"Son of a bitch!" Nabiki yelled, staring at her computer screen. Akane, who was passing her room at the time, came in to find out what was going on. The elder girl was home during a short holiday, normally she stayed at the university accommodation as much as possible, due to the somewhat strained household relationships. Genma and Nodoka were still living in the Tendo house after nearly two and a half years, which slightly puzzled her, but at the same time it at least meant that edible food was being cooked. Soun was even slowly recovering his mental health, reaching the point that he had been discussing with the other martial artist the idea of taking on a few students.
Of course, where to teach them would be the problem, the Dojo itself was still only half-rebuilt, due to a lack of funds. It at least had a roof without holes now. They were thinking of renting space in a nearby warehouse, with the thought that they could put any money earned into completing the rebuilding. Nabiki was all for the idea, but privately felt it was pretty ambitious for a pair of middle-aged albeit undeniably very good martial artists, especially as one of them was nearly the text-book example of sloth while the other tended to have major emotional breakdowns on a semi-random basis. Still, it might work, and if nothing else would keep them busy.
Her sister and she were getting along better at the moment, after a long period during which they barely spoke. Akane had managed to find a job in retail that stuck, having gone through a number of others, losing most of them due to her bad temper. This last one was working for a small jewellery shop, the owner of which had been impressed when an attempted theft on her first day had resulted in an unconscious thief with two broken arms. He'd decided that the enhanced security was worth the occasional argument. The money was reasonable, adding a welcome flexibility to the household budget. Unfortunately the debts that had built up would take some time to pay off before she could seriously start saving for her own further education.
"What's the problem?" she asked, entering the room. Nabiki pointed an accusing finger at her monitor.
"An old police report a contact sent me. It's from nearly two years ago." She was extremely pissed off, and a curious Akane came over and read it over her shoulder. The details were somewhat gruesome.
"I remember hearing something about that. The pervert got what was coming to him, everyone thought. The girl he assaulted was the sister of someone I knew at school." Nabiki shook her head.
"No, you're missing the point. Read it again, and think about it. Read the notes from my contact as well." The younger woman did so, then glanced at her sister.
"I still don't get it." The brunette sighed impatiently.
"Look. Someone at the police station here in Nerima got this crime, nasty but local, reported in a major paper covering all of Japan. Five days later the rapist is found nearly dead in a park with bits missing. The police got reports of screams for at least an hour before they bothered to investigate, which is unusually inefficient of them. The missing parts were never found but they did find a melted crater in the ground near him." She looked at her sister's face to see if she was following. "No one has ever been arrested or even questioned about the attack on the rapist, and my contact said that they had no intention of following up on it. Doesn't that sound a little odd to you?" Akane shrugged.
"So?"
"I recognise the name of the lieutenant at the station who called the papers. He knew Ranma, he was one of the few policemen that knew all about him. The guy is smart, and also kind of... flexible... in his approach to life in Nerima. Pragmatic, I guess." Paging up through the document, she pointed to a line in the medical report. "Totally clean cuts even through the bone, cauterised, almost no blood loss. No tool marks of any kind. The man was beaten to a level that the doctors say should have killed him, but whoever did it was so good they missed everything critical, just hit all the painful places." Akane was still looking blank and now slightly irritated.
Nabiki swivelled her chair around, staring at her sister like she was looking at a child. "It was Ranma. I'm sure of it." The blue haired young woman returned her gaze for a few seconds, stepping back and sinking down to sit on the bed
"Ranma did that?" She didn't immediately disbelieve it but wasn't convinced. Nabiki nodded firmly.
"It was a martial artist, definitely. Only someone very skilled in the art could do that much damage without critically injuring the person. And the cuts? The only thing I can think of that I've ever seen that could do something like that was some sort of ki attack. The cat-fist could certainly slice someone into little bits as easily as a knife through butter. The cauterisation is a bit odd, but even so, it fits. As does the crater."
"Maybe some other martial artist could have done it? There are a lot of them around here, you know." Akane still wasn't convinced.
