Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Gold Digger Fan Fiction ❯ Golden Oportunity ❯ Chapter 06 ( Chapter 6 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Notes - Here's the new chapter I promised everybody, it's a bit late but I had to expand it more than I realized and it took just a tad longer. It came out a lot better than I expected and allowed me to take care of another loose end. Let me know what you think, its a bit long like most to the chapters for this story so take your time and enjoy ^_^

If you should happen to spot any glaring mistakes that I missed let me know and I'll get them fixed.

Thanks

http://home.talkcity.com/BookmarkBlvd/crose 9/

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Golden Opportunity
Chapter 06
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2002
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The sun had just gone down over the Amazon village when Gina crawled out from an access tunnel that led back behind the power plant where she had been installing some of the special equipment. Her friend Penny had just finished installing the finishing touches to the building while she tightened the last bolt and inserted the last chip of a computer that would monitor the station's power use and efficiency over the next few months, sending the information back to her larger system back in Atlanta after bouncing off a couple of satellites Penny had in orbit for various uses. She was pleased with the way things had been working out lately, getting things finished off a few days before schedule was always a treat as well, especially when the locals were starting to give hints that they had over stayed their welcome.

Gina wasn't to worried about that though, she knew that the Amazons wouldn't run them off when they had asked for the Plant to be built in the first place. She had been taking steps to be careful though, just to make sure they didn't push the Amazons to far. These woman had to be some of the strangest groups she had ever met, everything about their culture was used to contradict the basic freedoms that most took for granted and used against anyone that rubbed them the wrong way. She was just glad that she had been smart enough to get Ryan, Ranma, and Ace out of the valley before they got themselves into trouble. That hadn't stopped one problem though, her sister Brianna was starting to get on people's nerves.

Doing something about it though was almost impossible, Brianna had a mind of her own and liked to 'play' around a little. The singing Peebo's had been a hilarious sight, but when the song they were singing was from Nine Inch Nails and they were timing their detonations for every tenth back beat it gave a new meaning to the songs she used. For all of Brianna's eccentric ways, she was very good at what she did and knew how to set these things up perfectly. Now that things were almost finished she knew it was only a matter of time before something weird happened. She looked outside and saw he sister as she did some finishing touches on the walls of the building. Gina just hoped they could avoid that little problem they had to fix a few days before, she really shouldn't have given Brianna that much free reign to what she wanted with the Plant's over all look.

Outside, Brianna was working with a paint brush to give the outside walls of the plant a natural look with the help of a few dozen of her Peebos. She didn't seem to be quite happy with what she was doing, but that was after Gina had chewed her out for painting the whole place camouflage green, brown, and black to let it blend in with it's background. This was complete with camouflage netting and a couple of hidden access doors at either side of the water fall so that there a couple of hidden back doors could be used in an emergency. Brianna had thought it was a great idea considering that the Amazons were at war almost constantly with the other people in the small valley.

It seemed that this power plant was supposed to have limited use to several of the local villages and keeping it a secret had never been a part of the plan. Some of the elders had gotten a good laugh at what Brianna had pulled off, but a little 'push' from Gina and she had taken the whole thing down. Complaining about how much of a waste it was to do so, and had the whole place repainted in a natural stone like covering, using shadows to give the flat walls a more natural look while not making the whole place just disappear from sight. She had several of her Peebos were out working on the grounds, clipping grass, edging thing along the side walk, pulling weeds, and chasing off small animals that thought they could just leave smelly pieces of themselves all over the place without a care.

Not while she was around, no sir.

"That's much better Brianna, though I still think simple light green would've been sufficient." Gina said as she stepped outside to see how things were going.

"It still needs something."

"Like what? It looks like you carved the whole thing out of the side fo the hill right now."

Brianna started pacing back and forth, looking the building over with a critical eye of a professional. Then stopped and smirked as she grabbed up some paint and wandered over to the edge of the building and...signed it with a flourish! She giggled as she dotted the 'i' in her name and painted some little hearts around it for better effect, some of her Peebo's stopped to 'Ooh' and 'Ahh' her handy work. Gina just sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, and shook her head. She got a headache whenever she had to leave something like this up to her sister. It always turned out weird if she didn't keep an eye on her every step of the way, and boy had she been to busy to do just that.

"That's great Brianna." Gina said with another sigh.

She grinned happily. "Isn't it?!" She squealed and bounced around a bit.

"Right, anyway, were all done so we need to start this thing up."

Brianna stopped bouncing around and landed by the door. "You're all done?"

"Yep, we just need to turn it onaAAhaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!" Gina said and screamed as Cologne tapped her in back.

"Excellent! I was wondering just how long this would take." The old woman said with a smirk as Gina finished having a panic attack and glared at her.

"Why did you do that?"

Cologne grinned and started hopping to the front entrance, giving all the Peebo's a strange look. "Just getting your attention dear, now let's see this monstrosity in action."

"Good one granny!" Brianna said with a smirk of her own, she stuck her tongue out at Gina.

Gina ignored her sister as she followed the old woman into the building, Penny was already giving her the tour when she caught up. Leading them all through the various rooms and out side to the platform that overlooked the edge of the water fall that had a large wheel set up to be lowered into the water. Once it started turning it would provide enough power to power most of the village. Cologne was impressed, she hadn't expected them to build anything that was so simple that anyone in the village could operate it easily. Well so long as they could read the little tag below each of the buttons, otherwise when the machine got going the whole thing would be self sufficient. Requiring only a bit of maintenance every now and then.

"I thought this thing would be more complicated."

"I thought about giving you something a lot more complicated, but decided that the easier it was to understand, the better. Once the wheel starts to turn everything inside will be powered and you can expand from there, there are several books we're leaving with you that can be used to set things up however you want."

Looking down from the over look of the giant wheel and the river below them, Cologne could see a series of cables holding the wheel in place, the cables led up to one tied to the edge of the platform they were all standing on. She gave the knot a tap when Penny said she could and watched as the wheel slowly lowered itself into the water and slowly started spinning, at first things stayed dark, but after a little while she started to see that the lights around them started flickering on and off. Cologne had never seen moving Christmas lights before, but Gina and Penny had and they tried to hit Brianna across the back of her head when she giggled happily, but she ducked and ran off before they could catch her.

"Brianna you get back here and take those down!" Gina yelled.

Penny just groaned.

"Sorry about that Elder, she gets bored and things like this happen." Gina said, glaring in the direction her sister had run off in.

Cologne just cackled, enjoying the lights as they made several passes around the roof of the building, to the ground, down around the landing area where that helicopter hat been dropping off materials for the last few weeks and back around to the building for another pass. She didn't mind and it was kind of a celebration, these outsiders would be out of her hair by noon tomorrow when their ride showed up one final time so she could afford to be patient and it wasn't like she had any problems with them, something like this should have taken much longer to build so this was working out great from every turn.

"That's okay, it looks like you did an excellent job. Were there any major problems that you had to deal with?"

"Naw, the biggest thing that happened was that I lost one of my Robots."

Cologne had heard about that from some of the girls watching the construction, but hadn't thought much of it at the time. "Oh?"

"I'm still not sure what happened, but something turned poor #42 into a pile of scrap. I wasn't even able to salvage his main computer, his whole body was crushed beyond repair. It might have been an animal, but it was to far gone to really tell."

"What could do such a thing?" Cologne asked.

"I have no idea, some kind of large cat or a bear, I've had the rest of the bots on a high level of alert ever since, but there is only so much they can do." Gina said carefully, she had received a warning from one of the others about a large man with a weapon, but so far no evidence has come up to support it.

Those robots fascinated Cologne, she had never encountered anything like them in her 300 years of life. They were like human beings in shape only, they had no aura to speak up and yet they could hold a conversation as easily as she could. These girls were one strange contradiction after another, if this one could create life like robots, what could the others do when they put their minds to something? The other sister was just plain dangerous, tossing about explosives like they were pieces of candy the couldn't hurt anybody. Yet she had taken great delight in leveling one of the more treacherous parts of the stream just blow the overlook she was standing upon, Cologne still remembered the girl's laughter as the set off the blasts.

The only thing that had kept Lo Sion and her followers from going completely ballistic when she did this was because Brianna had saved those little girls from the Musk, the Elders were more than happy to give the girl credit and leeway to do what she wanted. Cologne understood outsiders a bit better than those that had spent their lives in the village and realized that Brianna may have seemed to be a bit erratic, but she took steps to make sure no one would be hurt in one of her schemes. Even if those steps were a little weird at time and her little robots were as interesting as those human like robots that were wandering around.

Half the girls in the village started to avoided her when she leveled several acres of land in less than a second by pressing a button, some of them had never seen anything like it before. Yet this same girl had been the one that saved those younglings from being captured from the musk with one of her robots, those things had so much potential, but to make them required far more technology than she wanted in the village at this time, they had to take this slowly. Some of the other elders were complaining about this project ruining their chances of survival for more than a few generations. Cologne had been forced to yell at more than one of the Elders to make sure this project happened and they still refused to believe that their culture was on the verge of extinction. This was but the first step they would need to make sure they would survive another two or three thousand years, they had to adapt with the times or suffer like the Phoenix were.

"Excellent work Miss. Diggers, the robots at the village are almost done as well. Just how long until you are completely finished?"

Gina gave it a few seconds of thought. "I'd say some time today, all that's left is final checks to make sure everything is running like it should."

Cologne nodded as she started to hop off. "I'm looking forward to seeing this place up and running at full power tomorrow."

"We'll be ready, Elder." Gina called out.

Penny was yawning a little as she walked out of the building, they had been up since just before sunrise making sure everything was ready without the power on. Low power tests from a couple of generators had shown that everything was in perfect working order, but the Elders didn't need to know about them. With everything running they had to make sure the lines could handle the power load comfortably. She was talking on one of the portable phones that Gina had designed for keeping in contact with her sisters when they were off planet or in a different dimension like Jade or the Undead Realm. They didn't work all that great, but good enough for a few minutes contact before things started to degrade the signal. Penny handed her the phone with a grin. "It's your mother."

"Thanks Penny." Gina said as she took the phone. "Hello?"

"Gina."

"Hi Mom!"

"I was just calling to let you know that we will be returning tomorrow."

