Nodoka awoke on the first Sunday that Ranma was a member of her household not to the peaceful sounds of silence that she generally associated with a languid awakening on a tranquil Sunday morning. Far from it in fact. This morning she awoke by leaping straight up out of bed, scrabbling for the ancestral Hino Katana. Which of course, she fumbled as soon as she got a hold of it.

A light rosen hue tinted her cheeks for a moment as she looked down at the katana sticking up out of the floor at her feet. Then another cry from the outside called to her. A brief tug-o-war with the floor regarding the possession of the ancient blade later, she raced out the door to the backyard, following the sounds to their source with a hopefully firm grip on the katana.

**********

The sight that met her questing eyes was a disturbing one. Her son was engaged in the Art of massive destruction. Rubble from what had once been three stacks of cinder blocks covered the yard and garden. Dust was everywhere. As she watched, he completed another set of moves against a forth stack and destroyed them with a loud ki-yah. At least that is what it seemed. He had just finished striking the bricks several times, then stepped back and yelled at it, and they exploded.

If that wasn’t enough for Nodoka’s poor mind, he looked quite proud of himself at the destruction as well. It was all a mother could do not to run screaming at him with blade upraised. Well, all a mother and a rather clumsy kendoist could do. She didn’t really feel like loosing a hand over the mess. Or her head for that matter.

That’s not saying that she had no other option though.

**********

"Son?"

Ranma paused in the middle of a kata, paused eerily in balance standing on one foot perched on the large stone centerpiece of the garden while the other hooked in the air. He looked to his mother curiously, not bothering to lower his floating foot.

"Hai, Okaa-san?"

Nodoka spoke with deceptive calm. Outside, she was the calm and cool mother that he had ever known. Inside, she was a raging maelstrom of fury at the destruction her only begotten son had done to her beautiful garden.

"What are you doing, Son?"

Ranma blinked. Wondering where she was going, or maybe just if she was playing with all of the game pieces, he lowered his foot and straightened up.

"I’m practicin’, Okaa-san."

"Practicing what, Son?"

"My Art. Why?" His voice began to pick up the qualities of a person dealing with someone who wasn’t quite all there and armed to boot.

"Why do you question me, Son?"

"’Cause I wanna know why yer askin’ me dumb questions!"

Ranma wasn’t mad, just frustrated, but how was Nodoka to know something like that? She had only recently met the disillusioned man who’s father had taken away from her so very long ago. She didn’t have the inside advantage that many mothers’ shared over their children because of this. Unfortunately, this generally translated as misinterpretation of the facts.

"Saotome Ranma! Do not send your wrath at me! I am your mother! I am allowed to know these things!"

Ranma was slowly edging into anger, but he kept his mouth shut for once and just let his self-proclaimed mother rant.

"First, I am alarmed into wakefulness thinking that my home is under assault from ninjas or something! Then I come outside to find that my first assumption was incorrect! My home is not under assault from ninjas or anything like that! My home is under assault from the most unexpected of sources! My home is under assault from my son! Because what do I find?! I find that my garden, which I have spent countless amounts of time and effort on, destroyed! Rubble everywhere! Dust everywhere out here and inside my clean house! What do you expect me to think, Son?! You have destroyed in one morning what has taken me over fifteen years to create!"

Ranma didn’t feel angry anymore. Just really, really guilty.

"Now I am going to have to spend my entire day fixing this … this mess you have created of what was once beauty! I had meant to spend the day getting to know my son better, but apparently he has better ideas upon how to spend his time! Well, son since apparently you cannot keep from destroying things here this morning, perhaps you should take yourself and your Art elsewhere!"

Ranma, despite what most people said about him, was not an idiot. He knew when he wasn’t wanted around. A quick hop up into his room gave him some cash for lunch, and possibly dinner if Nodoka was still furious by then, then he leapt to the street and began to run. He had a general idea of where he was going. There had been a park that Makoto had shown him yesterday. It was quiet and pretty secluded. He figured that he could probably do some training there, if not at home. Maybe even a few ki practices.

