Growing Up

Preface

    This story diverges at the end of the story involving the mushrooms of time. The idea for it started with a simple, "what if," regarding Nodoka seeing Ranma while he was a six-year-old boy. From that, it grew into a story that will span ten years without any significant time skips, and will include around two dozen other series in minor, major, temporary and permanent ways. Unlike the majority of my stories, I even intend to make a pairing happen.
    Obviously, it's a big undertaking. It is guaranteed to be the longest story I'll ever write by many times, assuming that I ever get to finish it. I want to finish it, of course, but it will greatly depend on how much attention I give it. That will — in turn — depend on how much attention others give it, since I'd rather focus on stories that I'm confident I can complete this century.
    Now, mind you, Ranma will grow up as a girl this time around. Fair warning for those who don't care for that sort of thing, regardless of the reason. For those who can stomach it if the focus of the story is far and away from any significant feminization of Ranma's character, rest easy: the main point of this story is adventure, action, friendship and maturing in general. So, I can say that Ranma won't be a girl forever, but it will feel like it since he will be one until the end of the story.
    Now, if you're curious about the kind of series that will appear in this story, I've made a post in my forum that shows the ones that become relevant in the first several years.

Growing Pains

    Ranma found himself walking around the neighborhood while in a daze, not knowing or caring where he was going. It wasn't a wise idea, what with only being six years old, but he simply had to escape the attention of the Tendo's patriarch, who took joy in treating him like the young boy that he appeared to be despite his actual age.
    He was still in shock over the fact that he was stuck as a six-year-old and would need to grow up all over again, since he and Ryoga had accidentally destroyed the last of the age-altering mushrooms. Having to adapt to his change in status was an unwelcome and daunting prospect, one that he hoped to avoid if at all possible. Unfortunately, the only person who "knew" of the mushrooms' location, Ryoga, had a sense of direction that was practically nonexistent. The aforementioned individual was nearly as bad when it came to recognizing the places that he had visited before, confusing towns and cities no matter how often he had visited them, so it was essentially up to random chance if Ryoga ever happened upon the mushrooms' location again, because he certainly wasn't going to be able to tell one group of trees apart from a myriad of others.
    It was that uncertainty that had really taken the wind out of Ranma's sails, regarding his chances of resolving his problem in a timely manner. While he didn't have the same problem as his "friend," and could conceivably comb all of the wooded areas of Japan, there was no telling how long that would take. He was confident that he could find the mushrooms that way, but there was a good chance that it would take years of searching, even with help, and he might end up so far behind everyone else that he would be no better off than if he had simply allowed nature to take its course: his peers would be older, possibly changed as people, and maybe even out of school and making headway as adults. Should that turn out to be the case, and especially if certain people moved on, he would end up going through all of that effort to find the mushrooms for nothing.
    Sure, he could ask certain people — the ones that mattered to him — to put a hold on their lives until his problem was taken care of, so they could pick up things where they had left off at instead of moving on without him, but even he knew how much he would be asking for if he did that, and of one individual in particular. Besides which, he wouldn't even be in his current position if not for his own behavior and decisions, so it wasn't like he could expect sympathy to do him any good.
    That was the impression that he had gotten from Akane, when she had told him and Ryoga to start their lives over as friends. She might have been willing to put her life on hold for him when he had thought that the only known cure for the ultimate weakness moxibustion had been lost, since he hadn't been afflicted with it through any fault of his own, but she had too much to sacrifice for the kind of juvenile behavior that had led him to his current predicament.
    The sad thing about his situation, upon reflection, was that he didn't really lose out on much — personally — by having to grow up again. While there were plenty of undesirable things to be gained, he didn't have many good things to lose. He didn't have the respect of his peers, was more infamous than famous, didn't have much in the way of friends, or have any future prospects beyond settling down and running a dojo. With the exception of Akane, despite his still-unresolved feelings for her, he wasn't exactly sure how much he would be affected by the loss of anything else.
    That revelation was what had hit him the hardest, because it had really gotten him to see the length and breadth of his life for what it was, which wasn't much. Even the one future that was expected to become a reality one day, of running a dojo and raising a family, held no real interest to him. While he hadn't exactly been raised with such a future in mind, or for any future of a similar nature, he hadn't even cared to warm up to the idea ever since the day that its likelihood had been revealed to him.
    When he got right down to it, he had to admit to himself that he had to grow up in more than just the literal sense. He did so grudgingly, not liking anything about what that would mean for him, but neither did he like how poorly he had done for himself outside of his accomplishments as a martial artist. If for no other reason than to feel good about himself, he wanted to be liked, respected and admired by the time he was sixteen again. Maybe, by then, he would also figure out what he wanted to do with himself once he was an adult, especially if he was lucky enough to get out of the arranged marriage.
    Although he had overcome most of his shock by the time that he had formed some idea of what to do with himself, as the sobering weight of resignation settled upon him, he was still too preoccupied with his thoughts to hear someone address him by name, and had his head bowed too low to see the source of that voice until he was about to walk right into it. While his reflexes were quick enough to prevent a collision, the person with whom he had nearly walked into had assumed otherwise and laid a hand upon one of his shoulders to arrest his movement at roughly the same time.
    When he looked up and opened his mouth to apologize, he ended up gaping at the person who was leaning over him instead, because they weren't just any person: they were none other than his mother, Saotome Nodoka. Then, his surprise turned to panic when she worriedly asked, "Ranma? Are you alright?"
    He considered running away, hoping that his mother would think this moment a figment of her imagination, or lying his way out of his predicament somehow, but the genuine concern on her face interrupted the part of his brain that should have been telling his legs to get a move on, and his throat to do more than release a croaking sound in a failed attempt at speech.
    Eventually, however, his emotion-addled mind was able to produce a question that he would not have asked if his mental faculties hadn't been so compromised. "H-how could you tell it was me?"
    Nodoka smiled sadly and knelt before him, setting her wrapped-up sword aside in the process. "While you're not as young as you were when you left with your father, you're not so old that I wouldn't recognize the only face that I've known you by for so many years." Her look of concern returned as she added, "Is this why I couldn't make contact with you?"
    Before Ranma could reply without thought, since his mother had offered him the perfect excuse, she pulled him into an embrace and spoke with a voice that was strained by emotion. "Oh, I'm just so happy to be with you again."
    Between that, and hearing his mother weep softly with joy, the words that he had been about to say died on his lips. He couldn't lie in light of this, although — now that he had the presence of mind to think about it — it wouldn't have done him any good anyway, since the discovery of his curse would have likely been inevitable. Besides which, he realized that this could be his opportunity to come clean with her, since he had always intended to be honest with her if the circumstances ever gave him the chance.
    So, reluctantly, he pulled away and somberly admitted, "Look, mom, this isn't the reason why I've been avoiding you. The real reason is, well," he tried to find the right words to explain himself, but ended up looking askance and lamely finishing with, "complicated."
    Nodoka stared at him for a moment, then glanced around and noticed that they were making a scene in front of a restaurant, in addition to whoever happened to be out and about on either side of the street. With that being the case, she nodded to herself, retrieved her sword, rose to her feet in a dignified manner, then softly said, "I understand. Why don't we find a more appropriate setting for this conversation?"
    After nodding his head in agreement, he didn't expect his mother to offer her hand to him, which he looked at with confusion before turning his attention to its owner. Seeing the hopeful yet expectant expression on his mother's face spurred him to take it, with some embarrassment, and he fell into step beside her as she guided them to a new locale.
    He looked upward after a moment, first to regard his mother, then to observe the hand that engulfed his own. It was an odd position to be in, and it certainly felt awkward, but... there was a nice feeling that he got from the experience as well.

    The "more appropriate setting" turned out to be his family's home, which he had only visited a few times before. He sat at the chabudai in the living room, where he waited for his mother to return from the kitchen with some beverages and snacks, including the glass of water that he had requested apart from the tea. Every once in a while his gaze would nervously gravitate back toward his mother's sword, which now rested horizontally on a special sword stand. Above it, on the wall, hung a banner that bore the word "seppuku" on it, which did nothing to allay his nerves.
    He certainly hoped that he had made the right decision. However, he couldn't really think of what else to do, now that he had exposed himself. It wasn't just the threat of seppuku that concerned him, but he also wished to avoid having to cut ties with his mother. Running away or trying to hide the truth until it was uncovered was liable to necessitate such an action, since he didn't think that she would consider anything of the sort to be manly, so he had to hope that what he had intended to do from the start, ever since his mother had entered his life, would suffice.
    Once his mother returned from the kitchen, she sat down on the opposite side of the table and placed a tray upon it. On the tray was a teapot that had steam wafting from its spout, two cups, a glass of water, and a plate of anpan. Taking the teapot, she calmly poured him a cup of tea before doing the same for herself. The anpan remained untouched by both of them for the time being, though he wondered why she had them, since they weren't the sort of thing that he would have expected to see on such an occasion.
    Seeing where his attention was focused, Nodoka's cheeks flushed slightly as she admitted, "I got those from a friend, and planned on giving them to Ranko, but with you like this... I can bring out some senbei, if you would prefer that instead."
    Ranma smiled wanly and shook his head. "Don't worry about it, mom. You won't have to worry about Ranko missing out on them."
    "What do you mean?" Nodoka queried, confused.
    Ranma took a deep, calming breath and looked into the depths of his tea before he said, "It's about the reason for why I've been avoiding you. It's not that I haven't tried to approach you, because I have, but... Stuff happens. And pop thinks you'll want to kill us on sight, so he's often gotten in my way."
    Still confused, but also a bit upset over her husband's actions, Nodoka asked, "Why would he do a thing like that? Did he not raise you to be a man among men?"
    Despite the situation being what it was, Ranma's response was a bit self-deprecating. "Honestly? I thought I was manly, but now..." He sighed, and swirled the tea in his cup a bit. "I'm not so sure."
    "I see..." Nodoka softly voiced, before taking a sip of her tea. When Ranma glanced up at her, he saw her gazing upon him with a face void of expression. "Is your current condition the reason for your doubt?"
    Ranma shook his head and continued to be candid, despite the dangerous territory that he was treading in, and said, "Not directly," before he explained the events that had led up to him being unable to return to his natural age, regarding the childish behavior that had — fittingly — sealed his fate as a child.
    Considering the timing of the aforementioned events, Nodoka had to conclude, "If this wasn't the reason for why you have been avoiding me... There is something else?"
    Ranma nodded his head once and sat quietly for a moment as he gathered his thoughts, in order to figure out exactly how to say what he wanted to say. When he felt that he was ready, or as ready as he would ever be, he made eye contact with his mother and spoke in a calm yet determined manner. "While I was training in China, I was cursed: whenever I come into contact with cold water, I transform into something else."
    Ranma wasn't sure if his mother's look of concern was anything to be worried about, so he continued. "My curse... isn't the sort of thing that brings "manliness" to mind. Still, I figured that it would be alright if I could make my case as a man, so there wouldn't be any misunderstandings. At least, I had hoped that you would understand if you saw me as I really am first, but..." His gaze fell to the tabletop, and his shoulders slumped. "My curse kept getting activated, or pop got in the way... Among other things."
    With obvious sympathy, Nodoka leaned forward and softly said, "I think I understand. What curse have you been afflicted with?"
    After steeling himself for what he would do next, Ranma reached toward the glass of water with a moderately shaky hand and quietly stated, "It's best if I show you..."
    After he poured the water over his head, his mother's eyes widened with realization upon recognizing the six-year-old girl that now sat before her. "Ran... ko?"
    Ranma nodded his head once and left it lowered, awaiting judgement.
    With Nodoka's mind awhirl with the implications of what had been revealed to her, her first impulse was to obtain her sword, which was within reach from where she sat. It wasn't until she was about to grasp it, with her upper body supported by an arm, that a particular thought caught her attention, which caused the others to slow and become more coherent. After a few seconds of introspection, she pulled her hand back and settled into her seat.
    As she gazed at her currently-female child, the one that had felt so much like family to her as Ranko, she remembered all of the times when he had pretended to be that girl in order to hide from her. That kind of cowardice and dishonesty wasn't manly at all, of course, but his words from before helped her to understand that he'd had a good reason for doing it. His reason had been based on an assumption, but it had nevertheless been made with good intentions.
    She was sure of it because he had spoken honestly about his actions. Not only did she remember all of those times that she had been expecting her son to meet her, or had seen Ranko when she had expected or hoped to see him, but one occasion — in particular — came to mind. She had been waiting for Ranma in a restaurant, with Akane, when a hand had settled upon her shoulder. She had been so sure that it had belonged to a boy, yet its owner had turned out to be Ranko. Between hugging Ranko around the waist, which had blocked her view, and her disappointment at not seeing her son, she hadn't really registered — at the time — that Ranko had been doused by cold beverages, but she vaguely recalled feeling some of it splash on her hands and seeing an upended glass on top of Ranko's head. It was proof that that her son had tried to meet her.
    Of course, she couldn't forget the time that her son had saved her when that water pipe had burst and ejected her into the air, which had truly been a display of manliness. Again, thinking — hoping — that it had been her son, she had discovered that it had been Ranko upon being awoken by the rain. Now, however, she knew the truth, as well as the rain's role in that encounter, so she now understood that her son hadn't tried to hide himself with his curse after saving her.
    The real quandary was what she was being presented with right now, because her son had expressed doubt over his own manliness. While it was certainly brave to admit it, especially considering what was on the line, the fact remained: she had tasked her husband with producing a manly son, and by their son's own words he had failed. That wasn't to say that their child was completely removed from being manly, because what she saw was promising, but for him to have misgivings about his manliness at this age...
    That last thought made her pause. While it was true that her son was — in reality — sixteen years old, he appeared to be a decade younger at that precise moment. It was then that her upbringing in a martial arts family, and the hold that giri had on her in particular, took a step back and allowed the mother in her to have a say in the matter, and that side of her was quite keen on being with a live child rather than joining them in death.
    As a mother, she could scrutinize the seppuku pledge to see how much room it gave her to act as she saw fit before she had to uphold it, and it turned out to be plenty. Ranma was still being raised, after all, so it would be premature to follow what was dictated until that period ended, unless there was enough evidence to suggest that he was unredeemable. While he could conceivably be at fault for extending the time that he could be raised, she saw no reason to believe that he had done it on purpose, much less for the sake of avoiding any deadline.
    Considering how much she had missed her son, and how flexible the seppuku pledge was, she saw an opportunity to take advantage of his regression in age. However, she couldn't demand what she wanted from him, or suggest exactly what she desired: it was something that he would have to decide on his own, considering its significance, and because it would be an appropriate way to herald the start of a new chapter on his journey to manliness.
    With that in mind, she returned her attention to her son, who was fidgeting nervously due to how long she had been silent, and addressed him in a solemn manner. "Ranma. What do you plan to do?"
    Ranma had expected her to say something in relation to his curse, if anything at all, so it took him a moment to form a response, during which time he had regarded his mother searchingly. "Uh... Well, I don't really like my prospects of finding more of those mushrooms any time soon, so..." He trailed off and looked away, not liking having to admit what he was about to say, but knowing that it wouldn't be any worse than what he had shared with his mother already. "I was thinking that it would do me some good to grow up again."
    He must have said something right, somehow, because his mother pressed her hands together in delight, smiled and said, "That sounds like a wonderful idea. How would you feel about being raised by your mother, this time?"
    That question helped him to figure out the reason for the response that she had given to him after he had shown her his curse. Of course, it wasn't surprising that she would want him to live with her full-time, since she had made it quite clear that she had missed him. While she wouldn't get back the time that she had spent living alone while his father had taken him on that training journey, she would at least get a chance to raise him from a child to some degree.
    While his mother wasn't perfect, he held her in a much higher regard than his father, especially now that the main problem between them seemed to be resolved. It was a great relief to know that his mother didn't judge him based on his appearance alone, or else her response would have been very different from the one that would lead them to starting a new life together. Aside from that, his mother seemed more likely to do something to benefit him, whereas his father could only be counted on for being selfish and self-serving.
    Having a good feeling about this arrangement, even though he still didn't look forward to reliving ten years of his life, he returned his mother's smile and said, "Sounds good to me."
    His mother was on his side of the table before he knew it, hugging him and nuzzling her cheek against his in her excitement — much to his embarrassment. To his relief, she didn't do it for long, because she got up and paced about as she spoke aloud of the things that she would need to do, now that this arrangement had been decided upon, which she was eager to see realized. As such, it wasn't long before she was rushing out of the room, in order to take care of the first of many tasks that would help to accommodate this change in their lives.
    He wasn't sure what he could do right then to help her, so he decided to try out the anpan. As he took his first bite, and enjoyed the chestnut filling, he reflected upon his situation with some apprehension. While he would avoid the awkwardness of living with the Tendo family, due to his current age and being unable to fulfill the engagement, it wasn't going to be fun breaking the news to them, and to a certain individual in particular. He could only hope that they would all understand, since it wasn't like he could return to being sixteen on command.
