparation to scare the guy away when she eventually met him. Plus, it’s one of her main character traits that I wouldn’t feel right changing. Sorry.