"You look nice." He murmured, brushing a stray hair from her face.

"Think so?" she asked, spinning about.

His traditional style was slightly modified on her. She had combined the shirt he had left behind the other night with a black, ankle length skirt with a slit up the side from ankle to the knee. A pair of soft, black cotton slippers, twin to his own, adorned her feet.

He leaned down and straightened her shirt slightly before wrapping a long black sash thrice about her slim waist before cinching it tight at the side with a square knot. Then he stood, her arms draping about his shoulders as he did.

"There. Now we match." He whispered, looking down at her with a smile.

And the pair headed off towards the Mizuno residence a matched set with crimson silk shirts, black velvet encasing their legs, and sable silk cinching their waists. Ranma’s chuckle drifted back on the wind as he tossed his sapphire package to Akane. Her shriek of surprise echoed back in response as he scooped her and her newly acquired burden into his arms and took to the roofs.

***********

"Where are those two?" An impatient Makoto asked, tapping her foot rapidly, though what would have been an impressively staccato display of annoyance was muffled easily by the thick pile covering the floor of the apartment. Though, the little amount of sound it was making was beginning to get on Rei’s nerves from where she was standing and talking with Usagi, Mamoru, and little Hotaru.

"Aw, give the lovebirds a break, Mako-chan!" cooed Minako from her place on the leather couch. "I mean, they’re getting so close... we don’t want to interrupt them do we?" she asked, with a rather disturbing smirk.

Makoto at least had the grace to blush at the implication from the mischievous girl. "Minako! They’ve both said that they’re just friends!"

"Come off it, Mako-chan!" Minako responded, twisting a strand of stray hair about her finger idly as she spoke. "You remember how he reacted to Raetheon, don’t you? Well, I sure do at any rate."

"Minako, I’d react the same way as he did if that bastard had raped you. That doesn’t mean we’re going to end up sleeping together." Haruka interrupted, leaning over the back of the couch and letting a hand settle on her shoulder. "Or does it?" She added with a sly smile.

Minako eeped and twisted herself out from under Haruka’s hand in response. Haruka and Makoto just laughed at her reaction, though Michiru looked on in mild annoyance at Haruka’s flirting. Finally, Minako stood before the couch and let out an exasperated sigh.

"Okay, enough already! I’ll let up on them!" she

"Let up on who?" Came a voice from the open window.

"Really. Inquiring minds want to know!" Another, more feminine voice came from the same direction shortly after.

All eyes were suddenly redirected towards the source of the voices. There, perched lightly upon the sill, crouched the missing Saotome Ranma, carrying Tendo Akane snugly in his arms, who was also laden with a awkward looking sapphire wrapped bundle. The sight of the twin garb upon the two was mildly disconcerting to look at, so quite a few of the room’s occupants found elsewhere to look after a couple of minutes.

Except for Minako, of course.

"What’s with the matching outfits? Trying to say something?" she asked, as Ranma set Akane upon her feet.

Akane laughed with apparent confidence, though inside both she and Ranma were praising whatever deity had decide to make them think about what they would do in a situation like this. "Oh, no, nothing like that, Minako-san!" She replied.

"We just figured that since we were the only representatives of ‘the Nerimans’ here that it might be interesting if we dressed alike." Ranma added by way of explanation.

Most everyone else excepted it at that. Minako didn’t really take it at face value, but since Makoto and Haruka were starting to look like they were about to do something to her, she decided to leave it alone.

Just then Rei heard the sound of familiar steps outside the door and the rattling noise of someone pulling out their keys. "Everyone, she’s here!" She hissed, scurrying off to hide beside a chair.

Usagi and Mamoru ducked down behind the sofa with Haruka, Michiru, and Hotaru. Ranma and Akane dodged around the counter that separated the kitchenette from the living room. Minako slipped behind the coffee table. And last but not least, Makoto doused the lamp they had been using to see by and spun about to stand behind where the door would swing to when opened.

