Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Gold Digger Fan Fiction ❯ Golden Oportunity ❯ Chapter 08 ( Chapter 8 )

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

Notes - Time for another bit of fun in the Gold Digger universe, it's long, it's funny, and should add quite a bit to the story if all goes well. Let me know what you think. ^_^

Web Site: http://shi_hanna.tripod.com/

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Golden Opportunity
Chapter 08
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2002
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She was a perfect replica of Ranma's cursed form, the same breasts, the same size shoes, the computer even said she had the exact number of hairs in her pig tail. The only difference between her and Ranma was that she wasn't alive, instead she was an android of some kind according to Gina and she wasn't going to pass up a chance to look at a design she had never seen before. So far it had put all of her own designs to shame in complexity and technology. So far Gina had found that it had Pneumonic memory matrices that put everything she had ever built to shame, it gave the android the ability to completely take over a persons life without anyone knowing. According to her computers the android had been given an almost moment to moment down load of Ranma's life, giving it all his knowledge, abilities, and habits Ranma had ever had. She wasn't sure how it was done yet, but she wouldn't stop until she had figured out how it was done.

Ranma didn't know what to do about it either, but the android gave him the creeps, less than twelve hours before it had been kicking the snot out of him with relative ease. He was still ticked off about that, but he had made some decisions about the battle and knew that it would never happen again. There was no way he would just sit by and accept another defeat after this one, Gina had been right when she told him that he needed to stop holding back and going for the knock out as quick as possible. His old man had always tried to drive into his head that he needed to fight with his whole ability and not to hold back no matter who it was. At the time Ranma hadn't really cared what he had to say, but after the last few weeks he had come to realize that the old fool was right after all. He needed to alter the way he fought and to do that he needed to change the way the thought about things.

A few months ago that would have been impossible, but now that Gina had fixed him up with her machines he could do so with ease. All it would require would be a few weeks of practice and mental exercises and he would be able to do it instinctively, it was one of the prime tenants of his style, the ability to adapt. On the way back from the island he had spent a lot of time brooding over what Gina said to him, at first he had tried to deny it, but as time went on he started to see certain patterns in his life where she had been absolutely correct about his actions. She had pointed out one of his failures and didn't like to think about it, but there was no way he was going to just back down from this and shrug it off, she was right and he had to make sure he was able to fix the problem before it got him killed.

Now this android was laid out on an operating table down in one of Gina's underground rooms below the mansion. She had built the room so that everyone could see what she was doing, whether she was performing an operation with Penny or working on some equipment for later use on one of her expeditions. He didn't really know what to think about this android, it had come very close to defeating him with its enhanced strength and nearly invulnerable body. He had bruises all over his own body from where she kicked the shit out of him during their fight, the thing had known all his moves, all his counters, everything he might possibly do to fight it and used that against him in the worst possible way. He was a bit surprised that Gina was operating on it like it was a real person, slowly performing a kind of autopsy to figure out how it ticked, or that was how it had been explained to him. It's chest was currently laid open, the skin peeled back from a metal and plastic frame that had Gina absolutely fascinated as she tinkered with some of its innards.

"Ranma?"

He turned to see Brianna stepping into the room, she grinned at him and waved. "Hi Bri, how are you doing this morning?"

"Pretty good, are you okay?" She asked.

"Oh sure, though I want to give that thing another try."

Brianna purred a little and grinned a little wider. "I won't go easy on you."

"Ha, after a what we did for the last few days I wouldn't doubt it. It was good training though."

"Hah, I wouldn't call it training." Brianna said.

"So when can I give it another try?"

"How about tonight?"

"Hmm...alright, but no cheating this time I want to have a chance to win." Ranma said and waggled a finger in Brianna's face.

"What?! I never cheat!"

"Yeah right girl, you set that thing up give you the best advantage."

"I did not, I just built the system myself and know all the little details..."

"See." Ranma said with a grin.

"Hey, you agreed to use the cuffs."

"Man I hate those things, they messed up my coordination and chaffed my wrists, look, I've still got some bruising from those things."

"Well you can try some of the other versions I've developed, okay? How about a full body suit then?"

"Fine, but make sure you have the other pieces ready to hook up this time. Those missing pieces kept me from using certain techniques."

Brianna rolled her eyes. "You've only told me that a hundred times now Ranma, I've got it covered."

"Cool, see you after dinner then."

"Alright." Brianna said and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek and winked at him. "Don't be late."

"Yeah, yeah." He said as he played with his pigtail and blushed.

**********

"Master Julia?" Ranma said as he walked into the living room.

"Let me guess, you're bored and want to learn something?"

"Yep." Ranma agreed.

"Do you have any energy left after a week with Brianna and going on that trip with Gina?"

Ranma blushed, again. "Yeah, I need to do something, sitting around is just getting on my nerves so if there is something I can do?"

"How about you let me have him for the rest of the day?" Dr. Diggers said as he walked into the room, he was decked out in his form fitting black Mage Suit. "He already missed several classed because of Brianna."

"That magic training?" Ranma asked.

"Yes, you still have that fluctuating aura so I have to teach you some of the basics while we have the chance."

"I'm not sure now would be a good time sir." Ranma said hesitantly.

His eyes narrowed. "Why would that be, we have to do this before you start to cast spells on accident."

"There seems to be something wrong with my Ki, sir, like it's out of balance or something. I have to constantly adjust it and lately it's been causing me problems, sending chills through my body and making me shake."

"Are you ill?" Dr. Diggers asked.

"I don't know, since my Ki keeps losing it's balance my skills aren't up to sustaining me in a proper fight and I have to regain my balance before it gets me killed."

"Ranma, last week's practice didn't help?" Julia asked.

"Not really, my Ki is more in balance, but now when it goes out of wack I get the shivers and can't practice for several seconds."

Dr. Diggers concentrated and cast a spell around Ranma to see his aura again, as his eyes adjusted he noticed that there was a large brown section of Ranma's aura that was hovering around his stomach. This was yet another new aura, but one he'd never seen before, this one seemed to focusing it's energies right into Ranma's stomach. "Are you having any stomach pains?"

"No sir?"

"I have an idea, but you need to learn to do some deep meditation techniques. Are you up to it?"

"I know several already sir..." Ranma started.

"Not like this one, I normally wouldn't even teach it to you this early in your training, but I think you may benefit from it and the sooner the better."

Nodding, Ranma stood. "Well let's get to it."

"Follow me." Dr. Digger's said. "And stop calling me, sir!"

"Um...yes, s...Dr. Diggers." Ranma said.

"Good enough."

The mansion had long ago been divided into certain sections, the main floor belonged to everybody, the underground stuff belonged to Gina, Britanny, and Brianna. The top floor belonged to their parents and Dr. Diggers had used his magic to pull off something that Gina had done below the house on a smaller scale. Some of the rooms on the upper floors were bigger on the inside than they should have been, one of these rooms was the Library, where Dr. Diggers stored all his magical, historical, and medical books. Ranma wasn't sure how many books the room held, but there had to be thousands of them along the walls and on the shelves that took up the back portion of the room. In the center of this was a large circle with symbols painted on the floor in and around the circle.

"Sit down in the circle and cross your legs Ranma."

"Okay."

Sitting across from him, Dr. Diggers took up a similar position and pulled a scroll out of thin air and handed to Ranma. "Study that and memorize it, that will be today's lesson, it will help you attain a balance between your mind, body, and soul. Once you master that you will be better able to control your Ki, I think you are having problems is because you are not totally balanced and that is affecting your body in someway. Once achieved you will be able to fully control your Ki with even more precision. From there we will move on to controlling your magical abilities."

Ignoring Dr. Diggers, Ranma was already halfway through the scroll and it's fascinating contents. He'd never thought of attaining this kind of meditation before, it would allow him to master everything about his body, to control his emotions, the way his Ki flowed through his body, even how to form a controlled aura that he could already see uses for in a fight. As he read he started to follow the basic steps of the scroll and hoped to have the beginnings of it mastered by the time he finished reading it. After several minutes Ranma nodded and sat the scroll down beside him and looked at Dr. Diggers, he'd been pretty quiet while he was reading. Ranma blinked and gaped at the old guy, he was hovering about three feet off the floor with a gentle white glow about him as he meditated. His hands were folded together and the eyes were closed as he just hovered there and waited.

This must have been one of those things he could accomplish with this technique if he mastered it, something like this could help out immensely in his next fight. It would be a never ending aerial battle and allow him to pull off the hardest moves of his school with ease, grinning he looked the scroll over one more time and started to meditate. He copied Dr. Diggers 'stance' as he meditated and slowly centered himself as he ran down the scrolls list of instructions for achieving the perfect balance. One of the first things he realized was that his Ki and body were very balanced already, giving him quite a bit of power already, but his mind wasn't even close to being ready to join in yet. "This doesn't seem to work..." Ranma muttered.

"Why is that Ranma?" Dr. Diggers asked in a soft voice as he floated there.

"My Ki and body will enter the meditation easily, but my mind can't grasp the kind of peaceful thoughts that this thing says I need."

"Ranma, your father has taught you how to use your body for years, you have mastered quite a bit of your aura, but you have never had to use your mind for anything like this. You said yourself that your fighting style makes you react without thought, that is exactly the opposite of what you need to do in order to learn this. You are blanking your mind to meditate, you can't do that with this technique, you have to control the energies as they flow through your body, mind, and soul. It will take a bit of practice, maybe a week or so, but can learn this and once you do learning all the other things you need will be easy. This only the first step after all, now focus on your inner energies and learn the control you need."

"Yes sir." Ranma said.

Dr. Diggers leaned forward and his head exploded into his Flaming Skull of Death, he started talking in his Death voice. "Don't Call ME Sir!"

"AGHAAA!!"

"Now focus on the lesson and begin." Dr. Diggers said in a calm tone of voice.

**********

Several hours later Dr. Diggers finally let Ranma go, he was more than happy to get out of that room. He felt like an idiot when it came to this magic stuff and had no clue where to even begin with it. With his martial arts he could make up new moves and knew all the ins and outs of any particular style he'd ever encountered. Magic was a whole different world of things to learn and he had learned very quickly that he had barely scratched the surface, for the last five hours he'd been sitting in the middle of a circle trying to learn how to move air with his mind. He had never had to do anything so hard in his life and that old fart had just hovered there and looked down his nose at him like it was easy.

Ranma felt like walking out on the bastard, but he kind of understood what he was doing teaching him this way. It was a stupid test to see if he had the determination to even learn magic. This headache was going to get old real quick though, five hours of using your brain to push air around, a simple spell according to Dr. Diggers, and he wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for a few days. He was a fighter, he ran around, he jumped, he fought great battles because they were fun. What he didn't like to do was sit around on the floor and push at the 'AIR' with his mind for fun. Where was the challenge? The Danger? He sighed, slumped over and headed out back, he had to work some of the kinks out of his back to make sure he start to lose his edge with all this sitting.

If this was what magic was always going to be like then he wouldn't do it, as things stood right now he had no intention of ever going very far with this. He had other thing to that were far more important than sitting in the middle of the floor anyway. Looking in the sky he figured he had two or three hours before he had to meet Brianna so he did a few quick stretches to loosen the screaming muscles in his back and started to work out. He started slow to make sure he was strong enough, then filled his body with Ki and leapt about forty feet into the air and started his work out. Just so he wouldn't piss off Dr. Diggers Ranma also spends the time trying to focus his mind through the...'what did he call it?' Breeze Cantrip, almost instantly his headache came back and nearly made him mess up one of his rebounds, but he ignored it and focused past the pain like his old man taught him to so long ago.

His increase in concentration, something he can't seem to do while sitting on his ass in a circle on the floor, paid off almost instantly as the headache decreased slightly. Ranma could feel energy flowing through his body as he jumped and continued to focus on the cantrip spell, the energy in his body was nothing like Ki, but he'd expected that. What he wasn't expecting was the amount of energy the cantrip seemed to call up, he could feel it filling his body with every passing second. Strangely enough it seemed to be flowing through his body differently than the way his Ki did, kind of like he was getting aroused. Yet that didn't quite describe it either, he landed by the house and let the energy fill his hands like he did with his Ki attacks.

