Rock-EX

M Shadowy, author and alias

••••••••••

And now it is time for disclaimer! Author creature primitively grunts that it not own Ranma 1/2, or other source of fictional inspiration, Tenchi Muyo! (the OAV, not the other series) Indeed. Primitive author thing states that the belong to Rumiko Takahashi/Viz Video and Pioneer Entertainment, respectively. Grunt.

••••••••••

Once upon a time, about 700 years ago to be precise, in a far away land called Japan, there was a man. He was a prince of a great kingdom, and a warrior of matchless skill. In a battle that would become legend, he would ride down from the heavens on the back of a dragon to strike down two demons of unparalleled evil and terrible power.

Except that his draconic steed was actually a wooden space ship, and the demons were a space pirate and her living starship, who had successfully broken through the formidable defenses of his homeworld, mandating his quest to go forth and take them down. His name was Yosho, and he was an alien.

•••••••••

The crown prince of Jurai grimaced as Ryo-Ohki retreated down into the valley beneath them, neatly swerving around a barrage of particle bolts. The missed shots hammered into the ground with worrying force, and Yosho, noble warrior that he was, sincerely hoped that the locals had cleared out. And not just because he was a noble warrior, but also because his mother was from Earth, and he would never hear the end of it if he did something stupid like wipe out all life on the planet.

Funaho gave him a mental heads-up and he returned his attention to the fight. Bolts of energy flickered up towards his vessel, and he almost contemptuously dissipated them with the Wings of the Light Hawk. This was getting out of hand, had, in fact, been out of hand since he and Ryouko had begun shooting at each other almost a week ago, out in the orbital path of Mars, though he knew that world by another name. What had followed would best be termed an epic series of trans-orbital skirmishes, with neither vessel proving able to best the other in open space. A magnificent scowl marched over his features as he thought of his repeated failures out in the big empty. Some of those failures had been... rather humiliating.

He twitched, noticeably, and shook his head to clear it. Enough. It was time to bring the chase to an end. Ryo-Ohki had put herself in an untenable position and he had to act before she could extricate herself.

He didn't need to speak to give the order, but he did so anyway.

"Funaho, fire!"

Bolts of ruby energy lanced out, bracketing Ryo-Ohki in overlapping fields of energy. Her shields withstood the assault for a heartbeat, before failing in a flash of light and a spectacular fireball. For a moment, the mortally wounded pirate vessel struggled to maintain altitude, but another salvo put her down for the count. Through the smoke, he could spy Ryouko slipping out her crippled ship / partner as the aforementioned entity spiraled down towards the ground. The resulting impact wrought an enormous explosion, clearing out the valley save for few extremely lucky or resilient trees and some large rocks in a cataclysm of heat and violence.

Yosho allowed himself a tight grin. He was just getting started.

••••••••••

Let us now turn our attention to a rock. Only not really. A rock that is, though it certainly resembled one. It was, in fact, a slightly charred hunk of a superlatively advanced organic polymer; a crystalline compound with the ideal mix of ablative, dissipative, tensile, and fractal strength to function as, as it's creator might say "The greatest starship armor in the Universe!" It was, as it were, a little piece of Ryo-Ohki.

And it just so happened to be hurtling through the air at a velocity that might best be described as "excessive." Perhaps "tremendous." Regardless, it zipped through the air, tumbling along at a speed separated hull fragments were simply not meant to go. Its speed was quite utterly disproportionate to the force that sent it flying on it's course through the heavens. For example, it should not have been able to hurtle over the mountains, through the woods, and across the Sea of Japan. But nevertheless, it had. And it was just getting started.

Oh, and did I mention it was on fire?

Still, despite it's frankly absurd velocity, which the educated of a later age would refer to as 'escape capable,' it was passing through air, and as such atmospheric friction eventually bled off it's excessive motive force. With it's excessive motive force bled off, it had nothing left to fight off the perfectly natural attraction two masses of particles would have for each other. As it's heft was utterly negligible compared to the looming Earths, it began to, essentially, fall.

It was still on fire, though.

As it's arc fell into decline and it began to make preparations to join with good old terra firma in an interesting display of physics, we must turn our attention to the word of the day: coincidence. No, wait, that's not quite right. Let me try again. "Coincidence." He said knowingly. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.