Just in time as it turned out, for only seconds after she hit the light, Makoto heard the sound of a key turning in the knob and the handle turning. The door swung open silently, just brushing against her arm. The silhouette in the doorway reached over absent-mindedly and flicked the light switch into the on position.

As the main lights suddenly flooded the room that had been only dim at best before, ten friends suddenly leapt up from their hiding places with smiles wreathing their faces.

"Surprise!" They called as one. "Happy birthday, Ami!"

Ami, for her part, was shocked. A single tear tracked its way down her face as she looked upon her friends. Then she managed to recover and wiped it away with a laugh.

"Oh... oh, you guys!" she laughed, stepping into the rather awkward group hug that developed as she moved into the room.

***********

Two weeks later, Ranma was walking through the local mall in the company of both Ami and Akane. He was in his usual high spirits, joking with Ami and teasing Akane as they walked along. Fortunately for him, ever since their little conversation the other night, Akane was finally seeing his teasing for what it was, good-natured and not as out and out right malicious as she believed.

Akane, for her part, was simply enjoying being able to spend the day out in Ranma’s company without having to have one or the other being forced into the situation. It was entirely possible that the day could have progressed even better, if Ami had not been tagging along with them, but for some reason, she seemed even happier to have the shy girl, who looked so much like her, along.

Ami sighed happily as she watched the golden leaves drifting in their silent way down to the street below. She burrowed deeper into the soft lamb’s down interior of the indigo leather jacket that Ranma and Akane had gifted her with at the party earlier that month. He had mentioned that it was called a ‘bom-bur’ style jacket, fairly popular in America.

They were all each lost in their own little reverie as they journeyed past the shops that lined the narrow path to either side. Ranma was locked into his thoughts about Akane and the sudden leap they had made in their relationship, as well as the results that were starting to become apparent to him. Akane deliberately confined any conscious musings to an out of the way corner in the back of her mind, so that she could simply enjoy the day. Ami was relishing being able to be out with her friends as simply friends.

Which was why Ranma suddenly wrapping a strong arm about each of the girls’ waists and leaping backwards took them by such surprise. When the smoke and dust finally cleared from the area they had just removed themselves from, a singularly massive axe, with a head that was roughly as wide as Ranma was tall, was being wrenched from where it was embedded in the ground by a lanky rouge of a foreigner. Finally removing it, he flipped it up into the air and caught it. All with only one hand.

He grinned cockily at the trio. "That was good! You truly are better than I had expected! But do you really think you can avoid Soulcrusher forever?" He asked, lightly running his free hand across the unparalleled expanse of metal that made up the head of the double-bit waraxe.

Ranma didn’t bother to answer the arrogant gajin. He turned and set the girls gently upon their feet. "Go get help." He said.

"I can help, Ranma!" Akane started to argue, but Ranma quickly broke in.

"Akane, we don’t have time for that now!" He snapped, more worry and anger slipping into his voice than he truly wanted to have. "I’ll keep him away from you as long as I can." He glanced at Ami and Akane in turn. "Just go get help." Then he turned to face his opponent and refused to look at them as he spoke the last of his missive. "I’ll hold out as long as I can."

"Ranma..." Akane whispered, agony sprawled across her features as she reached out a hand to him. Ami walked up behind her and grasped her arm.

Ranma closed his eyes for a moment, his head lowering slightly as he did. "Just hurry... please." Then he determinedly shunted his consciousness into ‘battle mode’.

Ami pulled hurriedly at Akane’s arm, drawing the slightly larger girl’s attention from Ranma. "Come on, Akane! You heard him!"

Akane nodded her acquiescence, though Ami could tell that she did not wish to leave Ranma behind, if not from the pain written plain to see on the girl, no, woman’s face, then from something else far more inexplicable.

***********

Ranma sensed them leaving, but he paid it no mind. He merely began to focus his energy into the palms of his hands, spinning the energy about him into the slender golden form of his ki rod from the empty air. When it finally emerged, he danced through a loose bo drill and settled into a stance designed to accentuate his confidence and strike fear into his opponent.

The gajin merely yawned.