Instead of his normal bright blue color, this energy formed into a pure white sphere of energy. It wasn't hot or cold, just a swirling mass of white and gray. He imagined the pattern that Dr. Diggers had told him to use when casting this cantrip spell and wasn't all that surprised when the sphere vanished as he made the wave motion that set off the cantrip spell. With a gasp he felt the energy rush out of his body, but other than that he couldn't even tell that he'd just cast a spell. Everything around him was super calm, there wasn't a thing stirring that even hinted at a breeze and he though for a second that it had failed, but then he felt it. Somewhere nearby there was something gathering in force, he frowned a little and wondered what kind of useless spell took all this time to get going.

Then his danger sense went off and he dove to the side, rolled and came up on his feet as this gigantic gust of wind thundered through the back yard. The grass was nearly pulled out of the ground, the trees swayed, tiles were blown off the roofs of nearby houses, and the swing set in the neighbors yard was lifted up like a little toy and tossed into their swimming pool with a huge splash of water. It lasted about thirty seconds, actually dragging water out of said pool and flooding the yard beyond that one in a spray of water before it finally stopped and the noise died down. Ranma gaped at the destruction around him, unable to comprehend how a cantrip, something Dr. Diggers had explained was small, useless, only good for practice and only good for limited effects that couldn't hurt anybody.

"Whoa!"

"Ranma what the hell did you just do?!" Dr. Diggers yelled as he stalked into the back yard. "I felt that thing you just did go off like a bomb, every magic user in the city probably just felt what you just did!"

"I was just trying to cast that cantrip again." Ranma explained.

"A Breeze Cantrip can't rip up a yard, pick things up, and drain a pool!"

"I don't know, I just did what you showed me, I swear!" He snapped right back, the jerk had been the one to show how to do this, it's not his fault it was that big.

"Tell me how you cast that spell please." Theo growled, this kid seemed to have the ability to constantly surprise everyone he was around with actions like this.

"I was practicing when I felt that energy you told me about up in the library a little while ago, at first I just kind of focused on it while I was moving around and compared it to my Ki. I could feel it filling my body so I landed and focus it into my hands to see what it would look like and created a small white ball of light."

"Then?"

"I pictured that pattern in my head that you showed me and made that gesture to set the spell off with a rush of energy. The ball vanished and everything went quiet for a few seconds and I thought I'd messed up again, but then that giant gust came up from behind me and blew through this yard, theirs, and that one way down there with a giant blast of air."

Theo shook his head. "You said your body was full of energy?"

"How much of this did you use?"

"It all drained out of me before I could stop it."

"You're just a beginner, you should not be able to increase the power of a spell like that and I've never heard of a Breeze spell that did anything like this." Theo said as he motioned with his arm.

"Idon'tknowhowIdidit!" Ranma said and ducked his head.

"..." Theo said, he could see his wife laughing her ass off in one of the nearby windows and pointing at him as she kicked her legs in the air. This was going to be one of those days he decided, this kid was going to be a challenge if he ever saw one. One other was obvious as well, he was a natural at using magic, he wondered why he had never accidentally used it before now? Was it the curse?

"Um...what are we going to do about those guy's yards?" Ranma asked nervously.

"Fix them...is that a swing set at the bottom of that pool?"

"Heheheheh." Ranma laughed and played with his pig tail.

"Sigh!" Dr. Diggers flared his aura and cast a restructuring spell he'd designed a few years back and in a flash of light everything was back to normal except for the wet grass.

**********

Zelda wasn't having a good day, though to be fair, she hadn't had a good day since she joined up with Peewee the Brat, or better known as Lord Talon. He had enhanced her to make her stronger, faster, and incredibly dangerous in exchange for serving him. At the time it has seemed like the greatest idea, but now a few years later she was beginning to realize just what a horrible job she had agreed to. When compared to a normal person she outclassed them in every way, but as one of Peewee's body guards she just couldn't get a break. No matter what the situation was, she always seemed to end up in a bad way, in jail, in traction, on the receiving end of Peewee's temper. Like right now, she was in jail, that was pretty normal for the most part, but she had been her for some time. This time she had been in jail for over a month, Peewee normally got freed within a week because he was a minor and his mother came to get him, but they usually let her out at the same time.

For the first time in a long time she wondered if he had decided to let her rot while he bioengineered a new set of body guards for his plans. She had sacrificed everything for him, he held her soul in the palm of his hand and if he squeezed she would be one dead servant. She stood up and started pacing her cell as she thought to herself, it was about twice the size of a normal one, but it had been designed to hold a person like herself. The walls were made out of special materials that she couldn't shatter with her hands, they absorbed energy in some way so she couldn't use her ability to generate electricity, but had no idea what happened to it then. Even the door to the cell was about a foot thick and made out of the same stuff as the walls, but it had a small hole in it near the floor where they shoved food in to keep her alive. She hated it here, there was nothing to do and only a few things that she could practice to keep in shape.

She hadn't even seen her friends since she arrived and as far as she could tell they had all been tossed in cells and then forgotten about. The only thing she had that brought her any comfort at the moment was a small window, it over looked the main yard of the prison and allowed her to see everybody else that was being held when they went out into the yard to move around a bit. There seemed to be a good number of female prisoners, though none of them were enhanced like she was. That enhancement must have been why she wasn't allowed out of her cell, it would have certainly been easy enough to escape if they had. She sighed and counted out the twenty steps of her cell, turned, and did it again.

It was as she was doing this for about the fiftieth time that she heard something at the edge of her hearing, after five weeks of being stuck in this hole she had learned what kinds of sounds this place made. She didn't have a TV, no Radio, nothing to keep her occupied except her own thoughts and it was driving her mad. Usually the guards would walk by and taunt her or threaten her in some way, hell, even the prisoners were supposed to make her life a lot worse than it was. Instead she hadn't talked to anyone since the day they threw her in here, even when the food was delivered it was by this little robot that roved from one cell to another. So when she heard the foot steps coming down the hall she knew it wasn't a guard, they didn't walk by the cell in this prison, so it had to be something else. They drew closer and closer and just as she was about to go look out the hole at the bottom of the door she heard their voices.

"Is this the one?" Asked a male voice.

Zelda had heard that certain female prisoners were 'given' time with some of the male prisoners from the men's sections of the prison, but had never thought she would be on anyone's list. Her abilities still worked though even in this cell, she just couldn't use them on the walls to escape, so she was safe enough even if they did come in for that. So she charged a bit of electricity in her hand and watched for the door to open, she would kill whoever had decided to use her as a victim, no man had the right to do that. The electricity turned bright blue as it arched across her hands silently, then something odd happened. There was a loud bang and the door caved in a bit from the outside, almost as if someone had hit it with something.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

With each hit the door gave just a little more, then with a final hit the door shattered into large chunks and fell to the floor with a clang. She staggered back in shock, that had been the last thing she had expected. Some of the rubble was kicked out of the way and she was able to see Peewee as he stood on the other side and he glanced at Zelda with his evil smirk. There was a huge guy beside him that looked like he could rip phone books in half with his bare hands. "Zelda, it's time to go. We have some planning to do as we get our revenge on Gina Diggers for this mess."

"Sure, let's go." She said, then noticed that the man standing behind Peewee was massaging his fist and frowning at it for hurting. He was obviously oriental and a lot younger than most of the usual guys that Peewee attracted to his little group. Daishi was oriental, but he was world wise and knew about a lot of different things. This guy seemed to be a bit different, she looked him over and wondered for a second why he seemed to look familiar. He was wearing a faded yellowish green shirt, black pants with the bottom part of the leg tied up with rope to keep them from getting in the way as he moved and fought, simple shoes, and had this huge backpack on his back that seemed to be straining the straps around his shoulders. There was also a tiger striped bandana on his head to keep a mop of unruly black hair out of his eyes, he also looked like he wanted to kill someone.

"Who's the goof, sir?"

He glared at her.

Peewee ignored him and grinned at Zelda. "Daishi didn't come to get us, so he's either dead or doing something that I wouldn't like. Mom told me to get out of this on my own, she had other things to do and it would have taken her a few months to get around to us with her busy schedule. This is Ryoga Hibiki, he's that guy that I cursed at Jusenkyo, he has agreed to serve me for a cure to his curse and some enhancements so that he can get his revenge on a Ranma Saotome. Do you recognize that name?"

"Not really, sir, have we met him before?"

"He's the guy that defeated Daishi over Jusenkyo."

"The one that turned into a girl?" Zelda gasped, she could remember Gina muttering about someone getting cursed in such a way.

"The very same, well come along, we have to get back to work and get our revenge on Gina Diggers for this."

"What about the guards?"

"They...are being taken care of." Peewee said nervously.

"Are we going to get Ionis?"

"He's been getting a portal set up to port us out of here with his magic."

Stepping out of the cell Zelda was looking forward to getting another chance at Britanny Diggers, the bitch had a serious butt kicking coming to her. She looked over at Ryoga and saw that he was restraining himself from killing Peewee, the glare and clenched fists were a dead give away. The guy obviously didn't seem to be able control his emotions, they all flashed across his face and were easy to read. It was also pretty normal for everyone that served Peewee to act like this, there was something about the little kid that made him extremely dangerous. She had met his mother at one time and nearly wet her pants, glowing eyes and an evil growl was more than enough to scare the hell out of her. Even Daishi had been scared of that woman and he wouldn't admit fear unless he was forced to and even then would deny it with his dying breath.

"Come along, Ionis is just down the hall." Peewee snapped and started walking.

"Yes sir."

"Don't order me around you little pipsqueak, you either cure this curse or I'll kill you!" Ryoga yelled.

"We made a deal, live up to your end and I'll live up to mine. Or would you like to suffer the other consequences I mentioned." Peewee said as he narrowed his eyes, they started to glow.

"Ah..." Ryoga looked nervous. "Alright."

"Excellent, now come along we can't waste anymore time here."

'That was new.' Zelda thought as she glanced at the new guy, he was kind of cute and she liked the little fangs.

Ryoga just growled.

Peewee smirked.

**********

"Now focus that energy like you would your aura Ranma, let it form around your body like a shield." Theo said and demonstrated what he wanted.

Ranma nodded and focused, once he'd felt the energy tapping into it had become a whole lot easier then he'd expected. Within seconds his aura flared a bright blue and made the his clothing ruffle a bit as it hummed. "How's that?"

"Use magic Ranma, not Ki, they are similar I'll admit, but there are differences between the two. You have to learn how to use one or the other."

"They feel the same to me, it's so hard to tell them apart..." Ranma said as his aura died down and resurged a second later, this time it was white in color.

"Much better, now slowly focus on those meditation techniques I showed you."

At first nothing happened, but Ranma had figured out that this magic aura worked almost like his Ki aura so he could use them the same way. His aura flared out a few minutes later and nearly tripled in size as it lit up the room around them. "Okay, how's this?"

"Now picture that pattern in your mind, but I want you to only use a portion of the power you've collected for this. It should only take a tiny portion of what you have now..."

"I still don't understand that."

"I've explained this, your aura is your magic and if you use it all you won't be able to use your magic until you've had a chance to rest and recharge your energies. If you use only a tiny bit at a time it will last a lot longer and you will always be able to have your magic available, it is only in the most extreme situations that you would use all of your aura up."

"...but I can just draw more in from around me, why should I have to worry about using to much?"

"Ranma, your magic can't just be sucked out of the very air, it has to come from within you and be built up over time. You are trying to use the least amount of magic to accomplish as much as you can. Now focus on that pattern and cast the spell, I just want a little one this time, not that giant gust you did earlier."

"Yes sir." Ranma mumbled.

He could picture the pattern easily enough, but every time he tried to use just a tiny portion of it he felt like he was holding back an ocean of power. The little slip in concentration after he tried to tap into just a small amount and he would be flooded with energy. Again and again he would grasp onto it and have to fight to keep everything he had available from rushing out in one giant wave. Again and again he tried and failed to use just a small amount of power, it seemed as it had to be all or nothing. It just wasn't working and he didn't understand why, he was following Dr. Digger's instructions to the letter. Focus your aura, picture a pattern, and channel a bit of magic through it to set off the effect. It seemed simple enough and drawing in the magic wasn't a problem, what the hell was he doing wrong?

