I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

Tatsuno (since the official name change) Ranma glanced around the dojo from where the new/young succubus floated in one corner. The open room looked very different from its usual airy openness. The sun had set so the light was the soft glow of the candles and braziers bordering various circles combined with the outside night to form walls to replace those the succubus could barely see.

Those multi-colored sand and chalk circles faintly glowing with residual magic took up most of the floor space, two large circles in the middle with three smaller circles bordered by braziers for the three Amazon elders on one side and two more bordered by candles for Nabiki and Nodoka on the other, leaving the larger circles in the middle to an ordered outline of flowers and crystals. The smaller circles and one of the larger ones were pasted onto large paper mats, leaving only one on the bare polished wooden floor. (The Amazon elders had been impressed with the concept of the circle mats when asked to help create theirs, and Ku Lon and Dao Paz had promptly started discussing the possibility of woven circle mats before Lo Shun had dryly suggested they focus on preparations for the ceremony first.)

Ranma's lover and mother were both dressed in the robes that Nodoka called her working uniform. Like the dojo's walls those robes were translucent, but the kanji embroidered along the edges and the katanas both wore shone with power (though Nabiki looked less than comfortable with the extra weight, unnecessary this time but Nodoka insisted for the sake of building good habit). To Ranma's succubus vision both women seemed to radiate magic (they had spent most of the day in meditation and ritual cleansing preparing for the night's ritual, and Ranma was still slightly grumpy about not being able to skip the half-Saturday of school like Nabiki), so much so that she had trouble making out their faces — and in the case of her mother she was careful to look only at her face; she was getting accustomed to her attraction to the apparently bare bodies constantly on display while she was a nature spirit (which was most of the time), but she didn't want to get used to feeling that attraction to her mother's exercise-shaped nakedness.

The Amazon elders, too, had spent the day performing their own cleansing rituals. But for the three of them, it had involved performing a series of group dances performed on the grass of the Tendo yard between house and dojo to the double-beat of drums hammered out by one of their warriors and her husband (softly, to avoid disturbing Nabiki and Nodoka inside the house), interspersed with chants while kneeling and bathing in pungent smoke from braziers kept fed by other warriors and their husbands.

In fact, the only Amazons not involved were Shan Pu and Pa Fum, and the only reason the Champion and her wife were guarding the camp was in case their wandering husband returned. (Akane wasn't involved, either. But however unhappy she was about not being involved, her still-healing ankle precluded it.)

Now those five smaller circles were all occupied by their intended recipients, all radiating an oddly peaceful tension except Nabiki, who was just tense. Ranma spared her lover a soft smile where the middle Tendo stood in her circle beside her sensei, her sprite familiar sitting on her shoulder and katana on loan from Nodoka at her waist. Seeing Nabiki's and Nodoka's nods, Ranma refocused on the large circle toward the middle of the dojo, the one that wasn't pasted on paper. There in the center lay Genma on his back, his massive bear arms and legs circling Dr. Tofu lying on top of him. The kanpo was blindfolded with a gag locking a mouth guard in place, his body bound by leather and cloth cords and even wrapped with some chains they'd managed to locate. It was the best they could to, and they'd just have to hope it was enough.

Everyone looked as ready as they could be. Ranma called out, "We're ready."

Instantly, Kasumi rushed through the dojo's open door, her simple white robe billowing about her legs and brown hair still damp-dark from her own purifying bath sticking to her neck and back, radiating equal parts fear and hope. She paused at the edge of the empty large circle pasted on paper, hiked up her robe, and stepped to the middle to carefully lie down. She took several deep breaths for steadying calm and nodded, a nod perhaps only Ranma saw thanks to her ability to see the life energy of all living things — but in this case, that light actually seemed to be dimming as the same dark, ugly, slimy aura seemed to ooze from her, reaching for and intermingling with the same terrible aura from a suddenly thrashing Dr. Tofu, fighting against the Panda's arms and legs pinning him in place. Damn, so much fer the blindfold keepin' him from knowing she's there, Ranma thought as she softly called out, "Go, we're good!"

The Amazon men lining the back wall behind their Elders instantly started beating a low, complex rhythm and small drums as their wives chanted in a language Ranma had never heard before, or anything like it — whatever it was, it no relation to the Japanese she knew or the Chinese she'd heard on the last stages of the training trip. The Elders started their own chant, their voices merging with those of their warriors. And ... it was working! Those horrible auras linking Kasumi and Dr. Tofu wasn't growing any less, but they were ... pulling apart? Tofu's fit seemed to be easing off a little — and Nodoka and Nabiki joined in.