For example, purely by "coincidence," the chunk of hull's trajectory had sent it flying over mainland China, and, again purely by "coincidence" said trajectory had sent it off to the province of Quinghai. And now, as its velocity terminally degraded and the graceful arc turned into more of a headlong plunge, it was just as "coincidentally" heading straight for a peaceful, innocent valley filled with a number of placid, harmless springs.

And again, purely via "coincidence" appearances were entirely deceiving on this account, as the valley wasn't particularly innocent and the springs weren't especially peaceful. The entire placed was cursed up the yin-yang, as a point of fact; haunted by the spirits of the dead, trapped forever within the still waters. With luck, the Chunk-o-Ohki would wipe the place from the map and save everyone a headache.

Alas, it was not to be. With a great deal of fanfare, what with being a flaming piece of debris screaming down from the heavens and all, the Piece-o-Ohki hurtled down from the sky, to plunk, innocuously, into one of the many springs dotting the basin. For a long time, nothing happened. Beyond the physical realm, the guiding force behind Jusenkyo, whether entity, entities, or whatnot, deliberated on whether this... thing was actually worthy of a spring.

One could almost imagine the metaphysical debate. Indeed, you would have to, as it was occurring outside of the realm of any merely physical perception. One could almost sense a growing ambivalence to the whole affair, as if at any moment the evil spirits behind the entire messed up operation would simply make a decision in order to get it over with. And then, the moment passed, and the springs made their decision.

'Meh. Why the hell not?'

A luminous glow emanated from the spring, and then faded. And so was born a new spring. And for 700 years man nor beast set foot in it, for the guides labored under the springs misnomer, and believed that any who fell in it would perish. For this spring was known as...

••••••••••

Ranma stared in shock. It was a Panda; an honest-to-Kami Giant Freaking Panda. It was also, some part of him dimly noted, his father. Ranma really wanted an explanation as to how this was possible, and the Guide was gamely trying to give one, but given his fathers stance, Ranma doubted he would get to hear it. It was clear that his old man really wanted to avenge his dunking. "P-pops, wait!" Ranma called, but the the Panda ignored him, lunging forward to swing a mighty blow.

So Ranma kicked him in the head.

It happened pretty much entirely by reflex. Boot to the head and all that. Ranma managed to gather enough sense to stare stupidly at the giant panda and hope it went down for the count. Genma did not fall, though; instead he flipped back and caught himself on a pole before flying towards Ranma, this time zigzagging in an unpredictable course over the pools. As Ranma began to recover from his shock and set himself to defend, he noted, dimly, that this couldn't possibly be real.

Unfortunately, and as his earlier thoughts may attest, he was a still a bit flabbergasted from the experience and Genma managed to send him flying after a only momentary scuffle. As the wind whipped through his hair, he tried desperately to right himself, to find purchase on something, anything, to keep from landing in one of the pools beneath him. Alas, it was readily apparent that it was not to be, and as he hurtled towards one of the springs, he could hear the Guide's frantic calling, something about very, very bad spring and...

'Wait...' Thought Ranma, time seeming to slow. 'Did he just say Spring of Drowned Rock!'

Ranma brought a new meaning to the term 'frenzied activity,' as he desperately attempted to veer away from the inevitable impact. He had no such luck however; just before splashdown, he thought to wonder, 'How does a rock drown, anyway?'

Then he was in the wet. And he changed.

And no, he didn't turn into a rock.

Aside from the fact that he hadn't turned into a hunk of immobile non-living igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic compounds, Ranma was too busy thrashing his way out of his now vastly oversized dogi to notice much of anything. So dedicated to escaping the fate of drowning was he, that he completely failed to be aware of regions of until extremely recently nonexistent mental space initializing, loading core functions and accessing and adding unimaginably vast libraries of now largely outdated information. It would not be until much later that Ranma would become aware of such mind-numbing trivialities such as the GNP of the Betelgeuse Conglomerate in 1012 AD or the course and eventual outcome of the Surgians militant Dadaist revolution. Similarly mind-numbing, but for more important things, such as Hyper-Space physics, were also in there, but he was similarly unaware of them.

Indeed, as Ranma flopped onto the shore of the little pond, Ranma was only aware of a few of the differences. One, of course, was that he was smaller. That he had noticed back while thrashing out of his dogi. The second was that he was fuzzy, something readily apparent simply by looking down at the black tipped paws lying before him. In addition to this were two things which Ranma would happily not be aware of but was anyway. One of these was obvious; as a small fuzzy critter, Ranma's days as a martial artist were effectively over. His entire life was at an end in pretty much every way but the literal interpretation; without the Art, part of him morosely thought, he was nothing.