After about ten minutes he sighed and relaxed his aura. "I can't seem to grasp onto smaller amounts, every time I do it's like everything has to be used or nothing can."

"Keep trying, I know you can do it with a bit of practice. This is only the first day after all, you'll get the hang of it eventually and we can move onto the next spell."

Theo left the room and Ranma went back to practicing, but after half an hour he had to stop and rest again. He had this massive headache and it was driving his crazy so he decided to take a break and headed down to the kitchen. He didn't get far though, about halfway there he ran into Brianna as she was running down the hall. She smiled and waved at him as she ran by, a group of Peebos and Peebo-TIE's following close behind. He wondered why they had various little attachments like little antennas with flags, tiny little plastic finger attachments, and were chanting something about the Braves being on TV. What the hell was this about? He followed after her and found her setting up the huge TV to show something that he had no experience with, American Baseball, the Atlanta Braves to be exact.

"Ranma, want to watch the game with me?" Brianna asked as she sat a giant bowl of popcorn on the table as the Peebos arranged themselves on the couch to watch the game, they looked excited as they waved their little flags and plastic hands.

"I've still got some practicing to do or Dr. Diggers will get mad, I'm just going to grab something to drink and try and find something to aleve this headache I've got." He said.

"Ahhh, well maybe you can catch the next game in a couple of days. I've been looking forward to this all week."

"Maybe, well have fun. Where is everyone else anyway?"

"I'm not sure, Gina likes to watch baseball in her own way. Britanny isn't here right now, and Stripe is off seeing about a new job. He got dressed up in a suit and everything. He looked pretty good too, so I think he wanted to make a good impression. He didn't want miss this game either so I'm recording it for him."

Ranma nodded, he didn't care about this kind of thing at all, so he headed for the kitchen again. He wandered over to a gadget Gina had spent about a month designing, it looked like a large microwave built into the wall with the door missing and an advanced looking touch screen on the side. Everyone who lived in the house had their name programmed into the device, he tapped it and saw a list appear below his name and tapped a word. The hole lit up and after a few seconds a large bottle of orange juice appeared. Gina's abilities to make weird devices never failed to surprise him, he wasn't sure how it worked, but the thing came in handy for so many things. Slamming the whole bottle he moved over to the fridge and grabbed some leftovers and ate a quick snack to help settle his stomach.

"Hey Ranma, how is your training going?" Julia asks as she walked in.

"Badly, I'm doing everything he said to do and I still can't get it."

"Really, well casting spells can be quite complicated at times."

"Casting the spell doesn't seem to be the problem."

"Huh? What's the problem then?"

"Well accessing the magic is easy, I've got tons of magic I can use for casting the spell. My problem is that I have too much magic to call on and every time I want to cast a spell it seems that I have to use all the magic I have built up or I can't cast a spell. Using smaller amounts is impossible."

"I've been around Theo long enough to know that is really weird."

"I'll figure it out, but right now I've got a headache from trying to use those small amounts and keeping the rest bottled up. It's like trying to hold back an ocean and takes a hundred times more concentration than using my Ki normally would."

"You have a knack for pulling out strange new ways to do things at the last minute Ranma, you'll get this as well."

"I hope so." Ranma said as he got up and stretched a little. "Well I'm going to go back up and try out a couple of ideas I've got.

**********

He wasn't quite certain why he did it, but Ryoga opened his eyes and sat up to look around. Then he recalled what he'd agreed to do for an opportunity to gain his revenge on the hated Ranma Saotome and growled to himself as he climbed off the metal table. He stood there for several seconds ignoring the fact that he was naked with a conveniently placed shadow hiding certain bits from the unwanted observers as he looked around the strange room. There wasn't anyone in the small room, the only thing he could see was the metal table, a computer, and a futuristic looking chair that was connected to the ceiling by a long bar that would allow it to circle around the metal table quite easily. He looked himself over and wondered what the kid had done to him, it wasn't like he had much of a choice in the matter and he already knew that he'd do anything for a cure. His curse was horrible, being on everyone's lunch menu, being so small that girls kept picking him up and taking him home to be their pet.

It was horrible, they all had this thing for pink and always had two or more pets that thought they could eat him if they wanted to. It had only been about six weeks or so since he'd received his curse at the hands of this kid, but he seemed to find himself in some situation like that on a weekly basis, the first had been Kimiko and her scream of Kaaaaaaawwwwwwiiiiiiiiiiiiii!" and pure cuteness, it was enough to give him cavities, then that Yuka girl, she had been nice and all, but after she nearly poisoned him with a simple soup and that had been the end of that. Three days in pig form with the runs hadn't been very fun either, that girl would be dangerous to whoever she ever married. Then Makoto, Akiko, and Lum (Shudder) she had been the last one and he planned to never let a girl get near him again. She hadn't been into pink like a normal girl, no, she had some martial arts ability to create electricity that was used to shock her boyfriend into submission. Nine times out of ten he'd been nearby and gotten hit as well, he'd never been as happy as the day he'd gotten lost and wandered away from that house. It had been a death trap pure and simple, no matter what he did he would end up being on the end of something dangerous.

Flexing his arms to see if they had changed any was a surprise, he had always been strong, but now he was very strong. His muscles seemed to bulge and with suppressed power as they flexed and strained against his skin, all his muscles seemed to be the same way. He could feel the difference in the way they moved, it would take several days for him to learn how he moved again. His balance had been altered with the change, but that would have to wait until he got his hands on some clothing. Where was his pack, he always had something in there for emergencies. Walking around the room he spotted a door, concentrated on it and made his way over. So long as it was in sight he could usually find his way, eventually, it only took him ten minutes to get over to it. That damned chair seemed to get in his way ever step of the way, but that didn't stop him and he celebrated when he reached the door.

It opened as he approached, there was a small hallway on the other side that had doors every ten feet or so. Most of them were empty rooms or filled with little boxes, but he got lucky and found his pack sitting in the corner of the forth room. After dressing and tying his loose pants around his shins he lifted the pack up and went to find the door, it took twenty minutes, a new record for him since hadn't been looking at the door while he dressed. He wanted to get out of here, but that little kid had a promise to keep so he went looking for him, that other guy with the goatee, or the bald chick with the great....blush. In her prison uniform she had looked kind of ugly, but once they arrived at Peewee's home she had gone to her room and come out in this skin tight green outfit that left nothing to the imagination.

After wandering around for a few hours and ending up back in the original room at least a dozen times he found a set of stairs and made his way up, down, to the side, up again, and down until he found himself standing in a stone hallway covered with tapestries. Now he was confused, the kid had taken him and the other two to a relatively normal looking house, he remembered the carpet and wooden walls. There hadn't been any kind of stone anywhere to be seen, when had this portion of the house been added? The hanging rugs were really weird too, they showed scenes of dragons sleeping, posing, eating some hapless human sacrifice, fighting, flying, casting spells and things along that nature. He'd never seen anything like it before and would have hung around to see what else was available, but headed off to find the kid instead. Getting the cure was all he could think about, everything else would have to wait until he found his way back again.

Finding a staircase that went up, he followed along until it started making weird turns and eventually found himself in some house he'd never been in before. Then he saw the bald chick relaxing on the couch in that body hugging outfit as she watched a baseball game, he didn't know women liked baseball, they usually did other things to keep occupied. "Hey." He said as he entered the room and stood behind the couch.

"Hey, where you been?"

"Just visiting the carpet room." He said with a shrug.

"Huh?" Now Zelda looked confused.

"Ryoga! There you are! Where the hell have you been? You shouldn't even have woken up for another twelve hours or so."

"Just wandering around, found my pack and started looking for you after I woke up." He said with a shrug.

"Well come along, I want to explain what I did to you while you are still here. That direction sense of yours is going to be a pain the ass, I did everything I could to cure it, but it seems to be some kind of learned response."

"Huh?"

"It certainly doesn't seem to be something physically or genetically wrong with you so I can only say that you learned it somehow."

"It's a family curse, my mom and dad are cousins so they both have it to some extent and I got a double dose of it. My life was cast into the deepest pit of hell because of it, if my dog was here he could lead me around though."

"Like a seeing eye dog?" Peewee asked.

"Yeah, my family bred these dogs for just that. They have the directions sense we are usually born without and can always get us to where we have to go, but I haven't seen Shirokuro for a long time now."

"Would it be at your home?"

"Probably, they always go back there when we get lost without them."

"Where do you live, I'll have Ionis pop on over there and pick the dog up for you." Peewee said as he led them into a small room with a desk and a large computer.

Ryoga had to think about if for a minute, he hadn't been home in so long that he couldn't remember what his house looked like. "Um...it's near Mt. Fuji...I think..."

Peewee almost facefaulted, but controlled himself at the last instant and shook his head instead. "You don't even know where you live?"

"OF COURSE I KNOW WHERE I LIVE!!" Ryoga bellowed. "Right next to Mt. Fugi, I remember looking out my window and there it was, big as life and hard to miss."

"Ryoga that describes 90% of the houses in Tokyo, I need something a little more accurate than that. Like it's address."

"Well I have that, never helped me before though. I haven't been home in three years or so..." Ryoga said nervously.

"IONIS!!"

The well dressed guy with the gotee walked into the room and gave Peewee a little bow. "You called boss?"

"I need you to take Ryoga here home to retrieve his dog."

"A d-d-dog? Um...why?"

"He has a lousy sense of direction and needs it to get around."

"Yes sir." Ionis was confused, but that was pretty normal for him. He was a magic user, not whatever it was that Peewee seemed to think he was. "Well Ryoga, where's your house?"

"Near Mt. Fuji."

"AGHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" Peewee yelled and had to restrain himself from committing stress induced murder. His eyes glowed and made Ryoga and Ionis back up a couple of steps. "GO, NOW BEFORE I KILL YOU!!" He snarled.

"Y-yes Lord Talon." Ionis stuttered as he pulled out his spell book and dragged Ryoga out of the room. "Well Ryoga, lead the way."

"Sure." Ruummbbllee... "Grab an umbrella, sounds like it might rain pretty soon."

**********

Beep...beep...beep

With a twist of her screwdriver Gina finished off the last of the repairs she needed to make to the Ranma-chan android that she had been studying for some time now. That old computer had been a marvel of information, an actual artificial intelligence that had been active for way to long without having it's memory purged and defragmented. It's old programs had been slowly altering over time, corrupted and changed every time they were used to make an android or anything else. She still had a link set up to it on her main computer that was downloading all it's files into one of her hard drives, there was tons of information there and it was all hers. The Explorers Society had agreed to let her have access the whole island after she discovered it, everything there belonged to her now and she had barely scratched it's surface of everything she had found so far.

Beep...beep...beep

Before she closed the chest plate and repaired the damaged skin, she attached an umbilical cord and booted up her diagnostic program. The android's memory set up was an incredible set of super advanced dime sized hard drives that could hold a thousand times more info than her current set up and there were hundreds of the little things in it's brain case working together like a normal brain would. Whoever had designed this had been a genius, it was so simple to see how everything worked when activated. Each of the tiny hard drives communicated with each other and processed information like the human brain did and could easily access any of the information in an instant with no lag time or anything. Recreating it would take her several weeks though, even for one tiny little hard drive, but once that was accomplished she would be able to update all of her Bots.

This technology, combined with her own inventions would make her a fortune in robotics designs. There was so much she had to learn, but once she was done with this android she would be able to duplicate it with ease. It had even had weapons built into it's main chassis, in the forearms, shins, shoulders, and breasts. Lasers weapons of amazing destructive capability that she had removed and deactivated for later study, Brianna would be able to do more with them than she would though. The most amazing thing she had found was that 98 percent of the android was made from some very rare materials, but ones that would allow it to react in a more human manner. It's bones could be broken, but would 'fix' themselves within minutes, it could lift ten tons of weight with little problem though she still wasn't sure what it's upper limits where. It's skin was incredibly life like, warm to the touch and just as stretchable as normal human skin.

