Author's Foreword:

  It is perhaps the whim of fate which dictates that certain elements of
this story make reference to a story which is not yet publically available
due to the fact that it has been in partial draft form for over a year
now.  Thus, several of the Serendipity references make reference to things
which may not be familiar to all readers of it, since I've seen the
partial drafts and they may not have ^^;;; I think the references stand on
their own, and I hope this prods Phil to finish Serendipity 3. :)

Enjoy!

************************

Nine Princes in Anime Chapter 3:  Featuring An Undocumented
Serendipitous Otaku Uprising

by

John Biles

************************

    Ever done something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but in
hindsight, you can only conclude that someone should have performed a
mercy killing on you before you could do it?  Looking back, I can see
this was one of those times.

    The second I appeared, they mobbed me.  In the next three minutes, I
came as close to death as I ever had.  Tens, hundreds, thousands, maybe
an infinite number of screaming men, women, boys, and girls in t-shirts
and jeans, all trying to touch me or get my autograph or convince me to
father their child.  They all knew me, even though I'd never met a
single one of them.

    I snapped.  Instinctively, I began to take them all down.  Three
minutes later, I was surrounded by knocked out fanboys and fangirls. 
"What the hell kind of crazed Shadow is this?"  I asked Ryo, who was
laughing his head off.

    "They know us, but not as us here," he said.  "And they worship us. 
In this shadow, every human is a fan of animation, and they worship us
as gods.  I've dubbed this the 'Otaku' dimension.  We're on one of the
intermural fields of the Nuevo InglaTerra Worseter Institute of
Technology, in the fair city of Worseter Park.  Also known as NITWIT."

    "Nuevo InglaTerra?  The Spanish settled North America in this
universe?"

    "Apparently, in 1066, William the Conqueror fell off his horse and
banged his head and forgot England existed.  By the time he remembered,
this fellow named 'Juan Valdez' conquered England and renamed it
Inglaterra.  Or so they claim.  Then again, they also tried to tell me
that they elected Michael Jackson president in 1988."

    "They didn't?"

    "Jermaine was president; they elected Michael Emperor."

    I shook my head.  I didn't really want to know.  "Do you really
think we can turn these people into an army capable of conquering
Anime?"

    "This dimension has several advantages.  First, everyone here will
do whatever we tell them because we resemble their gods."  He looked
around at the women, and I had a bad feeling about what he'd been
ordering.  "Secondly, they make Wasyuu look like a piker in improvising
technology."  He spread his arms out wide as if he was trying to embrace
the entire campus.  "See this place?"

    "I'm not blind."  It was a mixture of pretty landscaping and
hideously ugly buildings which looked like they had been designed by
Fred Flintstone.

    "The entire campus turns into a spaceship now."

    "..."

    "You just push one button," he said, pulling out a remote control. 
"In a few months, we'll have rigged six college campuses to do this. 
Six starships fully staffed by fanatical Otakus trained in battlesuit
combat.  I've selected six Institutes of Technology since they have
appropriate labs for turning minivans into combat vehicles and building
battlesuits."

    "Of course," I said, my skepticism circuits having already blown.

    "And Kasumi's children are here, training them to fight."

    "NO!  You didn't voluntarily let those two into this shadow, did
you?"

    "They're both excellent fighters and they know how to train people."

    "I can name fifty Shadows they've destroyed before breakfast!"

    "Uncle Ranma!"  I heard one of them shout.  Immediately, I dropped
to the ground and rolled.  The laser scorch marks in the grass told me I
had made the right choice.  They aren't out to kill me; they just like
to roughhouse.  I used to encourage them to do that when they were
little, but they didn't use lasers then.

    A few seconds later, they were on me, a shorter redhead with huge
bangs held in place by a headband, and a taller woman with dark
blue-black hair cut long, both of them clad in rather scanty outfits
they'd picked up out in Shadow during a jaunt they spent as law
enforcers until they accidentally destroyed the entire Shadow they had
been working in.  It was only the first of many.

    I soon had Kei in a headlock, but getting Yuri loose from my legs
was harder; not because Kei was a worse fighter, but because I couldn't
get any proper leverage.  Ryo just watched, of course.  He knew we were
just playing around.  Finally, I managed to trap Yuri with my legs once
I got them loose.  We all laughed, then I stood up.  They'd gotten a lot
better.  "So you've signed up with our force?  Do we have an official
name for this team?"

    "My new boyfriend, Brett Ultrastoner, thinks we ought to call
ourselves 'Strikeforce Morituri',"  Kei said.

    "That's a stupid name!  My MUCH CUTER boyfriend, Burt V. Hippogriff,
suggested we call ourselves 'The Diamondback Expeditionary Corps'.  Now
THAT would be a good name," Yuri fired back, sounding slightly
irritated.

    "We're not off to discover Africa and look for where King Solomon
put the Noah's Ark of the Thomas Covenant!"  Kei shouted back.  "This is
a war of conquest!"

    "We should call ourselves the City Hunters,"  Ryo said.

    They turned to him and shouted in unison, "NO!"

    While Kei and Yuri bickered, I turned to Ryo.  "Do we have any of
the other family members backing us?"

    "Wasyuu thinks she finally has a lead on where her daughter vanished
to all those years ago and ran off looking for her.  But I trumped
Usagi, and she's going to gather her army and join us."

    I frowned slightly.  We'd need her.  I'd need her if I was going to
get out of this alive, but I didn't like endangering her.  Endangering
the Danger Twins was fine; nothing could be more dangerous to them than
they were to everyone around them, but...

    Before I could reply, the Bloody Card was out, whipping about
through the air.  I wish Wasyuu had never given them each one as a
birthday present way back when.  I swatted it out of the sky.  "That
thing could poke an eye out, you know!"  It was a small credit card that
doubled as a small monofilament projectile of death.  Unless, like me,
you were good enough to swat the flat sides instead of the monofilament
edges.

    They started wrestling on the ground.  "Brett's got a nicer butt!" 
"If you like flab, maybe!"  "Oh yeah?  I'll show you tight buttocks!" 
One of them was...I'll leave it to your imagination.  It wasn't
dignified.

    "Oh, where's your wife?"  Ryo asked.  "She's a cutie."

    "Don't even THINK about it."

    He had his serious face on.  I started.  I dunno how he does that;
he goes from Mr. Perpetual Quest for Sex to Mr. Serious in a second. 
Usually, it only happens when he's about to kick butt.  The man can
fight.  Especially with his special gun.  Each of us has some kind of
special item or gift.  His is the Pattern Gun.  It etches part of the
Pattern onto each bullet; he can shoot through just about anything.  I
could see it holstered on his hip; it's easy to recognize because part
of the Pattern is etched onto the grip.  Only someone who has walked the
Pattern can safely carry it.  Sometimes people go poof if they touch it,
otherwise; I don't know why.  My sword, Justice, is the same way.  My
sword, I realized.  I need to go get it.

    "Let me take you to meet my primary lieutenants while they finish
their discussion."  Ryo led me off across the campus.

***********

    Brett Ultrastoner was actually far more impressive than I expected;
Kei has never had very good taste in men.  He was huge, almost as big as
Pop; he would have been bigger if he was fat, but it was all bone and
muscle.  He was at least five inches taller than me, with black hair
down to his shoulderblades and piercing grey eyes.  He was wearing a
Metallica T-shirt and jeans; I was starting to wonder if this shadow had
invented any other form of clothing.  Besides battlesuits, anyway. 
"Nice to meet you."  I realized he wasn't fawning, like the people in
the yard had been.  "I've never really liked your series, but I know you
can fight."  That answered that.  "This is Hippogriff."

    Burt V. Hippogriff was not quite so impressive.  Short with bright
red hair and soft green eyes, he wore...well, you can guess.  It had a
bunch of women in battlesuits on it; I didn't recognize them.  He looked
like a typical wandering geek; if typical wandering geeks carried a
briefcase and had a laser pistol slung on their hip, anyway.  "J.D's
around here somewhere.  I think he and Misato slipped off for some
nookie again."  I could see Ryo twitch.  Clearly he wanted to be the one
getting nookie with...Misato?

    "Not...Queen Misato?"

    "Yeah,"  Burt said.  "She acts like one.  Well, like a drunken
Queen."

    Ryo shook his head.  "Not Queen Misato.  She's a shadow of Misato I
hooked up with on my quest to find this place.  Where's Bill and Mary
Anne?"

    "They're fitting a hardsuit for Kaori.  She decided she wanted one."

    "Hardsuit?"

    "A kind of ceramic, forcefield strengthened battlesuit,"  Burt said.
 "Of my own design.  Modeled after those used by the great warrior
goddesses, but without the high heels."

    "Mechs are better,"  Ultrastoner said.

    "Too big, too clumsy, too impractical.  A hardsuit fights just as
well and costs about 1/50th as much."  Burt's voice was starting to get
heated.

    "Yeah, but a Mech can carry bigger guns AND morph into something
cool."

    "Yeah, but whenever they do, the pilot gets mangled!  Like what
happened to Bill when he tried to build a mech using Lincoln Logs and
Tinker Toys!"

    "I told him to use an Erector set.  Besides, MY mechs work!"

    "If you define getting their ass kicked by MY hardsuits as working."

    "A force of Gundams would CRUSH THE KNIGHT SABRES!"

    "Priss could kill ALL THE GODS OF GUNDAM BY HERSELF WHILE
DEAD!"

    I turned to Ryo.  "Should we come back later?"

    Ryo suckerpunched both of them.  Thunk.  "Now we come back later. 
Otherwise, they'd start rampaging around destroying the campus again."

    "This happens often?"

    "Yeah.  Also, you can't seem to get through the day without another
Largo attacking.  Damn things breed like flies."

***********

    Ryo and I walked across the campus, heading for one of the
engineering labs to fit me for a hardsuit since I tended to agree with
Burt.  I don't like big clunky mechs; I can't use my best moves in them
and they cost too much given the way they usually all get blown up in the
first thirty seconds, anyway.  He paused to fondle a few women; they
actualy liked it, which was the clearest sign I'd seen yet that this was
a Shadow of Desire.

    A Shadow of Desire is a Shadow found by basically placing an image
of the kind of universe you want to find in your mind, then riding or
walking through Shadow until you find it.  For example, you could decide
you want to find a Shadow which is a giant bathhouse.  The less specific
your desires, the easier it is to find.  Finding a Shadow that contained
a bathhouse (but wasn't itself a giant bathhouse) could probably be done
in a day or less.  Finding a Shadow that contained an infinite number of
Trollocs would take a lot more effort.  Ryo had clearly found a shadow
full of women who liked him.  I'm sort of surprised he didn't do this a
long time ago.  Of course, normally, Kaori would be beating him to death
right now.

    Kaori is sort of his ward, sort of his girlfriend, sort of the
cosmic force that keeps Ryo from molesting all females.  Ryo is just
perpetually horny and has all the subtlety of a goat in seeking to sate
his urges.  Kaori follows him around and beats him in the head every
time he gets too out of control.  I'm not sure what Kaori is; Ryo found
her as an orphan in Shadow when she was a kid and has been hauling her
around shadow ever since.  She's not a member of our family by blood,
but she does seem to be able to shift Shadow and mold it to some extent.
 Ryo once went off looking for this legendary Shadow that was a giant
whorehouse; he made sure he left Kaori behind.  When he rode up to the
front door, she dropped down from the sky, riding an anvil.  I still
don't know how she got there BEFORE he did.  Or how he survived the
anvil, for that matter.  The next time Yule came around, Pop gave her  a
magic hammer as a gift; she usually uses that on him now.

    We reached the engineering lab, a maze of tables and fancy tools and
machines, none of which I recognized except for a power saw and a nail
gun.  I've never been much of a handyman; that's what servants are for. 
A tall skinny guy with short black hair and gold rimmed glasses stood
next to a woman with short black hair gathered into two very short
pony-tails on the sides of her head who was wearing...it wasn't a
t-shirt and jeans.  I nearly fainted.  The woman was wearing a form
fitting purple bodysuit with a v neck.  She looked familiar.  Some TV
show...with an island?  I couldn't remember.  She was a lot shorter than
the man, who was taller than me.  He was helping her into a black and
gold battlesuit that looked suspiciously like a humanoid turtle outfit. 
Except for the helmet, which was more a battlesuit standard.  But it had
a shell.  The man looked up.  "Hi, Ryo."

    Ryo looked around.  "Where's JD and Misato?"

    The woman laughed, then spoke in a sing-song voice.  "Oh, JD, gazing
upon your manly form fills me with lust...let's get it on."  Then she
spoke with a wavering voice like a young boy whose voice was breaking. 
"Not in public, baby."  We all laughed, then she said, "They finished,
now they're busy getting it on.  And Kaori went looking for you."

    The man looked at me, and got the fawning look, though not as
strongly as some of the people.  "Ranma Saotome?"

    "Yeah, I'm Ranma."

    He looked around.  "Where's Akane?"

    He knew about Akane?  She'd been dead for hundreds of years! 
"You...know about Akane?"

    "Man, the manga makes it pretty obvious.  So, like, when are you
going to marry her?"

    "I'm married to Ukyou."

    "Ahh, you must have been written by Biles or maybe Zen, then..."  He
nodded knowingly, while I tried to figure out what he was talking about.
 "Anyway, I'm Bill Moyer.  No relation."  I still had no clue.  "And
this is Mary Anne."

    Mary waved.  "How are ya?  You here for a hardsuit fitting?"

    "Yeah."

    "This is gonna be tricky,"  Ryo said.  "The hardsuit needs to be
able to change sex with Ranma."

    "I ain't gonna get wet while I'm wearing it; the hardsuit will get
wet instead of me,"  I said.  I knew this from experience.  Anything
water resistant is enough.  The water has to touch my flesh; although it
can soak through clothing and do the trick.

    "Yes, but what if you get wet before you put it on?"  Ryo said.  "Or
it could develop a leak; these things do get battle damaged, you know."

    Bill grinned.  "I have an idea."

    Rarely has a grin so thoroughly filled me with fear.  Suddenly, I
knew that grin.  Wasyuu uses it about fifty times a day.  I could smell
my doom.

