Thanks to TerraBull for the name. Thanks are also due to Josh Temple, Sopchoppy, and Dragonlord for inspiration. Thanks to Questara and J. St.C. Patrick, and TerraBull for proofreading it for me. Especially J. St.C. Patrick, the man is awesome

Disclaimer: I own neither Xmen nor Ranma. These characters do not belong to me in any way, shape or form. But I sure wish I did.

Emma Frost strode down the hall of the hotel. It screamed money, class and prosperity, from the ornate chandeliers to the expensive yet tasteful works of art adorning the walls.

Yes. This was the way life should be. The way life had always been. The way she would ensure life would always be.

She passed a porter, who deftly stepped around her, but she paid no notice. It would be beneath her to notice the help, and could startle them beyond their meager intellect to perform. Besides, she had to see her new acquaintances, and hopefully the newest members of the Hellfire Club. She had promised to give them some time, and indeed she had, but she was getting impatient, and having world-class martial artists would be a good start to reforming the group. She stopped outside the room she had loaned them, and raised her hand to the door. Right before she could knock, she heard yelling from the room.

"Damn it, when are you gonna stop doing that, honey! Don't you trust us?"

"Arien should trust wife, is part of good marriage! You is being too, too bad!"

"I'm sorry, ok! It's just habit! I'll get over it sooner or later, so calm down. Please?"

Yes, I was still curling into a ball whenever I woke up, and my bedmates were getting tired of it. I couldn't see why, since it wasn't hurting them, but then again- who understands women? Not me, and I was gonna be stuck as one for quite a while, maybe always. Hopefully not, but knowing my luck, probably.

'Knock knock'

"I'll get it." I rushed out of bed, glad to have an excuse to flee the Unreasonable Feminine Wrath of Doom (UFWoD), grabbing a robe from the coat hanger on the door. Slipping it on, I opened the door, to be confronted by our hostess. She had changed since yesterday, and was now wearing a white women's business suit. While it clung to her body with astonishing tightness, it was still the epitome of restraint from the white leather she wore at the dock. She took one look at the way I was dressed, and was trying to suppress a grin, failing madly.

"I do hope that I am not interrupting anything… important." I looked down, and noticed that I'd forgotten to tie the robe up at the middle. I shrugged- hey, I ain't ever had feminine modesty, and don't plan on getting any either. Looking back at her face, I could see that Emma was trying her hardest not to look at everything that was free to view.

"Oh, don't worry. You saved me from gettin screamed at anyway." I directed her towards the couch. I heard sounds from the bedroom, rustling and bumping, and a minute later an Amazon and an Okonomiyaki chef walked into the room: Shampoo in a light blue dress; Ucchan in her normal outfit. A throwing spatula went flying past my ear, and sunk into the couch next to me. I gave Ukyo the puppy-dog eyes for a moment, letting my voice sound like I was about to cry. "What was that for?" I added a dramatic sniff at the end, and let my lower lip tremble a little.

Ucchan grinned, and picked up her spatula from the couch. "Oh, nothing….." she said innocently. I gulped, knowing I would be in for it as soon as Emma left. Man, most guys would kill to have two hot girlfriends at once like I had, but none of them had a clue how easy it was to get in trouble with either of 'em.

The girls pulled me onto a sofa opposite the White Queen, and I knew it was time to talk business. So, like usual, Shampoo took the lead.

"So, we is thinking about it, and is deciding we is no knowing enough", straight and to the point. "Is wondering, first of all, if you is really a mutant, what is your power?"

The white clad woman gave a one-word answer. "Telepathy." Sad that I had no idea what that meant.

Ukyo nudged me in the side. "She reads minds."

"Hey! You can help Shampoo then, can't you? She can sorta do that, but boy is she bad at it!" Shit. Saotome Verbal Technique backfire. I'd be sleeping on the couch tonight for sure. "So, her mutant name would be Psylocke, that's what we decided." Shampoo was glaring daggers at me, and if I turned my head I was sure I would of seen Ukyo doing the same.

"Oh! Well, I had been wondering what all your powers were. Ms. Tendo was quite informative, but didn't seem to know the details." Frost was ignoring the insult in my statement, and was taking it as fact. Which it was, to be fair.

