-*- mode: text; fill-column: 79; -*- vocab for the Japanese language impaired, in the order of appearance: x ni nare: turn into x juku: cram school goen-dama: five yen coin(s) onaka ga suita: I'm hungry ze: emphatic, masculine/rough joudan: joke wa: feminine emphatic I am in route to ESC pod when I closed my eyes and yawn, think as I had rather often that week `Mizuno Ami-chan ni nare!' I open my eyes and realize that I was suddenly missing 4, no, 8 rings, five bracelets, my glasses, and, quick feel, four earings and a lot of hair. I then notice a few other things; I am in a store, the signs are in Japanese and I can read them, (which makes me happy, let me tell you) the four earings I have are different from what I expect, my hands are way too white, my watch is different and on the wrong way (face on the outside of my left wrist) but Hebi-chan is still wrapped around it and my left hand, I am wearing a blue skirt, a white blouse, and my hair is now black. I really hadn't expected it to work, but it obviously did. I turn and slowly walk towards the door, lost in my thoughts. Walking out into the Tokyo sunlight, struck by the humid heat. I stand there glorying in the fuzzy warmth as two young women run past, giggling, and I see something drop, a book of animation sketches. I pick it up and read the address, suddenly remember the episode and that Ami was supposed to be in juku. Discovering that I know the way there I go off to juku. Juku is horrendously boring. Totally uninteresting. We are reviewing inverse functions, and although I still don't quite have them totally down, I have other things to do than listen to the teacher, such as keep Hebi-chan down my shirt. After a bit I dig Ami's computer out of my pocket, open it, and log in as root, slightly surprised that I know Ami-chan's passwords. I am given the prompt: yami:ma 16:10:34 ~>. A quick `env' shows that I am running bash as my shell, my path is nearly as long as the one on my mom's account (I should know, as I wrote that one), and the DISPLAY variable was set to: yami.com.mil.simi:0. I check the three root menus, and when I found emacs I start it instantly (and it is there instantly, not just near instantly like on an SGI, but with no lag. I release the button on it and it pops up on screen) I try something that I thought would be a bit silly, gnus, as I am fairly sure that there isn't a news feed to the bitsy computer in my hands. I am wrong, there is, and I am surprised by the newsgroups Ami-chan read. rec.arts.anime, alt.religion.emacs, comp.emacs, alt.discordia, and the comp.os.unix hierarchy. I hit the space chord to select r.a.a and realize a few things. I had been chording. Ami's password was the kanji for `kiri' (mist/fog) and a bit of gibberish, not only was `kiri' it one chord, so were all of the rest of the kanji, and I knew them all. I nearly faint from happiness, fight back the urge and carefully stuff Hebi-chan back down my shirt. The teacher frowns at me, so I look up from reading r.a.a. ``Mizuno-san, are you going to pay any attention at all?'' ``No, sensei, I already know this.'' ``What is the answer to this problem?'' I give it. I decide that that last response had been a bit on the arrogant side, but it was too late now to fix it. I quit GNUS, (that computer is amazingly fast) shutdown emacs, and log out. Stuffing the little device back in my pocket I poke Hebi-chan back down my shirt, fish out a pencil and note pad, and proceed to pretend to pay attention, doing a few of my standard sketches. I say `standard' because I can only manage things that don't require symmetry, like jewelry designs, landscapes, spacecraft, profiles of not-quite fish, and so forth. Juku finally ends, and I set out to the address on the sketchbook. About ten steps into the trip I remember what happened in this episode, and break into a run. I get there a few moments later, just as Nephrite was walking into the studio. I stuff Hebi-chan back down my shirt once more, grumph about the sadists who design bra-straps, set my bag beside a post, and call quietly: ``Mercury Power Make Up'' Three seconds later I get the world to stop spinning, and approach Nephrite's car. Open the door, the hood release lever is . . . there. Pull it, go around to the back, open the engine cover, Yes, there's the distributer, open the cap, pop out the rotor, stuff that down my shirt, close everything up, and stand on top of the car to wait. Right on schedule; as expected he leaps, sweeping his hand to knock me down and escape. I leap as well, my knee meets his throat, and he lands on his back in a good deal of pain. I almost flub the landing, scraping both palms a bit on the sidewalk as I catch myself. As I hear him try the ignition I turn towards him, see him half fall out the door of the car as I start back toward it. He leaps for an open pool of darkness, apparently he has a better impression of my abilities than I do. I drop back to my normal form, and walk into the studio, collecting my bag on the way. ``Um, I saw you drop this, but I couldn't get it back to you until now. I had to go to juku.'' I say to Kazuko, offering the folder. ``Oh, thank you, Hiromi was worried about this. Is there anything I can do to thank you?'' ``My friends are great fans of the Sailor V anime . . .'' I let the statement trail off. ``I'd be delighted to show them sometime.'' ``I couldn't impose like that.'' ``Don't worry. Nothing important will be going on the day after tomorrow.'' ``If it won't be too much trouble.'' I bounce a bit from happiness, and just about hug the young woman before I stop myself, not wanting to squash poor Hebi-chan. We exchange goodbyes and I set out once more. The Ferrari is still there. I walk over, open the door, and pop the hood again, noticing that the keys are still in the ignition. I manage to get the rotor back into the distributor, and closing the hood look at the car. `You are 19 years old and you don't know how to drive. Want to learn, Suika-chan?' I ask myself rhetorically. Of course I did. The question is if I would survive teaching myself. Tossing my bag into the passenger's seat, and I pop the glove compartment. Inside was a map, an SD Sailor V key bob, and the full registration papers. With everything but the buyers name filled in. I check in Ami's school bag for her hanko. A bit of ink and I am the proud owner of a nice new Ferrari coupe. I set myself in the drivers seat, move Hebi-chan from his preferred position in a single loop about my body to a demi-ball at my belly as I schooch the seat forward and buckle in. Check the mirrors, push in the clutch, check that the car is in neutral, start the engine. It is louder than my mother's Toyota, but does not vibrate or shake much, or otherwise act too scary. Having gotten that far I put it into first and slowly let the clutch out. Success! I make it home alive, in one piece, and determined that I would get someone else to teach me before I do much more driving. I carefully park, got out, grabbing bag, title, and keys, and head inside, locking the car behind me. On the refrigerator there was a note, `Will be back late, cook something for me please.' I start to look through the kitchen. Gods it was well stocked, especially compared to home. After a few moments of looking about I decide on something that is simple, I know how to make and is not too labor-intensive. Yudohu. I put the rice in the cooker, start it cooking, and go up to Ami-chan's, my, room. It is a bit spartan, but quite nice. A great deal cleaner than my room had been in as long as I could remember, and nicely laid out. I quickly take Hebi-chan out of my shirt and unhook the straps on the bra. That is better, whoever designed those things really was a sadist, truly they must've been. I wiggle it out from under my blouse, and take the couple steps needed to keep Hebi-chan from escaping. As I turned from achieving that task, I saw myself in the mirror. ``Gya, I thought Gainax was exaggerating with Takaya Noriko! This will not do, no it won't.'' Over to the closet, anything? Hmm, that might do. Fish out the cotton obi and check it out. Wide enough to be useful, and long enough to wrap well. Bind tightly, bounce about the room. Good, that's better, no obnoxious biting by the straps, and much bounce-suppression as I walk. I looked at Hebi-chan who was running his face through my hair, obviously quite bored with the whole affair. I look up at the one poster, a nice photo of a waterfall I had never seen before, probably taken with a telephoto, since the photographer got a full kilometer of its fall down the side of the Machigatta basin, the lower kilometer and a half below the bottom of the poster. Sad, really, since the intersection of the fall and the sea is really quite pretty. I shake my head at the name, taken from the statements made by `United Imperial military sources' after the incident. The military had been working on combat magic, something that would have as devistating an effect as the atomic weapons the Soviets were supposedly working on. The accident blew up a good portion of California, and threw gigatons of dirt into the upper atmosphere. Within a day there were teams working to solve the problem, to prevent a global cooling the likes of which the world had not seen in millions of years. Krakatoa, decades earlier and orders of magnitude smaller had notably altered the climate for three years. Trying to let this one settle out on its own would have been disasterous, most likely involving a reductition in biodiversity on a barely comprehensible scale, down to a few creatures living about the sulfer vents on the bottom of the sea, a few hardy fungi who's spores could survive being frozen for years, and bacteria. Some people made predictions that humans could survive in shelters, kept from freezing until things warmed up again, but most forgot critical things that others took great glee in pointing out, and even after these problems were rectified there was still the fact that most of humanity would be killed by the winter, along with anything that wasn't brought into the shelters with them. Three days after the accident the proposal to send large collectors into the upper atmosphere to remove the dust blown up there. By five days after the accident people everywhere were begining to notice the drop in temperatures, although the cloud over California and the middle UI had thinned to the point that it no longer filtered out all the sunlight, letting a brownish light shine on Hawaii, California, Chicago, New Orleans, Mexico city. Kyaa, that was an impressive set of pictures in the history book. It's a good thing that some people had color film, as the sight just would not be the same in black and white. A week after the accident the first prototype filter was launched, attached to a weather balloon, and the second prototype only waited on the telemetry from the first to show where the highest concentrations of dust were. The next day it was launched, showing that while levitation spells wouldn't work for tanks or passenger aircraft, they worked just fine for this purpose, as the filter spells cared not a wit that the lift spell accelerated to the limits of the craft, in this case a mere fifty-five Gs. Two days later the prototype for the self-replicating filters was finally ready, and launched that afternoon. There are still partrols out checking the few which get enough to `eat' to keep functioning, making sure that we don't end up with nasty mutations in their population, ever since the scare back in the '70s when their numbers suddenly jumped. Someone figured out that one had mutated and was straining clorine. Those results caused someone else to wonder what the clorine was doing in the upper atmosphere, and then realize that it was CFC's and somehow the filter had figured out that the excess clorine would cause problems. Or just that the clorine levels were far higher than they should be, so the excess was fair game, scientists still argue over that one. ``I'll need to find you someplace to stay too, huh?'' I ask Hebi-chan, reeling under the impact of so much knowledge, each main thought illuminating dozens of supporting details, from how the US and Japan had merged, first language and currency before the Great War, then government as the world began to fall into the Great Depression after the war ended, to how to make a self-replicating filter, complete with all the math that would have made my head spin and without which the whole endevour is imposible. As I expected he does not answer, being a snake. I worry for a moment about what having Ami-chan's life stuffed into my head will do to me, then give up on the thought as pointless, check Ami's bag, she had written down her homework, her memories of the last few days haven't come forward yet, so I decide to do it. The Japanese and English language stuff was easy, the math I know, so it does not take too long either, but the recent UI history is another matter, either she hadn't been studing it, or the information just hasn't come forward yet. I spend a few minutes, OK, about an hour and a half, reading the text, with her memories filling in great numbers of blanks, the alliance with Comunist Vietnam that Roosevelt had begun and which continues to this day, the castration the CIA recieved when their involvement in the attempt to oust Allende came to light in Guatemala. Other things that stain the reputation of the US government in the world, how would one say it, that my core identity grew up in just didn't happen here.. Of a sudden I remember the rice in the rice-cooker, mark my place with the piece of paper I find for that purpose, and go downstairs. I had just finish the preparations to make the yudohu (find a clean pot, add enough water to cover the tofu, add a bit of rice vinegar if you have it, which we did, warm the water, add the tofu, cook until the tofu is warm, serve with rice) (I was at the add the touhu stage) when Ami's mom came home. ``Tadaima!'' she calls as she came in. ``O-kaerinasai!'' I call back. I set the touhu to cook, and walk up to Ami's mom. ``Konbanwa, Atashi wa Roberts Suika desu, hajimemashite.'' She just sort of stared at Hebi-chan as he stuck his face over my ear. ``Ami-chan, what is that?'' ``His name is Hebi-chan, he won't bite,'' she slowly moves her hand up and strokes the soft scales of his back. ``What kind of snake is he?'' ``He's a ball or royal python. Wash up, dinner is almost ready.'' ``What did you say about being a roberutsu Suika? A melon? Ami-chan, I know I said I would go along with your games, but this one is a bit much.'' Flashback of me, no, Ami in full male drag, more passible than I normally was, talking to her about . . . Drat, the rest of it isn't there. ``I'm sorry, but it isn't a game. I was wishing to be your daughter this afternoon, and it happened. I really wasn't expecting that.'' ``OK, be careful, don't get killed, caught stealing cars, or anything like that.'' she responds. I am flabbergasted. Here I had just said that I had taken over her daughter's body, and all she does is tell me to take care of it and Ami-chan's reputation. Very strange. Like in the Amade Yuusuke episode where Usagi tells him she is a super-hero and he doesn't even bat an eye. Strange. ``Dekita yo!'' I cry as I realize the yudohu is by this time quite done and ready to serve. After supper I stuff Hebi-chan in a pillow case and knot it, telling myself to find him a proper cage soon, then lay out my futon and go to bed, remember that I haven't told the others, dig out my communicator, call and wake the both of them. ``Sorry, but I fought Nephrite today. I will need both of you to come help me investigate day after tomorrow.'' ``You called us up at,'' Rei-chan looks at a clock, ``24:10 in the morning to tell us you lost to Nephrite?!'' ``I won.'' ``Oh. You did! I need to sleep! Oyasumi!'' Rei-chan clicked off. Usagi was still a bit out of it, but she was agreeable to going to the animation studio where they ``What? We get to go to the studio where they make the Sailor V anime! Wai! When do we leave?'' ``Calm, Usagi, Calm. We are going the day after tomorrow after I get out of juku. Dress nice and please don't come to school with concrete marks on your forehead, 'K?'' ``Fine.'' *I was just terribly rude and she didn't even notice? She must be more tired than I thought.