"Possibly. But I don't think so. Any of the others I know personally would have just kicked the shit out of the guy then dropped him off at the police station. I'm aware there are quite a few I've never met, but one thing I do know is that Ranma is much, much better than any of them. And I know for a fact that he absolutely hates rapists. It's almost scary how he feels about rape. One time I saw him read something in the paper about a girl getting assaulted near here, he looked like he was ready to kill someone. You know what he's like about defending the weak, and nothing says the weak needing defending like rape." She paused, watching Akane, who seemed less disbelieving. "I think the fact that he's female a lot of the time gives him even more reason to get upset about attacks on women. Whatever, he doesn't take prisoners where that sort of thing is concerned."
Turning back to the report she scanned it again, nodding. "It was him, I'm certain. Which means that he was back here nearly six months after he vanished. And it's taken me two damn years to find out about it!"
"Can we use that to find him?"
Nabiki shook her head. "It's much too long ago. Perhaps if I'd found out at the time... perhaps not. He seems to have been very careful to cover his tracks. Apparently the police did unofficially poke around a little but found nothing."
"So it's useless, then." Akane stood up, dismissing the report with a grunt. Stomping out of her sister's room she went downstairs to shout at Genma, the reminder of her errant fiancé bringing on a bad mood. Nabiki watched her go, then turned back to her computer with one eyebrow twitching a little. The girl, young woman now, as she had just turned twenty the previous month, was still erratic and prone to outbursts of massive anger. Both the middle sister and her father had told her to keep the public displays of destruction to a minimum as she was now a legal adult, which gave the police slightly more leverage if she caused trouble. Amazingly she seemed to have listened at least to some degree, with the result that she didn't get into as many fights as before. How long that would last was anyone's guess.
A lot of it probably hinged on the next time Ryoga would turn up. About a year ago Akane had finally worked out what everyone else had know for a long time, that Ryoga and her little pet P-Chan were one and the same. It had been completely accidental, she'd managed to spill a pan of near-boiling water on the little pig when she was in the kitchen and Ryoga hadn't seen it coming. Even while he was screaming in agony, red and naked on the floor, she had seen, understood, gone almost purple with rage, then proceeded to inflict the beating of a lifetime on him. Nabiki had in the end been forced to call on Ukyo and Shampoo to help pull her off him before she killed him. If it hadn't been for the fact that he was nearly invulnerable there was little doubt that he wouldn't have made it.
Even so, he spent nearly a month in the hospital and was walking with a limp for another six. The damage to the side of the house where he'd been knocked through, the garden, the garden wall when he'd gone through that, and two cars in the street outside looked more like a decent size bomb had been dropped on the area. The two policemen, veterans of Nerima, that had finally showed up when everyone was sure that it was safe had been genuinely impressed with the level of damage, and quietly appalled that one slim female had done it with her bare hands. No one wanted to see a repeat, so Ryoga was quickly spirited away when Akane was arguing with Ukyo, what was left of him being taken to recover at a hospital well outside the area. Afterwards everyone denied knowing where he'd ended up. The youngest Tendo looked for him for at least a couple of months after this, intending to finish the job, but luckily for both of them couldn't find him.
Nabiki had gone to have a quiet word with the part-time pig when he'd recovered enough to be able to talk. She'd pointed out that while he was undoubtedly tougher than her sister, she was a lot like that American comic book character The Hulk in that the angrier she got the more dangerous she became. Ryoga had managed to make her angrier than anyone had believed possible. His inability to effectively defend himself against women, unless the woman in question was Ranma, would also work against him. There was a good chance she could, and indeed would, kill him if they met up again while she was still furious, so it was strongly suggested that he steer well clear of Nerima for the foreseeable future. Like the next ten years or so. She'd given him some cash they could ill afford, a new set of accurate maps and a compass, and told him to make sure he stayed out of the area in future. He hadn't been seen more than a few times since, always moving at a dead run directly away when he realised he had accidentally strayed back into danger range.