*************

    My imminent doom looked harmless.  It was a room that was filled
twenty feet deep with legos, tinker toys, erector set parts, lincoln
logs, kinetix parts, girder and panel parts, and many other 'building
toys' I couldn't even identify.  It reminded me of Scrooge McDuck's
vault, but with building toys instead of money.  Far across the room,
some of the toys had been built into buildings by a tiny race of green
people who looked like a construction gang of green smurfs.  I could see
tunnels down into the piles of building toys; clearly the 'mines' they
worked to get the parts they needed.  Bill shouted, "I need a squad! 
Pronto!"  He turned to me.  "They build specialty stuff for me in return
for a continual stream of new parts being brought here.  In fact, in our
universe, it was a team of Doozers who build the weapon that ended World
War II."

    "Nuclear weapons were invented by little green men in this Shadow?"

    "Nuclear what?  No, I'm talking about giant robots.  The Little Big
Man and Fat Boy.  The first two of the War Robots."

    "..."

*************

    I looked dubiously at the small box, which looked like a Dukes of
Hazard lunchbox.  This is because it WAS a Dukes of Hazard lunchbox. 
With a large red button and an antenna.  "It fits in this?"

    He nodded.  "It's dimensionally inverted."  I stared.  "Bigger on
the inside than the outside.  Push the red button and shout "Hardsuit
Power!"

    "..."

    "Your clothing will transform into a skinsuit, which you need to
properly interface with it.  Also, legos and lincoln logs can chafe when
pressed to skin for long periods of time.  Then the erector set parts
erupt out and form the basic frame of the suit.  The lincoln logs come
next and provide armor, with the legos to cover the outside and fill in
gaps.  Also the legos form the weapons, along with some specialized
erector set parts.  It uses a powerful fusion powered erector set engine
and rubber bands to provide and transmit power."

    By this point, my brain glazed over.  "Are you sure this will work?"

    "Here, I'll demonstrate."  He pulled out his lunchbox.  I was miffed
because his was a cool Star Trek lunchbox while I got stuck with the
Dukes of Hazard.  "HARDSUIT POWER!"  The lunch box flew open and an
ocean of building toy parts erupted.  Erector set and girder and panel
parts flew about him, forming a large squarish frame.  Then hundreds of
lincoln logs filled in the walls, and legos surrounded them, providing a
festive exterior.  Bill was now deep inside a scale model of the
cathedral at Chartes.  Or perhaps the one at Rheims.  I have a hard time
telling those things apart.  It was really impressive.  From deep
inside, I heard his muffled voice.  "We're still working out a few
bugs."

*************

    I ended up inside the Empire State Building when they tested mine
out.  I was beginning to suspect they hadn't explained what they wanted
clearly enough to the Doozers.  Although I certainly respected doozer
building skills by the third time.  By the time they cleared me out, two
new people had arrived.

    The first, I recognized immediately.  It was Misato.  In a T...you
can guess.   She was holding hands with someone I guessed must be her
child.  He was about fourteen, maybe fifteen at most with multi-colored
spikey hair and sunglasses.  "Yo, Ranma," he said.  "Where's Shampoo?"

    I blinked.  "In the bathroom, I suppose."

    "She got wet?" he asked.

    I blinked.  "What?"

    Ryo said, "Ranma, this is J. D. Kroft."

    He looked kinda familiar.  Some woman I'd hung out with a few
times...Dara...no...Lara.  Lara.  "Is Lara Croft your mother?"

    He shook his head.  "Sid and Marty Kroft are my parents."  He paused
and plucked off some loose strings on his shirt.

    How did two guys give birth to someone?  "They sound..."

    "They are both male.  Don't ask; Every time I ask, they have a drug
flashback."

    Misato wrapped her arms around his chest.  "Isn't he just DREAMY?"

    My eyes widened.  They're...I fought back the urge to get sick, then
something struck me.  He looked like...like...this guy.  Who I couldn't
remember.  Hey, I've been alive for hundreds of years; you'd forget
stuff too, even after walking the Pattern.  The guy had been able to
attract women like crazy, sometimes, because Wasyuu had used some sort
of DNA altering thing on him as an experiment...Or possibly this shadow
of Misato was simply brain damaged.   "I don't suppose either of you
builds hardsuits that adapt to changing bodies?"

    "My specialty,"  J.D. said.  "I have a degree in hardsuit design for
shapechangers."

    "..."

    Ryo nodded.  "He's quite the wonderkid, as you'll find out."

    I got distracted by a flying glomp.  I went down with Ukyou and
Usagi grappling me.  "There you are!"  Ukyou said.  "You were supposed
to trump us, Ranchan!"

    Usagi's knees were in my mouth; I didn't reply.  Finally, we all got
disentangled and I said, "I think it's going to be..."

    "I can take care of myself, Ranchan,"  Ukyou said.  "I'm one of
Usagi's Senshi now!"

    "One of what?"

    "We didn't have a Sailor of the Sun yet, so I took her to Juuban
after we got tired of waiting around Anime-3's Pattern room and we
bathed her in the Hottub of Power and..."  Usagi began.

    "The what?"

    "The Hottub of Power.  Any woman who enters it gains a link with the
Senshi Power.  It's also where you and I..."

    I put a hand over her mouth.  I remembered it now with very fond
memories.  But not ones it would be wise to share with Ukyou.  "Yeah, I
remember that."

    Ukyou looked at me suspiciously, then said, "Right.  So when do we
go conquer Anime?"

    "First we get a battlesuit built for Ranma.  Then we do a few field
manuevers.  Then...time to Conquer ANIME!"  Ryo shouted.

***********

    That night, I was cuddled up with Ukyou in our new home.  Since the
locals viewed me as some kind of...almost like a god, really, I got a
huge suite with a built in hottub, a bedroom with a bed the size of a
small apartment (okay, it was just double king sized), a library, a
computer room, and a walk-in closet full of clothing.  Ukyou and I were
taking advantage of the hottub.  Or more precisely, taking advantage of
each other in the hottub.

    I won't bore you with details.  A gentleman never tells.  Although I
have to say her bre...anyway.  After exhausting ourselves, I laid
against the side with her on top of me, her head resting on my shoulder.
 "Ucchan, can I ask you a question?"

    "Blue."

    "..."

    "What, Ranchan?"

    "Are you sure you want to do this?"

    She blinked.  "It's a bit late to ask after we already had sex,
dear."

    "No, I mean...coming along on this attack.  This is gonna be really
dangerous.  And it's not like you even know Kunou to want to clobber
him."

    "Well, my other choice is to watch you run off and risk death
without me.  That's why I've gone along on all this lunacy.  I can't
stop you and I would rather be with you than without you."  She sounded
almost desperate, which made me feel guilty.  I had kinda just charged
into this without asking her.  And we were married; it wasn't like she
was just my girlfriend or something.  But dammit, I had to do this.  I
had to.  And she understood that, right?   Shifting slightly, she said,
"So why do you want to clobber Kunou, anyway?"

    "He destroyed Lodoss."  My voice grew angry as I remembered what had
happened.  "He claims he's innocent, but I know it was him.  I faced
him.  He may think wearing underwear on his head and a Zorro mask would
disguise him, but I'd know Kunou anywhere."

    "Lodoss?"

    I wanted to cry, but guys don't do that, so I didn't.  Instead, I
choked back the pain and tried to tell enough to sate her curiousity
without having to remember it all.  "When I was a lot younger, Kunou and
I had a massive brawl.  In the family art gallery."  Ukyou winced. 
"Ever wonder what happened to the arms on all those old statues?  Me and
Kunou happened, that's what.  Although the Venus de Milo looks better
with no head.  Trust me.  Anyway, Pop got REALLY mad and banished us
from Anime for fifty years so we'd both have time to calm down and
regret what we did.  Now, fifty years really isn't all that long, but I
didn't know that yet."

    "For you, maybe,"  Ukyou muttered.

    I had never thought about that before that.  She was going to age
faster than me.  Much faster.  At that very moment, I was five hundred and
ninety six years old in the six hundred and eighty fourth year of the City
of Anime.  I had been only 72 when I was exiled.  At that age, most people
from her shadow were dead or retired from working.

    She wouldn't be around forever.  Not like me.  I'd still be trying
to put up with Gosunkugi when she had been dust for centuries.  Bleah. 
It was a creepy feeling.  I shivered, though the water was warm.  It
hadn't stopped me loving shadow dwellers before, though I haven't had
many girlfriends.  I'd been married three times; Ukyou was the third. 
And the first was...

    "I've been married to someone from shadow before, Ucchan.  Her name
was Akane.  Akane of Lodoss.  The daughter of King Soun of Lodoss.  When
I left Anime, I travelled through Shadow, with one thought on my mind. 
I wanted to go where I would be appreciated.  And I found it.  I came to
Lodoss, a kingdom besieged by evil Saxons.  They came from across the
seas, landing, pillaging, and plundering.  I enlisted in the King's
army, and by the time the wars were over, I lead his armies.  I married
his daughter, though we had a stormy courtship."  The first time we met,
she hurled me out a window overlooking a cliff, and I landed in the
ocean.  How was I supposed to know it was the BATHROOM?  No one
labelled  any of the doors; I was half asleep and thought it was my
bedroom.

    "And we had a child.  Shinobu.  She had her mother's supernal
strength, and my grace.  I taught her to fight and her mother taught her
to rule.  When she was around ten, it was starting to become obvious
that I did not age.  And Akane did.  I didn't even quite understand; it
hadn't really sunk in to me that people aged once they stopped being
little kids.  I mean...I knew the concept, but it had never happened
fast enough for me to notice."

    "So how did you and Akane cope?" she asked.

    "It was that same year when the Animal-Warriors of the Musk Dynasty
launched their first attack.  They turned animals into men to form their
armies, each retaining many traits of its true species, but with the
intelligence of men.  Fox-men were cunning, wolf-men were endurant,
lion-men were fierce, and the worst...was the Dragon-King himself, Herb.
 He and his advisor, The Masked Samurai, led assault after assault.  We
beat them off as best we could, but their army grew ever stronger.  I
hadn't really learned much about Shadow at that time, or I could have
done a variety of things to stop them, but I lacked the knowledge.  I
sent Shinobu and Akane to our fortress in the mountains, while I lead
our army into the field.  I got double-teamed by the Masked Samurai and
Herb.  We fought for hours, and finally, the Masked Samurai fled.  But I
had recognized him when I saw him.  It was Kunou.  Herb...I would have
killed him.  Until he pointed out that while I fought him, my army had
been wiped out.  And Lodoss was burning.  And off in the mountains, from
the fortress where I had sent my family to safety, I could see smoke
rising..."

    Ukyou's eyes widened.  "They...died?"

    "I found Akane's corpse.  She was buried under a pile of dead Musk
Dynasty warriors.  She'd taken a good two dozen with her before she
fell.  The Musk Warriors were gone.  I snapped.  I suppose you've never
gone mad."

    "Not really."

    "I have.  I blew up the fortress.  Somehow.  I don't know how. 
Maybe it was just an exertion of my will over the Shadow, the power of
the Pattern.  Maybe Lodoss had some special quirk that gave me power. 
There was an explosion, and then...madness.  I remember only bits and
pieces.  I found Kunou.  I tried to kill him, and I beat him, but
then...I couldn't kill him.  Not when he was helpless.  And that REALLY
drove me over the edge.  I couldn't even avenge my wife.  I spent years
wandering Shadow, a total raving incredibly dangerous lunatic."  That's
why Ryouga hates me.  I beat the crap out of him during a chance
encounter for no reason.  I can't blame him for being pissed.  I was
insane, but my attack on him was totally unprovoked.  Although the fact
that he couldn't beat me when I was insane says something.

    "Then what happened?"

    Just thinking about it was making me shake.  "Usagi found me and put
me back together again.  Unfortunately, I made some more mistakes and
Pop finally found me and got pissed because of it, so he took me off to
Jyusenkyo, which is how I got this curse."  This was the extremely short
version; partly because even after walking the Pattern, my memories of
that period don't make much sense, and partly because I didn't WANT to
remember the things I did.

    "What kind of mistakes?"

    I shook my head.  "It was hundreds of years ago, stupid, and I won't
do it again."  Although I wanted to.  Well, some of them.  "But be
warned...I can be dangerous to be around."  Very dangerous.  I shouldn't
be taking you into danger like this, I thought.  Ryo's plan might work,
but it's completely insane.  I asked myself why I was doing this. 
Because it was the only way to beat Kunou unless I wanted to put an army
together myself, and organizing...well, I can't organize anything much
bigger than a party.  When I was King of Lodoss, Akane did all the
organizing stuff, while I bashed our enemies into little bits.  And I
was a judge; I knew how to be fair, I just can't administer stuff.  It
takes too much work.  It was work with Ryo or try something suicidal
like a commando attack on Kunou, but...that would just end up with
Youshou going out to Shadow and leading an army to kick my butt.  We had
to capture him when we launched this attack, or he'd come back and
squash us.

    She ran a finger along the underside of my chin, smiling.  "Maybe I
like danger."

    "Well, you'll get enough of it.  This plan of Ryo's is crazy, but I
don't have a better one and I can't just sit back and let Kunou become
the Otaking."  I felt something.  The tickle of a trump contact.  Should
I take it?  It could be someone friendly...or it could be an effort to
eat my brain.  I wasn't sure what to do, but I am a bit of a gambler. 
Although I usually lose.   I opened my mind just enough to see who it
was.

    It was like having a red hot slinkie stuffed up my nose.  They were
trying to break into my mind.  So I fought back.  This sort of psychic
battle is NOT my strong point.  Whoever it was, it clearly was one of
their strong points.  Couldn't be Kunou, then.  His brain was like
jello.

    The silent battle continued.  Ukyou was saying something, but I
couldn't hear it.   I fought back as best I could, but my defenses were
crumbling, one by one.  I could see my assailant now.  It WAS Kunou.  He
sat in a chair, dressed in his hakama, holding a trump of me.  He spoke.
 "While you have been playing around, I have been studying things I long
neglected in my urge to best you, Ranma.  You should have joined me.   I
could use a warrior like you; there are things, horrible things stalking
Shadow.  Rei actually deigned to speak to me in order to ask for us to
aid Anime-3 against one such assault."

    "I'll never help the bastard who destroyed Lodoss!  My wife died
because of you!"  I could feel my body trying to sweat, and dimly I
could feel Ukyou shaking me.  "I left YOUR kingdom alone!"

    "I tell you once more, I had nothing to do with what happened to
your kingdom.  Undoubtably, it was a mere shadow of myself.  I've been
attacked by enough pathetic shadows of yourself to build a fortress with
their remains, if they were not tainted by their resemblance to you." 
He sounded serious, and if I had not sensed the blood of Anime within
the one who had brought down the Musk Dynasty on me so long ago, I might
have believed him.  But who else could it be?  If any within my family
knew how to shapeshift, I had never learned of it.  And no one else had
a motive but Ryouga, and he lacked the brains.  Kunou's not too smart,
but he does know how to put an army together.  "Your plan is doomed."

