-- Mike Loader -- The best you could say about the afternoon was that the situation was almost under control. Almost. Noone was sure exactly who had spiked the morning tea with love potion. Peter Noone knew a lot of things that he really had no right to know. The house, however was ignorant of both the druggist's identity and Peter's knowledge of it, which in all likelyhood prevented Peter from making a quick few bucks and saved the druggist a nasty, lingering death. Washuu had locked herself in her lab with orders not to let her out until she had finished brewing the cure, no matter how often she claimed that Tux-boy was the one true love of her life. Ranma had been securely strapped to the breakfast bar with steel cable, and alternated attempts to break loose with long, rather dubious arguments on how Ataru really was the guy for him. Nuku-Nuku was licking Urd's face; the drug had had no effect on her, but she _liked_ licking people's faces. The goddess made no responce to the tongue bath; the drug had done interesting things to her unusual body chemistry, and she was now attempting to gain enlightenment by contemplating her navel. Periodically, she would make slurred observations along the lines of "Gosh," "Oh wow," or "Like, yeah." Kyosuke had been watching the international news, and was on the phone trying to get the Kremlin so he could propose to Boris Yeltsin. It was hard to tell who Ataru had fixated on. His behavior was unchanged; if something female entered his line of sight, he would attempt to grope. He very, very carefully kept his distance from Ranma. The aliens invaded around noon, but left after Geraldo threatened to do an investigative interview. On their way out of the ionosphere they atomized the Micro$oft building as a parting blow, much to the delight of humanity. Commanding the invasion was a multivalved biform named Ukyo. The name was a complete coincidence, and had nothing at all to do with a certain okonomiyaki chef. In fact, it has no bearing on the story whatsoever, and probably shouldn't be mentioned at all, but hey, these side comments are popular, well, sort of, Foxtrot keeps telling me to pair them down but what does she know anyway. This was the situation at 2:35 PM, which was when the wall suddenly exploded inward. As the housemates stared, a Harley- Davidson rumbled through the new enterance and made a tight circuit of the living room, screeching to a halt beside the couch. The driver, clad in a black leather outfit with lots of chains, revved the engine in order to be cool. "Oh my," commented Urd. "That's my line," Kasumi responded, removing her helmet. From his spot on the breakfast bar, Ranma stared. It certainly _looked_ like Kasumi, despite the chains, leather, chrome spikes, and death's head belt buckle. And the anarchist symbol painted in blood on the back of her jacket had "Born to Cook" above it in iron studs. But this was, to say the least, a new look for her. "Uh, Kasumi?" he ventured. "What are you, uh, doing here? I thought the house location was supposed to be a secret.." Kasumi laughed a hideous laugh, stopped, gargled with a nearby glass of club soda, and gave her normal musical chuckle. The rest of the room hummed along with it. "I am not the Kasumi you knew," she said, idly toying with a bowie knife, "but a future version of her. Your Kasumi is... hmm, let's see, it's about 2:30... in her room with the vibrator. Um. I mean, taking a nap." Her face colored slightly. "You may call me... Kaasumi." "Been reading too much Zahn, have we?" muttered Ataru. While he normally would have moved in for the glomp by now, the large numbers of sharp metal things on her made patience seem like a good idea. Kaasumi shrugged. "Yeah, well, sue me. It's a ploy to get attention and to avoid confusing me with the live-in maid that I am in this time period." Ranma nodded, one mystery solved. "So whatcha doin' here?" Her face darkened. "Nuku," Ranma snapped, "stop playing with the lighting." "Sorry!" As the illumination cast on the once and future Kasumi's face returned to normal, they could see that she was near tears. "She's near tears," Urd commented. "Like, profound." Kaasumi sniffled. "You don't know what it's been like, what I've gone through noone could but Peter's a special case going into the long white long hall of the cold hospital filled ith really impolite uncaring nurses to see if _she_ was alive or dead as dirt oh crap I'm stuck in one of those run-on sentences damnit I hate it when this happens must get punctuation back oh the humanity there almost got.. it..." With great effort, she ground to a halt. "I think I wet myself." The rest of