Mars landed with a slight thump on the ground behind them just moments later. She was winded and tired after her long chase after him, but she tried to hold that back. However, when she took a step forward to lay a comforting hand upon Ranma’s shoulder, he suddenly spun about with a look of such fury written upon his face that she couldn’t help but flinch bodily backwards in fear.

"Don’t touch me." He snarled, his voice emerging from deep in his chest and rumbling outwards in a bass growl. "Don’t touch Akane. In fact, why don’t you just get your backstabbing self out of here before I do something that I MIGHT regret later."

Akane’s eyes fluttered open at the raw, unmitigated fury in his voice. A hand roughened from years spent sending cinder blocks to their Maker gently brushed against his cheek and turned his gaze from where Mars cowered to where Akane yet still laid in his arms. Her body still trembled with the memory of what had happened to her that night, and yet her dark eyes that hid untold depths of pain within them pleaded with him in their own unique way.

"Ranma." She whispered, the name sliding easily off of her tongue as it always had whether in anger or in worry despite what had been done by the vicious beast Raetheon. "Don’t."

And with that one particular word from that one particular person on that one particular morning, Ranma stopped. For Akane on that morning, he stopped. How could he do anything less for one who had suffered as she had that night? How could anyone as chivalrous as he possibly do anything else?

And so, the Pretty Sailor-suited Soldier Sailormars, otherwise known as the beauteous young temple maiden Hino Rei, was not torn apart piece by piece at the hands of a righteously furious young man, that she had earlier so unwarrantedly assaulted, that night. All because the man in question found himself incapable of deliberately performing some action which would cause distress to the woman in his arms.

"I’ll deal with you later." Ranma snarled as Akane’s eyes fell shut again, his voice much more sullen than it had been earlier. "Right now, Akane’s well being is far more important to me than beating the hell out of someone like you."

With that, he strode purposefully into the house before him.

***********

The sullen light of late evening after the night-long battle against Raetheon the Destroyer, which ended rather inconclusively at the dawning of a new day, found Ranma sitting up through the ever thickening dusk in dedicated vigil to one Tendo Akane, despite his burgeoning exhaustion. Rei hid herself in the background, a scurrying figure trying with desperation to find herself exit from the unpleasant situation she had inadvertently placed herself within by following Ranma away from the battlefield. Akane curled tight about herself in a fetal ball on the red bedspread of Ranma’s bunk.

The setting was a relatively spacious room in the Hino Residence whose absence of decoration fair screamed the name of the primary resident. The spartan room bore little furniture to match its lack of ornamentation. The bed upon which Akane laid was pushed tight against the far wall from the doorway. On the wall to the immediate left of the door, which lead to the hallway through its sliding panels, their stood a simple wooden clothespress and the window which stood above it and allowed some sparse particles of light admittance into the somber room. The wall across from it was bare as was the wall which fronted the hall, since Ranma had stored his pack in the hollow under his bed.

Ranma gazed at Akane’s torturous expression through half-lidded eyes with the same spaced-out quality as found in people who force themselves to continue despite the fact that they are obviously exhausted. The heavy lids slowly drooped lower and lower over the clear sapphire eyes that gazed up the girl who had captured his hand in an, at times painful, grip. Behind them, Rei hoped and prayed for Ranma to fall into the clutches of the Lord of Dreams, because she honestly believed that that was the only way for her to make good her escape.

But her hopes and prayers were in vain, for at the very moment which Ranma’s eyes slid completely closed and she began inching towards the door, Akane finally fell into a more peaceful slumber and her hand gently loosed Ranma’s. The cessation of pressure upon his hand awoke the teenaged combatant from the fitful slumber he had been dropping into. With a sigh, he pushed himself up off of the ground and gently arranged Akane’s hand beside her on the bed.

As his back was turned, Rei made an attempt for the door. But at that moment, Ranma turned to her. She found herself ensnared by the unfathomable depths of his eyes the deep stormy-gray of the waters of a sea grasped in the throws of a hurricane.

Then the moment was over, and he strode silently past her into the hall. With that single look he had instructed her to follow him, and she obediently followed along.

