Really, I'm seventeen years old!

"Hey, kid. You okay?" The coarse speech and masculine voice coming from on top of the wall she was walking beside made Nabiki freeze. She knew that voice.

"Hm?" She glanced up and back at her sister's fiancé. Fortunately it seemed like he hadn't recognised her without her day to day disguise active, a small blessing at least. She fixed him with a cool, dismissive smirk. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she informed him, "and it'd be hard to be stranger than you."

"Been in a fight." He observed, without approaching. "Way too calm for a kid who just got attacked." She could see the tension building in him as he got ready to move. "Ah, shit. I bet there's a ring on your finger full of black, too. There aint one of them magical hags around, is there?"

"Just what do you know about witches?" Nabiki asked, narrowing her eyes. "You clearly aren't a Magical Girl, and I don't remember seeing you around before."

"Tchih... I know enough not to get between you and them, little kid or not." Ranma said. "Look, Magical Girl-chan. I can tell you're pretty tough from here, but one day you're gonna get in over your head. Look me up at the Tendo Dojo. Name's Saotome."

"And what, you'll make the big bad monster go away? There's no such thing as heroes, Saotome-san." She shook her head and turned to walk away.

"Sure there is." Ranma's voice carried his cocky smirk. "There's us."


A week later, Nabiki felt herself drifting off as she sat in the stands at the skating rink. She was so tired. It rarely felt like she had enough time to sleep at the best of times, but she had been dealing with more witches than ever since Saotome had shown up, almost like he attracted them.

It hadn't been this way at first, back when she'd first made her contract. She'd been able to cleanse her Soul Gem all the way, and had barely needed to sleep at all she'd been so full of energy. She'd learned a few 'home truths' since then.

Her body no longer demanded rest and sustenance, although she still felt hunger – her abilities never deteriorated for a lack of food or sleep beyond a slight darkening of her Soul Gem if she went without either for an extended period.

She'd noticed the other benefits even sooner. She was no stranger to pain – her father had been teaching his children martial arts since they could walk, after all – but the transformation had deadened the pain she felt, as well as making her physically stronger. She had almost given the game away the first time she had sparred with Akane after the funeral, not initially realising the difference. She'd had to stop training openly after that, although she continued to practice in private.

A few experiments had proven to her that her newfound strength wasn't any kind of magical enhancement. It was a side effect of the same effect that stopped her from being incapacitated when she was injured. Her body could no longer tell when it was damaging itself, and so the usual limitations it imposed over itself were no longer functioning, allowing her to apply a hundred percent strength constantly. She had been hurting herself without realising it – tearing ligaments and straining bones.

Of course, the nastiest surprise had come two years into her career as a Magical Girl, when she had realised that while her classmates were shooting up inches at a time, and her haemonculus was growing breasts, she may as well still have been eight years old. Six months later, things still hadn't changed.

She had a long talk with Kyubey about that. Suffice to say, the facts of Magical Girl life had not gone down well with the by then veteran. She was functionally immortal, her body nothing more than an animated meat puppet effectively no different to the paper, clay and mist shikigami she fought with.

Her Soul Gem had never quite recovered from the darkness that had flooded it with the knowledge of her lost humanity, a pitch core remaining at the very apex of the egg no matter how many seeds she used to cleanse it.

That kernel had only deepened as she had started using her creation magic to build herself a semi-real growth spurt. There were congratulations all round when she suddenly became the tallest girl in her class the week before her elementary school graduation, after lagging behind for so long. By the time she started Junior High the following April, however, she had let herself fall back into the middle of the pack. She had realised the benefit of being ordinary and easy to overlook.

A crash and a feminine shriek dragged her back to awakeness. This was what she was here for, spying in her true form once more. Mikado Sanzenin had just met Ranma Saotome again for the first time, and naturally this time his reaction had been completely different. She didn't want another surprise like the Kuno girl - this time she was going to know everything before setting the odds.

Fortunately, her ability to shed her seventeen-year-old guise and return to her eight-year-old body afforded her with some measure of stealth. Nobody would know she had been watching both groups train to better fix her bets. She winced as the Kolkhoz pair showed off their incredible crowd-control abilities, although honestly it wasn't anything Akane couldn't have done on her own... she watched with a kind of growing horror as events unfolded on the rink below her, shaking her head and sitting back after the skater sent Ranma, now a boy, flying.

"What a mess..." She muttered to herself. This was the braggart who had offered to 'help' her with Witches?

"I don't think I like the way you're looking at my meal ticket, little girl." She was brought from her thoughts by a girl's voice as the speaker sat in the chair next to her. Nabiki gave her a once-over before returning her eyes to the rink. The girl was about eleven, maybe twelve, with short blonde hair that looked like it had been hacked off with a knife. She had dirty, chipped fingernails, hard-wearing and roughly cleaned clothes, and wore walking boots.

Nabiki didn't need to see the ring on her finger to identify the girl as a rogue Magical Girl without a territory. A veteran from the way she carried herself.

"I was wondering when you would arrive." She replied, snidely. "The rate Saotome attracts Witches, it's no wonder he's picked up an ambulance chaser too."

"Tch." The girl sneered at her. "You think you're all that just 'cause you made a contract?" She asked. "This is your one warning, and you only get it 'cause you're a kid. This town's mine now, 'till he moves on again. Got it?"

Nabiki almost laughed out loud, barely manage to constrain her reaction to a sarcastic chuckle.

"You have no idea, do you? Did you even ask Kyubey about Nerima before you came here?"

"Hmph. All that rat said was that it was claimed by an old lady... which you aint."

"Seventeen." Nabiki informed her, serenely. "But I guess a newbie like you wouldn't have noticed it yet..."

"Tch, pull the other one, brat. Noticed what?"

"Magical Girls don't age." Nabiki said. "That cute body you've been neglecting? It's just a corpse, pretending to be something it's not."

"How dare you?" The blonde stood, her pupils contracting with near-berserker levels of anger. "Tonight. Be there, little girl. I will crush you."

"If you insist," Nabiki glanced up at the angry girl, dismissively. "I was going to just let you hunt freely for a mere twenty thousand yen per month, but if you insist on fighting over it..."

"You aren't scared at all." The blonde relaxed herself with a visible effort. "Maybe you do have the power to back up that attitude. And you know what? I can take that deal. Better than betting on an unknown strength in known powerhouse territory. Name's Ikari. Yumei."

"Tendo Nabiki." Nabiki replied, nodding to her. "Nice doing business. First money by tonight, final payment within four weeks or I will break your Soul Gem myself."

End