Chapter Two

Disclaimer: All that you love will be carried away.

"Let me get this straight," Akane said carefully. They were sitting on the ruin of a parked car, the fragile plastic worn by its decades of exposure to the elements creaking underneath their weight with every movement. "You're from somewhere else, a place where civilization still exists and the world isn't this wasted hellhole. And in that different reality, you're the best martial artist in the world, you live with my family and I, and we've been engaged against our will by our parents. And you have a horde of other people who want to either marry or kill you, or sometimes both at once."

Ranma reviewed her summary and nodded once, firmly. "That's it, you've got it."

"You're insane." Akane's voice was flat. "I don't know if you've hit your head or if you ate something and it's caused hallucinations, but that is probably the biggest pile of crap I've heard since the last time Sheriff Kuno won the brag concert at the town festival." Ranma opened his mouth to protest, and she held up her hand - the one in the massive mechanical gauntlet she referred to as her power fist - to forestall him. "Look, it's not your fault. You probably heard my name in town, they talk about me a lot. And my family, well, the Tendo Clan of Anything Goes Salvage is one of the two top salvage groups in Furinkan Town. The other one, as I'm sure you know since you're trying to pass yourself off as one, is the Saotome Family. You're living a dream, Ranma, or whatever your real name is. And I hope you wake up soon, I do. It's dangerous enough out here without having some fantasy clogging up your head. But I've got work to do, and it's getting late. I didn't want to have to camp out in Nuked Tokyo overnight, but I'm going to have to if I'm going to salvage this."

"Maybe I can help," Ranma offered. "Look, this isn't a dream. I'm telling you, I know you - I've been living with you for over a year. I can tell you anything, your favorite color, what kind of panties you wear-"

Akane flushed, embarrassed or angry he wasn't sure. "That's enough about my underwear, mister, unless you want to talk to the power fist again." He eyed the gauntlet warily; that thing made Akane's already formidable punch into something that would knock Ryoga for a loop. "I don't need an outsider's help, and I'm not splitting my salvage with you. I can handle this myself." She pointed down the road he'd been traveling with the power fist, its servos whining gently as she extended one finger. "Furinkan Town is that way, if you've forgotten. You can get a room at the inn for the night, or camp out in the town square without worrying about mutants. Kuno's boys are good for that, at least, although they might rough you up some if they think you're eyeballing the local girls."

"I wouldn't - I never - I mean, look -" Ranma wasn't entirely sure what he wanted to say; you'd think that an Akane from a different world would be easier to talk to than the one he was used to, wouldn't you? And sitting here on the car, illuminated by a small kerosene lamp, he could see the differences between this Akane and his own; her face was thinner, her body more muscled even than the overpowered gorilla he knew. This was an Akane who had known hunger, known hardship; an Akane who had grown up fighting, not boys on the playground, but men and monsters who wanted to take what was hers. The gleam in her eyes was familiar. It was the same he'd seen in his own, or in Ryoga's or Ukyou's. The steely stare of a warrior. She slid off the hood of the car and tucked her mask up over her face.

"Good luck, Ranma. I'd recommend you think of a better last name, Genma Saotome doesn't take kindly to people trying to trade on his fame."

"But that's my pops!" Ranma protested. Akane threw him a halfhearted wave over her shoulder as she walked back towards the grocery store, taking the lamp with her. "Well, shit." He muttered. He wasn't sure how he could convince her he was for real; looking around the deserted street, more ghostly than ever in the moonlight, he had trouble believing in a world that wasn't ruin and wreckage himself. He slid off the car, feeling more alone than ever before - and hungrier, too.

He hadn't gotten more than fifteen feet down the road before he heard a familiar clicking sound, one that sent shivers down his spine. Shadows churned at the end of the street, and here and there the moonlight glinted from steely carapaces. The GiAnts had found him.

"Akane! Akane!" He shouted, sprinting full speed towards the store. He saw her, silhoutted by the lamp, turn towards him - even without seeing her face, he could feel the exasperation she projected, an unspoken "Now what, crazy man?" her stance screamed louder than any words. He jabbed his fingers towards the end of the street. "GiAnts! They're coming!"

"Oh, piss," she muttered. "Ants? You stirred up a nest of terror ants and then you brought it straight to me?" Her next words were louder, needing to shriek to be heard over the rush of thousands of insect legs suddenly rushing along the broken concrete towards them. "You really are an asshole, Ranma!"