She trailed after him down the stairs to the main hall, back into the kitchen pantry, down into the cellar and then further. The entire trek to the library was made in silence broken only by the sound of their footsteps upon the stone. Ranma’s stride was grimly purposeful, yet Rei’s was filled with hesitation and nervousness.

***********

When they finally arrived in the grim silence of the cavernous athenaeum, Ranma paced the length of the room in reticence to the far end of the long, highly polished table, trailing his slender fingers lightly along the glistening surface as he walked. Once he reached the end, and the throne-like chair which presided over the room from there, he turned and sat within the depths of the place of honor. Steepling his hands before him at first, he soon placed them fast upon the marbled stone and gazed upon them with the rapt fixedness of a man who did not know exactly where to begin.

Rei, for her part, waited nervously near the door, fidgeting helplessly with the hem of her yellow sweater. She shuffled her feet softly on the macadamized parterre, though not enough to disturb Ranma’s reverie. Her violet eyes gazed apprehensively down the length of the room to rest upon Ranma’s reposed figure. After some time, he did look up and direct his attention upon her.

"Why, Rei?" he asked, his normally overwhelmingly confident voice hushed to almost a bare whisper, confidence nearly overwhelmed by resignation and exhaustion.

The murmured question cracked slightly at the end. A slight upward pitch, almost undetectable to any who didn’t know him, but Rei noticed it. With two words, he had managed to convey the pain of betrayal held within his heart because of what she had done. The next few words didn’t help her feel better at all.

"What the hell possessed you to try and turn me into a living campfire, Rei? I thought we were supposed to be friends! We’re cousins, Goddammit!" His furious voice trailed off into silence, leaving an opening clear as day for her to pick up with an explanation of her actions towards him.

She cast desperately about for something, anything, that could possibly save her from having to face that accusing gaze which he had leveled upon her. What she found was the bookcase that lined the walls of the enclosure. Moving slowly, trying hard to make the move look casual and unconcerned, she wandered over to the case and gently drifted her fingertips along the wooden cases of the ancient scroll containers and over leather bindings stiff with age. She allowed her eyes to pour over the graceful characters that outlined the contents hidden behind the age-old covers.

She was a long time in answering, but when she did finally give tongue to her thoughts, the words did not come with her typical grace or charm. A heavy, gilt-edge tome was shifted from its resting place and into her hands before she spoke. Its delicate hand-lettered pages still crisp, despite the yellowing of the parchment the characters were inscribed upon. She poured over the meandering rivers of text for some minutes before she spoke.

"I don’t know." She paused for a second, collecting her thoughts for a second attempt. "I mean, it’s difficult to explain."

"Difficult to explain?! You sure as hell didn’t seem to have any difficulties setting me ON FIRE!" Ranma raged, causing her to flinch away.

"I think..." she stumbled over her words, trying to find the right ones, the one’s that would keep his incandescent fury from falling upon her unprotected soul. "I think maybe it was because... You remember, don’t you? The past? Back on the Moon?" she asked, her need to know tinting her tone brilliant.

"Some. Bits and pieces. A name. Friends. What the hell does THAT got to do with anything?!" was his answer. "I don’t see what some stupid prick from Mars who gets off talking to FIRE has to do with either me or the question at hand!"

Rei deliberately ignored the prick comment with some effort, it had struck a bit close to home in her mind. "I – I’ve been having memories too. When I’m sleeping. In my dreams, I see the past. The Moon. The girls. It’s all so real, that I know, I hope, it’s not just a fantasy. And in those dreams, I’ve seen you. Not like you are now. But how you were. Back then. When you were my brother and you took care of me.

"I wanted to have that again. I wanted that closeness. That love." She sighed, closing the book in her hands gently and replacing it upon the shelf. For once, Ranma bided his time, letting her decide whether or not she was going to manage to explain herself or just dig her grave that much deeper. "I’ve never been really close to anyone before. What with Mother dying when I was so young that I don’t even remember her as anything but a name on a stone. And Father always away on his trips. Of course, there’s always Grandpa, and I love him, really I do. But it’s just not the same. Nothing’s the same as it could have been. As it was."