It was only a matter of time until he popped up too close before he could work it out, which made Nabiki lose sleep now and then. Hopefully by the time this happened her sister would have cooled off a little, although it didn't seem likely at the moment. She was even more convinced that all men were perverts, although she made a few rare exceptions if they were old enough and she felt that they deserved some respect. That was the only reason she was able to get a job at all. The middle sister had wondered for some considerable time whether her sister was a closet lesbian, her intense dislike for males seemed excessive otherwise. Her dislike for anything she deemed 'perverted' was even more intense, most definitely including anything that smacked of homosexuality, which went a long way towards explaining her constant anger. Even on a good day it was simmering just below the surface.
Repairing the damage to the house and garden had used up most of the money that Nabiki had budgeted towards rebuilding the Dojo, delaying that project even more, but the house took priority. She still hoped to get it finished within the next six months so when winter came it was done.
Looking through the police report yet again, she re-read the notes from her contact, thinking about what it all meant. After a few minutes pondering it she emailed a request for more information on any other cases over the last couple of years that met a certain set of specific conditions, then turned the computer off. Lying on her bed she stared at the ceiling for a while, mulling over what she'd learned.
Despite Akane's arguments to the contrary she was certain that the report detailed something that Ranma had been responsible for. There were just too many things that didn't add up otherwise. But that said, the report raised worries, ones she was sure that Akane had missed. The level of brutality involved in the injuries sustained by the rapist spoke of a certain coldness that she'd never have suspected the young martial artist capable of, at least before that unforgettable night nearly two and a half years ago. On that night, having seen the expression the red-headed girl had worn as she walked out of the rubble, she'd have believed almost anything you cared to mention. It had been terrifying. If it was Ranma, he had changed.
'Not surprising, all things considered,' she thought to herself. 'People do change as they mature, and god knows he's had more reason than anyone else I know...' Closing her eyes for a moment she massaged them. 'I suppose the fact that the rapist lived is proof that he hasn't completely thrown away mercy, although under the circumstances it might have been kinder to finish the job. I wonder if that was the point?' Sitting up then swinging her legs around, she sat on the edge of the bed for a moment before standing up and heading downstairs to begin cleaning the living room. She still didn't like doing the work, but as she didn't have to all the time now since she was away at university a lot of the time, she felt it was her duty to improve on the rather indifferent job Akane and the others managed when she was in residence. She liked coming home to a clean house.
As she ran the vacuum around the room she was still thinking about the whole Ranma situation. In truth over the last year she hadn't been putting as much effort into the search as she had for the first eighteen months, partly due to a lack of funding, partly due to thinking that if the boy hadn't been found by that time, it was unlikely that he'd suddenly give himself away. If she ever did find him she suspected it would be by luck more than anything else. Akane had slowly stopped pushing so hard, although it didn't take much to get her ranting on the subject. In fact Nabiki was pleasantly surprised that she'd not seized on the police report to start yet another argument about how the middle sister should be trying harder to track the martial artist down.
Both of them still missed Kasumi every day, but even there Akane's guilt about what she'd nearly done had stopped her pushing too hard eventually. In the end she barely mentioned their older sister unless either very tired or very angry. Nabiki wasn't sure if this was a good thing or not. When the subject did come up the younger woman would usually change it quickly with a look in her eyes that made it clear the subject was uncomfortable for her. Everyone had learned not to mention either the missing fiancé or the missing sister unless they really wanted a good shouting match.
The NWC had slowly moved on after the Ryoga incident. Both Kunos still occasionally put in a highly unwelcome appearance, although neither one seemed to have their hearts in it. Tatewaki would every now and then deliver a request for pictures of his 'pig-tailed princess' but it seemed to be more for old times sake than anything else. Kodachi had a habit of intermittently dropping into the back yard and giving off one of her horrific laughs, but after Akane nearly killed Ryoga she'd become much more circumspect. No saner, though. Nabiki still got reports on her behaviour towards whatever poor sod had sparked her interest that month, most of whom left the area for good as soon as they could. The young woman needed professional help, or possibly just locking up. Not that either of these events would be likely to happen due to the family's political influence.