    Well, at least he would likely get to enjoy his father's reaction to this development.

    That evening, Ranma and Nodoka joined the Tendo's for dinner. Their arrival had been unannounced, with Ranma still in his cursed form, so they wouldn't clue anyone in about the situation — especially a certain panda who was liable to run away at the first sign of trouble. Instead, Nodoka told them that she had bumped into "Ranko" on her way over, who had explained what had happened to "her." It was true enough, technically, since Ranma and Ranko were the same person.
    Fortunately, since Genma's place at the table was forfeit while he pretended to be a panda, Kasumi didn't have to go through any trouble to accommodate Nodoka by providing an extra portion, much to the dismay of the aforementioned panda. So, after greetings were exchanged, and Ranma and Nodoka were seated at the table together, everyone said, "Itadakimasu," and began to eat.
    Ranma made an effort to act natural, since he didn't want to give away the fact that he and his mother had something planned once dinner was over, so he pretended to still be down in spirits because there were no more mushrooms that could return him to his proper age. It wasn't hard to do, of course, since he was still feeling more down than up about his situation in general: because he really didn't look forward to repeating an entire decade of his life.
    It wasn't long before Akane, who had been too focused on what she wanted to say to pick up her chopsticks, addressed Ranma in a somewhat hesitant manner. "Ranko, about those mushrooms..."
    "Yeah?" Ranma replied, after chewing and swallowing a bite of his tonkatsu, wondering why Akane would bring that particular subject up.
    "There are still some left," Akane informed Ranma, before helpfully adding, "They're in the kitchen if you want to check and see if any are the right size... Is something wrong?"
    Akane had been inspired to ask that question at the end due to the fact that Ranma's chopsticks had fallen from his now-nerveless fingers, and it was with a great deal of dread that he decided to confirm what he had just been told. "There's... more?"
    "Of course," Akane replied, with a frown, and somewhat defensively. "How else was I supposed to stop you and Ryoga from fighting over them? At the rate that you two were going, there really wouldn't have been any left if you had carried on like that."
    Nabiki, who believed that Ranma's frozen form and unfocused gaze was not the kind of reaction that she would have expected from him upon hearing such news, had her curiosity piqued. "I'm surprised you aren't already in the kitchen." She stole a glance at his mother. "Did something happen?"
    Ranma did his best to regain his bearings as he recovered his chopsticks and made an effort to continue eating his meal like nothing was wrong, but wasn't all that convincing when he avoided eye contact and nervously — and somewhat hastily — said, "Happen? Nothing happened. Why would something need to happen? I was just... surprised, is all."
    "Uh-huh..." Nabiki voiced her disbelief, but she let Ramna's response slide since she was confident that the truth would come out before too long, whether intended or not.
    Ranma found himself fortunate that most either took his response at face value, didn't press the issue any further if they hadn't, or made dinner their priority. Akane looked at him speculatively, however, so it was obvious to him that his behavior had caught her attention in addition to Nabiki's. Soun and Kasumi seemed to be minding their own business, so he couldn't be sure what they were thinking, but figured that the Tendo patriarch would have said something if he had picked up on anything particularly worrisome. Considering how his father was staring at the food being eaten with an expression of anguish, while a line of drool issued forth from the side of his mouth, there was a good chance that he may not have been paying enough attention to register what had been said. As for his mother...
    Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her eating as if nothing of consequence had happened. She must have heard them, surely, so her lack of reaction didn't sit well with him, especially since she had clearly been happy about the arrangement that they had made. At the very least he would have expected her desire for him to see his decision through to be expressed in some way, yet that didn't seem to be the case. It made him wonder if backing out now and returning to the path that his life would have naturally followed, instead of growing up with his mother, would be considered unmanly.
    He felt so conflicted over what action to take. What he wanted to do the most was within his grasp, but going after that could cost him his life, or — at the very least — drive a wedge between himself and his mother. While those things were certainly issues, however, they weren't the only ones: despite the scenario that he had based his decision on being a lie, which had been a consequence of his own behavior, none of that changed the fact that his self-assessment had been real. After some soul-searching, he had come to acknowledge his shortcomings. While growing up again wasn't necessary for a lot of the self-improvements that he could make in his life, it would certainly make many of them easier to accomplish. It wasn't that he wanted to grow up again for that precise reason, but because he had felt that it would be a good idea after deciding that growing up would be the lesser of the evils out of the choices that he had supposedly been restricted to.
    Of course, at the crux of this dilemma was his relationship with Akane. Even if he wasn't ready to commit to a romantic relationship with her, he still had enough feelings for her that he couldn't deny the existence of his attraction. Once, when he had felt that his only options were to either risk being killed by Herb or escape and live out the rest of his days as a girl, he had preferred the latter since he had believed that Akane would not be affected as negatively by that than if he had died. For her, he could have tried to live with that, because she mattered that much to him.
    While his current situation also involved the threat of death, his choice was more about himself than it was about Akane, especially since the choice that didn't risk any endangerment to his life would be the one that would set him back by a decade. If he stuck with his decision to start over with his mother, it would be left up to Akane to decide whether they should move on or not. Now that he knew that more mushrooms were available, however, he began to worry that the engagement would be perceived as being salvageable, which would likely mean that their parents would force Akane to join him as a six-year-old. In the best case scenario, they could insist on him returning to his proper age without that coming into conflict with him becoming manly, but he doubted that things would resolve themselves that nicely.
    By the time that his mother had finished eating, and was thus ready to announce the real reason for their visit, he had been too preoccupied with his thoughts and concerns to eat more than half of his own meal. However, since his reduction in size hadn't been taken into account, he had still eaten enough to stave off his hunger until bedtime. It would have been even better if filling himself with food had done something about the knot that had formed in his stomach, but such was life.
    After setting her chopsticks aside and wiping her mouth, Nodoka spoke up and said, "There is an announcement that needs to be made." Once she had everyone's attention, which included her husband's, she turned to regard her son with an expectant look.
    Everyone's attention shifted to Ranma, who gulped, knowing that this was the moment of truth. It wouldn't do him any good to not go along with his mother regarding what he was expected to do next, since it would only reveal an already-established fact, but it was what would follow that worried him. Not only did he not know for sure how things would turn out, but there was a good chance that the outcome would not be of the welcome variety.
    Using the table to hide the thermos that he now held within his hands, in order to prevent any kind of preemptive action that might stop him from using it, he made quick work of the thermos' top before he dumped the hot water that was inside of it over his head. The wide-eyed, shocked expressions were both expected and amusing, in a morbid sort of way, but his father's impression of a specific painting by Munch was — appropriately — priceless.
    When Genma recovered, he held up a sign in a pointlessly-dramatic fashion, one that said, "I can't die here," before he tried to make a break for it.
    Taking out a second thermos, Ranma quickly opened it and threw it at the back of his father's head, with enough force to make him lose his balance and fall due to his transition from panda to man. "It's too late for that, you idiot!"
    "Dear," Nodoka said, in a tone that made the person being addressed freeze in their tracks, "I'm very disappointed in you. How could you allow my faith in you to be misplaced?"
    Genma turned about and nervously tried to entreat his wife with, "Nodoka, I can—"
    "Spare me your lies," Nodoka calmly interrupted, with evident disappointment, which made her husband cringe and shrink into himself. "You had unlimited access to our child for more than a decade, so keeping your word should have been the least that you could have done for me."
    "That said," she continued, as she turned her attention to those at the table, "Ranma and I have come to an understanding, so no one will be dying today."
    Upon hearing that news, everyone was relieved to one degree or another. Well, everyone save Nabiki, who was more intrigued about the situation than anything else, as she rested her head upon the heel of her hand and watched the proceedings. Genma was the most relieved, which wasn't a surprise, although Soun wasn't that far behind him.
    "How did you find out?" Akane asked Nodoka out of curiosity, now that any concern for Ranma having to commit seppuku had passed.
    "It's probably because Ranma is young enough for her to recognize him," Nabiki idly deduced, before locking gazes with Nodoka and adding, "What I'm waiting for, though, is for the other shoe to drop."
    "What other shoe?" Soun voiced his concern, beating Genma and Akane to the punch.
    Instead of Nodoka telling those not in the know that her son would live with her and grow up normally, via the passage of time, she turned to the person in question and asked, "What do you wish to do?"
    Being put on the spot like that, and once again being the center of attention, made Ranma freeze up and break out into a sweat. While he and his mother hadn't established exactly how they would convey their message, he had assumed that it would have been a straightforward affair rather than him actually being given a choice and making a decision before an audience.
    Whether or not it was due to the ongoing existence of the mushrooms that the method of conveyance had taken this form, he was pretty sure that he was expected to say what they had planned on saying despite being given a choice. It wasn't because his mother had given him that impression right at that precise moment, but because her question was very similar in nature to the one that she had asked him earlier, regarding what he had planned to do: she had wanted him to make his own choice, and now she was testing his resolve.
    If his mother was anything, she was dedicated to the things that she believed in, and it was a trait that was at once admirable and damnable. While she wasn't perfect, she was still a lot better than his father, whose thoughts only seemed to be about himself. If not for him, he wouldn't have been on the wrong side of his mother's sights to begin with, much less put into a position where he'd had to handle two engagements, neither of which expected and one due to an attempt to resolve the bad blood with an old friend. And that was just scratching the surface: he had a long list of grievances against his father after living with the man for over a decade.
    However, choosing to live with his mother, over his father, wasn't the real issue. Although there were some things that he would like to keep about the life that he had made for himself in Nerima, even if just for familiarity's or stability's sake, those things paled in comparison to his main concern: Akane. It wasn't just about his feelings for her, but how his choice would affect her. Unfortunately, either way he chose had the potential for affecting her in a negative way, to one degree or another.
    "Well, boy?" Genma demanded, who had grown impatient. "What is your mother asking you?"
    After briefly closing his eyes and taking a deep, calming breath, Ranma looked around those looking upon him, who were expecting him to say something, before he gathered enough nerve to stop his gaze on Akane as he said, "I've decided to live with my mother... And grow up the normal way."
    The reactions that he got from saying those words were pretty much what he had expected, but only until the initial shock had worn off. While his father and Soun were quickly — and predictably — up in arms about the engagement, and Akane's face clearly expressed a conflict of emotions, he hadn't expected Nabiki's chin to slip from its perch and hit the table, or for Kasumi to look at him as if she were wondering about something.
    While he could conceivably answer Akane while their fathers were making a fuss, not only did it not feel right to say something of such importance while trying to speak over someone else, but he was reticent to say it in front of others, especially whatever words that he could put together for her in particular. It wasn't that he didn't want to explain himself, but because he'd never been all that great or comfortable with sharing things on a personal or intimate level, and the day's events had pretty much worn him out mentally and emotionally on top of that.
    In the meantime, Nodoka had waited patiently for her husband and Soun to expend the heat of their objections, so she could get a word in edgewise. When that time arrived, she stared at her husband and calmly posed, "So, dear, you wish to obstruct your son's path to fulfilling your vow?"
    Understandably, that made Genma pause, in addition to making him confused. "...Huh? What do you mean?"
    "As a man, one must stay true to their word, even in the face of adversity," Nodoka lectured her husband, as if the answer should have been obvious to him. "While Ranma may have made his decision while under the impression that no more mushrooms of time remained, it wasn't a decision based purely on circumstance."
    When Ranma received questioning looks from most of those present, he avoided direct eye contact with them since it hadn't been easy to admit what he had to his mother and he'd rather not share those thoughts with just any of the people who happened to be there. He stole looks every now and again, however, and that's how he was able to notice the difference in Kasumi's expression in relation to everyone else's: because it was more scrutinizing, as if she were trying to see something that wasn't immediately obvious. He couldn't imagine why she would give him that kind of attention, so he figured that he had to be mistaken about the meaning of her expression.
    Eventually, Genma and Soun turned to regard each other, nodded their heads in unison, then convened in a corner of the room, where they began to converse in hushed tones. There was little doubt in anyone's mind that they were trying to figure out how to fulfill the engagement while the threat of seppuku obstructed the most obvious and immediate means of doing so. Once they were finished, they returned to the table and sat down at the same side, solemnly, with Genma not doing much to hide how unhappy he was about the situation.
    Fortunately, it was Soun who spoke, who focused his attention on Nodoka as he said, "While waiting another decade will be difficult, it's better than the alternative. However, since it would be... odd for a sixteen-year-old boy to marry a twenty-six-year-old woman," he directed his gaze toward Akane, "we feel that it would be for the best if they grew up together."
    That idea wasn't received well, especially by Akane, who was quite astounded by the gall of their fathers as she rounded on them and shouted, "Wh-what!? Do you have any idea what you're saying!?"
    "But, Akane," Soun tried to reason with his daughter, "you heard Nodoka. Are you suggesting that you'd be willing to marry Ranma despite the age difference?"
    Akane blanched at the thought: marrying Ranma as soon as possible would likely be all sorts of awkward for them, both personally and socially, and there was no telling just how much the circumstances of the future would affect how things would play out. Aside from that, though, was the fact that she had plenty of things at stake, such as friends, her social life, and even a few things that she wanted to pursue once high school was put behind her. Not only would repeating the next ten years be bound to make a mess of whatever security she had among those aspects of her life, she really didn't want to go through another long period where she was confused for a boy — especially if she still had to attend school.
    When Soun failed to make any immediate headway with his youngest daughter, he began to petition Nabiki about being the one who would match ages with Ranma, although he didn't do it with any serious intent: the aim was to get an impulsive reaction out of Akane that could serve as her assent, since she seemed to be having a problem trying to form a response or protest.
    However, much to everyone's surprise, Kasumi very clearly stated, "I'll do it."
    The silence that followed was all-consuming, to a degree that Kasumi had never experienced before, much less as a result of her own actions. It was understandable, of course, since she had essentially volunteered to become Ranma's fiancée on top of becoming a six-year-old, even though she had never shown any interest in him before. At one time she had even voiced a desire for her fiancé to be older, and not only had Ranma not matched that description upon entering her life, but he was now — to all appearances — even further away from that image. Considering all of those things, she would have been more surprised if anyone hadn't been stupefied by her statement.
    However, while Ranma didn't exactly match what she was looking for in a companion, she would have to be blind to not see the qualities that she liked despite the ones that repelled her. It wasn't just that he was strong and talented at what he did, but he was generally helpful and considerate, and his morality could usually be counted upon when it really mattered. His immaturity, indecisiveness, lack of purpose and inadequacy when it came to intimacy were more than enough to trump those qualities, as far as she was concerned, but now there was an opportunity to fix that, which — in turn — gave her the opportunity to resolve some of her own issues.
    Akane finally broke the silence, expressing her confusion and the slightest hint of betrayal by saying, "Kasumi... Why?"
    "Yeah," Nabiki chimed in, who was no less mystified by Kasumi's decision than Akane. "You're not doing this for our sake, are you?"
    Genma gripped Soun's forearm hard enough to make him wince, who shared the same concern as his friend but wasn't about to address it directly as he nervously said, "Let's not be hasty, Kasumi... Why not allow Akane to give us her answer, first?"
    Seeing her father looking at Akane hopefully, and knowing why, Kasumi regarded her youngest sister and spoke in answer to everyone in a matter-of-fact way since gaining sympathy wasn't her intention. "I haven't made any plans for my future, many of my friends have moved on, and most of the people that I socialize with are already much older than I am." Speaking directly to Akane, she added, "Can you say the same? Or give up what you have?"
    Akane couldn't have foreseen her sister directing questions of that nature toward her, and the surprising words that had preceded them had already pushed her off balance, so she was struck dumb for a time. On some level, she also realized that her answer would serve the same purpose as if she had answered her father, so she was even more reluctant to say anything in response.
    However, as she looked out of the corner of her eye and caught Ranma gazing between her and Kasumi with a lost expression on his face, as he awaited the outcome of this development, it was with resignation that she decided on her answer. She would like to think that her decision was for Kasumi's sake, since she could probably stand to have another shot at childhood, or for Ranma, because she figured that Kasumi would be so much better for him, but — the truth was — she didn't like Ranma enough to be certain if joining him as a child would be worth it, much less to the extent that she could admit whatever feelings that she did have for him in front of others.
    So, in the end, she lowered her eyes and quietly admitted, "No..."
    While Nodoka was satisfied that the matter had been settled, she sympathized enough with Akane to keep her excitement in check, so she clapped her hands deliberately and solemnly said, "It's decided, then." Turning to regard Kasumi, she added, "Why don't we check the mushrooms and see if any are of a suitable size?"
    The room fell silent as Kasumi and Nodoka made their way out of the room. Soun had reached his hand out toward his eldest daughter as she left, and opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn't muster the guts to say anything that might see his most reliable and helpful daughter out of the new arrangement that he himself had proposed. Once she was gone, he turned to Genma, who felt the same about losing their main provider of food and doer of housework, and began to mourn with him in relative silence. Nabiki had wisely chosen to remain quiet as she observed Akane and Ranma staring at each other with a storm of emotions within their eyes, and wondered if they were getting anything of benefit from communicating in that fashion.