"At least you have a father instead of some prick like pop. My mom’s alive and all, but I spent most of my life being no where near her. I spent most of my life going through HELL. Akane’s not been drug all over the place but her life ain’t much better than mine. Don’t tell me OR her about how bad YOUR lot’s been." Ranma interjected softly. "You’ve never seen hell until you’ve even lived a PORTION of our lives."

"In my dreams, you were more than just my brother, Ranma." Rei continued as if he had never spoken. She had to, or she knew she would never finish. "You were my best friend. You were always there for me. No matter what. You never gave up on me. Never decided I wasn’t worth the effort. You took my side. You fought for me. Oh, you fought for all the girls, but you fought for me first. That was my first memory from back then. The sounds of battle followed by your battered and bloody face looking down at me in my cradle with a simple smile."

"I would have done that anyways. You just weren’t willing to let me." Ranma muttered.

"Now, you’re my distant, and somewhat estranged cousin with barely any memory of any family beyond a exceedingly nasty SOB who calls himself your father. You don’t know me any better than you know any of the other girls." She turned from the books and made her way to the table where she seated herself at one of the simple chairs there. Slouched over her hands on the cool stone of the tabletop, the long strands of her raven black hair draped down and effectively concealed her face from Ranma’s view. "I’m a fool to think that things would change, but I had to try. I needed to know if it could be possible."

"Hell! You couldn’t believe that making me super crispy could possibly make things BETTER could you?!" Ranma was, in a word, stunned. But Rei pretty much ignored him again.

"I’ve never had any real friends before. Sure, there’s always the girls, and I suppose some of those harpies from T*A* Academy could possibly be considered my friends. But for most of my life, the only life I knew was the shrine. The only friends I had were Phobos and Demios. Two crows. I talked to them a lot, I was so lonely.

"Thus I was seen as the ‘crazy temple girl who talks to crows’. Not exactly the best board to hang if your in the market for a friend, you know? Then I got into T*A* thanks to Father, and those girls are majorly into seeing what they can get people to do. They’re manipulative little bitches. All they do is use each other and then spit them out again when they’re all done. And I got sucked right in to that little culture.

"It caused me to put up walls around my self. I didn’t want to left anyone in. Because if they got close enough to make me care, they were close enough to hurt me. Those walls were very firmly in place when Usagi showed up on my steps for the first time. I didn’t know any other way to treat .. friends. So, I left those walls in place for a long time, until I finally figured out that they didn’t want to hurt me. That they weren’t going to abandon me.

"By that time though, the damage was already done. I was the Ice Maiden. Not even my fires could thaw out the chill on my heart. Not that they didn’t try. At first, anyways. After a while, they just sort of took me at face value and stopped trying for any real depth in our friendship. Which isn’t to say no depth ever developed. Because it did. It couldn’t be helped. Not with everything we went through together. But its not as deep as it could have been. If I just could have been a little more trusting, then maybe... but that doesn’t matter.

"What matters is that I did something that was totally and completely horrid to you, just for my own selfish reasons. You’re a good man, Ranma. And you were beginning to be a good friend of mine, all on your own reconnaissance. But I really screwed that up in a properly royal fashion, didn’t I? Blessed Fires, I’m just as bad as any of those little two-time, scamming bitches back at T*A* Academy, aren’t I? I just can’t let a good thing be."

Ranma waited. He finally realized that the conversation was going somewhere.

"What it all comes down to though, is that I’m sorry. For once in my life, I’m really and truly sorry about what I’ve done. And I know, beyond any hope of a sliver of a shadow of a doubt, I know that there is no way that I have any reason to believe that you would ever, could ever, forgive me for what I did. But I still must apologize for those actions. I’ll understand completely if you never want to see me again. Anything you ask, I’ll do. Maybe it’s just a vain attempt to pay back the damage I caused but..."

Finally, for the first time since beginning to speak, she looked up and met his steady gaze with her reddened violet eyes brimming with tears. "I just wanted someone to love me like I remembered you did."