* An old memory flitters through my mind, Serenety, somehow I know it's Serenety, smirking at me and replying `I'll be careful Mercury-sempai, no concrete marks for the ceremony tomorrow.' ``Oyasumi.'' ``Oyasumi.'' She mumbles back before clicking off. By this time I am all the way awake again, so I decide to continue searching through Ami-chan's computer. I discover a neat program that lets one design fantastic devices, I think just as computer models. I play with it for a while, find a nice pre-done design, used a tape measure to check that the size is right, and when I am all done I discover the print button. I hit it of course, and go, seeing as how it is now 2:10, to sleep. I wake the next day to the most distressing racket and enticing smell. I shut off the alarm clock and set off to the kitchen, where I find, as I more than half expected to, Ami-chan's mom and breakfast. Rice, miso soup, and natto. I try the natto first, as I already knew I liked the rest of it. It is weird, but good. Surprising, considering its reputation. We finish breakfast in a fairly companionable silence, and she says she will be working late again this evening. I go up to my room to get my bag, and notice the nice set of gloves next to the computer. Actually two pair of gloves, one of black spandex-like cloth, and the other of dark metal, fingerless, with the set of beam wolvers I had just printed last night. I put them on and activate them. Fwoosh, six one meter blades of blazing energy right before my face. I cut the power, only then realizing that I have not the faintest conscious idea how I had turned them on. They shut down and I pull the black spandex gloves over them, then realize just how stupid I must have been from lack of sleep the night before. Or lack of something, since the beam wolvers are a standard weapon in the Silver Millennium military; make that were. I am almost surprised by the intense wave of sadness that wells up with that, the stream of faces that flash past too fast for me to see. School. I walk with Usagi, which is not too bad. I leave her at the door of her class, and start back towards mine when I see her. She is standing in the hallway, facing me. I had never thought that anyone could be that beautiful. ``Ohaiyo gozaimasu, Mako-chan!'' I walk up to her quickly before anything could stop me, and wrapping one hand about each side of her face, kiss her firmly on the lips. ``If that's OK,'' I ask tentatively, somehow managing to keep which action I was inquiring about vague. ``Don't worry, it's fine,'' I notice that she, too, is vague about which she's agreeing to. ``Wasurechatta! Atashi wa Mizuno Suika, dozou youroshiku onegaishimasu.'' ``Kino Makoto, dozou yoroshiku,'' she says, not appearing to pay any attention to the way my fingers are in her hair and my thumbs are stroking her face. I'm not really paying much attention either, as I have been captivated, enthralled, lost, in the emerald depths of Mako-chan's eyes. Eyes, I now realize, who's irises are the size of goen-dama, and whose pupils are dilating greatly. The world brightens a bit more and I realize my own eyes are dilating as well. The bell for class rings, startling us both into motion. I spend most of the day mooning over Mako-chan. The teachers all notice, and so do the students; 'tis almost embarasing. I manage to get most of my homework done in class, but not all of it, and I don't hear the teacher a couple of times. During lunch I find Mako-chan and invite her on the trip to Studio Dive. She accepts. I almost faint, I'm not sure why, but manage to keep it to the `the world starts spinning a little and you need to hold onto something' stage. I don't even grab Mako-chan ^_^ (I grab the wall, and Mako-chan grabs me ^_^ ) ``Mako-chan, would you like to come manga shopping with me?'' She thinks it's a fine idea, and so we set up a meeting for after I get out of Juku that evening. Back in class a sudden flurry of memories wash through me as I work on my homework from two classes earlier, English, which was to come up with far too many stupid sentances. I gasp, realizing what they mean, worry if things might have changed. ``So, do you know any good huruhonya?'' I ask as we set out from my juku. ``For what? Textbooks? English language novels? Manga? Otaku-mono?'' ``Manga, and possibly otaku-mono as well.'' ``Hmm, how about Mandrake, it has a really good selection.'' ``Un.'' I find Jupiter-chan's computer, and I call it up for her. The print function is actually rather a nice piece of work, for if there is a copy of whatever is being `printed' in storage it is just transfered, and if there is not a new one is made. That was why it took so little time for my beam wolvers to appear, and why I can just call up the other four's computers. ``Hai, Makuro desu,'' I say, handing the speckle-cased device over. She blinks at the name and takes the small grey spotted green computer, opens it. She goes still for a moment as she stares at the xdm login screen, then quickly enters her login name and password. Moments later I can tell she is reading old mail, archives or just ones she hadn't had a chance to read earlier, the way she keeps freezing for a moment showing old memories being re-awakened. I should know, as I spent most of my time in juku doing the same thing. Mako-chan shows me the way to Mandrake, it is almost hidden, and we walk in. The saleslady is doing Lum cosplay, very well I might add. I look for what seems like hours, picking out a small stack of manga and a couple of doujinshi, ask the saleslady, ``Do you ever get any Ranma manga or doujinshi in?'' ``Ranma? What is that?'' ``Ranma nibun no ichi. Takahashi Rumiko no manga. Shiranakatta?'' ``Ano, there is no such manga by Takahashi Rumiko, might you have the artist wrong?'' I agree that that is a possibility, lay down some of the change in my pocket, really hope that it is not supposed to last all month, complement her on her cosplay and start for home, bringing Mako-chan with me. ``Wasurechatta! We need to call Venus to ask if she could make a meeting tomorrow afternoon, for we need to do a better job of things this time around.'' I look at my watch, look at the crowd on the subway, look up Minako's phone number, (I am so glad that yami somehow has a full copy of the current global phone number database) and call her. ``Moshi moshi, could I speak to Minako?'' I ask the person who answers the phone. ``You are. Mercury-chuui, ne?'' She answers. ``Hai. Venus-gunshou, we need to hold a meeting to discuss what is going on with the Dark Kingdom. Do you know where the Hikawa shrine is?'' ``Hai, Could we put it off till the day after tomorrow? I won't be in town until really late tomorrow, and I don't know if I could get out of the house then.'' ``The day after tomorrow would be fine. After school at Hikawa?'' she makes an affirmative noise and we each beg off. I sit there for a moment staring at yami's prompt, then do a couple of quick checks. Yes, there is a Tendou Doujou in Nerima, yes there is a phone number for a Saotome Genma in Nerima, and yes there are both a Fuurinkan and a St. Hebedeke High school in Nerima. I call up some old newspapers, note the massive damage listed, the strange fights, the multiple pictures of Ranma, fighting Kodachi, the Golden Pair, and, in a little piece about `summer games,' Shanpoo and Akane. ``What were you looking up?'' Mako-chan asks as I put Yami away. ``Ranma Nibun no Ichi.'' She makes a face. ``There isn't such a manga because it happened here. In real life. Ranma and the rest live in Nerima. Would you come with me to see just how closely the Ranma of this universe matches the one from the manga in my old one?'' She nods agreement, notices that it is the stop we want. We hurry to my new parent's house, shed our shoes in the genkan, and I remember just who I left in a pillow case for far longer than is polite. I rush to my room, let poor Hebi-chan out of the pillowcase, wrap him about my neck, stroke under his chin. ``Poor thing, I should have gotten you a nice fat mouse as an apology. I'll get you a proper cage too, OK? I know that even if I could sleep all day and all night I wouldn't want to do it in a pillow case.'' he wraps up tight, obviously cooler than he would prefer, as I keep petting him and walk down the stairs. Mako-chan's eyes go big when she sees him. ``I thought you didn't like snakes at all.'' Flashback to falling on my rear, blue boots scrabbling in a most undignified manner as I retreat from a large boa. ``I remember not liking them, but for the life of me I can't tell why. I guess I got raised properly this time around, and lost that awful little phobia.'' I reply, stroking Hebi's scales. I check the answering machine, Ami's mom was worried, and would be home about 20 that evening. I flip my left hand, exposing both the softer skin to slash if you attempt suicide and my watch face. 2010. Drat. ``Do you know of anything that one can prepare in negative ten minutes that is good?'' ``Ten minutes ago? No, but I can manage 12 minutes from now.'' Mako answers calmly, leading the way to the kitchen. I strip off my gloves, cut what she tells me to cut, and we end up with something very good by the time Natsuko gets home, at about 2019. ``Tadima!'' she calls. ``Okaerinasai, Mizuno-san! Gohan ga dekita yo!'' I introduce the two of them back and forth, calling Mako-chan my classmate, wondering how she would take it if I introduced her as my lover. Then it hits me. I had added the clearsight spell to `on-wakeup-hook,' meaning that it was started when I woke in the morning, and shut down when I went to bed. No wonder people saw the obvious so easily. The clearsight spell attempts to strip the barriers people put between themselves and the truth, making for easier interaction and quicker assimilation. Of course intense emotions on the part of the caster interfere with it to a degree, as do those of the people in its area of affect to a lesser one. I hadn't considered it earlier since I had added it before I died the last time, and had not remembered it until now. Dinner passes quickly, after which I read my manga, the first volumes of Tokyo Babylon, VGAi, Gunnm, and Ribbon no Kishi. Ribbon no Kishi was really different, I must say. Mako-chan says in a terribly surprised voice, ``I'm done with my math. Math hasn't been that easy since . . . I died last time.'' ``What do you expect? Math is a learned skill, and you hadn't learned it yet in this lifetime, but your old memories are integrating themselves. You are becoming a new person, made up of both your old memories and your experiences from this life, and who should be very stable once things settle down. I, however, seem to be becoming much more bouncy and obnoxious than I should be.'' ``Yeah, true about the math bit, calc is much more fun than this stuff. You shouldn't worry about being obnoxious, it always has been one of the reasons that I like you so much.'' ``Really?'' I ask, tickling her where I knew she really misliked it, at the curve of her waist. We rolled about on the floor yelling and screaming until Mizuno-san came in, ``Please! Stop that! Or at least stop yelling so much! People are trying to sleep, you know!'' I look at my watch, 2315, yah, some people like to go to bed before midnight. ``Hai, okaachan.'' ``Hai, Mizuno-san.'' we reply in unison. ``Thanks. Please stay the night if you can, Kino-chan.'' ``I shouldn't, Mizuno-san.'' ``Please, I insist.'' ``OK, I hope it isn't too much of a bother.'' ``Don't worry, it isn't. Don't keep her up too late Suika-chan, you have school tomorrow.'' She leaves and I pull the futon out of the closet, unroll it on the floor and spread the covers. ``So, are you done with your homework?'' ``Yes, are you?'' ``Finished it during juku. So, shall we get ready for bed?'' She nods, and I point out the facilities and dig out a nightgown for her. It was really nice to sleep in the same bed as her again for the first time in thousands of years. Breakfast the next morning is very quiet, but Mako and I make it instead of Mizuno-san. Natsukashii! I spend the whole day reading old email messages, from before the last war, from people who have been dead longer than the Chinese have been recording history. I get none of my homework done, and most of my teachers are more than a little annoyed that their prize student isn't paying any attention to them at all. The only one who wasn't was the history teacher; she is cool so I pay attention. We meet Usagi-chan and Rei-chan at the gate of the school at five, after I get out of juku. Rei-chan shows up with the kingyou-chuuihou! bag and shikishi (autograph boards). It is rather fun watching Rei pretend not to be interested in what's going on, especially when she says the shikishi are for friends. I try not to let how deeply entranced Mako-chan has me show, and so get ever quieter as the other three feed off of each other's excitement. It gets to the point that I have to sush them when we get to Studio Dive. Mako-chan is quiet at the studio, at least compared to Rei and Usagi. She is hovering, oo'ing and ah'ing, while they are screaming. I ask Kazuko if anything weird had happened recently, and she confirms that things are going as they had when I watched it. Hiromi comes out to yell at Usagi and Rei, blinks at Mako-chan, and then whales on the noisy twosome. Kazuko yells at her for it, and the phone rings. As expected it is the producer, saying that he likes Hiromi's new drawings. The others are shocked when Hiromi announces her plan to off Sailor V, and it gets really loud for a moment. Hiromi storms out ahead of questions from Kazuko, and the four of us follow. On the roof Kazuko goes to confront Hiromi, and the youma appears. Kazuko and Hiromi pass out, slumping against each other before hitting the roof. Mako-chan leaps at the youma, a pair of girls tied together by their tails, and gets swatted back. I transform, light the beam wolvers, left hand palm up, right hand palm down and situated for an overhand blow. The gloves melt where the beam passes through them, dripping on the roof and my right hand. I scream, curse, the beams shutting off as I shake my hand to get the molten material off, and the youma looks my way, distracted. The youma is getting ready to attack me when the others distract it, and the pain backs off far enough that I can re-light the wolvers, this time keeping both palms up until the gloves stopped dripping. I go for the youmas' backs, the beams disappearing as I bring them down in an arc that should have cleaved both in twain. I get backhanded, the beams slashing through the raised brick of the roof edge as I hit it. I shut the beam wolvers off, the pain of abraided skin reviving memories of the last time I had tried a beam weapon on a youma. It had been about as successful then, and I _REALLY_ don't want to think about the memories that brings up. ``Supreme Thunder!'' I look up to see one of the untied youma die, shredded by the force of the attack. I leap into a flying spin kick, no skill to guide me, just too many kung fu movies. I actually hit where I was aiming and knock the remaining youma off of her feet, hurting my heel on her face. As I land I realize that I have had almost two centuries of martial arts training, but not since I had died last. Mako-chan helps me to my feet in time to see Usagi take out the other youma with the tiara, then reaches down and kisses me. I cling back, overwhelmed, unable to really move because of the pain in my ankle. Usagi makes some polite noise to remind us of where we are, and I drop back into my normal uniform, pressing the side of my face to Mako-chan's breast. I suddenly realize that my ankle doesn't hurt anymore, nor the burns on my right hand, nor the roof-rash on my arm. I then notice the two pairs of eyes on us, and turn, blushing, from Rei and Usagi's gaze into Hiromi and Kazuko's as they help each other up. I walk home with Mako-chan, stopping to window-shop at a couple of stores along the way. I notice that Mako-chan is also into blades now when she leads us into a little shop, almost hidden between a closed jewelry store and an ice cream parlor. It is almost scary, the way her face lights up at the sight of the katar, the blatant desire to hold, to own. Totally understandable, but so unexpected as to be knock-me-over-with-a-finger surprising, for she had never really liked them before, considering them a useful tool, nothing more. I looked from her face into the case, had my attention caught by a largish blade, a bayonet. It's tag said `WW][ United Imperial bayonet, 1500 yen.' "Um, could I see that?" I point carefully, the shopkeep pulls the blade from