the room nodded, profoundly moved. "I had... to save my sister, no matter what the personal cost!" cried the biker Tendo. "Even though it left me horribly scarred and mutilated!" There was a short silence. Ataru was the first to speak. "You don't, ah, _look_ horribly scarred..." Kaasumi ripped off her left glove. "Look!" The housemates recoiled in horror. "That... that... " Ranma stammered. "Oh, ugh!" said Nuku-Nuku, her nose wrinkling "That has to be the ugliest nail polish I've seen in my life," Ranma concluded. The rest of them nodded in solemn agreement. Yellow/brown was really not a very good shade. "Anyway, where's the mutilation?" Ataru asked. He harbored a hope that she would have to remove certain articles of clothing to show it to them. Scowling, Kaasumi pointed to her pinky finger. "There!" They peered intently at the digit. "Nasty paper cut," said Ranma. "How'd ya get it?" "Motorcycle rental contract. Damn sharp edges." Another moment of silence followed, broken only by the sound of Urd quietly telling her left knee that she was a antelope trapped in a man's body. "So," Ranma said, feeling the need to get conversation going again, "what's all that about saving a sister? Akane get killed or somethin'?" Kaasumi blew her nose loudly into a handkerchief. "Nabiki- chan got hit by a car, Ranma. The doctors couldn't save her body, but her brain...." She trailed off. "What about her brain?" asked Ranma. "What'd they do with the body? Do they still want it?" asked Ataru. Reaching into a knapsack slung to the side of the cycle, Kaasumi pulled forth a fishbowl attached to several high-tech doodads with neat blinky things. Inside, through the swirling liquid, the horrified housemates could see a mass of pulsating flesh.... "They saved Nabiki's brain," intoned Kaasumi. [A-N-D-A-G-O-O-D-T-H-I-N-G-,-T-O-O-.] clattered a small speaker on the side of the fishbowl. "Hush, Nabiki-chan, don't strain what's left of yourself," Kaasumi said soothingly. "Oh wow, man. Dig it," Urd told the large potted fern next to the sofa. "Geez," Ranma said, "tough break. So whatcha doin' here?" The biker smiled. "Nabiki needs a new body, and I'm given to understand that you have here an android that will fit the bill perfectly. After all, it was designed for the brain of a cat... Nabiki's brain shouldn't be much of a change for it." [H-E-Y-!] "Wait a minute," Ranma interjected. "You wanna take out Nuku-Nuku's brain and replace it with Nabiki's?" She nodded. "The VP of Mishima assured me it would work. The All-Purpose Cultural Extortionist Nabi-Nabi project was highly successful, at least in the computer simulations." "You can't do that!" "Why not?" Ranma thought for a few minutes. "Beats me. Okay, go ahead." Hissing, Nuku-Nuku jumped atop a bookcase. "Urd! Ataru! Tell her not to take Nuku-Nuku apart!" "Well," Ataru said, shrugging, "as long as the body stays the same..." Urd gurgled happily and began to play with herself. Frowning, Nuku struck a dramatic pose. "You will not take my brain!" Kaasumi took out a small, black device, pointed it at Nuku- Nuku, and pressed a button. Nuku froze. "Oddly enough, an ordinary Toshiba stereo remote control will turn off this model android," Kaasumi commented. "Amazing the things you learn in Basic Mecha 101 at Nekomi Tech. And now..." Hyper-laser Death Chainsaw in hand, she advanced on the bookcase. "Wait!" They turned to see Kyosuke framed in the doorway, wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words 'Deus Ex Machina'. "If you can travel through time, why don't you just prevent the accident from ever happening?" Ranma snorted. "Because the Tefler Backlash of a paradox in quantum reality topolixes would downsize the Wilmor Timeline Branching Flux, resulting in multiple entity schisms. Geez, don't you know anything?" Kaasumi snapped her fingers. "Actually, Ranma, the Sic-E Self-termination Effect would compensate. I just didn't think of it before. It really does sound a lot easier all around, so I'll go and do that instead. Bye!" Dropping the fishbowl, which shattered rather messily on the floor, Kaasumi revved the engine and sped out through a nearby wall in a shower of plaster. "Well," commented Ranma after the spate of coughing produced by the motorcycle exhaust, "that was interesting." "I'm a wildebeest," agreed Urd. "Glad that done with," muttered Nuku. She leaped off of the bookcase. *thump*Splat* "Aw, man, you landed on Nabiki! How are we gonna get that out of the carpet?" "Icky!" wailed Nuku. They eventually waited until Tux-boy came home, and made him clean it up. Two days later, Soun married Kodachi for no disternable reason, but that was okay. -end-