Makoto shut the door behind her with much more force than usual, practically slamming it shut. Her day had been close to a catastrophe. At least now she was again at her home and Ranma was already on her way back to Nerima. She'd still have to come clean tomorrow and explain who Ranma and Ukyo really were to her friends, though.

She walked to her kitchen and took out an opened bag of flour. There was plenty of it; no danger of running out of it anytime soon. She took out sugar, chocolate and the rest of the ingredients she needed to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies, working with a recipe she had improved a bit on her own.

A week after Makoto had met Ukyo for the first time she had asked Ukyo if she could become her student in martial arts okonomiyaki cooking. Ukyo hadn't been against it, not until she tasted what Makoto had prepared. She had given Makoto a condition: she'd have to learn to cook before Ukyo would teach her her Art. With the goal of becoming Ukyo's student on her mind, she threw herself into learning to cook.

Ever since then cooking and baking had become a way for her to detach from her problems. A bowl of miso soup and her height seemed much less of a problem. A batch of cookies and her problems at school seemed inconsequential. All to impress her senpai when she'd see him the next time. No, her. See her the next time.

And right now, baking sounded like a very good idea.

The process of preparing the dough was so familiar to her she might just as well do it with her eyes closed, as was now practically proven as she noticed she had already mixed all the ingredients. She put down the bowl of cookie dough and tasted it. Impeccable as always.

She cut the dough in small buttons and put them in the oven she had put on to preheat a while ago. With some idle time now on her hands, her thoughts wandered back to the arcade.

Ranma did try to explain his curse, she remembered.


Even though the reactions of Ami, Minako and Rei appeared similar in their awed silence, their thoughts were moving in very different ways after they had understood Makoto had a strong crush on a girl.

"Makoto's senpai is a girl?" Minako wondered in her mind. But Makoto had also been checking out boys with her just last weekend?

Rei, ever the adept in the spiritual matters, felt within the girl a ki furnace of size she simply couldn't explain. Not in the least. No, Ranma couldn't have been a normal human, but if she were with Beryl, why would they let her out and not just harvest her for the life energy?

Ami cocked her head as she watched the older girl scratch the back of her head. It was a surprise that Makoto's old flame was a girl, but she hardly considered that an issue. However, there was something wrong with Ranma, even if she couldn't quite place it. Something that was out of place. The way she rocked on the soles of her feet maybe? The way she carried herself without any feminine modesty? If only she could bring out Mercury Computer to scan her...

Makoto stared at the girl who claimed to be Ranma. This was not funny, not in the least!

"Okay, girl, who are you and where'd you put Ranma?" she demanded.

"Oh, right, ya dun know-" Ranma replied but her words trailed off as her attention had now shifted from Makoto to Usagi's forgotten ice cream on the desk. Ice cream? Well, since there was no apparent hot water forthcoming yet, it was time to bring out the big guns-that is, the big, watery eyes-and get a free sample of ice cream for her as well.

"Wait a sec, will ya?" she told Makoto before heading off to the clerk who was just handing a young girl and her mother their ice cream cones.

The young man with light brown hair never knew what hit him.

Ranma sat down with her portion of ice cream next to Usagi, who scooted a few inches away to give the pigtailed girl a bit more space at the edge of the bench. She was staring at Ranma with a scowl for flirting a free ice cream from Motoki in front of Makoto, but on the other hand she was intently watching Ranma's ice cream with poorly concealed longing. Her own serving was only a plain strawberry ice cream whereas Ranma's had an extra scoop, fudge and a cherry on the top.

"Where did you hide Ranma!" Makoto demanded for the second time. She hadn't bothered to sit down yet and was now standing tall beside Ranma. The girl was shorter than her, even more so now that she was sitting down, but the height difference still failed to produce the effect she desired.

"Told ya, I'm Ranma," the pigtailed girl, who wasn't intimidated in the least, said in between the spoonfuls of ice cream she ate. "'cept I got a curse. Ya sure ya got no -" was all she managed to say before she felt something smack her in the middle of her forehead before it fell down on top of her ice cream and got stuck in the fudge topping. "- hot water?"

"An ofuda?" Ranma asked with narrowed eyes.