    Eventually, Akane rose from the table and began to leave the room quietly, in order to hole herself in her bedroom, while Ranma struggled to do more than watch her go. Once she was gone, Ranma stared at the empty doorway, unseeingly, before he turned back toward the table and bowed his head, cursing himself, and wishing that he could have been the sort of person who not only knew what to do in such a situation but had the courage to do it.
    When his mother and Kasumi returned, he was reminded that he had a new fiancée on top of everything else. She was his apparent age now, and it seemed like his mother had shed a few years off of her own age for some reason. He wanted to ask the once-older Tendo sister the reason for why she had volunteered to become his fiancée, because he had never once been under the impression that she had harbored any feelings for him, or would make such a sacrifice for Akane, but decided that it would be best to approach her about it in private... If he could work up the nerve to do it, anyway.
    More importantly, however, was when and how to talk to Akane. He didn't want things to end like this between them, if things had to be this way, but he couldn't even begin to figure out a good course of action. Akane was usually unapproachable during times like these, though, so he hoped that he would have enough time to get back to her later, when she was more likely to be receptive and he had at least some idea of what to do.

The Best Way to A Man's Heart?

    The following week was not wholly pleasant for Ranma as he came to terms with the new circumstances of his life and tried to adjust to them, which had not been made easier with the knowledge that Akane was avoiding him. While he hadn't intended to speak to her about what had happened during his last visit at the Tendo's place, when he had gone to help with the process of moving Kasumi into his own house, it hadn't sat well with him to be separated from her like that. He could only hope that she wouldn't go out of her way to avoid him once he was ready to vocalize whatever he wanted to say to her.
    Of course, word had quickly spread about what had happened, so it hadn't been long before he had begun to receive visitors. Many of them weren't a surprise, considering his relationship with them, but what concerned him the most was how many of the visits ended without anything being resolved, which left him uncertain as to what to expect from them in the future.
    The first person to visit him had been Ukyo, who had not been very happy despite understanding — once given an explanation — why things had turned out the way that they had. It wasn't difficult for him to figure out why, since she had spent a decade of her life preparing to get her revenge on him and his father, and now her options were to either: wait another decade; find a way to join him as a child, give up on the business that had grown to surpass her father's and still wait a decade before marriage would be possible; or, give up on him entirely. Given those choices, she had needed some time to think about what to do, and had thus left without deciding anything.
    Shampoo and Cologne had been the next to pay him a visit. Rather than being upset, they were more bemused than anything else. Apparently, there wasn't any precedent for those given the kiss of marriage being regressed well beyond the age where one could even begin to consummate it, so there was no law that dictated what to do in such a case. While Cologne didn't really seem to care about what could be done either way, aside from telling her great-granddaughter that maintaining her commitment to him should not be a decision made lightly, Shampoo appeared to be determined to pursue him yet was unsure if she would do so as a child or not. Since his mother had disposed of the mushrooms that had remained, however, Shampoo hoped to have the option to regress her age open to her before she made a decision on that front.
    Kodachi had been one of the later arrivals, after hearing about his condition from her brother, who had been under the impression that the pigtailed girl had been the one responsible for his regression in age. Predictably, Kodachi now believed him to be the victim of her redheaded rival, apparently done just to spite her. He had tried to enlighten her about the truth of the matter, but she hadn't allowed him to say much before she was bounding away to find a cure for him. Well, after he had steadfastly refused her offer to raise him. Just the thought of what might happen while under her care made him shudder.
    Hiroshi and Daisuke had dropped by for a bit, which had been a somewhat awkward experience that had yet to repeat itself — nor did he ever expect it to. They were more acquaintance than friend, after all, which was why they had mostly asked about things to sate their own curiosity, or that they could relay to others. One of their questions was whether he would still attend school or not, probably because he was handy for the various sports teams to have around, and the one good thing about his situation was that he wouldn't.
    Fortunately for him, his mother was understanding enough to not force him to continue his high school education, or otherwise go through the same grades all over again. High school wasn't mandatory anyway, so he could always get back to it once he was the proper age. While his age suggested that he should attend primary school, since that level of education was mandatory, his mother had managed to arrange an exemption for him. While he hadn't known about it before, it wasn't surprising that there was a special department in the government that handled such matters, what with the frequency of supernatural things that happened in plain view of ordinary people. The real question was how his mother had known about it, since she didn't really seem to be the type that would, much less with familiarity.
    He wouldn't have to worry too much about his scholastic knowledge degenerating over time, however, because of one visitor that he hadn't expected: his former homeroom teacher, Ninomiya Hinako. Apparently, she was still worried about reforming him, and about his education, although her invitation to come and play games at her home made him suspect that there had been an ulterior motive behind her offer. Still, he didn't mind keeping himself prepared for high school, and playing around wouldn't hurt every once in a while, so he had decided to not cut his ties with her.
    The last notable visitor had been Happosai, who had been less than pleased about being denied a return to youth. Fortunately, he had been reluctant to strike him as a child, which had probably been facilitated by the fact that he had been a girl at the time. Instead, Happosai had acted much like a child himself and declared that he couldn't train a child before running off, as if that were supposed to be some kind of punishment. Despite having named him his heir, Happosai had never really done anything to make him an heir in any martial arts-related sense.
    Aside from all of that, and having found little to do with himself so far, his biggest issues concerned two of the constants within his new life: Kasumi and his mother. Kasumi took to being a child like a duck did to water, which — while not all that surprising to him — was somewhat enviable, especially with how easily she interacted with his mother and how well they got along together. In contrast to that, he and his mother were both quite awkward in their dealings with each other, between him not being accustomed to his status as a child and his mother often needing to remember that he was older than he appeared to be and having to restrain herself from treating him like a little boy.
    While he hadn't been able to approach his mother about the issues that he had been having with her and Kasumi, since he didn't really know what could be done about it other than to deal with everything until they — hopefully — worked themselves out, his mother didn't seem to have the same problem. At least, between Kasumi spending the weekend with her family and his mother arranging for them to have a talk while she was away, he couldn't figure out what else they could talk about that required privacy.
    So, he was confused when his mother entered the living room while carrying a tray with an odd assortment of items on it, which she set upon the table while she sat down across from him. The only thing that he could have expected to find on the tray was the glass of water; joining it was a jar filled with a clear liquid, a mortar that had some kind of green vegetation already ground up inside of it, a small cauldron on top of a butane stove, and a wooden stirring paddle.
    Looking up at his mother questioningly, he asked, "What's this?"
    "This," Nodoka calmly replied, as she gestured at the items before her, "is a test. I gave you a similar one once you were old enough to perform it, which had decided whether you would pursue your father's art or my craft."
    "You have a craft?" Ranma inquired with some confusion, as he tried to figure out what it could be by scrutinizing the items on the tray more closely. While he was doing that, he followed up his question with another. "Why am I being tested again if the last one already decided that I'd be a martial artist?"
    Nodoka took the glass of water from the tray and placed it before her son. "You were only a boy at the time. While my craft can also be taught, if you don't have the... aptitude for it, shall we say, then you won't have much potential for achievement. Since you're no longer just a boy, I wish to see if you have the aptitude for my craft as a girl."
    His curiosity piqued, Ranma figured that it wouldn't hurt to take the test, since nothing would change if he didn't test positive and he might get to do something interesting if he did. So, after dousing himself with the water from the glass, he asked, "What do I do?"
    "Simply turn on the stove, add the water from the jar, put the crushed leaves from the mortar into the cauldron once the water is heated, then stir until you feel like stopping," Nodoka directed.
    Ranma looked at his mother with a dubious expression on his face before he followed her directions, wondering what she hoped for him to accomplish. Still, since it was supposed to be a test, he figured that the only way to find out was to give it a try, so he focused on stirring the contents of the cauldron once he got to that part of the test. Even though he hadn't known how long to stir, he hadn't expected to stop as soon as he did, but somehow felt that it had been the right time to do so.
    Right when he had turned off the stove and looked up at his mother, with the intention to tell her that he had finished, he had enough time to catch her proud smile before a glow drew his attention back to the contents of the cauldron. He leaned forward so he could see what was happening inside, just in time to see the faintly-glowing liquid transition into something else, which turned out to be a viscous, white substance once the glow faded away.
    Nonplussed about what he had just witnessed, he turned his attention back to his mother and asked, "What just happened?"
    "You passed the test," Nodoka replied, still smiling.
    Ranma looked at her oddly. "But anyone could have done that..."
    "If they were extremely lucky," Nodoka breezily agreed, "or were provided with precise directions. However, considering how unlikely it would be for you to accidentally stir these ingredients clockwise with the right amount of revolutions, followed by the right amount counter-clockwise, chances are much more in favor of you having an aptitude for this."
    Ranma spared the cauldron a glance before he asked, "What is this, anyway?"
    "That," Nodoka replied, her gaze having shifted to the cauldron, "is a skin ointment for minor injuries." Knowing what the real question was, she regarded her son with a significant look and added, "It is a product of alchemy."
    "Alchemy?" Ranma responded incredulously. While it was true that he'd seen enough out-of-the-ordinary stuff in his life, so much so that they might not even be out-of-the-ordinary to him in particular, this would be the first instance that he had ever encountered something that was being directly attributed to alchemy, rather than something like chemistry, magic, strange flora, or the supernatural. While he had some idea of what it consisted of, he didn't know enough about it to identify it without aid.
    "Come," Nodoka instructed, as she rose to her feet. "I'll show you."
    Seeing no reason not to, Ranma proceeded to follow her to the center of the room. Once there, she stopped and produced a weird, fancy-looking key. However, rather than procuring it from somewhere on her person, it appeared over her open palm as if by magic. In most circumstances such an action wouldn't have provoked much of a reaction from him, if any at all, but seeing this from his mother made him gape and begin to re-evaluate her.
    Upon glimpsing the expression that was on his face, his mother smiled at him with amusement before she thrust the key forward and turned it. As she retracted the key, a swirling vortex appeared in the air before her, looking much like mist that was being illuminated by a myriad colors. His mother stepped through it without word or ceremony, and seemingly disappeared, so he threw caution to the wind and rushed after her after taking a second to steel himself.
    He hadn't known what to expect on the other side of the portal, but it wasn't entirely beyond what his imagination could have come up with. From the alcove that he had appeared in, he could see a spacious room that was at least twice as long as it was wide. Toward the far end was a large cauldron within the recess of a platform, which was underneath a sizeable range hood. Along one wall were benches that contained enough equipment for a chemistry lab, as well as metal storage cabinets. Opposite of that were tables and shelves with all manner of things on them, in containment or otherwise, and much of what he saw were either hard to identify or unknown to him. All in all, if this was the workspace of an alchemist, on the surface they appeared to be a marriage between a (mad?) scientist and a witch — of science and magic.
    Aside from the aforementioned contents that seemed to be related to his mother's work as an alchemist, the room was rather austere, meant more for work than for comfort. While there was a mat near the cauldron, to make standing for long periods of time more bearable, and a few chairs with reasonably-plush seats situated around the benches and tables, there were no rugs on the floor, pictures hanging on the walls, or other such touches of personality elsewhere. When he considered the dead-serious side of his mother, however, he wasn't really surprised that it would turn up in a place like this.
    Still, it was quite dreary how the floor, walls and ceiling were the same, as if cut out of the same rock — at least, as far as he could tell, that's what they appeared to be made out of. The room's one saving grace were the lights, which were glass-like spheres that hung from the ceiling, providing the room with an adequate amount of light without being difficult to look at directly.
    While her son had been busy taking in the new surroundings, Nodoka had used her key to close the portal behind them, since it wouldn't be wise to leave it open for just anyone to find the place where she practiced her alchemy. Once she felt that she had given her son enough time to absorb what he was seeing, she began to walk into the room proper and said, "What I want to show you is right over here."
    She led her son over to the tables and swept a hand across the various items that she had set out upon them earlier, in order to illustrate the point that she wished to convey to her son. "These should give you a fair idea of what is possible with alchemy."
    Ranma looked over the items with an incredulous expression on his face, as he tried to believe what he was seeing. It wasn't so much that the existence of any of the items seemed impossible, due to personal experience, but that his mother was capable of making some of them, let alone having the knowledge and skills to make all of them without being much older than she was. Among the few dozen things present, there was something that looked like some kind of thick soup, and an elaborate, shimmering dress that he could easily see his mother making, but the sword and the television that was displaying a show with alien creatures on the screen — without an obvious power source — was pushing it. However, there was also an orb that seemed to contain a ball of fire with electricity arcing all over its ever-shifting form, whose use and method of creation he couldn't even begin to fathom.
    Thinking that it would be best to approach his inquiry with something that he was familiar with, he hopped onto a nearby chair and reached for the sword. Expecting the kind of weight that he would have normally felt from a large, scimitar-looking weapon, he was caught by surprise when he lifted the sword as if it were no heavier than a feather. After scrutinizing it for a bit, he turned to his mother and asked, "So, you're a smith, too?"
    Nodoka shook her head and smiled slightly. "No. Everything you see here is exactly how it looked when it was taken out of the cauldron."
    Ranma spared the cauldron in question a glance. "Seriously? How does that work?"
    Having planned for the explanation that she was about to give, Nodoka pulled up another chair and sat down before she began, and her son — in response — set the sword aside and sat down on the chair that he had been standing upon. "Imagine that everything has a number, like a code. Alchemy takes those numbers, puts them together, then combines, rearranges or discards them until the desired result is achieved. Everything has a code that's unique to itself, so even electricity will have a different code depending on the nature of its source."
    Ranma's brow furrowed as he digested that. "I didn't see or feel a code, though."
    "That comes with training or talent," Nodoka informed her son. "Also, how the code is felt or visualized depends on the individual. Once you have enough experience you can tell the different components of what you're working with apart, which will give you a better idea of what you can make with it, but creating something new is ultimately trial and error. Fortunately, we have a vast library of what alchemists have made in the past, so it's not necessary to do that anymore."
    After considering everything that he had learned for a moment, Ranma decided to raise the next obvious question. "So, since I passed that test, do you want me to become an alchemist or something?"
    Nodoka shook her head. "You don't have to, but I've been thinking about our situation for the past few days, especially yours, and thought that it would be a good idea."
    "Oh?" Ranma voiced his interest, who began to wonder about the kind of scheme that his mother was capable of, and whether it would be any better than his father's. "Why's that?"
    Instead of answering her son's question, Nodoka posed, "First, how would you feel about being my daughter for the next ten years?"
    Ranma stared at his mother for a moment, in both disbelief and confusion, since the idea seemed to come into conflict with him being raised to become a man among men. "Um... What?"
    "Well, there are a number of reasons for why I ask," Nodoka began, as she gazed upon her son with calm resolve. "To start with, I thought that practicing alchemy would be a good way to pass the time while you grow up, now that you don't need to attend school, and because you haven't devoted most of your free time to martial arts since your training journey ended."
    Ranma was no less enlightened by those words. "What does that have to do with being a girl all of the time?"
    "I'm getting to that," Nodoka admonished, although her son's impatience was understandable considering the nature of her suggestion. "Now, I'll admit that it's been awkward having you back at this age, because I hadn't really wanted to be separated from you in the first place and spent a lot of time imagining what it would have been like had you stayed home. It's been a little difficult not treating as you appear to be."
    Ranma could sympathize with that, so he nodded his head in understanding. It helped that he didn't want to be treated like the young boy that he appeared to be, either.
    "However," Nodoka continued, her gaze becoming a bit more penetrating, "I've also noticed how often you keep your distance from Kasumi-chan and myself when we're doing something together, and how you look at us during those occasions."
    Ranma flushed with embarrassment and looked away. "I don't know what you're talking about, mom."
    "You don't have to deny it," Nodoka stated, her expression softening. "I can understand your feelings, but you have to realize that you're in a unique position."
    Ranma looked at his mother questioningly. "What do you mean?"
    Nodoka made a gesture toward Ranma with her hand, indicating that the subject was about his body. "Not every boy can become a girl. What would appear strange or wrong for a boy to do would not look out of place for a girl."
    "How does that help me become a man among men?" Ranma queried.
    Nodoka smiled with an, "I'm glad you asked," expression on her face. "Well, regarding the subject at hand, I just want us to feel happy and comfortable within our own home. While there are different expectations of men and women, the core virtues expected of us are very similar. For instance, as a man it might feel strange to prepare a meal with the women, but no one would find it wrong for a man to be self-sufficient as a cook. So, I won't find you any less manly if you decided to join us in the kitchen; or joined us for many other things, for that matter."
    Ranma was relieved to hear that, to the extent that he relaxed and leaned against the back of his chair. Ever since he had learned about the seppuku pledge, he had been a lot more worried than usual about presenting his manliness to the world, but he was glad to know that his mother wouldn't be making judgements based on such superficial things. While he had figured that out a week ago, he hadn't truly grasped the extent to which it would apply.