"If you don't mind our asking, how do you know Nabiki? Or anything about us and Nerima? It's a little confusing?" If Shampoo got the brains, Ucchan got the politeness.

Emma blushed slightly. "Well, it's a long story. But to cut it short, I was on a holiday to Japan, about three years ago. I already spoke Japanese, so I decided to forgo a tour guide. But while my spoken Japanese was impeccable, my written was terrible, and I got lost quickly.

After several hours of wandering around, lost, I found a school named Furinkan High. I waited outside the gates, as it was almost time for school to be let out, and I was hoping to ask someone for directions. When the bell rang, and the students came out, I went to talk with the first girl I saw. She was about 15, whilst I was 19, so she seemed in awe of me. That only increased when she tried to speak to me in English, and I responded in perfect Japanese.

She gave me directions to the Hotel I was staying at, and I tipped her 2000 yen. It was habit, but she seemed surprised by it. So I told her something that I think she took a little too seriously: "Everything has its price, and information has the highest price of all." She, being slightly naive at the time, asked for my e-mail address, asking to sell me any information she found that was worth something. To humor her, I gave it. As I said good-bye, she asked who I was.

'Emma Frost, the White Queen'

And she replied, 'Nabiki Tendo, the Ice Queen'. She had obviously adopted the alias on the spot, to match mine, but I hadn't the heart to say anything about it."

I was in shock at this news, and beside me Ukyo and Shampoo were in the same state. "You mean that YOU made Nabiki the heartless money obsessed bitch that she is today! That girl would sell water to a man dying of thirst, at 40 interest per month! She literally did that to me, like eight times in the same day!" That was when Shampoo was after me, selling me hot water to keep me in male form.

Emma blushed again. "I saw her again four months after you arrived at the Tendo residence. She had been selling me the information on you, and I suspected that you might be a mutant. I arrived in time to see your rather spectacular fight against the diminutive pervert. I was most impressed to see that tornado appear, and afterwards, I had your blood tested for a mutant gene. I was surprised to find out that your X-gene wasn't active. I left a testing kit with Ms. Tendo, and she tested you after every new move you learnt, to see if it had activated. She also sold me an account of everything that happened around you.

On a side note;" she blushed even harder "my telepathic abilities, having manifested themselves after I first met Ms. Tendo, but before I returned to see her, told me that she had something of a crush on me."

I had to whistle at that one. "So Nabiki is the way she is cause she LIKES YOU? Man, that's nuts."

"And yet, it explains so much." noted Ucchan.

Emma shook her head. "Anyway, I'm sure you had other questions than just those." She seemed embarrassed by the idea of having a girl in love with her- kinda strange, considering who was sitting in front of her.

I decided to ask the next question. "You said you wanted to remake the Hellfire Club, right?"

"Indeed"

"So what happened to the old one?"

The White Queen looked sad for a moment. "The Hellfire Club is ancient, dating back to 1746. Originally, it was dedicated to ruling the world at any cost. Some time later, the goal changed to that of ruling mankind benevolently. By 1900, it aimed to bring peace and prosperity to the world, hopefully with us at the top. But not all its members were happy with the way the Hellfire Club was changing. One man, Sebastian Shaw, wanted to return to the goal of world domination. He gathered all the like-minded people of the club, and staged a takeover. The other members resisted this, and in the fight, someone let off a bomb. The buildng collapsed, killing all who were inside. Only I was left alive, as I had used my telepathy to convince Shaw that I was on his side, then never showed up for the meeting. I tried to warn the other members, but failed.

All were influential people, businessmen, politician's, those who had climbed to the top of their field in the search for power. When I decided to reform the Hellfire club, I planned along different lines. The treasury was immense from all the members who had willed their life fortunes to the club, so money was no problem. The typical way of the Hellfire Club was bribes, and between the raw cash and the factories and land that was left to the club, it was unlikley that money would ever be a problem ever again. As such, I decided that the new Hellfire Club should concentrate on the atributes of the members, not their money and connections. My goal was, and still is, to find members who are both powerfull mutants, highly honourable, or ideally, well trained in some way."