Nodoka and the Elders had had several long discussions over the past almost two weeks since Akane's victory over Kodachi, but in the end they couldn't see any way for them to join together in a single ceremony — the worldview underlying their respective rituals were simply too different to be merged, at least not in the time they had. So instead, they had divided the night's work into two spheres of responsibility, and as the Elders fought to mitigate the impact of the curse on Tofu Nodoka and Nabiki's voices rose in a chant that Nodoka had worked out and then Nabiki had translated into Esperanto to attack the curse itself — and ... it was working!

Ranma's hands brushed her floating fiery-red hair back out of her face, away from her eyes, holding the breath she didn't actually need as she stared. The curse's black aura was fading, becoming more translucent, the slimy feeling that made her want to take a bath fading! And more important, the Doc's writhing was easing off. Her fists clenched and a manic grin spread across her face as a wave of joyful triumph from the others washed over her.

But the curse seemed to realize it was under assault, almost as if it was alive, and it began to cast off additional streamers from both Kasumi and Dr. Tofu, fighting to connect, to strengthen the link. The triumphalism faded, turned desperate as the volume of the Elders' voices raised to fight against the curses' attempt to rejoin, and began to drown out the chanting of their Japanese counterparts. Nabiki's voice faltered for a heartbeat as the Amazons' rhythm interfered with her own and the fading curses darkened for a moment before she recovered, then her and Nodoka's voices grew louder as they fought to avoid being drowned out. The two chants mingled and clashed, one thread of the multitude streaming from Kasumi snapped through to connect with Tofu and with a burst of mania that made Ranma wince he began to convulse — and with a wet crack both bones in his right forearm snapped.

Instantly, Nodoka broke off her chant to shout, "Kasumi, out, now!" The paper foundation for the ritual circle tore as the eldest Tendo daughter sprang to her feet and rushed from the room into the night-darkened yard, and Nodoka sighed as the chanting and drumbeats from the rest broke off. She turned to her currently-daughter to find Ranma shaking from the whipsawing backlash of emotions she'd just been through. Nabiki walked over to pull her fiancé into a hug as Peach Fuzz flew a circle around the pair before settling on her fellow nature spirit's shoulder to rub her head against Ranma's cheek. Nodoka joined them, wrapping her own arms around them in a group hug, but waited until Ranma fought her shivering under control before stepping back and asking, "What did you see?"

Ranma reported in a tight, over-controlled voice, shivering in Nabiki's arms as she remembered that disgusting, slimy feeling of the curse brushing across her, and felt her fiancée's arms tighten around her. She wiggled for a moment, luxuriating in the feeling of soft skin on skin through the robes and trying to ignore the bitter disappointment Nabiki was radiating.

"We were so close!" the middle Tendo burst out when Ranma finished.

"No, child, we were not."

Ranma looked down at the shrunken, ancient woman balancing on her staff. The succubus had been so caught up in her lover's embrace and attempting to push away the memory of the disgusting touch of the curse her retelling had invoked that she hadn't sensed the approach of the blazing torch of Ku Lon's ki. "What d'ya mean?" she asked.

"Just what I said," Ku Lon snarled, then sucked in a deep breath as she fought her own disappointment under control. "The curse's resistance rose to match our own strength," she finally continued, "and I did not sense any diminution in its increase as it did so. I suspect it would have been able to continue to do so however strong our own attempt was — whatever demon was responsible for this curse, we cannot match its raw power."

"So that's it?" Ranma asked. "There's nothin' we can do fer Kasumi an' the Doc?"

Nodoka glanced over at the other large multi-colored circle and smiled approvingly when she found the Amazon men were already dealing with unbinding a once again sane Tofu, one of them supporting him on his feet and another keeping his broken arm steady as a third unwrapped him while around them their warrior wives snuffed out the candles. The circle was hopelessly smeared, but it wasn't like they'd be trying again anytime soon if at all ... not this way. "No, that's not 'it'," she replied, returning her attention to her disappointed child, running her fingers through Ranma's shiny-soft hair. "It just means we won't be able to defeat the curse by overpowering it. Every curse has a weak point, a loose-hanging thread one can pull on to unravel it, we simply have to find it."

Nabiki sighed. "So much for the easy way." She twisted her head to get Ranma's hair out of her face, then looked down at Ku Lon over her armful's shoulder. "But you did your part, I'll have the rest of your payment to you tomorrow when Ranma and I pass the park on the way to the train station."

"Oh?" Nodoka queried, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, Ranma and I still need to return those scrolls Genma stole from the Buddhist temple in Nekomi. I thought we'd make a day of it." Nabiki's eyes met Nodoka's over Ranma's head, and Nodoka nodded. However serene a front Kasumi might put up, she had to be mourning over the night's failure. Returning the scrolls was the perfect excuse for getting the two empaths out of the dojo for the day while hiding the fact that they were avoiding their grieving sister/future sister-in-law.

"Very well, no training tomorrow. But you leave after you help clean up the dojo," Nodoka added. "But that's for the morning, tonight Kasumi is going to need us."