    "As for your question," Nodoka went on, becoming more solemn, "I feel — by your own admission, and after making some inquiries elsewhere — that focusing so much on martial arts and attending all-boy schools up until recently, at the expense of interacting with the opposite sex and society in general, has had a significantly negative impact on your ability to be manly. You lack assertiveness, handle relationships poorly, and your other failings have given you a rather low standing in the community. Why, I even heard that it wasn't that long ago that you had molested an older woman, in broad daylight, and before many witnesses."
    Ranma felt small in the face of his mother's assessment and the account of when he had tried to press the pressure points of his teacher, with his head squeezed between his shoulders, but he nonetheless felt the need to defend himself on that last point. "But that wasn't intentional..."
    "I know," Nodoka acknowledged, her voice taking on a slightly softer tone, "but that's beside the point. A man needs to have more common sense and discipline than that, so such situations don't ever occur in the first place. Not only is it important to embody the qualities of a man within, but to make it recognizable without; only then can you become a man among men."
    "That said," she continued, getting back to the point, "I only suggest acting as my daughter because it could prove to be useful in a number of ways. Mainly, I think that living as a girl — and being in a position to socialize with other girls so naturally — could not only make up for how your father raised you, but provide enough insight for you to surpass other men as a man in that regard. Second, your image as a boy — and as my son — will require a lot of mending. Removing your male appearance from the public eye will be of some help after a decade, but it will ultimately be best to attend to your image once you've grown into a man who can undertake such a task successfully. Third, remaining one sex will avoid the issues that come with a changing body, and avoid embarrassing accidents in public. Finally, if you do decide to become an alchemist, you'll risk being exposed to hot liquids and vapors, and it can be dangerous to lose control and make a mistake during the transmutation process."
    Ranma stared back at his mother quietly as he considered her idea. Normally, he might have dismissed the idea outright, but the usual stigma associated with accepting such an idea was pretty much being nulled by the one person whose opinion on manliness mattered the most. True, others could make an issue out of it, but that wouldn't be any different from before, aside from the fact that he was no longer so attached to their views on the matter.
    Still, a decade was a long time. While being a girl didn't bother him as much as he would have others believe, he didn't particularly like it either. He wasn't even sure if he would have much in the way of common interests with girls, because a lot of the typical activities that he associated with them — that he could think of — were not the kinds of things that he could enjoy, or might even consider a form of torture. While it was nice that he could enjoy sweets as a girl without looking out of place, and could even get discounts or free stuff that way, it wouldn't be worth devoting ten years of his life for.
    He glanced over at the various items that had been laid out on the table beside him, intrigued by the notion of "cooking" stuff up like that. What were the limits of what could be created with alchemy? Plus, between gathering the materials necessary for making things, and the mode of transportation that his mother had demonstrated earlier, he suspected that being an alchemist might also involve some traveling and/or adventuring. Since he had been raised as a nomad of sorts, roaming about was more normal to him than the sedentary life, so exploring new — and potentially strange — places was an appealing prospect, especially if he couldn't get much mileage out of his martial arts at his current age.
    Seeing her son's struggle to come to a decision, Nodoka helpfully said, "You don't have to do it: what needs to be done can still be managed; it will just be less convenient."
    Whether intended to be taken as a challenge or not, Ranma didn't want to appear like he couldn't handle it, so the scale finally tilted in favor of his mother's suggestion. So, with a serious expression on his face, he stated, "Okay. I'm going to do it."
    "Are you sure?" Nodoka inquired out of concern, while suppressing the desire to smile in delight.
    Despite being wholly and truly devoted to helping her son become the manliest of men, her idea was not entirely unselfish. Although her husband had tried to provide her with a second child after Ranma's birth, on the rare occasion when he could get away from his master, he had ultimately left with Ranma before he had been able to do so. It had been devastating because — much like her husband — she had hoped to raise a child in her own ways, especially the ones that were passed down from mother to daughter.
    Ranma nodded his head resolutely before a thought occurred to him, one which inspired him to ask, "But how will I stay like this?"
    This time Nodoka did smile, who stood up from her chair before she said, "Allow me to show you," and put some space between herself and her son.
    Ranma shifted in his chair and leaned on its arm so he could watch what his mother was doing, who soon found where she wanted to stand before facing him once more. Upon doing so, she stretched out her arm, as if to grab something, and something that could have been either a staff or a magic wand materialized within her grasp. It appeared to be made out of some kind of translucent crystal, and was about as long as his mother was tall. It was the color of azure at its base, but transitioned to a paler shade of blue from the middle up, where it branched into two and swirled about the same focal point in opposing directions, becoming ever wider, thinner and further apart as they went, until they took on the appearance of something that was between a ribbon and a wave of water at their apex. Near the apex, and enclosed within the twin tendrils, was a cobalt blue orb that was nearly the size of a person's head, which seemed to float in place rather than being secured by its confines.
    "What's that?" He queried, his curiosity piqued.
    "This," Nodoka said, as she presented her family's legacy with a mixture of fondness and pride, "is Astraea, a product of our family's amassed knowledge and the skill of an alchemist whose talents remain unmatched." She quickly sobered, as she privately recalled another part of its history, but thought better about mentioning it for the time being. "It is the unification of a multi-purpose tool and a homunculus."
    "A what?" Ranma inquired, his brow furrowed, having never heard of such a thing.
    Instead of giving her son an explanation, Nodoka decided to show him what a homunculus was. With her attention focused on Astraea, which she had drawn her hand away from and left to float in place, she ordered, "Astraea: assistant mode."
    "Understood," came the monotone acknowledgement, much to Ranma's surprise.
    Astraea's form began to glow, until it appeared to be a silhouette of light to those watching. Then, the shape began to transition into another, shrinking to nearly half of its original height, growing thicker in the middle, and gaining extremities like limbs and a head. It looked like a naked and crudely-shaped doll for a second, until the details began to be refined, as long hair sprouted from its head, fingers could be distinguished on its hands, and other areas abandoned simple geometric shapes for those belonging to the figure of a human. Finally, its hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, and the shape of its silhouette changed further, in a way that suggested the appearance of an outfit.
    Once the glow was gone, it revealed a girl who appeared to be a few years older than Ranma, with dusky skin, long, pale blue hair, and cobalt blue eyes. Like her mother, she wore a kimono, although this one depicted small waves gently lapping at a sandy shore beneath a starry sky. It was quite a sight, overall, though it was offset by by the utterly blank expression on its face, and the dullness of its eyes.
    Ranma looked at his mother questioningly, having picked up on the nature of the words that his mother had used but not being so familiar with their usage to be confident about his impression. "So, a hunk-thing is a shapeshifting robot?"
    "Homunculus, dear," Nodoka corrected, with a wry smile. "And it's more accurate to call it an artificial lifeform. It's not exactly organic, or entirely machine, and there's plenty of magic involved as well. Homunculi by themselves are usually a lot more straightforward, if still complicated, but this one is also integrated with a very sophisticated tool, so..."
    Ranma didn't really understand all of that, so he pressed on with the next most relevant subject. "So, how's, um, Astraea going to solve my problem?"
    Turning to Astraea, and knowing that it will know her intent, Nodoka simply commanded, "Astraea, modify the trigger to my son's curse so that it can't be activated in any way for the time being."
    Astraea turned to regard Ranma, and its eyes glowed for a second before it flatly stated, "It is done."
    Ranma blinked his eyes incredulously, between not having felt anything happen and being aware of his lack of success every time he had tried to do something about his curse in the past. "...That's it?"
    "That's it," Nodoka confirmed with some amusement. "Astraea is very useful. In fact," she added, as she realized something, "it's so useful I think I'll lend it to you."
    "Huh?" Ranma voiced, who was trying to follow his mother's train of thought and failing to do so.
    Nodoka had the decency to look embarrassed about her mistake and asked, "I suppose I haven't told you about our family's atelier, have I?"
    Ranma shook his head in the negative.
    "Well," Nodoka began to explain, "that's how I make a living. I've more or less kept the shop closed ever since I began to look for you and your father, so I'll have to take care of the backlog before I return to regular business. That will keep me busy for a while, but Astraea can help you if you wish to spend more time improving yourself as an alchemist than I can be available for."
    Ranma looked over at Astraea with some reservation, since it was somewhat unnerving how it continued to stare in his direction unblinkingly and without emotion. That, and he had some misgivings over the fact that it had a human appearance while its role was pretty much that of a slave. Still, if it could modify his curse so easily, he couldn't help wondering what else it might be capable of, and that would most likely require using it.
    He was brought out of his thoughts when his mother said, "If you'd like, I can show you the shop later. For now, how about I take you to your new workshop?"
    Ranma was a bit surprised by that. "I get my own workshop?"
    Nodoka smiled and nodded her head. "Of course. Our family was quite large at one time, so we have an overabundance of workshops here. I cleaned one of them up and prepared it for your use last night, in case you passed the test and decided to practice alchemy. Would you like to see it now?"
    Ranma simply nodded his head, since he was a bit distracted by the curious bit of information that his mother had mentioned, for which he asked, "So, there aren't many alchemists in the family anymore? What happened to them?"
    Nodoka's smile faded. "Themselves." She turned her head to regard Astraea. "Over that."
    "Oh..." Ranma quietly voiced, who had an idea of what that probably entailed.
    Nodoka shook her head. "I can go into more depth, if you want, but let's save that for later." With that settled, and what she intended to do right then, she perked back up and eagerly added, "Right now, I'd like to show you your workshop."
    Without further delay, Ranma watched as his mother dismissed Astraea, probably back to wherever she had come from, and summoned a key that looked a bit different from the one that he had seen her use before. After his mother opened a portal and stepped through it, he took a moment to wonder how this latest turn in events would affect his future before he kicked himself into gear and followed her.

Sleeping Beauty

    The next day, after spending an entire morning with his mother to buy a new wardrobe for his six-year-old body, Ranma returned to his relatively-new workshop wearing a new tank top, pair of shorts and sneakers. He had been afraid that his mother would have made him choose something that was more traditional for a girl to wear, or girly, but he was relieved that such attire was the exception among his wardrobe, reserved for particular occasions for the most part. So long as he didn't look too out of place among the other girls of the current generation, his mother had no problem with what he chose to wear. It probably didn't hurt that he still managed to project the image of a cute — if somewhat tomboyish — girl instead of a boyish one.
    Considering how his mother had seemed rather poor and frugal before, and more or less continued to seem so despite how much money she had spent on his new clothes, he had asked her about it since she must have been earning something as an alchemist. As a result, he had learned that she was — in fact — extremely rich, and not just because she could create precious metals and gemstones with alchemy. The reason for why she usually didn't have much more money than she needed to live on was because her wealth was not in any currency that could be used or exchanged where they lived, and because selling the aforementioned precious metals and gemstones would attract the wrong attention. However, she could still make and sell other things, like she would at her shop, only her clientele mostly consisted of those that she had approached — initially, at least — rather than the other way around.
    The currency issue reminded him of how much his life had become something that was out of this world, and not just in the figurative sense. At that moment, for instance, he was standing inside of a workshop that was within an asteroid, which was — itself — located in a foreign solar system. There were dozens of such workshops, scattered across multiple universes. The reasons for such an arrangement had been numerous, mainly regarding various issues related to privacy and safety, although the number of them had mainly been a result of their family's former size.
    Not only was he inside of an asteroid at the moment, but his mother's shop — as seen from a holographic commercial — was on a space colony whose nature was very much like that of a mall and orbited an alien planet. The main body of the colony, where all of the shops were located, was huge, egg-shaped, and possessed an architecture that was fanciful yet functional in that neo-futuristic sort of way. Around it, and connected to it by many transit shafts, was an ouroboros-shaped station that accommodated various methods by which it could receive visitors, where said visitors would also be able to find food and lodging.
    The only thing that hadn't been a surprise was his mother's awareness of the sutratma, which was a transitional existence that connected one's body and mind in the physical plane with their spirit in the astral plane. As it turned out, some of the things that his mother used, like the keys and Astraea, came with a function that sent them to the sutratma for storage. As a martial artist who had trained his mind, body and spirit to accomplish such a feat himself, he didn't need the process of sending objects to his sutratma done for him, although it could be helpful in a pinch.
    Despite all of that, what really occupied his mind was Astraea, due in no small part to the fact that it was standing right before him, awaiting his orders. He'd learned that it had been so coveted by his ancestors that they had torn themselves asunder in order to claim it, once its creator had died — a death suspected to have been the result of foul play. In the war that had ensued, many had been killed or displaced, with only a few staying out of it. After everything had been said and done, and Astraea decisively claimed, a bitter divide had risen up between the participants of the war that had survived and those who had stayed out of it, and it was from there that what had remained of his family had begun to drift away, both from themselves and alchemy. As far as his mother was aware, until yesterday she had been the only practicing alchemist from the members of her family that she knew of.
    However, the real reason for his preoccupation with Astraea wasn't due to what he had learned about his ancestors in relation to it. Rather, it was because his mother had told him that he could change its personality if he didn't like its default setting, as well as choose a different attire for it if his mother's tastes didn't suit his own, but he wasn't comfortable with doing either of those things. Despite Astraea appearing to be so lifeless and machine-like in behavior, it still looked human enough, and a young girl at that, so treating it like a thing — a slave — didn't sit well with him. That, and he could kind of sympathize with it, maybe even empathize, considering how people had fought over him, and the various occasions where he had been influenced to act against his will. Just thinking of the time when the koi rod had effectively changed him into a different person, with Ryoga being at the center of that person's world, made him shudder.
    When he came right down to it, though: even if Astraea wasn't exactly human, or seemed to have a will of its own, it was still a lifeform of sorts. While giving it a personality would be an improvement, he would still know that it was fake, and that it would only be behaving that way because he had ordered it to. If there was an option for it to express itself however it wanted to, that would be great, although he might have to re-evaluate his opinion of his mother if that happened to be the case.
    Since there was a way to find out if there was such an option or not, and it didn't occur to him to ask his mother about it first, he stepped up to Astraea and stated, "Astraea, you can choose to behave however you want to."
    "I do not understand," came the flat reply.
    Ranma frowned and thought for a second before saying, "You have a choice."
    "What are my options?" Astraea replied.
    Thinking that he had made some headway, Ranma was more animated as he said, "Whatever you want."
    "I do not understand," Astraea said once again.
    Ranma crossed his arms and stared at Astraea unhappily as he tried to figure out how to accomplish what he desired, and wondered if his mother had ever tried something similar and met with failure. It seemed that Astraea was incapable of taking the initiative: unless it was given an explicit enough instruction to respond to, it wouldn't act on its own. His mother had said as much, though, so he wasn't really surprised — just disappointed and a bit irritated.
    After a moment of pondering, a thought occurred to him: could he give Astraea the will that it lacked, so it could act on its own, with a command? He wasn't sure if that was possible, due largely to the fact that he knew next to nothing about the technology involved, and what little reference he had from fiction didn't inspire much confidence regarding whether he should give the idea a try or not. Well, he supposed that it wouldn't hurt to give it a go; at worst, he figured that Astraea would respond with something like, "I do not understand," again.
    "Astraea," he said in a commanding tone, after taking a second to think of what he would say, "I want you to have a will."
    Astraea did not give him an immediate reply. When it became apparent that she wasn't going to answer him at all, he nervously said, "Um, Astraea?"
    After waving his hand before Astraea's face, then venturing a few pokes, with the final one causing her to fall upon her back like a plank of wood, he began to suspect — with rising dread — that he had somehow broken the legacy of his family's alchemists. Not only that, but that he may have also compromised the very thing that had locked his curse, and there was no guarantee that the Kaisuifu would be able to reverse whatever method Astraea had used to accomplish that.
    He began to pace around as he tried to figure out what to do, in addition to fighting down the urge to panic. While he had no real idea of how his mother would react to this development, if Astraea had — indeed — been broken, he was reasonably sure that it wouldn't be in a positive way. For something like this to happen already, after everything that he had already gone through recently, wasn't how he wanted his new life to start, and that concerned him as well.
    Due to being so preoccupied with his worries, it took him a while to notice the blue, holographic screen that had appeared over Astraea's supine form. It wasn't until he was hunched over, while grasping his head out of frustration, that he spared Astraea a glance and spotted it. It wasn't too surprising a sight, since his mother had introduced him to them in connection to Astraea and several other things, so he figured that it had been prompted to appear because of Astraea's current condition.
    Seeing as there was nothing to be gained from not investigating whatever had appeared on the screen, especially when it could be a potential solution to the problem that he was faced with, he quickly hopped over to Astraea's side and looked at it. Unfortunately, while it seemed to be a message of some kind, it was in a language that was unlike anything that he had ever seen before. That's what he hoped it to be, at least, even though it wouldn't do him any good.
    "What am I supposed to do with this?" He muttered under his breath.
    Suddenly, as if in response to his voice, the foreign language was replaced by another message, only this one was in Japanese. "Translating..." Was all it said, and in a flash it disappeared, right when the black, hollow circle in the lower-right corner filled completely with an electric blue color. In their place was what he assumed to be the original message, only now it was in Japanese. Well, everything save for one word, which — given the context — he figured was someone's name. Thankfully, said name was accompanied by small kana, so pronouncing it wouldn't be a problem.