"Insults later, running now!" Ranma said, grabbing her arm through the broken window and hauling her bodily along with him. She found her feet quickly and proved that she had a decent turn of speed in her own right, taking off full sprint down the road with her cloak streaming behind her. He had a second to spare to wonder if this Akane jogged every morning, too, and then he had to put his full mind to running. They hadn't made it halfway down the block before more of the GiAnts swarmed from around the corner, and they screeched to a halt before they could pile into them. Akane barely hesitated, smoothly changing course to dart down an alley Ranma had barely noticed; he followed, nervously noticing that narrow as it was, it was still more than wide enough to let the Buggers follow. He stumbled over a pile of rubble Akane had smoothly leaped, caught his balance before he could face plant, and struggled to catch up with her - only to find that she'd smoothly hurdled a chain link fence he could barely see. He didn't have time to stop, and piled straight through the rusted links, jagged edges tearing at the arms he'd raised to protect his face. Behind them, the clicking sounded louder, amplified by the building walls. Ranma spared a glance over his shoulder, judging how much room they had before the first GiAnt would be upon them; when he turned back, Akane was gone.

He screeched to a halt and whipped his head around wildly. There were no turns off the alley; as a matter of fact, at the end he could see disturbing shapes in the darkness, the full moon shining pitilessly down on gleaming chitin and snapping mandibles. Looking up showed only the side of a crumbling apartment building, without so much as a fire escape to offer a way out; he tensed his muscles, wondering if he could leap up the side, perhaps using the window sills to springboard his way to the roof. Something wrapped around one of his ankles, and before he could cry out, he was falling.

He landed flat on his back in something soft, yielding, and noxious. The stench was truly mind numbing, and only the wind being knocked out of him by the impact kept him from letting out a yelp of disgust. It was pitch black all around; there was the sound of metal against stone, and then light flared. He was in a tunnel, the crowded remnant of some old maintenance tunnel. Akane was clinging to a rusted ladder on the wall, having just slid a manhole in place and, once it was secure, lit her lantern.

"Keep quiet," she said softly. "They can feel the vibrations. If we move slowly and carefully, they might not realize we're down here and we can- why are you doing that?"

It took him a moment to realize that she meant his hands, fists clenched and pinky, index, and thumb extended in the 'promise pose'. It had turned into instinctive reaction by this point, he must have adopted the posture as he was falling. He shrugged and grinned, and she shook her head and slid down the ladder. "You look like an idiot. Anyway, I've been in these old tunnels before. There isn't much worth salvaging down here, but every so often you need an exit, and they usually do the trick. There's all kinds of nasty things living down here, though, so we're going to have move quick and quiet."

He stood up and brushed himself off; his shirt and pants, by this point, were probably a total loss. Even Kasumi, brilliant goddess of housework that she was, would be hard pressed to find any salvage for them; stained, torn, rumpled, and soaked with ant gore. Akane suddenly grabbed his shirt front with her power fist and hauled him in close. "You cost me the salvage of a lifetime," she hissed, suddenly furious. The lamp hardly seemed necessary with the blue flames coming off her, and Ranma found his hands automatically back up in their warding posture. "Those oversized insects are going to be swarming that whole part of town for at least a week, probably longer, and it's all. Your. Fault." She let him go, and he backpedaled frantically; but she might as well have already forgotten the whole thing, turning away dismissively. "If we go down this way, we should come to an intersection. Most of them have been tagged already, so we'll be able to work out which way to go from there."

"Tagged?" he said carefully, following along behind her.

"Salvagers put up different marks when we explore somewhere. Like road signs. Usually they're to mark claims - like my ducks - but we'll put up warnings about hostile wildlife or Eaters, tips about the terrain, and directions out."

"Eaters?" This was why he'd always blown off school, much to Akane-Back-Home's frustration; what was the point in going when they didn't teach you anything important? Crazy-Akane-of-the-future sighed.

"Look, we don't have time for me to try to infodump every scrap you need to survive the wastelands right now. Just stick close to me, and if you see anything that looks scary then let me handle it, okay?"

"Hey, I ain't scared of nothing!" he protested.