Beyond this was a vague sense of his recently incurred mental expansion, but next to the perceived destruction of his entire life's work it was a mere footnote. Though it was disturbing, he ignored the sensation and the accompanying data transfer that largely occurred below the level of his current bounds of conscious thought anyway, and instead turned slowly around to look at himself in the mirror like surface of the pond into which he'd been dunked. His first thought, was that he was red. Then next thing that occurred to him was that he seemed to be some kind of freakish hybrid. He had the face of a c-c-c... feline, the body of a rabbit, the coloration of a red fox, and ears which evoked the image all three. Certainly his eyes remained the same, that precise, piercing shade of cobalt, but aside from that he was, well, cute.

Oh, the shame of it all.

Before further internal venting could commence, Ranma found himself being scooped up by a gigantic pair of panda paws and deftly, if slightly disorientingly flipped around to face his now pandafied father. Genma didn't say anything, which was understandable since he didn't have human vocal cords. Instead, he just stared in shock and rumbled slightly. And then something vaguely akin to worry joined the shock in the important task of crawling over Genma's face. For a moment, nothing happened, then the panda tipped Ranma backwards and his eyes sank down. Ranma had a distinctly uncomfortable, hackle raising sensation run along his back and he took a moment to wonder what the hell had gotten into his pop.

Then, the Guide spoke, and all became clear. "Aiyah! Honorable young customer is female rock!" The total illogicality of this phrase was lost on Ranma, because that was about the time that the world went away in a comfortable haze of red, red rage.

••••••••••

Ryoga slowly exhaled as he overlooked the splendor of the valley below him. He was not in a particularly good mood to enjoy it, though. Actually, he was not in much of a mood to enjoy anything, nor had he been for the better part of his life. Admittedly, it was not a particularly long life yet, but he saw no point beyond the current of drawing it out longer than he needed too.

The point in question was hunting down his "arch-rival" Ranma. In all truth, compared to most other arch-rivalries, which were often born of truly terrible and despicable events such as destroying ones home, or murdering ones family, or hiding the Pacific Ocean in ones helmet, it was not particularly impressive. Those were things a person could get into a real raging arch-rivalry about, things guaranteed to stir the heart into a beating fury. A bread feud, and missing a challenge, especially since it had been he himself who had been late to it, did not quite compare to such epically bad things to angry about.

Such considerations, however logical, mattered little in the face of the supreme and highly irrational emotions Ryoga had in abundance. Emotions which were almost universally considered negative and self-destructive. Which is why, instead of being taken by the sight before him, Ryoga was indifferent. He even, dare I say it, released a petulant, bored half-sigh half-groan. If there was anything which he was angry about at the moment, aside from the constant anger at Ranma, it was at the sound of the noise he'd emitted.

No, he did not like releasing noises such as this, noises which made him sound little better than an angsty, lonely teenager, which realistically speaking he was. He would much rather release great, booming, manly threats. The type which would strike fear into the heart of his rival, the ones which were so popularly written of in historical plays and dramatic manga. Unfortunately he found the threats of the heroes to be trite and almost humorous, and he lacked the wit to spew forth a proper villainous diatribe.

So he had simply settled on shouting 'Die, Ranma!' before caving his enemies skull in with his umbrella.

And so was it displayed that Ryoga Hibiki had absolutely no sense of proportion in addition to his oft-mentioned ability to get lost inside of ten feet. Releasing another petulant, and, dare I say it, angst filled sigh Ryoga looked down into the valley and contemplated how much he'd like a nice ham sandwich, but the thought was derailed by his noticing what appeared to be a gyrating panda grabbing at some kind of fur covered blender latched onto it's head. Whatever the red thing was, it was fast, but then so was the panda. Ryoga marveled at the tremendous speed of the beast, far faster then he thought was possible for any bear, before he saw it had finally grabbed the pest and had hurled it away from it at an extraordinary speed.

Right, Ryoga belatedly realized, at him. Quite literally screaming through the air, the red blender beast was a hissing mass of nastily beclawed cute; Ryoga sidestepped to avoid the thing but was, perhaps, a hair to slow.