    The message was brief and to the point, instructing the owner of Astraea to go to a location that was designated by a set of coordinates, in order to receive help. It had taken him a second to recognize the aforementioned coordinates for what they were, since his mother had only just shown him how the keys worked, and thus how they made it possible for them to have access to a vast assortment of items that could be utilized with alchemy, but he didn't have the faintest idea of where the coordinates would take him. He could only hope that the filter that his mother had used to restrict which places he could go to with the keys, due to various safety concerns, hadn't blacklisted the location in question.
    As he moved to the alcove that was the access point of the keys, where the door to his living quarters was located, it never occurred to him to consult his mother about what to do. The last thing that he wanted was for his mother to find out about what he had done and risk getting into some kind of trouble, and/or being on the receiving end of whatever negative response that she would have to what had happened. He figured that what she didn't know wouldn't hurt anyone, so long as he managed to rectify the situation before she could find out about it.
    Aside from the bathroom, due to the call of nature and the potential of having a messy accident while making something with alchemy, his living quarters were pretty barren, mostly due to the fact that he had no reason to live there. The living room was completely empty at the moment, since the one at home suited his needs just fine. There was a kitchenette in the living room, but it wasn't stocked with anything in terms of food and appliances, what with having those things at home in addition to the two good cooks that he lived with. The only thing in his bedroom was a bed, just in case he ever felt too tired to make it home, and — according to his mother — if he ever got around to making anything with alchemy that would necessitate getting some rest in between stages that required lengthy amounts of participation. The study only had a desk and a chair for furnishings, and was larger than the living room because it had been built when his family had still been using books to store their knowledge.
    Furnishings aside, on his desk laid his new laptop and a device where he could retrieve keys from, which his mother had referred to as a key caller. The key caller was a small, rectangular-shaped box made of metal, with a lid that could only be lifted from one side. While the lid was down, he could connect to the key caller with his laptop wirelessly and choose whichever key he wished for it to call up from storage, assuming that he was allowed to go to the desired destination in the first place.
    After seating himself at his desk, he opened up his laptop and turned it on. Within seconds he was putting in his password, and shortly after that he had opened the program for operating the key caller and was trying to remember how to go about finding the right key. While his mother had explained many of the basics about a lot of things, and within the last twenty-four hours at that, it had still been a lot to take in all at once, so it had taken him some time to bring up the list of keys that he had access to and ordering them in numerical order, between his unfamiliarity with computers in general, remembering what his mother had said, and figuring out other things having to do with the program.
    Much to his relief, he found both the universe and world accessible to him. The message hadn't provided an exact location for him to arrive at on the other world, however, so he hoped that the one where the key would take him would suffice. Of course, that brought up the problem of knowing who or what he was supposed to look for, unless they were to somehow know of his arrival and come to him. However, he supposed that it wouldn't hurt to go there and see if anything happened; if nothing did, he could simply return and face the music once his mother returned from work, since he didn't know what else to do without the risk of making a bad situation worse.
    Once he had the key in his possession, he shut down his laptop and returned to his workshop. After storing Astraea in his sutrama, so he wouldn't have to carry it everywhere, he wasted little time in activating the key and going to the world on the other side of the portal. After all, the sooner that he checked it out to see if it could help him in any way, the sooner he could think of something else or prepare for the worst.
    He hadn't known what to expect on the other side of the portal, but what he saw was underwhelmingly — and a mite disappointingly — ordinary. He found himself standing upon a hill, surrounded by a fair amount of trees in the immediate area, which became much thicker in a few other areas that he could see in the distance. What really caught his attention, however, were the signs of civilization that he could see fairly close by, starting with modern-looking roads and houses amongst the trees nearest to him, while further out the trees gave way to a moderately-sized city.
    It was only then that it dawned on him that he was probably in an alternate reality, where the world was much like the one that he had come from but with some minor differences. A lot of the places that his mother had restricted him to were places such as this, since whatever problems and dangers that he might encounter were bound to be familiar enough to anticipate and/or deal with. He would have known that before his arrival, had he looked at the key's profile, but he had been in too much of a hurry to check it.
    Either way, now that he was there, he was presented with a more immediate problem: should he wait for something to happen, or should he explore? After some thought, he decided to explore. He had no way of knowing if waiting where he was would accomplish anything, for one thing, and he figured that he could be found nearby if his arrival itself could draw attention to him. Beyond that, though, he was curious to see how the world differed from his own. Depending on his findings, there might just be something of interest to return to when not out on "business."
    With his mind made up, he ran down the hill until he encountered the forest line, at which point he took to traveling by branch. While his smaller size made it easier for him to maneuver within the canopy, he had to pace himself because he still hadn't gotten enough practice in to completely adjust for his change in mass, since the ki that he had cultivated over the years empowered him no differently than before his regression in age. It wasn't too hard to do when he put his mind to it, but using the right amount of ki without thinking was another matter.
    Since a residential part of the suburbs was closest to him, he decided to start his browsing there. The neighborhood wasn't all that big, and appeared to be fairly lacking in activity for whatever time of day it was, but that just meant that he wouldn't have to worry all that much about people while he ascertained what he could from his new — yet familiar — surroundings. He couldn't see much at any given time from street level, however, because of high retaining walls, narrow streets, and the amount of trees that were kept or grown so as to not completely divorce the area from the land that the settlement had been built upon.
    By the time he had reached a convenience store, on a street where a few other businesses could be found, he had encountered enough people to know that he didn't look out of place, partly due to the fact that he seemed to share the same ethnicity with them. Well, he had garnered the attention of a concerned grandmother, since his wandering gaze had made him seem like a lost child, but he had managed to talk his way out of being escorted somewhere. Of course, it had helped that he'd made sure to have the last word before leaping out of sight.
    The newspaper stand in front of the convenience store had revealed that he was in Chiba, Japan, and that the date was a few years off from the one that he was familiar with. Another possible difference was that his precise location was Nekomi, a place that he didn't recall being in Chiba. That didn't mean that there wasn't one where he was from, of course, but he was fairly confident about the places where he had spent any significant time training, and he had done plenty of that around the Bōsō Peninsula.
    After browsing around for a bit, and not seeing anything in particular that stood out as being peculiar, he opted to go back to the hill and see if anything would be waiting for him there. If not, he figured that he might as well head back home and try to think of something else that he might be able to do with the time that he had left. If he couldn't come up with anything, he would just have to resign himself to whatever fate awaited him with his mother.
    However, when he came to a quiet intersection while on his way out of the neighborhood, he stopped right after stepping off of a curb upon feeling something strange teasing at his awareness. He looked around, trying to find its source, when something caught his attention at the peripheral edge of his vision. When he looked upward, he saw a young woman with the upper half of her body sticking out of a street mirror, as if the aforementioned mirror weren't a solid object.
    By the time that their eyes met, he had already established that she looked like an ordinary human, apart from what she was in the middle of doing. She had blue eyes, fair, immacule skin, long, brunette hair that was pulled back into a ponytail, and — as far as he could see — she wore a sleeveless turtleneck. At the moment, her facial expression was one of mild surprise, but what really caught his attention were the blue marks on her face: the teardrop-shaped diamond on her forehead, and the obtuse isosceles triangles that were on either side of — and just below — each eye.
    The moment passed, and the young woman calmly pushed the rest of the way out of the mirror and landed before him with casual ease. Now he could see that she was wearing pants that were accessorized by a belt, along with low-heeled sandals. He also took notice of her earrings and bracelets, when she raised a hand and swept away the long bangs that had fallen across her eyes. When their gazes met again, he could see the gentle warmth that they conveyed, and the overall affect was as disarming as it was enamoring.
    However, considering what he had witnessed only seconds before, and his desire to escape the trouble that was looming ever closer, he wasn't affected so much by the display to fail to take the initiative with this encounter. "Are you..." He paused for a second as he recalled the pronunctiation of the name that had accompanied that message, "Ansuz?"
    The young woman blinked her eyes in response to his question, expressing the unexpectedness of it even as he saw the light of recognition for the name shine through. "Oh, no: that would be my mother." She seemed to realize something a second later, at which point she smiled genially and asked, "Would that make you the interuniversal traveler?"
    Ranma figured that he had found someone that could help him with his problem, so he nodded his head in acknowledgement. "Name's Saotome Ranma."
    "I am Morisato Belldandy," said person easily returned. "While my mother is preoccupied at the moment, she has explained the situation to me and I would be happy to help you in her place. That is, if you don't mind?"
    Ranma perked up upon hearing that. "You can help me?" After receiving a nod of confirmation, he eagerly added, "That's great! What do I have to do?"
    "First," Belldandy began, "we should decide on a location where I can work on Astraea without attracting undue attention. Your arrival point should be fine, but — if I may — I would suggest doing this where I live. I have a sister who can help me with this there, and I can make accommodations so the wait will be more bearable."
    Ranma considered her offer for a second before asking, "How long will it take to fix Astraea?"
    Belldandy pressed an index finger to her chin and glanced upward in thought. "Hmmmm... Based on what I know of the problem, I would estimate that it would take about three and a half hours if I were to work alone, and closer to two if I had my sister's help."
    Since Ranma wanted the best chance of having the problem resolved before his mother could find out about it, his choice was pretty much a given to him. The possibility of having something to preoccupy himself with while he waited, and that of having a refreshment and/or snack, was factored in as well. Plus, he didn't like the idea of waiting around for three and a half hours with nothing to do, now that his younger body made it more difficult for him to stay still when he had an ample amount of energy to burn.
    "Alright," he said, "let's go to your place." Curious about what their mode of transportation would be, he added, "Are we going to use the mirror to get there?"
    Belldandy shook her head. "I'm afraid that medium is inaccessible to you. However, where I live is not that far from here. I could ask someone to pick us up, if you'd like."
    Ranma frowned thoughtfully. "Exactly how far away is it? I won't mind getting there on foot, if it'll save time."
    He watched as Belldandy regarded him with curiousity before seemingly having her attention drawn elsewhere, in a way that suggested that she was listening to something that only she seemed to be able to hear. "My home is approximately eleven-point-seven-three kilometers away from here." She returned her gaze to him and asked, "Will that be quicker for you?"
    He waved his hand in a dismissive manner and confidentally said, "That's nothing."
    To demonstrate the validity of that statement, he picked the rooftop of a nearby house and leapt toward it. He hadn't been paying as much attention as he should have, due to trying to show off, so he ended up propelling himself higher and further than intended, but not so much that he overshot the roof that he had been aiming for. Still, that moment of awkwardness had been embarrassing, when he had realized his mistake and had to adjust for it, so he pretended as if it had all been intended as he backtracked to the other side of the roof and posed triumphantly for his audience.
    Belldandy spared her surroundings a glance before she joined him on the roof, albeit with seemingly more ease and grace. Before that observation could nettle him, however, he was caught by her smile as she said, "That was amazing. Are you a human, where you come from?"
    While Ranma's ego was soothed by her recognition of his abilities, the question had kind of come out of left field, so he deflected the question back out of reflex. "Why, aren't you?"
    Belldandy maintained her smile as she shook her head, then closed her eyes, pressed the fingertips of both hands to her chest, with one set partially overlapping the other, and pleasantly stated, "I'm a goddess."
    Ordinarily such a claim would have made him nonplussed, if not outright skeptical. However, between the way that she had spoken and held herself while saying it, the way that she had joined him on the roof, her overall beauty and grace, his prior experience with the supernatural, and the fact that he would soon be having his first encounter with extraterrestials before too long, it was difficult to deny the possibility that she was speaking the truth without sufficient evidence to the contrary. In the end, though, he supposed that there may not be a better source of help if she was — indeed — a goddess.
    So, instead of questioning her, in part because he was running against the clock, he decided to try and answer her question as succinctly as possible. "Well, I'm human, but," he paused for a second and decided to toot his own horn a bit while he was at it, "it's rare for people to get anywhere near as good as I am."
    Belldandy nodded her head in acknowledgement before she turned away from him and made it apparent that she was ready to escort him to her home. Whether she was aware of his need to move things along, or simply had similar priorities to his own even if the reasons for them happened to be different, he was grateful that they were in silent agreement regarding their next course of action. While he wasn't against striking up a conversation, especially since he had some questions that he'd like to ask her, he figured he could save them for when he could really afford to waste time and distract her.
    Once he was standing beside her and ready to follow her lead, she inquired, "How should I pace myself?"
    "Don't worry about it," came his confident reply. "I'll be able to keep up."
    Belldandy appeared to take his response at face value, because she began their journey rather than asking him if he were sure about his ability to keep up with her. As they leapt from such things as rooftops, utility poles, streetlamps, walls and trees, he discovered that he could keep up with her, if only barely. He really had to push himself so he wouldn't be left behind, and focusing more on power than finesse made him lose ground from time to time, whenever he overshot his intended landing zones.
    As for Belldandy's performance, well... He wasn't sure if he should be envious or awed. She made it look so effortless and easy, as if the very laws of nature themselves didn't have as firm of a grip on her as they did everyone else. It was difficult to turn his eyes away from her, and pay attention to his own situation, when she glided through the air and covered as much as two or three times the distance than he could with each bound, and reaching each landing point with poise and precision. Idly, he wondered if he could learn to do the same; that is, if it wasn't just a perk that came with being the goddess that she claimed to be.
    By the time that they had reached their destination, after cutting across a part of the inner city in order to get to a suburban area that wasn't all that different from the one that they had left, he was panting and interlocking his hands on top of his head to help with his recovery. Under normal circumstances he wouldn't have been winded at all, but he had chosen to keep up with Belldandy's pace from beginning to end, which had really pushed his limits.
    Since he had nothing better to do at that exact moment, he took in the grounds of the Buddhist temple that he had been taken to. Aside from the temple itself, which was immediately before him, there wasn't much else to see, except for the bell and the house where temple staff would normally live. Well, until he noticed the robot-looking thing behind the house, as it hung from a tree branch while replacing a bird's nest. The shape of its head made it such an odd sight that he almost didn't notice the girl that was standing at the base of the tree, who had her back to him.
    His attention was diverted away from them when he noticed Belldandy approaching him, who offered him a handkerchief with which to wipe his brow. He felt a little embarrassed as he accepted it and mumbled his gratitude, since she didn't look like she had been affected at all by their journey. He found it hard to be upset about it, however, since he'd already managed to establish that she was a really nice person; her smile, gestures and behavior, and how naturally they came, made her character — as it appeared — very easy to discern.
    While he addressed the sweat on his brow, he noticed that Belldandy was regarding him as if she had something on her mind. "What?"
    "I was just wondering why you pushed yourself so hard," she replied, with her head cocked ever so slightly to the side and her hands clasped in front of her.
    Ranma shrugged his shoulders and simply said, "I just like challenges," even though he knew that that wasn't entirely accurate. However, the subject matter at the heart of his actions wasn't the sort of thing that he liked to think about, nevermind share with others.
    Belldandy appeared to accept his answer and began to lead him toward the house, along the smaller stone pathway that branched off of the larger one that led to the temple. When they reached the front door, he took the opportunity to return the handkerchief to its owner and thanked her for it. Then, upon entering the house, Belldandy announced herself as she continued onward. At first, he thought that she might leave the genkan without removing her sandals, but they disappeared as if they were smoke being blown away by the wind.
    That unexpected occurrence was enough to make him pause, more out of mild surprise than anything else, so he was still standing in the genkan — with his shoes on — after the few seconds that it had taken for two of the house's residents to make an appearance. One of them was a young girl, perhaps old enough to be a teenager, with long, raven hair and brown eyes. She wore a light, open jacket over a T-shirt, shorts and a white ribbon in her hair. The other was a woman with dusky skin, violet eyes and long, flowing, white hair. That one was dressed rather skimpily, in a black leather halter top and hot pants. He noticed that both of them had markings on their faces, like Belldandy did, although all of their shapes were unique to their owners.
    Their eyes were on him as they gathered around Belldandy, at which point the woman said, "Huh. I wasn't expecting it to be a kid."
    "I'm older than I look," he grumbled, before he began to focus on the removal of his shoes. Once he was finished with that, and he returned his attention to the woman, he saw that his statement had only merited a cocked eyebrow.
    "Ranma," Belldandy spoke up, who gestured toward the other bemarked individuals — in turn — as she said, "these are my sisters, Urd and Skuld. Urd, Skuld, this is Ranma."
    Urd raised a hand in greeting and casually said, "Yo."
    It was only then that he noticed Skuld's look of interest, when she stepped forward and asked, "What kind of machines have you made with alchemy? Can you create robots?"
    Feeling awkward, since her expectations were well beyond his newly-minted status as an alchemist, he rubbed the back of his head and said, "Um... I only found out about this alchemy stuff yesterday, to be honest."