"That sounds like Akane’s typical line of reasoning." He mused, turning those stormy eyes of his back to the study of his callused hands. "You want someone to care, so you do something that will invariably end up with that person getting the living hell beat out of them, possibly on a regular basis. Geez. What am I? Flypaper for violent people?!"

With that last outburst, he shoved himself up out of his chair. Pacing around to stand across from her, he leaned back upon the table and ran one hand through his thick hair only to stop when he came to his unnaturally long braid. Pulling a good portion of that braid up over his shoulder, he pondered it for a time. After a while of trying to figure out his hair, he gave it up as pointless and looked back over his shoulder at Rei.

"I really don’t have a clue what I’m going to do with this mess. But, I promised Mom that I wouldn’t check out before the year is up, so it looks like I got a couple more months around these parts before I head back to Nerima." He gestured upwards with his eyebrows, "And then there’s Akane. I don’t see how I can force her to go back to Nerima, so I’m afraid I’ll have to keep her here. Not HERE here!" he hurriedly added, as if afraid that Rei would get the wrong idea, possibly with good cause. "But in Juuban. Somewhere."

He sighed and pushed himself up off of the table. "Right now, I’m exhausted, so I’m going to go up and check on Akane then check into my sleeping roll. You can head home, or stay in the guest room. Whatever you want to do. At this point, I don’t care if you turn into a purple gerbil."

Then he wearily plodded out of the room and back the long trek to the main house. Behind him, he left Rei slowly regaining her composure.

***********

Ranma paused at the washroom for a glass of cold water before he went on into the room he would be sharing with Akane for the night. Looking into the mirror at his masculine features with the glass of water in his hands, he smirked wryly at his reflection. The irony didn’t surpass him for once. He thought about what he had scene during that strange time after he changed when he wasn’t in control.

He remembered looking down into a still pool of steaming water and, instead of seeing his feminine reflection, he saw himself as a man. And he had control over that reflection. Seeing through the reflection’s eyes, he watched as his girl-type had begun to step into the crystal clear depths, somehow knowing what would happen if she did.

A sudden fear had gripped his mind and he struggled against the bonds that held his reflection still in the pool. He would have sighed with relief if he could when she stopped. They had spoken through kanji traced on the surface and somehow come to an understanding.

Reflecting upon the fact that it would no longer be himself in control when he changed form, he slowly poured the glass over his head.

Ranko smiled back at the mirror before she strode out of the room with a comfortable swagger. It was time to see her friend, reborn after so long.

***********

Akane was awake when Ranko walked into the room. Her puzzled features when Akane looked at the other girl prompted a response.

"Ranma didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable with him in the room, so he sent me instead." Ranko offered shyly.

"B-but aren’t you Ranma?" Akane was majorly confused by this point.

"Actually, not really. I mean, this is his body and all, but something happened while he.. we.. were missing. And I got to come out. My name is Ranko." She smiled at Akane. "And long ago, your Ranma was my Shima. He was my first and foremost friend, nothing more. I loved him dearly, but I loved you as well. You were my first friend after Shima." She reached out and grasped the shocked Akane’s hands in her own as she sat down on the bed beside her. "And once I learned from Ranma what had happened to you, I knew that I had to be there for you. I won’t leave you alone, Akane. I promise."

Akane smiled through the tears that threatened to spill down her face. Through all that had happened to her, she was discovering the truth to having real friends. And she did remember Ranko, dimly, from her dreams.

It was good to have friends like the small red-head. Comforting. And comfort was what Akane needed right then.

She suddenly broke into sobs as the full magnitude of what had happened broke upon her. Ranko merely smiled sadly and drew the sobbing girl into her embrace. For she truly had meant what she said, and there was nothing that would change that. Especially not now, that they were all the same age.

***********

A few days layer with a bone-deep weariness still plaguing his steps, Ranma made his way slowly back the long journey from school and up the stairs to the futon still rolled up in the corner of his room. Once there, he paused a moment to briefly brush a stray strand of hair from Akane’s still slumbering features. She hadn’t managed a full nights sleep in days, and he wasn’t willing to make her move somewhere else until she finally managed to garner a whole night of rest.