**********

‘Alright. Now, if I focus on the Soul of Ice technique and my Moko Takabushi at the same time, maybe I can figure out a way to use a cold attack like the Toppatsu Higi Hyouga Reppou Soku without being shoved in a freezer for several hours.’

Saotome Ranma was thinking. Something that generally didn’t seem to happen to the youthful martial artist, but nevertheless that was what he was doing. The ebon haired, god-like warrior sat in sezia in the middle of an out of the way glade in the park. His eyes were closed and his expression completely neutral. This, his position, and his style of clothing are the most likely cause of why he was not disturbed. He appeared to be meditating.

***********

After a time, the continued focus of ki within and around him began to have physical effects. In other words, he began to radiate a rather bright and visible aura in an extreme area of the visible light spectrum, edging noticeably into ultra-violet. The brilliant, silvery light which now surrounded him skidded back and forth between visible and invisible spectrums of light, causing a strange shimmering to fill the air from the intense cold.

**********

Of course, as he was sitting in Juuban District, home of the Sailor Senshi and the site of much assorted weirdness in the form of ki and magic manipulative youma, it was probably not the best of times, or places. Not too many blocks away, in the apartment shared by Dahlia Mizuno-san and her daughter, Ami, an almost subsonic beeping sound began to ring in the cerulean tinted room that belonged to the youngest resident. The apartment’s sole occupant reached out of the cave of bed sheets she had created, groped blindly about, and, finally, drug the offending object to where she could peer at it, still bleary-eyed despite it being nearly noon.

It figured. She finally managed to crawl into bed after spending a straight 36 hours studying, and what happens? Senshi business, that’s what. Sometimes she had to seriously ponder exactly what it was that kept her from giving it all up. The answer was always the same though, no matter what happened. She had to, because no one else would, could, do it for her. Finally alert again, or at least not asleep, she pops the top of the miniaturized supercomputer.

There, blinking its crimson blotch on the Juuban map, a massive power surge. Sure, maybe the ID of the blip was a bit strange. And the location was prone to attacks from various, and progressively higher powered youma, so going by herself would probably be a bad idea. However, this time Mizuno Ami, the strategic human supercomputer of the Sailor Senshi, didn’t really care about any of that. She set the Mercury Computer to alert the others in a short time, just before raising a sapphire pen to the heavens and crying out a simple phrase that made a world of difference.

"Mercury Crystal Power, make up!"

As the waters flashed and crystallized around her, she debated seriously about her current choice of action. Notwithstanding all of that, she finally came to the proprietorship of two facts. One, she was rather annoyed with this whole mess. And two, somebody had woke her up after she had finally managed to crawl into bed for some much needed slumber. Any other mitigating factors were shoved to the side or disqualified in the face of one singular overwhelming Truth.

Someone or something was gonna pay big time for waking her up!

**********

Mercury dropped to the ground 200 meters from where Ranma sat secluded, having kept to the roofs and upper branches of localized trees to avoid the gossiping public. The park was empty of any visitors, even though it was a beautiful day. This fact Mercury attributed to the fact that the grove she was rapidly approaching was emanating waves of palatably frigid air. Even 150 meters away, she could feel the first touches of frost forming on her costume. She shivered when she thought of how bad it would have to be closer to the epicenter.

**********

Mercury came to a halt, at long last, within the arctic confines of the frozen, beech ringed grove. An ice covered humanoid figure sat in sezia in the middle of the grove. It didn’t move, threatening or otherwise, but that didn’t stop Mercury from making a speech to it.

"You woke me up!! You are going to pay for that!!"

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t much of a speech…

**********

Looking back on the events that occurred at that moment, Mercury would eventually realize how insanely stupid it had been to try to physically attack her opponent when she knew absolutely nothing about it. But from that day on, she always claimed it was the sleep deprivation acting, not her. That never did stop the others from teasing her about it though.