    While Skuld looked disappointed, Belldandy turned to give Urd a questioning look, who shrugged her shoulders and said, "She thought that our guest would share my hobby, and I simply told her that their brand of alchemy was much closer to her own hobby than mine."
    Realization seemed to dawn on Belldandy, who turned to Skuld with a smile and said, "The alchemy that Ranma practices is similar to what Urd does, on the surface, but is fundamentally different. If you'd like, you could teach Ranma how to make things while Urd and I are busy saving the homunculus."
    That seemed to perk Skuld back up, and he shrugged his shoulders and said, "Sure, why not," when she looked at him expectantly. Aside from it helping him to pass the time, he was kind of curious about the differences that Urd and Belldandy had alluded to. Either way, if he could learn anything new, or make something useful, it would be time well spent.
    "So," Urd spoke up, as she regarded him with curiosity, "where's the homunculus?"
    Neither she nor Belldandy batted an eye when he pulled the aforementioned homunculus out from behind his back and casually held its stiff body beneath an arm, while Skuld regarded him with some confusion. While he hadn't expected them to be surprised or amazed, he was really beginning to wonder about the nature of the people that he was dealing with. Even if he accepted that any one of them could actually be a goddess, that still left a lot of possibilities regarding their purpose and what they could do.
    After Urd and Belldandy leaned closer and scrutinized Astraea for a couple of seconds, the former whistled in appreciation and said, "She's a real piece of work," while the latter followed that up with a question. "What is her name?"
    "Astraea," he provided.
    Belldandy smiled and asked him to follow her, although it was Urd who led the party at large further into the house. It didn't take them long to reach their destination, within the inner hallway, where they stopped in front of a door. Said door bore a plaque, which had, "Urd's Castle," written on it. After it was opened and he stepped into the room beyond, behind the others, he looked around absently and noted the magic-natured paraphernalia that could be found in ample supply, along with some of the same kind of equipment that he and his mother had in their workshops. Seeing all of that, along with a bookshelf of stuff that were in labeled bottles, it made him wonder how — exactly — he and Urd differed as alchemists.
    He was soon instructed to lay Astraea upon the floor, and Belldandy and Urd sat on either side of it after doing so. Then, Urd began to chant something, and a strange collection of shapes appeared over Astraea's body, in a variety of colors, where they began to float in place. Many of them were oblong and rhomboid in appearance, with the occasional spherical or pyramidic protrusion on their surfaces. While it seemed that there could be some purpose to their arrangement, as far as he could discern, he couldn't even begin to imagine what it might be. Had he seen it under different circumstances, such as a part of a mansion's decor, it wouldn't have looked out of place to him — although he would have certainly wondered about the owner's tastes and/or personality.
    Urd, Belldandy and Skuld seemed to understand what the whole thing was about, though, since all three of them were peering at it quite intently. This was confirmed when Skuld frowned and asked, "Is that what I think it is?"
    "Probably," Urd replied, her expression grim. "Rather crude work, too."
    Since he was feeling left out of the loop, he asked, "What are you guys talking about?"
    He managed to gain everyone's attention with that question. While Urd's expression remained unchanged, and Belldandy's sad, Skuld gave him a dirty look and seemed ready to tell him off. Before she could say anything, however, Belldandy rested a staying hand upon the girl's arm and softly asked him, "Ranma, what do you know about Astraea?"
    By now he was fairly certain that something was wrong, even if he didn't know the nature of it, so some worry crept into his voice as he said, "Not much. Mom said that it was an artificial lifeform that can do various things, but requires our input to do anything. Why? What's wrong?"
    "What's wrong?" Skuld echoed angrily, despite her sister's calming influence. "She's a slave!"
    Taken aback by that statement, he drew away a bit and sputtered, "Wh-what?"
    "It's exactly like the squirt said," Urd said measuredly, who turned to face the multi-shaped thing and began to manipulate it, until it was evident that she was moving the outer layer enough so he could see what was hidden within it. "Do you see the inner-most parts, and how its appearance is different enough to tell it apart from the rest?" At his nod, she continued. "That's Astraea. All this other stuff," she gestured at everything that surrounded the "Astraea" portion with an absent wave of her hand, "was added on to suppress and control her."
    For a moment, he tried to wrap his mind around the concept being presented to him. It wasn't the enslavement part that was hard to understand, but the idea that Astraea had been endowed with free will in the first place. What little he knew about artificial intelligence wasn't helped by the fact that technology — from where he hailed from — hadn't progressed so far as to give machines a self-determining mind, so not only had it not occurred to him that Astraea could be advanced enough to have such a trait, but that her lack of initiative could be unnatural.
    He was also disturbed by the possibility of his mother knowing about this, or even being the one responsible for it. What optimism he'd had about being raised by her was now cast into doubt, since even his father — however morally bankrupt he could be at times — had yet to stoop to such a level of wrongdoing. While he had never really thought about the subject of slavery seriously before, and had even entertained the thought of mind-controlling a few individuals who were particularly bothersome, the thought of a cute, young girl being made into a slave struck a familiar chord within him, the kind that often spurred him into some heroic venture or another, or to dispense justice upon someone. That's how he often viewed his actions, as far as that was concerned, at any rate.
    It also occurred to him that something wasn't entirely right about the people that he had sought help from. He had been under the impression that they were the equivalent of an auto repair shop, where you brought your vehicle if it needed to be fixed, yet not only had they known nothing about Astraea's enslavement, they were obviously against it. He had figured that the message had meant that his mother — if not his family — had been regular "customers," and thus might have known how they felt about slavery, but it didn't really seem as if they had any business to begin with — in the traditional sense, at least. There were simply too many unknowns to figure out what the situation was, on that particular front, but he saved his questions for later, since there were more relevant issues to address first.
    To start with, he wanted to be proactive, in order to show that he was on the same wavelength as they were concerning Astraea's enslavement, so he asked, "Can you fix that, too?"
    "Yes," Belldandy assured him with a smile. "We just have to be careful in the dismantling process. You probably can't tell," she glanced at the multi-shaped thing that was floating over Astraea, "but the method of her enslavement involves the hijacking of her own functions, in such a way that they — and other important sections — can be damaged if not handled with care."
    Urd snorted with contempt and added, "Whoever did it probably wasn't knowledgable enough to replicate those functions themselves, or knew how to separate them from Astraea's mind," before she directed her attention to him and asked, "Anyway, what was it that brought up mom's message? Nothing too bad, I hope."
    He rubbed the back of his head, since he felt a little embarrassed about causing something to go wrong. "Ah, well, my mother had told me that I could change Astraea's personality with a command. Controlling how it—" he quickly caught himself, since he had only used that pronoun because he had simply been following his mother's example, "she behaved kind of bugged me, since she looks so lifelike, so I thought it'd be better if she acted however she liked."
    His three hosts shared a look with each other before peering at the mass of objects again, seemingly intent on finding something in specific. It only took a second for their attention to home in on one of the larger, oblong shapes. Being the closest to it, Belldandy reached out with a finger and tapped it, which somehow caused it to break up into a series of shapes all its own, similar in appearance to the rest yet at a fraction of the size. After studying the new arrangement for a few seconds, he noted that Skuld had something of an apologetic expression on her face when she spared him a glance, in response to whatever it was that she had seen.
    "Huh," Urd voiced, as if having confirmed something. "Considering the intent of the rules that were used, I'm not surprised that the one responsible for the programming hadn't thought to make an exception for the two rules that came into conflict."
    "What do you mean?" He inquired, since he wasn't entirely sure of what was being referred to.
    Turning her full attention to him, Skuld helpfully explained, "There's one rule that makes her absolutely obedient to anyone who is recognized as a master, and another that firmly enforces the inability to think and act of her own accord. When you told her that she could do whatever she wanted, she couldn't, but neither could she not disobey you. So, she got caught in a logical paradox where she couldn't follow one rule without contradicting the other."
    "You could have resolved it by rescinding your order," Urd remarked, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, "but that's neither here nor there. What matters is that you brought her to us, since we can help her."
    Not knowing what else that could be done, he scratched at the side of his face as he said, "Well, I guess I'll leave the rest to you guys, then..."
    Taking that as their cue to begin their work in earnest, Urd began to do just that as Belldandy turned to him and pleasantly said, "I prepared some snacks earlier, in case you were hungry, and Skuld can provide you with refreshments. Will that be alright?"
    After assuring her that it was, he followed Skuld as she led him out of the room. As they made their way to the living room, his host contritely said, "Sorry for snapping at you before."
    "No problem," he absently said, his thoughts wandering as he reflected upon his situation. "It happens."

    Shortly thereafter, Ranma found himself sitting at the table in the living room, an onigiri in hand and a plate of senbei within reach while he waited for Skuld to return with the offered drink that he had accepted. Aside from a small cabinet and a television set, there wasn't anything notable about the room, not unlike the one that he had spent many a time in while he had been living with the Tendo family.
    Before he could be gripped by nostalgia, or depressing thoughts concerning Akane, he was distracted by Skuld's reappearance, who set down his drink in front of him — which he thanked her for — before taking a seat at one of the adjoining sides of the table. The drink in question was orange juice, since he had discovered early on that his taste buds had changed along with his age and now had less of a tolerance for bitter-tasting things. It wasn't a big deal, though, so he just accepted that it was one of the things about being young that he would have to get used to.
    The following few seconds were spent in silence, and were a bit awkward, so he cleared his throat and decided to bring up a subject that had come up earlier, one which Belldandy had made a suggestion about. "So, uh, your sister said something about what we do being similar?"
    Skuld brightened at that, leaned forward out of enthusiasm, and said, "Oh, right! I don't know much about alchemy, or how yours is different from Urd's, but — if I understand it correctly — you can make machines, devices and such? Onee-sama suggested as much, anyway."
    Ranma shrugged his shoulders. "I haven't heard of anything that I can't make with alchemy, but I've only made one thing so far, and that had been to test if I could be an alchemist or not."
    Skuld considered that for a moment, who suddenly seemed a bit reserved despite her earlier excitement, before she asked, "Well, when you're finished with that," she indicated his drink and onigiri with a look, "would you like to make something? Even if you don't know how to do it, maybe I can still walk you through the process."
    Since he had already made up his mind earlier, and he saw no reason to change it, he agreed to go with her to her room once he was finished eating. When they came upon her door, he noted the plaque that said "Skuld's Lab" before entering, which made him wonder just what it was he would be stepping into. As it turned out, while it wasn't a lab in truth, he could easily tell that she did at least some of her work in her room, between the various gadgets, machines and tools either lying about haphazardly, stored somewhere or placed with a purpose. Aside from the things hanging from the ceiling, which he assumed were high-tech models of some kind of flying machine, and a chair-looking thing that had a high voltage warning displayed on it, which made him wonder what it was used for, he couldn't really identify what any of her contraptions were. All he could really recognize were some of their parts, like wires, circuit boards and gauges, but there were still plenty of them that he either didn't recognize or could put a name to.
    Skuld had stopped in the middle of her room to gaze at a large cabinet with a thoughtful frown, where various things in boxes and bins could be seen through its glass doors. After muttering something to herself, she eventually turned to him and asked, "Okay, I understand that you're new to being an alchemist, but what kind of skills do you have otherwise? Can you do anything with the spare parts that I have available?"
    He returned his attention to the spare parts in question, although it was more to hide his face and avoid eye contact than anything else, since it was embarrassing for him to know next to nothing about the current subject despite having a perfectly understandable excuse for it. He didn't want to admit to any lack of skill outright, so he considered the question from another angle — regarding the "do anything" part — and provided an answer that wasn't a lie. "Um... I guess?"
    The questioning tone in his voice gave away the true nature of his response, of course, which elicited a somewhat disheartening sigh from Skuld. A moment later, after some rumination, an idea seemed to occur to her, and it was with some obvious determination that she proceeded to open her cabinet and rummage through its contents. Whenever she found something of interest, no matter what it was, she would toss it onto the floor behind her. Before long, there was a pile of stuff that would probably be larger than he was if he were to lay down and curl up into a ball.
    Once she was done with that, she faced him, planted her hands upon her hips and said, "We can make something simple with this. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that using schematics and blueprints won't be of any help to you, so would you have any objection to being guided by hand?"
    He regarded the pile of spare parts with an incredulous look, wondering how anything "simple" could be derived from it, but he shook his head anyway. "Nah. It's not like I know how this is supposed to work, so I'll try it if you think it'll work."
    When Skuld sat down on the floor and indicated that he should do the same, betwixt her legs, he hesitated. It was only for a second, however, since he'd commonly experienced much more compromising and indecent situations in the past, and he was pretty sure that Skuld had no intention of doing anything that would result in the same. Besides which, not only did he not have to worry about being changed by hot water, but the only person that he would have to worry about — as far as being caught was concerned — was his mother: because she was the only one who would have any idea of where he could have gone. Of course, even if she did happen to catch him, he figured that she wouldn't mind him being in such close proximity to a girl, for one reason or another.
    "Okay," Skuld said, who seemed to mentally prepared herself for the task ahead, "let's build a UMV." She pointed at something in the pile of spare parts, which was out of her reach, and added, "We'll start with that piston."
    "What's a UMV?" He asked, as he leaned a bit to the right and reached over to acquire the requested item from the pile.
    "An unmanned vehicle," Skuld supplied, as she positioned one of her hands behind the one that he wasn't using to hold the piston. "Before we start on it, though, I want to see what you can do. Since this piston is made out of an aluminium alloy, we can use it for the rotor blades, so what I'm going to do is peel off enough for one blade and see if you can do the same, okay?" After receiving confirmation from him, and figuring out how to manipulate his much smaller hand with her own, she said, "Alright, let's begin..."
    Even though it turned out to be a very simple affair, Skuld took it slow so he could get a feel for what she was doing. When she pressed the tip of his index finger upon the head of the piston with her own, he began to feel something strange being exuded by her hand, which he felt much more acutely around her index finger. He wasn't sure how to describe it, as it didn't really seem like a pressure or change in temperature, but it definitely had a presence. Then, when she pressed his finger downward, which began to dig into the piston like it was made out of a soft clay, he felt that presence shift in some indefinable way, feeling as if it were being directed toward the piston. Down his finger went, going through the grooves without any resistance, and in no time at all he was pinching a curled-up piece of the piston between his index finger and thumb.
    "Now you try," Skuld prompted, with a tone that sounded kind of odd to him, as if she hadn't been sure of what kind of tone to use with that simple statement. However, since he had something more substantial weighing on his mind, as well as in his hands, he didn't merit it any thought.
    While what Skuld had done had looked easy enough, he wasn't sure if he could do it, even if he did resort to using his physical strength. As far as he knew, what he did as an alchemist required something like a stirring paddle, if not some other tool, considering all of the equipment that was in his workshop besides the cauldron. Since he didn't seem to be restricted to any one tool, he was reminded that the ability came from the same source, which was — obviously — none other than himself. Did that mean that he could exercise his ability with his bare hands, though? Wouldn't his mother have mentioned something about that?
    He figured that it wouldn't hurt to try, so he put aside the piece that Skuld had separated from the piston and focused on extracting a piece of his own. For a moment he just settled his finger in place, since he had to figure out how to replicate what Skuld had done, which he was pretty certain had nothing to do with using force in the traditional sense. He tried to imagine what he had felt from her hand when she had done it, and tried to will that to happen, but it proved to be ineffective.
    While he wanted to be frustrated, and maybe try to ply a piece away with his strength alone, if only for the satisfaction of being able to do it his own way, he was able to check himself. Aside from wanting to grow up to be a man that his mother would approve of, which would require being able to suppress a fit of pique, he didn't want to let the girl behind him down. He didn't know the reason why, but it was obvious enough to him that she was looking forward to doing this sort of thing with someone else. Maybe it had something to do with why his alchemy was different from another's, and why this hands-on approach — while alien to him — was supposedly similar...
    Either way, it wasn't something that he could muscle his way to victory with. That left him with meditation, since he assumed that there wouldn't be a convenient manual for him to refer to if he asked for one. So, he closed his eyes and began to think about the challenge being presented to him, and how he might overcome it. Having no other experience save the one where he had been tested, he focused on that and tried to gain some insight from it. Unfortunately, he hadn't even known what he had been expected to do at that time, beyond the instructions that he had been given, so he hadn't even put any thought into—
    "Hold on," he thought to himself. "It can't be that easy... Could it?"
    Due to his inactivity, and Skuld not being able to see his face, it was about then that she carefully said, "Um, it's okay if you can't do it..."
    Rather than reply to that, he opened his eyes and pressed downward with his finger while envisioning the end result of what he wished to happen, instead of trying to control whatever-it-was that would make it possible. There was resistance at first, but the material of the piston began to give way to his finger once he began to imagine the actual process of what he wanted to happen. While he had hoped that this kind of approach would work, it had still been unexpected enough for it to break his concentration, which hadn't been helped when Skuld stiffened and held her breath.