"You've been there for about a month now, are you finished already?"

"Yep, there isn't anything left to do now that Ranma has mastered his problem."

"Were there any complications?"

"We had a run in with one of the local criminals, that one I owe a beating, Hanza."

"What did you do to her?" Gina gasped.

"Not a thing, Ranma got to her before I could get there."

"He won?"

"Not really, he had her beat until she started to use magic against him and that was the end of that."

Gina could hear the amusement in her mom's voice. "Well at least he survived."

"True, the Edge Guard showed up."

"Cool!!"

"Yeah, Sheila has taken quite a liking to Ranma too."

"That's great, he's much better for her than that playboy Tirga that she likes."

"Maybe, he still has that clueless streak and it's confusing the heck out of her. She pouts every time he does something she doesn't expect...crap, the charge says this things is about to cut off."

"Alright, see you tomorrow mom."

"Bye...bzzzzzzzz." The phone buzzed as one end lost contact and Gina tapped the off button., she handed it back to Penny. "Look like everybody will be back tomorrow morning sometime."

"Oh? Did they say anything about Charlotte?"

Gina blinked and adjusted her glasses. "Nope, I forgot to ask, but from the sounds of thing they didn't have very many problems."

"That's good, those Phoenix were giving me the creeps."

Gina shrugged. "You never know, they might have been a good influence on her."

"No way, all they talked about was how bad humans were and how they didn't like our kind, I didn't want Charlotte to be like that. I've spent to much time getting her to show a little back bone when she fights, turning her into a someone like them just wouldn't work." Penny said with a shake of her head as they started to walk back into the building.

For the most part Gina agreed with Penny, but she recalled the guards that the Kiima girl had brought with her that one time. Those guys had been Yummy looking, to bad they had refused to even notice her when she walked by them in her favorite adventuring outfit that showed off her body. That had been just after Ryan left though, a couple days after Ranma had defeated him with that fight. He hadn't stopped complaining either, it had been really irritating to listen to as well. Luckily Ace had stopped by and she had a chance to get rid of him for a few days. That and she had noticed several of the Amazons giving him this look she had learned to recognize.

It was a lot better that he wasn't around anymore.

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Cold emotionless eyes watched the as Gina and Penny finished their latest project and he wondered if there was some way he could take his revenge on them in a way that would bring pain to his true enemy. He moved through the trees and bushes as slowly as he could to keep from being noticed, several encounters with the locals had brought him nothing but irritation. They couldn't stop him anymore, but he had learned pretty quick that defeating them was a 'bad' idea. He knew Chinese so understanding them talking about being defeated in combat, just to find a husband, had sent chills down his spine.

Daishi sighed as he eyed Gina Diggers once more, she and her friends had humiliated him more than once over the last few years, especially her sister Britanny Diggers, and he'd been looking for a way to pay her back for some time now. Honor demanded that he strive to defeat only those who could fight back and Cheetah fit that bill to a tee, but he'd been forced to add Ranma to that list during their last meeting. His defeat at Ranma's hands had been as bad if not worse than anything the werecheetah had ever done to him. The last three weeks had been one nasty surprise after another for Daishi, swatted across his battle ground like a some kind of deformed baseball and landing in that spring had been a blow to his pride. He had been so close to winning that he thought he had the boy completely beat when it happened. The only reason he wasn't insane with rage was that he'd landed in a spring with the most amazing properties.

It had been nothing but a small pool of mud, nearly dried out from too much sun and not enough access to the waters that fed the all the small springs in the valley, even the guide's map hadn't detailed it when he was collecting samples for Lord Talon. He had been changed by it though, his protective suit damaged in the fight and left him vulnerable to the water. What he had changed into had nearly given him a heart attack, it was something out of the legends of his people, one of the myths given life once more, all that power given to him by one little dip in the mud. He'd spent his first week trying to learn how to control his new body and finding ways to use it to his advantage. Luckily he'd read several stories that related his new form and applied that knowledge with ease, this form plus the tinkering that Lord Talon had done to his body allowed him to become a juggernaut of destructive power.

Now as he watched the Diggers complete their project he had a feeling that Ranma would be returning sometime soon, the boy hadn't been around by the time he showed up, but knew that the Diggers wouldn't be leaving China without him. Watching them set up the place had been a real surprise as well, at first he was completely baffled, but the final addition of the large water wheel had been enough to figure out that they were setting up a primitive hydroelectric plant for the Amazons, though he didn't understand why exactly. Now that they were done, his time was running out, he felt that he had less than twenty four hours before things came to a head and his revenge would be at hand.

Daishi gazed at the old woman that was standing on the over look above the waterfall, she seemed to be laughing about something. The elders of this place gave him the creeps, even with his current form he didn't feel all that safe around them. He would have to make sure there weren't any in the area when he did attack, he'd seen them teaching the younger fighters several times and knew they were incredibly good fighters, no matter how ugly they were. He could feel their Ki permeating the very air around the village, they were like barely contained hurricanes of power and he didn't want to be anywhere near one if he had any choice in the matter. He'd ever met anyone with that kind of ability at their beck and call and the one he was watching was right at the top of the list of those to avoid.

He was strong, but even he knew his limits and had enough brains to know when he was out classed, no matter how much he wanted to dispute that idea he wasn't as stupid as some wanted to believe. With silent movements he used the shadows as he made his way deeper into the trees around the plant, he had already set some of his plans in motion a few days before by letting the Gina know that she wasn't as safe here as she seemed to think she was. Destroying that robot had been a lot of fun and given him a good idea of his new body's full strength, two blows and it had crumpled into a pile of scrap and he hadn't even hurt himself. He couldn't wait to do the same thing against Ranma and Britanny, he chuckled silently as he glanced at his larger than normal hands.

With this new power of his he was going to be one of the strongest fighters in the world and there wasn't a thing that could stop him once he got going. He moved out of the area and avoided the traps that Gina had set up to capture him, those robots of hers had no subtlety so he wasn't all that worried and even if one of them did catch him off guard they weren't strong enough to hurt him now that he was stronger than ever. His revenge was going to be more satisfying than anything he had ever accomplished and he couldn't wait to pull it off, they were all going to pay for this.

**********

The sun was just rising above the horizon as Ranma completed his morning workout, he had fine layer of sweat covering his body as he took a second to relax with a cool down Kata. For once he wasn't wearing his shirt, but his workout this morning had been harder than normal as he pushed himself to the limit and beyond and it would have been drenched in sweat if had kept it on. After going to sleep the night before he'd only gotten a few hours sleep before he woke up, completely rested and wide awake. He figured he'd only gotten only four hours sleep, if that much before he got up to keep from being bored. He had been out her for hours trying to push his body to its very limits so that he could get a few more hours sleep, unfortunately his Ki was so strong now that he would have to do this for hours before he came close to being that tired.

Ranma didn't really know if he liked that little fact or not, there were several things he had learned to enjoy over the years with his old man, eating and sleeping were at the top of hat list. Eventually he had given up, wandered outside he had stood beside the large magical torch that lit up the night around the front entrance to Brod's tower. To Ranma, it had been a long time since he stood in front of a large fire like this and he used it to relax after his work out was finished. He could still feel his Ki surging around inside him like an uncontrolled storm just waiting to be released, but he was getting better at keeping it under his power with every hour that went by. He figured it would take him several more weeks of hard training to get his Ki abilities under his complete control again, it was just to easy too access at the moment and he was worried he might hurt someone before he mastered it completely. Right now he was also happy that his old man wasn't around, about to sneak attack him at every opportunity that presented itself. He would most likely have killed the old fart completely by accident.

His walk though Brod's garden had been very helpful to him and allowed him to get his mind off all his problems of late, but that magical statue he had been subjected to had caused him to see things a little differently as well. He wouldn't have thought much of the experience if Sheila hadn't reacted in such a strange way. Julia had been right about the garden though, he needed a break from his problems and that walk had helped him quite a bit. He had spent to much time with his guard on full alert and to many years under his old man's training to completely relax. All he really needed to do was let his mind rest every now and then, to let his guard down just the tiniest bit and let himself relax with no thoughts intruding upon his mind, this was why he meditated once or twice a week. Meditation was the best way for him to do this and it kept the old man from sneak attacking him, but with his power surging like this it was made things very tricky to do lately since his Ki tried to surge out of control when he even tried to relax now.

Sitting down near the torch so that it's heat kept him warm in the early morning coolness, Ranma assumed a meditation position and calmed his mind as best he could now that he was somewhat exhausted. Though he could already feel his body returning to normal levels, he just didn't have the time to really push himself anymore without causing a problem. In this case he had just done a morning workout that would have put him down for most of the day just a few weeks before, but the cat fist made that nearly impossible now. He had so many things to think about now that he was done with that part of his training, something his old man would have frowned upon as well, it was a major change from the norm. His understanding of a particular ability had never really mattered to the old man, just as long as his skill was there and ready to be used whenever it was needed. No matter how many times he remembered his training under his old man and compared it to Julia's style, he always felt like the old man had cheated him of things he needed so that he could reach the skill level he needed to be the best and that took knowledge he had never been given.

The biggest change he had noticed was that he had learned how to think for himself instead of depending on the old man like he used to, though there were still instances where he made a mistake and reacted without thought. He recalled that Gina had also cured him of some damage to his brain some months ago down in her lab. This had given him a weird outlook on the world since, to him nothing big had changed about himself other than an old wound had been healed, but that didn't explain why he was more curious about things than he used to be. Where before he would have dismissed them without much thought and gone back to his mindless training, kind of like a well trained dog, he now sought out things that would increase his knowledge. Even now Master Julia had him working to think for himself in a fight, in their training she wouldn't show him a new move unless he could thing of a way to improve his mind as well and that meant reading books. Luckily Brod had quite a library available to chose from on all kinds of subjects.

He delved deeper into this mind with an ease that almost frightened him, but he kept it at bay. His mind was automatically interpreting things as pictures in his minds eye and they were perfectly clear and easy to tell apart. each of his emotions had a different color and seemed to be of a different size than the others. This reminded him of the conversation he'd had with Master Julia some weeks before when she explained that using emotions as a Ki focus tended to be dangerous. Making one emotion more powerful than the others and why he now used his will power instead, it made for much larger Ki reserves. He frowned a little when his senses told him that someone was approaching him, but before he could focus on it they called his name.