The Scouts watched Rei, who was sitting opposite to Ranma, attempt to explain herself.

"What? She said that she was cursed!" she flustered. This episode with the ofuda alone was embarrassing enough for the quick-tempered warrior of fire to keep on pressing about other matters.


Before Makoto had left the company of the other Scouts later that evening, Rei had told her that she felt Ranma was a veritable ki furnace, quite beyond her belief of what a human could have been. Still, it was rude to flip an ofuda in the face and the food of a new acquaintance, even if she had some characteristics generally attributed to their enemies.

Likewise, the ever so observant Ami had noticed something was wrong in the way Ranma had carried herself already at that point.

Makoto sighed. Usually by this point she was already feeling quite fine, but the events of the day apparently were too much for only one batch of cookies to fix. With that in her mind she turned back to make another batch of dough.


Ranma picked the slip of paper from her ice cream, crumpled it and casually threw it in the nearest wastebasket five metres away without looking.

"Messing with my ice cream is never a good idea," Ranma started with a low tone before blinking and continuing, "who are you all anyway? Makoto's friends, right?"

Usagi took this as her cue to start talking. "She's Rei Hino, a shrine maiden, I'm Usagi Tsukino, here's Ami Mizuno, she's real smart, and Minako Aino!" The speed at which Usagi did the honors on Makoto's behalf was a feat in itself, enough to make Ranma wonder...

"You're a practitioner of martial arts sports commenting?"

Usagi - like the others - was perplexed. "Huh?"

"Ehh, never mind. So, do ya have hot water or tea around somewhere?" Ranma asked before taking another taste of the ice cream.

Rei, who was sitting at the edge of the bench, stood up and left to talk to the clerk about getting a cup of hot tea.

"As I was sayin' before I was interrupted, I got a curse. I'm really a guy," she explained.

Rei returned with hot tap water in a cup, which Ranma took and put down on the table next to the bowl of ice cream with half of the portion still left. For some reason, Ami cringed at the sight of this before her expression changed that of disbelief as she stared at the now empty bowl.

Ranma gave a small smile at Rei as a thank-you and took hold of the cup of water. "Blink and you'll miss it," she warned and poured the water over her head, triggering the change back to his male form.

Once again, the Scouts had fallen silent. Ever since Makoto and Ranma had entered the arcade Ami had been fingering the zipper on her bag that Makoto knew to hold the Mercury Computer. Now she looked like she was crying silent tears. Her computer was still inside the bag.

"So, Makoto, what now?" Ranma asked the girl whose right hand had slumped down and was now dangling limp on her side.

"My senpai is a girl and the boy I got to act as my senpai turns into a girl. Why me?" she silently cried. Maybe there was still something she could salvage... he was a martial artist, right?

"I told them that you're a good martial artist -"

"The best," he interjected.

"- the best, so maybe you could show us something you can do?" Makoto finished with a rather obvious fake smile she had trouble keeping on her face.

Ranma looked around and saw the girls nodding, even the bluehaired girl who had been silent until now. He shrugged, why not? He could show an advanced kata of his school and get some workout done at the same time... but they'd have to go outside for maximum effect, somewhere where there was no danger of kids getting in his way.

He looked out through the window. At least the rain had stopped.


Makoto took the cookies out of the oven and put in another batch of them. She sighed in exasperation. She was feeling a bit better, but she should make some more cookie dough after taking the next batch out.

In hindsight, Makoto realized she should've known better and just ended the charade right then. But no, she had to attempt to salvage something-anything-from the wreck their meeting was turning into. Next time she'd just trust her friends on all matters.

Instead, she had asked Ranma to show off his skills as a martial artist. The alarm bells really should've rung with enough volume to raise the dead when he asked that they move outside for more space and less things that break easily. At least Ami had finally managed to set the Mercury Computer on passive scan.


By the time the Scouts and Ranma left the arcade for a nearby park the rain had already stopped, leaving puddles of rainwater on the streets.

Once the team reached the park, Ranma turned to face the girls.