"Are you quite finished playing?" Ranma did not speak, his eyes merely narrowed slightly at the insult. "Then how about we begin this mess?"

And with no further ado, Soulcrusher flickered in the thin, long-fingered hands of the blonde man. Ranma’s ki rod flashed a effulgent response as it leapt up as if with a mind of its own and met the onrushing axe with a suddenly emerald blade. The gajin snarled at Ranma over the crossed blades. Ranma merely smirked back, his trademarked confidence returning to him in spades at the thoughtless defense.

"What do you expect?" He asked, even as he shoved the axeman away from him with a tremendous thrust. "I’m the best there is!"

The next instant found him charging rather foolhardily towards the slender man before him. Soulcrusher flickered. Once. Twice. The ki-katana danced in response. Crimson hued blossoms bloomed in the wake of the emerald blade as it finally arrowed its way through the nearly overwhelming defenses put up by the Soulcrusher. Then, Soulcrusher darted out again, and Ranma suddenly found himself soaring through the air in a rather advanced pain version of Air Akane, having been bashed with the flat of the axe. The gajin bastard was still flipping it about one handed, too! He looked down to notice that his shirt had been slashed open at the chest, leaving a shallow gash along his otherwise unmarked flesh. His eyes widened noticeably at the sight.

"I dodged that!" He kept insisting to himself, mere seconds before he slammed into a hard brick wall. The wall crumbled under the impact. He kept going. In fact, it took no less than five and one half once solid brick and wood walls to slow his headlong flight. He didn’t actually stop until the sixth wall, the thickest yet, and from the feel, the newest of them all.

Ranma slowly stood from the rubble, dust and chunks of brick drifting from his body to fall upon the remains of what had once been a stalwart defender from the elements. He pulled himself upright through the use of the staff form of his ki rod. Then he stood there. Silent. Achieving his bearings.

It was the battered remnants of the sign, that had once adorned the wall, lying at his feet that gave him his greatest clue. There wasn’t much left to it. Only a few symbols here and there. ‘Ha’. ‘Tsukan’. ‘Buge’. He had been launched in a direct interception route with the only recently completed and opened Hakubutsukan no Bugei. It was like a sun dawning to see the sudden realization clicking on in Ranma’s head.

Suddenly, things began falling into place for our hero.

The overly aggressive gajin professor. The strange sword. The dream. All of it was coming together like a ingenious entanglement that somehow decided to unravel its perplexing mazes before his very eyes leaving only the truth behind.

He quickly realized that he knew the identity of his aggressor. Had known it all along. It was Milo Passhem. It had to be. The professor that had walked in on him suddenly and just as suddenly went on the super defensive when Ranma had criticized his display.

But, more strangely, he felt seriously compelled to retrieve that strange sword, that had caused the argument between them in the first place, from its repressive case. And it was with that thought in mind, that he found himself dashing into the depths of the assaulted building.

Moments later, Milo appeared outside the building still carrying Soulcrusher. A evil smirk distorted his features.

"Very good, Saotome. That’s it. Awaken the sword. Master will be pleased to have his blade back..." Then he stepped into the remains of the building after Ranma. And the echoes of his laughter faded into the remains of the day.

***********

Meanwhile, during the exceedingly brief contact between Ranma and the brutal Soulcrusher, Ami was having the singularly unique experience of simultaneously trying to figure out how to contact the rest of the senshi, while keeping a very determined Akane from both leaping after the vanishing figure of Ranma and out of the cubbyhole where they had taken refuge and finding out about Ami’s secret identity, and trying to figure out what to do next in the immediate on top of all that!

At that very moment, however, at least part of her dilemma was torn from her as Akane finally simply overpowered the weaker girl and forced her way out. She made it all of about five steps out in the open before a structure already weakened by Ranma slamming sheer through it on his outward flight plan, crumpled down in on itself. A small chunk of stone, no bigger than the palm of her hand really, struck Akane a glancing blow on the head. Normally, that wouldn’t have done anything, but this chunk had about three stories worth of terminal velocity behind its nominal weight. Somehow though, by some strange quirk of fate perchance, the majority of the building and its rubble failed to land upon her.

