Hello again my friends. Sorry, been coming back to school, moving into a new house AND watching a MST3K Marathon. Question: Am I odd for thinking Doctor Forester's "Who will I Kill" was a very touching song?

At any rate, On with the chapter. Hope you all like it!

Chapter 28, Dates and Youma.

Konatsu fiddled nervously with his ponytail as he walked silently next to Ukyo. The two hadn't exchanged words since he had met her and asked her out, and the silence was becoming, at least to him, uncomfortable. He quickly glanced backwards, then returned his gaze to the sidewalk in front of him and hoped that Ukyo wouldn't notice.

"Look…" Ukyo said, her voice breaking the silence like a shotgun shot to the overly-tense male Kunoichi. "Is there something wrong, Sugar? You seem more nervous than Ran-chan around cats."

"Nothing's wrong, Ukyo-san." Konatsu said, quickly.

The Okonomiyaki chef looked at the boy walking next to her skeptically. She'd thought that she'd recognized him from somewhere, maybe Furinkan, but the way he was acting, perhaps accepting a lunch invitation wasn't the smartest move. "So where are we going for lunch?" She asked, deciding to give the boy a chance.

"I… I was thinking we go to…" Konatsu fumbled. He couldn't believe that he hadn't considered WHERE to take Ukyo-sama if he succeeded in asking her out! His eyes flicked around the street randomly, stopping briefly on a garbage can nearby before locking onto a sign that said 'Crown game center and fruit parlor.' "How about there?" He asked, pointing and trying to act like he wasn't just pointing at the first place he saw.

Ukyo shrugged. "Sure, I guess." She said, following her rather jittery date into the building.

From a nearby Garbage can, Minako Aino cursed. She'd been following Konatsu to see how he was doing, but she hadn't planned for what to do if he entered a building. To make things worse, so far he hadn't done any of the things she'd advised him to do on a first date. Once the two she was following entered the building, the Senshi of love hopped up from her cover and followed them in.

Just as she was about to clime the stairs to the second floor and find a corner booth to hide, someone called out to her. "Hi, Minako-chan!" Came Motoki's voice from the arcade's front desk. "Come back to try and get to level 34 in the Sailor V game?" Minako just sighed in temporary defeat and turned from her mission to talk to her friend.

Meanwhile, Ukyo and Konatsu had found a seat in the upstairs parlor of the crown, and Ukyo was looking over the menu that was left on the table.

Konatsu tried to do the same thing, and he was more relaxed since Minako was apparently lost in the crowd, but he kept getting distracted either by taking a glance at Ukyo or tugging nervously at the sleeves of his rather uncomfortable dress shirt. The silence between the two was broken as the waitress approached the table.

"Oh, hello Ukyo-san." Kasumi said, cheerfully.

"Kasumi?" Ukyo asked, raising her eyes from her menu to stare slack jawed at the eldest Tendo sister. "When did you get here?"

"I didn't have school this morning, so I thought I'd work a shift." Kasumi replied, completely missing Ukyo's real question. "Now what would you like to eat, Ukyo-san?"

"I'll have some battered chicken." Ukyo said, derailed by Kasumi's matter of fact delivery and losing her train of thought.

Kasumi nodded slightly, before turning to Konatsu. "And you, Konatsu-kun?" She asked, with a kind smile. Konatsu selected his order, neither he nor Kasumi noticing that Ukyo had a look of shocked surprise frozen on her face.

"K… Konatsu?" The Okonomiyaki chef stammered, pointing at the not currently cross-dressing ninja.

"Hai, Ukyo-san." Konatsu said, looking at her quizzically. "I don't really look that much different, do I? I thought you knew it was me." He looked down, his body-language starting to clash a little with his current appearance as he took a very feminine posture. "I apologize."

"Konatsu… it's all right. You just look," she shrugged, not sure what to say.

"You don't like it, Ukyo-san?" He asked.

"No, no. You look fine, Konatsu. I just didn't expect you to dress like a boy, that's all." Ukyo almost wanted to smack herself. "That is, I know you are a boy, but I'm so used to you in your Kunoichi gear." She babbled. Distantly, she wondered why she was trying so hard not to insult Konatsu.