    "If you thought that, you wouldn't be trying to tunnel into my
brain."  And succeeding.  I felt humilated.  In seconds, he would crush
my last resistance and be able to rifle through my brain at will.  He
had never been so strong of will.  There had to be something helping
him.

    "You might die accidentally before I can humiliate you in person,"
he said.  Now that was the Kunou I knew.  I stared at him through the
link.  There had to be...something.  Something helping him.  And then I
saw it.  I could only see the silver chain and the faint glow coming
from inside his hakama, lighting his chin and upper chest with its
light.  I wasn't sure what it was, but there was one very likely
possibility.  The Silver Crystal.  No wonder Kunou was kicking my ass. 
But it was dangerous to use, very dangerous.  Even when Anime was
attacked by armies, Pop wouldn't use it unless he had to.  It spent most
of its time...actually, I had no clue where Pop kept it, but he
certainly didn't wear it except on ceremonial occasions or when things
were really bad.  Youshou told me one time that when he was little, long
before I was born, Pop had used it to destroy an entire army.  I was
toast and I knew it.

    Just as I prepared my last shout of defiance, a hand touched my
shoulder.  A comforting strength, familiar from centuries of shared
adventures, flowed through me.  I knew her by her touch alone, gentle
but strong.  Usagi, my sister.

    Describing a mental battle to those who lack the blood of Anime is
difficult.  Metaphors must make do where description fails.  Her power
surrounded my mind, raising a triple curtain wall of her power behind
which my defeated forces sheltered.  And from those walls, her attack
sallied forth, driving back Kunou's mental force.  She had grown
stronger too, stronger even than Kunou.  Which shouldn't have been
possible.  Not if he was REALLY using the Silver Crystal.  Maybe it was
just some other sorcerous trinket.  Although that didn't make much sense
either;  Kunou always talked about how much he hated Sorcery, which was
one reason he and Wasyuu had never gotten along.  Kunou using sorcery
and kicking my ass at ANYTHING.  I was starting to wonder if the Pattern
had somehow screwed up and given me the wrong memories.

    Being saved by my sister was embarrassing too.  Guys weren't
supposed to need saving.  Not that Akane had ever wanted to be saved
either.

    Kunou smiled.  "Usagi.  I should have known you'd be sharing Ranma's
bed."

    I was incredibly glad Ukyou couldn't hear that.  It wasn't true;
Ukyou had slept in the same room with Usagi more recently than I had. 
But Ukyou would take it the wrong way.  "I'm married, ya know!"

    Kunou simply smirked.  "You have always been a destroyer of women,
Ranma.  And a user of them.  And now you hide behind a woman.  THAT, I
would not have expected of you.  Farewell for now.  I shall spend the
time preparing your epitath."  He dropped the trump and the contact
collapsed.

    "You ain't no one to talk about hiding behind people!"  I shouted to
what was now the air.   I looked over at Usagi, who still had her hand
on my shoulder.  She was in her nightgown, her hair a mess.  She smiled
at me.  "Don't worry.  We'll get Kunou.  He didn't...you're okay, aren't
you?"

    With a confused look on her face, Ukyou said, "What the hell was
that?  You got this rainbow shimmering around you like the time you
pulled Yuu through, but you looked like you were going to die, and I
couldn't snap you out of it, so I went and got Usagi and when I was
shaking you, I could like see this guy and he had so much power, I felt
like he could see through me, and..."  She took a deep breath.  "There
was something.  Powerful.  I could feel it through the...Trump contact. 
That's what you call it, right?"

    Usagi nodded.  "You could feel it because you've been initiated into
the Senshi Force.  Gradually, it will heighten your spiritual abilities
as you become filled with the essence of your planet.  Or in your case,
the Sun."

    "I'm going to turn into roiling nuclear plasma?"  Ukyou said, sounding
worried.

    I shook my head.  "You take on the sort of mythic qualities.  And
sometimes some mild physical changes.  So I suppose your hair might turn
red.  And you might glow a bit when you're in Senshi form.  Or something
like that."

    "Or get a fiery temper like Rei has,"  Usagi said after a bit of
thought.  "My senshi Rei of Hino, not our sister."

    This was not something I wanted to hear; Ukyou already had enough of
a temper, although she had been rather subdued of late.  Very subdued. 
I was starting to wonder if I could trust any of my memories.  Maybe it was
just the shock of all the weirdness.  "Kunou's gotten stronger.  And I
thought he might be using the Silver Crystal, but we beat him, and I'm
not sure we could do that if he really had it."

    "He's been studying with Goto,"  Usagi said.  "He's not an idiot
anymore.  Just mean and obnoxious and stuck-up.  And he's stolen Dad's
throne.   I'm sure Dad will be back soon if we just wait a little
longer; he runs off into Shadow all the time.  He's probably just drunk
in a gutter somewhere.  And I think that was the Crystal.  But it's not
like you can just pick it up and use it.   Haven't you heard the story
about the time Gosunkugi tried to use it to paint the entire castle
black when he was little?"   We both laughed at that.    Wasyuu had told
us during a trip we'd taken with her and Mom and Kunou when we were a
lot younger.  One of the few times Kunou and I had ever agreed on
anything; we'd both laughed until we nearly passed out.  The whole
castle had ended up painted swirling psychedlic colors, and Pop had
found Gosunkugi passed out in a laundry hamper.

    Usagi said, "Mind if I get Mamoru and join you?  I could use a good
soak in the..."  Then she actually really looked at us instead of just
our heads.   "Nevermind.  I...I'll just let you two finish."  She ran
off.

    "Usagi..."  I sighed.  "Thanks, Ucchan.  If you hadn't gotten her, I
would have had a lot more trouble beating up Kunou."

    She smiled faintly.  "It's my job to keep you out of trouble."

***********

    The next morning, I decided that if Ukyou was going with us, I
needed to teach her to fight.  Oh, yeah, she had years of martial arts
training, but what she knew wouldn't keep her alive in a battle with the
average street bum in Anime for more than a minute or two.  We'd sparred
before, but I had forgotten most of my techniques during my amnesia and
always held back on my strength so I wouldn't hurt her.  Also, she
needed to learn more weapon techniques; she'd always fought unarmed. 
Not that I really fully understood the art of using a giant spatula
(Usagi had given her a giant magical spatula as a present; where does
Usagi find all these weird weapons, anyway?), but I've studied just
about every normal one.  I'd taught Ukyou a little fencing before this,
but she'd always prefered unarmed styles.  So do I as a general rule,
but I know a lot of sword fighting because of my...sword.  It suddenly
struck me that I had left my magic sword behind when Lodoss was
destroyed and had somehow never thought to go looking for it before
this.

    I've done a lot of stupid things in my life, but virtually none of
them were this stupid.  I stood and stared off into space, trying to
think of WHY I wouldn't have gone back for it eventually.  No reason. 
No reason at all.  I hadn't seen it in a good four hundred years, maybe
more, but I couldn't think of why I had never gone looking for it. 
Well, during the period when I had been kinda nuts, I had an excuse,
but...Had someone made me forget?  Or had I just been an idiot?

    Ukyou poked my forehead.  "Earth to Ranchan?"

    "Can you think of some reason why I wouldn't have gone back for my
magic sword?"

    She blinked audibly.  "What?"

    "I have this feeling like..."

    "THERE HE IS!"  Someone shouted.  Someone female.  Turning, I saw a
woman with long purple hair wearing a hand made Chinese red dress.  A
badly made one.  Several dozen women with similar hair and clothing
stood near her, all staring at me.  "It IS Ranma!  OUR DREAM MAN! 
AIYA!"  They charged in unison.

    I stared mindlessly.   Everyone in this Shadow is insane, I thought.
 Should I run?  No way.  I wasn't gonna run from a bunch of weirdo
purple haired fangirls.  Then they all dogpiled me, talking with a weird
fake Chinese accent and using bad grammar.  "Aiya, Ranma like Shampoo's
costume?  Real Ranma like Shampoo-type women, yes?  Oooh, muscles!"  I
tried to break loose.  This should have been easy.  I can punch through
a solid wood door.  I can heft a human being and throw them.  But I
couldn't get loose.  Not without doing things that might have hurt them,
and I don't like beating up women.

    Ukyou was fuming.  "Get off my husband."  I could hear her getting
angrier, though I couldn't see her.  Not through the horde of purple
haired bimbos.

    Far off, I heard maniacal laughter.  "HOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!!!"  It was
like Dark Santa.  Manical laughter in unison.  I managed to get my head
out of the pile of crazy women, only to see a legion who made them look
like Martha Stewart.  Bounding across the rooftops was a legion of women
in black leotards, twirling gymnastics ribbons over their heads, and
cackling to scare the dead.  "HOHOHOHOHOHOHOUCH!  I just missed the
aaaaaa........ " one of them cackled as she missed a jump and fell
between buildings."  I began to wonder if today was some sort of quirky
holiday in this shadow where you got together, put on a weird costume,
and acted like you were nuts.

    Ukyou snapped.  "THAT'S IT!  NO MORE MRS. NICE GAL!"  She took
her giant spatula and began pounding purple heads into the ground. 
Unfortunately, her aim wasn't too good, and she knocked me for a loop,
sending me flying across the patch of greenspace between buildings and
into a wall.  The wall ruptured, and the students inside, trying to take
a class, turned and stared.

    One of them shouted, "It's the great goddess Ukyou!  We must worship
her!"  Every male in the class began to stream towards her.

    Ukyou stared in shock, then turned and ran.  I couldn't blame her; I
could have fought them all, but she wasn't ready yet.  Not that I was
glad to be abandoned.  I'd shaken off the purple haired women, but now
the legion of gymasts bounded down, forming a circle around me.  "Come
with us, oh great god Ranma!  We have taken on the appearance of your
one true love, Kodachi, to show our devotion to you!"

    "Then smite the purple haired heretics!"  I said.  Maybe I could
make this work for me.

    They chased off the purple haired women with ease.  "Now we will
take you to our shrine!"

    Despite my protests, I soon ended up at a dorm named Saint Eligidus,
but the sign had been covered with a cardboard sign that said 'Saint
Hebereke School for Girls'.  Every woman in the place, even the sixty
year old dorm mother, wore a black leotard and had black hair or hair
dyed black.  They all carried various rythymic gymnastics equipment, and
they all seemed obsessed with me.  I didn't get this many stares the
time I ran topless while female through one of Pop's formal banquets
(Don't ask).

    Then they took me to the dining hall; the dorm had a small dining
hall, run by the students themselves.  When I saw them bringing the
rope, I began to worry.  "What's that for?"

    One of the women smiled.  "No need to play innocent with us.  We
know what you like."

    Great.  Bondage nuts.  "I do NOT like stuff like that!"

    "We know you just say that so Akane won't hurt you if she gets her
claws into you again."

    Again, they knew who Akane was.  I resolved I really needed to sit
down with Ryo, or one of the more sane Otaku, like Bill, and find out
how these people knew stuff.  "Who are you and how do you know about
Akane?"  I tried to demand.

    One of them handed me a bouquet of flowers.  Someone had
spray-painted chrysanthemums black.  "Smell these, please?"  She fluttered
her eyelashes at me.  "And we're all Kodachis here!  Our true identities
are submerged, for we have taken on the divine Kodachi's identity in
order to better serve you!"

    Kodachi?  I didn't know any Kodachis.  At least I didn't think I
did.  Maybe some warped shadow of me had come through here with a train
of women or something...I sniffed the flowers.  It would give me a few
seconds to think

    When my body locked up, paralyzed, I realized it would give me a lot
of minutes to think.  And for them to do whatever they wanted.  I've
never been the screaming type, but I was tempted.

    They tied me down fast enough and well enough that I was quite sure
they must have been practicing.  Then they all danced around me in a
circle, laughing maniacally.  And then...one stepped forward and began
to unzip her leotard.  "I shall begin the process of meeting
Ranma-sama's needs for...for..."  She gasped and blushed.

    She wasn't bad looking, but I was married and I've never, ever had
sex with a horde of lunatics watching me.  I tried to shout no, but all
I could do was dribble.  However, fate took a hand.

    Another stepped forward.  "No, I should!  I'm a senior!  I've got
more class hours than you!"

    "But I can laugh better!"

    A third stepped forward.  "Oh yeah?  Well, I look more like the
blessed goddess than you because my black hair is real!"

    "But I'm really Japanese and you're not!"

    More and more of them began to shout, asserting their claim to be
the best avatar of Kodachi.  Soon, gymnastics pins began to fly and a
full scale brawl was in progress.  And then...

    Words I'd never thought I'd hear again.  "RANMA NO BAKA!  How dare
you tie yourself to a table and invite the Kodachi society to have their
way with you!  YOU JERK!"  For a moment, I thought it was Akane.  She
had the same short black hair, the same red face, and she wore the royal
costume of Lodoss, a white blouse with huge puffed out sleeves closing
tight at the ends in a narrow band about halfway between the elbow and
the shoulder, with a blue dress over that, cut down in a wide but
shallow rectangular cut in front, and going up to the collar in back,
tied at the waist with a huge blue belt tied in a large bow in back, the
skirt flowing down to just below the knees, with white socks and black
shoes.  All she needed was a tiara and the golden orb necklace.  And
some plastic surgery.  On a second glance, I could see she had green
eyes, her face was wrong, and her skin was too pale.  There were thirty
more women like her, all with hair cut short and either black or dyed
black, all wearing the royal costume of Lodoss.  Most of them carried
huge hammers, but a handful had wooden practice swords, tree limbs, or
large rocks instead.  Every last one of them looked ready to kill all
living things, then start on the dead ones.  "Release Ranma now so we
can give him the beating he deserves for this!"  Sounded like they'd
taken lessons on how to act like Akane too.  She never did give me an
even break.

    One of the Kodachis turned.  "Never!  Ranma-sama is OURS!"  The two
groups of women charged each other and a massive brawl began.  Watching
them fight, I was starting to understand why Ryo had picked this shadow.
 They were good, even the ones who looked pathetically out of shape and
should never have been wearing leotards.  When I saw the sixty year old
house mother vault fifteen feet into the air, land on someone's head,
then hook an Akane with a ribbon, and do a back flip, flinging the Akane
first into the air, then down onto another Akane, I knew that if we ever
taught them to not kill each other, we'd have a nearly unstoppable army.