Ami ventured out long enough to ascertain Akane’s condition and then drag her back to the cubbyhole after she discovered that, from the looks of things, her apparent duplicate had only been knocked unconscious. Looking down on the stunned woman from where she was crouched beside her, Ami could only shake her head with a rueful smile.

"Well. That was unbelievably..." she said, "helpful. One of these days you are going to have to slow down, but I can’t see you slowing down until the Horse does. Not that Shima has ever slowed down in his life!"

Shaking her head in confusion as to where those last two sentences had come from, Ami transformed and ducked out of the cubbyhole, pulling her communicator out somewhere along the way.

"Senshi alert! This is Mercury! I’m in need of major assistance down at the mall!"

"Mercury! What is going on?! I thought you were with Ranma and Akane!"

"I was! But some majorly powerful gajin with an axe bigger than you, Jupiter, showed up and started trashing the place! Ranma’s fighting with him right now, but he just knocked him out of sight! Akane’s been knocked unconscious and I’m not going to stand a chance with out some serious help!"

"We’re on our way!"

***********

Back to Ranma, he had just finally managed to make it all the way into the very depths of the museum, after several wrong turns and one particularly nasty flash of pain in his head that blurred his vision for a few moments. In fact, it was during that period of blurred vision that he stumbled into the very gallery he had been searching for for so long. Shaking his head hastily to clear out the last remaining bits of cobwebbing lodging in his skull, he lurched over to the case in the center of the room and sent a perfect hammerfist into the pristine sheet of Plexiglas.

Seconds later, there was no shattered remains of plastic shards on the ground and his fist seriously ached. The Plexiglas was completely undamaged, which was a fact that Ranma was quite annoyingly aware of. Snapping his wrist loosely in an effort to shake off the pain, he flicked his ki rod over and snared one of the rope railing pedestals. Slamming the pedestal into the case over the sword in a fury, he snarled as it rebounded off the Plexiglas and out of his grasp, only to smash though the Plexiglas covering the naginata display across the room.

Ranma stared at that little fact in blatant astonishment for a moment before turning his attention back to the sword case.

"I am Ranma Saotome!" He growled at the implacable case. "I am the heir to the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts! I have blown apart MOUNTAINS! I killed an immortal, a GOD! I will NOT be defeated by a goddamn piece of plastic!" He roared, the ki rod morphing suddenly into a mallet of epic proportions.

He slammed the mallet into the case with every last iota of strength within his body. His form was perfect. His power unbelievable. His effect...

Useless.

There wasn’t even a scratch on the case. He stood there in abject disbelief, his jaw hanging open in his shock. He looked from the mallet to the case and back again several times.

But the fact remained that it hadn’t worked.

Finally, in his disbelief, he slumped down against the pedestal that held the sword. His hand, sliding down the slick stone, brushed lightly against some odd disfigurement for a moment before continuing down to the floor. Ranma brushed it off as scarring caused from the rubble scattered about even as he leaned back against it.

Then, his head cracked viciously off of the stone as the odd disfigurement suddenly vanished into the pedestal. A brilliant alarm suddenly sang out once.

And, as he stared up in rather pissed off amazement, the impenetrable case slowly rose off of the podium and into the recessed ceiling.

His eyes narrowed. "I despise you." He whispered in the general direction of the no longer visible case, even as he reached out and grasped the hilt of the sword before him. The sword came away easily in his hand.

He was standing there staring dumbfoundedly at the blade, when Milo showed up with Soulcrusher. And promptly bashed him in the back of the head with his foot. Ranma went flying into the katana display.

"Well, lookit what we have here! Whadda you know, a little thief!" Milo shook a finger at him. "We don’t tolerate thieves here, you know. I’m gonna have to punish you."

He rushed forward to attack, Soulcrusher raised high to strike down the recovering man. But he did not count on one thing. Ranma’s life in the home of the Tendo Clan, and the excessive resistance to violence it had given him.