the case, hands it to me in the scabbard. I pull it out, noting the spring lock as I do so, set the scabbard on the counter top. The blade is as long as my forearm, with a nice edge up the front side, and a quarter down the back. I slip it back into the scabbard, check my pockets, pull out my coin purse, barely enough to cover the blade, and the sales tax as well. ``How much is the sales tax?'' ``Sales tax? No such thing.'' the shopkeep looks a bit puzzled. ``I want it. Why is it so cheap, though?'' I fish three 500 yen coins out of the mess of change in the little green silk brocade bag, hand them over. ``Those things are so plentiful you would not believe. Six hundred million of them were made during the war, and most of them survived.'' He takes the coins, rings me up, hands me the receipt, asks if I want a bag. I reply that I don't, still a bit wobbly from the knowledge that the US had taken all of Mexico back in 1848. ``What are the rules about carrying things like this?'' Straightforward question. ``Don't stick anyone who doesn't agree in writing first.'' That was a bit of a surprise to me, but a rather pleasant one. I went over to Mako-chan, who was still admiring the Indian punch-daggar, slipped my hand across her back. ``How much?'' I ask her, for I did not hear her ask. She turns over the tag. 6000 yen. ``How much do you have?'' She holds out 5 fingers. ``Thousand?'' She nods. I pull my purse out again, set it on the counter, slide seven hundred, five fifty, and five ten yen coins out of the pile, over to her. She looks at me, fishes out her wallet, pulls ten bills out of it, and slides the whole lot of it to the waiting shopkeep. ``I noticed you've wanted that for a while, enjoy it.'' The shopkeep smiles as he rings up her purchase, hands her the receipt. We walk back to her house, I ring mine, tell the answering machine that I stopped to study with a friend, and might be back late. I then ask Mako-chan if she would help me with something. ``What?'' ``Making a harness for this.'' I pull my new toy from my bag, ``I want to mount it along my thigh like so,'' I slide the scabbard up my skirt (up the outside edge of my thigh, you ecchi people!) to the point where the hilt is just covered by the edge of my skirt, the front edge of the blade facing backwards. I hold the scabbard with my left hand, bring my knee up, palm the spring-lock and draw the blade in one almost smooth motion. ``Can you re-sheath the blade without cutting yourself, and will the spring-lock keep it in the scabbard while you are fighting?'' ``Talia,'' ``What?'' ``We can't just keep calling her `the blade,' so her name is Talia,'' I slide her back into her scabbard, shake her scabbard and all. No real rattling, so I decide it will do. I stop for a moment, strip off the elbow-length black gloves, look at the armored under gloves, undo the buckles, set them on the table next to the others. ``OK, now how are we going to keep that scabbard comfortablely on your thigh, and not have it fall off?'' Mako-chan asks softly, taking Talia from me, setting her on the table before sliding her hands up under my skirt, thinking about how to strap the scabbard in her left hand to my right thigh. I know that I am having a hard time thinking about that, however. Her long warm fingers feel so. . . ``I had better do that,'' I say before the ecchi thoughts in my head get the better of me. I undo the buttons on my skirt, slip out of it so that both of us could see how this would be done. ``I had sort of thought of having a strap about my waist with a strap coming down to here holding the scabbard,'' I set my skirt on the table on top of my gloves, press the scabbard to my thigh, point to the spot where the tip of the scabbard rests, just under the white hem of my panties, ``With another strap about here,'' point to where the open end of the scabbard rests, a couple centimeters from my knee, ``to hold it down tight so it doesn't bounce about annoyingly. What do you think?'' I turn to look at her, only then noticing the fading blush on her face, the way her hands are clenched on her knees. I set the scabbard on the table, sit down as well, my knees on either side of Mako-chan's left thigh, slip my hands about her back, press myself against her. She slips her hand up under my blouse, strokes the smooth curve of my waist, tilts her face down, kisses my hair, then, as I look up at her, my forehead, my nose, my lips, her tounge warm, strange, deliciously familiar in my mouth. She kisses my eyelids, her fingers wrapping about my right hip as I gasp at her, my hands slipping up under her blouse, pulling her over on top of me. Her fingers feel wonderful, strange on my new nerves. I quickly unbutton her skirt as she opens my blouse, starts on her own, our fingers meeting on the middle button, twining. I slip my hands into her shirt, over her warm skin, undo her bra, slip both off of her before she starts to take off mine. I lean up off the floor, my fingers slipping on her belly, my lips catching hers, her hands slipping my shirt off my shoulders, pausing for a moment, slipping up into my hair, fingers sliding across the back of my ears. My other hand slips up her side, slides accross her back, makes little circles on her shoulders. She pulls her arm from between me and the floor, and kisses me gently, lovely delicate tracings of her lips over my lips, along the line of my jaw as I gasp, clutching her close, writhing beneath her, soft damp warm cotton between her vulva and my thigh, my hips rocking awkward counterpoint to hers. It, like everything today, is new and familiar at the same time, lovely, loving, comfortable, and very arousing, the slickery wetness smooth on my thigh, between us, the soft heavyness of her breasts pressing into me, her harsh sweet gasps and little moans, the sweat-slick strength of her back under my fingers, th slight strained feel in my left calf from pressing the ball of my foot against the floor, the hard length of her thigh against tender parts. She sighs, ``Mercury,'' then she gasps, her hands splaying over my hips. ``Mako-chan,'' I gasp back, clutch her tightly, hold her still against me, not letting her move off of me, ``Stay there, I like it, the way you feel on top of me.'' She nods, smiles against my neck, cuddles me close. I wrap my arms around her, relax as the day catches up with us both, and she goes even softer in my arms. I smile, squiggle happily under her, and close my eyes to bask in the feeling. I wake first in the morning, carefully slide myself out from under Mako-chan, for despite how nice her weight feels on top of me I need to empty my bladder. That taken care of I pull Yami out of my bag, start the cad/cam program, look in the templates under the apparel menu. I am surprised for a moment when I see the submenu, for the third name is Serenity, then remember that I'd had that for a very long time, and the keybindings for the program, something I'd've thought I would have picked up a lot earlier. I call up the first one under `Mercury.' seihuku.tmpl1 draws (my nondress uniform looks a bit like the leotard Ranma wears in the gouriki soba episode, backless with a high chinese collar, in black with legs, but I hadn't seen that episode yet), and a sudden flash hits me, my hand is behind my head, holding up my hair as I ask Jupiter, ``Zip me up, dear?'' She does so, wraps her arms about me, bites my ear lightly, asks where I am going. I lose the memory as I reach back and cup her face in my hand. I look over the design, check the measurements against the ones I had taken the day before, decide they will work even though my bust is bigger than it should be, notice the `hardpoints,' wonder at the way my memory is coming back. I quickly enter a pair of mounts for my new blade, make sure that they will mount Talia to the hardpoints securely, hit the print chord as I look at Mako-chan on the floor in front of me, drop forward, wrap my arms about her, bury my face in her neck, comforted by her warmth against me. However, she wakes at this, turns and looks at me, almost leaps from my grip. ``It wasn't a dream. Oh, no, I actually. . .'' Her voice is strained, distraught. Now at this I really start to lose it. ``I didn't intend. . .'' my voice shakes so badly that I stop speaking, start to gather up my clothing, my fingers hitting the bundle of my new old clothes. I snatch them up, turn, choke back tears as I bundle the legs up, slip my feet in, pull the garment up, adjust the fit a bit at knees, pull it over my still damp and rather uncomfortable panties, adjust it around my hips, slip my arms through the arm holes, stretch it about, reach back to see if I can get the zipper. Using both hands I manage, one hand holding the bottom of the zipper at the top of the opening over my back, just under my shoulder blades, the other running the pull up to the top of the high collar, catching my hair. I turn, choke tears down again, notice how she looks up at me, blinks, cries even more. ``I'm sorry, I didn't plan on coming back here and. . . I didn't want to make you cry, but I just didn't think, didn't notice that you'' ``What! I was at fault, I shouldn't have done that to you'' ``Done what to me? Let me. . .'' I fade off as I realize that that might be exactly what she is referring to. To cover my almost slip I hook the mounts to Talia's scabbord, attach them to the hardpoints on my right thigh, pull, twist, bounce a couple times, carefully watching that, and not anything else, really hoping that things haven't changed, that she still. . . fearing that things have. ``You're so beautiful. I wish . . .'' she fades off, I turn to look, decide. ``Wish what? Tell me why you are upset, and I'll tell you why I am. OK?'' I gather my stuff, put on my skirt, the Sailor V key bob hanging out of my pocket. The skirt almost covers the end of Talia's hilt. ``OK. I wish that you loved me. Or that I hadn't seduced you, ruining my chances to be even just your friend. I '' she breaks down again. I drop to the floor in front of her, wrap my arms about her, hold her to me. ``I do love you. You are so beautiful that when you jumped back like that I just knew that you didn't want me, that you'd come to your senses.'' I kiss her neck, my fingers moving in little circles on her bare back, calming me at least as much as her. ``When I woke with your arms about me I was so happy, your face pressed against my arm . . .'' she gulps, her fingertips pressing to my face, ``Then I noticed our undress, where we are, and jumped to the wrong conclusion. I just knew that I had brought you here to seduce you, that you would be so mad at me, that I might as well end it right now, save myself the pain of seeing your pretty face twisted with hatred at the sight of me.'' I clench her tight at the thought of her leaving. ``Don't. Don't, please don't even think such a thing. I would really hate it if you did. Or at least I would be very upset until I dealt with the pain, in a decade or ten.'' I take her hand in mine, bring it to my lips, start sucking her fingers, pause, kiss her palm, the back of her hand, the soft inside of her wrist. ``One question, what did you do to your nails?'' I blatently change the subject. ``I broke one of them one day and decided that enough was enough and reset them to be built out of high-carbon steel. I don't break them anymore, and only have to snip them back and file them smooth again every now and again. Why?'' ``I was wondering about their grey colour.'' ``Ah. If you aren't angry with me, and I am not angry with you, could you . . .'' ``Yes?'' ``Scrub my back before school? We have,'' she looks at the clock, ``A whole hour before we need to leave.'' She looks at me, ``And I noticed earlier, that looks absotively _gorgeous_ on you.'' ``No, but you always say that, so I won't bother with the line about flattery getting you anywhere.'' I reply to her complement, notice the slightly disappointed look on her face, ``And of course I would love the chance to scrub your back.'' ``OK.'' She stands, pulling me up with her, pauses for a few moments to wash her hands, then the rice and start the cooker, then leads the way to the bathroom. ``Cold? Hot? Warm?'' We draw a bucket of wash water, I strip my new finery off, the interesting mix of fibers providing a bit of squashing across my breasts, stretching elsewhere like the shiny black spandex it resembles, the toes wide enough not to squash my feet, which are not much narrower than they used to be, rather wide. I see myself in the mirror as I set blade and garment on the counter, pale complected blue eyed girl in rumpled, sweat-darkened underwear, face a little blotchy, but smiling. I touch the girl in the mirror on the nose, then join her on the tiles, sluice her back, soap it. ``So why do you live alone? You must admit it is strange for a fourteen year old girl to have her own household like this.'' I rinse her back, let my hand slip onto her belly, the tip of my middle finger in her belly button. ``I nominally live with one of my fencing coaches, but she really lives with her lover in Osaka, and just keeps this apartment to maintain appearances. I get a place to live, and she doesn't have to pay someone to watch it.'' she turns, pulls me across her lap, soaps my front, starts running her fingers in little circles about my nipples, one at a time, stops, sluices the soap off, kisses my neck, my belly button, my inner thigh, slips her tounge between my lips, her fingers in my pubic hair. . . ``I would love to have you do that, but as you said we only have an hour,'' I tell her when she breaks the kiss, my fingers still trapping hers. She nods slightly, and I lean forward, kiss her cheek, nose, other cheek, neck, break off, continue, ``So, having done such a good job washing my front would you wash my back?'' I smile up at her through my wet bangs. I am not expecting the ease with which she tosses me up, spinning me lightly in the air before catching me and setting me in her lap, holding me as I squirm slightly, feeling exposed and vulnerable, fidgeting as she scrubs my back. It takes only about half the time that I usually spend bathing, mostly because I don't have any shaving to do, partly because I had someone to scrub my back, and thus lacked an excuse to procrastinate, and partly because the bucket of water was getting cold and we both were clean. I am not to surprised to note that we only used about four liters of water, but I had never considered the savings before. As we were drying each other off I notice the scale, step on. 75. OK, bit light, but . . . wait, that is kilograms. 