"Ranma?"

He opened his eyes and looked over to see Julia stepping outside, she was wearing a one of those short robes that most of the girls in the Diggers family liked to wear, it showed off her legs more than he needed to see. Ranma had seen her wearing the thing several times now and it always caught his eye, so it didn't bother him all that much, Britanny had cured him of that little problem around the first week of seeing her in those skin tight outfits she liked to wear so much, this was nothing compared to that.

"Master Julia?"

"Are you out here practicing again?"

"Every day, rain or shine and without fail." Ranma said with a grin.

"Is there a problem? Why are you out here so early?" Julia asked.

Ranma shrugged. "My Ki is flaring out of control because of the Neko-Ken training and it's very hard to control, that's what I'm looking for, I don't' want to hurt anyone because of it. I'm using one of the little tricks Onoli showed me, so far they are working a little, but my Ki is so strong that the only way I'm going to get it under control is though some hard training."

"I thought that might happen, you said it's easier to access now, Right?"

"Yeah. I figure it will take a few weeks of careful training to get the extra power back under control."

"That may not be enough." Julia pointed out.

"Oh?"

"Remember, you've got to learn that magic from Theo when you've got the time, I believe that's what's making your Ki surge like this."

"Oh yeah, he explained it to me. I no longer have the original curse either, that seems to have mixed with my soul and altered me in some way and made me more powerful."

"Wild Talents are very rare these days Ranma, most people are no longer afraid of magic and are able to get people like you to a Mage that can give them the training they need. It's free after all, leaving people like that untrained is what caused so many problems with magic in the first place."

"What kind of magic does a wild talent have?"

"I don't know the specifics, Theo would be able to answer that better than I could." Julia said with a smirk.

"Yeah, yeah, though I don't really want to learn magic."

"I know Ranma, we're fighters and using magic doesn't seem like a very good idea. Almost dishonorable?"

"That's it exactly, something like that would be cheating."

"Ranma, my old Master, Master Leep, spent several years teaching me how to fight under some interesting circumstances and one of the biggest things he taught me was that using magic wasn't dishonorable."

Ranma snorted. "You've got to be kidding me?"

"No, it's all in how you look at it. Magic is just another form of combat that uses different rules, fighters like us train our bodies to amazing and incredible things almost without thought. Mage's do the same thing, except that they train their minds how to tap into magical energy and learn how to wield it."

"That sounds more like an excuse to make someone over look the fact that magic has nothing to do with fighting and more to do with personal power." Ranma grumbled.

Julia laughed. "You're closer than you think Ranma, but to be an effective fighter you have to know your enemies right?"

"Sure."

"Well then, if you had known more about magic and how it worked when you fought Hanza she wouldn't have been able to get the better of you by 'cheating' with her magic."

"Humph!!"

"Well you think about it Ranma, I have to get going before anyone else has a chance to use the baths." Julia said and headed back inside, she stopped for a second and called back to Ranma. "I almost forgot, we will be returning to Earth this morning."

Ranma blinked in surprise, he hadn't even been thinking about going back to Earth just yet. "Oh, why is that?"

"We're done here and Gina said she would be finished her project sometime yesterday, we'll head back there and pick up the girls before heading back home. Is that okay?"

"Sure, I can train there as easily as here." Ranma said with a shrug.

Julia nodded and headed inside as Ranma went back to meditating, but after about half an hour he found that he was to distracted to reach the calm state he needed for it. So he grabbed his shirt and draped it around his neck like a towel and headed inside, everyone was just starting to get up as he came in. He was so preoccupied that he completely missed the look that crossed Sheila's face when he walked by, the slow turn, the glance at muscled back that lingered all the way down to his ass, or the look of pure lust that would have done Tirga proud and that had upon occasion gotten him beat to within an inch of his life. Yep, Ranma was still oblivious to female attention, it meant nothing to him since girls weren't like that after all. Put him in a combat situation and he was near perfection, but when it came to girls he was a clueless moron. Yep.

With a quiet sigh of disappointment she watched him until he was out of sight before she stepped into the bathroom and shut the door. She heard some movement and looked up to see that Julia was sitting in the large tub, it had been designed to accommodate Brod's large size, so up to three humans could sit in it easily with no one touching each other in any way. The werejaguar stripped out of her robe and slipped into the bath a little way from Julia, she smiled at her. "Hi, Master Julia."

"You've got it bad don't you?" Julia said with a little smile.

"Got what so bad?"

Julia laughed. "You've fallen for Ranma."

Sheila turned bright red, a feat that was very difficult for a werejaguar in her hybrid form. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't."

"I have not, he's just...cute." Sheila said, refusing to meet Julia's eyes.

"You've been following him around like a puppy for the last couple of weeks, you even had a little fun with him when you had to go into the room where he was training." Julia pointed out.

Sheila blushed again as she was reminded of the time she had 'played' with Ranma when he was in the Neko-ken, she hadn't had that much fun in years and she had been in her cat form to boot. "He's just a friend." She insisted.

Julia smirked. "Well then this news won't be to much of a shock then."

"News?" Sheila said and focused on Julia a little more, there was a slight hesitancy in her voice.

"Were heading back to Earth today, Ranma only has a few more months to train with me before he has to go back to his..." Julia spat the name. "Father!"

"You're leaving?" Sheila gasped, her heart suddenly pounding in fear.

"Yeah, Gina should have just completed a project she was working on. We came here to take care of Ranma's Neko-Ken problem and to get out of Gina's hair while her and Penny worked on a project. Now that both are completed, we can head home and get things back to normal again."

"I see."

'The girl is on the verge of crying already.' Julia thought to herself. 'She's got it worse than I thought.'

"Um...what don't you like about Ranma's father?" Sheila asked, attempting to change the subject.

"The man isn't worthy of his son, he cares nothing about Ranma's safety or well being, only his own wants and needs matter. Theo attempted to correct that problem, but I think it's too ingrained in him to make much for a spell to make much of a difference in the long run. After all this is the man that taught Ranma the Neko-Ken in the first place."

Sheila had suspected as much, but over the last few weeks the others had focused more on the training and given out very little information on the subject. She hadn't even been able to figure out who had made Ranma into such a cat like creature complete with the correct movements and instincts. For a normal human like Ranma it must have been quite dangerous, but for a werecat, a being that could talk to other cats and regenerate injuries in moments, things might have gone quite a bit differently. She still planned to hurt this man though, he had hurt her Ranma in unforgivable ways and nearly driven him insane, permanently. She had actually heard of some techniques that were more dangerous than this Neko-Ken, but they were only taught to those who were willing or had the skills to survive.

"Well now that Ranma is cured of the fear and he can control the technique, he can get around to paying the old guy back for all the pain he's caused over the years. I plan on making him feel a little pain for doing that to My Ranma." Sheila realized what she had just said and blushed as she cursed under her breath.

"Your Ranma?" Julia hooted at the blushing girl. "See, I knew you had it bad for him."

Sheila turned shy and looked away. "Please don't tell him, he hasn't even noticed that I'm around or shown any interest in me anyway. I think there might be someone else he's interested in."

"Ranma likes you Sheila, he treats you like a friend and someone he trusts. With most people he tends to get tense or untrustworthy around them to keep them at a distance, with you he lets his guard down a little. I don't think he even realizes what you want from him. You're his friend and that means more to him than a relationship of any kind, and he doesn't have very many of them."

"Everyone has friends Master Julia."

"You don't understand, he does now, me, Theo, the girls, even you, but there was a time that Ranma's father wouldn't let him have any."

"Why?"

"Ranma said friends were supposed to be a distraction from the Art and that nothing else mattered, nothing but the Art. That's all his life revolved around for the first 9 or so years of his life, so you see, to be his friend is a special privilege."

Sheila didn't really know what to say to that.

Grabbing her robe, Julia stood up and put it on while Sheila sat there and thought about what she had said. "I have some things to take care of before we leave, so you have a few hours to think about things before we have to leave."

"Thanks Master Julia." Sheila said from the tub and waved absently as the older woman walked out of the bathroom and left her alone. She sat there for several more minutes before she got up and grabbed her towel and left the bathroom. For some reason Sheila didn't quite understand how she felt about Ranma, one minute she wanted him and the next she wanted to break him into little pieces, from what she understood, this wasn't what love was about. She leaned back in the tub and relaxed a little more, stretching herself out and letting herself float a little. Tirga came to mind and she pictured him in her mind, for once she didn't react to the thought at all and she usually had some kind of reaction when she thought of him.

She'd had a major crush on Tirga for several years now and took a bit of pride riling him for all the times he had chased after some other girl and dumped the girl after getting her in bed once or twice. Tirga was one of the only men she had every been interested in, one of the reasons was that he didn't care about the fact that she had a birth defect that screwed up her werejaguar abilities, most everyone else considered her to be bad news. Instead of being a tall and powerfully built werecat like her brother, with loads of strength, speed, and a quick regeneration ability. Her hybrid form had ended up being human sized and puny, giving her a child like look that she had to offset with sexy clothing that made her look like she was playing dress up all the time. She had been forced to Kapowie more than one guy when she was treated like a child, her ice cream fetish not withstanding, nope.

Her human form on the other hand was almost seven foot high and made her look like a giant Amazon with huge breasts. That form also had all her strength and speed that should have belonged to her hybrid form, because of this she rarely went about in her human form unless she had to. It drew the eyes of everybody that saw it, for some reason a werecat with the same look didn't draw as much attention as she did as a human and it got embarrassing watching guys walk into walls whenever she was in that form for any reason. Even Tirga couldn't look her in the eye for a simple conversation when she was human and having him ogling her breasts was just a bit weird at times. Now that she was thinking about it, she hadn't even had a chance to mention her human form to Ranma, would he even noticed her if she showed it to him?