Ranma met the downrushing Soulcrusher with a swift, albeit awkward, parry with the unfamiliar blade. He was fighting on more levels than the physical though. The katana in his hand did not want to work for him.

"Having trouble, little Ranma?" Milo asked, apparently all worried. "Oh. I see. The sword is giving you trouble. Well, I can see why! It doesn’t like being handled by those to whom it doesn’t belong!"

"Shut the hell up!" Ranma yelled, pulling the sword forcefully back down into a guarding position.

But it was obvious that he was having trouble. He couldn’t maintain a stance. The sword kept trying to leap from his hands. However, he was Ranma Saotome, and he wasn’t about to be beaten by a inanimate object!

Milo sighed as if in pity or maybe exasperation, even as he brought Soulcrusher around for another brutal buffet of Ranma’s faltering defenses. "If only you would think about this, Ranma my boy! The sword doesn’t want you, can’t you see?!"

Ranma ignored him. He was noticing something odd about the sword. It wasn’t the sword that was fighting him, it was the blade. As he watched the strange European straight blade twisted and curvetted about atop the weld lines connecting it to the hilt he grasped in his sweaty palms. His eyes narrowed in thought, even as he popped up another parry and counter-thrust.

Then it hit him. If the blade was the enemy, then he would have to remove it from the sword. But how to do that with out getting killed?

Suddenly, he was forced into a desperation parry as Soulcrusher came flickering down towards his head, without leaving him time to dodge. Ranma hauled the sword up into a double handed guard before his body. Soulcrusher smashed hungrily into the blade full force for the first time all battle. The blade shattered, splitting clean in half all of the way down to just above the hilt, were the two bits snapped off at the already over-stressed weld mark.

Ranma fell back, but could only watch in horror as the blade descended towards his suddenly defenseless form. And for the first time in his life...

He screamed.

***********

Near by, the Senshi had gathered and were headed quickly for the remains of the museum, towards the sounds of battle.

It was then that they heard the ear-piercing shriek suddenly surrounding them.

A scream of terror, from two sources.

Jupiter and Uranus suddenly leapt into high speed with Venus and Mars close behind as they raced towards the scream nearest the battle. Moon, Mercury, Neptune, and Saturn spun about and headed back in the direction of Ami and Akane’s cubbyhole, the source of the secondary scream.

***********

Just as it seemed that all was lost for our intrepid hero, the two split pieces of blade shrieked their way around and buried themselves deep in the sides of Milo, who jerked aside in sudden agony. Soulcrusher bit a deep groove into the stone podium, mere particles of air away from Ranma’s head.

Ranma took one look at his reflection glinting back palely at him and rolled quickly of to the side and away. Some feet away from the moaning Milo, who was coming back to his feet, Ranma pushed himself up in a Chinese get-up and paused to gather his wits about him, his back foolishly turned to the dazed and massively wounded Milo. Unfortunately for him, he had forgotten about Milo’s strength.

Milo surged to his feet and hurled Soulcrusher at Ranma’s unprotected head, just as the four rapidly approaching Senshi cleared the doorway.

"NO!" Was the last thing Milo heard before he was cut down like chaff before the scorching onslaught of a combined Space Sword Blaster, Oak Revolution, Crescent Shower, AND Burning Mandela. He didn’t stand a chance.

As for Ranma?

He spun about with only moments to spare, and brought the bladeless katana up before him in a futile defense.

Then, much to his infinite surprise, from the broken section of blade still attached to the hilt roared a blistering inferno of light and heat and sheer, unadulterated POWER.

Soulcrusher was dissolved under the force that struck it. By the time the lights faded, all that was left at that nonparallel weapon was a palm-sized axe-shaped sliver. Which Ranma promptly blasted away with a burst of anger ki.

After that, he could only stare at the hilt in his hands.

He had found it.

And boy was Shima ever right.

Once you’ve barred the Sword of the High Prince, anything else is nothing more than a butter knife.

***********