    Assuming I didn't die horribly first.

    As the battle raged around me, I could feel my body starting to
loosen up a bit.  I'm very tough and hard to poison.   Getting better
quick is something I do well.

    Then the ceiling cracked open and VOLTRON smashed the table next to
me to splinters as it landed.  Okay, it wasn't really VOLTRON, but it
was the same basic idea; huge humanoid robot that looks sort of modular. 
It had a horned helmet and a huge spear.  A voice boomed from the
loudspeakers.  It was Ultrastoner.  "Ryo said you'd gotten in trouble and
sent me to save your ass.  I thought you were supposed to be a good
fighter."

    "Urgh...murfle...snitz..."  was all I could manage.

    "Your worshippers are completely insane, by the way," he said. 
"Although I was about as bad when I met Kei."  His voice got dreamy for
a  moment, then turned serious.  "Now, I'll just pick you up."  Voltron,
jr. bent over and the huge metal hand picked up me, the table, and the
tables by me.  Also, two Kodachis and an Akane, who kept fighting as the
hand rose into the air.

    The riot stopped.  Everyone looked at each other, then said,
"HERETIC!  Worshipper of the false gods of Gundam!  We will destroy
you!"  That many people shouldn't be able to shout spontaneously in
unison.  It's creepy.

    "Sieg JION!"  He did some sort of hand salute.  It drove them crazy,
as they began to ululate in unison.  Unfortunately, he used the hand
holding me, the tables, and the three women.  We went flying across the
room and right through a plate glass window into an upper story dining
room.  I was now free of my bonds, which wasn't much use when I was
still paralyzed.  I could move, but only just barely; I probably could
have crawled back to the window if they'd left me alone for a half hour
or so.

    The two Kodachis tied up the Akane with a ribbon in about thirty
seconds, then turned to me.  I managed to say, "Shoelace...tied."  I
mean to say untied.

    They blinked at me.  "What?"

    "Yuri shoelance..."  My vocal cords, tongue and mouth weren't
cooperating.

    "Yuri has a dragonlance?"  One of them asked.

    "A prophecy!"  the other said.  "Holy words from the god!"

    Perfect, I thought.  I'll keep them busy with fake prophecies and...

    CLANG.  They both collapsed as a man in gleaming red and gold armor
with hippogriffs emblazoned all over it in purple whacked each of them
in the head.  It was Burt.  "Man, you have some crazy followers.  You
didn't do this deliberately, did you?"

    "No.  Just...tried...practice."

    "So this is your first time to start a riot?"

    Not really.  Not that I could tell him.  I flailed a bit; it was
nice to finally be able to flail feebly.  He opened one of his palms
wide and hosed me down.  I turned into a woman, of course.  He laughed. 
"So it is true!"

    "Yeah."

    "Perfect.  Now the Kodachis will lose interest; they're devoted only
to your male aspect.  And with a little disguise..."  He reached behind
him and I heard photocopy noises and the sound of a drawer opening.  I
could see a little; some part of the back of his armor had sort of slid
open.  He pulled out a long green dress, very simply in design;
basically a t-shirt attached to a skirt.  "Here, put this on."  He
tossed it onto my flailing arm.  "And let down your hair."

    "Can't move."

    "Plan 2, I guess."

    I managed to sit up.  "What's that?"

    He strode over to the shattered window.  "Time to see if the tear
gas I bought really works."

    Some of it blew back in my face, and I can assure you it works. 
Normally, it won't knock you out too, but I had simply passed my limit
for stress for a single half hour.

************

    I woke up on a nice soft bed with Kaori sitting nearby, reading. 
She looked up.  "Hello, sleeping beauty."

    Feeling much better, I sat up.  Someone had put me in the dress. 
Probably her.  "Is everyone here insane?"

    She laughed.  "They even worship me.  Scary, eh?  In this Shadow,
there are tons of gods worshipped, and everyone has some patron they
worship and try to become, effectively.  Some are more popular than
others.  Not everything they know about is true, but we resemble the
gods they worship.  Not all the worshippers are whacko, but most of
yours are."

    "I haven't seen anyone actually trying to be ME, though."

    "Apparently, they're busy clobbering each other to see who get to be
your high priest.  The real problem is that the most popular cults don't
worship you directly; instead they argue over who you are married to, or
should marry.  There's four leading candidate goddesses for the job of
your wife, but there's splinter sects of almost any goddess arguing she
is your one true love.  I suppose Kasumi would blush if she saw some of
her worshippers arguing the two of you should be a couple.  Not to
mention the ones who..."  She blushed.  "Anyway, they're best approached
singly; the more worshippers get together, the crazier they get.  We're
going to try and recruit the sanest ones for you to train."

    "How am I gonna avoid getting ripped apart in the...Ukyou!  There
were a bunch of guys chasing her."

    "There's several cults that worship her and several others who argue
over who she should marry, although the Ukyou they serve is only
somewhat like yours.  Their goddess takes all her traits to lunatic
extremes."  She laughed.

    "But how did they know about her?  I mean, I could see Shadows of
those of us from the true city being reflected here, but..."

    Kaori shrugged.  "There's no 'Shampoo' or 'Kodachi' or 'Konatsu' or
'Azusa' in the True City as far as I know, either.  But they're among
the people that some want you to marry here.   It's just a Shadow. 
Probably all four of those people only exist in their holy scriptures,
just as the you they worship is from Japan, not Anime.  It's likely just
a coincidence."

    "But the Akanes...they wore the royal uniform of Lodoss!"

    "It's a school girl's uniform here."

    I boggled.  Although it did explain the lack of the tiara.  "I guess
I'll have to go incognito for a while, then."  I hopped up.  "I'd best
go find Ukyou."

    As if on cue, she ran into the room.  "RANMA!"  Her clothing was
ripped up and she had dirt smeared across what was left.  "Why didn't
you come help me?"

    "Because I was kidnapped, poisoned and tied to a table!  I was the
one being attacked, you know!"

    "But you're the great warrior!  You're the one who...You let your
hair down."  All the anger suddenly drained out of her in a second.  It
was surreal.  From kill to surprise in two seconds.  She walked over and
grabbed a few locks.  "I bet we could do something with this."

    "You're not mad anymore?"

    She blinked, then started.  "I...Yeesh, I was angry.  I'm sorry,
Ranchan.  I wasn't thinking clearly.  I just...after all those guys
started chasing me, I had to beat them all up, and I got mad and
couldn't remember my transformation phrase, so I had to use my spatula
and it was like...I could feel the anger roiling around like I was on
fire and had to let it out."  She took a deep breath.  "I shouldn't have
yelled at you.  Even though you didn't come looking for me."  Her vocal
temperature rose just a touch on that last sentence.

    "I got carried off, tied to a table, poisoned and had to be rescued
by Voltron, Jr. and Hippogriff.  While a bunch of Akanes and Kodachis
had a brawl.  If you could beat up all those guys yourself, I could have
used a little help myself, you know."

    "You're the immortal Prince of Anime!  You can take care of
yourself!"  Her voice was rising again.  "I'm just an ordinary woman!"

    "You're the Senshi of the Sun, you've got a magical big spatula, and
you've got years of training!  You're not exactly helpless, you know!"

    "You're my HUSBAND!"  We were shouting in each other's faces now.

    "I told you this was gonna be dangerous!"

    Kaori tried to step between us, but the sound waves pushed her away.

    "I'll show you DANGEROUS!  SOLAR POWER!"  Senshi transformations
are always spectacular.  I nearly went blind from hers.  As it was, I was
half-blind afterwards.  Still, I could tell Ukyou looked good in a red
and gold sailor warrior uniform, with a ruby in the middle of her large
golden bow, and another one set in her tiara.

    "Ukyou, calm down!  We'll destroy this entire building...whatever it
is."  I had no idea exactly where I was.

    "You left me!"

    "TWO DOZEN WOMEN CARRIED ME OFF BY FORCE!  It's not like I
was playing tiddlywinks!"

    "A likely story!"

    "YOU WERE THERE!"  This was getting ridiculous.  What had gotten
into her?

    Her voice changed, turned more pleading.  "If you'd gotten killed,
and I couldn't have...If you...If you die, Ranma, I'll die too," she
said quietly.  The fire had suddenly gone out, though she was still clad
as an incarnation of flame made flesh.  She detransformed without a
word.  "I'm just so...I feel different, Ranma.  All this...everything...
I'm in over my head, Ranchan.  I did this for you, but it seems
like...like...like I'm going to lose you.  Lose me.  All this power inside
me...it wants to be used.  I'm scared and half the people here are insane
and..."

    I stepped forward and hugged her.  Over her shoulder, I saw Kaori
slipping out of the room.  "I love you, Ukyou.  It'll be okay."  I'd
better talk to Usagi about this Senshi thing.  It didn't normally make
people go nuts, at least I didn't think so.  "It'll be fine."

    Ryo stuck his head in the door.  "You can use the bed, but only if I
get to join you."

    I didn't have to see the mallet's holder to know it was Kaori.

**********

    A little later that day, I had my first encounter with a prevalent
threat in this shadow.  Ukyou and I had dropped by a Kentucky Fried
Chicken forlunch.  As we sat stuffing chicken and rolls into our mouths,
the door flew open and a tall, muscular man clad in a business suit
walked in.  He had red eyes and short, white hair.  He walked up to the
counter.  "Give me all your money or I'll call an orbital laser strike on
you."  It was a Largo.  They breed in the sewers or something, then emerge
and cause trouble.  

      The clerk began shoveling money into a biscuit box; apparently the
threat was a realistic one.  But I wasn't going to stand for this.  Okay, I
did stand for it, but not to tolerate it.  I couldn't fight him without
getting out of my seat, you see. 

      Anyway, I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder.  "I
suggest you go home before I have to take you to jail, buddy," I said.

      "I am a GOD!  How dare you touch me, mortal?"  He aimed a punch at
me, lightning quick.  Too bad I was faster.  I dropped low and slammed a
hundred punches into his gut.  He staggered back, but was still standing; I
was impressed.  

        "Pathetic mortal!"  Everyone in the place was diving for cover. I
could hear Ukyou shouting her transformation phrase; soon lights shone all
over as if a disco ball had been unleashed.  The guy stared at me.  "Do
you know who I am?"

        "An idiot?"  I guessed.  I leaped up, kicking him with one foot
after another, then pushing off the ceiling to elbow smash his head on the
rebound.  

        It knocked him down, but that was about it.  Then Ukyou unleashed a
Solar Flare on him.  That fried off a lot of his 'flesh', revealing he was
clearly some kind of robot or artifical life form or something quite not
human.  He fell down, too, but quickly got up.  "Now, mortal, you die."
He pointed at her and we all tensed, waiting for something to happen.

        Nothing did.  As I later found out, he didn't have a REAL laser
satellite to call down strikes from, just delusions of one.  I charged
him, opening with an axe kick and following up with more blows to his now
exposed innards. Once I smashed a few things and got my legs covered with
ooze, Ukyou fried him with another Solar Flare, finishing him off.  

         The manager thanked us after that.  "Good job.  We've had a really
bad Largo infestation here in Worseter lately."

        "That was a Largo?"

        "Yeah.  They're worst in the Summer; the cold weather we get here
usually kills most of them off in the Fall and Winter.  I thought I'd
sprayed for them, but it must have worn off by now."

       I was afraid to ask how tough the mosquitoes got around here.

**********

    That evening, I stole away to talk to Usagi.  I found her and Mamoru
over at the NITWIT botany lab, where he was chatting with a biology
professor, and she was sniffing flowers.  I'd met Mamoru briefly the
previous day; he was the sort of guy Usagi likes, tall, dark haired,
bishonen.  I've seen her date enough of them, and marry a few; Usagi's
had a lot of husbands, but no children.  That I knew of, anyway.  Usagi
was wearing a light green long-sleeved blouse and a dark blue skirt,
smiling at a butterfly which had landed on her hand.  I walked over
softly so as to not scare it; Usagi has a way with animals.   "Hey."

    Her smile was warm as usual.  "Hi, Ranma.  What's up?"

    "Ukyou's been kinda...tempermental today."

    "The Senshi of the Sun is always tempermental.  But very powerful. 
I warned her that Power uses you as much as you use it sometimes, but
she didn't care.  She...she's really worried about your safety, Ranma." 
Her voice turned serious, although it was still a sort of happy serious.
 "And she feels...Well, I guess it's kind of natural for most people to
have a hard time keeping up with us.  We've had hundreds of years to
learn to do just about everything and do it well.  Everything we like,
anyway.  We had a big talk in Anime-3 and when we went to my Shadow,
Juuban.  I wanted to catch up on how things had been with you two, and
she told me a lot about your marriage...and everything."

    I was curious about that everything.  Hopefully, Ukyou hadn't 
described the time we had...anyway.  "She's not worried I'm going to
dump her, is she?  I'd never leave her for any of these lunatics around
here, even if some of them do dress up like my first wife."  Especially
those.  They brought up painful memories, and they could never be the
real Akane, the one I had loved.  None of them had borne my daughter,
Shinobu.  She was dead, and so was Shinobu.

    Usagi must have seen my face darken.  She stepped closer and reached
out with a hand, then pulled it back.  "Are you okay, Ranma?"

    "Just thinking about...I do NOT need to see a bunch of people
pretending to be Akane."

    "At least they're all female,"  Usagi said.  "Some of my worshippers
are male, but dress as me anyway."

    I boggled.  That was even crazier than...suddenly, I wondered how my
guy worshippers thought about my curse.  Ack.  "You're joking."

    She laughed.  "I wish.  Anyway.  Ukyou is the Senshi of the Sun. 
She's got enough power to protect her and you now, once she learns to
use it.  But she hasn't really learned that.  And it does have her
price.  She's going to have a temper.  But if you could marry Akane,
you're used to that.  She may act odd in other ways as well, as other
subdued traits become stronger.  She's fused herself with an archetype;
we all have.  It makes us strong, but it means we become like it.  But
it's worth it to gain the power to fight evil and right wrongs.  And
she's still Ukyou.  She loves you, Ranma."

    "Usagi.  Can I ask you a question?"

    "Blue."

    I nearly ran away screaming when she said that.  Ukyou had said the
same thing to the same question the previous night.  She hadn't
been...watching...had she?  No way.  Usagi probably gets embarrassed
seeing herself naked.  "..."

    "Go ahead and ask, Ranma."  She smiled at me, the smile Mom always
had; Usagi is very much Mom's child.  Me and Kunou picked up a lot of
traits from Pop, but Usagi isn't like him at all.  Which is a good
thing.