Shampoo looked sympathtic. "Aiyah! Is too, too sad story. Is good idea you is having for new club though."

"Yeah, sugar, that's a great idea."

"So, if we were to join, and I'm not saying we are or anthing, we'd be doing what, exactly?" I may not have Shampoos brains, but I'm not stupid either. While this bit about wanting honourable people to help the world sounded good, I was a little confussed as to what we'd actually be doing.

Emma smilled hopefully. It was a small smile, but it spoke lots about how desperate she was to reform this club. "Well, first there are a few others I would like to recruit. Then I would move the Club to Bayville, the city where the X-men, The Brotherhood, and the Morlocks can be found, and try to keep them from doing anything stupid, whilest I kept an eye out for ways to make my vision come to pas. I'd rather not go into specifics just yet, as you still haven't joined, but I would not try to force you into doing anything unethical."

Shampoo had the next question. "Even if you is knowing our history, how is you finding out which boat we is on? Is too, too many boats, yet you is in right place, right time. How?"

Emma smirked at this question. Not an evil smirk, more of an 'I've been waiting for someone to ask this question, let me show off for a while now' smirk. "Well, when you have as much money as I do, you can afford all sorts of toys. One of them was rather useful, a Global positioning system, which locates any person who had their blood fed into the machine. I have your blood, Ranma, so I was able to find you after a week. And," she was anticipating our next question, "Nabiki told me how you left with these two, letting me guess that they were still with you." Once, I saw some anime called 'Tenchi Myio' or something. And in it, there was this mad inventor called Wasshu (I think). Every now and again she would brag, calling herself the Greatest Genius in the Universe! Emma looked about ready to do that right now.

I thought about her offer. Back home, I never was known for thinking a lot, 'cause it aint something I like to do all the time. But I do think occasionally. I was thinking about the White Queen's offer. It did sound good. We'd get other members to spar with, enemies and rivals, and if Emma was as rich as she said she was, the pay would be good. Not that it was a huge thing, but it would be nice to have money, especially as there would be no loan-sharking Tendo sister to worry about here. All up, it sounded pretty good. I looked at Ucchan and Shamps, to see what they were thinking. Ucchan had an interested look, and Shampoo looked happy. I put a questioning frown on my face, and they each gave a tiny nod. No non-martial artist would have noticed, but to us three such signs were as obvious as the nose on my face. I gave a nod in return.

"Well, White Queen, we would be honoured to join the Hellfire Club, if you would take us." Ucchan was sitting up straight, looking formal. I decided to copy her, but with my robe open, it had a slightly more perverted effect. Shampoo did likewise.

If our hostess had been hopeful before, she was grateful as hell now. She bowed, Japanese style. "The Hellfire Club accepts your membership bids. You are now full fledged members of the Hellfire Club, and are entrusted with helping guide its destiny and the destiny of the world." Formal speeches over and done with, she turned to Shampoo. "If you would spend a few moments with me in private, I can show you how to learn English using your powers, and teach it to your teammates the same way."

Shampoo shook her head, surprisingly. "No."

"No?"

"No. Is no wanting to cheat. Is hard way to learn language otherwise, but is good way. Is no wanting to take easy path." I had to agree with that. The Super Soba, the Mark of God, the enchanted Dogi, all of those had been shortcuts, and all ended badly.

Emma looked a little worried. "Well, I won't force you, but let me tell you two things first. In the first place, I used this technique once to learn Russian, and it hasn't damaged me at all. It just gives you knowledge, letting you speak as well as you would your native language, but doesn't make your language perfect.

Secondly, we are in America, and everyone does speak English, so you'll need to learn it any way."

She gave a tiny cough. "Oh, did I forget to mention that I need you to do a mission in about six hours, and not being able to speak English would be a problem?"

"WHAT!" we three yelled at the same time.

"Yes, that would be one of the reasons I was trying to speed up your decision making process- there is a mutant who would be perfect as the next member of our club. Unfortunately, sometime last night, he was found out as a mutant and is on the run from the military. Whilst he was doing an excellent job of keeping hidden, he was found about….. twenty minutes ago."

