I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi, or anything I've borrowed from Scooter.

Ranma slowly surfaced from the sea of sleep. This surprised her, in a vague sort of way ... she seemed to remember huddling in a doorway, drifting off to sleep and not expecting to wake up. Had there been a man? Wherever she was it certainly wasn't in that doorway watching the snow fall. It was too warm, for one thing, and ... there was a hint of bacon in the air, making her stomach demand to be filled for the first time in she couldn't remember how long.

Hospital! The thought yanked her out of her half-sleep and she bolted upright ... or tried to, anyway, what she actually managed was to twitch and sort of half-roll onto one side. But from the framed photos on top of a dresser against a blue wall, she wasn't in a hospital.

"Oh, you're awake."

At the sound of a male voice she didn't recognize, she flopped back and rolled the other way (the best she could manage, with all the blankets wrapped round her) to find a stranger sitting in a chair, a large book open in his lap ... clearly a gaijin, and not just because of the military uniform he wore—blond, paler than Orientals, Western features, though shorter than most Westerners she'd met.

"How old are you?"

Ranma blinked at the question in flawless but accented Japanese. "What?" she asked ... croaked, really, and began to cough.

He instantly set the book on the floor and strode out of the room, returning with a bottle of water. "How long since you've had anything in your stomach?"

"I ... I don't know."

"Right, small sips until you're sure it'll stay down." He handed her the bottle and waited until she'd taken several sips, luxuriating in the cool liquid trickling down her throat. "Now, how old are you?"

"Eight ... eighteen."

He sighed and ran a hand across the top of his head. "Well, that simplifies things. Let's get some food in you. Can you stand?"

"A' course." She started to struggle out of the blankets and paused when the blankets covering her top fell away and she realized she was naked.

"Oh, yeah, right, I stripped you down to get you out of your wet clothes and so I could get some hot water bags where they were most needed. Hold on a sec." He vanished out of the room again and returned with her clothes, now clean. "Let me know when you're dressed." He vanished out of the room again.

Ranma waited until the door closed then pushed herself up and pulled on her clothes—slowly pulled on her clothes, that was all she had the energy for. Once dressed, she managed to stagger over to the door and leaned against the wall. "I'm dressed," she called out, then barely managed to keep from getting smacked by the door when her benefactor opened it.

"Where ... ? Oh." He chuckled when he found her behind the door trying to glare at him. "Come on, let's get you into the kitchen."

Ranma was not happy with how much she had to lean on the man as he helped her into a seat at a kitchen table. She was very happy with the American-style breakfast she found waiting for her—eggs, bacon, buttered pancakes, syrup ... a lot heavier a breakfast than what she'd become used to at the Tendo's (she ignored a spike of pain at the thought), but considering she couldn't remember how long it had been since she'd eaten she was not going to complain. She fell on the food as the man headed for the stove.

"Careful!" he called back over his shoulder. "Remember, take it slow, give your stomach time to adjust to being full again."

Ranma paused, remembering a few times on his training trip with his fath—with Genma that he'd gorged himself after going hungry for awhile, and slowed her rate of intake.

The man watched for a few minutes, nodded, and turned back to the stove. "I'm Lieutenant Blake Wendell, by the way, but you can call me Win. What's your name?"

Ranma wondered whether her host was placing the family name before or after the personal name, but decided it didn't matter—'Win' would do. And Win was waiting for an answer. "Ranma."

Win paused for a moment, before returning to his cooking. "Ranma? No last name?"

Ranma stopped chewing for a moment, before forcing herself to finish her mouthful. "No ... not anymore. If they don't want me, I don't see any reason why I should recognize them." She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, and succeeded more than usual as she remembered her mother's tearstained face. With that memory a thought struck her, and after a moment she added, "Actually, make it Tatsuno Ranma. That's my Mom's family, before she married. It's not official, but she deserves the recognition."

"Ah." Win finished cooking, then put his own plate on the table across from Ranma and sat down. "Tell me about the people hunting you." At Ranma's hesitation, he added, "You're on a US military base at the moment, so I doubt they can find you. But if they can, since you're in my home I should know what risk I'm running, hm?"

Ranma hesitated for a long moment more, than sighed and nodded. "Yeah, you should." She thought for a moment about how much she could include and still be believable. "It started when Pop ... my father and his best friend were drinking at a bar, and bitching up a storm, when a businessman sharing the bar with them took an interest..."

/\

" ... and that's when ya found me, I guess."