"Well, I heard you say that you felt that I was just like that annoying Tsubasa boy who always bothers you." Konatsu explained, not seeing Ukyo's wince. "Since the only things the two of us had in common was our dressing as women, I attempted to overcome that obstacle." He grimaced. "Although it does feel a little strange."

Ukyo looked at him incredulously. "You mean you disappeared for almost two weeks, just because you were trying to find men's clothes, because of one comment that I made?" She frowned. "That you weren't even supposed to hear." She added, with a small glare.

"Yes, Ukyo-san. On the night I left the Ucchan, I found a Shinto priest who took me in. His granddaughter and her friends helped me with my clothing, as well as a few pieces of advice on how to take a girl on a date." Konatsu said. It was only after he said it that he thought of the advisability of telling Ukyo that he'd gotten advice about dating her, but she didn't seem to react to it.

The reason Ukyo hadn't reacted to the second half of Konatsu's statement was that she was currently lost in thought. At some point during their conversation, Kasumi had left and returned with her food, and Ukyo spent the next few minutes chewing and thinking.

What Konatsu had done seemed both incredibly stupid and, in an odd way, very familiar. Briefly, she recalled a time when she'd attended Furinkan in as feminine an outfit and appearance as she possibly could, strangely enough, it had also been due to an offhand comment Ranma had made while not thinking, though at the time, and until recently, she'd thought it was akin to a proposal.

The brown haired girl stopped chewing for a few seconds and swallowed hard as another realization hit her. Her relationship with Konatsu was rather similar to what Ranma's had once been with her. The male Kunoichi would do almost anything for her, and adored her. She'd dismissed it as hero worship, but this most recent incident showed that he was, in fact, interested in her and just like Ranma had with her, she'd ignored it or tried to dismiss it.

"Ukyo-san, are you all right?" Konatsu asked, and Ukyo noticed for the first time that he was clenching his jaw right after the word 'san,' as if he wanted to address her with his usual 'Sama.'

"I'm fine, Konatsu." Ukyo said, quietly, before lifting another piece of food to her mouth. After a few minutes, she spoke again. "So was that one of the people who helped you out that was following us?"

Konatsu smiled slightly. "So, you noticed Minako-san?"

"Blonde hair's kinda easy to spot." Ukyo replied. "Was it Minako's temple you stayed at?"

"No, it was Hino-san's. His granddaughter is named Rei. She has black hair. I didn't see her following us."

"So, you've been hanging around with two pretty younger girls, Maybe I should be jealous, Konatsu." Ukyo said, mentally wincing. That sentence would probably give the boy false hope, but then again, was it so false? Unlike Ranma, she didn't have half a dozen other commitments tugging her in different directions. While Konatsu blushed and stammered, she made a decision. She didn't have her dream of living with Ranma to fall back on now, and it was time to rebuild her life. If it happened to be with Konatsu, so be it.

From the doorway to the Crown's kitchen, Kasumi wore a small smile as she saw Ukyo marginally relax and start to talk quietly with Konatsu.

HR.

"This is an OUTRAGE!" Kuno Tatewaki bellowed, glaring hotly at his black clad ninja manservant, who was sitting nervously in a chair on the other side of a pane of glass.

"I'm sorry master." Sasuke's quavering voice said, as he rubbed his ears from the volume of Kuno's shout. "The family lawyers say that they're facing too much hard evidence and too many powerful people this time. I'm afraid there's nothing we can do."

Kuno huffed. He had been resigned to a few weeks in a local jail while his family's legal council arranged to free him, but what he was hearing Sasuke say now was NOT what he'd expected. Apparently, within hours of his arrest, two major families had filed charges of assault, attempted murder and willful destruction of property against him. What was worse, the only concession they were offering to drop the charges before he went to court was that he be committed to a respected mental institution. "Sasuke, I am not mentally unbalanced, and I will not suffer this indignity!" He boomed, causing the Ninja to flinch again.

"But master Kuno, the other alternative is a rather long prison sentence. Perhaps more than five years!"

The young Kuno frowned. While the idea of receiving psychiatric treatment was repugnant, the idea of wasting several years in prison was much worse. Besides, he was clearly perfectly sane, and therefore the mental hospital would be forced to release him within a week. He sighed. "Fine, Sasuke. I find this most objectionable, but see no choice. Inform the family lawyers that I shall agree to enter the mental hospital… then fire the foul naves." He growled, turning about and striding to the door that lead back to his cell proudly.