Ukyo had gone home for an extended period a few months ago, cutting contact with Nerima completely for a while and closing the okonomiyaki café. Some time later Konatsu had disappeared as well, both of them eventually reappearing a few weeks later, reopening the shop and carrying on as if nothing had happened. Nabiki's curiosity had driven her to investigate, but all she'd easily been able to find out was that Ukyo had managed to persuade her father that there was no chance of her marrying Ranma. Oddly enough she seemed quite relieved about it and happier than she'd been for some time beforehand. The middle Tendo had visited her café many times since, noting that the cross-dressing ninja seemed to be very close to Ukyo now, closer than before, reaching her own conclusions after watching them for a while. As far as she was concerned it was their own business but privately she was pleased for the sake of someone who had become a friend.
The thing she found most surprising was that the Amazons were still in the area. With so long having passed since Ranma disappeared she had expected that they'd return to China, but they hadn't moved. Nabiki was on fairly good terms with them, strangely. She didn't trust Cologne, Cologne didn't trust her, but it was a sort of Cold War détente type of mistrust. Neither one thought the other was likely to suddenly turn on them, while at the same time neither one would necessarily believe anything the other said without checking it carefully. They both occasionally exchanged information on their respective searches when it suited them.
Shampoo had become considerably better at speaking Japanese over the last couple of years having put in quite a lot of effort. The young woman had almost the exact opposite of a gift for languages but got annoyed about being taken as something of a bimbo, in the end finding a good mail-order language course and sticking to it with surprising discipline. In the end she still made the odd mistake but overall sounded a lot smarter. Mousse was still pursuing her with no apparent luck but refused to give up. He was impressive in his dedication but showed a lack of common sense in Nabiki's opinion.
A couple of months ago she'd asked Shampoo outright why they were still in Japan. The answer both surprised and amused her. Both young people had come to realise that while they held great affection for their village they found daily life in Japan much more to their liking in most respects. They'd integrated pretty well into Neriman life which was probably helped by the fact that Nerimans were quite used to the unexpected and found foreign martial artists who occasionally turned into animals more comedic than anything else, as long as they refrained from fighting in the streets and damaging the fixtures and fittings. Since Ryoga had left, or more accurately been kicked out, the number of fights had reduced considerably. This pleased the average Neriman nearly as much as it pleased the local police who had been getting very irritated by their impotence in the face of the random attacks of martial artistry.
That's not to say that these things had stopped completely, or even dramatically reduced in number. It's just that without the main heavy guns of the local martial artist group the damage had become much more manageable. Nerima was still a pretty weird place by most people's standards, with a higher density of martial artists and mystical fighters than probably anywhere on the planet.
With the drop in fights between each other the various parties had taken to exercising their martial instincts on any evil-doers who were dim enough to do evil within the boundaries of the ward. Crime had plummeted to levels lower than anyone could remember as a result. It was a spectacularly brave, stupid, or ill-informed mugger who tried plying his or her trade within Nerima. It never ended well for them. This suited the police quite nicely as they were a particularly pragmatic bunch by normal cop terms. As long as the crime stayed low, no one was too badly beaten, and they could claim credit for the arrests, they were perfectly happy to let things proceed as normal. Most of them were cynical enough to realise there wasn't a hell of a lot they could do about it anyway, something that had been brought home pretty effectively during the first few months of Ranma's disappearance.
The few police who knew the truth were still quietly keeping an eye out for either the pig-tailed boy or the red-headed girl, but had given up actively searching. Long before Nabiki had come to much the same conclusion they had decided that to vanish so thoroughly meant the martial artist either had powerful help, knew something they didn't, or had left the country completely. 'Possibly the planet,' quipped one lieutenant, which got him some odd looks followed by slow thoughtful nods. You couldn't put anything past that person.
The only reason they bothered with even the amount of vigilance they did was due to the intermittent reports that came in at widely separated intervals of sexual predators who met particularly nasty comeuppances. These happened all over the Greater Tokyo area and in a few other cities throughout Japan, giving the people who looked into this sort of thing the distinct impression that there was a sexual predator predator out there somewhere. Discussions had been had between the local Neriman police and a few high-ranked officers from other districts, after the third one of these cases. Much information was given out behind a firmly closed door, some photos and video shown, and the high-ranked officials eventually left looking more than a little disturbed. Even slightly frightened.