"You were a shrine maiden, right?" he asked Rei. Upon her nod he continued, "Then you are very familiar with the concept of ki," he said, cupped his right hand and concentrated for a moment to gather a glowing blue ball of ki on that. He let most of it dissipate and threw the remaining small sphere, no bigger than a pebble, at a nearby cherry tree. The ball was small enough not to do any real damage to the tree, he gathered.

None of the people present had expected what happened then. The sphere hit the tree with a thud as expected, but then the remaining wisps were sucked into the tree whose branches began to shrink, first at a slow pace but which grew ever faster. Finally the metamorphosis ended when the tree had taken a shape resembling that of a woman maybe two and a half metres tall with a skin of bark and hair of twigs, staring at Ranma with her maw in a malicious grin and a glint of hunger in her eyes. Her clothing was little more than a leotard, whose color ranged from light green to grey.

"Never seen that happen before," Ranma remarked as he dodged a flurry of cherry pits the youma sent his way.

The girls scampered away to transform out of Ranma's sight, but hadn't moved so far that they couldn't hear Ranma taunting the youma, who apparently was trying-and failing-to tag the pigtailed boy. This had a minor relieving effect on the girls: at least he didn't appear to be in league with Beryl. On the other hand, it would've been in line with their experiences for Makoto's senpai to be an enemy of the Sailor Scouts.

Soon enough, the Sailor Scouts had transformed and returned at the scene, with Jupiter at the vanguard.

Ranma gave the wooden youma a smirk as he flared his battle aura at the youma. A dozen metres behind him Sailor Jupiter flinched at the light show. Just what kind of person was Ukyo engaged to? And why did she herself have to go to Nerima? Being one of the Sailor Scouts should've been enough for anyone's weirdness factor for life.

Luna, who had appeared with Artemis just in time for the fight, walked next to Jupiter. "Meow, who is that boy, Jupiter?" she whispered.

The whisper wasn't quiet enough, as Ranma's trained ears picked up the sign of impending danger, that is to say the meow, even if not any of the words that followed. His head whipped back to see what had just made that horrifying sound, and saw the small black cat next to a girl with some kind of strange combination of a leotard and a school uniform with a team of more girls dressed in same fashion behind her.

"Meow?" Luna repeated.


Makoto didn't know what exactly might have scared Ranma so badly, if he didn't think the youma was anything out of the ordinary. Maybe she'd ask Ukyo later on; surely she'd know that as his fiance. But now she opened a new bag of flour and began mixing the ingredients for the next batch of cookie dough.


A youma over two metres tall didn't faze Ranma in the least, so in reaction to seeing the feline, he sprinted as quickly as he could away from the demon spawn. Given the way the cat was directly behind him as he was facing the youma, the escape manoeuvre meant running directly into the arms of the youma... whose expression had changed at Ranma's flashy show from malice to something of different kind of hunger.

When a female youma has a good-looking boy who had only a few seconds ago been covered from head to toe with the youma equivalent of whipped cream and chocolate sauce laced with a fair dose of aphrodisiac thrown on her lap, the outcome really was not all that far-fetched. Especially considering the high gender imbalance within the forces of the Dark Kingdom. And what if the two had been fighting only a moment before? 'Forgive and forget' never was one of the cornerstones of the Dark Kingdom, but the youma hadn't heard of Beryl or the four generals in months either. Since then she had been following her standing orders, harvesting ki until it was collected from her.

The deciding factor ended being the fact that her superiors weren't there but the boy was.

"Jupiter, what is your senpai doing?" Sailor Venus asked as she stepped up next to her friend with the other Scouts.

Sailor Jupiter could only stare as the youma ravaged the lips of the squirming pigtailed boy. The gall of that... that... insufferable bully! Why couldn't anything go right today!

Sailor Venus could only stare in envy-she'd want to do the very same things to the boy in question if only he hadn't been Makoto's senpai. But no, he has to be also a lover for a youma. Oh the injustice of it all!

Venus blinked at this realization. Injustice! This was a task for the pretty sailor suited champions of truth, love and justice-truth in bringing the boy back from the evil influence of Dark Kingdom, love to be rediscovered between Ranma and Makoto and finally justice in giving Makoto another chance with her senpai!

Yes, this definitely was a task for the Soldier of Love!