Win finished chewing the last of his breakfast and swallowed, then leaned back in his seat and considered the tale he had just heard; it seemed normal enough, if brutally ugly ... a businessman lusting after a young girl and throwing money at her father, nothing that hadn't been happening ever since one man had accumulated more wealth and power than other men. There were just two problems with it. First ... "Ranma, you don't think this Schwei is spending a lot of money for a living sex toy? Yes, you probably clean up really nice, but there are plenty of other girls just as beautiful and a lot less trouble to acquire."

Ranma crossed her arms, mulishly stubborn. "Maybe the pursuit is part a' the thrill."

"No, I don't think so. I'm not saying you've lied, but you didn't tell me everything. So how about filling in the blanks?"

Ranma stared at him for a long moment, then sighed. "You aren't gonna believe it."

"Try me, you might be surprised. I've seen some incredible things in my time."

She hesitated, then slowly began again, 'filling in the blanks', picking up speed as she went. And an incredible story it was, filled with magic springs and their weird water curses, Amazons living in the backwaters of China, fiancées and rivals, an underground Martial Arts subculture that belonged in comic books, ending in a fight with an arrogant prince with superpowers. He could see why she didn't really think he'd believe her, he was just surprised she was willing to tell it at all, much less spilling it out the way she had. She must have been desperate to tell her story to anyone, however unbelievable others would find it, just to get it off her chest. And he had to admit, if it hadn't been for those government agents and their home video, he wouldn't have believed a word of it.

And that was the second problem ... He considered those men from the unnamed agency with the amateur video. They hadn't actually ordered him not to discuss it with anyone, probably because they had thought he wouldn't expect anyone to believe him ... or maybe they thought there wasn't any point to it, that long-term secrecy was impossible. But they had given him an explicit order. He had an excellent reputation as a pilot and an officer so he had some leeway, but not much. The question was whether the girl across the table from him would play ball.

He waited until she finally wound down (there hadn't been much difference in her story once Schwei entered the picture, just more men in the mob sent after her was all). When she at last fell silent, staring anxiously—no, fearfully—at him, he shrugged. "I believe you."

"Just like that?" Ranma scoffed. "Yeah, right, let's humor the crazy girl."

"No, not 'just like that'. Sure, a curse turning a boy into a girl and superhero martial artists is a bit much, but beyond the Senshi publicly fighting something in Tokyo, the truth is, Schwei isn't the only one hunting you. A few months ago some government suits showed me a video of that fight with the prince you were in; they had some work convincing me it was real, I'd never seen anything like it outside of a special-effects blockbuster."

Ranma stiffened, eyes widening. "What!? They know?"

Win chuckled. "Ranma, you and that flying man you were fighting brought down a good-sized chunk of a mountain, people are going to notice. Governments are going to notice." He sobered, and leaned forward. "They ordered me to keep an eye out for you, report back if I learned anything."

Now Ranma wasn't just stiff, she was tense, eyes darting around the room, pausing on the windows; if he hadn't had to help her into her seat, he suspected she'd already be gone. "So that's why you took me in. Kinda stupid to tell me before your back-up shows up, though."

"No, it isn't why I took you in, I didn't recognize you until I'd already stripped you down and bundled you up with blankets and bags of hot water." Careful to keep his hands in sight on the table, he continued, "But they don't know you're here ... yet. I am 'a man under authority'—" He grinned slightly, though he didn't expect her to catch the Biblical reference. "—but I figure I have a little leeway in how I carry out my orders."

Ranma stopped looking around the room, focusing on her host. "You don't trust those above ya, so you're giving me a chance ta run."

"Yes ... and no." Win ran his fingers through his hair, sighing. "They're people, just like everyone else, some good and some bad. But right now even the good ones must be desperate, or they wouldn't have looked me up just because my wife was a Wiccan." At Ranma's blank look, he shrugged. "It's a religion, like your Shinto, kind of. Think about it, would you expect any of your people to know all about how you can throw fireballs around, just because they're married to someone that practices Shinto?"

"No," Ranma responded, shaking her head.

"No. So they're desperate, and desperate people can do stupid things."

"So like I said, you're giving me a chance ta run before they do something desperate."

"If that's what you choose to do. But you can't keep running forever, now that they know you're out there one government or another will catch you sooner or later even if Schwei doesn't. And from what you said, legally you don't exist. So what you need is a way to let the suits find you instead of Schwei, while being able to keep you safe from any stupidity the suits might be tempted to come up with."

"Yeah, right," Ranma scoffed, "and I suppose you have some idea how ta make that happen?"

"Actually, I do." Win leaned back in his seat and grinned. "Will you marry me?"