I bit my lip in thought. We had to do this mission. I spoke terrible English. Shampoo was good, but not good enough to get us through this, from the sounds of it. Well, I for sure wasn't going to make her abandon honour for me, she'd already done that once for me- not killing me when she first found out that the woman she was hunting was also the man who defeated her.

"Hey Shamps, how does this sound- you let Emma teach you how to do it, and you do it to me? After all, Anything-Goes is all about grabbing any advantage, and that sure sounds like one hell of an advantage to me!"

Ukyo nodded her head. "Same here. Your English is good enough to get through living here, but mine isn't."

Shampoo looked doubtful, but nodded. "Fine. Will learn how to do. But is not doing to self. Understand?"

Emma looked relieved. "Yes, that will be adequate. Let us retire to your room, and I will show you how it is done." She didn't bother to ask us if we wanted her to do it- smart woman. After all, while we trusted her, we had only met the day before, and I'd rather have had Shampoo rearranging my head than the White Queen.

"Hey Ranchan, you know what this means?"

"Uhh, no?"

"We have a few hours to kill, and lots of money. Meaning- SHOPPING!"

I whimpered, praying silently to whatever god ruled my life that the moment I died, I was gonna kick some serious ass. "Someone shoot me." I whispered, loudly enough for all to hear, though Ukyo ignored it. I might have been stuck in this dam, horrible, sexy body, but inside I was all guy, damn it!

And so, half an hour later, Ukyo was dragging me around the city. She had the money from selling Ucchan's, and looked dead set on spending it all. I was trailing behind her, as a part-time packhorse. Part time, as in she would also stop to force me into girly outfits, or watch her get into them. Sure, I had a curse. Sure, I had spent the last two years as a female during bad weather. But now, Ucchan had taken it into her head that it meant that I was as much a girl as I was a boy! I had always had my doubts as to my cute fiancée's sanity, and this expedition was not helping anything. I kept my silence though, since every time I mentioned I was a guy, she'd start groping my chest. In public. While I didn't exactly overflow with feminine modesty, I had enough normal modesty to want to avoid that scene!

My musings were cut off by a squeal from my semi insane companion. "Look at that! Isn't it cute!" She looked like she was over compensating for years of forced cross-dressing, by over doing it in the sheer girliness department. In this case, she had found a Cosplay shop, and was making googily eyes in front of all the costumes. "Come on honey, let's try them on!" Yup, a lot of catching up on being a girl for her. Although, some of it may have been to pay me back from the morning. Much more effective punishment than a mallet to the head.

I walked slowly into the store, Ucchan having run ahead of me. I couldn't see where she was, but hearing the occasional girly squeal of delight let me home in on her. I passed the section on Dominatrix stuff. (man, thanks to Nabiki and my debts to her, I'd modeled some of that stuff. Ick.) Thankfully, Ukyo seemed to have left it all alone, in favor of things less mature. As I exited the S&M section, and entered the Anime section, I could see visible traces of her passing. Clothes strewn on the floor, on the other shoppers, even on the hanging light bulbs. Man, she had a lot of energy.

I finally caught up with her, finding her in an outfit from either my most perverted dreams, (If I wasn't wearing it) or my biggest nightmares (If I was). She had a pair of tight blue boots with white trim, which came up to her knees, matching the pair of white gloves with blue trim, coming past her elbows. A tiny portion of her legs was covered by a ruffled blue miniskirt, coming over tight white top, a parody of a woman's sailor outfit (although no sailor outfit could show THAT much cleavage). A blue choker adorned her neck, and to complete the tribute to perverts with a lolita fetish, her forehead sported a bronze circlet, with a blue stone in the middle. I dropped the shopping in shock.

Once, I was walking past a park in a town. Can't remember the name of the place, since Pops was more interested in teaching me how to jump than in teaching me about real life at the time. But I remember seeing this boy, about ten years old. He had just bought some gloves, leather ones with no fingers. He put them on, and then came up to me, threatening to beat me up if I didn't give him my lunch money. I musta been seven, and pretty short, so anyone would've thought that he had the advantage.