Alright, he was way too slow. He had in fact, begun to sidestep the moment that the wailing critter had latched onto his face. Ryoga aborted his failed evasive maneuver, screamed like a little girl, and began clawing to get it off before it tore his scalp off or something else equally unpleasant. Along with the clawing, came random stumbling, which, as he was atop a cliff over a large number of cursed springs , unsurprisingly turned out to be a bad idea. Ranma's frantic attempts to get him to turn around, which consisted of batting him atop the head and "Miyahing" frantically, did nothing to avert his tragic course and with another shockingly high pitched shriek, he plunged headfirst into one of the springs below.

Ranma, however, did not follow him down. As she realized that her improvised conveyance was doomed, she began a wild scramble to clamber over his head and down to the cliff top behind him. Ryoga had, as a direct result, panicked yet more and then thrashed his way over the edge in record time. Ranma would have joined him on his trip to the bottom, but she managed to leap off of his head in the nick of time. She touched down behind him just as he pitched over, wincing as she heard the splash echo up from below.

Ranma decided that perhaps it would be best if she returned to the valley via the long way.

••••••••••

She was in for something of a rude shock by the time she got down to the valley floor. Somehow, while she was out her idiot of a father had somehow returned to being human, as had the guy pops had flung her at. Idly noting that the guy seemed to be brooding and sending dark stares her way, Ranma miyahed loudly, somehow ignoring the cat-like nature of the call. This caught the Guides attention, and the dumpy fellow in the green Maoist uniform immediately bustled over bearing the 'cure', such as that was.

She took a moment to send a glare promising death, dismemberment, or at least severe discomfort to her father, before taking a moment to sit for a spell and listen to Guides rambling explanation. "Oh, young sir," Began the man in broken japanese, "Is too good that you come back so Guide can explain curse. You fall in very bad spring, where 700 year ago rock somehow drown. Was thought that whoever fall in spring turn into rock, but..." The Guide shrugged helplessly.

Ranma rolled her eyes at him, impatient for him to continue. "Maybe error in records." The Guide mused, before continuing. "Hot water cure for curse, so when hot water poured over you turn back into... Aiyah?" The Aiyah came because, at that moment, the Guide had dumped the hot water over Ranma and quite simply put, nothing had happened. The Guide blinked confusedly; this was most unusual. His guests, however, had a wide mix of reactions.

Ranma simply froze. And, after a suitably long pause, twitched. Not much really, just a little, nervous tic. Regardless, it managed to convey the presence of greater, and far more disturbing mental activity deeper within; perhaps involving defenestration and other, less pleasant-to-people-other-than-Ranma concepts. Her mental state most certainly wasn't helped by the fact she was still a girl in addition to remaining a cabbit.

Genma stared, panic written broadly across his face. This, as the saying goes, was not part of the plan; the plan had instead involved raising Ranma to be a man amongst men, marrying him to his old friend Soun's daughter, living comfortably in his retirement, and not having his head chopped off by his lunatic of a wife. And this was something that would easily fall under the head-chopping-off clause, even without the seppeku contract.

And Ryoga, for that's who the guy was, of course, simply let out an amused chuckle. After a couple moments, it turned into something of a deranged cackle, despite Ryoga's attempts to make it otherwise. It was more than enough to snap Ranma out of her daze, and she stared at him in blank incomprehension. She was still rather stunned though, and as such she couldn't manage to evade Ryoga when he reached down to snag onto the back of her neck and lift her up to his eye level. He let out a dark chuckle, before asking the cabbit, simply, "Do you remember me, Ranma?"

His psuedo-tormentor gave him a look that mixed irritation and what could only be 'No, I don't remember you. Maybe if you hum a few lines?' Ryoga growled in irritation, and barely restrained himself from wringing the little wretch's neck. Instead, he managed to grate, "Don't tell me you've forgotten Ryoga Hibiki?"

To be perfectly honest, Ranma had done pretty much exactly that. It had been a task aided by a concussion obtained during the intervening years, but all things considered it was doubtful that Ranma would have remembered the obsessive, directionally challenged boy anyway.

Now, however, Ranma was changed in ways both subtle and gross, and one of those ways was about make itself apparent, even if only to Ranma. Not that she had any idea what it meant; suddenly becoming a piece of hyper-advanced xenotech did not necessarily bear with it understanding of what one had become. And despite having been born in a first world nation, Ranma had spent almost all of her life ignoring technology as being unimportant, and with no practical understanding of modern technology she had no way of even remotely comprehending what happened next.