He crossed to the room and began the slow task of unrolling the narrow pad of the futon that had been his bed for the past few nights, as his normal resting place was still engaged by his engaged.

"Ranma?" the sleepy voiced murmur disrupted him from his random reverie.

He turned sharply towards Akane with the startled alertness of a gazelle. "Akane? You’re awake." He mumbled, not quite awake enough to state the unobivious, though he was becoming more aware by the moment.

"Ranma?" she whispered once more, though it sounded almost like a whimper.

"What?" was Ranma’s somewhat less than brilliant reply.

"Ranma, I don’t.." she trailed off, as if she wasn’t quite certain of what words to use next.

"Want me in here with you." Ranma finished for her, as he began gathering up his things. "That’s okay. You’ve been through a lot, I guess. Seeing me probably doesn’t help anything. I’ll just go sleep in the guest room – no, wait, Rei might be there again."

"Ranma." Akane attempted to interrupt his rapidly becoming monologue, but failed rather miserably.

"I guess I can sleep in the living room. Or maybe the dining room..."

"Ranma!" The tone was much firmer and her face was becoming more than slightly flushed.

Ranma spun around, dropping everything he had previously gathered in the process. "What?" he yelped.

"That’s not what I meant." She sighed. "I-I don’t mind if you sleep in here tonight." The concession was little more than a whisper, but it echoed in the spartan room.

Ranma coloured slightly, but he somehow managed to refrain from making any comments.

"What I meant..." she paused, collecting her thoughts. "What I meant was that I don’t want... this..." she waved about the room with a hand that trembled slightly in the effort, though she wasn’t hurt physically. "to affect..." another pause, this one slightly longer as she slowly raised her eyes to meet his. "us..." her cheeks coloured slightly as she mumbled the last word, letting her eyes drop to the floor as she did.

Ranma stood there in silence for a moment before speaking. "What do you mean by us?" he asked, slowly.

Her eyes met his again, she looked confused. "I meant us. You and me. Our – our relationship."

"And what kind of relationship is that, Akane?" he knew that he was being rather cold, but he refused to allow any warmth to colour his responses. This had all the earmarks of being an important break-through in how they dealt with each other, and he wasn’t going to ruin that.

"What do you mean, Ranma? I-I thought we were starting to get close." Her voice was pained, her words anguished, but he didn’t relent.

"Close? You can’t possibly think that we’re getting close. Not when you still use me as your punching bag every time you get mad about something and I’m near by. It hurts when you hit me, Akane. It really does." She knew that it wasn’t easy for him to admit that she managed to hurt him, but he did it.

"But... you can always dodge! You dodge everything I throw at you in training, why don’t you dodge when I’m- I’m angry?" she had some difficulty getting out the confession of her anger, but she managed.

"I don’t dodge because every time, every single time I have dodged before I just get hit again, usually a lot harder! And it’s not always you who does the hitting either! No! It’s pop! Claiming that I’m bringing dishonour to the family name! As if he has a clue about honour! Or it’s your dad! All yelling that I’ve hurt his baby girl! When the hell is he gonna realize that you’re an adult now, goddammit!" Ranma raged. "Do you really think that I’ve got any honour to be found in allowing my wife to beat the hell out of me for any little thing?!"

He paused, thinking about what he had last said, as he watched Akane’s eyes widen and her jaw drop. "Dammit. I shouldn’ta said that. Not with the other girls still after me. Now I’ve really screwed things up." He flopped down on the ground and pulled his knees up towards him.

"Ranma?"

"What?" His voice was sullen, and he refused to look up at her.

"Did – did you really mean that?"

"Mean what?"

"Mean what you said – about your wife."

"Maybe, why?"

"Does that mean... that you lo... like me?" she had learned about his reactions to the L word.

He finally looked up at her with a strange look in his sapphire eyes. "Like you? Yeah. I guess. But, I can’t..." he gathered his thoughts, "I can’t let myself feel anything more until you learn to control your anger." She looked crestfallen at that, but he continued. "You keep on claiming that you’re a martial artist. But a true martial artist can control his or her temper."