The bit I found funny at the time was that the boy had no idea how to punch. He held his hands at the wrong position, and was more likely to break his thumb than to damage me with a hit. But since he had those gloves on, he felt 'cool' enough to think he could do it. I ended up beating the crap out of him, of course.

But the next time I went to a park, I went out of my way to see of the same thing would happen if someone else got gloves like that. And it happened, every time a kid got gloves like that, they went stupid, and thought they could beat people up.

Since I was just a kid, I thought that the gloves controlled their brains. Stupid, but to a seven year old, it made a lot of sense.

So when Ucchan posed dramatically, and shouted out her speech, you can see why that old theory made a brief appearance in my head again.

"Halt, Foul Temptress! Shopping is for taking home, not for dropping on the floor! In the name of love and justice, I, Sailor Mercury, will punish you!"

I had to groan at that one. "Ucchan……"

"Yes?"

"You know, there is such a thing as being too girly, right?"

"Yes,"

"And a Sailor Mercury fuku is possibly the most 'Too Girly' thing in the world, right?"

"Yes!"

"So….. uh.. why are you wearing one?"

She gave me a look that said 'What, you don't get it?' "Because its cute!"

"Uhhhhhh……."

The next hour or so was devoted entirely to me watching my cute fiancée try on outfit after outfit, from Cardcaptors to every single thing worn in Final Fantasy- who woulda guessed that Ucchan was an RPG fan? After bullying me into a few, she ended up buying only three outfits. The Sailor Mercury one (she must have seen me drooling at her when she was wearing it), something she called 'Rikku's Lady Luck outfit', and last but not least- a blue dominatrix outfit. I tried my hardest to get her to get rid of it, but to no avail. I did mange to make her promise never to wear it in the bedroom, but then she said some do the scariest words I had ever heard.

"Shampoo's going to look so beautiful in this, don't you think?"

The language barrier was easily broken when it came time to buy all her stuff. Ucchan dumped the three outfits on the desk of a bored looking clerk, and then slammed down a credit card on the table. As Nabiki once said, 'Money is a language that everyone understands'.

As we were walking out of the store, Ukyo gave me the bags with the costumes in. "Hey Ranchan,"

"Yeah?"

"Take these back to the hotel, will you? I want to do a little more shopping."

I was a little confused. Why would she want me when shopping for weird outfits, but not when shopping for other stuff? Well, I might not have learned a lot about women, apart from how to use the plumbing, but I had learnt the most important fact of all: They don't make sense. Don't question them, and you don't get confused. If you break that rule, everything falls apart. "Sure thing. Remember, we gotta be back at the hotel soon, so don't take too long."

"Yes mother." She said with a fake pout.

'Knock knock knock'

"Hey Shampoo! Open up! I forgot my key," I yelled, hoping that they weren't meditating or something. When someone's meditating, they're almost impossible to wake up by yelling, if they do it right. Fortunately for me, they weren't. The door opened, and a blue-haired Amazon stuck her head out.

"Oh, is you." I thought she sounded depressed for a moment. Chalking it up to my imagination, I passed her the bags.

"Hey Shampoo, could ya take these? I really gotta go bathroom."

As I walked away, I heard an excited gasp from the Amazon. But as my tiny girl-form bladder was insisting that we get to a toilet, I put it out of my mind.

By the time I had returned, Shampoo had disappeared into our bedroom, taking the bags with her. She had locked the door, and showed no signs of letting me in. I shrugged, musing about the weirdness if women, and hopped on the couch, intent on watching some TV.

"Ouch!"

I shuffled in my seat slightly, confused as to why the couch was so lumpy.

"Ow! Get off! You're squashing me!"

I shook my head. Some of the voices on the TV sounded like Emma. I absently wondered where she was.

"If you don't get off me, you are going to spend the rest of your life convinced that you are a female version of Happosai, who wants to steal men's boxer shorts!"

That didn't sound good. I felt sorry for the poor sap on the TV. Then something rang a bell: Happosai. How would he get mentioned in American TV? Wait, why was some of the voices in Japanese? Oh shit.

I leapt off the couch, leaving a squashed looking woman in white behind me. "Ahhh……. Sorry?" I offered as an apology.