    "Why are you helping us?  I mean, not that I mind, but since you
know Kunou didn't kill me..."

    "Because you're my favorite brother.  I care about you, Ranma.  You
know that.  And I know I can keep you out of a lot more trouble if I'm
here with you, instead of off somewhere else.  And Kunou's stolen Dad's
throne.  He's not dead.  I know he's alive.  And I won't let Kunou get
away with this.   He's not even trying to find Dad.   And..."  She
hesitated, turning to stare off at a pot of violets.

    "And?"  I asked.  It had to be bad if Usagi didn't want to talk
about it.

    "Have you read the Prophecies of the Unicorn, Ranma?"  She still
wouldn't look at me.

    It had been centuries, and I'd never finished it.  I was pretty sure
I had a copy lying around my room back at Anime, gathering dust.  It's a
collection of visions and whatnot that Pop had and that my older, now
dead, brother Gendo had at Laputa.  Gendo had been a sort of mystic,
apparently.  Or maybe he just liked risking falling to his death in the
middle of the night.  Laputa appears only on a cloudless night, a city
that appears in the sky as long as the moon shines and the sun does not.
 Then it fades with the dawn.  Or if a cloud shrouds the moon. 
Dangerous as all get out, but Pop made me go once.  In fact, that's how
we got to Jyusenkyo.  We walked the Pattern of Laputa and it sent us there.

    I saw all sorts of funky stuff on the way to the Laputan Pattern. 
Most of it had faded, but three things had stuck in my mind.  A talking
orangutang.  A duplicate of myself walking arm in arm with some freckle
faced girl with auburn hair  I had never met.  And my sword.  That was how
I had gotten it; it was stuck in an anvil.  Seemed like a waste of a
sword, so I took it.  Anyway, back to the present.

    "Yeah, sort of."

    "Rei has been studying them, and she had a vision.  A vision of
Silence.  The destruction of all things.  This war...is a part of it. 
We don't know for sure how, but...She was sure that if we didn't join
you, you would...Anime would be destroyed."

    I frowned.  "I would what?"

    "If I didn't come, you would die."  Her voice was stark now, with an
undercurrent of fear."  She took my hands now, and squeezed them.  "We
all would.  Everything would be Silenced.  But you'd die before that." 
Her voice took on a hollow tone, like she was quoting something.  "You
must find him, Usagi, and stand by him, or he will die, and the greatest
hope to stop the Silence will die as well.  It is coming."

    "The Silence?  What's the Silence?"

    "We don't know.  A great storm, ripping through Shadow, destroying
everything in its wake.  We don't know what will cause it or if it is
really destined or just a possibility.  But Rei's visions...it doesn't
pay to ignore them."

    "Especially if she actually felt it worth telling one of us.  I've
never understood why she's so...why she dislikes us all."

    Usagi blinked.  "Not our sister.  My friend, Rei Hino.  Sailor Mars.
 She's a priestess as well as a Sailor Warrior."  She smiled, her tone
starting to lighten.  "She'll be eating dinner with us.  You've got to
meet her.  You'll like her, I know you will."

    Mamoru came over and put a hand on Usagi's shoulder.  "Telling Ranma
about Rei's vision?"

    She nodded and let go of my hands, looking a little embarrassed,
folding one arm back to lay her hand on his.  "That's all we know, but
it's enough for me."

    I couldn't believe it was true.  What could possibly destroy all of
Shadow?  Even Wasyuu couldn't do that.  Although...hmm...maybe some
kind of out of control lab accident...naah, who would ever cast Wasyuu as a
dark Messiah?  A dork Messiah, maybe...And why would I be so important? 
Yeah, I have a healthy ego, but it's not that big, I thought.  "Well,
I'm not planning on dying any time soon."

    Usagi turned to Mamoru and said, "We could make a triple date of it.
 Whaddya say?"

    He laughed.  "What, me and three women?  I think you'd get jealous."

    She pounded on him harmlessly.  "That's not what I meant!"

    "Just what you want."

    "IS NOT!!!!!"

    I laughed myself now.  "I'll go see if Ukyou's up for it."

 ************

    Ukyou wore a suit and sunglasses, and I left my hair down and kept
the dress on so we could evade our worshippers.  It wasn't as
embarrassing as it would have been, once; I'd worn dresses quite a few
times during my three hundred years or so on Earth, since I hadn't known
I wasn't female, and for some reason, I had never changed.  I still
didn't know how my curse had gotten locked in place; the plague had done
it somehow.  Or maybe the magic level was just too low to support it. 
Or something.

    Usagi and Mamoru were undercover as well; for Mamoru, a disguise was
a t-shirt and jeans, which made him look like a local, while Usagi let
her hair down and tied it together at the end loosely with a blue ribbon
and also put on local clothing.  A woman stood near her, a little taller
than Usagi, but shorter than Mamoru.  Just about everyone I know is
shorter than Mamoru; he's pretty tall.  She had long black hair down to
her butt with thin seperated bangs in front down to her eyebrows.  She
wore a long, tight red dress that was probably uncomfortable but looked
good despite hiding most of her flesh.  There was a pad of prayer strips
sticking out of her handbag and she wore a very nicely made silver
necklace with a golden raven medallion.  Usagi said, "Hihihihi, Ranma! 
Ranma, this is Rei Hino.  Rei-chan, this is Ranma, my older brother, and
his wife Ukyou."

    Rei bowed to Ukyou.  "Nice to meet you."  She bowed slightly to me. 
"Nice to meet you, Ukyou."

    Usagi said, "No, no, that's Ranma."  She pointed at me.  "And that's
Ukyou."

    Rei blinked, looked again, then said, "You didn't mention they were
transvestites."

    "Ranma turns female when wet,"  Usagi said.  "It's a curse from some
shadow our Father hauled him off to."

    "Oh.  Okay.  She looks dry, though."

    "I stay that way until I get hot water splashed on me.  Anyway,
let's go eat."

    We ended up at a little restaurant called the Soapstone Cafe, the
only place I've ever seen constructed entirely from soapstone.  The food
was your typical mixed bag 'American food' cafe, with sandwiches, and
attempts at home cooking.  Some of it was pretty good.  Ukyou was
disappointed she couldn't get an okonomiyaki, though.  I decided we
needed to get her a new grill; hers had been eaten by hellhounds, I was
pretty sure.

    "So where are you from?"  I asked Rei.

    "I was just an ordinary psychic priestess who talked to ravens and
had visions of the future when I met Usagi,"  Rei said.  "She came to my
temple for a good luck charm, but this evil sorceror attacked while she
was still trying to decide which one she wanted.  We beat him, but Usagi
got hurt pretty badly and stayed for a while.  I nursed her back to
health, and then I had a vision that I should go with her when she left.
 So I did.  And now..."  She looked at me.  "Did you dye your hair?"

    "It turns red when I turn into a woman,"  I said.  "So you think
Usagi has to..."

    "The Silence is coming."  Rei said flatly.  "My visions are not
clear, but I know one thing for sure.  The time will come when she must
leave you to do what must be done, but for now, she must stand by you,
or you will die.  And if you die too soon, then everything will be
destroyed."

    I've never been big on mystic stuff.  "Destroyed by what?"

    She blushed.  "I don't know.  All I have seen is a trinity.  A man,
a woman, and a younger man.  Perhaps parents and a child.  I'm not sure.
 Each of them wants Anime to be destroyed, but I don't know why.  It all
connects to a city.  That's how the vision starts.  A great city on an
island of brass in a sea of flame.  Boats of obsidian cross the ocean of
flames to attack it.  And then, there is a flash of light in the middle
of a battle where some of the ships have landed.  A swirling sea of
energy erupts and consumes everything, destroying both sides.  And three
dark phoenixes arise from the flame, and set out to destroy.  One
strikes at Anime-3.  One attacks Anime itself.  And one of them...is
hunting someone through Shadow.  Hunting you, I think."

    "I ain't been attacked by no Phoenixes lately.  I haven't even been
to Phoenix."  I was impressed with my own wit.

    Rei wasn't.  "It will come to you, I think.  And only Usagi can stop
it."

    Ukyou frowned intensely.  "Why only Usagi?"  She sounded almost
jealous.

    "Probably it requires magic to stop it,"  Rei said.  "I don't know. 
I just know that I saw a crossroads.  Down one path, Usagi left you to
this war alone, and you died, and the Silence destroyed everything.  Down
the other, you lived and..."

    "And?"  No one ever trails off before good news.

    "And then there was another fork.  And the vision ended."  She
shoved her food around her plate idly with her fork, her pork cutlets
and noodles half-eaten.  "There you go."

    "So Kunou's going to like destroy the universe if we don't win?"

    "I have had no vision of whether or not you will win."  She looked
uncomfortable, and I had a bad feeling she was lying.

    Mamoru, who had been eating while Rei and I talked, finished off his
shrimp plate,  and said, "I still think you should try to convince Kunou
of this before you attack him."

    "He exiled me before Rei-chan had the vision,"  Usagi said.  "I only
managed to find Ranma because Wasyuu Trumped me and told me he was
going to be in Arden when he was.  I tried to trump Kunou and tell him, but
he told me I was just trying to manipulate him like everyone else.  That he
wasn't stupid anymore and wouldn't just believe everything he was told
like a child.  I couldn't believe how mad he got at me."  She sighed and
paused to wolf down half the food on her plate in seconds.  When Usagi
eats, she makes me look like a piker.

    Mamoru nodded.  "I suppose we don't have any other proof.  But by
the time we do..."

    "The end of all things will be on its way,"  Rei said.  "I don't
know much else.  Fragments of verse.  Images that make no sense.  A
great pit with many castles around it.  A black road.  Ceramic cows
eating grass.  A blue haired woman no weapon can harm."

    "Short blue hair?  In a sort of rounded sphere effect?  Wearing a
tight white bodysuit with gloves?"

    Rei nodded.  "You know her?"

    "Our sister, Rei of Anime-3.  But I've seen her get hurt by a
weapon.  She and Wasyuu had a knockdown brawl and..."

    Usagi blinked.  "She and Wasyuu had a BRAWL?  We're talking the
walking ice statue and the woman who won't even stomp a cockroach
herself when she could build a giant robot to do it?"

    "I think you and Kasumi had run off somewhere, and the rest of us
had a sort of...ummm...discussion about who was legitimate and who
wasn't.   It was after that when Rei finally pretty much left Anime and
started totally ignoring us as best she could," I said.  It wasn't one
of Pop's more successful family dinners to celebrate Yule.  "Didn't you
hear about that?"

    "We were trying to buy presents for everyone."  Usagi sighed.  "I
heard some of it, but Wasyuu and Rei brawling..."  She shook her head. 
"It's like discovering Dad told the truth.  You just can't believe it."

    Ukyou blinked.  "Was he that much of a liar?"

    "Pop lied instinctively.  Even when he didn't need to.  He's
probably faked his own disappearance, just to see what we'll do,"  I
said.  "Although...hasn't anyone tried to trump him?"

    "I tried trumping you after the first couple of years you were gone,
and it was like you didn't exist.  We all thought at first you'd
wandered into some shadow where Trumps didn't work right, or maybe you
didn't want to be disturbed, but now...Dad's been gone for about sixty
years now, and no one's been able to trump him successfully.  Wasyuu
claims he's dead."

    "Why did he leave?"  I asked her.

    "Well, Chiyako, his last wife, died in 623, and after he mourned
her, he decided to go off on a quest for a new wife.  The last we heard
of him was about three years after that.  He was trying to convince some
woman named Sakura to marry him.  Then...nothing.  Kasumi and Yuu and I
all went to the last Shadow he'd reported being in, and they all said he
'Went out for milk and didn't come back'.  He'd set up a regency
council, but things started going to pot, and eventually, everyone who
wouldn't support Kunou as being Chief Regent either left or got exiled
like me.  Beryl's kids left first after a big shouting match with Kunou
about how to settle the Metallicana/Oniboshi border dispute, Rei almost
never came anyway, Yuu got bored after the first time we had to try and
work out a budget and never came back, Youshou was usually too busy with
the army or the Temple of the Unicorn to do much, unless we discussed
army business, and Kasumi doesn't like politics.  So it came down to me
and Kunou, Mendo, Ryouga, and Goto.  Assuming Ryouga didn't get lost
and actually made it.  It still didn't go too badly at first, but after
Kunou defeated that invasion by the Horseclans, I think it all went to
his head."

    "What, by himself?"  I asked.  I was impressed; the Horseclans are
pretty big.

    "No, with the army, silly.  But he lead the army.  And actually did
pretty well.  But after that, it was clear he wanted to be king.  Dad
had been gone for a long time, and people were starting to whisper. 
Beryl's kids came back to the Council for a while after the war, but
they fought with Kunou all the time.  About seven years ago, Wasyuu
simply vanished off into Shadow; she said she had a long term experiment
to monitor.  After that, pretty much Kunou was king in everything but
name.  About three years ago, he declared himself Sole Regent with Goto
and Mendo and Ryouga's support, and dissolved the Council.  I was pretty
sure by that point that he had killed you and maybe even killed Dad, so
I accused him of it, and he exiled me.    I don't know what's happened
in Anime since then."

    "That's when I met her,"  Ukyou said.  "Seven years ago.  Wasyuu,
that is.  She was at the same party where I met Ranchan.  Kasumi and I
had some business dealings because she had invested some money in my
restaurant chain.  So she invited me to a Christmas party.  She was
calling herself Wanda, though.  And Kasumi was Kay.  Anyway, Ranchan
was balancing an umbrella on her nose when I met her."

    I laughed at the memory.  "Just showing off my sense of balance.  I
was drunk out of my mind.   I didn't exactly make the best first
impression."

    Ukyou smiled.  "Yeah, looking for Christmas presents inside my shirt
wasn't exactly the best way to make a first impression."

    "Well, I asked Wasyuu where she had put my Christmas present and she
said it was in your shirt and..."  Not one of my brighter moments, but I
was too drunk to think.  Although Wasyuu WOULD do something like that.

    The conversation drifted off into reminiscences.  A lot of fun, but
I could spend forever just telling all the stories.  So I'll just skip
ahead to the next disaster...incident.

*************

    The next day, I was starting to have second thoughts about this.  I
was sure we could beat Kunou, but I was starting to wonder if maybe we
should be putting our resources to work trying to find Pop and stop the
destruction of the universe.  Assuming Rei was right.  She didn't seem
like the type to try to trick Usagi, but vague prophecies make me
nervous and Usagi is kinda gullible.  I once convinced her I was her
twin sister that Pop had been hiding from her all these years.  Not one
of my finer moments.