75 kilos? at 157 cm and slender? Gah. ``Mako-chan, how much do you mass?'' I look back at her, she has a towel about her shoulders with her hair spread on it to dry. She steps onto the scale, 90. ``Do me a favor? Don't scream.'' I pick her up lightly, easily, by her hips, set her on the ground again, bounce up and kiss her on her forehead. I do not think I could have done either before, and I'm a good couple centimeters shorter than I had been. Not that I mind, I had been getting a bit larger than I wanted to be anyway. ``Why did you do that?'' Mako-chan asks, her fingers on my shoulders. ``I am not totally from this universe. A couple of days I had something absolutely wonderful happened. Somebody decided to grant one of my wishes, and I ended up here. Longish story, you want to hear it?'' I am fairly dry by now, and I start to pull on my new garment, gathering the legs of the tights. At her nod, ``OK, disclosure first. I have 19 years behind me this lifetime, and for all but the last couple days I was a different person in a different universe,'' She makes the appropriate sort of `I'm listening' noise, and I continue, ``I apparently belong here, though, as I have been remembering my past as Mercury, the spells recognize me, so I just hope Ami-chan is OK, this having been her body and all. I've also been remembering Ami-chan's memories, but they don't feel like they're mine. That was really scrambled wasn't it?'' She nods. ``What was most confuzling?'' I ask, re-attaching the scabbard mounts under my skirt, making sure Talia is secure. ``The bit about the other universe,'' She says, leading the way from the room. ``Apparently whomever was right and there are an infinite number of universes, each separate from the others. I apparently got my mind, soul, whatever, dumped from my home universe to this one. I assume Ami-chan ended up with my body in my home universe. I hope she doesn't mind.'' We reach her room, and she digs out underwear, today's uniform, and stands in the corner nearest the window, out of sight from outside as she drops her towels and gets dressed. My belly rumbles, making me think back. Did I even eat lunch yesterday? ``What would you like for breakfast?'' She asks me, straightening her skirt. ``Whatever isn't too much trouble,'' I head towards the kitchen to find my bag, speak over my shoulder. ``Cold miso soup and leftover onigiri?'' From the way she says it I can tell that she is joking, but. . . ``Sounds fine. Onaka ga suitta ze.'' ``Joudan datta wa yo!'' ``I knew that, but it is still fine with me.'' I pick up my bag, stuff the beam wolvers into my bag and set it down, pulling on the black over-gloves. ``What did you eat before, that you don't mind such things?'' ``Well, this last semester I was eating air for lunch all too often, so . . .'' I stuff my shirt in, make sure everything is straight. ``Anything I can help with?'' ``Could you cube the tohu? And dig out the seaweed?'' I look, find cutting board, seaweed, tofu, set the seaweed out where she tells me too, slip Talia out, cut the tohu, add it to the miso when she tells me to. ``What were you doing, trying to eat air for lunch?'' ``Being too lazy to cook.'' ``That's bad for you, you know.'' ``Yep, I kept passing out when I did it.'' ``Passing out?'' I explain about the two times that I had not eaten enough for a while, and then lightly injured myself, after which I passed out. Both times it was an interesting process, but I don't want to repeat it. ``It's done.'' she announces, serving us both. Breakfast is delicious, and the run to school is rather exciting, seeing as we have to jump over a couple of cars on the way or risk being late. We make it to school before the gates get locked, and they decide not to hassle me about Talia. I accost Usagi in the hall, ``We need to have a meeting this evening, discuss strategy and tactics, and do some planning. I'll call Rei-chan and make sure we can hold it at Hikawa before I have to go to juku. OK?'' ``Fine, Mercury-sempai, tell me where and I will be there.'' The world goes a bit grey as memory overlays reality, Serenity-shoui overlapping Usagi-chan. Along with the memory comes other knowledge, more tests that I need to retake, that the pips on my uniform collar are those of a Chuui in the Silver Millennium military, that I had promised Venus-gunshou that I would get things together if they went as bad as it seemed they would, how to spell a blade for strength and sharpness, a possible weakness that I had found in the new beam-shields that the Dark Kingdom had just developed before the last war, and other things too numerous to list out now. I totter to class, pay very little attention as I try to integrate all the things that I just remembered. Lunch. I find Mako-chan, sit next to her, call Rei-chan. ``Rei-chan, is it be all right with you to hold a strategy meeting at Hikawa today after school?'' ``Yeah, why? We just had a fight last night, and they never hold an attack so soon after a failure.'' She replies, slightly puzzled. ``We need to stop reacting, and take the offensive, Mars-chuusa.'' She goes blank-faced for a moment. ``Sou yo! We need to stop them before it gets to the point it did last time.'' She is very white, as, I notice, is Mako-chan. ``I'll see you this afternoon, and we can work on how to deal with this.'' She nods shakily, hangs up from her side. ``You remembered what happened, haven't you?'' I ask Mako-chan. ``Ha, You died, none of your tricks worked on the enemies' new beam-shields, you charged in, cutting them to pieces with a sword until they cut you down. Your blood flew like a red mist, the bomb that you had rigged with a deadman switch shredded your body, blowing through the enemy warriors, killing dozens, but there were hundreds left, and beam weapons just flowed off them like water. I remember charging into their midst, pain, I think I killed one or two more of them with my bare hands, I can't be sure.'' She almost starts crying when she mentions my death, grabs me, holds me tightly, presses her face to my shoulder as she finishes what she was saying. ``This time, no one dies. OK? That means that we have to plan, have to strike before they can, have to be very careful, have to get Venus-gunshou and find their base. There is no other way that I can think of.'' I hold her tightly in return, change the subject, ``So, we should eat, yes?'' We proceed to be disgustingly sappy, feeding each other, giggling, getting re-acquainted after several thousand years and at least one death. I tell about myself, the fact that I am now a rather full-blown bicycle otaku, a bit of an anime otaku, and just about a high school graduate. ``I have to admit that if my world had magic to the degree that this one does, I would probably like the situation there a lot better. There, magic is not taken at all seriously, the US and Japan are two different countries, and the US is just the middle 48 states, Hawaii and Alaska, and there were no screw-ups on the scale of the Machigatta chasm. However, the US and the Soviet Union never really got along, millions more died in the world wars, the US got into an unnessasary war with Vietnam, billions of people live in poverty, the communist Chinese government has massive human rights problems, and pollution is horrible. The lack of Gojira, not having had a government research team burn a kanji for destruction through Los Angeles, and not having had an experimental nanotech virus get loose on the population is not compensation for that kind of mess.'' I snort, ``Especially since that last only screws up in one case in ten thousand, and any good healer can rewire it so that it works properly.'' ``Well, I can't say that I am a bike otaku, but I like anime and I like blades a bit more than is probably good for me. I think that is largely the result of having seen _Highlander_ when I was younger. I had been in kendo before that, but after I saw that movie I studied more, got into kenjitsu, took to bothering the people who work at the knife shops, searching out people who could teach me actual sword combat, not how to fight in competition, but real life. I have gotten to the point where I am ranked first in my age group, and that is just because they won't let me compete outside of it. From what I have seen from sparring with people I could boost my standing at least to the twenty-five year old age category.'' From the way she says it I can easily see that this is not bragging, but simple fact, so obvious that she sees no point in being modest about it. I make the appropriate sounds of amazement anyway, for it is very impressive, especially since she did this on her own, on fourteen years of experience, not the hundred ninety five that she is regaining. The bell rings and calls us into class. Class is, as usual, absotively boring. Home ec. is fun, though. I get to make some nihonryouri that I had never even tried before, so that was interesting, and it comes out very good. Usagi, Mako-chan, and I walk to Hikawa together, and I must admit that Mako-chan and I get a bit blatant, her arm about my shoulders, mine about her waist, practically leaning on each other as we try to walk down the street, and almost manage. We give up on leaning on each other after about two blocks, it being to hard to walk like that, but keep our arms wrapped around each other. Usagi notices, and has to work to stop giggling. ``What?'' I ask, more than a tiny bit exasperated about that. ``I'd worry about you two, but I know that what I would be worrying about is exactly what is happening, and has been for longer than anyone would guess. You just make such a cute couple, too. It's been such a long time since I last saw you walking like that, it makes me feel hopeful that Endemyion will show up, as well.'' She says, making me wonder about the changes that these recovered memories indicate in the universe. When we walk up Rei-chan greets us, ``Mercury-chuui, Jupiter-taii, Serenity-shoui, what do we need to discuss?'' ``Is Luna here?'' ``Yes.'' Her young voice answers as Luna walks toward the group. ``What did you say our mission was?'' ``Find the princess and protect her, find the ginzuishou, and keep it from the Dark Kingdom.'' ``Well, that is half done. We have the princess, we need the ginzuishou, and we need to destroy the Dark Kingdom.'' Luna facefaults, ``What do you mean we have the princess?'' ``Think. Was there a Sailor Moon, before? Could anyone who had attained a rank higher than shoui be such a clutz? There is no mistake, Usagi was Serenity, and is the princess,'' Luna looks totally upset with herself. ``I found Venus-gunshou, and we need to issue uniforms, find some weapons, other than ki attacks, that work on the new Dark Kingdom beam shields.'' I continue, pulling up and hitting print on uniforms for the other four. I then check to see if the locator function still works, or if I will need to change the personal names by hand. I pull the other three computers out of my pocket, hand them over with the uniforms, ``Shimatta! Fill Minako in when she gets here.'' I get the expected confirmation from everyone, and run off to juku, getting there just a bit late. The teacher just looks at me funny, and asks about the location of the United Imperial congress. I reply San Francisco and he nods in satisfaction before going back to bothering the other students. I read usenet and think about the things that I have been regaining, only missing the teacher asking things a couple of times, and I know the answers they want anyway, so. . . I meet Mako at the door to my juku, and we set off together towards the train station. ``Oh, wait. I think it would be faster to just run, taking the roofs. We need to make sure that we aren't too Ticklike, though.'' ``Ticklike? Do you mind if I redo that psycom spell?'' I shake my head, feel the so familiar touch of her mind on mine, flash several episodes of `The Tick' to her. /Un, being too Ticklike would be bad. Ranma is?/ /In the manga of the universe that I just came from,/ I drop into the images and half-formed thoughts that we tend to communicate in, filling her in on the background, sharing the first three episodes, what of the manga I had read, and spoilers for the lot of it. I hadn't remembered the episode summaries before I had come here, although I had read them. /That sounds neat. We're going to bother them, right?/ I flash a // at her, jump onto a nearby roof, and lead the way towards Nerima. The hour and a half train trip takes less than 20 minutes. ``Tendou Kasumi desu ne?'' I ask the young woman, who replies in Inoue Kikuko's voice, ``Hai, donata desu ka?'' ``I came by to see Akane-chan and Ranma-chan.'' ``I'll tell them, come in, supper will be ready soon, could you stay?'' ``If it isn't too much trouble.'' ``Not at all, Ranma and Akane are in the garden.'' Kasumi points the way. We walk over, look out at the fishpond and the young girl in it, her clothing dripping as she yells at someone I can't see yet. ``You don't have to insult my cooking you know!'' Akane storms over to Ranma, fists clenched at her sides. ``Yes I do. I wouldn't mind eating it if I knew that you had actually tried and liked it before you tried to feed it to me. If you're scared to eat it why shouldn't I be?'' I can almost hear Ranma's mind spin as he tries to figure out why he just said that. ``Because you're a guy, and guys do things like that.'' Akane pauses, suddenly realizing just how stupid that sounded. ``No, not unless they are irredeamablely stupid. A real cook tries whatever they made before they ask others to. Hey, even I do that, and I can't cook too hot myself. Better than oyaji, though.'' ``It's really sad. Your father cooks better than I do, and I try so hard.'' Akane appears about to cry. ``If you didn't try so hard you might do better. All you really need to do is make sure you know what you are putting in, and follow recipes for a while. That's how I learned.'' Ranma is out of the pond, her arm about Akane's shoulder as she starts toward the house, finally noticing me and Mako standing there. ``Saotome Ranma and Tendou Akane, I presume? This is my friend Kino Makoto, and I am Mizuno Suika. Pleased to meet you.'' The two girls sit down on the edge of the house with us, ``Do we know you? For some reason I feel that I can trust you, but I don't know why.'' Akane looks at us suspiciously, holding Ranma's waist. ``No, I don't think you know us, but we have heard a good deal about you two. It is rather rare to be counted amoung major disaters like Gojira and earthquakes, you know.'' Ranma makes a face, wringing out her hair. ``I really wish whoever decided that hadn't. Too late now I guess. Why did you come by?'' ``Partially because I was wondering if you could teach me, us, some of the newer martial arts, and partially because I was curious.'' ``What do you mean by `newer'?'' Ranma looks at me questioningly. ``Developed after the fall of Silver Millenium.'' She looks a bit shocked. ``You mean to say that you know the techniques of the schools of Silver Millenium? Could you teach me?'' Ranma's voice is eager. ``Yes, and I'd be happy too. I am more than a little out of practice, though.'' Akane is making a funny face, like she thought she should be jealous, and is wondering why she is not. ``Akane-chan, I am not after your Ranma, don't worry.'' ``She isn't mine. Not that I don't want her to be.'' Akane replies slightly angrily, not noticing the female pronouns she used. ``Really?'' Ranma's face looks rather funny as she tries to cope with the new, to her, information. `You want me? To be yours? I thought you were just being mean.'' ``Of course you fool, why else would I pound you into the ground whenever you seemed interested in another girl?'' ``That doesn't seem to be the most effective method, does it?'' I interject. ``No, it isn't.'' Akane seems thoughtful for a moment, ``Ranma, will you marry me? I think you are so pretty, and I just couldn't deal with that, with you deciding you like someone else after I admit I like you, so . . . I'm sorry.'' She takes Ranma's chin in her hand, holds her still as she bends over and kisses her, slipping her tounge between Ranma's unresisting lips. I look at Mako. ``Yes, if you want me to.'' Ranma replies, breaking off the kiss. Akane smiles, one hand sliding up Ranma's shirt, the other cupping Ranma's face as she kisses her again. *Thunk* I look up from Mako's pretty face to see that the noise was Tendou Soun hitting the ground in a dead faint at the sight of Akane and Ranma kissing. I poke Ranma lightly with a finger, ``Oh, that reminds me, I have something you might like to check out.'' Ranma reluctantly turns, asks, ``What is that?'' ``Your mother's address.'' She looks a bit stunned for a moment, then slips Akane's hand out of her shirt, ``I have a mother? I'd never thought about it. I mean, I sorta figured I had to have one, but I never really thought about it. Want to come with us, Akane?'' She asks, running her fingers through her almost dry black hair. ``Un. Kasumi! Were going to go check on something, we'll be back in time for dinner!'' Akane calls out, pulling Ranma to her feet as she waits for us. All of us gather our shoes in the Genkan, decide on the way out the door to take the roofs again. ``Saotome Nodoka-san desu ne?'' I ask the young woman who answers the door, she appears to be only about 36 or so. ``Hai. Donata desu ka?'' ``Atashi wa Mizuno Suika desu, soshite kochira wa Kino Makoto to Tendou Akane to Saotome Ranma, Saotome-san no musuko.'' She pikus at the last introduction. ``Irashai, o agetekudasai.'' She waves us in, looking rather hard at Ranma. We all troop in, shed our shoes in the genkan, follow her to her living room. ``Is this a joke of some kind? My son went off on a training trip with his father, and up until recently I had been getting regular progress reports. This isn't what I expected.'' she indicates Ranma. ``I seem to atract cold water like a piece of meat attracts flies, so I didn't bother to change back before I came. Could I get some hot water?'' ``Sure. Why?'' She points the way to the kitchen. ``Akane, could you explain things?'' Ranma walks from the room after Akane's nod. I remember something I thought would be a really good idea to have, knowledge of how to make one of those Dark Kingdom shields, and set about coding a search/replicate program while I listen. ``Well I found out about this when Ranma first came back from China . . . '' Akane gets through the curse, the multiple iinazuke, and the way Ranma reacted to her proposal by the time Ranma comes back with the hot water. Ranma pours a small amount onto her head, triggering the change. ``Oh my. That is impressive.'' Nodoka reaches out and pokes Ranma's chest. ``I really need to talk with my husband about this. He did a good job of making you a real man amoung men.'' ``A man amoung men? What is that about?'' Ranma asks, obviously curious. ``In order to get me to let him take you away to train he promised to make you a real man amoung men, and he vowed that if he failed the both of you would commit seppuku. You splattered your palmprint all over that paper, since you were too young to sign.'' She smiles at the memory. ``Seppuku? How old was I?'' Ranma looks slightly green, as does Akane. ``About three, which is why I am glad he did a good job.'' ``How can you tell that? I mean you don't even know him.'' Akane asks, knowing that it should be brought out into the open. ``You do, you think he is worth having, and I trust your judgement. Ranma, where have you been staying?'' ``Ranma and Genma have been staying at our doujou for the last couple months. Could you come visit us this evening?'' Akane replies. ``Sure. I need to find out why my husband has been hiding for so long, and I would like to meet my daughter's family.'' ``Mizuno-san to Kino-san mo kimasen ka? Kasumi is cooking this evening, so dinner will be good.'' Akane looks hopefully at us. /?