Every time she took a new look at this thing she found something else she hadn't noticed before. Luckily her link to the main AI on the island was providing a ton of answers and had allowed her access to it's programming, with that reprogramming the android would be simple. Both had been designed for easy use and understanding, this was both good and bad, on one hand it meant that she would soon have the Android working perfectly. On the other hand it meant that just anybody with a limited intelligence could access that island computer and she was worried about who had been using it before she came along. Were there androids out there that lived among humans and pretended to blend in for some reason? If so what were they programmed to do in certain situations?

"...nga! Yea..."

This more than anything else had her worried, she would need to return to the island and search the whole thing from top to bottom to get the answers she needed. That one little AI she found hadn't had access to the information she wanted, just stuff on androids and robotics, as far as she could figure she had stumbled into the manufacturing plant for the things. She sighed and rubbed her eyes as she tapped a few more keys on the computer and let it finish it's diagnostic on the android. At the moment she couldn't let herself think of it as a copy of Ranma's female form, she needed to make sure it was safe first. After she had it reprogrammed with the right attitude then she could treat it like her regular Bots, but until then it would continue to be the android.

"...ung..."

The computer finally beeped at her and she tapped in the last code string and sat back to watch as it performed a core dump of the android's memory. It would take about four hours to complete, a lot longer than expected, but she knew just how much memory was in this thing's hard drives. Even after downloading it she would need to learn the code, read through the whole mess, and rewrite everything. Ah, she loved robotics, there was so much potential to create the most amazing wonders. She yawned, it would take all night if she took her time, but it would be worth it in the end. Taking off her glasses she stood up and wandered over to her replicater and got herself a glass of ice water. That was when she heard the strange noise and wandered around the room trying to figure out where the odd music was coming from. Eventually she found herself standing in front of the main door to the lab, it sealed into the wall when she locked it to keep her sisters out during delicate operations. She glanced at the clock and noticed for the first time that it was about two in the morning and that everyone was in bed, she had worked right through dinner, again.

"...one, two, three..."

Right now she wanted to know what was going on out in the hall, it was starting to get on her nerves, so she tapped the open code and the door opened up silently. What greeted her was something she hadn't expected, but knowing her sister as well as she did, it didn't surprise her either. There where about forty Peebo moving up and down the long hallway performing a conga line, they all had on little Atlanta Braves hats and were waving little banners around that sait they had won. Singing to themselves as they moved back and forth in one long wiggling mass of little robots, even Peebochu had gotten into the act. She blinked as they all turned to look at her sheepishly then got back to dancing happily. Turning around Gina stepped back into her lab and shut the door and locked it just to be safe. Now if she could figure out why they were doing that at two in the morning she would be happy, as it was she was constantly wondering about the kind of programs her sister was using to control those things.

"....Conga! Uh...Uh...Ah! Uh...Uh...Ah!"

"Oh great, they just got louder. I do not need this tonight." She had more important things to worry about.

"...One more time Peebos, everybody CONGA!"

"One of these days Brianna." Gina mumbled to herself as she headed over to the alternate entrance to her lab and headed through the underground garage and up a level to enter the kitchen. She needed some aspirin after seeing that, those things seemed to get weirder and weirder as time went on. At times she even wondered if Brianna was just letting them run loose like pets or something, they were the size of a small remote controlled car and full of high explosives strong enough to knock down walls and if they blew up in groups they could level entire buildings.

"Uh...Uh...Ah! Uh...Uh...Ah! Oh Yeah, feel the burn!"

**********

Three days and he still couldn't seem to figure out what he was doing wrong, Ranma was starting to get frustrated. He could pick up a martial arts technique after only seeing it one or two times and even invent a counter or improvement that same day, but he couldn't get seem to figure out this magic crap. Picturing the pattern in his mind was easy, gathering the magic for the spell and making it fit the pattern was easy, but for some danmed reason he just couldn't seem to cast a spell at low power. Casting a cantrip spell was like setting off a large scale blast of wind that could toss cars around. The one time he had tried a simple candle lighting spell he'd cast a giant fire ball that gone right through his bedroom wall, melted most of the backyard fence and earned himself a lecture from Gina, Julia, Dr. Diggers, and the neighbors who had almost been caught in the blast as well.

Now he was in a special room the Dr. Diggers had made out of magic, he called it a spell casting room. It allowed spells to be tested and perfected, even really destructive ones, while inside without destroying everything in the immediate area. Ranma had been in here for close to six hours now and had only cast one spell so far and that one had been just as bad as the other three he'd cast recently, way to powerful. That was also the weird thing, according to what he'd been told the pattern's he was using to focus the spell were not supposed to grow as strong as the spells he cast. They were designed to actually limit the amount of power a person could put into them, bleeding off the access energy while they were cast. Dr. Diggers was baffled by his ability to increase their power and even thought he might have been using the wrong pattern.

That had meant an hour of drawing them out by hand on paper to show which one's he was using, when that had proven to be a bust he'd been told to go back to practicing. Ranma could feel that he was doing something wrong too, but he just couldn't place his finger one what. He was a martial artist, not a mage, so he had no idea what it might be. He just knew that it was something simple that he was spacing out. Even when Dr. Diggers was making him run through a spell step by step he was always thrown off when he tried to take a small portion of his magic and use it. Gathering in his magic again he did a quick cast of the candle spell again, maybe if he did it really fast it would work, but a large ball of fire fired out of his hand and soared down the 'target range' and exploded against the back wall.

"It didn't accomplish anything, but it sure as hell made me feel better." Ranma muttered to himself.

He needed a break from this, so he started to go through his Kata once again, starting at the beginning and slowly increasing his difficulty and speed. This was what he knew, he could perform them in his sleep and knew every in an out of the moves, their history, their advantages and disadvantages depending on the circumstances. They were so ingrained into his body that if he were to lose his memory he'd do them by instinct alone, rote perfect. He kept it up for close to an hour without really doing anything really straining, he needed to take his mind off his magic training and this was the only way. By the time he'd finished he had another idea, it was such a small thing, but if it worked he might finally be able to move onto some real spells.

Centering himself he took a relaxed offensive stance and flared his magic aura for a second, holding all the magical energy he could. Then he relaxed and let it die down, the problem seemed to be in his aura and following Dr. Digger's suggestions didn't seem to be working so he needed to find a different way to do the same thing. He'd even made that very suggestion a few days ago, but Dr. Diggers had insisted that doing so wouldn't work, but Ranma was beginning to think his magic worked differently than Dr. Diggers' magic did. The magical aura seemed to flow like water at times and the more he concentrated the stronger it got, just like his battle aura did.

His very training under his father and Master Julia might be why things weren't working, his mind was so used to doing these things one way that it made it harder to do another way. He formed the pattern for lighting the candle in his mind and drew in a tiny bit of his magical aura instead of filling himself as Dr. Diggers wanted. He flicked his wrist in the proper position and channeled the magic through the pattern, this time the small trickle of power surged through him and vanished. The candle lit up with a small flare that melted the wax half way down the wick and stayed lit.

"HAH! TAKE THAT YOU ****ING CANDLE!!" Ranma crowed and did a happy dance.

Eventually he stopped dancing and got serious again, focusing on the gust cantrip that he'd started out with he followed the same steps, aimed, and channeled a tiny bit of magic at the candle. There was a whooshing sound and the candle blew out and fell over, but other than that there was on hurricane force winds to dodge. He grinned happily and did another dance, now all he had to do was perfect the new technique and master it in all it's forms. Getting this far was over half the battle and improving on it would be child's play now that he knew what he was doing wrong.

"Very good Ranma." Dr. Diggers said as he walked in the room.

"I did it! Whooho!" Ranma crowed and danced some more.

"How did you do it? That didn't feel like a normal kind of spell I would use or anyone else I know of."

"I had to find a different way to cast the spell from the one you showed me and I remembered a conversation we had a few days ago when I first cast that gust spell and tossed that swing set into the neighbor's pool."

"What was that?"

"My magic works differently than yours, I have to draw in the exact amount I need and cast however much energy is in my body to make the spell work, this way will mean a lot of trial and error practice, but your way just makes me increase the power of the spell way to much. Either making it way to dangerous to use or ineffective."

"I've never heard of a magic discipline that worked like that, all of them use one variation or another of the type I described to you." Theo said with a little confusion, he would have to go back to Bugee and see if he knew what kind of magic Ranma was using. He was just one contradiction after another with the potential to be the best at just about anything he set his mind to. That was almost scary.

"I have no clue why your way doesn't work either, it might have something to do with the way I was trained to access my Ki aura. I do know that I'm puting a bit of my Ki into the spells I'm casting though, it makes them just a tiny bit stronger than they normally would be. I'll have to practice some more to learn if that is a good or bad thing."

"Excellent work Ranma, I was starting to wonder if you would be able to figure out a way to cast these lower level spells. I wouldn't have started out on the higher range spells and canceled your training if you couldn't work at these lower levels, they are a very necessary level to begin at. Now that you have I can show you some other things and get to teaching you full time, I'll even have Seance help you out."

"Cool." Ranma said with a nod.

"Now that I think about it I think that you might have been giving off some unconsious clues that your magic worked a little differently as well and I was just missing them." Dr. Diggers said as he rubbed his chin.

"What do you mean?"

"Remember how every time me or one of the others would look at your aura and it was always something different?"

"Sure, it was driving you nuts." Smirked Ranma.

Dr. Diggers ignored the insult. "Yep, I want you to cast that candle lighting spell again, but this time I want to cast that aura reading spell first to see what your aura does when you cast the spell."

Ranma shrugged as he walked over to put the candle out and cast the spell again.. "Sure, tell me when your ready."

"Alright, it's cast, go ahead and cast it, but wait a few seconds before you cast so I can get a good look at your aura."

Nodding, Ranma formed the pattern in his mind and drew in a tiny amount of magic, less than before and held the spell. "It's ready."

"Your aura changes as you prepared the spell Ranma, it started out as a light blue aura, but as you prepared the spell your aura wavered and turned to a firey red color. I can barely see it, but I think it's because you have such a tiny amount of magic in your body."

"Anything else?" Ranma asked, he was getting tired of holding the spell at bay.

"Go ahead and cast, but I want you to prepare to cast it again almost immediately."

With a puff of smoke the candle lit up with ease and Dr. Diggers saw that his aura drained out of his body, leaving the blue one in it's place. Then that again vanished as Ranma prepared to cast it one more time and stopped at the same spot and turned to give him a questioning look. "Now what?"

"Think about altering the spell to the small breeze spell and put the candle out without releasing the magic you have gathered."

Raising an eyebrow, Ranma shrugged and altered the pattern in his mind and refocused the magic to fit this pattern. He saw Dr. Diggers nodding out of the corner of his eye and wondered what he was seeing. After several second he got tired of waiting and released the spell, putting the candle out with a wave of his hand. "How was that?"

"Very informative. Well done Ranma that was a very good indeed." Holding up his hand Dr. Diggers cast a quick spell and a leather bound book appeared in his hand. He handed it to Ranma with a grin. "You're ready to move on, this is your first spell book."

"So what did you just see with my aura?"

"When you changed spells your aura changed the magic in your body to the kind it needed for the spell, altering the aura's color from fiery red to a white color."

Taking the book Ranma was amazed to be holding such a thing, it was about the size of a large text book, bound brown leather that had been worked by a master of the art. There was a small yin/yang symbol on the cover right next to a cover lock with a hinged piece to lock it in place. "Whoa!"

Dr. Diggers grinned. "That is a first level spell book, it was designed by the council to help evaluate all beginners in the art. It is yours to keep as the first book in the library of books you might eventually acquire over the years. There are about fifteen spells in in there and lots of information on each of them, who created them, some of their histories and such. I want you to memorize ever line in that book and master each of the spells."

"Sure, no problem." Ranma said, it was like martial arts scrolls that the old man had used to 'borrow'. Fifteen spells was a lot, but so long as he had something to refer to he could do it easily, they were described and detailed with all the information he needed. "How long do I have?"

"There is no time limit on this Ranma, when you get everything in there memorized you will considered a novice Mage, those are the basics. After you finish doing this you can stop learning because you will finally have the skill to control that magical aura of yours, or you will need to pick a school of magic and find someone to teach you more."