Being in essence a living computer (and much else besides, but that's for later), Ranma's request for information retrieval went down at a rate that befitted her extraordinarily advanced design. It did not, however, particularly well suit Ranma, who was used to a more... sedate pace of data recovery. Vast tesseracts of coherent but utterly incomprehensible data streams completely overloaded Ranma's perception for a fraction of a second, and in the resulting mental confusion, it actually took Ranma perceptually longer than it would have otherwise to recall the identity of her tormentor. To those not-privy to her modified thought-processes, though, her reaction was instantaneous; it was immediately quite clear that she remembered her captor, her mouth gaping and eyes boggling, though this had far more to do with seemingly everything in her memory coming at her at once.

Ryoga released yet another somewhat demented chortle. Despite his obvious attempts to control it, the chuckling quickly escalated to full blown, over the top, mad-scientist laughter in only a few moments. Ranma twitched, becoming increasingly annoyed with with the situation. 'What the hell does he think is so funny!' Ranma mentally raged, as she wondered what the lost boys problem was. Despite her improved recollection, she had no idea why the Ryoga would take such joy in her destruction, and this only irritated her more. It took only a few moments for that irritation to coalesce into a sincere desire to shake the jerk by his collar and demand exactly that.

Far below the level of conscious thought, a heretofore unknown sub-routine of Ranma's newly expanded intelligence processed this desire, analyzed it's current level of reactive mass, and compared the findings to it's available templates. The available resources were vastly insufficient to achieve the next standard template, and as such Ranma would have been out of luck. However, the program also detected an external module containing a suitable intermediate form in a non-native file format.

Earlier, the program had prevented a transition to said form because of the combination of it's woefully inadequate (read: non-existent) M/AM containment and vastly insufficient Hard Disk space, but the form could provide a usable base. Unfortunately for Ranma, the sub-routine had not the same attachment to being male, and as such merely extracted the basics of a humanoid configuration before integrating it's DNA (or DNA equivalent) and basic required functions. Then, as was appropriate given the whims of it's creator, it tweaked the results for just that little extra oomph of cute/sexy. The External Module, its usefulness at an end, was promptly deleted.

With the template complete, it implemented the solution, and said solution became almost immediately physically apparent.

No one was exactly sure what had happened next, least of all Ranma. Or at least, the self-aware part of Ranma. One moment Ryoga was finally gathering his composure enough to start babbling about his revenge, and the next he was being pressed up against the guides hut by a very red, very angry bunny tailed chick with huge triangular ears and piercing blue eyes. Despite being somewhat stunned, Ryoga managed a strangled "R-Ranma!"

Ranma opened her mouth to respond, and probably throw in a demand for an explanation, but found herself unexpectedly interrupted. This was due to two things. The first was the simple question, 'Wait, how am I holding Ryoga up against the wall?' This in and of itself would likely have caused Ranma to pause noticeably. When combined with Ryoga's reaction, it completely derailed her train of thought.

Ryoga took note of Ranma's auto-modified shape well before she had even really begun to think about it. And as Ranma now appeared to be what could only be described as a cute, curvaceous, and, most importantly, naked girl, Ryoga did the only thing a juvenile Hibiki could do, particularly given their close proximity. Ranma blinked in momentary incomprehension as Ryoga's nostrils suddenly spewed forth a great gout of blood. As in, all over her.

The excessive visual gag obliterated all thought for a moment, and Ranma almost panicked, fearing that she'd somehow caused Ryoga's head to explode. Her own expanded senses quickly reported that that wasn't so, and asked what exactly was she smoking anyhow? With that determined, Ranma was at something of a loss. What could've caused this bizarre reaction? Indeed, her own memories stated that Ryoga only got like this when he was around a pretty girl and... 'Oh, no.' Without ever really knowing why, Ranma looked down. And realized exactly what she'd turned into; it is said that one could hear the scream all the way across Quinghai.

Ranma sputtered blankly, unable to formulate a response. Her father, who had been staring stupidly at her since she'd transformed, continued to do so. Ryoga had fainted dead away, though he would later defend this choice of action as 'Passing Out.' Only the Guide, already used to the strangeness of the springs from long contact, kept a relatively level head, ducking inside his hut and returning with one of his large, maoist shirts, which he dutifully cast over the stunned Ranma.

Being a true gentleman, the Guide did not peek, nope, not at all. He was a married man, even though his wife had died many years ago. He also had a daughter of his own, not quite the younger Saotome's age. Besides, the neo-girl critter didn't even have half his years, and couldn't even be considered human in any case. The Guide, resolute as a mountain, was beyond the temptation to look. No matter how much he wanted to. Well, maybe he looked a little. Just a tiny bit really, and a man would have to be blind to ignore those, after all.