/ /sure/ ``If it isn't too much trouble.'' ``None at all. You really should come.'' ``As you wish.'' We walk back to the Tendou doujou in the gathering dusk, Ranma somehow manages to get splashed with cold water, jokes, ``I should wear the dress at the wedding, or I'll end up wearing a really wrinkled Tux.'' She walks a bit closer to Akane, who has her arm about Ranma's waist. Akane giggles. ``You would, too. OK, I'll wear the Tux, and I get to help pick out your wedding dress.'' ``Hai, ore no kawaii shuujin-chama.'' Ranma plays along, then looks up at Akane, ``and that way we might get Kunou off our backs. He can't accuse me of bewitching you and his `osage no onna' if you marry her.'' She laughs at the idea. ``True, and I would like to have a wife as cute as you are. So, shall we do that?'' ``Why not. Kaa-chama, do you mind?'' Nodoka shakes her head, obviously amused. ``No, but you have to make sure you get some good wedding pictures. When is the wedding to be?'' ``Shiran, Shuujin-chama?'' Ranma looks at Akane to answer. ``After we graduate high school, I would think.'' She sqeezes Ranma lightly, keeps walking. There is a great commotion as we approach the Tendou Doujou, Soun and Genma obvously celebrating a bit too hard. When Kasumi notices the lot of us approaching, and mentions the `older woman' walking with us there is a quick splash from inside, and a very nervous panda looks over the wall, sees Ranma walking with her head on Akane's shoulder, and Nodoka. There is a great thump as he hits the ground in a dead faint. ``Who was that?'' Nodoka looks like she can guess, and hopes to be contradicted. I keep quiet as I cannot do that. ``Oyaji.'' Ranma's voice shows the utter contempt she occasionally feels for her male parent. Make that often feels. Dinner is fairly quiet, and everyone is finished by the time the interruption arrives. Shanpoo, who thoughtfully comes through the open door rather than the wall. ``Shanpoo? Have question. Could I get a copy of your village laws?'' She looks at me, obviously wondering where I came from. I wait for her to notice the most obvous clues, the high black chinese collar, the Mercury symbol in red on the left side of it, and the black tights. She looks at me for a moment, and I can feel the disturbance caused by someone nearby invoking higher discipline, and she replies. ``You are Mercury-chuui of Silver Millenium, aren't you. I thought Silver Millenium and Sailor Senshi just legends. Che. Will bring copy of laws, sir.'' She turns to leave, stops, turns back, ``Oh, and brought this for Ranma. Is good.'' She takes the bowl of ramen out of the delivery box, sets it on the table and leaves. Ranma and Akane look at me like I had grown another head. ``What? How did you do that? Who did she say you are? Explain!'' ``A long time ago, before the Dark Kingdom came to power the Silver Millenium military helped a group of feminist sepratists fight off an invasion. Apparently they thought it was important enough to be remembered through the fall of several civilizations. I was sort of in charge of the operation, and my aura signature hasn't changed. I don't know how they managed to pass on the knowlege of what it looks like, though.'' ``Aura signature?'' ``It is the shape of your soul, basically. I can't really explain it, but they are very useful. If she had bothered to check yours she would have known that onna-Ranma and otoko-Ranma were the same person quite quickly. However, it takes a bit of practice to get to the point where one can easily check an aura signature, let alone get into the habit of doing it for everyone one meets.'' ``How much is a bit of practice?'' Akane asks, Ranma nodding to show her interest. ``About seventy years to get to the point that you don't broadcast the fact that you are doing it to every sensative in half a Maar. A Maar is . . . 5.897348 kilometers, and no one knows just what it is supposed to represent. A Maar is a Maar, and makes about as much sense as a mile. Anyway, it only takes about twenty years to get to the point where one doesn't have to just about drop into a trance to do it.'' ``Twenty years? How old are you?'' ``This time through? Nineteen and some, but Mercury-who-was died in a most unpleasant manner, but maintained a coherent pattern, which has gotten about sixty-five percent done merging into Mercury-who-is, or me. Mercury-who-was died at . . . two hundred and sixteen.'' ``Shanpoo was right, you are far older than you look. I can't tell if you are Mercury, though, with this spell messing with my mind. Turn it off.'' I blush, M-:(clearsight-mode) RET. ``Better?'' ``Yes, Mercury-chuui. You can turn it back on again, I would say that it is more useful than a lot of the spells I have run across.'' M-:(clearsight-mode) RET. ``Now why were you wanting a copy of the village laws?'' ``Something that I remembered from when I helped your ancestors, crossed with what happened with Ranma. Do you have a copy with you?'' ``Yes, and I assume you want the untranslated and the Chinese translation both?'' I nod and she hands them to me. I start with the untranslated one, and after a bit of flipping back and forth and puzzling over the handwritting I find the bit I want, pull out the modern chinese translation of it, and sure enough there is the difference I was expecting. ``You should look at this. See here, where it describes interaction with outsiders? Someone either messed up in the translation or deliberately changed it. In the original it says `An amazon defeated by an outsider must marry, or if that proves imposible, kill the person who defeated her.' In the translation they go into great detail about proper genders and all that. The sections on marriage were changed as well, from `marriage is a binding relationship between individuals, and children from such a marriage are the responsibility of the senior female partner' to, again, a hugely complicated mess with a lot of Confucian `filial piety' thrown in. Oh, no wonder. The translation was done by an outsider. Do you know why that was?'' ``No, but I would assume because there was no one left who could read the old script; only the fact that the original was so powerfully spelled has allowed it to survive this long.'' ``Fuagh. I'll have a proper translation done for you by the middle of next week. Dying is so bloody inconvienient.'' ``Thank you, Mercury-chuui.'' Obaba bows at me, then almost vanishes as she pops out the door. /Looks like you were right, and people did start taking my sainthood seriously. Don't see why, I don't, Eris-sama doesn't./ /Because you have this habit of being nice to people./ She presses herself against my back, her head on my left shoulder, her hands wrapped loosely about my waist. /Thanks. Like I wanted to hear that./ /It's true. You always say that truth, even painful truth, is generally better than disembling./ /Doesn't mean I can't grumble about it./ ``Oh, Ranma-chan. Would you like a training book on Silver Millennium fighting styles? I have one on high disciple as well. I wouldn't trust a beginner to be able to make use of them, but I think you are far enough along that you can manage, and I don't have much time to go over more than the basics for a couple of days at least.'' ``Ah, sure. Akane?'' ``Do you mind of I look at them too? I know I am not as good as Ranma but I'm not a bare beginner, either.'' ``OK, this will feel a little strange, but I will need to find the proper translation setups for you both. Tell me what you see, hear, feel.'' Starting from the basic translations logged by the rn3 I feed little strings of information at them, checking to make sure that it is received in a coherent form. After a few moments I am satisfied that the translation algorithm has learned the proper modifications for each of them, and dump both volumes through the algorithm into the data space where once upon a time the rn3 documentation was supposed to go. rn3b4's bug prevented that, spreading round the globe within days, going from a UI military `secret weapon' to a standard part of humanity. Luckily, rn3b4 didn't have any major bugs, or it would have been a true catastrophe. The most famous of its two real bugs was that someone conditoned out the code that kept it from spreading, and the other one was declared to be a feature, since none of the developers wanted to try and figure out how to get people's hair back to the original colours, and no one complained too much about their hair having turned green, blue, purple, or other novel colours. rn3 was designed to be used by your average soldier, and was to have full documentation, in the form of an un-losable manual, pre-parsed into memory for easy access. When rn3b4 went into human testing the documentation was not done, and after it escaped there was little impetus to finish it. That was over twenty-five years ago, and the documentation is still not done. rn3pl34, the curent revision, is much the same as the original, a spell wrapped about a carbon60 buckminsterfullerine, lockouts preventing the full use of the myomer's strength by most, carbon-fiber composite bone, remapped receptors so that viruses no longer function, along with a host of other functions for those that learned how to use them. The dataspace, too, is still there, still linked into the mind of the user, providing, if one knows how to access it, a great place for putting things like appointments that one doesn't want to forget, or information that one needs/wants to learn. The problem with it is that everyone's thoughts are formed just a bit differently, work just a bit differently, and so the data needs to be translated between individuals, a rather complex process, even with all the spells for doing so. ``OK, that's done. Can you feel the knowledge? It should be a lot like a memory, only it isn't yours.'' They both nod at me, and I feel Ranma twist her mind about, reading my aura signature and following the crossrefs that looking at it presented. ``Are you as old as your signature says? And as powerful?'' Ranma asks almost hesitantly. ``Old, yes, powerful, yes, as wise as I would wish, not in the slightest.'' I grin at her, trying not to look as scary as I felt I should. ``Suika-san, what is the spell obaba was asking you to turn off?'' Akane quickly asks, before I can think of something more to say. ``The clearsight spell? Do you know much about magic?'' They shake their heads, ``Well, in simple terms it is an unholy kludge. I just took a whole bunch of other spells and wired them into one another. The main components are a mild emotional control spell and a truth spell. The first tries to keep everyone in its area of affect from being too depressed, angry, or enraged, and calms unreasonable fears, the second encourages everyone to speak the whole truth of what everyone says, and there a a couple little spells to get people to think a little bit more before they act. There are a lot of other parts, but I don't control any of it, and don't know what it is doing at any given moment.'' Everyone sits there digesting this information for a moment, their rising agitation feeding the spell, which tries to calm them, further upsetting everyone in the room. ``You mean to tell me that I'm sitting here holding Ranma because _you_ were messing with _my_ _mind_?'' Akane grabs the table and brings it down toward my head, breaking it across my raised palm. It would have hurt a lot before, either before. ``No. You're holding Ranma because you both want you to. All the spell does is try to make you think, keep you from getting too angry, and let you know when someone is telling the truth or lying to you. As you can see it can't, and doesn't really try to, alter who you are or control you, but rather attempts to prevent misunderstandings.'' I look through my memory for a repair spell, as I know I should know dozens, having fixed things I distroyed daily for literally hundreds of years. I can't find one for a moment, then with a suddenness that rocks me I remember the first time I tried, I was sixteen, just coming into my powers, my new strength, and had squeezed a drinking glass a little too hard, running shards of glass into my hand, dripping blood on the floor as I looked at the mess, with the faint feeling of power, power that felt like mine, flowing away. I reach for it, gather it all up, and, without noticing how much I had, use brute force and ignorance on the cup. I check, and the cup is still in existance, as whole as the day it was made, encased in rock at the bottom of the crater left by the impact of a good size meteor. Palming the springlock I pull Talia a little bit from her sheath, attempt to nick my little finger on her edge, and realize that I am wearing my gloves, which quite effectively prevent that. I give up on doing it the easy way and wrap my mind firmly about the table, forcing the air from around the table's shards, lining up all the pieces, and vacuum weld it back together again. Much more elegant than what I had planned, but a bit more tiring as well. /You probably shouldn't have done that/ /I know, but I wasn't really thinking about it. Standard `Leap and scream' I'm afraid./ ``So that's how I managed to keep supper from burning that day I slashed my finger open!'' She smiles at the knowledge, looking at the small crescent shaped scar on her left index finger. I take a closer look at her aura, noticing the signs for the first time. ``Kasumi, may I check something?'' ``What?'' ``I just noticed something, and I was wondering if I might take a closer look at you.'' ``Sure.'' She gets up and walks over, settleing gracefully into seiza in front of me and Mako. ``If you let me I'm going to rummage through your mind, something that I haven't done in a long time, so it might be uncomfortable, and it will definately impinge on your privacy something fierce.'' She nods, and I can feel her acceptance. I place my hand on her cheek, sync with her, begin examining the blocks in her mind, and what they are hiding. ``Ouch. You are hiding a lot from yourself. I think that you can deal with it now, if I take the blocks down, but it's your choice. You should know that it will likely hurt, and you will be more than a little different afterwards.'' I feel her acceptance of the change, start letting her memories out, her memories of her mother teaching her magic, holding her, throwing her out of the way as a great foot came down that day in the Ginza, the guilt she felt as she looked on the mangled form, the anger towards Megalon, who was too powerful for her to stop, the anger at her mother for the choice she made. Kasumi crumples as I pull my hand from her cheek, wraps her arms about both Mako and me as we try to comfort her. Mako moves from behind me, I stroke her hair, Mako her back as we murmur calming things at her, feeling her calm, reform herself, integrating the knowledge. ``Ick. That hurt. It needed to happen, but still . . .'' Kasumi shakes her head, tears flung off her nose, cups her hand in front of