"What about Ryouga? Or Mousse?"

"No matter what you might think about Ryouga, he’s not angry all of the time. A lot of the time, yeah, but not all of the time, like you seem to be. He’s depressed a lot. And he’s got reason for it, though it’s his place to tell you, not mine. Mousse is a lot like Ryouga, except he was raised to believe that might makes right. In his culture it may be true, but in coming to ours, he just doesn’t fit in. They’re both martial artists, not because they happen to be good at it, but because they’re dedicated to the Art and because they do have control. I’d be dead, several times over, and a lot of innocent people as well if they didn’t. You, on the other hand, don’t have any control at all. Or any dedication. Breaking bricks isn’t going to make you a better martial artist. It just makes you better at breaking bricks. Martial arts is more than that. Much, much more."

Akane was almost in tears by that point, but she had to ask. "But you never try to train me. You never hit me. You hit other girls, just not me. Sometimes I think that it’s because you hate me. Why not train me? When you came you brought so many people that were on your level and I just keep falling so far behind."

Ranma looked positively uncomfortable, but he managed to come up with a decent answer for once. "It’s part of who I am, Akane. I don’t hit girls, and I don’t hit people who can’t defend themselves. It’s what I was raised with, Kami-sama only knows how. Now, I’ve hit girls in the past, true. But the main reason for not hitting girls is simply that most of the girls I grew up with fell into the second category. They couldn’t defend themselves from my attacks. Which made it really, really unfair to them. I’ve hit Ukyo, Shampoo, Kodachi, and a few other girls since I came to Tokyo, but they could defend themselves from my attacks. Sure, I won, but then, I’m the best. I couldn’t stand to lose, so I didn’t. It doesn’t mean I liked hitting them" He shrugged.

"You though, can’t defend yourself. I’m not saying it’s cause you’re weak or nothing. Hell, I’ve got the scars to prove that’s wrong. It’s cause you never bothered to learn to defend yourself. You’re all for charging straight at your opponent and trying to run him over. It just don’t work. Not on my level, or on anyone else’s, besides you and the Horde o’ Hentai. And it’s gotten to the point where it doesn’t really even work on your level either. Plus, you’re brutal. I watched you fighting with the Horde o’ Hentai, and I know you didn’t have to be that rough with them. It doesn’t take much to knock a person unconscious, though it does take some finesse. You didn’t need to break bones, though you did."

Akane was in tears, almost to the point of sobbing, but Ranma forced himself to ignore that fact and continue.

"I know I’m mean and even cruel sometimes. But that’s how I was raised. It’s what I know. I don’t know how to be nice and sweet and gentle and romantic and all that stuff like the other guys at school can be. It’s not me. You want that? You should go find it in one of those other guys. Because it’s one of the reasons why you should think before you hit me. I mean, sometimes I know it’s my fault, and those times, I take the hits because I deserve it. Other times, it’s not my fault, and that’s the hits that make me angry, and makes me stop liking you a little bit."

He got up and moved across the room to kneel on the floor next to Akane, who turned her tear-stained face away from him. "Look at me, Akane."

"I don’t want to." She muttered.

He wouldn’t have any of it. He reached over and gently turned her face to look at him. "Look at me, Akane. I would never lie to you. I will never lie to you. Believe me. I swear upon what honour I have left that it’s true."

She looked up at him through eyes blurred with tears and nodded slowly.

"Now, if you don’t want Raetheon and what he did to you to come between us, that’s totally up to you. If you actually want something to exist between us besides him, I’ve given you my reasoning on it. You want to make something of it, it’s your turn. Now sleep on it, and we’ll talk again in the morning." Then he leaned down and gently pressed his lips to her forehead in a fatherly fashion.

Walking over to his futon, he clambered in and pulled the thin sheet up over his shoulders. "’night, Akane." He muttered as he drifted off.

Akane lay for a few minutes still. One hand delicately laid up the spot where he had kissed her. Then she slowly turned her head and looked at his sleeping form. "I want to be your friend, Ranma. And maybe, someday, we can be something more than just friends. Good night, Ranma."