She perked up a little as she though about it, Ranma was a man and he had to have those feeling in there somewhere, if there was one thing about her human form it was that it was quite striking to any male that saw it. Did she want to even make him think of her like that though? She did like him quite a bit and last night in the garden she would have gone for it in an instant, but he had virtually ignored her as they walked along and that hadn't earned him any good points with her when she was trying to get his attention. Still, Julia said he was somewhat clueless when it came to relationships, but even if he grew up in an isolated way the boy shouldn't have been that bad. She rose out of the large bath and absently grabbed her robe off the side and wrapped it around her, it was kind of small, but it was enough to cover her small body. She stepped out of the bathroom and headed for her room, she'd forgotten to bring a change of clothes with her after Ranma had walked by her in all his muscled glory.

"Sheila! My Love!" Was yelled out the instant she moved out of the bathroom and started heading down the hall to her room, Tirga came out of nowhere and picked her up in a bear hug. Sheila could instantly smell the cheap wine that Tirga was drinking as he tried to lean in and kiss her, otherwise he would have known better than to play with her like this. She looked away and pretended not to care what he was doing, even if it was finally making her body respond to him a little. Playing hard to get with him had become a habit and this was just a good reason to get rid of him now that she wasn't as interested as she used to be.

"Put me down Tirga." Sheila said calmly, but Tirga didn't listen and she found she was already getting tired of him. That smell of cheap wine was enough to make her sick and she had to hold her breath just to keep from smelling it, then he leaned foreword again and she had to resist an urge to break him into little pieces.

"I knew you still cared about me." Tirga purred in her ear and started to grope one of her breasts through the robe. "You're kind of small aren't you?"

Vision went read as she lost her temper, she shifted to her human form and broke out of his arms with a burst of strength and dropped to the floor. She turned to glare at him, but stopped when his eyes glazed over and he started drooling like an idiot. Then she realized that her robe wasn't big enough to keep all the special bits covered in this form, in other words her giant tits were on display and less than a foot from the drooling pervert.

"PEEEERVVVERRRTTTTT KAPOWIE!! Sheila screamed and punched him.

As just mentioned, Sheila's strength while in human form is what she would have been given if she didn't have that strange birth defect, so it was with no surprise that her fist hit him with the force of a car running into a brick wall. Tirga exploded backwards with a grunt of pain, flew down the hall, and slammed into a wall with enough force to shatter it around him in a spider web of cracks. He collapsed to the floor with a groan and lay there as Sheila glared at him and contemplated his slow agonizing death.

"Sheila! Are you alrigGHAAAA!!" Ranma yelled as he came running down the hall, he took one look at her and skidded to a halt, froze in shock at seeing her, and passed out as a shower of blood burst out of his nose. He hit the floor almost as hard as Tirga had just seconds before, she ran over to see what was wrong with him and completely forgot that she was currently human and endowed with a bit more padding.

"Ranma, are you alright?!" She asked as she knelt down beside him, his eyes fluttered as they opened and she smiled down at him.

"AGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" Ranma screamed, jumped out of her arms and did a flip in mid air, bounced off both walls, landed and ran off faster than she could blink.

"Ranma!?" She called after him.

"Geeze sis, why are running around in the nude?" Gar asked as he seemed to appear beside her, kneeling down and smiling at her.

"Huh?"

Gar reached out and poked one of her over sized breasts.

"AGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! I'M NAKED!!" She screamed and ran for the bathroom.

Gar chuckled as he pulled himself from the wall where she had kicked him in her attempt to get away, he had to struggle not to start laughing out right. He had seen the whole thing, though Ranma's reaction had been a surprise, from her reaction to him it looked like they were going to have to have a little older brother to younger sister talk about her dating a human. He growled and smacked his fist into his palm, oh yes, they would have to have that little chat that had been put off a month before when Ranma had been at Nali's clinic. Sheila had been acting weird over the last few weeks and he was worried that this might have been more than a little crush, it looked like he was right. The last time she had started acting like this she had fixated on Tirga and look what kind of guy that was, she had bad luck when it came to men and this was all the proof he needed that Ranma wasn't right for his sister.

His sister punched him in the head. "GARFIELD!! How could you do that to me?!!" Sheila yelled in his ear, he noticed that she had changed back to her normal self, though her clothing was a bit of a surprise. It took him a second to remember where he had seen the thing, the it him and realized she had raided Britanny's room for a quick change of clothing. That wouldn't have mattered, but Britanny tended to wear skin tight clothing that showed off her exquisite body from all angles. She had a thing for spandex, that made something really tight on Britanny form fitting on Sheila and accentuated her small frame quite nicely. He had never seen her wear something like this bodysuit, it was pure black and reflected the light with every little move she made.

"You were the one kneeling in the hall, naked, with a boy in your arms sis. You tell me?" He said as he leaned in close and smirked at her.

Sheila blushed and cringed away. "So what." She mumbled.

"Well you don't have to worry about that guy now that I'm here, I'll make sure he stay's away from you."

"You will do no such thing."

"Oh really?"

Sheila placed her fist under Gar's chin and snarled. "Don't make me KAPOWIE you like I did Tirga the Pervert here."

"You wouldn't dare." Gar said as he stood tall and folded his arms.

"Oh wouldn't I?" Sheila said sweetly, though her eyes had turned cold and flinty.

Gar considered his sister, she was hard to read at times, but when she was falling in love she was even harder to read than normal and this was beyond him. He shrugged and backed down, for now, there would be other opportunities in the future to get rid of the guy. He already knew that Ranma would be leaving Jade anyway, that meant that in a few hours he would be out of his sister's hair forever and he wouldn't even have to worry anymore. She would mope around for a few weeks, then get back to normal and they could put all this behind them. "Whatever."

"Get out of my way."

"No."

"I don't have time for this, I have to find out if Ranma is alright!" Sheila yelled and ran by Gar before he could do anything. He watched her run down the hall and vanish around a corner before he turned back to think a little more. He took a long look at Tirga from where he was 'resting' nearby, there had to be something that would keep his sister away from Ranma and this was his only option. His friend had come on to her in drunken stupor and declared his love for for her, unfortunately he had been too drunk. Well that meant they would just have to come up with another idea, his sister deserved better than that human and he would make sure she ended up with someone that he approved of.

**********

After several minutes of searching Sheila was about to panic, but she noticed that the door to the Brod's garden area was open. She sighed, if he was in there, her chances of finding him were pretty small even if she would be able to smell him at ten meters in her current form, tracking wasn't exactly her best subject. She was inside the room almost instantly and looking around before she had even decided to go in an look around. After a few seconds she managed to spot some signs of him as he plowed through the bushes in his haste to get away, it seemed Ranma had decided that he wasn't going to use the paths like a normal person would do. Taking a deep breath she started through the trees, keeping the path in sight so that she knew where she was. But, after several minutes of walking she realized that she had lost him again and cursed under her breath.

"RANMA?!!"

"What?" Ranma asked from beside her. She jumped ten feet in shock and had to take several seconds to gasp for air as she calmed down, how in the world had he gotten that close without her noticing?

"W-where did you come from?" She gasped.

"I saw you running around out here and wondered if you were trying to get away from that naked chick too."

Her eye started to twitch. "Naked chick?"

Ranma nodded. "Yeah, she was huge! I thought she was going to pound me for stumbling upon her and her boyfriend making out like that." He shuddered.

"Idiot!" She swatted him across the back of the head.

"Ow! What did you do that for?!"

"I'm a werejaguar Ranma, don't you know what that means?"

"Um...not really, but what does that have to do with that crazy chick?" Ranma asked in confusion.

Sheila sighed. "Ranma, I have other forms I can transform into. There's this form that you know, then there is a full cat form that you've seen already."

"Well yeah? So?"

She willed the transformation and turned human again and found herself looking down on Ranma, he looked like he was in shock. Sheila hoped she didn't look as constricted in her borrowed outfit as she suddenly felt, her proportions had to be stretching the spandex to it's limits. "This is my human form."

"But..."

"I don't like to use this form very much, but it has a lot of uses, one of which is that its really strong."

"Um..."

"You see my Hybrid form should look like this and my human form should be wimpy and small, I have this birth defect that has messed up the transformations and I ended up with this."

"I THOUGH YOU AND TIRGA DIDN'T GET ALONG?!"

Sheila facefaults, hard. "What?!"

"Well you were there with Tirga, nude, I thought you two didn't get along?"

Sheila had to sigh, again, as she stood up and returned to her hybrid form and felt much better about things. He had completely misinterpreted the situation, but all she had to do was explain it to him. "Ranma, Tirga was drunk and he grabbed me from behind as I was coming out of the bathroom. I got so angry at him that I transformed, my robe wasn't enough to cover me anymore, and pounded him. That's when you came around the corner and got a good look at me before I could transform back and cover myself up once more."

He gave her that cute, but confused look again. "Then why did I wake up to find myself in your arms with your breasts pressed against me?"

Now it was her turn to look confused. "Huh?"

"I didn't know you could turn human, so when I woke up I thought I was about to be pounded or something, then I noticed that you were still naked and had something large and soft pressing into my arm..."

Her fist appeared in front of his face and he shut up. "Don't make me Kapowie you for being a pervert like Tirga."

"That's the reason I ran."

"Oh..." Sheila blushed as she pictured the scene in her head.

"Though, since that was you and not some sex craved deviant trying to take advantage of me, you sure were cute in that form." Ranma said with a grin.

KAPOWIE!!

Her fist slammed into his head and sent him flying across the garden path to slam into a tree, he slit do the ground unconscious. "Jerk, insult me in one breath and try to cover it up with a complement in the other. SEX CRAVED DEVIANT my ASS!" Sheila yelled and stomped off in a huff.

Ranma was seeing to many stars to do much of anything after that, so he just lay there quietly.

**********

Ranma stumbled into the main room an hour or so later with a rather large bruise covering the side of his face. He was a bit surprised the girl had been able to put him down as long as that, the longest his old man had ever put him down for was about half an hour or so. After that the old man started using him as a punching bag until he woke up and they could continue the training journey. He shook himself out of his thoughts and noticed that everyone was standing around with their bags packed and getting to leave.

"What happened to you Ranma?" Julia asked as she looked the bruise over.

"Sheila punched me." Ranma said with a shrug. "Where is she, I need to apologize."

"She left with the rest of the Edge Guard about half an hour ago, she didn't look all that happy now that I think about it."

"She left?"

"Yep." Julia said, trying to hide the smirk that was threatening to develop. She had been right about him and Sheila, though it looked like things were a little rocky right now.