her, bounces a little ball of fire from fingertip to fingertip. ``This was one of the first spells she taught me, one of the ones that made me want to be a mage. I remember how she had to force me not to just pull the energy from the air, saying `Magic is effort and will, not power. Power is everywhere, but effort and will are the power of the true mage' I didn't understand, but I persevered, finally getting to the point where all of the power was my will. She was so proud of me that day.'' Her tears continue to flow as she bounces the little fireball around in a circle, first one way, then the other. Everyone else looks on in shock at the sudden change, unasked questions distorting their auras, the tint of shock suffusing the room. ``Don't worry. I'm still, pretty much, the Kasumi you knew. It's not like I grew a trio of long necks and two more heads.'' She giggles at their shocked expressions. ``It would have had to come out sometime, better now than when I'm thirty and paying a shrink to do it.'' She extracts herself from our grasp, stands, ``I'm going to bed, I hope to see you two again.'' she nods to us and walks from the room. ``We need to be going, I'm afraid. If you need anything, just call me,'' I set one of Ami-chan's meishi on the table, ``You two should practice both discipline and the kata, and I'll be by to bother you the day after tomorrow. OK?'' Akane and Ranma nod. ``Thank you for having us over. . .'' we make our goodbyes and leave, walking out into the gathering dusk. We end up walking to a small kisaten, about three quarters of the way home, and kill a few hours drinking coffee, reading usenet, or, in my case, translating the Joketsuzoku laws from Silver Millennium script into Chinese. It is really a miracle that the original has survived so long. The Silver Millennium is far easier than the Chinese, which I have no idea how I am managing to read, other than that it is a lot like ancient Japanese, which I have a fair grasp of, probably because Ami learned it to read the Hean poetry I saw on her shelves. Or maybe she just liked languages, I don't know. By the time the sun comes up we are both about as high as a kite, and I have finished translating the Jokestuzoku laws, and look at Mako. ``Ano, would you like to go to the Neko-hanten? I've got the translation done, and it's too late for us to get enough sleep to do any good.'' She looks out the window, scowls, snaps makuro closed. ``Sure. You know you are supposed to tell me when it gets to be horribly early in the morning like this, don't you?'' I grin sheepishly, ``I forgot to check until it started to get light out, and by then I was most of the way done. Sorry.'' /If I fall asleep in class it's your fault/ She glares at me for an instant, smiles. /or not./ We dig out the 60 yen for the tip, drain our cups and leave, bouncing giddily over the rooftops. - By the time we get to the Neko-Hanten we are both sober again, and I knock. ``Who is it at this Eris-blessed time of day?'' Obaba sounds more than a little bit upset with me. ``Your friendly helpful translator-chan!'' I say in my most obnoxious morning person voice. ``come in. Let me get some tea before I gripe at you about coming by at such an Eris-blessed time of day.'' She moves off, somehow managing not to let her hair move as she does so. She reappears after a few moments, holding a pot of tea in one hand, and a tray with cups in the other, and somehow keeping a grip on her staff at the same time. I am impressed. /You?/ /what?/ /are you impressed by that as well?/ /un. I wonder how she manages that with only two hands, and shoes on./ /sou yo/ ``OK, why are you here at 6 bloody 25 in the morning?'' She has downed a cup of tea, and sounds less grumpy. ``I've got the translation done, but I would like a native speaker to make sure I didn't mess up too badly anywhere. What with the mess the last translator made I feel that's pretty important.'' I fish the sheaf of papers out, set it down on the table between us. ``Hmm.'' She reads for a long while, checking against the Japanese notes where I didn't know quite how to put something, occasionally changing a line or two, but mostly looking appalled. ``I need to take this back to the village. Could I get you to watch things while I'm gone?'' ``I've got other responsibilities. What things do you want watched?'' I ask. ``Mainly I would like you to make sure that Shampoo doesn't do anything too rash, and that Mousse keeps the shop running.'' ``OK, I think I can manage that. Do you mind if I take a copy of the translation to Ranma? I think they would be interested.'' ``Yes, I think that would be a very good idea. I rather wish I could get my hands on the Eris-blessed fool who did the old `translation', as they have a lot to answer for.'' ``I would think. Most of it seems like it would be halfway reasonable from the original, but some of it just isn't. I think a real possiblilty for what happened is some cataclism took out the elders before they had a chance to translate it into Chinese, and the younglings had to write the laws up from memory. Not a good thing.'' ``I fear you are right, for there are several instances in village history where we had half the village or more die fighting some great danger. We have survived, but the cost has sometimes been staggering.'' She shakes her head, ``I'm just glad that the illusion spell has kept the Communists out.'' She notes my inquisitive look. ``The spell makes the village look like a bombed out ruin, and hides the villagers from anyone who would report us to the central government. Fuagh, we're better Communists than those patriarchal scumly sorts ever could be.'' She makes a face. ``So Mao went a bit off the deep end in this world too?'' ``You could say that. Plus eveyone treated him as a god, which only served to give Eris an excuse to mess with things. I swear she has more avatars in the communist Chinese government than the rest of the world put together.'' She didn't look happy about that. I can understand that perfectly. My goddess's avatars are the kind of straight-laced people who think that if you don't like people drinking, you should ban liquer, and then people won't drink. Republicans back home are often Eristic avatars who set out to make laws so that things don't happen. This of course makes whatever formerly legal thing just got prohibited very profitable, allowing a lot of not-nice people to spread chaos, which is a good thing, death, destruction, and fear, which aren't good things, but that Eris is willing to deal with if everyone else doesn't spread enough chaos. I have this bad feeling that I am an AnEristic Avatar, for when I try to spread chaos I all too often get order, the exact opposite of an Eristic avatar. ``Iya. So, do you have anything else for me?'' I stuff the original copy of the Joketsuzoku tribal laws into a pocket folder, hand it to Obaba, and quickly scan a copy of the Japanese translation into yami's /tmp directory. I really like that scanning spell, it's so useful. ``Not really, you've already met Shanpoo, and I should introduce you to Mousse as well.'' She sets down her teacup and takes off at a speed that no normal could have followed. ``Kore ga Mousse to yonde.'' Obaba pokes him as she says it, the young man obviously having been practicing the arts before she brought him in. ``Shitsumon aru desu ga, '' ``Hai?'' ``Why are you so hard on Mousse-kun?'' ``Because he's just so girlish, but when we went to Jusenkyou I even pointed out the proper pool, and he didn't end up in it. Plus he keeps challenging my great-grand daughter, and even he knows that those rules only apply to outsiders. I'll go back to treating him like an adult human when he starts acting like one. If he wants to be a girl and fight, he should be one, if he wants to be manly and stay home taking care of home and children, he can, but he needs to make up his mind. And there's the fact that he still hasn't gone to a healer to get his vision fixed.'' She scowls at him, and I am all but sure that the only reason he doesn't flinch is that he can't see her. ``Mousse-kun, come here.'' He looks a bit scared, but complies, walking towards me and stopping about an arms length away. ``I am a healer, do you want your vision fixed?'' ``It's complicated. I would like to be able to see better, but at the same time I am scared of just what I will see.'' ``Well, being able to see is a good thing, and not being able to see really doesn't have many advantages. If you would prefer I could just fix your glasses for you, as they are a bit off of what they should be to correct your vision.'' ``Hun, that would be good, but it would mean more work for you if I decide to get my eyes fixed later. Just go ahead and do my eyes please.'' I knod, step forward and place my hand upon his face to better feel the patterns of power, their interactions with his DNA, and his mind. Finding the sections of DNA that pre-disposed him to nearsightednes, I re-write those, keeping the maintnence programs at bay until after the change is complete, preventing them from trying to rip him apart to prevent the spread of the changed DNA. I tweak the parameters a bit, let him go and step back, opening my eyes. He blinks, staring at my face, then turns to look at Obaba, ``Did you really mean that about treating me like an adult when I start acting like one?'' ``Yes, haven't I told you that three or four times?'' She scowls at him again, and this time he flinches. ``No, Obaba-sama, you hadn't said anything of the sort in my hearing until now. I thank you for speaking so plainly, and I shall endevor to be more. . . adult.'' ``Good. This is Mercury-chuui, and she'll be watching over things while I take this back to the village.'' She turns to me, asks, ``Could you make me another copy of this if it won't be more trouble than photocopying it?'' I knod, she continues as I pull yami out of my pocket, ``She knows the old script, so she retranslated the laws for us. You will need to read them.'' Mousse knods as I hand her the printout, and she hands it to him. ``Make sure Shanpoo reads it too, OK?'' He knods again, already reading. ``Sa, Obaba-san, we must be off if we don't want to miss school, even though I am currently tempted to do just that.'' She acknowledged our departure with a wave, already on her way upstairs to pack for the arduous journey ahead. I still find it hard to keep up that kind of speed for that long. It's over a hundred miles, and I know I really wouldn't want to try and run it. Of course, that's why I'm a mage and she's a martial artist. - ``Ara! Suika-chan! Oagete kudasai,'' Kasumi answers the door, invites us in, ``Asagohan wa dou?'' Mako looks at me, flashes // // ``That would be wonderful, actually.'' ``OK, head into the dinning area, the others are there already. Akane cooked breakfast, but Ranma helped, so it's actually edible. I am rather amazed, to tell the truth.'' Kasumi giggles, waits while we shed our shoes before leading the way. ``Morning!'' I chirp at everyone as I enter the room, getting a tired-sounding `Osu' out of Nabiki, a pleased grin from Akane, and a chorus of `ohayo' from the others. ``Wait 'til you try what I cooked for breakfast!'' Akane manages to look both pleased as punch and green about the gills, so I guess Ranma tried the technique I'd thought would work best, making her taste or at least smell everything before she added it to the food, and taste the food after. I scan the table quickly, noticing that she'd cooked a standard Japanese breakfast, miso soup, rice, pickled things. It looks astoundingly normal for her, so either she'd calmed down a lot, or Ranma's help had a big influence. Likely both. Mako sits next to me as I start to serve her, and she serves me a nice lot of pickled ginger, knowing how much I like the stuff, then starts on her soup. ``It's good,'' I tell Akane after my first taste of the soup, go on to what I had wanted to say earlier, ``However, I have something you need to read. I translated the Joketsuzoku laws from the original Silver Millenium script last night, and you need to read them, for I think they will have an influence on you.'' I lay my chopsticks across the top of my soup-bowl, pull yami from my pocket again, slip over to an xterm window and print out a Japanese language copy of the laws, fold yami and stuff her back in my pocket while the printout stacks itself on the table. I leave the four sheets of tiny print on the table while I go back to my soup, sucking it down. ``Ano, shitsumon arimasu ga,'' Ranma speaks up while she refills her rice bowl, ``Kuroka Kobaruto wa dare datta?'' ``Cobalt was my teacher for a long time, and I though she was terribly cool when I was your age, wanted to grow up to be just like her, you know, the standard schoolgirl crush. She was the oldest person in the military at that time, almost as old as Silver-sama herself if one believed the stories, and I never gathered up the courage to ask her about them. She wrote both of the books I passed you, and at the time was the premier expert on both discipline and the Arts. Now, I fear she's the only expert, for I never was as good with martial arts as she was, and even now I'm pretty sure Obaba is better than I am. I know I wouldn't even attempt the run back to China, and would either swim or fly if I had to get there on my own.'' The blood drains from Ranma's face as she thinks about what I said at the end. ``Run? Back to China? Across the ocean?'' I knod, ``On her own feet? no boat or anything?'' again I knod, ``Eris bless. I had heard that a really skilled martial artist could run on water like one of those Jesus lizards, but I've only managed a couple of steps before the water slows me so much I sink.'' I smile at her, impressed that she's gotten this far on her own. Akane looks at Ranma with a bit of awe as she parses what she just heard. ``Ranma? You can walk on water?'' ``No, If I'm moving really fast I can run across it without sinking for a little bit, though. You're still so slow that you can't manage it yet.'' Ranma suddenly looks scared, ducks her head down to hide behind her rice bowl as she realizes what she said. ``True. How long do you think it will take me to get fast enough?'' Akane askes calmly, then notices the way Ranma is trying to be invisible, ``Hey, Baka, I'm not going to hit you! You said `yet.''' Ranma stops trying to be invisible, and stops being see-through. She's doing really well for someone who has been practicing for less than a day. ``It depends a lot on how much you practice, and how you practice. If you go on like you have been, I doubt you will ever be fast enough. If you put enough effort into building speed, strength and flexibility, you may be able to pull off a run across the pond by the time winter comes around.'' Ranma notices the shocked look on Akane's face, the umeboshi she had been picking up on the top of her rice, impulsively picks it up, offers it to her. Akane eats it off of Ranma's chopsticks, grimacing slightly at the taste, then realizes what she just did as everyone but me and Mako stop eating to stare at the two of them, Ranma's chopsticks still in front of Akane's face, a small smile on Ranma's lips. Akane looks about, picks up a slice of avocado from the plate and feeds it to Ranma, and Soun faints dead away, Genma sways before Nodoka smacks him someplace that looks like it should hurt and he straightens quite abruptly, holding his knees with white knucked hands. Ranma smiles and procedes to pick up a slice of avocado as well. I take a quick look at the plate, as I hadn't noticed the avocado before, and snag a few pieces before they are all gone. I feed one to Mako, scarf one myself, enjoying the fatty green fruit with my eyes closed. ``Mercury-chan!'' A voice I can't place at first gasps at me, making me open my eyes. ``Ko-chama?'' I gasp, reading her aura, feeling the warping effects of altered dopamine production in it, reach out to grab her hand before she can pull away, drop into a mild trance as I hear Mako echo my words. I cut most of my external links, call out to shiroyami-chan, wake her from whatever slumber she had been in, use the full bandwidth that I had freed to link with her, catching up on what she thought was important over the last several thousand years as the ACI merged with me, and we turned to the problem at hand, quickly scanning Cobalt, shutting down the nanite network, redoing her genetic code to handle the load she put on it, rebooting the nanites, and then spending a few moments more on the chitchat we hadn't been able to do for a long time, 'Mi-chan giving me the rundown on the state of what was left of Silver Millenium; the few thousands in the outlying posts; the few dozen ACIs who were still running, hadn't swapped themselves out to hard storage and shut down their CPUs; the quiet worry on everyone's mind, that things wouldn't get any better; the few who disobeyed orders once they thought things were safe, who came back looking for survivors, who left again leaving nothing but legends; the even fewer who stayed, hiding, moving every fourty years or so. ``Better?'' I hear myself ask as I come back to conciousness, knowing that it is shiroyami speaking through me even as I open my eyes on Cobalt's new face, a black rose tucked behind her left ear. ``Much. That wasn't at all fun, not knowing what is real, what is just a waking dream, what is even less real than that. Thank you.'' She leans forward, kisses me on the forehead, continues, ``You were always so good at coming to the right decision quickly, I'd always envied that about you, you know?'' I shake my head, for I hadn't, ``Hun, I see Jupiter-chan is still as possesive as always. You haven't seen Shi-chan, have you?'' Shi-chan was her lover, a quick little blonde-haired woman who seemed as old as Ko-chama, who had disappeared a few years before the end. I shake my head no, pass a query to shiroyami, who also replies in the negative. ``She hasn't been seen or sensed since she disappeared, and the only data we have is the residue of a temporispatial disturbance.'' Ko-chama seems to wilt a little, wraps her arms about the two of us, quietly radiating her grief. ``Ko-chama?'' Everyone is staring at her, wondering how I knew their crazy enemy Kunou `Kurobara' Kodachi. ``Cobalt. She merged into her current body at about 14. Kodachi was already a bit unstable, I think, and Cobalt's joining finally pushed her dopamine production out of whack. I had to call upon the help of a friend of mine to fix things, but she's wired properly now.'' I continue to stroke her back, holding her like I had when Cepia first disappeared, like she held me after my first breakup with 'Mitsu, and my second, and my third. I had a hard head about 'Mitsu, couldn't see that she wasn't what I wanted, needed, that I wasn't the person who she wanted me to be either. The fourth time it took, though. 