"You won't be doing that?" Ranma asked with some surprise.

"Only if you choose to specialize in Aura magic. You could be a Mystic mage, or a rune mage, or even a illusionist if you wanted. Anything that might catch your attention, as you learn more you will grow in power and skill, just like your martial arts. First we need to figure out what kind of magic you are using first."

Ranma nodded again. "Cool, and you'll be helping me learn these spells?"

"Yes, each one will take you a few days to a week to learn, even with everything described so I'll be around to push you in the right direction."

"Alright, now all I need is one more thing."

"What's that?"

"Food, I'm starving." Ranma said as his stomach growled at him and demanded sustenance, NOW.

Dr. Diggers sweatdropped. "Um...okay. When you get back I have something else I want to try."

"Sure, no problem." Ranma yelled as he ran out of the room.

**********

She sat up and moved to get off the metal bed she was laying on, and several things registered at the same time as she took in her surroundings. She had been repaired, she was naked, the room was cold and causing certain reactions on her body she didn't understand, and that there was blonde haired girl with glasses dancing around the room trying to pat herself on the back shouting something about how she had done it and that she was 'such' a genius. Memory nodes sparked and she recalled a recent fight with some kind of cat girl and the amount of damage she had taken. The blonde stopped running and sauntered up to smirk at her, giving her a once over as she approached.

"How do you feel? Your programming and internal systems should be working quite well now that I've rebuilt you." Gina said.

"My systems seem to be working fine, my mass has changed since I was last on line, my personality programs are currently off line, strength settings have been downgraded to a lower setting. My artificial skin has been repaired to 96% of norm and will be back to normal within the hour. All other systems are functioning normally and within parameters, though someone has reprogrammed major parts of my programming. Emergency programs have been removed and replaced with a different set of commands."

"I repaired you and started reprogramming you with proper orders, when your personality programs are activated you will be working like a normal girl. You had old orders to kill everything that crossed your path and I had to remove those and give you some upgrades. You will notice on an internal scan that I used the proper codes from the factory and that everything has been given authorization." Gina said.

"Running scan...running scan...scan complete. Program changes have been accepted."

"Excellent, now I would like you to remove your interface cable and plug into this computer right here." Gina said and motioned to the system that took up one whole wall of th lab she was using.

The Android walked across the room and found the slot for her cable, she reached up under her hair and pulled the thin cord out of it's slot and plugged in. Instantly she found that her vision shifting from her optic sensors to computer itself. "Hook up complete."

"Now look over the menu, there should be four names there."

"Yes."

"I want you to run through each of those files, the name is the name you decide on will be the one you go by after we activate your personality programs. Those files you are looking at are the final stage you need before your programming can be completed."

"Why four names?"

"To give you a choice, normally this wouldn't be needed, but I thought it would be a good idea in this case just to give you a good idea of what kind of life you will have around here after you choose."

"I am an android."

"When you are done you will be a free android, able to make your own decisions and live your life as you see fit. You will no longer have a master to make all the choices for you."

"Current programmed memories have me as a duplicate of one Ranma Saotome, female, a powerful fighter, and in need of a proper education." The Android said.

"Access your new files on Ranma Saotome."

The android cocked her head to the side and accessed the files. "Ranma is a man that changes into a girl with a splash of cold water?"

"Yes, it's a curse and the form you are modeled off of."

"What will his reaction be to me?"

"I don't know, but he does know that I planned to fix you up so he knows you will be around."

"Understood, choosing profile now..." The Android said and started looking over the histories of each name and the memories of each, a section of her mind activated as she read each profile and added the information to her neural net for later use and shut down without her knowing about it.

Gina stood back and watched for several seconds as the female Ranma android went through the various files. She had programmed it to be able to choose whatever it wanted, the fact that it had taken her four days to do it had been the biggest surprise though. She had the plans available, computerized schematics, and detailed instructions to work by and the thing had been so complicated that she had been forced to do it the old fashioned way. Complete and total reverse engineering of every part and chip, it had taken her and the main computer hours to work everything out enough for her to begin repairs. She did not like to wait, she had always forged on ahead and completed things far faster and better than everyone else around her. Even Penny had to take a couple of months to build those 'caster' guns of hers from there Beta technology experiments a few months back.

It had been worth the extra time though, the android was working perfectly and installing a neural net into it's head had worked wonders on it's programming. Surprisingly enough there were still areas of its programming that she didn't understand, but that would give her something to do later on when she had bit more free time. For now it was in perfect working order and once it chose an identity she could set about getting the final stages of the job done. The android finished reading the files and unjacked from the system as it turned to look at Gina and smirked. It took a second to unjack from the computer and conceal it beneath her hair again. "Personality program activated."

"Which one did you choose?" Gina asked. She could see that it was already adapting to the special programs that had been on hold since she first activated it, the hand and eye coordination was no longer robotic, she was unconsciously adjusting her balance, had picked up a couple of nervous habits already (a smirk and adjustment of her pigtail, not really liking the thing now that she could think for herself), and seemed to be more human than some people she knew in the Explorers Club.

"You may call me Ranko Saotome, Ranma's sister and companion." Ranko said.

"BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I AM SUCH A GENIUS!!" Gina cackled.

**********

"Excuse me, but would you know the way to Tokyo?" Ryoga asked a farmer who was standing by a fence?

"Huh?" The old man said.

"WOULD YOU KNOW THE WAY TO TOKYO FROM HERE?!" Ryoga yelled.

"Eh?" The old man said and leaned a little closer.

"Ryoga, are you sure you know the way to your house?" Ionis asked. He wasn't positive, but there was a distinct possibility that they weren't even in Japan right then. The Farmer kept trying to get them to say something and was muttering under his breath in German of all languages.

"Of course I know where my own home is, it's in Tokyo." Ryoga yelled.

"Then why are we in Germany?"

Ryoga blinked.

His face paled a little before turning a horrible shade of red as he grabbed his head and screamed.

"RANMA SAOTOME, THIS ALL YOUR FAULT!!"

It echoed across the small mountain they happened to be on.

The old man hit him over the head with the shovel and knocked him out with a surprise shot to the head. "QUIET YOU YOUNG WHIPPERSNAPPER!!"

"We'll be going now." Ionis said as he dragged Ryoga away, there was no way he would ever be able to lift him up and using his magic was out of the question way out here in the middle of nowhere. People out here tended shoot first and 'eat' the remains, everyone knew about these out of the way places.

**********

"One please." Ranma said as she stepped up to the booth.

"Eight dollars." The teeny bopper ditz behind the glass said as she took his money, secure in the knowledge that she was safe from the rain while the poor girl in front of her was being soaked to the bone. She had to resist the urge to smirk.

Pulling out her wallet Ranma handed over the damp money, got her ticket, and walked into the movie theater. Gina had suggested that he take a break from the constant practice and give her parents a bit of time to themselves. In fact Ranma would later found out that they had gone on a little trip to Jade to visit someone, but Gina forgot to tell him. It had been a hint, Ranma knew that, but she hadn't understood what she was hinting at. So she had shrugged and headed out of the house in her converted communist outfit, though at the time she hadn't known it was raining as bad as it was and gotten soaked the instant she opened the door to the house. Instant girl, she had not been pleased, but Gina just told her to go out and enjoy herself and not to do anything she wouldn't. Though that part about picking up a one night stand had been a bit confusing since, but she thought it might have something to do with that stuff that Brianna has been showing her lately and didn't even want to think of it at the moment.

The wink and giggle had been a bit hard to understand, but she chalked it up to some of the weird stuff girls were known for and forgot about it. That was why she were here to see a movie, it wasn't the best way to spend her free time, but she figured that after spending all this time practicing she deserved a bit of that stuff that Master Julia had been talking about, time off, it was odd doing this, but nothing she couldn't handle. That was why she planned on spending most of the time watching the movie practicing some of her Ki technique exercises. She usually did them at home so this wouldn't be any different and might make it easier. She glanced around the theater as she entered and realized that this was the first American movie theater she had ever been in.

Back when she had been training under the old man she had taken several opportunities to sneak into one through an upper story window to see a movie that had caught her interest, even the old man had tagged along every now and then. Though he would usually sneak off about halfway through the movie to go out and acquire them some more funds for the trip. This was the first time she had ever actually paid to get into a movie and she thought it was a lot easier to do than to sneak in through a back door or slip in with a group of people on the sly 'to test her stealth skills'. She took in the lobby with it's wide open space, the red rug, the gold rope barriers, and all the people standing around at the front stand to buy food and drinks for their movie. It didn't take long to find out that they didn't have any hot water to give away and she really wasn't' in the mood to buy any.

Half an hour later Ranma wandered out of the theater, the movie wasn't finished yet, but she was bored and sitting around looking at bad actors just didn't seem to be the best way to waste time and relax a little. The rain was still coming down so she didn't want to go back out there for a while, but she did consider just going home to practice some more when she recalled that she had something she could do. She had just forgotten about it in the rush to master the Neko-Ken and lose that fear of cats she had been dealing with for years. Reaching into her subspace pocket she pulled out one of the books she had gotten from Shangri-la, it was actually a copy that she had made with some special machine's that Gina had loaned her for a few hours. Now she had copies of all the books she had been given, that way Dr. Diggers had been able to teleport the books back to the Library. Kahn had sent back a thank you note and a box of star shaped chocolates that everyone had eaten. Other than the one book on the Neko-Ken there had been four others that she had forgotten about with all the training Julia had been giving her.

Picking out a bench against the wall she looked at the title on the book, The Kami Hami Ha detailed as Fact or Fiction, it seemed to be an entire book dedicated to just one style of martial arts. She had only flipped through it that one time when she had gotten it and hadn't touched it since. At first it seemed to be some kind of book telling the life of a some old geaser named Muten Roshi, but that soon changed and she delved into his world of super martial artists and techniques powerful enough to blast whole mountains into rubble. The techniques, if they could be learned would have taken him years to master, but Ranma didn't mind, it would be worth it.

One of the first things the book suggested for any student was for them to put on some kind of weighted clothing. She thought about the super heavy back pack she had been carrying around with her on the training trip and realized that she was already over half way through that kind of training. It would have worked better if she had been able to learn to fight with that weight on her back all the time, but that was fixed easy enough. Then it went on to detail several fights that this old guy had gotten into and some of his students, all of them had been trained in some unorthodox ways that brought out the best in them as fighters and made them some of the best in the world. That was exactly what Ranma wanted the most, to be the best and prove to herself that her whole life hadn't been wasted.

Her confidence was at an all time low right now, she had lost so many fights that she had begun to wonder if she should just give up fighting all together. But her training had also taught her that no matter how many times she went down in a fight, she should get right back up and keep going until she won totally. As the time passed slowly Ranma made her way through the book, learning about several different kinds of fighting arts that made up the Muten Roshi style of martial arts. Surprisingly enough she knew most of the styles that were used, but there were several other moves that she had never heard of before that needed to be learned before she could start adapting this kind of fighting into her Anything Goes style.

Most of these unknown ones could be learned by following the old guys training, though it would take about three months or more. That was about all the time she had left her in America before she had to go home to Japan and her father. Maybe there was some way to find a way to stick around longer and see if Julia knew anything about the style. She was just finishing off the book and it's detailed explanation of the Kame Hame Ha when the movie finally let out and she was reminded that she had better get home now. One look outside was enough to let her know that it still hadn't stopped raining, but a little rain wouldn't hurt her so she got up and stretched. Putting the book away she pulled out her spell book and flipped through it until she found a spell that she had found just that morning and memorized the pattern. It was a simple enough spell that could be cast without everyone around her freaking out over some weird light show.

She flicked her wrist and let the energy go just as she stepped outside and grinned as the rain seemed to flow around her body. It was a shield spell that could be used to keep any kind of airborne irritant away from her body, bugs, rain, poison gas, even radiation. The last one was rarely needed, but it had been needed before and that was why it was listed in the first place. At it's current strength it should last about half an hour and that was more than enough time to get home. Even if it wasn't she could just cast it again so she took her time as she walked along thinking about the contents of that book. Her aura could have done the same thing, but it would have been noticeable to everybody around her and Master Julia had suggested that she keep the special effects down to a minimum.