"Bad karma", Makoto reasoned as she watched the cookies bake in the oven. "I'll have to tell them everything tomorrow," she mumbled to herself.


By the time Sailor Moon had finished her introduction routine, Ranma had recovered enough from the scare Luna had given him to gather his wits. He had first attempted using a pressure point to paralyze the youma's arms, but to no avail as hitting them had no effect whatsoever on the youma. The unleashing of his battle aura only made the youma double the force behind her glomp on him, and conventional attacks didn't appear to faze her in the least. This gave him an idea.

All the other Scouts witnessed the boy stop struggling in the glomp the youma had him in. If they attacked from where they were now, Makoto's senpai would be hurt by their attacks, possibly badly. Their last fight and the related property damage was still fresh on their minds. Makoto moved to take the youma's back, Rei her right flank and Minako the left flank. But then, before their very eyes, the boy began to disappear from view.

"His ki! It's fading!" Mars shouted. Mercury stared at her computer, which was telling the very same thing. But the youma was still hugging and kissing something, judging by the way her tongue wildly flailed in the air. Mars scowled. The boy was either dead or certainly not a human. In either case, Makoto had better have some answers.

Sailor Moon was distressed. Makoto's senpai had died or was captured like Tuxedo Kamen at the time. Her resolve hardened she clenched her fist and reached for her forehead. There would be justice dealt this evening. She couldn't do it until Ranma was out of the way, but now-now it was already too late. "Moon Tiara Action!" she shouted as she threw her tiara at the youma.

The tiara flew true at the midsection of the youma, cutting through the arms she was hugging air with.

"Ow!"

The Scouts blinked. Wasn't that Ranma's voice? And even though the tiara had effectively chopped the youma's arms that had fallen on the ground and were now mere dead branches, the tiara just stopped mid-air and hit the pavement with a sharp cling.

The streets were still riddled with small puddles from the rain that had started as Ranma and Makoto had entered the arcade, and on the street right in front of the youma was one particularly large and deep puddle. Ranma, still utilizing the Umisenken, dropped at the edge of the pavement, well out of the water.

Wroooooommmm... Splash!

A speeding car drove past the two fighters, right in the middle of the puddle. The scouts saw the water briefly hit against a silhouette of a boy rubbing his backside.

Uuuaaa Uuuaaa... Splash!

The police cruiser driving after the speeding car hit the same puddle, but now the silhouette was that of a young woman holding her trousers up with one hand and shaking her fist at the skies before she slowly faded back into their vision.

"She has a strange magic signature... she might be one of the enemy," said the cat who had told Usagi that Ami Mizuno and Makoto Kino might be working for the Dark Kingdom-until they turned out to be her sisters-at-arms.

"She lives in Nerima," Mercury supplied. Never underestimate the power of Nerima as an excuse.

"Ah. But why is she here?"

Ranma had now fully let go of the Umisenken to examine her trousers, whose drawstring the tiara had just cut and were now under constant danger of falling down in her ankles unless she held them up. The youma had noticed that even if the boy had vanished, the new girl had the same yummy ki as the boy did. Before she could take one more step, though, her world exploded in pain.

"Fire Soul!" Sailor Mars cried as she attacked the youma, lighting the youma like a bonfire who began dancing and trying to smother out the fire, but failing miserably. This had also made Jupiter and Venus pay again attention to the monster of the day and attacked her until the pieces of the monster that were still upright and not burning turned into charcoal and fell down onto the ground.

The enemy defeated, the heroines ran to Ranma who had by now tied the drawstring tighter.

The other Scouts stayed behind as their leader approached Ranma. "Are you okay?" Moon asked her.

Ranma slowly shifted her gaze from her trousers to the eyes and the forehead of Sailor Moon. With one hand she reached for the ground and picked up a tiara that had fallen there. The ground around her was beginning to freeze.

"Yours?" Ranma asked, presenting the tiara at Moon.

"Yes!" Moon cheerfully replied and stepped forward to take the presented weapon. The freshly formed black ice on the ground, however, made her slip and fall on her rump, giving Ranma's shin a kick in the process.

"Owie..."


Makoto took the cookies out of the oven and sampled their taste.