'Mitsu caught herself someone else and I was lonely for a few years, until I met Jupiter, who was only 19 to my forty. Not much of an age difference for then, but almost unimaginable now, in these more conservative times. /Ne, Mako-chan, what do you think they would think if we told them a bit about how we met, and our ages at the time?/ /Oh my. `taking advantage of innocent young girls'?/ /Hey, who got who so high on caffiene that she couldn't do anything but be happy, then dragged her off to bed? Hun?/ /I know that, but they'd probably think it was the other way around/ /too true. I wonder where we can get a good set of chains/ /Probably we'll have to make them. Why do you like them anyway?/ /don't know. they provide a safe feeling, and I don't have to worry about hurting you while I struggle./ ``Friend?'' Akane pokes the question forward. Genma had fainted at the sight of Kodachi slumped against me and Mako, and Soun was still out. ``Her name is shiroyami, she's an ACI,'' four blank stares, and an `I think I know what you're talking about' face from Kasumi, ``artificial or autonomous computer intelligence, she goes back and forth on which she prefers of artificial and autonomous. Artificial stresses the differences between her and the rest of humanity, and that she had a maker, a fact she is rather proud of, I don't know why, and autonomous stresses the fact that she operates on her own, as an individual, just like anyone else.'' ``Maker? Who?'' Kasumi asks, an expression of genuine curiousity on her face, probably brought on by my `I don't know why.' ``Me. I'm glad she considers me a friend, but I really wish my daughter had higher self-esteem. I'm glad she turned out so well, despite my using her as a crutch to get over 'Mitsu. At least the attention that I concentrated on her to keep from thinking about the pain of first love lost did her some good.'' \hora, 'Mi-chan, are the holo-projectors on line?\ \Hai, Kaa-chama\ \would you like to talk to these younglings?\ \Sure, let me get things set\ ``Osu!'' shiroyami puts forth her favorite self-image, a bit shorter than me, broad shouldered, buff in the manner of a Silver Millenium supermodel, her short bushy olive green hair sticking up an even centimeter and a half all around in what was the height of femme style, the bright purple bodysuit and fulgin jacket going well with her pale eyes that shift color and pattern every few minutes. She'd driven me bonkers while she worked on that effect, asking my opinion every few moments. ``Osu.'' Nabiki answers, staring at her, radiating a mix of lust and confusion. ``Wah, osu has become a masculine form? Kwah, oh, that explains it. What a weird thing to have happen. I never thought this would end up being a butch look.'' She smiles and shakes her head, her hair swirling the little bit it can. ``What, that's supposed to be femme?'' Nabiki looks dubious. ``Yep. Hora, goran kudasai,'' she drops to her knees beside Nabiki, obviously picking up the ambiant emotions, calls up footage of the first pagent she ever saw, a `most beautiful femme in the system' contest, skipping to the `show off' section as I always thought of it, all of them showing off, muscles, magic, knowledge. The contest winners had always made at least one major contribution to something, from the woman who had perfected a way to find the hundredth root of any number with a great deal of accuracy and less than a tenth of the computer power and time that it had taken before, to the young man who had come up with an algorithm to determine how much wine to order for a party. The demonstrations of muscular power were always fun, especially since everyone ended up moving about the same mass, give or take a couple dozen kilos, so most of it was finding something interesting to move, or an interesting way of moving it. My favorite is still the woman who had juggled a set of collapsium balls, each about the size of a basketball and massing several metric tons despite being hollow, while standing in sand, somehow managing not to sink into the loose crystals. Magic was even more varied, ranging from how to layer beam shields to a low-concentration method of making chopsticks out of nothing but the desire to have them. I remember the pagent she is showing off, the youngling who had won, mainly on the strength of the debate competition. I know that that was when I first noticed that youngling, // her as she shows up in the holo, her brown hair trimmed short, her fulgin outfit absorbing all the light that touched it, her face so young above the flat-seeming silhouette, the skin of her throat showing in the cleft of the high round collar. Mako //s me back, followed with //. ``Who is that?'' Nabiki asks, looking at Jupiter in the holo. ``Jupiter, who is now Makoto-chan over there. This was back before she became kaa-chama's koibito, by about three years or so.'' shiroyami answers, then does something I hadn't expected, pulling out her remote and substituting it for the holo she had been using. She only had the single remote, and I rather doubt she's bothered to make up any new ones since the defeat. Nabiki notes the difference, asks, ``What did you just do? You feel different now.'' She gasps as 'Mi-chan slides one hand across her back. ``I pulled my remote from storage. It takes a bit of time, so I didn't wait.'' ``Remote?'' ``Yeah, rather like one of those teleoperated deep-sea subs, you know the ones that they use to go searching the sea floor?'' Nabiki knods, ``It's basicly a sophisticated robot that I send comands to and it sends back all that it feels. Amoung other things it lowers the amount of attention I have to pay to things like how my hair waves.'' She grins self-depreciatingly, shaking her head, her hair following the movement. ``Not that waving my hair takes much attention, but if it moves on it's own I can concentrate on more interesting things.'' She looks at Nabiki significantly, and I have to fight the urge to hide my face behind my hand at how fast she is moving, continue stroking Ko-chama. Nabiki just blushes. ``What is going on here, anyway?'' Ranma asks bluntly. ``My daughter is trying to seduce your elder sister,'' This produces a sputter of protest from 'Mi-chan and a giggle from Nabiki, and the begining of a reflexive protest from Ranma while I continue, ``Ko-chama is trying to deal with something she couldn't last time she tried, and that I couldn't help her with then,'' despite my best efforts the guilt I feel at that seeps into my voice, along with the sadness that her loss had brought upon us all. ``The enemies that destroyed Silver Millenium are massing their strength for a final assult on the Earth, and serious thought is being given to calling back a lot of our remaining forces to Earth as soon as we come up with some means of cracking the beam-shields our enemies developed.'' ``Oh, I have one of those.'' Ko-chama's voice is muffled by my shirt, but still audible. ``If one uses a physical object it will pass right through the shield. You should remember that. I just picked up the information, though, so maybe that is why I noticed it and you didn't.'' I blink, feel like bapping my head on the table. ``Sorry, but I think they have figured out how to manage a Silver Millenium beam shield as well.'' 'Mi-chan speaks up, looking away from Nabiki who is bright red and smiling, at all the attention I would guess. 'Mi-chan is horribly cute when she wants to be, and even when she doesn't sometimes. ``Or at least that is what the readings from the recent battles show.'' I fight back a curse at that, glad that I hadn't spread the results of my experiments with spelled steel. Steel, at it's normal volume, takes spells wonderfully, and resonates just right for what I was trying, a successful physical attack on a Silver Millenium beam shield. There had always been the other methods; either attacking with such force that the shield overloaded, shorting back on the caster or emitter; or dumping high energy particles through the shield, which couldn't strain them out without overloading almost instantly. A positron beam was a real pain for most people to generate, however, and a neutron beam almost impossible, even though I found it easier than a positron beam. Positron beams were more effective for the energy, but also much easier to deflect, which a lot of peoples had learned how to do. The favored method, of course, is just to blow coherent EM energy through the shield, something that could only be countered by special tricks with bilayered fields, and even that didn't always work. Beam sabers, wolvers, and so forth worked by convincing light that it was particles then holding them until it hit something that it could release the energy into. Somehow the Dark Kingdom mages had figured out how to make a shield that shed energy like water and wouldn't collapse when the energy load dropped. Oh well, ki attacks still worked very nicely, and if we were lucky they would keep attacking singlely, their differences with each other keeping them from attacking en masse until after we were back up to speed or we had taken out a lot of them. Hopefully both. *Che! Atashi dai-boke! Eris-sama, nani mo omoinakatta yo!* *Remember, don't think about things you want to happen too articulately, or someone may well mess with you just for the fun of it.* ``Blessed Eris, mother of us all.'' Ranma sounds absolutely appalled, much like I feel. I feel quickly for my rings, remember that I don't have any, check the time. Nine forty five. *Guess I'm not going to school.* A familiar aura brushed my edges, making me look up as Ukyou walked in cautiously, her aura almost as familar as Ko-chama's, but different. I extract myself from Ko-chama, walk over to her, touch her hand. ``May I?'' I ask, reaching slowly for her cheek. Recognition flashes in her eyes as she knods, placing her hand over mine, pressing it to her face as she smiles at me, that familiar, motherly smile, so like my mother's that the wash of sadness almost makes me cry. I fight the grief down for a moment, reach into her mind with tender fingers, set to ease the barriers erected to slow the onslaught of Shi-chan's memories on Ukyou's personality, barriers that would already be eroding, but not fast, warping both into something strange and unhappy. She breathes a little faster for a moment as my mind brushes carefully through her, easing the barriers that prevent her from speaking out about who she is and how she feels, layering in trust that I will support her, be her friend and protector whenever she may need it. The realization of my mistake makes me wonder again about the ethics of warping young people to meld easily with others, people who already led long and generally happy lives, not quite at ease with the argument that it is better than what would happen if we didn't come back, didn't stop the Dark Kingdom, didn't keep the borders safe. What price for a child's chance to be a child? Yet the people who are involved in such a joining are willing participants, not choosen as small children to be warped to the proper shape to welcome the merger, but come to that shape on their own. I let her waken, feel her quick, lazy, obvious scan of all the auras in the room, pull my hand loose and step back as she takes a slow step forward, realizing just how much she changed in the last few moments, how much of me she appropriated. Ko-chama, hot tears streaming down her face as she took the four steps that brought her to Ukyou, who's aura still feels so much like Shi-chan's, my mother's. I watch as Ko-chama wraps her arms about Ukyou's waist, press her head just under Ukyou-chan's breasts. I feel her reach out the old link, the private comunication channel they said was inspired by the ancient modems that once formed the foundation of the Moon Kingdom of Silver Millenium, back when it was just a twinkle in the eyes of dreamers; a nation founded not on the oppression of a laboring class, but on equal participation, equal power by all but Eris and someone trained, shaped to be a perfect ruler, a final arbiter, a philosopher king who would watch out for her people before herself, who would act as her people would wish when there was not time to follow the normal channels of consensus. The Ginzuishou is one of the oldest artifacts of Silver Millenium, crafted by all the people in the project, mailed back and forth between thousands, millions. Spells layered upon each other, some spells shaping, some strengthening, some setting forth the ideals that the Ginzuishou would support with the force of all the millions in the Moon Kingdom, some spells just improving the shine, each woven into the others, each tied with a knot as difficult to undo as the caster could come up with, each knot tied into all the others until there was no way to destroy it permanently, no way to destroy its holder until the whole nation had either fallen or withdrawn their support, a lumpy knot of magic that couldn't be hidden. Once the Ginzuishou was complete a king was chosen, a woman so soft on the edges that people wondered how she was could be the one, until the first moves to block the new country came to light, and she acted with the decisive force needed, all but sacrificing herself, moving the kingdom from its former place, scattered across the face of the Earth with no more than a few hundred people in any one place, to the magically terraformed place she chose on the moon, teritory unclaimed by any of the countries who began moving to destroy the kingdom before it could steal their captive labor, their huddled servants. Until this time, the kingdom had no name, for no one had come up with one everyone could agree on. The first king almost killed herself through her action, decisions unanimously approved as the proper course when the retroactive arguements came, and people talked of how their old governments had begun to move against them, starting the proccedures to render them disposable. As she slowly began to recover her strength, the others gathered in small groups, healers were sent with all the energy entire villages could spare to help her. Soon it was