She rounded a corner and found that she had taken a wrong turn during her walk and headed downtown instead of uptown to the Digger's place. There were two reasons to notice this, the first was the dozen or so skyscrapers that were rising up around her like giant spikes piercing the sky. The second was the small pitched battle going on about a block away between two people she had never seen before and hanging around with the Diggers tended to make one think they had seen it all.

On one side of the battle was what looked like a dog like creature wearing armor and smoking a cigar as he fired blasts of green energy out of his hands (paws?) at his opponent. The other one was a girl, she was wearing glittering mech like armor like Brianna liked to use and had a lot of blond hair swirling around behind her as she dodged and attacked in a frenzy of movement. Her armor was kind of like a metal bikini with devices that flowed from this back pack she was wearing that reached to her metal gloves and boots. The boots seemed to have these little thrusters in the ankles that seemed to allow her to fly and hover. She was armed to the teeth too, firing little mini missiles out of her forearm mounted launcher at a rapid pace that the dog thing, that was standing like it was a normal human and moved around on two legs, dodged by running at a high rate of speed.

They were tearing up the whole street and blowing out the bottom floors of the buildings around them. Ranma stepped into the shadows to watched the fight a little, she wasn't to sure who the good guy was and wanted to make sure she didn't attack the wrong fighter. Over the years she had stumbled across several fights with super powered beings and high class martial artists. She had only made the mistake of jumping into a fight without knowing some of the story on one occasion, the one where she had chosen the wrong side and been stabbed in the back for her trouble. Literally. Her father had been so disappointed in her when he broke her out of the hospital a few days later and run her ragged to make up for the mistake and taught her several things about what she should have done. Namely picked her side and let them worry about killing each other, she could always move in when it was over to determine things and loot the body.

Her father's advice was never quite up there with terms like honorable and decent and manly. It was always do as he said and not as he does, still some of his tricks worked really well in certain situations. This time she was going to use a bit of his advice and stay out of the fight, while she was dong this she would take a couple of seconds to use one of her newer techniques to 'read' both fighters auras. It was one of the lessons Dr. Diggers had taught her out of the book and one that allowed her to analyze the situation without getting involved. Closing her eyes she started to find her center and went into a trance to up her magic level enough to see their auras. When she opened them up and saw both fighters and instantly knew where her course of action lay, the girl in the armor had a bright blue aura and that meant that she was defending something. The dog-man seemed to have a black and orange aura that flared to pure black every time he fired a blast of energy, he was trying to kill the girl.

She smirked as she slipped into the first level of the Neko-ken and started making her way to the fight by slipping from shadow to shadow as silently as a cat. The girl in the armor seemed to be winning as she kept the dog thing on the defensive, but his desperate shots were getting closer and closer to hitting her. Ranma smirked as she got within ten feet of the fight, neither of them seemed to know she was there. Then the dog got in a lucky hit by blasting the ground at the girl's feet as she was lunging forward to fire off another swarm of missiles. The dog ducked and ran forward before she could recover and slammed a couple of upper cuts into her stomach. His grin was almost evil as he blew smoke out of his mouth, but Ranma was able to see that the girl had some kind of force field around her protecting her bare skin. The blows had been strong enough to knock the wind out of her though and she collapsed to her knees and the dog raised his and placed it about a few inches from her head.

"Good try bitch, but you will never stop me from getting my revenge." He said.

Ranma ran forward just as his fist started to glow and build up enough power to blow through the shield. His other blasts hadn't been strong enough to get through but they would have hurt her if they hit. Submerged into the Neko-ken Ranma didn't think about this to much, she just ran in and slashed at this back with her claws. They slammed into his armor and seemed to have a bit of trouble slicing through, but they bit in deep enough to wound him. This was followed up by a savage kick to one of his knees and a throw that sent him flying across the street and into one of the smoldering buildings. Ranma's Ki senses were telling her that the thing wasn't even hurt all that much so she drew in quite a bit of magical power and formed a pattern in her mind just as it jumped out of the rubble.

"FIREBALL!!" Ranma screamed the name of a new spell she had learned just the day before. Dr. Diggers had thought it odd that the candle lighting spell would be so strong so he had shown her the more powerful version of the spell that got used the most. The fireball spell, it was supposed to be a hundred times more powerful and the perfect long range weapon. In her hands there was certainly an increase in power, but with her odd way of casting magic she could reach unheard of levels of power. Dr. Diggers had been amazed when she cast a fireball on the third try that almost overloaded his special room and been forced to cast a quick Dispell Magic spell to dampen out the insane level of magic and ordered her to never use that much power again.

Her hand lit up as a blast of fire seemed to fly out of the palm of her hand. The dog thing took it right in the chest and screamed in surprise as his forward motion was halted and reversed for a second before the fire ball exploded with a massive concussion of force that nearly blew Ranma off her feet. Windows all over the block shattered it was so loud, she took a few seconds to recover from adding to much magical power to the fireball spell. There was a large bonfire burning about ten feet in front of her, the flames were almost blue with heat and Ranma could see a nearby plastic sign melting from where it was hanging on the side of a building. She turned back to the girl to see if she was alright and found her standing there gaping at her in shock.

"Are you alright?" Ranma asked.

"How...how...did...y-you do that?" She asked.

"Sorry about that, I added to much power to the fireball spell. I didn't have time to be careful, he was about to kill you."

"Oh that, thanks for saving me. My name is Asrial."

"Hello Asrial, I'm Ranma Saotome."

"You said that was a fireball spell?"

"Yep." Ranma nodded.

"So you're a magic user? I've never seen a magic user cast a fireball spell that powerful before."

"More of a novice, I'm actually a Martial Artist, but I've recently started to study a bit of magic."

"Well Ranma you bought me some time, but Dog Supreme can't be beaten that easily and he should be recovering any minute now. If those flames weren't so hot I would fire my missiles in there to delay him some more, but they won't be able to even do that if they blow up before they reach his body." Asrial said with a frown.

"You're trying to kill him?" Ranma asked in surprise.

"He's been trying to kill me and my friends for the last few hours. We were just hanging around like we usually do when he came out of nowhere and started attacking us. What was surprising was that his Cosmic Supreme power seemed to be a lot more powerful than it was when we first defeated him a few years ago."

"You and your friends? Where are they right now?"

"Calling on some of our other friends to help fight this guy, I was just distracting him while they did this, but they are really late for some reason. It's been over an hour and they still haven't returned. It doesn't help that dog boy over here took our fight to the sky and we ended up here." Asrial muttered.

"Where are you from, I can take you back there and help you guys out." Ranma said.

"Well..." Asrial blushed. "That's kind of the problem now that my GPS is working again." She sweatdropped.

"What do you mean?"

"Um...I don't seem to be in Quagmire anymore."

"Quagmire? I've never heard of it, this is Atlanta, Georgia."

Asrial blinked, looked confused, and finally nodded as she examined her arm mounted computer. "I seem to recall when the fight got out of hand we had taken to the air, we were going at it so hard that I didn't pay attention to where we were. I guess we must have gone up really high and been moving at some pretty good speeds to make it all the way here in just under an hour."

"Whoa!" Ranma muttered as she thought about just how far that was, she had never been out of Atlanta except for those two trips, one to China and the other to that island.

"Well it looks like the fire is dying down, lets see how dog boy is doing, maybe we got lucky and put him down after all, that fire was pretty hot."

They sighed as they saw the dog walking out of the fire with barely any damage, though his fur was smoldering and he was patting out small fires that had started on his clothing as he moved and glared at them for a second before smiling. "That was a pretty good shot red, but I'm Dog Supreme and I can survive the core of a star, that little blast barely even hurt me and that was because I wasn't prepared for it. You wont get me a second time." He said with a toothy grin.

"You've caused enough trouble Dog Supreme, just go away and leave us alone." Asrial yelled and aimed her forearm again, readying another missile barrage.

"You and your little group nearly killed me when I was tossed out into space last time, I will have my revenge on your whole group for that, but since Leeanna liked you best it's only fitting that I kill you before I take out the others. I was one of her most loyal servants before her and the rest of her people abandoned me without a second thought." Dog Supreme said as he crouched and sneered at them, blue energy started to swirl around his armored hands as they flexed slowly. Surprisingly even his cigar had survived the fire and he puffed out a couple puffs of smoke as he grinned.

"If you think for one second that you can stop us Rover, think again, there isn't a thing you can do to us now that I'm here." Ranma said arrogantly, she was still in the first stages of her Neko-Ken and knew that there wasn't at thing this dog boy could do to hit her.

"Arghaa!!" Dog Supreme snarled and screamed as he threw his hand forward to blast a hole through Ranma's chest.

With a smirk Ranma dodged it with ease, just bending out of the way and not even bothering to move from where she was standing. The bolt of energy blasted a hole through the wall behind them and set off a small explosion. "Oh come on Fluffy, you can do better than that!" Ranma taunted as she reached out and ruffled the hair on top of his head.

Dog Supreme froze in shock.

"He's like a big ol pussy cat, totally harmless." She said sweetly.

Asrial backed away a little as an aura formed around the dog boy and his eyes took on a murderous glint and focused on Ranma. She didn't even seem to notice as she blinked back at him like a ditz, Asrial wondered what was up with Ranma, did she have a suicidal death wish or something? "Um...Ranma..." She tried.

"Well, what are you going to try now Spot?" Ranma asked and laughed as Dog Supreme started firing off large blasts of energy from his hands, but she dodged them all and moved in time and again to tap him in some strange way.

"Hold still you hairless monkey, I'm going to charbroil you in your own juices!" Dog Supreme screamed.

Ranma just led him in a circle and watched the surroundings out of the corner of her eye, when she got him in just the right spot she crouched down and hisssed at him. He stopped in shock for a second as she reminded him of a territorial cat for a second, but that was all Ranma needed as her hands shot forward, and aura forming around her, and claws appeared at the tips of her fingers to ripped through his armor. With a well placed kick she booted him into the sky and sent him flying out of the area before turning back to Asrial. "Quick we need to make sure he leaves the area, he was causing enough damage as it was, this way we can control where we fight him."

"Where did you send him?" Asrial asked as they ran after him.

"There was a small park near here, there will be enough room for us to let loose without having to worry about the buildings falling on us." Ranma said.

"You THINK?"

"Um...heheh...I don't know the area very well, but I recall passing it on my down to see a movie a few blocks from here."

"Let's hope you are right."

"No problem, I'm the best fighter you will ever meet. I can take him down easily." Ranma said, then tripped over her own feet and plowed face first into the side walk and groaned.

Asrial smirked, this girl was starting to remind her of someone she knew. "Oh right, your the best of the best."

"Hey, that was a fluke, it won't happen again." Ranma muttered as she blushed and crawled to her feet and took off after dog boy.

**********

High above them a Peebo-TIE followed along silently recording the whole thing as Brianna watched from her room. When Ranma hadn't shown up for their nightly game she had sent it out to see what was going on and been surprised to see Asrial hanging around Ranma and that little dog creature was reminding her a little to much of Peachbody and his pet human. Brianna wondered for a second if she should help them out and decided that fighting that thing would be a lot of fun and letting Ranma take all the credit was out of the question. They were competing with each other after all. She stood up, stripped off the revealing little silk dress she was wearing and walked over to her closet wearing only a pair of skimpy panties she'd borrowed from Britanny.

Grabbing one of her 'flight' suits, a skin tight body armor that looked like something the Knight Sabers would wear as they were putting on their armor. She dressed quickly, walked over to her computer and tapped in a password and watched as a one person elevator rose up from the floor in the corner of the room. Once in position inside the small device she pressed a button and it lowered into the floor and took her down to her Mecha lab where she built her armor and other lovely toys like the Lazy-Boy-O-Doom. Her eyes sparkled as she stepped off the elevator and moved over to one of several display racks. She had armor designed for just about everything and weapons that most governments would pay millions for if she ever decided to sell them, but they were all hers to play with and no one else could touch them.