She snorted. "Double negative, that means you are scared of something - or maybe you people from the past just don't talk as pretty as I always assumed, huh?" He didn't have anything witty with which to respond to that, so he shut his mouth and simmered silently. Soon enough, the tunnel - wider in some parts than others, since sections of the roof had collapsed and it was choked with debris - split into intersections. There was random graffiti on the walls; none of it made any sense to Ranma, and had they been home he would have dismissed it as usual city vandalism, but Akane stopped and pored over it as though it were Gospel. Ranma shifted his feet, trying not to let his boredom show; the air down here was warm and moist, making every breath feel like he was suffocating in a wet blanket, and the sooner they got out of here the happier he would be. Akane hummed to herself as she read, then let out a wordless cry of disgust.

"What is it?" Ranma was by her side in a heartbeat, scanning the wall and floor for the vermin that had caused her to squeal. She pointed at one of the scribbles instead. "That turd Lanzecki says he found cases of MREs in a civil defense shelter under the Yamotami Combine building. Everyone knows that whole sector's been scavenged out for over a decade, so who does that idiot think he's fooling? When I find him, I'm gonna squeeze the truth out of that skinny neck of his-" She noticed Ranma's flat, disbelieving stare and trailed off. "What? He had to have stolen them from someone else's claim, he doesn't have one of his own..."

"How do we get out of here?" he asked pointedly. Akane shrugged and pointed down one of the tunnels.

"This one lets out under what's left of the highway, it'll get us the closest to Furinkan. Maybe an hour's walk, maybe two. But we're not going to try it tonight."

"Why not?" Ranma was eager for dinner and a hot bath - he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so grimy. It was a sign of just how soft a year living in a house had made him; just right now, though, he couldn't bring himself to care. Akane shook her head in response, her short hair plastered down like a helmet by sweat and dirt.

"It's too dangerous to go wandering around, after dark. It's why I was going to bunk down at my claim after you distracted me, which-" she jabbed a finger at his chest, her mood shifting mercurial as the subject reminded her. "-you owe me for, you asshole."

"Don't call me an asshole, you hair trigger bitch," Ranma replied automatically, brushing her hand away. It came back, clenched into a fist he barely ducked. "Hey! Watch it, you psychopath!"

"Do you have any idea what your blundering cost me? There was a generator in that grocery, a working fucking power plant! It was worth, literally, its weight in gold and I had to abandon it because you don't know enough not to poke anthills!" She followed him, fists clenched. "You owe me, Ranma-who-thinks-he's-a-Saotome, and I intend to collect."

"Collect how? Your sister- I mean, I don't have any money." Nabiki cleaned out his wallet on a fairly regular basis, and whatever she missed his pops usually snapped up for drinking money. If Shampoo and Ukyou weren't thrilled at the opportunity to feed him their cooking, he'd probably have starved by now. At that thought, his stomach let loose an ear splitting growl that made Akane pale and look down the tunnel, momentarily forgetting her ire.

"That was your stomach?" She looked at him in amazement, then her eyes narrowed. "So now I have to feed you, on top of everything else? By the gods, future boy, you'd better have some talent besides hitting things. I'm going to work the living shit out of you to get my investment back, every goddam penny."

"Hey, you're the future person," Ranma folded his arms across his chest, trying to ignore the continuing rumble of his stomach. "And I don't owe you anythi-"

Akane reached into one of her utility pouches and waggled what looked like a cloth wrapped bar of soap at him. He had a witty comment on the tip of his tongue - he was sure of it - and then, even over the musty stink of the tunnel, there was a delicious smell. It was hard to describe; cooked meat, definitely, but also a fruity sweetness and a hint of oats and nuts. Akane smirked and started to say something, then blinked as the bar suddenly vanished from her hand. "FOOD!" He could feel her gaze upon him, even imagine how it must look - astonishment, disgust, horror - but he couldn't help himself as he devoured the bar, barely chewing in his haste.

"That... that was a three thousand calorie bar," she said numbly. "That was supposed to be a day's rations..."

"Got any more?" Ranma asked hopefully, sucking on a chocolate stain on his thumb. Ugh, that wasn't chocolate.