"Is there any way to contact her?"

"Sorry, they are taking a long way back to check on some of the recent bandit activity in the area."

"Oh." Ranma said and shrugged. "I guess I'll have to do it another time then."

"Go get packed Ranma, were almost ready to go, we should be leaving in about thrity minutes or so."

"Alright, I'll be back in a few minutes then."

Ranma didn't have very many things to pack, so he took his time and was back in the main room about twenty minutes later, he had his back pack slung over his shoulder. He looked a little depressed, but it was pretty obvious what was bothering him at the moment so they left him alone. He looked around at everybody and noticed that they were all excited to finally go back home again, even that strange girl Charlotte looked particularly happy. Her and Britanny had spent most of the trip together having fun and training with each other, he'd noticed that Britanny definitely had some skills, but she depended way to much on her speed and strength for most of her moves. Those were her strengths though and Master Julia had told him she was going to break the girl of those habits eventually.

Charlotte showed some potential, but she didn't have a proper fighter's spirit and her skills would always be lagging behind everyone else because of that. She was just as strong as Britanny, but tended to be way too defensive when she needed to be offensive and had a nervous nature that made her a bit skittish in a fight. He'd thought of offering to teach her some moves the other day, but decided not to mess up anything Britanny might have shown the girl already. He didn't think he knew her good enough to make that offer anyway and to make her into any kind of a fighter would've been way to costly in the long run, he'd have to break her out of that innocent nature of hers and that wouldn't have worked with Britanny or that other girl Penny. That reminded him of something else too, hadn't they come here with one other person?

"Where's that other guy?" Ranma asked.

Britanny turned to look at him. "Genn? He's here visiting some friends of his from a long time ago, he'll make it back to Earth on his own. He is a Rakasha after all."

"What's a Rakasha?"

She started coughing. "OH YEAH! I forgot you didn't know."

"So?"

"I'll...um...explain it to you later, it's a bit difficult to explain to someone if they don't know certain details."

Ranma shrugged. "Oh, okay."

"No one's explained Genn to him yet?" Julia asked Britanny.

"We keep forgetting to do it and with everything else that's happened it just got put off again and again."

"Hmmm...well that will have to wait for later I guess. Everyone gather your things, it's time to go back to Earth." Julia said to the group.

**********

Kneeling behind some rocks that were about twenty paces from the front of a cave, Blair wondered once again what he was doing here. They had forced him into this situation against his will by threatening to kill him if he didn't do as they told him, then expected him to actually go along with it? This was just like the mines, just more dangerous and deadly than being whipped by one of the guards for being slow and weak. He had been ordered to watch and report on that Ranma Saotome kid that was hanging out with The Julia Brigand Diggers, her family, and several of the Edge guard. What had this led to?

That had nearly gotten him caught by Ranma when he got to close to him, he'd been forced to go change into his fox form and scurry away as silently as he could before he got pounded again. Then to add insult to injury he couldn't just go his own way and tell Rook where to shove it, he had threatened his family if he tried to do that. Rook cared nothing for loyalty, all he wanted was for the job to be done and if a person couldn't do it, they were added to the Undead Army as a new recruit. He liked breathing, it made him feel good and healthy and alive, being dead would be a bad thing.

So here he was, dressed in some comfortable dark leather pants, a loose shirt, and a dark leather jacket. He had a weird belt around his waist that had spaces for several attachments, a small sword, a couple of knives, a water bottle, and a small pocket for matches. Even weirder was the fact that the tunnel he was currently kneeling in didn't really exist, it was simply a room that could change itself to match the needs of the people that used it. When Hanza had touched the crystal and grabbed him they had appeared in a place filled with white fog and a stone floor. They had been able to see very little due to the fog, but that hadn't lasted to long, Hanza had done some mysterious movement when he wasn't looking and the fog had started flowing and reshaping itself around them.

By the time it finished they had been standing in front of a large cave entrance that led into the side of a rather large mountain, Hanza had explained that they were going to do a little exploring of this cave and that by the time he finished he would have the stealth techniques down cold. Then she had shown him how to walk differently, how to move his body in ways that didn't attract the eye. It had all seemed to be to simple for him, but who was he to complain about how he was shown something like this? He really should have expected that just showing him how to do the moves wouldn't be enough, no, he actually had to practice them while in this odd place.

"Are you ready to begin?" Hanza had asked as they looked over a small rock outcropping that hid them from the front of the cave.

Blair had looked out and noticed that the front of the cave was covered in bleached white bones and the half eaten bodies of slain animals. "Does this place have a name?"

"Um...The cave of Caerbannorg." Hanza said helpfully, she grinned when he didn't recognize the name.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, supposedly there is a mystical device somewhere in the cave and you must use your stealth techniques to retrieve it."

Blair narrowed his eyes and looked out over the bone strewen landscape. "Sounds dangerous and those bones seem like a pretty good clue that this place isn't all that good for one's health."

"Of course it isn't, you must use this dangerous place to test your skills."

"Oh..." Blair said and shrugged. "Keep me covered then."

"What, your just going to walk out there with dangerous creature wandering around?" Hanza asked.

"What?" Blair asked and looked back a the cave. The only animal he could see was a harmless little rabbit sprawled out in front of the entrance. "Behind the rabbit?"

"It is the rabbit."

"You're kidding me? That little thing?" Blair said in disbelief.

"That's now ordinary rabbit, it the most foul, cruel, and bad tempered rodent to ever walk the planet!" Hanza snapped, trying in vain to hold in a snicker.

"Yeah right!" Blair snapped.

"That thing has a vicious streak a mile wide, it' knaw on the stone here just to sharpen it's teeth!!"

"Yeah right, what's he going to do, nibble on my big toe?"

"Don't say I didn't warn you, he's got big sharp teeth and can leap about."

"He's a rabbit, of course he hop about and has teeth to eat lettuce and carrots." Blair said and jumped out from the rocks and walked over to the rabbit, kicking bones out of the way as he went. Imagine being scared of a harmless little rabbit, it was to ridiculous for words and he wouldn't have anything to do with hit. "Come here you little fur ball, I need to make a stew."

The rabbit looked up at him, wiggled it's nose for a second and ROARED!!

Blair screamed as it launched forward, grabbed the skin of his neck in it's long sharp teeth, and RIPPED HIS HEAD OFF!!

"ARGHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" Blair screamed as he lost contact with the crystal and fell to the floor where he started hyperventilating.

"BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!" Hanza yelled as she fell to the floor laughing.

"What in the nine hells was that?!" He yelled.

Still giggling, Hanza tried to explain a bit. "In the Earth Realm they have lots of technology, they are able to use this to make moving pictures like we do with magic. That was a scene from one of their 'movies' as they call them, combined with a bit of magic it makes for a great joke." Hanza fell over laughing again.

"That wasn't a joke, that thing killed me, ripped my whole head off too!!"

Hanza continued to laugh.

Blair just knew the rest of the week was going to be even worse than this, he sighed and wait for his teacher to calm down enough to get the real training to begin. *

**********

With a burst of light Ranma and the others arrived in the clearing they had left from just a few weeks before. Ranma looked around to see that the place had been completely changed from what he remembered, there was now a full sized building where a large pile of stone had once stood and the whole area had been subtly transformed into a park like set up, complete with signs and little pathways. A little ways away he could see the helicopter that had brought them here in the first place, it's pilot relaxing in the shade beneath the thing with his hat pulled down over his eyes. Ranma could just make out the form of a girl underneath the helicopter with him and that they were making out with each other pretty hot and heavy, he made a mental note not to look over there until they were done.

"I thought we were going to go right back to the house?" Ranma asked.

"We were, but since Gina and Brianna are still around here somewhere, we thought we would pick them up before heading right for the house." Julia pointed out.

"Okay." Ranma said with a shrug, he didn't like this place all that much because it reminded him of his curse. He stretched a little and decided to look around a little before they left, he wanted to see what they had done with this place, at the very edge of his senses he could tell that the guards were still around as well, but they weren't paying any attention to them. He wasn't too sure what they were doing but it seemed to be distracting them from their job, maybe they had just grown bored of watching this place being built up from nothing.

"We should be back in Atlanta in about two or three hours Ranma." Julia said.

"Alright, are we going to do anything until then..." Ranma started to ask, he was thinking of making his way up to the top of the nearby water fall and getting a better look at the small valley they were in. From there he would have been able to see the far edge of the Amazon village, it had been a few weeks since he last had a chance to see it. Then he stopped and looked around as his danger sense went off, he noticed Julia giving him an odd look.
77
Then all hell broke loose around them as the ground around Dr. Digger's feet exploded outward and sent everyone stumbling backwards in surprise. Something dredged his way out of the ground a few seconds later and back handed him before Dr. Diggers could do much more than gasp in surprise. He flew back several feet and landed in a heap in the grass before any of them could even react, then it's fist lashed out and took Julia in the face. Her reflexes were impressive, but even with a proper defense ready she had underestimated his power and wasn't able to counter as the thing's fist plowed through her arms and sent her flying back as well. By this time everyone'd had time to react and they all dived out of the way of the monster as it turned to face them with an evil looking smile on it's deformed face.

Charlotte let out a cry as she flexed her wings and took to the air to dodge out of the way of a wild swing, she flipped around and hovered just out of range, unsure what to do in a situation like this. This wasn't a head on attack like she was used to defending against, so she moved out of the way to figure out what she needed to do. That didn't stop Cheetah as she cried out in rage and shot forward in a blur of speed to kick the thing in the stomach. It hit with enough force to kill a normal human, but the thing just grunted as it grabbed her ankle and started laughing as it gave a mighty tug and raised her above it's head, twirling her around like a rag doll. Charlotte dove down to help her friend, but the thing used Cheetah like a bat and slammed the two against each other, their heads collided and knocked Charlotte out of the air before she could do much of anything. She cried out as she slammed into a nearby tree hard enough to break off a sizable chunk, by the time she was back on her feet it was pretty obvious she was much to dazed and confused for more fighting.