decided to name the kingdom after the brave woman, a mother of five children, of whom only one survived to adulthood; who almost sacrificed her life to rescue everyone, not only her last daughter, from the governments that held her nation, that wanted to hold the world. The first king got better rapidly, her energy replenished to a level never reached before, helping as people emigrated from the Earth, first singly or doubly, then by tens and twenties, then with a sudden rush as the totalitarian states that remained went to war with each other, by the thousands, the other governments packing it in, merging into the anarchistic monarchy of Silver Millenium. The king took the energy that flowed like water towards her in a never ending stream, each person feeling it their duty to share a tiny bit of their life force, a tiny bit that would otherwise go to waste, used up worrying about something, or that they wouldn't have at all, if they were down on Earth, where the last kingdom sat, reduced to mind-controlled conscripts and warped `rulers,' and directed it back to the kingdom, into an endless quest to improve her kingdom and help her people. She first expanded the protections against meteorites, something she had neglected in her first terraforming, and then boosted the curvature of space artificially, increasing the `force of gravity,' first to Earth normal, and then gradually continuing, one and a half times Earth normal, two, two and a half, three. As this went on, people noticed, complained, made suggestions, and spells started working on the people as well; altering DNA to shift the receptor sites that were used by viruses, effectively wiping out the common cold and nastier things; re-working bones and muscles, streamlining the genetic code, adding comments. One day as the king was getting quite old and everyone was worrying about her, someone brought forth something they thought important; they had found the set of genes that brought on death. The code was commented out almost instantly, and the only reason this person isn't totally famous now is because they had the foresight to use a series of anonymous remailers and bogus accounts. Some people backtraced eight or ten levels in an attempt to find her identity, as a huge movement to honor whoever it was sprang up almost overnight. The only real arguments on the subject were ones of scale, from the small end of `name a bunch of schools after them and erect a bunch of statues' to `deify the saviour of our beloved king.' According to rumor, that was about the time that Ko-chama was born, shortly before the abdication of the first king, and the selection of the second, our first extra-solar ruler. Silver-sama is still a figure of reverence, despite, or perhaps to some degree because of, her having arranged a transfer to one of the least fun posts on the border, along with her daughter and great-grand daughter. The second king got herself killed, stomping an invasion by a race of humanoids controlled by a mad computer. She merged with the computer in an attempt to stop things with a minimum loss of life, and succeded, for the only lives lost were her own and the computer, destroyed by the merger and subsequent implosion. The humanoids, however, were quite happy to have a home, and in the end assimilated into the rest of the populace of Silver Millenium, although not without having a great impact, shifting the demographics firmly towards the female, and the main thrust of interest from computers, farming, and magic, to computers, combat, farming, magic, and giant mecha, a fascination that would last. The third king abdicated after a few hundred years, the fourth was the second non-human king, a Naga named Jesbet, who presided over a thousand years of peace, living down her truename of Worldkiller. Naga are interesting people, and I'd always admired them, even when I couldn't stand the sight of them or any other kind of snakely person. They chose their truenames when they become adults, like the Sharers of Joan Slonczewski's novels, naming a quality that they feel they have to excess, and believe they must control or not be the kind of person they want to be. Jesbet's mother had been Joe the Angry, and her closest cousin the Irritable. I still sometimes wonder what brought her to the choice of `Worldkiller,' though, for she won't tell me. The other kings were never as interesting to me, especially after it fell to Serenity's line, since none of them ever really did anything, and most of them were still alive until the end. Now only Jesbet, Silver, and Usagi remain, the kingdom of Silver Millenium reduced to a wasted shadow of herself, and the Ginzuishou shattered into seven parts, bound up with the souls of seven Youma at the defeat, an attempt to keep it from destroying the Dark Kingdom before it had a chance to recover. An attempt I really hope hasn't succeded. ``Ano, Suika-chan, doushitte konokoto?'' Ukyou looks only mildly worried as she wraps Ko-chama up in her arms, holding the sobbing woman as she asks. ``Your aura signature is a lot like her lover's, who disappeared a long time ago, and for a moment I thought you might be her, which is why I I didn't keep myself as detached as I should have. Sorry 'bout that.'' ``Don't worry, I'll live, and I don't mind the bits of you that I picked up. They're rather nice, actually.'' Ukyou smiles at me, kneels down to be on a closer level to Ko-chama, rocks her slowly while murmuring soothing words. The psychic feel is so familiar it rends the heart. \'Mi-chan, do you have any information on what happened to Shi-chan?\ \Other than what you know, I don't. She was just there one day, out on patrol, then she wasn't. No sense of her having been abducted, no sense of her having been killed, no sense of her having intentionally left, and no sense of her still being there.\ ``Ranma-chan, Akane-chan, read that please,'' I drag my mind back to the present, point at the copy of the laws that they have in front of them, go back to eating breakfast as they start reading it. I look up each time I hear a dismayed moan from one or the other as they realize just what they have gotten themselves into. The law, or at least the original version of it, lays forth their situation very clearly, each of them having defeated Shanpoo, it is her duty to marry them both, kill them both, or die in the attempt to pull off one or the other. Ranma passes the last sheet to Akane as I finish my rice, lean over against Mako in a rather undignified manner, and close my eyes for a moment. I wake up with Ko-chama and Ukyou-chan poking me, or actually Ko-chama wiggling my nose back and forth in a rather painful manner, the cartilage complaining about the abuse, while Ukyou watches. ``Good, you're awake. Status, please.'' ``Annoyed, tired, irritable.'' ``and making jokes. I meant the war.'' Ko-chama grumphs at me. ``Oh, that. They seem to think this is some sort of fighting anime, so they are using one operative at a time, and mainly operating in the Tokyo area. So far as I know, they're only opperating in the Tokyo area. Currently they are trying to gather energy to revive their `great leader,' Metallia, or somehow use the Ginzuishou for that end, I have no idea how they think that would work, and I can't see how they could make it do anything for them. Silver-sama, before the defeat, recognised several of the leaders of the Dark Kingdom as being reembodied versions of the leaders of the nation-states that our mothers fled.'' ``So it is your fight.'' ``Unfortunately, I fear so. There is also the simple fact of who we,'' I wave my hand at Mako's sleeping form, ``are. We are not just warriors for some cause, we are the Sailor Senshi, and as such have our duty to protect the Moon Kingdom by any means necessary, but killing will always be a last resort, the step right before defeat. The Dark Kingdom must kill us permanently to win; we must only survive, yet to win with honor we must insure the survival of as many other beings as possible.'' ``That makes it a lot harder.'' Ukyou looks at me with awe and hero-worship in her eyes. I'd thought her safe, what with just how much of my mind I let her go through, inexperienced fingers surprisingly gentle as they rummaged through the debris of lifetimes, and her fiancee who even well attached me found attractive. If I'm lucky part of the attraction is the very fact that I am firmly attached to Mako, and thus a safe object. If I am not so lucky, then it is something deeper, something that we will have to talk about later. She wraps her arm about Ko-chama's waist and leads the two of them out to the yard where Ranma and Akane are practicing, the smaller woman resting her head on Ukyou's shoulder as they leave. ``Shall we go?'' Mako-chan asks, eyes still closed, a little smile on her face, ``Venus ahould be around somewhere.'' Girlish laughter rolls out of a window upstairs. /Mama? I'm gonna hang here, Mina is waiting at Hikawa. Feel free to talk to me, but I'm not gonna manifest/ /Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. Don't break her heart/ /I won't/ /Have fun, then/ /*smile*/ ``She's at Hikawa. Shall we?'' I smile, twirl my fingers, dancing a little blue light over them. She smiles, grabs a pinch of the light, and leaps off, landing on a roof opposite, a smile on her face. /Good! Run fast./ /Catch me if you can. you've got twelve kilometers/ I give chase, the blue light trailing out between us. * We tumble up the stairs in a rush, trying to bind each other in the blue light, Mako's height a significant disadvantage as I finaly bind her free hand, then trip her with it. She laughs as I plop onto her belly, smiling, ``Do you yield?'' ``Never!'' ``Oh really?'' I kiss her, ``Then I shall be forced to continue kissing you.'' ``The horror, the horror,'' she says, ``Do your worst, I'll never break!'' ``Oh, that's nice,'' I tell her, then stand up, step away, ``I'll not waste my time now, then. I'll be back in a few hours.'' ``Oh, maybe if you kiss me again I'll give.'' I turn around, looking down at her lovely form, bound in stretchy blue light, and wiggle the fingers of my free hand at her. She giggles, ``Tickle, Tickle, Tickle,'' I tell her. ``Mercy, please,'' she gasps, squirming at the mere suggestion of being tickled. ``Yield.'' ``I give,'' she says. I smile, and the blue light fades. ``Yoo-hoo! Ami-chan, isn't it?'' Minako says from behind me, ``Haven't seen a game of tangle in a long time.'' ``Yep, and I wouldn't think you would have.'' ``Come up, you horrible woman,'' Rei-chan says, from a doorway. Mako pops to her feet easily, wraps a hug about me, then steps up, deep green semi-dress armor glossy under her brown school uniform. I smile, wave an `after you' to Mina-chan, and follow her up. Rei-chan follows us to the table, settles under the kotatsu, then Usagi-chan practically climbs into her lap, draping herself possessively over the taller girl. I smile at the familiar sight, wonder, for a moment, who the third I remember with her head pillowed on Serinity's lap is, then shake the memories so I can get back to the matter at hand. ``OK, to start, it is blessed good to see the lot of you again for the first time.'' Everyone smiles, a ragged chorus of ``you too''s, then they settle. ``Next, the Dark Kingdom have copied the our shields, and still, as I found to my distress yesterday, have their own beam shields.'' Mako gives me a hug, and everyone else laughs like they are supposed to. ``I have a method to spell steel to penetrate our shields.'' Silence, for a long moment. Silver Millenium shields can't be penetrated by kinetic attacks, no matter how large or powerful -- they refract the energy, projectiles shredding as their particles go in all directions, arrows and blades skidding off, blast waves swirling back towards their sources. Simply knowing it can be done will encourage imitation, and eventually someone else will find an exploit. ``Do we use it?'' Rei-chan asks, cuddling closer to the girl leaning on her shoulder. ``Yes, but not right away,'' Usagi-chan says, twists to kiss Rei-chan on the temple, ``Work us up a good set of weapons, and lets see if we can mask it as some sort of Ki attack.'' ``That might work,'' Mina-chan says, ``Particularly if they are our personal carry weapons.'' //'Mi-chan?/ /Yes?/ /find these for me (required)/ /The chicken tetracloride will be hard/ /That's carbon tet, as you should know/ /And the friccasse of sasafras?/ /puu-uu, that would be --// Jupiter lifts a vial, ``If I didn't know you obsfucated your ingredients, I'd be tempted to take a sniff.'' ``That's ferrous sulfate, 80%, perchromium manganate 20%. Or at least it was before I wet it with an equal weight of pure hydrogen peroxide.'' I smile. Jupiter puts it back without opening it. //Mama? Where'd you go?/ /Flashback. It's four parts ferrous sulfate, mixed with one part perchromium manganate, then five parts hydrogen peroxide are stirred in. Wait for it to stop gassing, then bottle/ /Are you sure it will gas?/ /No, but I think it should/ /Gotcha// ``I should be able to start on that soon.'' ``Good. Anything else of great weight?'' Usagi-chan asks. ``No,'' I say, smiling, ``But I am very glad to have all of you back,'' I smirk, ``And be back myself.'' ``You aren't Ami-chan, anymore.'' Rei-chan says. ``No. I have her memories, and she should have my old body's, but we have different cores. From what I remember, she'll enjoy being me a lot more than I did.'' ``Mercury-chan, explanation parser error,'' Minako-chan says smiling. ``Suika, please,'' I wait for Minako-chan to nod, ``I swapped personas with Ami-chan, two, no, three days ago now. The traces say she got my body, and I got hers, then Mercury started to be paged in. The process wasn't logged very well, but I should be able to figure the details out before too long.'' ``Good, I liked Ami-chan, and wouldn't want to lose her completely,'' Usagi-chan says. ``We need to win first. Who's left on our team?'' //You're missing the Outer Senshi, Saturn, Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, and the recruits. There are indications that the recruits were captured and modified sometime in the last few thousand years/ /What? Did they reincarnate before us?/ /No, they didn't die. Saturn finished training them, and they went erranting. They ran into something more powerful than they were, but we still get intermitant telemetry from them/ /Where's Saturn?/ /Sleeping, right now. She said something about a prophetic dream, needing her beauty sleep, and waking up when the Black Moon rose/ /Oh. Pluto?/ /Reincarnated about three hundred years ago, spends most of her time watching over her descendents/ /Oh?/ /Yep. You'll be seeing her soon as her mama gets back to her villiage/ /Mama? Oh, no, tell me it isn't/ /I'll lie to you If you want/ /The other two Outers?/ /Reincarnated, but not swapped in/ /Thanks/ /Conchs/ /Conchs?/ /I'm out of whelks at the moment/ /*groan*/ /^_^// ``Our cute little recruits appear to be still alive, but they're in foreign hands, and may have been forcemodded.'' ``Where, how, and when can we get them back.'' ``Saturn finished their training, so whatever took them was strong. Saturn is asleep, waiting for the `Black Moon' to rise. Neptune and Uranus have not started to page in yet. Pluto is liable to show up soon. ``They've got Nephrite, who you've met, Zoicite, who showed up for a moment, and Kunzite, who hasn't, Queen Beryl, and Metallia. ``Metallia is the big threat -- Beryl and her generals will be a relatively minor threat without her backing. Her physical aspect is a large, roughly egg-shaped lump of stone. I don't know what it actually is yet, it may be support or it might be some sort of trap she's in. ``Last, they have seven great youma, who reincarnated with the fragments of the Ginzuishou, and an unknown number of cannon-fodder youma.'' ``Where's Endimion? I'm worried for her.'' ``Isn't he Tuxedo Kamen?'' ``Tuxedo Kamen? Who's that?'' ``Tallish guy, wears a tux, goofy little mask, gives inspirational speeches, shows up in the nick of time?'' ``There's the sniper, but she seems too tall.'' ``Sniper?'' ``Grey ghillie suit, scoped rifle, takes headshots at the enemies. They don't penetrate their shields, but they do distract them. You think?'' ``Seems likely.'' --- log: 1995/?/?: Started. 1995-1996: worked on. 2002/Dec/1: started back up, perhaps. Log added. 2004/Jul/12: some editting. Re-fixed the scene between Suika and Makoto, the night they met. 2004/Jul/17: Added a bit more.