"I'm adding it to your tab." She pulled another one out and tossed it at him, flinching as it disappeared in midair. She chewed on one of her own as Ranma ate the second, trying to take his time with it. Even so, he finished long before she did, and had to restrain himself from staring longingly as she worked on hers. "Two flash bangs, a tear gas grenade, two days of rations, and that frigging generator. Plus whatever your room and board is while you're paying off your debt - and from the way you eat, that's not going to be chump change."

"You're charging me for the grenades you tried to shoot me with?" Ranma was appalled. "You really are Nabiki's sister, aren't you?"

She scowled. "And that's another thing, I don't want you telling that cock and bull story about being from some mirror reality to my family. We've got enough of our own crap to deal with, without adding your delusions to everything else."

Ranma thought about protesting, but it really was a crazy story - he'd heard crazier, of course, but it still pushed the bounds of belief. He wasn't sure if 'mirror reality' was really the right term - he thought it more likely this was some kind of crazy future, although he couldn't imagine why he would meet the same people he knew in his time. Still, didn't they say history repeated itself? Maybe that was more literal than people realized...

Well, he still hadn't shared the craziest thing with her yet. Not that he particularly wanted to; his greatest weakness, his greatest flaw. His curse. The thing that, for the longest time, he thought made him less of a man; that, although he had come to accept it, however begrudgingly, nobody else seemed to. Akane had even been willing to marry him to get rid of it, until Happosai-

For some reason, thinking of the disgusting little pervert sent a wave of terror down his spine and agony through his skull. He flinched and grabbed at his temples; Akane looked concerned and reached out to him.

"What's wrong? Did you eat too fast?" He brushed aside her hand without thinking about it. With his eyes screwed shut from the pain, he missed the expression on her face - part insulted, part wounded. This isn't the time or place, he thought, trying to push the thoughts away. I'll deal with this later. Slowly, the pain receded, but he knew he was going to have to go back and face it at some point. There was something buried there, something important...

"No, it's nothing," he said, opening his eyes. "Look, I don't like sharing this, but... do you have any water? And maybe a kettle, something to heat some up?"

She laughed disbelievingly. "What, you want a cup of tea or something? I can heat up some water, sure, but this isn't the time or place," Ranma blinked as she unknowingly parroted his earlier thoughts, "and we should get moving. You can have a sip off my canteen, if you want. You could probably use it to wash down those pemmican bars, anyway."

"What bars?" He accepted the canteen from her and drank eagerly, careful not to spill any on himself. Better to wait until he had the means to change back before showing the curse off.

He didn't particularly want to demonstrate it - Akane, his Akane back home, had never really accepted him because of the curse, never willing to forgive him for being a boy when she'd thought he was a girl. Someone she could be friends with. "My name's Akane! You wanna be friends?" Hell of a different greeting than this Akane had given him, but still...

"Pemmican. Fruit, meat, nuts, some grains for energy. My sister makes 'em, they can last damn near forever and they're tasty the first couple of days - you can get tired of them pretty fast, though. But there's almost nothing to hunt or gather in the city ruins, so I make sure to carry enough to last me a few days." She paused. "Of course, we'd probably need a wagon to carry enough to last you a few days."

"Har de har, har," Ranma fake-laughed, handing the canteen back to her.

"We should get moving," Akane took a swig from it without wiping off the mouth and tucked it back in her belt. Ranma blinked; wasn't that the same as kissing, what she'd just done? If it was, she certainly found it no big deal. "The longer we sit here, the more likely something will find us."

"I thought you said we couldn't move on until morning, that it was too dangerous to wander around at night," he said, pushing himself past the indirect kiss thing with an effort.

"I did," she said, turning on her heel and walking down the tunnel opposite the direction to home. "But that doesn't mean we can just stand around in the open like this, either. According to the tags, there's an old maintence shop up the tunnel a ways that's been converted to a scavenger safehouse. We can hole up there tonight, though it might cost us if someone's already using it. And you better believe that's going on your tab, too, bucko."

SCENE BREAK SCENE BREAK SCENE BREAK SCENE BREAK —

Fortunately for Ramma's empty pockets, there were no other scavengers holed up in the cubbyhole, nor any of the creatures of the wasteland Akane took great pleasure in describing to him as they walked; Morlocks and vrodyanoi, skin wolves, pit wasps, mourning mists and uglier things yet. It sounded like fantasy; but then, Ranma had encountered some pretty strange creatures in his day, even if most of them had turned out to be more goofy than terrifying. On the flip side, there had been some nasty ones like his evil female twin, or the ghost c-c-c-that thing with the bell that tried to take Shampoo for its bride.