"Oh no, quite alright, I love having a face full of transvestite bottom." I could have been wrong, but I thought I detected some small amount of sarcasm from the White Queen.

"Ahh…. so….. uhhhhh…… How did the lessons go? Shampoo a decent telapat yet?" Boy, I sure was a smooth speaker.

"Telepath. And she is making some progress, though she lacks both the skill and the raw power to be much use. Her telepathy is without a doubt one of the weakest examples I have ever seen." She was still giving me the evil eye, but being civil. It almost made me miss Nerima, where I'd just get beaten up, then all would be forgotten. Weird foreigners.

"So, will she ever be able to use it for anything?" If she could be civil, I could be too.

"To strangers and enemies, she will be able to sense if they are telling the truth or lying. But to friends, if they trust her, she will be able to scan their mind, and add knowledge. To anyone within a mile diameter, she will be able to send messages. That distance may increase if she is trying to communicate with people she has a deep connection with. At the moment, that would include you, Ukyo, her father and her great-grandmother."

"Does that mean she can teach me English? And Ucchan?"

"Indeed. She has the English language uploaded from me, ready to give to you. Perhaps now would be a good time to let her show you her new skills." She was itching to get rid of me, I could tell.

"Arien! What you wait for? Is time to learn!" Shampoo called out. I bowed a goodbye to Emma, and walked as fast as I could towards the bedroom.

The bedroom looked the same as always, except for an unusually full rubbish bin and a bulging bad in the corner. I ignored these, in favor of an overly excited Amazon sitting on the bed. Shamps was rubbing her hands tighter gleefully.

"So, is this where you teach me English? Or were ya just trying to get me in here without Ucchan?" I stuck my foot in my mouth again. As evidenced by the twitch in Shampoo's eye.

"Is teaching English. You is just having to sit down, and keep all thoughts out of head. For you, is going to be too, too easy." Shit, I was getting everyone pissed at me today. Made me homesick. I obeyed my bedmate, sitting down cross-legged on the floor. I shut my eyes, and cleared my mind. Just like meditating, an exercise I knew how to do, but never liked. I let myself go, trying to be as open as possible to whatever she had to do.

No amount of preparing would have been sufficient. It was like having a book shoved in my mouth. Yes, mouth. As in, feeling a horrible taste, and having all your teeth bent backwards. Well, not teeth, it was parts of my mind, but the analogy was otherwise accurate. But other than the discomfort, there was another sensation. I couldn't feel the knowledge coming in to me, not at all. Instead, I felt all sorts of things make sense. Suddenly, I knew that my old English teacher was almost always wrong. I knew what the label on the complimentary soap said. I knew what Emma had said to her driver, and how accurate Shampoo had been in translating it. I knew what they had been whispering at the Cosplay store. My eyebrow twitched as I recalled what they were saying about me in the outfits Ucchan had picked for me. I had half a mind to go back there and beat them all up.

A rapping on the back of my head brought me back to the world of the living. I opened my eyes, and stood up unsteadily. I felt slightly dizzy, something I thought I would never feel again- thanks to another of Pop's training exercises. Shampoo looked at me expectantly. "So, did it work? Is you understanding me?"

I was slightly confused. "Um, yeah. Why wouldn't I? Hey, why don't you try speaking in English, to see if it worked?"

The blue-haired Amazon gave me an odd look. "I did." She paused for a second. "Is you still knowing what I is saying?"

"Yeah, but why did your Japanese get better, then go back to normal? Wait a second…." Things started adding up. "That was English, wasn't it?"

Shamps gave a happy nod. "Yes! You are now speaking too, too good English! Like I am."

"Why is it that you speak better English than Japanese? I mean, you lived in Japan for like two years, so why is it so much worse than your English?"

"Because, is learning English from small child. Why you think my Japanese got so good, after a month? Practice at learning other languages. Is also knowing a little French."

Wow, you think you know someone. "Oh yeah, Ucchan said she had some more shopping to do, and she sent me back here alone. I ain't sure when she'll be back."

A knocking from the door interrupted our conversation. "You wanna get that?"

Incase the paragraph at the beginning misled you, The White Queen isn't evil. She is a caring person, but an aristocrat through and through.