While this was happening Ranma was in motion as well, but he had jumped back and into the air to get a better look at the thing before he took it on. He'd lost enough fights lately that he didn't want to make any more mistakes, from up above he could tell that it was around seven foot high and vaguely humanoid, but that was where the resemblance stopped. It had two arms, two legs, hands, and even a head, but it's body was covered in some kind of rough armor that concealed its body. Ranma wasn't sure how to describe the thing, it looked like someone with very little artistic talent had chiseled the thing out of rock and left it half undone. From the looks of the fight so far it was incredibly strong and had some impressive speed as well, that ambush had to have taken way more skill than he would have normally given something of this size.

He was about to land just as it let go of Cheetah's ankle and sent her flying away from the fight with a burst of laughter, then it turned to face Ranma and developed and evil glint in it's inhuman eyes. The instant his foot touched the ground he was in motion again, leaping forward and skidding along the ground for a quick attack. He let out a bit of his aura, using all the control at his disposal to make sure he didn't inadvertently kill himself as it surged though him, and punched the thing in the chest with all he had. It was a punch strong enough to topple a tree, but this thing just stood there as if nothing had happened, Ranma recoiled in pain and backed away careful as it cackled at him in a gravelly voice. That didn't slow Ranma down though, he used this distraction to perform another attack, doing a spin kick to take the thing's head off. Ranma blinked in surprise as his kick was blocked almost negligently with its arm, then cursed to himself for being stupid again as it instantly counter attacked.

Why the hell was it that every time he went into battle lately he was making these idiotic and boneheaded mistakes? Every time he thought he had things down, something like this would happen and he would have to pay for it in lots of pain, he was very tired of it, he needed a win against this thing or he felt he would have to take some drastic steps. Ranma dropped and rolled out of the way just in time to avoid being stomped on, with a quick push up he sailed above the thing's head for a third attack. This time he was in a good position and managed to get a hit in with enough force to cause some damage, though even that didn't do any good as it just stood there and took the hit as if it was nothing. Ranma landed and took a second to reevaluate the situation, this thing was like fighting one of Gina's robots and it seemed like it could take almost as much or more damage than those ever could.

He dodged out of the way and rolled again as it started to do something it had only hinted at, performing martial arts moves. With it's body formed like stone Ranma wondered if thing had any kind of weaknesses that he could exploit to pull off a win. By this time he spotted Cheetah as she zipped back to the fight and Ranma took advantage of it by quickly joining her and double teaming it with a quick volley of kicks and punches that pushed the thing back several feet. Ranma jumped and added more Ki to his attack, Cheetah was howling as she went low and they managed to keep it off balance for several seconds, but then it just stopped cold, easily blocked their attacks with it's arms and knees, and slapped them away like irritating flies. Ranma was thrown back nearly five yards before he landed, he was used to pain, but the hit had been a lot harder than he imagined. He wasn't able to gain control his short flight and hit the ground hard, but instinct took over and he managed to recover enough to come to his feet and slide back several more feet before he came to a stop. He noticed that Cheetah was nearby in a crumpled heap and not moving all that much, Julia was kneeling beside her adopted daughter and checking her over for injuries.

She was giving him a look that he had seen his old man use on occasion, saying that this was something he had to take care off and that she wouldn't interfere unless he was completely out of the fight. At first he was a little confused, then realized why she was doing this and nodded a little. She wanted to see what he could do against something like this without help, it was a test that he had to pass. A closer look at Britanny showed that she was going to be fine, but that she was going to be out for a the next few minutes at least. If his Sensei wanted to test him and his abilities against something like this then she would get it, his old man had done things like this all the time and he never failed.

He had a lot of Ki in his body and it could allow him to absorb a lot of damage before he was affected, way more than a normal creature, even one like Cheetah. That thing's blow had been only a fraction of it's true power, he wondered what this things full potential was and what would happen if it actually let loose completely. For some reason it was just standing there and giving him this evil grin as it waited for him to do something. Then he took a closer look at the monster and suddenly realized that it was vaguely familiar, but for the life of him, he couldn't ever recall seeing a monster like this before.

"Who are you?" He snapped.

"Why Ranma, don't you recognize me? After all you made me like this, you should at least be able to know the full extent of what you created." Daishi said in his slightly modulated voice, even his insides were somewhat altered by the change, but nothing like his skin.

It hit Ranma like a bolt of lightning and he almost fell over from shock, even then he let his guard down a little. "Daishi!!"

"It's about time you figured out who I am, I'm going to destroy you and make sure you never have a chance to do so again."

Ranma growled, this was the bastard that had defeated him not once, but twice and nearly killed him the last time they met. This was also the bastard that had cursed him because he hadn't thought he would be cursed, he owed this jerk a good pounding, but he wasn't doing to well so far. He recalled details of both battles and wondered why he hadn't noticed the similarities between this thing and what Daishi had looked like before. This monster fought almost the same as Daishi did, though there was now a total disregard for defenses in his fighting style, it was all offensive now that he could shrug off blows that would kill a normal human. This was the guy that had cursed him and turned his life upside down in an instant, he had been off balance mentally and physically from almost the instant he had come out of that spring and still hadn't completely regained his fighting edge because of it.

He had gown in strength over the last few weeks by leaps and bounds, with the Neko-Ken no longer a real problem he had skills and abilities to call on that this man hadn't even seen yet. There was only one problem he had to deal with, there was something missing from the Neko-Ken that seemed to be missing, but he couldn't put his finger on what it could be. His eyes narrowed and he willed his Ki up several level as he stood there glaring at this monster, this monster that had ruined his life, and he felt his power flow though his body like boiling lava. Fury didn't even begin to describe what he was feeling at that moment, but his wasn't about the loss of control kind, but a well of magma that had to be let loose to restore his confidence and honor.

"Today you die for what you did to me." Daishi said with a smirk.

"I will destroy you." Ranma said, it was almost a whisper.

Taking a special stance he had developed only a few days before, Ranma's aura flared around him in a fiery wave that scorched the earth around his feet and he turned his full furry upon his enemy. The smirk was wiped from Daishi's face as he watched Ranma collecting more and more energy, he could feel it in the ground as the boy stood there, his eyes promising to make him pay in ways he couldn't even imagine. He hadn't expected the boy to improve this much in such a short amount of time, but with his new form he would win this fight and destroy the upstart before things got to out of hand. It would just take a little longer than he had expected, the first order of business was to see just how much he really had improved.

For Ranma, unlike a lot of other battles, this one was one that he had to win no matter the cost. They stood there staring at each other eyes and waiting for one or the other to make the first move, it wasn't like before where they had been fighting under orders or to protect someone who was in danger. This was a fight to see who was the better, stronger, and better than the other and so far Ranma had failed to match up to Daishi's special training and enhancements. Then at some unseen signal one of them blinked and it began, Ranma's aura flared brighter than ever.

They shot forward in a blur and came together with a flurry of punches and kicks that lasted several minutes as they bounced around the small area. Moving at speeds that surprised even Britanny, for she had fought both of them and knew they had never been able to move like this. For every punch that Ranma through, for ever combo and kick, Daishi would either have a counter for it or just be completely invulnerable to it and it was pissing him off. To his surprise, Ranma was also finding himself at a disadvantage against Daishi's new form, he was shocked beyond words as he pulled out nearly every trick he had ever been taught and the stone skinned ninja seemed to shrug off almost everything sent his way. Then he was caught off guard when Daishi pulled an attack out of nowhere that nearly killed him, a punch was thrown and Ranma dodged it easily, but he wasn't counting on hundreds of tiny needle like things flying off Daishi's arm and nearly impaling him.

It was like having in a shot gun blast go off right next to him and Ranma's aura flared out ward, then he vanished from sight before Daishi could do anything to redirect the blast. Only to reappear just to the side of Daishi's attack a split second later to deliver a massive roundhouse punch in the lower portion of his spine. Ranma ignored the burning pain in his left arm where the needles had shredded the skin off the side of his arm and imbedded themselves in his muscles and sent a massive charge of Ki to his leg just as Daishi's attempted to block his second attack.

Ranma started in with a quick set of combos, punching and kicking at Daishi as fast as he could, but on the ending up sweep of the final attack that would have broke the guy's jaw something else happened. The blow was deflected with a quick snap of Daishi's arm, but only a tiny bit at the last second and the sharp sound of shattered stone echoed over the area as Ranma finally managed to shatter some of the rock like armor that Daishi's skin was made out of. This was followed by shocked silence as Daishi looked at his arm and the little chunks of it laying on the ground at his feet. Oh and Ranma jumping back with a cry of pain as his hand exploded in pain as well, he stayed back as he cradled his hand and watched as Daishi looked down at his arm.

Daishi's block had kept him from being hit, but at the cost of his arm and a blow that had been meant to seriously harm him. He stared at his bloodied forearm as blood slowly formed along the cracked edge and dripped on the ground at his feet. Lifting his eyes from the wound he glared at Ranma with some surprise, he'd thought this form was invulnerable to all kinds of attacks, why would such a thing work on him after all, it seemed he wasn't as invulnerable as he thought. His skin wasn't just stone, it magically altered his skin into a stone like substance. That added weight, power, and invulnerability to his body, there was no way such a thing should have worked against him.

"Super Stone Breaker Fist." Ranma taunted with a smirk. "I was wondering if your new form would be vulnerable to it?" Then he super charged his body with the same amount of Ki he had just used, if he did it once, he could do it again. "Not so tough are you, it just takes the right kind of hit and you're finished off like the pathetic thing you are."

Daishi turned to glare at Ranma with undisguised hatred in his eyes as he realized that this form wasn't as invulnerable as he had thought and he could feel the boy increasing his strength as Ranma slowly powered up his whole body. This wouldn't do, he needed to make a quick change in plans if he was going to make this boy learn some humility, he needed to be brought down a few pegs. "Bah, you got a hit in and actually managed to hurt me. You won't get another chance, I'm done playing around at this lower level and it's about time I killed you."

"Yeah right, you're not as strong as you seem to think you are and I still have a few things up my sleeves that you haven't seen yet." Ranma said with a smirk, his hand had stopped hurting as well, it was time to see if his plan would work.

"DIE WORM!!" Daishi screamed as he rose up both arms and brought them down in an attempt to pound Ranma into the ground.