    I needed confirmation.  Should I squash Kunou or should I trust in
Rei and go questing to save all of space and time?  I decided to do a
Trump Reading.  It's a sort of fortune telling trick with the Trumps. 
While the deck I got from Kasumi was probably inside the bellies of
multiple hellhounds, I had the deck from the library.  It was huge, full
of cards of people I was sure I had never met or even heard of.  Who was
'Armitage III'?  She looked sort of like a heavily armed prostitute,
whoever she was.

    I did a five card lay out, the way Wasyuu taught me, and I think the
way her mother taught her.  Top card is the past.  Middle is the
present, representing the questioner.  The bottom is the future.  You
put a card to the left of the middle, which represents your problem, and
one to the right, which stands for the solution.  The top card was a
picture of Jyusenkyo, reversed.  The middle card was Pop's trump.  I
decided to try it, just to see for myself if anything happened.  I
picked it up and held it, concentrating on the image.  For a long time,
there was nothing, just like it was a regular playing card, and then
suddenly, a fuzzy image like a staticky TV kicked in.  I could only make
out fragments of his voice.  "Ranma...trap...Trump Setsuna.  She
knows..."  His voice faded.  "They're coming...don't let them catch
you."

    "Pop!  Who the hell is Setsuna?"

    "Sister..."

    Another of Pop's illegitimate children, I guessed.  Maybe he had
found someone in Shadow and they had a kid?  Well, it couldn't hurt to
try.  The contact collapsed and I started paging through the deck,
hoping they weren't ALL illegitimate children of Pop.  I found her with
some effort.  According to the card (I was still using the weird 'game'
trumps from the library that had statistics and skills and whatnot
listed on them), she had the skills 'Sorcery, Conjuration, Trump
Artistry,  Singing, Investigation, Knowing More Than You, Crocheting'. 
The images on these Trumps were very colorful but kinda cramped, since
they only took up half the card.  She was tall, with long green-black
hair down to mid-back and huge bangs parted on her left, which half
obscured the golden tiara which she wore on her brow.  Her face was
noble, and she smiled in a friendly manner.  She wore a grey suit-dress
with a white blouse, and held a long staff in her other hand, tipped
with a orb of garnet.  It seemed like an odd combination.  The quote for
her was 'I foresee trouble ahead.'

    I had no idea how something dead could scream, but that wasn't
important right now.  I concentrated on the card, and unlike with Pop, I
got a near instant connection.  She was riding in a sleigh high over a
frost covered landscape.  Yes, it was flying.   Eight reindeer pulled
the sleigh, which was full of wrapped packages.  I had never realized
Santa Claus was one of our relatives, but the idea made sense to me now.
 Except for the added overcoat and fur hat to keep warm, she was dressed
much like she was on the card.  "Hello?"  I asked.

    She smiled at me; she didn't look quite so friendly as she had on
the card, but I could tell she was glad I had 'called'.  "Ranma!  So
you've finally come back.   Our father is in grave danger."

    "Who are you?"

    "I'm your half-sister Setsuna.  Your father had a fling with my
mother, Naoko, after your mother died."  She paused.  "After one of his
wives died.  Or maybe before...I grew up in a shadow where time flowed
differently than in Anime.  I've never been able to figure out exactly
when in Anime time I was born."

    I sighed.  Pop probably had countless kids scattered throughout
Shadow.  When I first married Akane, I had kept half expecting Pop to
show up and announce he was Akane's father.  "You know what's happened
to him?"

    "He came for a visit after his wife Chiyako died, but then a bunch
of goons working for Kunou showed up and carried him off.  When I trump
him, all I get is static or a handful of words.  Something about...a
gemstone.  Or a rock.  Or something."  She frowned, then suddenly fell
over.  "I need to make this quick, or these reindeer are going to crash
into something.  You know Father's bird trick?"

    "The one where he makes a bird out of his blood?"  It was kind of
disgusting, but cool at the same time.  I nearly killed myself when I
was younger trying to figure out he did it.

    "It brought me two messages.  One said for me to find you, but I
never did, although I've been looking for years.  And the other one has
your name on it."  She handed me a small rolled up scroll through the
trump connection.  "Call me back later; I've got to finish delivering
these presents."

    "Do you like...work for Santa?"

    "I am trying to pay off a debt."  The sleigh zoomed over a hilltop
and down towards a small village.  "Which will take me a while.  I have
to deliver presents to all the houses.  Anyway, I have to go."

    "Thanks."

    I let the trump connection collapse and turned to the scroll.  It
was sealed with Dad's personal seal, a hand pulling a wallet out of a
pocket.  The writing was tiny and illegible as usual.  But I could more
or less read it.  'Kunou holding me prisoner.  Goto using him as puppet.
 Still mad about Nabiki.  You must stop him before it is too late.'

    At least he hadn't killed Pop.  I was getting mad now.  I remembered
all about what had happened with Nabiki.  I missed a lot of it, cause
Pop married Nabiki a few years after I got exiled for fifty years when
Kunou and I wrecked the family art room in a brawl.  He cheated on her
with Princess Belldandy of Megami City.  How he convinced her to do
that, I don't know; I've met Belldandy, and she makes Kasumi look like
the Devil in comparison.  Kasumi was the result of that.  He and Nabiki
had a huge fight, but they made up.  Then these two girls showed up from
Shadow claiming Pop was their father.  They made a big deal out of it,
and finally, they convinced Pop it was true.  Nabiki blew up again. 
Then they tried to walk the Pattern.  It killed the first one, and the
other one turned into some kind of monster and tried to kill Pop by
hurling him across the Pattern (If you try to run across it instead of
following the lines, you die.)  But Nabiki stabbed it with a poisoned
dagger and it died before it could throw him.  So they reconciled again.

    But he did more dumb stuff, so one day, she ceremonially divorced
him in the style of her homeland and took half the stuff in the castle
with her.  Pop got mad, so he had the marriage annulled so it had never
existed.  Which turned Goto, Mendo, and Ryouga into instant bastards. 
Then he adopted Kasumi, which legitimated her, and asked Belldandy to
marry him.  That sent Nabiki's kids into fits.  But Belldandy turned him
down; she'd married this Keiichi guy.  So then he adopted Goto, Mendo,
and Ryouga, but Kasumi was now ahead of them in the succession.  I don't
think they ever fully forgave Pop.  I could see them kidnapping him
under the right circumstances.

    I got up.  Time to tell everyone about this.  We had to bring Kunou
down.  It was the only way to save Pop, other than maybe a commando
raid, but without a Trump of Anime itself, which was just about the only
thing the deck I had DIDN'T have, there was no way to do a commando raid
with any chance of success.

************

    Ryo and Kaori knew Setsuna;  Kaori showed us the home movie she had
made of Setsuna beating Ryo up for hitting on her.  "Except for not
going to bed with me, she's never done me wrong,"  Ryo said.  "We ran
into each other when I was trying to find a good base for an army. 
After the beating that KAORI CAN STOP SHOWING NOW, we talked some
and I told her where to find you, and she showed me this place."

    I frowned.  "But she didn't find me."

    "Well, the problem is that you were in that Shadow for so long that
you started casting shadows of yourself into all the adjacent Shadows. 
So she probably did some searching and got bogged down trying to find
the REAL you.  It's not easy, you know.  And it was only a few months
ago, anyway."  He shrugged.  "And it's not like she knew exactly what
the message said.  We might be able to get her to help us if she really
is concerned about Pop."

    "We could use a sorceress."  Usagi snorted at me.  "Another sorceress."

    "Are you sure she's on the level?"  Ukyou asked.  "I keep wondering
how you'd never heard of her before and..."

    "Ain't nobody who can forge Pop's lousy handwriting.  I can't even
write that bad if I try.  And she knew about the bird trick and..."  I
turned to Ryo.  "Hey, why the hell didn't you and Wasyuu do something
about my amnesia?"

    "Well, I could have tried shooting you in the head and see if that
helped, but I don't think you would have liked that.  I'm not a doctor. 
And Wasyuu was still working on a cure when you started getting your
memories back anyway.  Plus, she wasn't sure that was really you, and
not just a very close shadow.  You no longer changed sex and you
insisted you had been born female, you know.  I only went out there one
time, and I wasn't sure if it was just one of Wasyuu's practical jokes,
although I had fun at the wedding, even after your wife beat me up."

    Ukyou blushed.

    "And don't ask me why Kasumi didn't tell anyone; I'm not a mindreader.
 I think maybe this was Kunou's way of keeping you locked up and Kasumi
was your jailor."  He shrugged.  "Although she didn't do anything about
Wasyuu posing as your sister, so..."

    "I trust Setsuna,"  Usagi said.  "She's one of my Senshi.  In fact,
she's the one who helped me defeat Mordru and claim the Hottub of Power
for myself."

    Mamoru nodded.  "She doesn't come around much, but Sailor Pluto is
very helpful when she does show up."

    "She's one of your Senshi?  Why isn't she here?"  I asked.  "You
brought the rest, right?"

    "She is one of our Dad's children.  She comes and goes as she
pleases, but she has always been my friend.  You met her a few times
when you...came to Crystal Tokyo.  I'm sure you must have."

    I thought hard.  My memories of Crystal Tokyo are foggy as all get
out.  That was at the end of the period when I went nuts after Lodoss
was destroyed.  I did sort of remember seeing her a few times; she was
gone into Shadow most of the time.  "Yeah, I remember her now, sort of. 
Okay, if you think she's trustworthy, I'll buy that."

    Ukyou frowned.  Why she was being suspicious of someone she hadn't
even met, I don't know.

***********

    A week later, things were well under way.  Ryo put Kaori in charge
of organizing logistics.  Yuri and Kei were in charge of training our
space pilots; I would be helping to train the elite battlesuit corps
along with Hippogriff; he would teach them how to use their suits, I
would teach them how to fight.   Ultrastoner was busy drilling the Mech
pilots
and Bill was busy overseeing the construction of everything and trying to
convince the Doozers to build what we wanted, not what we said.  Ryo spent
his time teaching sharp shooting, overseeing various operations, and
planning the assault.

    Usagi spent the time recruiting new Senshi; she was going to have a
humongous horde of them, I was pretty sure.  I spotted Setsuna with her
a few times, helping her to select and train them, although I never got
a good chance to talk to her.  Ukyou trained with me and Hippogriff; she
was learning fast.   I don't know what Mamoru was doing.

    One day, I went in for a battlesuit fitting session with JD Kroft
and Bill and Mary Anne.  As I arrived, Mary Anne and JD were having a
shouting match about some aspect of technical battlesuit design that was
completely beyond me, since the words 'inverted electron flows' makes me
want to sleep.  I use Next Generation episodes as sleeping pills.  By
the third level three diagnostic, I'm out like a light.

    Making matters worse, three fawning female assistants were also
shouting at Mary Anne; how this scrawny spike-haired fourteen year old
had women a good seven years his elder worshipping him, I couldn't
figure out.  Pheremones, maybe.  I'd noted that it only seemed to affect
locals, and not quite all of them.   Mary Anne was immune anyway.  I
went over to Bill.  "Should I come back later?"

    Mary Anne's katana came out.  Don't ask me where she hides it.  She
just mutters something about there being only one when I ask.  Soon, she
was chasing JD into the sunset; apparently he doesn't have a degree in
beating sword weilding women.

    "I think we've worked out the bugs.  JD really does know a lot about
building battlesuits for shapechangers."  He pointed to the changing
room.  "Go change into a skinsuit."

    I nodded.  When I got back, we tested out the new armor.  It made a
pretty good likeness of Uncle Tom's Cabin when the Lincoln Logs stopped
flying.  Back to the drawing board.

    We eventually got me out, and I went and talked to Hippogriff, who
got me a standard battlesuit to use for practice until we finally worked
the bugs out of the shapechanging models.  I had to ask him one thing. 
"How have you managed to know the Danger Twins this long and not die?"

    "You've known them longer than me."

    "It's their boyfriends who usually have only weeks to live due to
dating them.  They don't mean to get their boyfriends killed, but then
they do something like trying to drive through Beggar's Canyon at Mach
8."

    "We never let them drive."

    I raised an eyebrow.  "The last time I tried to do that, they
be...got violent."

    "I never said they didn't get violent."  He grinned and started
singing some song about girls with guns.  Yet more proof, as if I needed
any, that I was the sanest male in this entire Shadow.

***********

       I finally got curious as to the 'holy scriptures' of this world. 
Specifically, the ones involving me.  So I went to see Bill, because I
knew he seemed to have some familiarity with the worship of me without
being a maniac about it.  I found him talking to his programming
assistant, Flacco, a really skinny Spanish guy.  They were working on the
operating system for the Campus Ships along with Usagi's friend, Sailor
Mercury, trying to combine Unix with AmigaDOS and SilMilOS (apparently
used as an operating system in the home shadow of the Senshi).  

       "Hey, Bill, got a minute to discuss theology?"

       He looked rather nervous; I can't blame him.  Any theology
discussion can get sticky and...well, imagine if Moses dropped by your
house to discuss Judaism with you.   "Uhh..."

       "I was curious as to why everyone worships some of us."

       Flacco said, "Ahh, wondering what holy writ says about you?"

       I nodded.  Mercury said, "Yes, I've seen some of us Senshi are
worshipped as well, and I was curious myself."

       "Well, it varies by cult, but basically, we worship the Brightly
Colored Gods because we want to be like you," Bill said.  "It's extremely
polytheistic. It's also complicated by the fact that many of the
scriptures are either scanty on some kinds of crucial details or there's
translation problems or there are multiple competing editions of the
scriptures which contradict each other, often due to the fact that the
founder of each of the major sects then had many disciples who all
interpreted the cult's precepts in different ways and produced
commentaries and new parables which didn't agree with each other.  And
since none of the cults have anyone who can act as a final authority...the
results are often chaotic."

       "What about the people who founded them?"

      "Unfortunately, people who have been dead for hundreds of years don't
return your calls," Bill said.

       Flacco said, "I've got the complete laser disk set of the Emperor
Katsudon Edition of Ranma 1/2 «, which is the oldest translation into
English of Ranma 1/2 «, from about three hundred years ago.  Come with me
and I'll show you some of it."

       We went to his room, and popped in the first laser disk.  "This is
just a bunch of still shots because it's simply a series of scans of the
still pages, not any of the modern animated versions.  I've got a
hardcopy, but it's a more modern translation, and I think this older
translation is more adequate,if you've mastered Elizabethan English, of
course."