And Ranma, loosely clad in the oversized garment, numbly closed the ties, turned around, and began to stumble off somewhere to grieve over the remains of her life. She didn't get too far though, collapsing after only a few feet. Pounding her fist into the ground, she banished her despair under a wave of impotent anger, before bounding to her feet and stalking over towards the Guide. "What happened? Why am I stuck like this!" She demanded, her eyes quite literally blazing with an inexplicable inner fire.

The Guide sincerely hoped that his honorable customer would not start pounding him when he shrugged helplessly,.

••••••••••

The small girl seemed to quite literally droop. She sat on top of the cliff overlooking the valley in which her life had taken such a momentous change, trying to figure out where she stood now that everything she had been had been stolen from her by the cruel hand that fate had dealt her. All her life she'd been raised to be a man amongst men and that was now categorically no longer possible.

Still, she was resilient, and her tough, pugnacious personality was beginning to reassert itself despite the repeated hammer blows her confidence had taken over the course of the day. Though it was a hardly a philosophical masterpiece, Ranma was beginning to rationalize that, as she was no longer human, the limits of a human girl weren't really applicable to her. This was truer, particularly in a physical sense, than she knew. Most beings were below even the lower limits of her potential output by several orders of magnitude.

It would, in fact, take a truly freakish individual, such as one Ryoga Hibiki, to even have a chance against her in personal combat. To truly stand as an equal against her one would have to be similarly superhuman. Few such individuals existed, on Earth or elsewhere.

Her introspection, itself unusual, was interrupted by her father coming up behind her. She looked over her shoulder, doing her level best to look defiant, angry, and most importantly to convey that she had not been crying. Not even a little. Genma did not look convinced, but instead of launching into the expected tirade, he simply tossed Ranma's back pack at her.

"Come on, boy. The Guide says he knows a village a short ways from here that may be able to provide us with a cure." Ranma, despite the sudden, inexplicable gut feeling that she would never be male again, contrastingly felt hope well up within her. She was so distracted by her conflicting emotions that she missed the anxiety in Genma's voice, and the fear in his eyes.

••••••••••

A trio of arrows flitted over Ranma's shoulder, thunking heavily into the ground before her as a couple of throwing knives scissored past her opposite side. Beside her, Genma also ran, pouring on speed. She had rarely seen her idiot of a father push himself so hard, but she knew he had it in him. It just took something like a horde of female warriors bent on his death in order to make him show his true potential. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed what she already knew; the full mass of the Amazon warriors were still right behind them. Another arrow whizzed past her nose, and she concentrated on running faster.

Huffing, she looked over at Genma, and growled, sarcastically, "Great idea, Pops."

"Shut up, Ranma."

••••••••••

Authors notes: Well, here comes the proverbial first chapter. Only kinda... not proverbial. Without any form of pre-reading, this fic is assuredly a tad rough; probably not mechanically, but conceptually. Never the less, it's here for your amusement. If you find this kind of thing amusing, that is. And for those of you about to bitch about Ranma being stuck as a girl, I pre-emptively explain: I subscribe to the ruthless, evil bastard school of writing fiction. I encourage being mean to your characters.

The why is simple: they hate it, and hence they act. And maybe, just maybe, I'm evil. EEEEVIL!

P.S: Bitch at me about problems so I'll correct them, okay?

In retrospect I should probably include a list of acknowledgments here. In no particular order:

Ozzallos: For his masterful fiction and getting me back interested in writing, even if he doesn't know it. Also, Cabbit Days proved invaluable as inspiration for this story.

X to the Zoltan: Pretty much the same as the above; masterful fiction re-energizing my will to write. And, as with the above, he's provided a good kernel of inspiration... for reasons that will become obvious at a later point.

Kenko: ... come back to us, man.

And, to my post readers:

bissek: For pointing out the plot hole considering Ryo-Ohki's humanoid form. Or more accurately, for pointing out that I hadn't covered it explicitly enough. This is now corrected.

Iced-Tea-1983: I appreciate the suggestions, and especially appreciate your pointing out that I should perhaps clarify what Ranma is during that entire section. Hopefully, it's clearer now.

XStylus: FirstFicWarning... removed!

And everyone else who commented, thanks. I'm glad to have recieved such a heartening response.