Ranma shifted out of the way with a jerk of his body and kicked him in the ribs, there was a flare of light when his foot connected, followed by an explosion of energy that sent Daishi stumbling backwards. He didn't let up as the rained super powered blows down on the monster, breaking off a chuck here, making a set of cracks there, and laying into the guy. Getting into a rhythm, Ranma used every move in his arsenal to make sure Daishi went down, he wasn't going to lose this fight, he had to win! A powerful uppercut sent Daishi several inches off the ground, Ranma grinned as he felt the jaw shatter around his fist, the giant landed in a heap and lay still at his feet and Ranma felt like crowing in happiness. His opponent's entire body was covered in a set of spider web cracks and Ranma wondered if he was going to fall into pieces.

"Take that you bastard." Ranma gasped out. He looked to the side and saw that everyone had been watching as he fought, but he was to tired to even be embarrassed about it and just stood there gasping for air. He even saw that Gina, Penny, and Ace had wandered over to see the action. Dr. Diggers and Julia were sitting down in front of everyone looking a little worse for wear, but they seemed to be okay other than that so he wasn't worried about them. Every inch of his body hurt, pumping his body up to that level of power hadn't been a very good idea it seemed. He could feel that his Ki reserves were dangerously low, but there was enough left over that he didn't have to worry about it very much, he just needed a little rest and he would be good as new. His left arm was a different story, it hurt like some one had tried to brand it with molten lead and he could see that most of it was covered in blood. His attack had caused it to open the wounds even more than they had been, hopefully he hadn't damaged it to much.

"That was to easy." Ranma spat and started to stagger away from the body.

The instant Ranma's back was turned Daishi rolled over and threw a bit of rock he'd been hiding under his hand. "Idiot!"

"Ranma look out!!" Britanny yelled.

Ranma saw the looks of shock on some of the girl's faces and started to turn back just as the rock hit him in the back of the head. It shattered around him and he collapsed to the ground in agony as he grabbed his head, he could feel the blood in his hair, but even then he managed to look at Daishi as the monster stood up with ease and grinned down at him with a look that sent a chill down his spine. All those little cracks started to fuse back together as he walked forward and kicked him in the stomach. This picked Ranma up and sent him tumbling away with a gasp of pain, he came to a rest on his back, unable to get up no matter how much he tried to.

"Is that the best you can dish out little man, you're strong I'll give you that, but compared to me you're a spineless worm. You gave me your best and it still failed to do more than crack me up a little, how does it feel to know you can't beat me, worm? I owe you a bit of pain a thousand time worse than this for what you did to me. On the other hand, since you made me this way maybe I should thank you instead?" Daishi seemed to think about it a little, then shook his head. "Naw, I'll just kill you and get this over with." Daishi sneered as he walked over to the downed boy.

"Go...s-screw...yourself." Ranma mumbled as the struggled to stand, but wasn't able to get past this hands and knees. That rock had given him a full blown concussion and his Ki reserves were to low to shrug off this kind of damage like it had earlier, he tried to think of a way to defeat the guy in his current state, but his head hurt way to much to think correctly.

He stopped right beside Ranma and raised his foot over his head. "Any last words?"

Ranma took a deep breath and tried to focus, he heard something and took a peek between his legs to see that his friends were running over to help him. The was a bit of a mistake though, it was still daylight out and the bright light of the sun was making his head pound, but he could tell that his friends were to far away to reach him in time. The large flashing lights in front of his eyes didn't' help matters much and he nearly threw up all over himself. "Stop them from interfering, this is between you and me now."

With a blink Daishi turned to see the Diggers running over to them. "Let them witness your end then." He said formally. "It is only right for a warrior of your caliber to die in battle."

A thought finally occurred to Ranma and decided to play it as his last card, if he had used it from the beginning he would have won this already, but his fear had been keeping him from using it. He sighed and started to concentrate the last of his available energy just as Daishi's foot came crashing down on the spot where Ranma had been kneeling, it sank into the soil several inches from Ranma's shoulder. At the same time Daishi screamed in agony and stumbled back several steps with his arms crossed across his stomach, blood could be seen as it burst out of the belly wound that he was desperately trying to hold together.

"You talk to much Daishi..." Ranma mumbled from where he landed a few feet away, his vision was started to funnel and go dark, a portion of his mind calmly wondered if he would wake up again. That had been his last attack, if it failed there was nothing left to do but dodge and hope he survived until he got away.

"Fireball!!" Dr. Digger's yelled from the side and blasted Daishi off his feet, not hard considering the amount of damage Ranma's attack had done to him. Ace, Penny, and Charlotte tackled him and tied him up as fast as they could with some cables they had grabbed from Ace's helicopter. Daishi didn't put up much of a fight, he was in to much pain as he tried to keep his blood from spilling from his belly wound.

Gina knelt down beside Ranma and adjusted her glasses to see the extent of his injuries, his clothing was in tatters, the arm was still bleeding, and the large bruise forming along his chest didn't look like it was a good thing. "This is bad."

"What can we do?" Cheetah said, her head still hurt from that blow Daishi had given her earlier, she looked down at Ranma and wondered if there was any way to help him.

Gina turned to her father from where she had been examining Ranma. "Daddy, please teleport me and Ranma to my lab, I have to get him the Regeneration Tank as soon as possible."

"Alright." Dr. Diggers said and quickly cast the spell, they vanished in a flare of light. He turned to glare at his wife. "Julia I could have saved him a lot of pain and suffering, why didn't you let me take Daishi out with a spell?"

Julia glared right back. "Ranma is a fighter and would rather die in battle than have someone help him out just because things got a little difficult."

"I disagree, he could die because you wouldn't let me interfere."

"I agree with your wife on this one Dr. Diggers, Ranma is a fighter and he would have been extremely angry with you for ruining his fight. I've met several men like him over the years and they like to finish their fights on their own." Ace said, adjusting his hat nervously. "Your interference would have only gained you and enemy Dr. Diggers, Ranma had to do this, this was the same guy that beat him the last time he was here."

"We've had this discussion before, Theo." Julia pointed out.

"Fine. Let's grab the body and get him tossed in jail with the others." Dr. Diggers snapped, he rarely won arguments like this anyway.

"HOLY MOLEY!!" They all turned to see Brianna examining the craggy body of Daishi, she had a weird look on her face as she ran a scanner over it. The little device was giving her a number of readings that didn't look good at all. They all came over and crowded around the bound form. Penny looked at the reading on Brianna's scanner and whistled, that wasn't good at all and it meant they might have to make a decision about him that could cause problems.

"What's the problem?" Julia asked.

"Whatever did this transformation to Daishi has made him into a man of stone, every square inch of his skin is made out of this dense stone like substance. Even weirder is that it isnt' real stone, but something so close that I can barely tell the difference between the two. No wonder he was shrugging off those blows like they were nothing, it must have been like pounding on the side of a large rock with a hammer. Now I'm surprised Ranma did as much damage as he did, Daishi shouldn't be hurt all that much, but this cut in his stomach has me worried." Brianna explained.

"I don't understand, he should have sealed it right back up or something."

Brianna shook her head. "He's healing himself actually, but it's only his skin that's like this. The rest of him is still flesh and blood and Ranma's attack has sliced open his internal organs, he could very well die if we don't do anything for him. Daddy, you might as well teleport us all back to the lab as well, I have some equipment on hand that can keep him from dieing. I'd also like to know how Ranma did this, I've never seen an attack like it before and if it can cut through stone this easily we might be able to make a robot that could pull the same stunt."

"He used the technique he was trying to master while we were gone, Brianna."

"That cat technique that he was trying to cure?"

Julia nodded. "He waited until the very last to use and even then as a last resort because it was so dangerous, look what it did to Daishi with one simple swipe of his hand."

"That's incredible!" Brianna crowed just as her father stepped forward.

"Alright then, everyone gather in a circle around him and we'll be off." Dr. Diggers said.

"I'll bow out of the trip, I have to get my ride back to where I got it from and make a couple of stops as well while I'm in the area and have a bit of free time. " Ace said with a grin. He pulled out a remote and pressed a button, his helicopter started up as he walked over to it, by the time he reached it the thing was warmed up enough for a quick lift off.

"Penny I'll need your help with this, I know you have more skill than me when it comes to surgery and Daishi will need quite a bit of it."

Penny nodded. "I thought that was what you were thinking, Gina has some of my tools at the lab for just such an emergency. I'll help Daishi, but I want to make sure he won't pull something like this again. Getting attacked like this every time we go anywhere is starting to get on my nerves."

"Agreed." Brianna said.

"Gina was telling me earlier that everything has been finished here so let's go, they can take care of themselves." Julia said as she looked around and counted everyone that was left. "It's look's like it's just the four of us then."

"Then were off." With a quick gesture Dr. Diggers released his spell and they all vanished in a flare of light.

A few minutes later Cologne and several other of the Elders entered the area at a run, but they stopped when they came across the battle ground. They would have been here earlier, but placing the Plant this far from the village had been a deliberate action, so they couldn't just visit it on a whim. On a normal day, it took the Elders at least twenty minutes to run or hop from the village, they had been slowed even more when they had to take time to pick up some of the younger fighters. There was no sign that anyone was there anymore, but they did take the time figure out all they needed to know, some kind of great battle had just been fought and they had missed it. Cologne had a pretty good idea who it had involved as well, but since the girls were no longer there she decided to write it off as a random event and move onto other things. If some kind of problem came up because of this she knew where to go in order to get more information, those girls hadn't been very secretive about things and she would put that to good use as well.

"What the hell happened?" Yelled one of the Elders as she examined the large pool of blood that Daishi had created.

"All these tracks indicate that two or three people were fighting a larger foe of some kind, that blood belongs to the loser, apparently the larger attacker." Bi Dal pointed out as she bounced around the area on her staff. Cologne really wished she hadn't allowed that Red Cross group to play "The Princess Bride" movie that time there were here to offer them some medical supplies. It had made some of the girls in the village start acting funny, especially some of the Elders.

'Inconceivable.' She thought with a smirk.

"Whatever happened, it looks like they cleaned up most of their mess and left before we got here, at least there is no body to dispose of. Let's double the guard for the next couple of nights and see if anything else happens. This might have been an isolated event with those girls that were installing the Hydroelectric Plant for us, and since they're obviously gone and all of this seems to point to them I don't think we need to worry about it too much." Cologne said with a sweep of her arm.