       Of course.  Hasn't everyone?  Not.

       I sat down in a nice chair and watched.  The art was a pretty good
likeness of my teenage self.  The whole thing was completely wrong in
almost every detail.  Akane wasn't a queen, Pop hadn't been around when I
met her, I had never known Ukyou as a child, I've never met a Shampoo or
a Kodachi, etc, etc.  

       And yet...there were flashes of incidents I remembered, and moments
where I could say that I would have done exactly the same thing in that
situation.  A lot of moments.  I made them sit through it all.  This took a
loooong time.  By the time we finished, Mary Anne, Usagi, Mamoru, and
Ukyou all showed up and joined the viewing.  Ukyou was in a state of horror
by the end; I couldn't blame her.  She and my mother both became more
and more...whacked out, is all I can say, the further along the 'manga' as
it was called, went.  

         When we got to the end, Usagi said, "Hey, I didn't show up at all!
And what about Yuu, and Wasyuu and..."

         "You're not in the CORE scriptures of the various churches of
Ranma,"  Flacco said.  "However, if we look at some of the many apocryphal
works by the many disciples of the great leaders of the faiths of our
world, we would probably find stories where you and Ranma were brother and
sister, where you were deadly enemies, or even one where you were lovers."

         I could feel Ukyou squeezing my hand and could see her clenching
her other fist.  Usagi was blushing, and so was I.  At least no one could
read our minds.  "So Usagi mostly appears in a different set of
scriptures?"

        "She appears in the five great volumes of 'Sailor Moon'," Flacco
said. "Although there's a million apocrypha for that as well.  Part of
the problem is that various syncretist religious leaders created
scriptures incorporating elements of many different texts into large
'crossovers' or 'fusions', some of which then spawned their own apocrypha.
And now, with a million different translations and people trying to
reconcile incompatible faiths...I mean, how could you possibly get
Evangelion and Marmalade Boy to coexist...or Unico and the Legend of the
Overfiend...anyway, I'm rambling.  Did this help?"

        "But how does anyone get an actual...I mean, there's nothing about
how to worship or what to believe in these things."  

        "People write extensive commentaries and try to act as the
character they choose to follow.  But yes, you're right.  That's why
there's so many different conflicting groups.  Plus, the arrival of some
of the Brightly Colored Gods among us has triggered a resurgence of old
arguments.  All of your worshippers are busy slaughtering each other and
fighting over who should be your chosen consort, etc, etc."  Flacco
laughed.  "If they find out about Ukyou, most of them will probably wig
out."

        "We should go on TV and announce it, Ranchan," Ukyou said.  "Let
them know who your REAL wife is."

        Usagi nodded.  "Best to settle it all."

       Bill said, "I'll make the arrangements to set you up for a global
satellite broadcast."  

**********

        After the announcement was over, I could say that I had become the
first member of my family to successfully trigger global rioting by merely
announcing who I was married to.  Ukyou and I had to go into hiding; it was
hard to tell if we were hiding from angry Kodachi and Shampoo cultists or
if we were hiding from the Ukyou worshippers.  They were all equally
scary.  The Akane ones simply ignored the announcement, secure in the
belief it was a fraud by one of the other groups.  

        Things eventually settled down, and we went back to our previous
routines, training and preparing for the day we would launch our attack. 

         Trouble came, as it usually does, when we decided to take a break.
Ryo, Usagi, and I and our closest friends and lovers/spouses, all took a
camping trip together.  It was my idea; I needed to get out in the 
wilderness and relax; after several months of training people, I simply
wanted some time to unwind where no maniacs could find me.  Ukyou and I
still hadn't gotten a car, so we rode with Bill and Mary Anne in Bill's
car, which is a station wagon that turns into a jet.  He built it in shop
class in High School, with a little help from Flacco.  Actually, I think
Flacco did most of it, along with another one of Bill's friends...Engineer
dude...anyway, he didn't come on the trip, so we won't worry about him.

        Bill's a decent pilot, and the Danger Twins weren't riding with us
or anywhere near us, so I felt safe.  Until I spotted them in the rearview
mirror.  They pulled up alongside on a pair of flying motorcycles; I think
all vehicles in the shadow could fly.  Or so it seemed.  "Hey, wanna
race?"  Kei shouted.

        "No thanks," Bill said.

         "CHICKEN!"  Kei shouted.  "A real man would do it in a second."  I
know I would have.  

         It's a bad sign, I've learned, when someone from the Otakuverse's
glasses fog up.  His did.  Mary Anne shouted at Kei, "He's five times the
man that Ultrastoner is!"

         "You wanna see a real man?"  Bill cackled.  This wasn't normal
behavior for him.  

         Ukyou said, "Don't let them taunt you into this!"

         Usagi said, "Mamo-chan, do something!"

        "Show them who's boss!"  Mamoru shouted.  Usagi hit him.

        Yuri grinned.  "Last one to camp gets to eat Kei's cooking."

        "HEY!"

        And we were off, three streaks of metal approaching Mach 4 at an
elevation of about ten feet of the ground.  On a twisty, bendy road through
a forest of trees, all alike.  At first, I thought it was cool, and only
Usagi was protesting.  Ukyou would have protested, but she fell back a row
of seats onto Mamoru and they both passed out in the first two seconds;
she hadn't been wearing her seat belt.  Neither had I, but I braced myself
better.

        Kei took the lead for the first two minutes, then Yuri pulled
ahead.  But when she turned back to stick her tongue out at Kei, she
nearly slammed into a tree; falling back, she was passed by Bill, who
slammed in a Rush tape and turned the volume up to about twenty on a scale
of ten.  I could feel the sound reshaping my body into a pancake.  It was
great.  

        Usagi was trying to shout something at me, but all I could tell was
that it would have been loud if I could have heard it over Rush.  It
probably wasn't important anyway; sure she looked panicked, but Usagi
panics if she breaks a nail.  I yelled at Bill, "FASTER!"

       He got confused and turned the stereo up.  My hair nearly blew off. 
Unfortunately, it's not wise to take your hand off the wheel at Mach Four. 
We swerved right as he leaned over, cutting across Kei and Yuri's path and
heading right into the trees.  Mary Anne turned the headlights up to
'Lethal Brightness', and they cut most of the timber out of the way as
Bill tried to get control of the vehicle.  Hopefully, the owner of the lot
had been planning to clear cut it.  If not, well, at least he could sell
the neatly cut timber. 


         We ended up having to eat Kei's cooking, and as a result, most of
my memories of the rest of the day consisted of alternating bouts of
nausea and being hit in the head by the ladies.

*************

         I woke up in my tent with Ukyou, both of us zipped tightly into a
sleeping bag; I wasn't sure how I got there.  We hadn't had too many quiet
moments of late, especially after Kei and Ultrastoner had a fight and they
ended up having a mech duel in MY room.  While Ukyou and I had been
trying to...well, you know.  Anyway, I suddenly wanted her rather
intensely, especially after I started hearing moaning coming from Usagi's
tent.  While it was possible she simply was dreaming about food...anyway,
I digress.  

       With a little effort, I managed to wake up Ukyou, who smiled at me. 
"I take it this is our cue?"

       I laughed.  "Is reading minds one of your senshi powers?"

      "I know that look.  Although usually, you just pulled my face down
into your bosom shortly afterwards," she said, wiggling her eyebrows at
me, which made laugh.  And made me think.  Sometimes I just have these
epiphanies; I think everyone does.  In this case, I suddenly realized that
while I'd married to her for three years and we'd had...well, lots of sex,
we'd both been women.  Now, we usually had sex with me as a man and her as
a woman (although we'd done it twice both as women in the bathroom since
arriving in this Shadow).  And this didn't phase her at all.  It had just
sort of happened, naturally, without me even thinking about it.  

         "Ucchan, can I..um..."  I wanted to ask, but I was afraid to.

         She poked my bellybutton.  "I won't put on a clown costume."

         "..."

         Ukyou giggled, her hair shaking in the dim light filtering through
the side of the tent.  I looked at it and suddenly realized she was
getting red streaks in it.  At this rate, she'd have completely red hair
by the time we left.  I hadn't even noticed.  "You want me to check to see
if anyone is likely to interrupt us?"

          Not what I was thinking, but a good idea.  "I'll look."  

         I got halfway to the tent door when Rei Hino stuck her head in. 
"Get up sleepyheads.  Breakfast is ready."  She saw me and Ukyou and
blushed.  "Umm...come as soon as you're ready."

         So much for quiet moments.       

***********

        We were going to have a men vs. women baseball game, but then
everyone started arguing over which team I should be on.  We ended up
instead doing a nature scavenger hunt, drawing names out of a hat to see
who ended up with who.  Rei was paired up with Ultrastoner.  Bill ended up
with Hippogriff.  Mary Anne and Ukyou were a team.  Kei and Mamoru, Yuri
and J. D., Misato and Ryo, Ami and Kaori, and myself and Usagi made up
the remaining squads.  Usagi and I took off into the woods, hunting the ten
items, such as mushrooms and dead branches of a fir tree which made up
the list.  It was cool, but not cold, pleasant weather for walking through
the woods.  It brought back old times when Mom had taken me and Kunou and
Usagi for a training trip.  We used to have great fun, even with me and
Kunou squabbling.  I remember the time Kunou and I climbed a mountain
and took a ride on the back of a giant Eagle and Mom had to chase us fifty
miles across the mountain range.  I had a really happy childhood until Mom
got killed and...I don't want to talk about that right now.

        Anyway, Mom liked to do this game; she'd team up with one of us and
send the other two to team up.  Usagi was the most fun to do it with
because she just delighted in everything she found, although she usually
fell into any river we could find and cried a lot.  But I was little, so I
still cried all the time too.

        We found our first thing, a hollow log, fairly quickly; I hefted it
over one shadow and carried it; it wasn't too big, although it was kinda
unwieldy.  "I hope Ryo doesn't cheat and manipulate the Shadow to find
everything," I said.  Ryo usually doesn't cheat, but sometimes...he can be
pretty wretched that way.

       "He'd only cheat if it got him into someone's bed," Usagi said,
laughing.  "He tried to get Rei into his bed," she said, then mimed a
hammer descending.  "It half worked.  She did sleep in his tent, but he
slept up in a tree with Kaori sleeping at the base of it."

       I blinked.  "She actually likes him?"  I'd gotten the impression she
had a bit of a crush on Mamoru, and I'd seen her looking at Bill and
Hippogriff assessingly at times, but not ever at Ryo.

       "No, but she was tired and he sent her to the wrong tent."  Usagi
picked up a sparkling rock, mostly grey but with shining flecks in it.
She held it, rotating it to catch the light.  "You slept through her
beating him up, I think.  She likes someone else, anyway."

        "Anyone I know?"  I got down on my knees and looked at some little
white flowers, trying to remember what they were and if they were something
we were looking for.  "What are these things?"

       "Flowers.  Mamo-chan would know, but I only know a few kinds by
name.  But they're pretty.  I think they're gonna freeze to death if they
get much colder."

       I nodded.  I plucked two and threaded one into each of the big hair
knobs on her head.  "You can ask him when we get back." 

       She laughed, then reached up to touch one of them.  "Going to make a
wreath for my hair?"

       I spotted a tree covered with ivy.  A few good yanks and I had
several feet worth of ivy, and with a little wrapping and tying, Usagi now
had an ivy crown.  "I'm pretty sure this isn't poison ivy.  So about
Rei.."

       "I think she has a crush on you," Usagi said, looking around. 
"Hmm...what to crown you with."

       "On me?  What makes you think that?"

       "She was mumbling, 'do me, Ranma, do me now' in her sleep."  Usagi's
voice was utterly serious as she looked around.

       I nearly dropped my log.  "WHAT?"

       Usagi began to giggle, and then to laugh, and finally to fall down
cackling.  "I had you going!"

 
         I frowned.  "Usagi!!!!"

         She got back up.  "I think she does like you, but she'd never
admit it.  Especially because you're married.  It's the same with her and
Mamoru.  They went out for a while, but then I met them and she had a
vision that he was destined to be with me and she...just got out of the
way."

        I stared at Usagi.  "You stole her boyfriend?"  It wasn't like
Usagi.

        She shook her head.  "Mamoru and I started out like you and Akane. 
At least from what you told me of her."  She sighed.  "Since she died
before I could meet her."

        "So you two fought all the time?"

        "Like wild stallions.  He and Rei never fought, but...she loved
him, but really, he just kind of liked her.  I guess sometimes, when you
love each other, you fight like maniacs."

        I sat down on another fallen log, putting down my own log.  "Yeah,
that was me and Akane.  We'd fight like idiots over everything important
and stupid stuff too.  But we loved each other, even through the fighting.
And when I needed it, she gave me all the love I needed to keep me sane."

        Usagi sat down by me, leaning back against what was left of another
damaged tree.  "This is your third marriage, right?"  Her voice was a
little tense.  I couldn't blame her.

        "Yep.  Sixth for you, right?"

        "Yeah.  And the longest.  Mamo-chan will be able to go the
distance, unlike the others."

       Most of her past husbands had died on her of old age.  She had a
knack for finding faithful men, though, and she had stuck by them all,
even when they were old and doddering.  Usagi is as good a wife as a man
could hope for.  "He's from a shadow with a long lifespan?"

       "He's connected to the Senshi Force, you see.  It provides a long
lifespan.  So Ukyou will live a long time."  She smiled at me.  "Big Sister
is watching out for you."

        That made me VERY happy.  I had a lot of other worries, but one
less in the world.  "How did you connect a guy to the Senshi Force?"

        "It wasn't easy.  But Setsuna helped me tinker with the Hottub of
Power, and now I can use it on men, although there's one condition."  She
blushed.

        "They have to have mad passionate sex with you in the Hottub?"

        She blushed.  "More or less."

        Making Usagi blush is fun.  "So when are you going to initiate me? 
I assume it isn't retroactive?"


         She turned beet red.  "We're both married now!   Ukyou and Mamo-
chan would get mad.  Although I suppose we could invite them..."  She was
starting to ramble.

         Now I was embarrassed.  "I was joking."

         "Oh..."  She stared at the ground.  "I've missed you, Ranma."

         "I've missed you too, Usagi."  Since getting my memories back.  I
hadn't missed her at all while I was an amnesiac, but this wasn't the time
to mention it.  "We'd best get to searching before the others find
everything."