    Still, it was easy enough to regain his focus, and it wasn't long before a second piece of the piston joined the first. He was kind of proud of himself, even though what he had just accomplished hadn't really involved much in the way of hard work or skill. Despite that, however, it was a feeling of excitement that pervaded him the most, as he began to imagine the applications that were possible with this kind of ability, whether it be of a martial arts nature or not. He even thought of past situations where its use would have come in handy, had he been aware of it.
    He wasn't the only one who had been affected by his achievement positively, because it was with evident enthusiasm that Skuld decided to abandon his back and join him at his side, so they could move on to the next part. "Okay," she said, once she was at his side and holding one of the two pieces that had been stripped away from the piston, "let's turn these into rotor blades."
    Skuld went ahead and did that with her own piece, so he would have it for a reference, and she made it look much easier than it turned out to be for him. Still, he persevered, and after figuring out how to change the shape of the metal in the way that he desired, as well as a few corrections to its shape and mass afterward, Skuld determined that it was worthy enough to be the sister of her own rotor blade.
    With his ability to manipulate the shape of objects confirmed, Skuld proceeded to give him a few tests, in order to get an idea of how well he could change the nature of objects beyond their shape. Since the tests required knowledge of what he was working with, he could only make simple changes, like making brass out of copper and zinc, or taking the carbon out of steel to make iron. Circuit boards were well beyond his ability to work with, of course, since he knew next to nothing about them; even just moving things around, as directed by Skuld, often resulted in something becoming defective in some way.
    Once Skuld had a good idea of what he was currently capable of, she decided that he could make the frame and body of the vehicle, since all it really required was his ability to shape things. In order to make it possible for him to make their dimensions as accurate as possible, she also provided him with a diagram of what he would be making, along with measuring tools. She also gave him implements that would help with the shaping process for the body, in case he had difficulty seeing his fingers making some of the more intricate aspects of its design.
    When all was said and done, it had taken him a relatively long time to complete his portion of the project, since it had only taken about a minute for Skuld to finish her own. It was just as well, however, given that he was new to it all — for the most part — and had needed some help from Skuld a few times, who handled the assembly of the remote-controlled helicopter once he was done.
    When the helicopter in question took its first flight, and he looked up at it as it gained altitude, he was struck by a strange sense of vertigo. He'd never once seen himself being involved in the creation of such a thing, yet there it was, even if his role had been minor. It wasn't until then that he saw a glimpse of what his future as an alchemist could hold for him, despite everything that his mother had already shown him. He supposed it felt more... real, now that he could look at something and remember that one part that had given him trouble, or the feeling that came with making one last adjustment to complete his work.
    Apparently he had been a bit out of it, because Skuld had startled him a bit when she had offered him the remote control and asked, "Would you like to give it a try?"
    "Oh, uh, sure," he replied, as he accepted the remote control from her.
    After some instruction on how to use the remote control, Skuld opened the door to her room so he could fly it out. Instead of following after it, she told him to turn on the camera, and the video screen in the middle of the remote control lit up and began to show what was ahead of the helicopter. Using the camera as their eyes, they maneuvered the helicopter out of the house and into the backyard, where Ranma was eventually treated to the sight of the robot that he had seen earlier, only now its body was in a motorcycle-like configuration as it chased the girl that he had seen with it before. Once he realized that the girl was moving on wheels instead of running, it made him wonder if she might be another robot.
    "Those two," Skuld grumbled, with a light shake of her head, although he thought he heard something like fondness in her voice. Then, her expression became a bit mischievous as she held out her hand towards him and asked, "Can I see that for a second?"
    He handed the remote control over to her without a word, wondering what she planned to do with it. She pressed the button with the "hologram" label over it, and on the screen he saw another Skuld appear in the girl's path while she was looking over her shoulder. While he'd heard of holograms before, and he'd seen a few images during his time on the road, seeing a real-looking image being projected like that was new to him. Of course, the first thing that came to mind was how useful something like that might be in a fight, especially since he had yet to find anything — or anyone — that could teach him the legendary split-body technique.
    By the time that the girl had returned her attention to the fore, she was too close to the hologram to do more than brake. It wasn't enough to stop her from going through it, and her sudden deceleration caused a collision with the robot that had been chasing her, which had been following her too closely to avoid her in time.
    "Whoops," Skuld voiced, who had apparently not meant for that to happen.
    When the girl recovered, and noticed the robot lying on top of her, she sent one of her fists rocketing — literally — into its face, in order to knock him away, which confirmed that she was a robot to him. Then, her attention drifted up to the helicopter, with a disgruntled look on her face, and a second fist was sent toward the helicopter before Skuld could react, and soon the video screen on the remote control displayed nothing but static.
    They stood there awkwardly for a time, staring at the video screen, before Skuld sighed, turned it off and said, "Well, so much for that." She turned to face him and apologetically added, "Sorry. Sigel can be a bit rocket punch-happy when she's feeling harassed."
    If he had to be honest with himself, he wasn't really sure what he felt about the helicopter's demise. There was the part about losing the work that he had just put into it, of course, but it wasn't like he had received irreversible damage to one of his limbs, which would have had a negative impact on his ability as a martial artist. It wasn't like the robots outside, or Astraea, but was it fair to treat the helicopter differently just because it wasn't as relatable as they were? It wasn't like any of them had come into the world differently, if the only alternative was to be born in the manner that he had been.
    Before he could figure out how he should feel about it, or otherwise respond to Skuld, his attention was drawn to the engawa, right across from the open door, where the two robots from before were making their entrance into the house. The girl didn't look very happy about it, however, and he could only assume that it had something to do with having to be carried by the other robot rather than operating under her own power.
    They stopped in the doorway upon noticing him, and the girl regarded him with curiosity for a second before turning to Skuld and asking, "Who is this, mistress?"
    "This is our guest, Ranma," Skuld replied, before motioning toward the robots in turn as she introduced them to him. "Ranma, this is Sigel and Banpei."
    He held up a hand and casually said, "Hey."
    "It's nice to meet you," Sigel greeted, and did as much of a curtsy as she could in her position. She noticed the remote control while she was bowed forward, so her attention returned to Skuld as she leaned back and evenly asked, "Mistress, were you responsible for the hologram?"
    Skuld rubbed the back of her head and adopted a mildly apologetic expression. "Sorry about that. I just wanted to show Ranma what our helicopter could do. I didn't expect you to notice it so late."
    Sigel seemed to understand, since she waved the apology aside with her hand and blithely said, "It's just some minor damage to my knee joint that I can fix easily enough by myself, so it's no problem."
    "Well, you are getting enough practice..." Skuld remarked, in a judging sort of manner.
    Sigel had the decency to look embarrassed before she tried to change the subject. "So, is Ranma the same as you, mistress?"
    Ranms and Skuld blinked their eyes at that, turned to look at each other for insight, before the latter realized what Sigel was asking. "Oh, no, she's not a goddess: she's an alchemist."
    "Aren't you one, too?" Ranma inquired, simply out of curiosity.
    Skuld opened her mouth to respond, but the nature of the question — for whatever reason — seemed to caused her to pause and consider it at length. After a moment of that, which only served to agitate her, she eventually said, "Um... I don't know? I always thought that what Urd did was alchemy..."
    Before anyone could pursue that subject any further, an engine could be heard a short distance away, growing louder until it was evident that it was idling somewhere close to the house. Skuld was relieved to have the distraction, since she wasn't ready to question what it was that she did, due in part to the fact that she wasn't all that keen about having it associated with what her eldest sister did — even if in name only. That, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to know, since that might mean that even Belldandy had been holding out on her for some reason, which might be possible if her rising suspicions weren't unfounded.
    When the engine had gone silent, Skuld perkily said, "That must be Keiichi," then proceeded to ask Ranma to follow her and meet him, in order to ensure an escape from the prior subject.
    Ranma had no reason to do otherwise, and had nothing better to do while he waited for Skuld's sisters to finish their work on Astraea, so he allowed her to lead him elsewhere, which left Skuld's room to Sigel, who began to fix herself while Banpei was made to wait for her out in the hall. He was led to the front door, where a man had just stepped into the genkan from outside, who had been about to announce his arrival when he had noticed him and Skuld approaching. Assuming that the man in question was Keiichi, he was average as far as guys went, overall, although Ranma thought that he may have been a bit on the short side. His eyes were brown, set in an open and somewhat homely visage, and his dark hair was short in general but more closely cropped around the sides and back. He was dressed casually, in a T-shirt, blue jeans and sneakers, and on his left wrist he wore a watch.
    Keiichi was also carrying a couple of plastic bags, which Ranma assumed were filled with groceries. One in particular seemed to catch Skuld's interest, because she quickly covered the rest of the distance to it, snatched it away, hoisted it up into the air and cheerfully exclaimed, "Yes! Ice cream!"
    "That's not just for you," Keiichi informed her, with a bit of exasperation. "Belldandy thought that our guest might like some as well, so be sure to share it with her."
    "Really?" Ranma spoke up, who began to salivate at the thought of eating some ice cream. While he normally didn't have too much in the way of reservation when it came to eating something that he liked, being young again seemed to make it even easier for him to be tempted by such things, so etiquette tended to fall by the wayside. "I love ice cream!"
    Skuld perked up upon hearing that, since she had initially felt disappointment at having to share the ice cream with someone else, because it seemed that she had another notable thing in common with Ranma. "You do?" After receiving some vigorous nodding of the head in response, she winsomely added, "Well, come on, then!"
    Ranma followed Skuld to the living room as she hurried her way there, with neither giving any thought to the fact that there hadn't been any show of gratitude for the ice cream or any introductions made with Keiichi. It wasn't long before they were sitting at the table, each with two sundaes in plastic containers before them and plastic spoons in hand. As one, without meaning to, they removed a domed top from one of their bowls, scooped up a spoonful of ice cream, then delivered it to their mouths.
    "Mmmmm..." They both hummed their appreciation, as they savored their first bite.
    Noticing what they had just done, they stared at each other for a second before smiling, realizing that there was a real potential for them to be more than just a guest and a host. Neither had been looking for a friend at the beginning, but now there had been enough signs to give the idea some thought. Their apparent like for ice cream aside, Ranma was curious about having an ability that his mother had failed to mention, which he seemed to share with Skuld, and Skuld was intrigued by the fact that someone was willing to work with her despite how good she was at what she did, and the possibility that she could be the kind of alchemist that Ranma was.
    After he removed the spoon from his mouth, Ranma sighed and said, "Man, it's been too long since I've been able to enjoy something like this."
    "How come?" Skuld inquired, before indulging in another bite of her sundae.
    After taking another bite of his own sundae, Ranma said, "Well, for various reasons, but mostly due to a certain individual, I often didn't have a lot of money to spend." He paused to take another bite of ice cream. "Normally, if I'm really hankering for some ice cream, I could get a guy to buy me some, but now that I'm only six years old..."
    Skuld paused and blinked her eyes with incomprehension. "Guys would buy you ice cream? Just like that?"
    With his arms akimbo, Ranma proudly said, "I may not look like it right now, but I'm a real knockout when I'm older. Why, often enough, I didn't even have to do anything: guys were more than willing to approach me and offer to treat me to something."
    Skuld frowned, in part because it sounded like something that Urd would do. "Should you be taking advantage of them like that?"
    "Hey," Ranma replied defensively, "I never promised them anything. It's not my fault if they assume they're doing it for something in return." Ranma paused and raised a spoonful of ice cream into view before adding, "Besides, it's for ice cream, right? Ice cream."
    Skuld stroked her chin and looked to the side thoughtfully as her expression turned shrewd. "Well, when you put it like that..."
    "Don't be getting any ideas," a new voice interjected itself into the conversation.
    Ranma and Skuld turned to look toward the source of the voice. Near the entrance to the room they found Keiichi, who stood there with a somewhat beleaguered expression on his face, due to the imagined trouble that Skuld might cause to get ice cream from guys. It took a second for Ranma to recognize him, but — once he did — he rushed to his feet out of embarrassment, bowed and hurriedly said, "Oh, sorry! Name's Saotome Ranma! And thanks for the ice cream!"
    "Don't worry about it," Keiichi assured Ranma with a chuckle, before seating himself at the table and adding, "I'm Morisato Keiichi." His expression became one of curiosity upon asking, "So, you're from another universe, huh?"
    Ranma returned to his seat and nodded his head. "Yeah. From what I've seen so far, though, our universes hardly seem all that different." Between not knowing much about the universe that he was in, and having a thought that piqued his interest, Ranma went ahead and posed, "Say... You live here, right?"
    Keiichi nodded his head in affirmation.
    "You're not engaged to the sisters, are you?" Ranma followed up with, out of simple curiosity, since he couldn't help seeing certain parallels between Keiichi's living arrangements and what his own had once been.
    With a look of distaste, Skuld replied, "Me? Engaged to him?"
    Having not expected such a question, Keiichi could only regard Ranma with confusion as he made his reply. "Um... I'm married to Belldandy, actually. Why do you ask?"
    Since the answer would be personal, a bit complicated, and — above all — would be embarrassing on top of raising unwanted questions, Ranma smiled awkwardly, waved one hand from side to side frantically and evasively sputtered, "Oh, n-no reason... I was just, uh, curious."
    Keiichi and Skuld were both pretty sure that the question had been inspired by something, but neither pursued the subject since it was clear that Ranma wouldn't want to talk about it. Instead, Keiichi took the opportunity to change the subject. "I haven't heard much about your situation, but I understand that you're an alchemist?" Upon receiving a nod of confirmation, he added, "What does that involve?"
    "Hmmmm..." Ranma hummed thoughtfully, with his arms crossed and brow furrowed, as he tried to think of a way to explain what he did — despite being so new to it — to someone who may not be all that familiar with his version of it. "Well, I'm new to this myself, but my workshop has a lot of stuff that you see in a chemistry lab, so I guess there's that."
    Keiichi nodded his head, and wondered if the alchemy in question was anything like Urd's, since it sounded a bit like what the goddess of the past used.
    "And there's this big cauldron," Ranma went on. "I think that's the main tool that we use. I don't know what we're limited to making with it, but from what I've seen I'd be more surprised if there was a limit."
    Keiichi began to nod his head, but paused before he could follow through with it, since using a cauldron sounded more like something a witch would use. Imagining Urd hovering over a bubbling cauldron, and cackling as she stirred in ingredients that were better off censored even to his mind's eye, caused him to shudder.
    While directing his gaze at Skuld, Ranma finished up by saying, "Also, it seems I can do the same kind of thing with my hands that Skuld can do, but I don't know if that counts as alchemy." That gave both Keiichi and Skuld pause, to the extent that he noticed and decided to comment on it, since he had no idea as to why they would respond to his words in such a way. "What? Was it something I said?"
    "Oh, no," Keiichi reassured Ranma with a weak smile, who tried to think of a good excuse for his reaction even as he spared Skuld a furtive glance.
    He was just worried that the youngest Norn would discover her talent for direct-manipulation magic, which both Urd and Belldandy seemed intent to keep her in the dark about for the time being. He wasn't entirely sure of what to think about their motives for doing so, but — at the very least — he trusted Belldandy's judgement. Considering the possibility that her ability was the same as Ranma's, and thus had yet to realize that she could do more with direct-manipulation magic than build machines, he could see why there would be some concern until Skuld proved to be a more responsible individual.
    Fortunately for him, he was spared having to come up with an excuse because Skuld pensively told Ranma, "I was just wondering if you'd want me to be your teacher."
    In truth, that was actually more of an afterthought. What she really wanted to do was find out if she could make things in the way that was traditional for Ranma, whether it was called alchemy or not. She'd long since been convinced that no one worked with her because she was so advanced at what she did, and would thus be held back by others rather than helped, but Ranma — even as a human — had cast some doubt upon that.
    After all, she had never seen any of her fellow gods and goddesses make anything, but she had nonetheless assumed that how they did things would be no different from her own method. However, what if what she and Ranma could do was the exception for both humans and her own kind? She had to know, but she didn't want Keiichi to be aware of what she intended to do, in case there was an actual effort to keep her ignorant about her ability, so what she had ended up doing was present a reason that would allow her to have further contact with Ranma in the future.
    As for the aforementioned reason, Ranma looked undecided, which was made clear when he said, "I don't know... If it turns out that mom doesn't know about it, I might. It's just that I have a lot going on right now, and I don't know if I'm ready to make any more long-term plans either."
    Since Keiichi believed that Skuld was still safely ensconced in the dark, about the matter concerning her ability, and because he still didn't have a believable explanation for his prior reaction, he made a show of looking at his watch before saying, "Well, I would have liked to stay a bit longer, but I should be heading off to work."
    Remembering one of the main reasons for why he had come to visit Ranma and Skuld in the first place, he paused while in the middle of getting to his feet and told the latter, "Oh, when you see Belldandy, be sure to tell her that I've already informed Chihiro that she will be arriving late today."
    "It was nice to meet you, Ranma," were his amiably-delivered parting words, before he walked away from the table and left the room.