"Could this involve that outsider that defeated those Musk warriors the other day as well?" Bi Dal asked.

Cologne thought about it for several seconds before she shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Why?"

"That is the same girl that was running around blowing holes in the landscape last week."

Bi Dal paled. "That's the same one that wanted to install those missile turrets on top of the Electric Plant?"

Cologne laughed. "The same, she was just joking it seemed. Thought her sister told me that they he had to later disassemble the walls she had already installed for something just slightly less dangerous than that."

"What was that?"

"Some kind of Water Cannon, supposedly it would have been able to fire a stream of water hundreds of feet with enough strength to knock people off thier feet."

"What in the hell would we need something like that for?"

"I have no idea really, these outsiders were a little eccentric in their ways though." Cologne said with a laugh.

Bi Dal crossed her arms and glared. "Does this mean that this Plant of yours is going to be just as eccentric as they were?"

"Not at all, Gina said it was designed to be as simple as it could be and still be efficient. All we have to do is keep everything clean and all the bolts tightened. If it does break down she would find out about it and stop by to repair it, she would have left a couple of her robots as well to do the up keep, but they weren't really liked in the village so she didn't want to chance it."

Bi Dal motioned to some of the girls that came with them, they were soon digging up the ground and burring the large blood stain and anything else that might draw in some of the wild animals from around the area, bears, large cats, Musk warriors, things like that. It took about half an hour to go over the area and make sure they had everything cleaned up before they left, though Cologne took a second to see it that strange presence she had sensed earlier was still around. Whatever it had been seemed to be long gone by now, she had her suspicions that it was the thing that had caused all this damage, but without further proof she would have to let it sit for now. Her fighter's eye had also noticed something that Bi Dal seemed to have missed, there had been a master fighter in the area, a very good one and she had no clue who it could be and she knew all the good fighters in the this part of china on a first name basis, she had trained a good number of them as well.

This one, from the tracks seemed to be a male who used an aerial type martial art that didn't seem to use any of her tribe's Wu Shu techniques. She would have to look into it, but if someone this skilled was running around without her knowing about it, things could get out of hand if they ever decided to interfere with her long range plans. That could not be allowed under any circumstances and meant she would have to reevaluate her plans for the moment, a wild card was not something to be ignored. Cologne noticed something at the corner of her eye and moved over to a tree, it was about ten feet up and barely noticeable.

There was a tiny finger sized cut along the side of a tree, if she hadn't been looking for something like this she wouldn't have noticed it at all. She hopped up on her her staff to get a better look at it, reaching out and running her fingers over it was quite amazing. It was a perfectly smooth cut along the side of the tree, about two inches deep and over ten inches long. Her senses reached out and touched it, she could feel the Ki still clinging to the tree as it slowly dissipated into the air around them. She could tell that this was the side effect of a powerful Ki attack of some kind that seemed a bit familiar, there was no doubt about it in her mind though, it could only have come from that boy.

"Most curious."

**********

The main med lab in the underground laboratory was constantly on standby mode, Gina had found that it saved time to have things ready in an instants notice when people were hurt. At normal hospitals this was accomplished much easier with living personnel that worked in shifts twenty four hours a day, unfortunately she couldn't afford something like that and preferred to have a personal touch with things like this anyway. She had access to medical practices that were way beyond Earths current level anyway, most of the time this had helped to save those people from 'out of town' that ended up getting in trouble. Stripe's people had also contributed a bit of knowledge, but since they were not quite human some of it was hard to apply to human terms.

There was a flash of light as Gina and Ranma appeared in the lab, the lights came on instantly and a couple of level B bots came into the room almost instantly. They helped her load Ranma onto one of the scanning beds and within minutes she was running a detailed scan on him, he had three broken ribs and some minor internal bleeding, a punctured lung, and a lacerated left bicep. He also had bruising and minor scratches over a good portion of his body, she typed on the computer and got the regeneration tank ready for use once again and reviewed the old reading she had taken on him several weeks before.

Making sure her bots were about done fixing up some of the smaller wounds that Ranma was suffering from, she set about programming the Nanite Solution to do what she wanted them to do, this was the tricky part, but she had the advantage of using them on Ranma once before. She didn't expect this to take all that long, not like last time when she had that tricky brain damage to repair. This time it was all easily fixable material and figured he would be out of the Tank in about fifteen hours, more than enough time to run some other experiments on him now that she had the time.

She grinned...well...like a geek about to have a little fun.

Once Ranma was ready, with all but his boxer shorts removed and his wounds cleaned, she had the bots pick him up and place him in the frame that would support him for a few minutes while the regeneration tank filled up around him. When that was done and he had a breathing mask over his face she released the frame and let him float listlessly in the greenish liquid that filled the tank. With a few taps on the keyboard a portion of the ceiling pulled away and let a large scanning device come down and cover the entire front portion of the tank. With Ranma safely inside she started it up, took a few minutes to finish programming the Nanites with their orders while waiting for the large scanner to finish warming up completely. At the same time she had the computer release the Nanites into the tank, she watched as they checked in once entering Ranma's body through the pores. The scanner fired up a few seconds later and she called up a full body scan of Ranma while he was floating in the tank and comparing the new readings to the ones. There was an obvious difference that she noticed right off the bat, he was stronger than he was before, his muscles were more defined and noticeable having filled out from all his training. Of course she looked down about mid thigh and drooled a little while she waited for the Nanites to correct his injuries.

Unluckily, as she saw it, he still had his boxers on, but the image was still as good as the last time she saw it and she did like the wet look. Of course, since she had to sit here for the next few hours to monitor everything, at least she had something yummy to look at whenever she got bored. She glanced at the picture on the monitor and sighed, if only he wasn't so damned young, if he was only a little older she would've liked to get to know him in much more interesting ways. But his age kept her from taking that step and she didn't want to screw things up if he already had someone he cared for. So far though, as far as she could tell, he had shown none of the usual tendencies that men seemed to have after they reached puberty.

Booting up a second computer she started to work on one of her side projects, she had to be careful though, if Brianna found about it things would get a little out of hand. The girl liked to mess with any kind of weapon and improve upon it, Gina didn't mind that all that much, but when her lab had to suffer for it she had to put her foot down and this little project had that kind of danger. That was why she was working on the thing sporadically, just a little here, a little there and every thing was fine. Of course she had to be careful when she was messing with her Beta Technology, but that was always the case no matter what the project. Luckily the stuff was simple to work with once one new how to shape everything, after that it was just a mater of engineering and that area she was one of the best.

Then about an hour later she had to stop and check on Ranma and found her computer was flashing something at her, it wasn't an emergency alarm, but one that said she needed to look at something. Calling up the appropriate screens she blinked in surprise, using that extra powered scanner had been a good idea after all. It seemed that Ranma's body was generating more Ki than it should and it was raging through his body unchecked. With his mind unconscious he wasn't focusing on it anymore and his relaxed state wasn't strong enough to hold all that energy back. Normally this wouldn't have mattered, but the high level of energy was causing her Nanites some problems.

"Jinkies! I've never seen anyone react like this before." She muttered to herself.

In this case they were being systematically destroyed, that wouldn't do, she thought about it for several seconds before she called up a program she had developed some years before to deal with their grandfather. Even Brianna didn't know about this one, it was designed to affect a person's aura and since her father and grandfather were Aura Magi it could be worked to suppress their magic abilities while they did what was needed to save their lives if it was needed. She was glad to use it one Ranma, it wouldn't have to be used at full force, just enough to let her Nanites to their jobs and get out of his body. Activating the program and equipment built into the walls she listened for the hum she built into the device, it reported all ready a few seconds later.

Once activated the readings around Ranma seemed to drop by almost sixty percent in a matter of minutes as he lost touch with his most of his Ki. For the next few hours he would be as human as a normal person and just as vulnerable, but he was tough person and she knew he could take the pressure with no problems. Then much to her surprise she started getting some more weird readings, at first things were progressing normally enough, then her Nanites started asking questions. They hadn't done this before, that was why the subject was scanned and placed in the tank in the first place. It seemed that Ranma's Ki had been keeping his body from being damaged to much by forcing the already damaged organs to continue functioning above normal, but with it suppressed by her program, a number of little problems were starting to show up. Sending the Nanites a signal, she told them to correct anything they thought needed it while they had him in this state and could do something about it.

The next few hours were a fascinating study in weird happenings, the Nanites had to alter his bone density, his muscle mass, and a whole host of other strange things they normally didn't have to mess with. She wasn't even sure what had caused it, for some reason it reminded her of some tests results she had read from NASA when they were still doing lots of zero-g testing. There were chemicals missing from his blood that should have been there, so Gina had the Nanites stimulate the appropriate glands to make sure they were still functioning correctly. This took her another four hours to do, but by that time Ranma was responding quite well so she figured she was done. She set the computer to slowly let Ranma's Ki come back, this way it would be back to normal about an hour before he woke up and had to get out to the Tank.

**********

To Be Continued...

* Apologies to Monty Python's Flying Circus ^_^

Ending Notes - A lot of you were expecting a relationship between Ranma and Sheila and I can hear the complaints now. Well I do not beleive in the love at first sight theory and both Ranma and Sheila have problems they have to work out before they can have much of a relationship, Sheila especially. She does have a crush on Tirga, a pretty big one and even though I have been showing him in a really bad light so far he does have some pretty decent traits as well, it's just that his womanizing ways tend to stand out more than his good points. I will be going a little easier on him in future chapters and show a bit more of him and why Sheila likes him, she has to come to terms with this before she can move on to someone else.

The Edge Guard will be showcased in the next chapter to set this in motion to create a weird kind of love triangle between Ranma/Sheila/Tirga, we'll see where this goes from there. That's the plan anyway, but my writing style rarely lets me go in the direction I want it to go and I keep ending up with these long chapters ^_^

Some of you might also think that Ranma should have kicked Daishi's ass all over the place, I did too, but that's now how things turned out. Ranma is dealing with a problem he's never encountered before and it's affecting his fighting ability. That's all for now, e-mail me if you have questions, praise, or complaints and I'll see what I can do to help you out.

C. Rose
06/11/02