After considerable thought the decision was made that as long as whatever it was kept to doing what it was doing, there was little they should do about it. Or, the unwritten addendum added, could do about it. Some of the video they'd been shown was, well, worrying. Not to mention that there was no proof whatsoever that the events were connected other than a certain feeling in the bones of various experienced cops. Each method of retribution, while excruciatingly painful, appeared to be unique, and carefully judged to be non-fatal. For all they could prove it was merely a series of vaguely similar but unconnected random attacks. As these were all on people who were known to be extremely dangerous sexual deviants, accounting between them so far for over fifty-three murders spanning some forty years, no one could really bring themselves to be overly worried about the 'victims'. Technically, crimes were being committed, but in the process they were solving much worse crimes.
There was also the fact that no collateral damage was created, no one had ever seen or heard anything other than some nasty screaming, and in any case it was a lot less bother than random demon attacks, which some wards still suffered from. These wards, when they became aware of what had happened to certain unsavoury individuals, began rather wishing that whoever or whatever was behind that would turn their attention to demons. They were certain to cause less trouble than those bloody magical girls, who still didn't seem to realise that destroying an entire street and hospitalising a dozen people for shock at each demonic encounter was heading into definite overkill territory.
Finishing with the vacuum cleaner Nabiki put it away in the cupboard, then began cleaning the table and generally tidying up. She'd become quite good at household tasks, something she'd long felt was beneath her, partly due to circumstances and partly out of belated respect for her vanished elder sister. The brunette still held out hope that Kasumi would one day walk through the door and didn't want her to come into the house she'd run so well for so long to find it a mess. Finishing with the living room and moving into the kitchen she looked around with a snort. "Some cleaning, Akane," she mumbled under her breath, picking up a pan and looking at the crud caked on it with disgust. The younger sister had obviously snuck in and tried her hand at cooking once more, despite the threats from both Nabiki and Nodoka at what would happen if she did that again.
There were only so many times you could chase chicken teriyaki around the garden with a shovel before you decided that enough was enough, after all.
Grumbling, Nabiki reached for the hammer and cold chisel they kept in the drawer for just such an occasion, viciously chipping whatever it was off the sides of the pan, wincing as it sparked. She continued musing on the whole Ranma affair.
The most unexpected thing about the Amazons in her opinion was Cologne. The old woman, lead elder of the tribe, seemed to prefer being as far away from that tribe as possible. The young woman had never quite summoned up the nerve to ask her outright but it seemed likely that the reasons Shampoo and Mousse had for staying in Japan applied to the elder as well. Certainly she seemed to find modern appliances very useful, and apparently enjoyed running a noodle restaurant. While Nabiki had no doubt that she was still as devious as ever behind the scenes the old girl seemed to have contentedly settled into a certain routine.
A few times she'd gone back to China for a couple of weeks, once or twice taking Shampoo with her, but always reappeared. The tribe itself still seemed to want Ranma found and Nabiki suspected that Cologne was using that desire to give herself a convenient excuse to stick around in Nerima.
Finishing with the pan she dropped it into a plastic bucket, then half-filled it with water. Retrieving a bottle of hydrochloric acid, normally used for cleaning particularly stubborn drains, from under the sink, she poured a generous amount into the bucket, leaning back from the cloud of purple vapour that rose from the bubbling contents accompanied by a hissing sound. "Purple? That's new. What the hell was she cooking with, ink?" The smell was appalling so she held a hand over her mouth and picked the bucket up with the other one, quickly carrying it out into the back garden. The fumes subsided after ten minutes or so, during which she finished with the rest of the dishes. Reclaiming the bucket she carefully lifted the stainless steel pan out, half-expecting to find it full of holes. Or possibly transmuted into gold.
In fact it was as shiny as if it was brand new. "Damn. If I could find out how she made that stuff we could sell it as a heavy-duty cleaner," she muttered, rinsing off the pan and inspecting it. While she was looking at it and marvelling at how clean it was there was a tired little squelching noise from behind her, making her turn just in time to see the bucket collapse into a soft mess of dissolved plastic and spill it's contents all over the floor. Luckily the mix of acid and whatever Akane had cooked up seemed to have expended it's activity, so it only left a nasty black-blue puddle rather than a hole. Nabiki sighed heavily and went to find the mop.