She could go with the powered flight armor where she had mounted a couple of rail guns to the forearms and missiles launched from the hip ports. Or the one flying power house with the multiple target laser casters, guaranteed to hit every object within in a hundred feet and perfect for crowd control when the stun setting was used. Then she spotted one of er earlier models from when she had fought those monsters at the Dragon Pharaoh's tower, it was a jack of all trades battle armor and came with dozens of options. She moved on to one of the others and decided right then and there that it was perfect, it only took her a few seconds to use the Light Gate technology she had in her lab to get it on and ready for battle.

Ding! Went a little tone in her ear and her visor lit up with a little super deformed picture of Gina glaring at her. "Brianna, you were told..."

"Sorry Gina, but Ranma's in a fight a few blocks from here and I was going to help him."

"He's in a fight? With who?"

"I'm not sure, some kind of dog boy that walks around like a normal human. He seems to have some kind of magic power and fires blasts of energy from his gloves. He's also being helped by Asrial, I was surprised to see here there so I think she might be the reason for the fight. I thought that she might be coming to us for help with this character, she's got one of her battle suits on to, though this one a bit different than the one she used to wear."

"Jinkies, my computers are registering a high level of energy a couple of blocks from here. Do you have one of those Peebo-Tie's watching the fight? I want to see what's making all this energy, its like a little sun, it's just sitting there like it's waiting for something."

"Yep, I want pictures." Brianna said with a smirk. "Ranma is a hunk after all."

"Give me the frequency so I can watch this too."

Brianna rattled off the number and saw Gina nod as she watched. "They are running right now and where is this dog thing?"

"Ranma just booted him in this direction, that's probably him that the computes are picking up."

"Right, ah there they are at the entrance to the park. They don't seem to see your Peebo-TIE, how far away is it?" Gina asked.

"About fifty feet or so, you know how silent they are when they fly. Those mini-antigraves are amazing thing."

"The armors charged up now and I just installed a flight pack, I'm out of here." Brianna said as she cut the link and moved over to a launching area. It lit up when she stepped on it and she pressed a control pad on the wall and the ceiling above her opened up to reveal a wide launch tube. The thrusters on her flight pack fired and she launched up the tube and into the sky in a trail of smoke. Changed directions and zeroed in on Ranma's location with a big grin plastered across her face. She could see a bunch of smoke rising in the distance and knew that those three were going at it pretty hard now that they didn't have to worry about building and such. The flight pack hit it's second stage and she raced off towards the park knowing that a hell of a fight was coming up and looking forward to kicking some ass and blowing some things up.

**********

They reached the park and Ranma could see where Dog Supreme had landed and was just crawling out of the hole he had created when he landed. Ranma was a bit surprised that he hadn't just landed on his feet, according to Asrial he could fly. He turned to growl at them as they ran up and formed a sphere of energy around himself, then smirked and flexed his muscles. Ranma skidded to a halt as her danger sense started to rise up at an alarming rate, a glance over at Asrial was enough to confirm that she was worried about this too. They moved to circle the dog boy, Ranma heading to the left and Asrial heading to the right to keep him occupied by attacking from two directions at once. She didn't want to admit it, but his this guy had survived being attacked by her Neko-Ken skills twice now and that was one of her most dangerous techniques besides magic.

When it came to magic she had only managed to memorize three spells from that book so far and only one of them was a combat spell as Dr. Diggers called them and she had used it already. Ranma watched Asrial out of the corner of her eye, she was taking a little longer to get into position than expected. It was now or never so Ranma jumped forward with her Ki claws forming around her fingertips, in an instant she knew she had made a mistake as Dog Supreme's aura flared up to intercept her. It was like slamming into a solid wall, then he stepped forward and backhanded her hard enough to send her flying. Spun around, and did a jumping roll for Asrial's legs as she was moving to fire her arm mounted missile launcher. She had to abort the attack to dodge and that was what he wanted, grabbing her ankle, Dog Supreme flexed his muscles and slammed her into the ground like a club.

"Aghaaa!!" Asrial screamed in shock.

"You won't be screaming for long little girl." Dog Supreme snarled as he lifted her up to throw her again.

Then Ranma was there attacking his back again, this time his aura wasn't flaring out to protect him. Instead of dragging her claws across his back, she knifed them into his back, right where his kidneys should have been. Asrial was dropped to the ground as he screamed in agony and stumbled forward clutching his back and cursing a mile a minute for making such a stupid mistake. Then Asrial brought her fist forward and fired a barrage of missiles into this stomach at almost point blank range and sent him flying back in a sphere of explosions and smoke. Ranma smirked as she ducked down and let him fly by, let him land, and pointed her hand at him and smirked.

"FIREBALL!!"

A large ball of fire exploded out of her palm and into the curled up excuse that had been Dog Supreme. It was just about to hit when he stirred and started to sit up and took him right in the chest with a massive explosion. Ranma grinned, this was one tough sucker. She wondered how Daishi's new form would have handled her new abilities, he might have been fireproof with that stone skin trick, but there was no way he could have just shrugged off all this damage. This guy was a different kind of fighter all together and she had a feeling she could take him down eventually. She caught a bit of movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to look up beside her and saw Brianna firing some kind of rocket pack to come in for a landing beside Asrial.

"Ranma! I came to help." Brianna said, then smirked as she realized that Ranma was in his female form. "How's things going?"

"Pretty good, he takes a good hit and keeps getting back up." Ranma said and cracked her knuckles. "He's the perfect sparing partner."

"Asrial, It's been a while...that's a new look for you." Brianna said as she looked over the metal bikini and wondered how she would look in something like that.

"It's a new design that I had drawn up."

"Did it work?" Brianna asked with a smirk, she knew exactly why Asrial would wear something like that.

Asrial pouted and shook her head. "No, the stupid jerk didn't even stick around to see it. He was to busy helping out that mad scientist at the school, the one that's obsessed with steam and wasn't even around when this fight started."

Giggling, Brianna smiled and winked at Ranma. "I kind of know what your going through, I found a guy that it totally oblivious to hints too."

"Huh?" Ranma muttered.

"I take it you succeeded though?" Asrial asked.

"Oh yeah, I just had to get on his good side. It took a video game of all things, typical man, more interested in a machine than in a girl throwing herself at him." Brianna muttered and rolled her eyes.

"Hey you two, quit gossiping, he's getting up for some more just like I thought he would." Ranma said, she concentrated on forming her aura around her body. She had a feeling that she would need a little extra help with this so she was upping her fighting abilities, the Neko-Ken was working, but not as well as she would have liked. His armor kept blocking the blows that would have finished him off, she was going to have to find a different way to stop this guy. On a high note, at least she was kicking the crap out of him. It was better than some of the other fights she had been in lately.

"Christ, what the hell is this thing?" Brianna asked as she tapped button on her for arm, there was a flash of light and a large gun appeared in her hand and started to whine as she thumbed off the safety and grinned evilly.

"His name is Dog Supreme and he has access to a Cosmic Supreme power, it makes him nearly unstoppable, he used to be a servant of Leeanna when we were fighting." Asrial said. "I think you guys met him a few years ago when you were exploring that ancient city in Egypt, you mentioned something about robots."

"Oh yeah, I remember this guy now. We left him lodged in a giant block of ice after he tried to take over the world a few years ago." Brianna said. "He was a pain, but that was because he was building hundreds of super powered robots that looked like himself. Gina adapted some of the technology into her own robots at the time to give them more mobility, I borrowed the weapon systems for my own work."

"Really? Do you think you can take him out like you did last time?"

Brianna was about to respond when Dog Supreme staggered out of the burning crater that had just been created around him in Ranma's blast, he glared at Ranma and snarled. "You Bitch! I will kill you slowly and painfully for this!"

"Let's just see you try, dog boy." Ranma snapped. "Your considerably weaker than you were a few minutes ago Lassie, there is no way I'm going to let something as WEAK as you defeat me that easily."

He growled, clutched his head as if he was in pain and screamed in fury, it sounded more like a howl than a scream. Ranma decided to take advantage of Dog Blunders mistake and motioned for all of them to attack, Asrial and Brianna nodded and they moved to attack him from three different directions at once. Ranma used her Ki to move in almost faster than he could move and clocked him across the chin with a powerful punch that sent him reeling. But not before his arm came up to block a kick from Asrial with his hand and he took a second blow to his head from Brianna's foot, it was a hard one too, powered by the increased power that came with her armor. His head snapped around the other direction and sent him back several feet where he collapsed to the ground groaning in pain. His powers had just taken a serious hit and he was running out fast, he had to take these girls out as fast as he could and stop playing with them.

He rolled right to his feet and glared at the girls that had just kicked the crap out of him, there was no way he was going to let them get away with this. Now he was going to kill them all and there was nothing that would stop him. Letting out a scream of rage, and nearly foaming at the mouth, Dog Supreme's aura exploded outward with explosive might that sent the girls flying back several yards where they crashed into the ground. Ranma landed hard, but instinctively rolled to her feet just as the dog was upon her, moving faster than he had in any of their earlier encounters. She took a fist to the stomach, a knee to the chin, and a spinning kick that launched her into the air and she was almost positive that she felt something insider her break when he hit her.

Asrial and Brianna yelled in shock and let loose on Dog Supreme with their weapons, sending mini-missles and laser fire into the evil character, but his armor just absorbs the laser fire and the mini-missles have little effect on him when he is prepared for them. His aura flares and he vanishes in the blink of an eye, only to reappear under Asrial with his elbow planted in her stomach and blows the air out of her lungs, sending her flying back and into a tree. She clenches her teeth in pain as she slides down to the ground and struggles to get her breath back and continue the fight. Brianna, who is nearly plowed over by Asrial, barely manages to dodge the flying blonde and leaves herself open to an attack that hits her in the lower back and shatters her flight pack into hundreds of little shards and sends her staggering forward to land on top of Ranma's prone form had landed in a heap.

Brianna groans and shakes her head as she tries to stand up, gut a kick to her stomach sends her rolling across the grass as Dog Supreme laughs at them. Instead of following her he bends down to pick up the stunned Ranma by her hair, though considering Dog Supreme's size her legs were still on the ground, his hands begin to glow and Brianna realizes that he plans to blow her head off. Brianna struggles to stand as she activates her back up plan, she had really underestimated this guy, but was glad she had learned to anticipate things like this. A group of Peebo-TIE's screech out of the night sky firing dozens of laser bolts, it's not enough to take him down, but work as a distraction as she rolls over and taps her forearm and a gun appears in her hand with a flash of light. The gun is made out of silver metal, about two feet long, and has a four inch wide barrel, it starts to glow ominously.

"Oh shit." Dog Supreme mutters just as she pulls the trigger.

The blast takes him in the side and sends him staggering backwards, he is just starting to shrug off the blast when he backs into something. He looks up into the blue eyes of another Ranma and gasps, his eyes roll over to look at the other red head laid out on the ground nearby just as the one behind him picks him up by his armor and tosses him over her shoulder. With a yelp Dog Supreme flies over a hundred feet before he manages to gain control the fall and land on his feet and use what little power he has left to keep from breaking anything. He stands there gasping for air and glares at the newest enemy as he negligently raises a hand and blows away Brianna's flying Peebos as they come in for another attack. They rain down around him in charred chunks of metal and plastic, completely unrecognizable for what they had been just seconds before.

"You...you...you..." He growls out in fury.

The other girls are starting to get to their feet, even Ranma who is holding her ribs, when they see the second Ranma standing there watching Dog Supreme carefully. She is his exact duplicate, right down to how she wears her clothing. The only difference is that she is wearing her hair loose instead of in that pigtail that Ranma always uses. She stalks forward without saying a word slowly gaining speed as she breaks into a run, jumps into the air to do a flying kick right into Dog Supreme's head. He tries to dodge, but the kick was a faint for the grass she just threw in his face and allows her enough time to get in a solid punch. Because of his weakened power level and the amount of time he had been fighting these girls he takes a blow to the back of his head that stuns him. The others are there in an instant and begin to pound the crap out of dog boy, stomping on him to make sure he stays down this time.