There were quite a few perfectly mundane rats, however; big, hairy brown rats that showed no fear at the light, but stood on their hind legs and sniffed at the air as if trying to decide just how edible the intruders might be. Akane, far from screaming and clinging to him, just sighed and unslung her grenade launcher.

"Are you nuts? You can't fire that thing in here!" Ranma grabbed her arm, and she elbowed him in the side hard enough to knock the breath out of him.

"Cool your jets, grabby. I've got some low dose gas rounds that should shut them down, we'll just have to wait an hour or so for it to dissipate."

"Let me deal with it." It didn't come off as confident or manly as he'd originally planned; it was a little hard to sound more macho than solving one's rodent problem with explosives, after all. He ushered her over to the side, and looked back at the rats; perhaps some of them had retreated, but more had decided to come investigate, drawn perhaps by the foreign smells - especially if some crumbs of Kasumi's pemmican had avoided Ranma's locust like scouring. He cracked his knuckles and stretched his legs slightly.

"Well?" Akane was tossing a rifle grenade up and down, eager to load it up and get to shooting. Ranma bent over, hunching his back slightly, and growled low in his throat. She blinked; that almost sounded like... a cat?

The rats stiffened, some deeply ingrained instinct warning them of danger. By then, of course, it was already too late. Akane had never seen anything like it before, and she knew, somehow, deep in her soul that it was only the beginning of the craziness associating with this strange cosmic castaway would bring to her doorstep. Still, even as insane as she'd thought him before, nothing could have prepared her for the sight of a grown man - or mostly grown, at any rate - acting like a cat.

Acting very well like a cat. The rats fled, and Ranma mrowled and pursued them, scampering faster than they could run and breaking their spines with quick, vicious blows of his paw-hands. He was always one step ahead of them, killing some instantly and batting others back, stymieing their attempts to escape - over and over again, for all the world like a cat playing with its prey. When there was only one left, and Ranma showed no sign of relinquishing his fun, Akane stepped forward to end it - literally, crushing the poor tortured rat under one steel shod boot with a definitive stomp.

"That's enough! Gods and little angels, you don't need to torment the poor thing-" she stopped as Ranma yowled at her, an angry predator deprived of its rightful meal. She cocked the grenade launcher with a loud snap, trying to bluster her way past the sudden tremor of fear that ran up her spine. "Don't even think about it, you weirdo. I will end you."

Ranma straightened suddenly, wincing as he tried to unkink his back from the bizarre position he'd been in. He looked around at the scatter of corpses and grinned. "Alright, it worked!"

"Wait, you turned yourself into a man... cat... thing, and you didn't even know if it would work properly?" It was all she could do not to shoot him right then and there, but decided it wouldn't hurt too much more to hear him out. She could always shoot him after, if the explanation killed too many brain cells.

"Well, it's something I've been practicing for a while..." Ranma told her the rudiments of his Nekoken training as they cleaned out the mess and found some bedrolls that had only been lightly nibbled on. He avoided some of the specifics, like just how bad c-c-c-those milk drinking things scared him, but finished with "...anyway, I wasn't sure if I could just summon it up and let it go like that. As it is, I can't seem to willingly tap into the really high end stuff I do unconsciously, like ki claws, but it's just a matter of time before I get it all under control." He clenched a fist at the sky and struck a pose. "'cause I'm Ranma Saotome, and I'm the best martial artist there is!"

"Yeah, whatever." Akane refused to look impressed. "So at least you've got one talent, I can use you to keep the mice out of Kasumi's pantry. Here's that hot water you wanted."

"Can I borrow your canteen for a minute, too? Thanks." Ranma stared down at the two containers before him, nervousness clutching him closely. What if this Akane reacted as badly - or worse - as the Akane back home did? What if she didn't want anything to do with a gender swapping freak like him? Or, worse, what if she decided he was some kind of wasteland mutant, and tried to kill him? "Akane, have you ever heard of a place called Jusenkyou?"

Akane shook her head. "There's an Amazon tribe not far from Furinkan Town, though, the Joketsuzoku. Is that what you mean?"

Ranma started, barely avoiding spilling water of one flavor or the other on himself. "No way! The Chinese Amazons are here, too?"