With the youma burnt to ashes, the fight had ended in a victory for the Scouts. Ranma had left to the arcade soon after he was reassured Makoto and her friends were safe and would be there shortly. For some reason she had the feeling Luna's presence was also a factor... as well as Sailor Mercury.

Oh, she remembered the grin on Sailor Mercury's face quite well. If Makoto hadn't known any better, she would've made her to stop watching that anime show with the redhaired child supergenius.


The detransformed Scouts were slowly making their way towards the arcade. Makoto had finally let the proverbial cat out of the bag and told that Ranma wasn't really her senpai. She refused going into the messy details at that point, though, and once they got inside the arcade, she told him to just return to Nerima. The gig was up and Rei would have to wait for the explanation.

"Luna, why didn't the tiara cut him like it did his clothing and the youma?" puzzled Ami asked Luna.

"Meow... the tiara has an enchantment to avoid irreparable collateral damage. The magic only prevents it from hurting uncorrupted humans badly," was the answer. "Unfortunately, lightning, water and flames are hard to make as discriminating as the tiara..." The Scouts, Rei excluded, blanched at the memory of their previous fight.


Makoto took yet another batch of fresh cookies from the oven and wondered where she should put them. All the cookie jars were already filled to the brim with fresh cookies.

She had spent all the flour and chocolate in the house to bake far too many batches of chocolate chip cookies. Far too many for her or the Scouts to eat in their meetings in several months, even when counting in Usagi and her appetite.

There was only one way out she could think of right now.


At the scene of the fight, a small piece of wood from the youma-possessed cherry tree lay on the grass, halfway submerged in a puddle next to where the cherry tree had stood. In a few hours, the rain broke out again, but the small roots that had grown from the chip and burrowed into the soft ground held the chip firmly in place. The next morning at sunrise a small sapling was there to greet the sun.

It was somewhat complicated to explain at the time, however, why exactly did the sapling's leaves resemble now those of linden trees.


The following day the doorbell rang at the house of a well-to-do family in Tokyo. A 15-year-old girl with short blond hair cast away the racing news magazine, stood up and slightly adjusted her trousers before walking to open the door. Behind the door she found a girl, maybe a year or two younger than her, clad in a scandalous outfit of white and green.

The younger girl smiled at her. "Hi, I'm Sailor Jupiter. Won't you please support our cause to fight for truth, love and justice by buying Sailor Scout chocolate chip cookies?"

She blinked. Usually the girl scouts to do this routine were younger and and less... talented. And their skirts were not this short either.

"Sorry," she said and closed the door.

"Thank goodness I'm not one of them," she thought before feeling a cold shiver run down her spine. No, Haruka Tenoh would never voluntarily dress up like that in public.

On the other side of the door Sailor Jupiter was not too surprised at this. She let the fake smile down and tallied her experiences so far. Usually it was the men who bought the most boxes whereas women, especially pensioners, more or less did not appreciate her way of dressing. But if she also ignored that she had nearly had to beat down a pervert or two she was surprised at the amount of money she had made with her cookies. A genuine smile slipped on her face. Maybe yesterday wasn't a total loss after all.


Omake (or not... your call):

A few years into the future the Sailor Scout cookies had become a brand to be recognized amongst all the other bakery goods sold by door-to-door salespeople. All the Inners had pitched in to generate sales and Usagi and Rei actually competed on which one could sell most cookies.

The soft-spoken Hotaru Tomoe, or Sailor Saturn, as she was known to a select few, had gathered her courage to ask her adoptive parents if she could try selling cookies as well. Michiru and Haruka quickly agreed to her suggestion. She'd be sure to succeed at the task, and it could only help her to gain some more confidence in herself when dealing with others.

The next Saturday Sailor Saturn nervously rung the doorbell. Her adoptive parents were not far behind trying to keep Moon away from the scene, but this she had to do alone for maximum effect. As the door opened, she put on the sweetest smile she could manage. "Hi, I'm Sailor Saturn. Would you please support the pretty sailor-suited warriors and buy Sailor Scout cookies?"

Unfortunately, the pensioner to open the door was a diabetic and only Saturn's quick hands-on healing saved his life.

It took a few months of intense therapy before Hotaru began to regain any of her former confidence.