Ten minutes later they all return to the Diggers place with Dog Supreme beat to a bloody pulp and trussed up tighter than a convict in the bent remains of his own armor. They are carrying him on their shoulders like a prize of some sort as they enter the house, even the android is joining in, though Ranma is giving her a weird look out of the corner of her eye. Dog boy is dumped on the floor just as Gina walks into the room, nods, and she places a collar around his neck before she looks up at everybody with a grin. "Whoa, you look like you were just in a war."

"We were, that is one hard guy to beat." Asrial said as she tapped a button on her armor. It started to glow and vanished, leaving her in a pair of shorts and a tank top that left nothing to the imagination. Ranma, recently inducted into the female appreciation club, gulps and tries not to stare at her. "What was that you just put on him?"

"An inhibitor, it should block his powers from working while its on him and it can't be taken off unless I hook him up to one of my computers and run a seventy four character code word through it's minicomputer." Gina said with a grin and adjusted her glasses.

"What happens if he tries to force it off or break it?" Brianna asked. "Does it blow up and take his head with it in a gory blast of bone and brain matter?"

"Eww!" Asrial gasped and almost gagged right there.

Gina blinked. "Um...no, I wouldn't create something like that, unless of course this was for Peachbody. In this case it just tasers him unconscious."

Brianna pouted, she liked the other idea better. "I never even thought of an inhibitor." Brianna muttered as she picked Peebochu off the floor and held it. The thing looked happier than it had been, but Ranma ignored it and chose to look at her double standing by the couch.

She turned and smiled at Ranma and walked over. "Hi Ranma, I'm sorry for attacking you the other day. I had no choice about how I acted."

"Um...that's alright, but are you really me?" Ranma asked, she was a little confused and wanted to get to the bottom of this.

"I'm a perfect copy of your female form, I was supposed to kill you and take your place while I waited for the computer to send me my new orders. When Britanny defeated me I was taken out of the fight and this allowed Gina to rebuild me and install new programming and personality routines."

Ranma blinked. "Huh?"

"I'm all better now, do you want to be friends?" She asked. "Just call me Ranko, it's the name I've chosen for myself while I adjust to this new way of life I've been given."

"Sure!" Ranma said and smiled. She was totally lost, but a new friend was better than losing one in her book. Now all she needed to do was find some hot water and her day would be just that much brighter.

"Hey, Asrial? Do you know where he came from? The last we saw of this guy was when he was frozen inside this giant block of ice." Gina asked as she pointed a small device at Dog Supreme and took some kind of reading.

"Sorry, but he just showed up out of nowhere."

"What's weird is that he was supposed to have lost his powers."

"Hey your right, I forgot that he'd had his powers taken from him some time ago during that fight on Leeanna's ship. Someone spaced him and everyone thought he was dead since he didn't have his powers anymore." Asrial muttered as old memories came back to her. "So where in the world did he get these new powers from?"

"I'm not sure, but I should be able to find out easily enough with a few hours work in my lab." Gina says and grins down at Dog Supreme when they all heard a faint sound from outside the house.

"Grrr.." Cha-Chink!

"What was that?" Brianna asked, that had been a very familiar sound and one that suggested lots of violence.

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!

They all duck as the whole front of the house seems to implode under the power of high powered ordinance. It blows all them off their feet even as a large machine steps through the destruction of the house, points a very large gun in Asrial's face, from where she is half buried under a burning couch, even as the other arm fires out a small grappling hook and snatches Dog Supreme into its arms. It growls as it looks over the girls tossed about the destroyed room then turns to walk out of the house, fires it's flight thrusters and launches into the sky.

"Groan..." Ranma mutters as she slowly digs herself out of the wall that had fallen on her. "This is just not my day." She mutters as she stands up and begins to dig everyone out of the rubble, they were just lucky that the explosion had just been the front room instead of the whole house. "Man, traveling around with the old man was a pain, but we were never blown up like this and it seems to happen to me ever couple of weeks."
"You shut up Ranma and dig me out of here right now." Brianna said from behind the shredded remains of a chair that had been thrown up against a wall and covered in part of the ceiling.

"Sure hold on a second." Ranma said, grabbed some debris and tossed it out on the front lawn. She had Brianna dug out in a few seconds, but other than some singed hair she seemed to be alright.

It only took them a few more minutes to dig everyone else out of the rubble, Gina was a bit ticked about not having her force field belt on to protect her. She had never thought about wearing it around the house, there hadn't been any real need, but if this chaos that had been cropping up lately continued she would have to change that. It would take her a couple of days to get the house repaired and fixed up, that blast had caused tons of damage, even the kitchen was damaged since it was right next to this room. She sighed as she tapped a button on her watch and contacted her computer.

"Working." The watch said.

"Please send in a set of clean up bots to the living room, we've had a battle up here."

"Acknowledged."

"Gina, you've seen way to many sci-fi shows." Brianna said.

"Hah, I'm such a genius! I'll have this fixed up in a few says easily you just wait and see."

"Yeah, whatever. Asrial, this looks like it's over with for now, do you need a ride back to Quagmire?"

"Naw, I can just call my car here and just fly back in that that way. No big problem now that I don't have to worry about it being blown out of the sky." She said.

"Cool, that flying convertible of yours has always been a great idea." Brianna said.

Asrial smirked, preened, and fluffed her hair. "True, true, I am Royalty after all."

"Bah, Royalty in that outfit? I don't think so." Brianna said with a smirk and glanced down at the revealing metal bikini.

"Hey!" Asrial yelled.

Ranma wandered over to her double and looked her over, now that she wasn't trying to kill her, she had a feeling that things were going to change. They headed for the kitchen and Ranma took a second to change back to a guy and turned back to his...twin? "So what are we going to do now?"

"I'm not sure, Gina gave me the ability to think for myself, but I really don't have any experience doing that. I consider you family, kind of an older brother, so we can work on it from there I guess." Ranko said.

"How much of my martial arts do you remember?"

"All of it. Why?"

"Would you like to train with me in the mornings?"

"I don't need to train, everything I know is ready to be used at a moments notice." Ranko said, she looked a little confused.

"Naw, I meant about learning new moves." Ranma said as they headed for his room.

"All I have to do is see a move and I can copy it perfectly."

"You're kidding? That's amazing, how do you do that?"

"It's just one of my many talents." Ranko said with a smirk.

"Heh, this should be fun at least."

As Ranko was entering Ranma's room she heard a grunt and saw Brianna running by, grabbing Ranma and throwing him over her shoulder. They ran down the stairs and into Brianna's room. The door swung shut as the entered and she could hear the door lock instantly. She stepped back and moved to go and help him when Gina grabbed her shoulder and shook her head. "That won't work, let's go to my room and boot up that little device I installed in her computer a few days ago."

"But he might be in danger." Ranko said.

"I highly doubt that Bri is hurting him."

"Well alright, but we can see what is happening in there from your room?"

"Yep." Gina said with a grin. "Asrial just took off and the bots are cleaning up the mess that explosion caused. Let's go and watch what is happening to Ranma, with my parents over in Jade for the next couple of days we can relax a little."

Ranko shrugged.

When they entered Gina's room she sat down at her wall sized computer, she liked them big, and started typing. Within seconds she had activated the linking device she had installed to look at Brianna's pictures. There was a mini-camera built into all the computers to give a live video link to any other computer in the house, kind of like a video phone. With a few strikes of a key it turned on and showed Brianna's room. Gina focused in on the bed and was surprised, very surprised to see that it was empty and still made. She frowned, adjusted the camera to show the whole room and saw that one of the doors to Brianna's lab was closed. She clicked her tongue and tapped a few more keys to bring up a map of Bri's lab area, that door seemed to lead to her super computer, the one that helped keep all the Peebo AI's running at all times. It had a massive memory and was always in a state of upgrade as she incorporated new ideas into it on a weekly basis.

There was a connection to that computer as well because it was linked right into her own giant super computer on the bottom most level of their home. With a few taps of the keys the screen lit up to show that Ranma and Brianna were standing in small booths at either end of the lab. They were wearing body suits that covered them from head to toe, made out of a gray material of some kind with little boxes on their wrists, ankles, heads, and around their chests like and armor of some kind. There were wires that connected all of this and ran into an out let in the ceiling. They were just standing there like they were in a coma or something, then she realized what it was.

"Ah HA!" Gina crowed. "Brianna is always coming up with the strangest devices, I didn't think she had started working with this stuff yet."

"What's going on with them?" Ranko asked as she looked over Gina's shoulder.

"Virtual reality, those suits they are wearing are touch sensitive and send sensations to any part of the body, it just depends on what they are experiencing within the VR world they are in. They are just playing a game, and here I thought they were having sex."

"Can we see what they are playing?"

"Sure, let me hook into the video feed." Gina said and started typing. After a few seconds she arched and eyebrow and smirked, Brianna had put in a lot of security programs to keep the game from being seen by outside computers. It actually took her about ten minutes of hacking to break through one of the back door areas. When the screen lit up Gina gasped, it was literally a video game, Mortal Kombat to be precise. Ranma was playing one of the guys, but Gina didn't know the game well enough to tell who it was, just that he was wearing a blue suit of some kind and kicking ass.

"Fascinating." Ranko muttered.

"Okay, now I'm confused, I know her and Ranma have had sex. I know her body language and how she acts after she kidnaps Genn and Seance for those little weekend sessions. What in the world is going on here?" Gina muttered.

"Check the rules." Ranko suggested.

"Why?"

"Ranma will have to follow the rules of any game he plays. Are there any punishments he has to suffer for losing?"

"Hmm...one second, that's a good idea it would have taken me forever to think of that. It's too simple." Gina said as she found the file on rules and brought it up. After a few minutes of reading she started to blush. "Brianna your a pervert."

"At least we know how she was pulling it off. She's playing off his pride and made him make a promise or take it up as a challenge. See it's listed right there." Ranko said as she pointed the line. "See over here are copies of the last few sessions they've had, wins, losses, and special bets. Ranma seems to be having problems with the higher range characters."

"No wonder her bed was made, they do it all in virtual reality to keep certain problems form showing up. Those suits must be a lot more impressive than the ones we developed a few years ago to do that." Gina muttered and blushed a little more and wiggled around in her chair a little. "Um, Ranko, if you want to go back to Ranma's room that's fine. I'll assign you a new one tomorrow, but right now I've...got something to take care of."

"We're not going to watch this?" Ranko asked in some surprise. On the screen Ranma was using his abilities to kick the crap out of some anime girl.

Twitch. "Um, no, I have to leave for a while." Gina said and disconnected the computer.

"Sure no problem, I'll just watch TV or something since I don't need to sleep."

"You do that. I'll be back later alright?" Gina said as she headed for her closet, watched as Ranko left the room and dove across her room to the phone. Dialed a number at impressive speeds and stood there tapping her foot. "You better be there you jerk."

"Hello?" Said a tired sounding voice.

"Ryan, it's Gina."

He grunted. "You do realize that it's close to midnight?"

"I'm coming over for a bit of playtime." She said in a husky voice.

"I'm up!" He yelled and she heard him fall out of bed and groan.

"Be ready, I'll be there in ten minutes." She said as she hung up and dived into her closet and emerged a half second later in a very short clingy little black dress. With that she ran out of the room in a blur of motion. Got in her car and roared out of the driveway doing mach two before it took flight and headed across the city to where Ryan lived.

**********

To Be Continued...

End Notes - Dog Supreme appeared in Issue 12 of the black and white series. The robot that saved him was Sparky, it has a dog like personality but looks like War Machine from Marvel comics Iron man, complete with lots of big weapons, flight pack, and evil looking armor. His original appearance and defeat was in Ninja High School, but I can't recall what issue it was off the top of my head. He's a flaky character with a big ego and a smoking habit, one minute he's loyal to the Zardons the next he's out to betray them and losing his powers, then he's free again and out to rule the universe through robotic look-alikes. He's a bit flaky. ^_^

As for the rest of the chapter, Ranma accomplished some magic training and started to work with on of his other books. Yet, he managed to bet into another fight, this time with a super powered dog and still needed help. Why the hell does he keep cutting these fights so close? Why does he lose all the time? As the author only I know. Tee Hee