***********

Ranma awoke to find himself in a very foggy place. He climbed up and looked around, only to discover that he was no longer in his room, and had instead been lying upon a marble floor.

"Where the hell am I?" he snarled, staggering forward into the blinding fog bank.

He didn’t know how long he traveled. Only that it was a long time and his feet were beginning to ache, when he suddenly came upon tall wall that scaled many, many times his own height. The glossy obsidian surface glinted his reflection back at him rather sinisterly. Then, off to the side, he heard a muffled giggle.

There, standing not even ten feet away from him and leaning against the wall in complete ease, was his curse form. The red-headed succubae was giggling apparently at the disoriented expression on his face.

"Well, if it isn’t the magnificently manly Saotome Ranma." She chortled, coming over to lounge against the wall at his side with an almost insolent attitude. "I’m sure we’ve met. I’m Ranko. That’s it. Just... Ranko. Last names for the peasants hadn’t been invented yet when I walked the lunar surface a free woman. It’s kinda my fault you got stuck with my shape and what’s left of my soul, after who knows how long, floating around in you. Some sicko tried to make me a part of his harem while my guardian wasn’t around. I created the curse of the springs in response. The sicko got to be the first, and only, Guide. I think his name was Kuno Ikari, or something."

"Kuno? It’s Kuno’s fault??"

"Well, something like that. You’ve got a Kuno bothering you too? Gee, what a cowinkydink." She smirked at him, then glanced up. "Oh, what’d’ya know. My guardian’s coming."

"Guardian? What? Where?!"

"There." She pointed upwards in a fashion that could only be described as casual.

Ranma’s eyes darted towards the skies rapidly. All he could detect however was an uncanny glowing of the upper realms of the fog bank. The glow was steadily increasing in brightness though.

Then suddenly, the source of the glow was upon him! He flinched backwards from the heat of the massive terraces of incandescence holocaust. As the searing torridity burnt away the surrounding fog, he slowly grew accustom to the warmth and rose his eyes to meet the newest arrival.

The man was, in a word, Ranma. But not the same as Raetheon the Destroyer. No. This man was older, but with the same cocky attitude as Ranma. He smirked at the younger man, even as his hand alit gently upon the hilt of an apparently broken sword.

"Are you from my future?" Ranma whispered haltingly.

"No. From your past. I’m ancient history." The older man replied easily. Ranko giggled in the background.

"Who-who are you?"

"My name is Shima, of the Royal House of Mars. I was the Heir Apparent to the War Throne of Mars. I am the Champion Among Mortals For The Lord Phoenix."

"That bastard Saffron?!" Ranma snarled, his emerald katana forging itself in his grasp.

"Saffron? Hardly." Shima snorted in contempt. "I serve none but the True Phoenix."

Ranma relaxed, though he didn’t dismiss his katana, then realized what Shima had said earlier. "So you’re the great Shima, huh? I’ve heard of you a bit."

Shima looked bemused. "So you’re the great Saotome Ranma, huh? That’s a nice knife you got there, kid. But when are you going to grow up and get yourself a real sword?"

"This is a real sword!" Ranma fulminated.

"Maybe. But once you’ve barred the Sword of the High Prince, you’ll know it’s nothing more than a butter knife." Shima replied, with infuriating calm. "The Sword waits for none but he whom it doth chose. The Sword has chosen you, Saotome Ranma. Now it is awaiting you. Find it and free it. As I did many years anon. Now, the day is growing bright, and you must soon awake. But worry not. We shall meet again."

Then Shima spread his massive wings bright and launched himself back into the heavens.

"The Sword is in a secured place, Ranma." Ranko stated, dragging him from his reverie. "You’ll find it, if you can find some culture."

Then everything went black.

***********

Ranma awoke with a start into the predawn light. He quickly mopped the sweat from his brow and pulled himself from the bed. Glancing over, he assured himself that Akane remained asleep.

"I’ll find it, if I can find some culture." Ranma mused as he pulled on a clean shirt before heading out for his morning exercise. "Now, what did she mean by that?"