    While Ranma immediately returned his attention to his ice cream and began to dig in, Skuld stared at her own as her thoughts continued to be arrested by a more important subject, although the temptation to eat it made her manipulate it with her spoon in an absent-minded fashion. However, it didn't take long for Ranma to notice her mood, between her lack of ice cream consumption and how she was silent even though her mouth wasn't being occupied by the food of the gods.
    After swallowing his latest bite of ice cream, Ranma asked, "What's up?"
    Skuld glanced up at Ranma and considered how she should respond, before deciding that being secretive and manipulative probably wouldn't work, if for no other reason than the fact that she couldn't come up with a good plan toward achieving such ends. "Um... Would you be willing to test me, so I can find out if I'm an alchemist like you or not?"
    Between her request and the serious expression on her face, it made Ranma pause and put his spoon down, in order to give her his undivided attention. "I don't see why not. I'd need to find out exactly what was used for my test, first, and I can bring a cauldron if you don't—"
    "Can you test me at your place?" Skuld interrupted.
    Now that he was sure that something was up, he made his reservations known as he cautiously asked, "Why?"
    "Because..." Skuld replied, who had to pause due to not having worked out exactly how she desired to word things. In the end, she decided to give up on that tact, so she sighed and said, "Look, I think my sisters have been keeping me in the dark about my... ability, if that's what it is. I just want to confirm whether that's the case or not without them finding out."
    Ranma blinked his eyes as he took a moment to assess the situation, what it seemed to be about, and observed the fact that the request was coming from someone that he had only just met. Well, he had certainly helped worse in terms of strangers, even if just basing them on appearances, so... "Alright, I suppose I can help you." While Skuld was clearly showing her relief, he couldn't help adding, "But, why would they keep it a secret from you?"
    "I don't know," Skuld replied, who slouched at the prospect of Belldandy being involved, even though she'd like to think that her older sister would have her best interests at heart if that turned out to be the case. "Should I pass your test, I might confront them about it... I might not."
    Seeing that she was feeling conflicted enough about it for him to notice, Ranma thought that it might be better to take her mind off of the current subject for the time being, so he assumed a cheerful demeanor and suggested, "Well, we wouldn't want our ice cream to go to waste, right? There's no use worrying about things until you get a better idea of what's going on."
    That suggestion was good enough for Skuld to heed, who perked back up and prepared to attack her ice cream with renewed vigor. As they ate, she asked Ranma what the extent of his education was, just to get an idea of what to expect to work with if he decided to learn her "hands-on" technique. Once she had that, she informed him what kind of things he'd need to know to be as good as she was at it, which he clearly found to be a daunting prospect. After that, Skuld inquired about the kinds of things that could be made in a cauldron, and a fair number of the examples that Ranma described — based on what he remembered from his mother's exhibition — sounded either strange or unbelievable.
    Eventually, the topic came around to their hobbies and specialties, which was where they began to see their differences. Fortunately, there wasn't anything that was a cause for friction between them, and some of the ancillary details hinted at similarities in personality: neither liked to lose, were pretty sure of themselves, and they could become quite stubborn when presented with a challenge. Of course, when it came to verbal examples of what Ranma could do as a martial artist, Skuld required visual confirmation, what with him supposedly being human and all — even despite being from another universe.
    It was while Ranma was demonstrating his physical prowess in the garden that they were interrupted by a whistle of appreciation. When they turned to look toward the engawa, they found Urd standing there casually, with her arms crossed, who — upon gaining their attention — said, "Sorry for interrupting such an impressive display, but I figured you'd want to know that the operation was a success."
    Ranma bounded over to her, with Skuld following at her own pace, and asked, "Really? So she's okay?"
    Urd nodded her head. "Pretty much. All that's left is for you to wake her up."
    "It has to be me?" Ranma questioned.
    "Seems like it," Urd responded, with a mild shrug of the shoulders. "She was already asleep, technically, so the slave program could control her. Since we couldn't wake her up, and we didn't want to mess with her mind because of its complexity, we imagine that she was put into that state by a command. That means that it was likely given by someone of distant relation to you, which would make you the best candidate for waking her up right now."
    Ranma frowned with confusion. "How does that not make her a slave?"
    "Well," Skuld began to field the query, since she had plenty of experience with the subject in question, "you don't want your creations running off on you, or doing whatever they want, right? It's pretty much convention to set some basic rules and behaviors. Besides, for all we know, she could simply be in this state because it facilitates the ability to perform maintenance on her."
    Ranma wasn't completely convinced that it was fine, but it made enough sense for him to nod his head anyway. Aside from the fact that there wasn't anything that he could do about it, he wouldn't really know what he would be dealing with until Astraea woke up. So, he proceeded to follow Urd into the house, in order to find out what the situation would actually be.
    Along the way, Urd tossed over her shoulder, "Oh, and that slave program heavily relied on Astraea's hardware in order to perform, and that included her memory."
    "Is that bad?" Ranma worriedly asked.
    "Depends," Urd replied. "If her original memory was wiped, all she would know is her life of slavery. Whether it was or not, there's no telling what she has experienced up until now, or for how long."
    When they entered Urd's room, Belldandy looked up and greeted them with a smile from where she still sat on the floor. Since Urd and Skuld joined her, Ranma decided to do the same, who knelt beside Astraea before asking, "So, what exactly do I have to do to wake her up?"
    "Why, the same way one wakes up any sleeping beauty," Urd coyly answered. At Ranma's blank stare, she added, "You kiss them, of course!"
    "K-kiss!?" Ranma sputtered, his eyes wide. "B-but..."
    "She was only joking," Belldandy quickly intervened, who reached over and rested her hand on Ranma's upper arm in order to placate him. "You don't have to kiss her."
    "I don't?" Ranma asked, who was clearly relieved by the news.
    Skuld spared her eldest sister a look of contempt as she remarked, "Urd says stuff like that because that's all she has room for in her brain."
    Urd raised her fist at Skuld and retorted, "What was that, you little—"
    Belldandy placed her hand over Urd's fist and regarded her with a frown, then spared Skuld a look of disapproval. "This is no time for fighting. We need to be prepared for Astraea's awakening, in whatever capacity that may be required."
    While Urd and Skuld had the decency to look sheepish, Ranma turned to Belldandy with obvious concern and asked, "What do you mean? She's not going to go ballistic or something, is she?"
    Belldandy shook her head. "We don't know. From what we've been able to gather, it's likely that she won't be overly affected by what happened, but without knowing more of the particulars concerning her system and memories, there's really no guarantee as to how she will handle the situation."
    Ranma mulled over what to do for a moment before deciding to go ahead and wake Astraea up. The slave programming was gone, so the only other option was to keep her asleep until... what? When? While he could have asked about other options, should they have been available, he still felt pressed for time, so he was more inclined to believe that everything would work out. If not, well... Hopefully the goddesses would be able to handle things if he couldn't.
    Once he made up his mind, he turned his attention to Astraea and calmly said, "Astraea, wake up."
    Astraea's eyes opened immediately, and she sat up straight a split second later. Her eyes still had that dull, thoughtless look to them as she stared ahead, and — for a moment — those around her exchanged looks of worry, but she eventually fluttered her eyelids and the dullness of her eyes was cleared away.
    Since the slave programming had hijacked her own system for many of its functions, she knew very well how long she had been enslaved, who her current masters were, and had a sense of what the current situation was. Aside from the last day's worth of memories, as far as they were relevant to her latest master, she forwent addressing the six-thousand, four-hundred and eighty-three years that she had been asleep. It wasn't so much that she couldn't handle it, due in no small part to the fact that her state of mind — at the time — made her so detached as to make it seem like watching a movie instead of remembering an experience, but because the moments that preceded being put to sleep dominated her attention.
    Tears came to her eyes as she remembered her creator's cousin, his protégé, apologize to her before commanding her to standby as he delivered a poisoned beverage to said creator, one that would incapacitate him. While her creator wasn't exactly naive or socially inept, he had placed a lot of trust in his cousin, and tended to be absent-minded while he was preoccupied with his work, so he hadn't spared a thought for the beverage until he had given it a taste. By then, of course, it had been too late.
    As it turned out, her creator's cousin had been coerced by his uncle — by what, she never learned. His uncle, once he had been established as one of her masters, struck his nephew down on the spot, who had gasped out something about a promise before dying. Aside from acquiring her, the man had also had designs for her creator, something about harnessing his spirit and thus having control over his talent as an alchemist. It was fortunate that he hadn't succeeded, but it came with the unfortunate consequence of her creator's death, because his spirit had ended up being torn apart in his effort to resist what was being done to him.
    As she broke down and sobbed into her hands at the memory, the goddesses looked on in sympathy while Ranma was at a loss at what to do. He'd never been good at handling emotional moments like these, even when he cared and wanted to help, so he turned his attention to Belldandy, with the idea of having her comfort Astraea in his stead. However, before he could express that idea, Belldandy took his helpless expression to mean that he needed encouragement, which entailed doing the very thing that he had hoped would be taken care of by another. If he didn't know any better, she — and possibly the other two goddesses — hadn't taken the initiative out of some belief that his own actions took precedence where Astraea's wellbeing was concerned.
    He looked back at Astraea, worried his bottom lip in hesitation, then moved closer to her and awkwardly wrapped one of his small arms across her back. It was an uncomfortable position for him to be in, between not knowing what to say or if he was being of any help, but he endured for decency's sake if nothing else. Eventually, whether helped by his efforts or not, her sobs abated and she uncovered her eyes, which she directed into his own before they began to glow.
    Astraea didn't know much about Ranma, beyond being Nodoka's child and normally not being so young or female, so she decided to glean more information about her new master with her extensive extrasensory resources. Since she had no record for him already, she figured that such senses had been far too intrusive for her to be allowed to use them without being ordered, although — now that she reviewed her time with his mother — she wasn't certain if Nodoka was even aware of how much she could perceive.
    What she saw came as a great surprise, which she managed to hide beyond an initial facial twitch. The chances were so low as to be nigh impossible, yet — after being separated by so much time — her latest master housed the same spirit as her creator. While there were some irregularities that she wasn't learned about, or had experienced previously, there was no confusing the integral qualities that defined each spirit. She hadn't a chance to form an opinion about fate before her enslavement, but now she wondered if there might be something to it. The real conundrum, however, was what she would do with the information that she had just learned.
    Noticing that her master was stiff and eying her warily, probably due to the glowing quality of her eyes, she ceased her inspection and took in her surroundings, in order to get a better grasp of her circumstances. She found herself joined by three others in the room, two women and a girl, although her light, passive senses detected that there was something peculiar about their physical forms. Wanting to know just who — exactly — her master was associating with, she decided to inspect them as well.
    She discovered that the ones who were likely responsible for her freedom were beings from a higher dimension, using a specialized, continuous process in order to maintain a corporeal form in the third dimension. Unlike her master, they seemed to understand what she was doing, so they weren't alarmed by her glowing eyes. It wasn't until her eyes settled upon the youngest of the three, though, that anything remarkable made itself known, and in a truly unexpected way.
    "What?" Skuld asked, who wasn't sure if Astraea's lingering, wide-eyed gaze was good or bad.
    Realizing what she was doing, Astraea blinked her eyes and ceased her inspection. "I apologize," she offered, as her racing mind quickly came up with an excuse — based on another detail that she had noticed — that was potentially relevant to what she had seen. "I just wasn't expecting to encounter extra-dimensional entities who seem to have some form of sway over time, especially over the future."
    "You noticed that, huh?" Urd commented, as impressed as she was unconcerned. "That's a pretty good eye you've got there."
    "Eh?" Ranma voiced his confusion, as he tried to figure out exactly what was being spoken about.
    Belldandy turned to Ranma and helpfully supplied, "As goddesses, we not only represent the past, present and future," she gestured to Urd, herself and Skuld while speaking, in the order spoken, "but our powers are reflective of our nature as well."
    "I see..." Ranma deliberately replied, who did, even if only for the most part. He wasn't sure if them being goddesses was now irrefutable, but something about their ties with time tickled at the back of his mind, as if it were something that he had heard before.
    Belldandy proceeded to focus her attention on Astraea with obvious concern. "How are you faring?"
    "I'll be fine," Astraea assured the goddess of the present.
    Ordinarily she would have been heavy-hearted, but what she had witnessed with Ranma and the goddess of the future was enough to raise her spirits and inspire her to look forward to the future despite the recent — from her perspective — tragedy. It also helped that she had decided to reserve all but the last few decades of her memories to reference for the time being, so she wouldn't risk having any of those memories weighing on her mind unless something came up that was both relevant and important. While she was sure that she could handle whatever had happened to her during her enslavement, she felt that there were more important things to attend to first.
    "So, uh," Ranma began awkwardly, who wanted to address the elephant in the room because of how it would affect him, "now that you're free, what do you plan to do?"
    Astraea adjusted how she was seated, so she could face Ranma properly, and offered him a small smile. "I'll continue to be at your service, of course."
    Confused, Ranma asked, "It's not because you have to, is it?"
    Astraea maintained her smile while she hid her amusement, in light of Ranma's ignorance. "Let's just say that I could go my own way, if I felt like it, unless you explicitly forbade me."
    Ranma wanted to make an issue out of that, but he got the impression that he wouldn't win the argument. Aside from that, not only would it be hypocritical of him to command Astraea to go do her own thing, whether she truly wanted to stick with him or not, he wasn't so sure that his mother would be as inclined to believe him about Astraea's situation without the homunculus there to prove the reality of the matter. Of course, regardless of whether Astraea returned with him or not, the real issue was whether his mother was even of the mind to release Astraea from her bondage, since he didn't know her well enough to be sure of how she would react to the current state of things. All he could do was hope that she was understanding enough to leave Astraea to her own devices.
    So, instead of arguing, he decided to address what concerned him about Astraea's decision, since she probably knew his mother better than he did. "What about my mom?"
    Astraea reflected on that question for a second, since it brought to mind her experiences with Ranma's mother. At first, she had been the servant of Nodoka's great aunt, and had been the little girl's playmate whenever she made a house call that didn't include any business having to do with alchemy. Then, when Nodoka was old enough, she had acted as a teacher for a number of subjects, in part because of the limitations of the school's curriculum — regarding things like alchemy in particular — and availability on the part of her family. However, while Nodoka hadn't thought of her as being much more than a tool by the time that she had inherited her from her great aunt, she had still remembered her childhood playmate and pretended to have a daughter when she had grown especially lonely, during the time when her husband and son were on their training journey. It hadn't lasted long, though, which she supposed was due to a mix of guilt and the unreality of the relationship.
    "I don't think she'll have any objections," she replied, with a reasonable amount of confidence.
    With that concern more or less put to rest, Ranma proceeded to thank the goddesses for their help. Then, after bringing up his need to leave and confront his mother with what had happened, which led to some small talk that promised a welcome return in the future, Skuld voiced her desire to visit him in his own universe, on the basis of friendship rather than her prime objective. Much to her relief, Belldandy said that she had her blessing after giving it some thought, but added that she would have to wait until her license was updated to include interuniversal travel. Urd didn't say anything on the matter, having chosen to regard Belldandy with a dubious expression on her face instead.
    Before Ranma and Astraea left, Belldandy inquired about their method of interuniversal travel. When presented with the key, she offered to change its coordinates so that it would take the user to an isolated part of the garden. Upon receiving their consent, she murmured a spell that would do just that, and then Ranma and Astraea returned to their own universe after some final goodbyes.
    Not that long afterward, when Belldandy was alone in the dressing room and about to travel through the mirror to get to work, Urd came up to her and somberly asked, "Are you sure it'll be alright if Skuld is allowed to spend more time with Ranma? I mean, we knew the risks before she got here, and made a gamble when we decided to treat Ranma's brand of alchemy as if it weren't unwelcome, but we won't have any control over the situation if Skuld's by herself in that kind of environment."
    Belldandy turned her back on the mirror and faced Urd, her expression a somewhat hopeful one, with a touch resignation. "It was never a sure thing to begin with. But, if it's going to happen before she has matured enough, it might be better if we allow her to discover the truth alongside a peer and friend."
    Urd's brow furrowed slightly as she considered that, before pointing out, "But we hardly know anything about Ranma." Wondering if her sister's decision had anything to do with her knack for feeling out the truth of things, she added, "Are you sure that she'll be a good influence?"
    Belldandy smiled slightly and said, "I think so. Actually, I was kind of surprised at how well they seemed to connect to each other."
    "Really?" Urd responded, somewhat incredulously. "It didn't look like anything special, to me."
    "I agree," Belldandy replied, with a nod of her head. "I'm not sure of its exact nature, but I have no doubt that they have a rapport, however slight it might be."
    With a slightly disgruntled sigh, Urd looked off into the distance and scratched at the back of her head as she said, "I guess we'll just have to wait and see how things turn out. Skuld'll just get suspicious if we keep her away from Ranma, at this point."
    "I'm sure it'll turn out alright," came Belldandy's optimistic reply.
    With that said, Belldandy excused herself and entered the mirror, in order to go to work. Urd stared after her for a moment, not feeling as optimistic as her sister, and thought, "I hope you're right..."