"You know them? They come into town every so often to trade, but for the most part they're pretty self sufficient - and they're really nasty warriors. Almost everyone steers clear of them, although Sheriff Kuno has gotten a couple of nice ass whuppings when he tries hassling their women." She snorted. "Hell, that's probably where he got the idea that if he beats me, he can claim me for his wife..."

Ranma closed his eyes. "Man, the more things change..." Akane gave him a suspicious look, but he just shook his head. "Okay, well... Jusenkyou is a cursed training ground my pops and I visited in China."

"This would be the same pops that threw you into a pit of starving cats," Akane remarked dryly.

Ranma shrugged. "Only one I've got. Anyway, the curse is that there's a thousand pools of water, and anyone who falls into one, um... turns into something. Whatever drowned in that pool."

"So, you're not really a boy?" Akane blinked.

"What? No! I'm all male, lady!" Ranma yelped.

"But you just said-"

"Yes, they turn into something else, but only when touched by cold water! Hot water changes me back to where I belong, which is right here!" Ranma cocked a thumb at his chest. Akane gave him a pitying look.

"You know, I thought you were crazy before, but the more you talk..." Before she could finish whatever sarcastic, Nabiki-ish comment she had this time, Ranma lifted the canteen and dumped a good cupful over his head. The look on her face, and the stunned silence that followed, were almost worth the amount of humiliation and misery the curse had brought him. Almost.

Then- "Ranko?"

"What?" Ranma wasn't sure she could be any more surprised if Akane had lifted up that heavy mechanical gauntlet of hers and clocked him upside the head with it. Actually, judging from the last time she'd done just that, that ranked pretty low on the 'surprise' scale right about now.

"You're - you look just like Ranko," Akane said slowly, staring at her as though she'd seen a ghost. "Everything except your eyes." She shook her head. "Ranko's a- well, kind of a rival, but kind of a friend, too. Her family runs a salvage operation just like mine-"

Ranma closed her eyes. "Lemme guess. Saotome Anything-Goes Salvage?"

Akane nodded, and even through closed lids Ranma could still feel her searching gaze running over her face, down that fantastic curvy figure she hated so much, and back up again. Stare all you like, she wanted to say. I won't melt away. I won't suddenly turn back to what I should be - not unless you splash me again. This is who, what, I am. It's crazy and it's fucked up, but it is what it is. At the same time, she wasn't sure what to think of finding - herself - duplicated here, in this strange mirror world. Akane the ass-kicker, okay. Akane having the same sisters, no big surprise. "Sheriff" Kuno, well, that was a little odd but she could buy it. But Ranko - a name they'd made up on the spur of the moment to fool her mother - being real? Ranko instead of Ranma?

Akane gasped as the hot water worked its magic, putting things back where they belonged. Ranma shook the worst of the water up, wringing his clothes and hair dry where he could and doing his best to ignore what he couldn't. "It does that every time?"

"Without fail," barring magic soap, splitting curses, and a couple other false hopes he'd rather not think about or bring up at this time. "It's a pretty tenacious curse. I guess, in a way, I was lucky. I mean, at least I'm still human. Most Jusenkyou curses are animals. My pops turns into a panda..." Ranma shrugged, a little ruefully. Ryoga had thrown that into his face, the first time they'd fought after being cursed - it had taken a long, long time for Ranma to realize just how true that was. As much as he'd rather not have to deal with swapping chromosomes every time he got splashed, there were worse things to turn into. Like a c-c-c- like Shampoo's curse.

"That must be horrible," Akane said. He blinked in surprise and looked at her. She didn't have the expression of disgust or anger he would have expected; didn't have that fascination like Ukyou. It wasn't an expression he was used to seeing on anyone's face, really; sympathy. Like she actually cared.

It made him uncomfortable, so he did what he did best; blew it off. "It's no big deal," he said. "I'm still the best martial artist in the world, and this just lets me study it from both sides of the coin. Besides, sometimes it comes in handy to have a ready made disguise just a thermos of water away."

"I can bet," Akane laughed. "Well, we should get some sleep; we're wasting lamp oil sitting around like this, and that stuff doesn't grow on trees." Ranma winced.

"Oh, man, you're not going to charge me for that, too, are you?"

Akane threw a dead rat at him, and blew out the lamp.