        Usagi got up, tripped on a root, and slid partway down a nearby
slope, catching herself by grabbing a branch.  "Hey, mushrooms!"  We'd
just found our next thing; Usagi's whole life is like that sometimes, I
think.  She has the luckiest serendipitous accidents.  Her and Kasumi.  

       Something exploded in the distance.  Probably the Danger Twins, I
was sure.  "You think we need to investigate?"

       "Only if there's another explosion," she said, scooping up some
'shrooms.  "I...While you were gone, I got lonely at one point and I...did
you ever try finding a shadow of our mother?"

        "No," I lied.  "She wouldn't have been the real thing."  She
wasn't, but she did comfort me when I was really down.  She never knew I
wasn't her real son; I wonder sometimes what he was like.  The Shadow
Nodoka lived in a shadow where Pop had only ever been married to Galaxia
and Beryl, and then her, so over half my siblings didn't exist.  She'd
evaded being murdered because my father had shown up at the last moment
and saved her.  I had to run away when I found that out; the thought that
there were better versions of my father and I'd gotten stuck with the
stupid, lazy one, was just too much.

          "I know.  I was just desperate.  Dad had vanished into Shadow and
you were missing and Kasumi was hiding somewhere and...I needed
someone to talk to.  So I hellrode to her.  I couldn't even take the time
to go slowly and carefully through Shadow.  She...it was just like when
she died, Ranma."  Usagi's voice was tensing up as she clambered back up
the slope to me.  "I hadn't planned it that way.  I got there just as the
monsters showed up.  And I killed them all.  You know I don't fight like
that, but I killed them.  Even the one that begged me for mercy."  She
shook now, and I put my log down again and hugged her.  "Later on, I had
to get rid of the magic sword I was using at the time.  I couldn't stand
to look at it; it was accusing me.  It was just...The ones who were trying
to hurt her, but the one that asked for mercy...and I couldn't give it.
Not when it had tried to kill Mother.  I just..."   She was starting to
cry, and I patted her futilely, not sure what to do.

        "It's the only time I ever did that.  And then, I saw me.  And you.
Our younger selves.  And Kunou too.  Kunou thought I was a monster too
and tried to defend Mom from me.  And so did you.  And my younger
self...she hid behind Mom and cried."  Usagi was shaking now; most of us
wouldn't get so worked up, even over a horrible memory, but I think Usagi
relives every story she tells.  "Mom understood.  And that was the worst
part.  I...I swore an oath I'd never do that again.  That I would always
grant mercy, even to my worst enemies, if they asked it."  She had buried
her face in my shoulder and upper chest.  "Promise me...you won't kill
Kunou."

         "I ain't gonna kill Kunou."

        "He's still our brother.  He needs a spanking, not a..."

          "I want him to see me be King.  I'll make him court jester."

         A twig snapped, and I heard footsteps moving away.  Someone had
been watching us.  I stared, but I couldn't spot them; probably just some
of the others had stumbled on us, but..."Usagi, someone's out there."

         "One of them was either Ukyou or Rei.  I could feel the Senshi
Force."

         "Or Mamoru, then."

         "He's so stealthy, he can hide his own power.  He once hid among a
group of mannequins.  I'll tell you that story some time."  She stepped
away from me.  "I guess we ought to get back to our hunting."

         "Yeah."  I couldn't sense the Senshi Force, but I could sense an
imminent beating.  Undeserved, of course.

*******************

       Somewhat later, we managed to find a squirrel.  I started shimmying
up the tree, letting Usagi carry the log.  How I was gonna get a nut from
it, I didn't know, but I was sure I could do a better job than most of our
compatriots.  

       Right as I was about to leap up a few branches and use a special
squirrel-disarming technique I learned from a mongoose a long time ago, I
got a prickly feeling on the back of my neck; I could feel my neck hairs
standing up.  It's not a fun feeling.

       "MOON PRISM POWER!"  Usagi shouted.  She must have sensed it
faster than me.  My own danger sense is unreliable, in fact incredibly
irregular, and usually comes too late to do any good.

       Like this time, for example.  As I turned to look, half the tree
caught fire.  I grabbed the squirrel and jumped.  It bit me, no doubt
assuming I was out to eat it.  

       A bishonen with short blond hair and ice grey eyes was floating in
the air about fifty or sixty feet away from me, wearing a dark grey
uniform with yellow trim: slacks, a wrap around buttoned jacket, and white
gloves.  He raised his hand to hurl more flames, but Usagi was airborne,
doing one of her flying kicks, which sent him toppling back, bouncing off
of trees.  

        "Attacking people trying to gather innocent items in the forest
just isn't right!  All we wanted was to win a scavenger hunt!"  I don't
know where Usagi picked up her speechmaking tendencies.  Although Pop does
rant sometimes.  "I will not forgive you!  I am Princess Usagi of the one
true city, and in the name of Anime, I will PUNISH YOU!"  She raised her
heart-mace high over her head, while I put down the squirrel and moved to
be ready to attack once she was done; I didn't want to leap in front of
one of her attacks.

        I could hear people running in the distance; we'd attracted some
attention.  Which was a good thing, because our opponent called for
reinforcements.  "Come, demons of fire!" he shouted, and about fifteen
pillars of flame erupted from nothing in the sky, forming themselves into
roughly humanoid winged forms.  I hurled a handy log at one as a test and
the log went right through it, but caught fire and burned up.  I couldn't
fight something like that, not without my magic sword, which I resolved to
go find immediately.  I would have gone earlier, but I had been to busy to
take the time; it could take months to find it.  

        Usagi blasted the leader with her mace, and he simply fled, leaving
us to fight fifteen fire demons.  Soon, the entire forest was starting to
blaze, as I ran desperately, dodging flame blasts.  Usagi was beating them
to death, one at a time, but too slowly to do me much good.

        As I jumped from tree to tree, I pushed through some thick
branches, and found myself face to face with Usagi's husband, Mamoru.
He'd gotten a tuxedo and a mask somewhere (leave it to one of Usagi's
husbands to take a tuxedo on a camping trip).  He pulled out a rose and
said, "Get behind me."

       "I think it's 'Say it with Roses', not 'Slay it with Roses',
Mamoru," I said.

       He started.  Apparently I wasn't supposed to recognize him or
something, but I mean...who else could it have been?  I got behind him
anyway.

        Then he hurled the rose at the onrushing fire demon.  The rose
stuck in its throat and it died.  I stared in shock, then grabbed Mamoru
and jumped when its remains hit the tree we were in, setting it on fire.

        More people were showing up.  Kei and Yuri had fire extinguishers,
and if the whole forest hadn't been starting to catch, that probably would
have been enough.  As it was, most of their effort had to go to keeping us
all alive.  Ukyou went to town on the fire demons with her spatula, and
Rei was able to ward them off, although her fire powers were, to say the
least, not much help.  Finally, Ami and Kaori arrived.  Kaori couldn't do
much.  Ami's water powers, on the other hand, were no fun at all for the
fire demons.  Soon, she put out the forest fire and doused all the demons.

        "Wow, I actually beat the monsters this time!"  Ami said
afterwards.

        Usagi hugged her.  "You saved the day, Ami-chan!"

        She spent the rest of the day looking happier than usual.  

*************

        We were all a bit more paranoid after that; the Danger Twins were
going around in full battle harness, and had converted their motorcycles to
mech mode.  I went to talk to Ryo.  "I'm thinking I should go find my magic
sword."

        "We don't have time.  And Usagi and her crew can handle the mystic
threats.  Do you even have any idea where you left that thing?"

         "I think I used it in the last battle with the Musk Dynasty."

         "Well, the odds are that it didn't go back to the anvil to wait
for you, so it could be anywhere."

         Nervously, I nodded. 

         "We don't have time.  We need to build this army as fast as we can
before Kunou finds us.  We probably shouldn't even be taking this camping
trip, but we needed the rest, and I wasn't going to be able to get Misato
into the sack any other way."  He grinned again, and I looked around.  It
didn't look like Kaori had heard him, but perhaps she would kill him
later.

         "You know, if Queen Misato ever finds out..."

         "She won't."

         In my bones, I knew someone was gonna get a beating.  Ideally, not
me.

*************

         I wandered off by myself to stare at the stars.  Ukyou was trading
cooking secrets with Kaori and Mary Anne.  Or maybe war stories of
relationships.  Likely both.  The stars were familiar and unfamiliar.  I
could see some of Anime's constellations like 'The Mallet', 'Orion', and
'The Giant Wombat', but others simply couldn't be found.  It was 
beautiful, though.

         Hearing footsteps, I spun warily, but it was only Rei.  She
laughed faintly.  "I'm not here to unleash fire demons."

         "What's up?"  I asked.

         "I think that was it."

         "Mrr?"

         She came over, standing near me.  "Whatever is threatening
everything...that was it."

         "What, that guy..?"

         "Sent by whatever is behind whatever to kill you."

         "But why me?"

         She looked up at the stars instead of me.  "Who knows.  Maybe they
don't like you.  Maybe they think you may stop them somehow."

          "How?"

         She shook her head.  "I have no clue.  Maybe you're destined to
stop them and they know that.  The future is not set in stone; it's a
dance of ever changing flames, a series of forking roads, a..."

       
         "Usagi thinks you have a crush on me."  I can be blunt sometimes. 
Usually, it's a dumb idea, but I thought it was better to get this out in
the open.  

         Rei froze up like someone poured cold ice on her.  "WHAT?"

         "So it's not true?"

         "NO!" she shouted.  I was suprised the entire camp didn't come
running after that shout.  She blushed and turned her back to me, staring
out into the woods.  "What gave her that crazy idea?"

         "Don't ask me," I said.  "I just wanted to make sure it wasn't
true."

         "It's NOT," she said emphatically, then turned and stared at me
suspiciously.  "And what about you and Usagi?"

         "There ain't nothing going on!  I'm married, ya know!"

         Rei stomped over to me, poking my chest.  "The way you two carry
on..."

        "I ain't never had no secret love afair in my life!"  I shouted. 
"If I was sleeping with Usagi, everyone would know it!  That's as crazy as
me asking if you were sleeping with Usagi."

       She turned beet red.  "I...I..."

        "We're both married, and we're both happy with it, and there ain't
gonna be nothing happening that don't happen between any brother and
sister!"  My grammar was getting worse; the madder I get, the more I sound
like some two-bit punk kid.  I used to swear like a sail...like a soldier,
but I've cut most of that.  

        "Yeah, she's happily married," Rei said quietly, then stared at me.
"Do you believe in destiny, Ranma?"

        "I think it doesn't matter if it exists.  Either something is
destined, and you have no choice, or it ain't destined, and you do have a
choice.  But either way, you just do what you do and what's gonna happen,
happens.  I'd rather not know my destiny if it exists.  But if I did, I'd
ignore it.  Why, you have another vision?"

        "Sometimes I see things that will happen, and other times, I see
only possibilities.  But the things that must happen...no matter what I
do, it seems like they can't be changed."  She turned from me to stare up
at the stars.

       "Is something bad going to happen?"

       "Good for me, bad for others.  What I want, but not what I should." 
She frowned.  "But I can't see how it could come true."

       "I dunno.  I still ain't met the red haired girl, so who knows."

       She blinked.  "The what?"

         
        "A vision in Laputa.  She looked like she was some kinda girlfriend
or wife or something, but I ain't never met her.  Girlfriend of mine, that
is.  A little taller than you, with kinda red/brown hair, and big blue
eyes and a kinda sneaky look."  I shrugged.  "The future will take care of
itself."

         "We make the future.  It never just takes care of itself."  She
turned again, and stared at me, like she was looking for something in my
face.  "So now what?"

        I blinked.  "Uh...I was gonna do some more star gazing, then go see
if Ukyou wanted to go take a swim."  I grinned a little.  "Have a little
fun."

        Her eyes glinted, making me nervous.  "We'll see who has more fun,"
she said, then walked away, leaving me to wonder what THAT meant.

        While I was never really sure, when everyone showed up in the
middle of my 'swimming session' with Ukyou, I was fairly sure I could
guess the answer to that.  Usagi turned redder than her swimsuit.

************

    Eventually, we finally got my hardsuit to work.  Once I repainted the
lunchbox to be a Star Wars lunchbox, I was quite pleased with it.  Doozers
do good work, once you clearly explain what you want.  No one had
bothered to tell them what a hardsuit was at first; that had been the main
problem.   They got plans which didn't SEEM to be for a building, which
is what they usually build, so they just...modified the plans we sent
them.

    We spent a good six months in Worseter Park, and another three in
space around the planet it stood on, doing manuevers and practicing
enough to be ready for the attack.  It was a long time, but organzing an
army is slow.  Six starships worth of crazed Otaku with battlesuits and
mechs.  Would it be enough?  I was pretty sure it would be.  None of
Anime's enemies had ever launched an attack this technologically
advanced.  Goto had four mechs, the Patlabor police squad, but that was
about it.  We were going to kick some low tech butt.

    The transforming button was hidden down in the sub-basement of the
Computer Science building, of course.  Ryo ceremonially pressed it, then
we sat back to watch NITWIT tranform into WIFF-1 (Worseter
Interdimensional Fighting Fortress-1.  I think Ultrastoner named it.)

    The transformation went through without a hitch as the entire
university wrenched loose from the ground, buildings shifting around
tossing trees, flowers, and grass everywhere, as the entire campus
formed itself into a giant humanoid figure.  It hadn't gone so well the
first few times; the first experimental launch had turned the campus
into a giant stone, concrete, and glass bagel.  During the first space
combat test, the Wave Motion Gun had ended up INSIDE the ship, and
when fired had cut the ship in half.  And every time it transformed, it
made a really annoying sound effect.  But it worked, and that was enough. 
Once it jumped up into space (yes, physically jumped), it reconfigured
into its space traveling mode, a giant eighteen wheeler.  The computer
science building formed the top of the cab.  We headed up the stairs to
the main computer lab, which was now the bridge.

    From there, I headed with Ukyou to the transporter room.  Ryo would
command three of our ships, and I would command the other three.  He
commaned the WIFF-1, the RSDT-1 (Really Super Dimensional Tree-1--It
had been an agricultural college originally), and the ROTC-1 (It had been a
military    academy, I think).  I had the TASS-1, the OR-1, and my
flagship, the GSWOFF-1 (Giant Space Wombat of Fear and Flame-1.  I did NOT
name it that.  Some crazy guy from Texas was responsible.)  It looked
silly, but it was a tough ship.  It's 'humanoid' form looked like a giant
space pirate, but it couldn't move at full speed like that, or I w