Sasuke sighed in relief. He wasn't entirely sure if psychiatric treatment would help master Kuno, but it would get him out of the way for quite a long time, and miracles do happen. Now if he could only get something similar to happen to mistress Kodachi.

HR.

Later that night, Ranma sat in Juku, staring cross-eyed at a math question. He'd previously been nibbling on the end of his pencil, but had managed to wear the eraser away to the wood and crush the metal end cap in frustration.

Ami sighed as she looked over at her Juku partner. At this point, she wasn't worried about him being an agent of darkness. No, she just wanted to get this class over with. "Ranma, you do it like this, see?" She asked, for the fourth time on this one question, tracing her own pencil across a neatly printed row of calculations in her notebook.

"But how did you solve for C?" Ranma asked, plaintively.

"You take the square of D and…" Ami was interrupted in her explanation as a loud roaring noise reverberated across the Juku class. All of the students' heads shot up, and the teacher woke with a snort.

"What was that?" Ranma asked, looking towards the source of the roar. It was behind a wall, deeper into the library.

"Do you think that was a Youma?" One student piped up, nervously.

Ranma stood and to his surprise, so did Ami. The martial artist and the younger girl both crept to the door to the hall, quickly looking out. "Yep, that's a demon all right." Ranma muttered, taking note of the large green and black striped creature that was standing in the hallway. It had a student clutched in it's large, wickedly clawed hand, and Ranma's Chi sense showed that it was sucking life energy out of the boy. "Get everyone outta here." The pigtailed martial artist said, glancing over at Ami.

"What will you be doing?" The blue haired girl asked, confused. Her question was answered as Ranma charged through the door, picking up a heavy shelf and lobbing it at the creature. Ami blinked a few times, before proceeding to usher everyone else through a different door and out of the class room. It didn't take a lot of time, since the residents of Juuban almost had a 'youma fire drill' by this point, but it was still almost three minutes before the Senshi of water was alone to transform.

In the meantime, Ranma had been distracting the youma as best as he could. His first thrown projectile had managed to knock the youma's arm hard enough to make it drop the person it was holding, but there were only a few things around here to throw, and on his first offensive attack he'd found out that this was one of the creatures that could drain energy from his limbs as he attacked.

He was tempted to use the transformation pen to turn into Sailor Neptune and destroy this thing that way, but he'd managed to get the only civilian in the immediate area out of range, and he had to make sure that he couldn't deal with this thing using his conventional martial arts before resorting to the Senshi magic.

He swung a wooden chair into the creature's side as hard as he could, causing the chair to snap, but unfortunately the Youma was unharmed. He cursed. That had been the last object around the area that could be used as a weapon, and he was currently relegated to dodging and thinking. All of his attacks would probably just feed this thing, and hitting it hard with un-charged objects hadn't worked. Genma's forbidden techniques could possibly work, but he'd made a promise to keep them forbidden. He couldn't think of any tactics that would work, at least not without a lot of preparation and luck, and unfortunately he'd just run out of time.

The martial artist had been too caught up in the fight to notice, but the Youma had been slowly draining his life energy during the fight. He had a LOT of life energy to drain, but it'd been slowing him down for about half a minute now, and the Youma used this opportunity to lash out and grab Ranma by the arm.

The pigtailed boy tried to use the arm hold as leverage to swing around and kick the youma in the abdomen, but the kick wasn't nearly as strong as it should have been. As Ranma struggled to get out of the Youma's grip and it continued to suck away his energy at an accelerated pace, a voice came from the end of the hall. "Mercury Aqua Rhapsody!"

Ranma's eyes widened as a huge column of water came at the Youma. All of it's force was aimed away from him, but that didn't stop him from getting soaked.

As the redhead sputtered and rolled away from the now quite pained Youma, she saw a blue skirted sailor standing at the door at the end of the hall, her arm stretched out from the attack she'd recently launched.

Ranma wasted very little time, quickly withdrawing her transformation pen from her pocket. She'd tried fighting this thing the normal way, and it hadn't worked. She dove into the classroom she'd originally come out of, looked around to make sure no one was around and then held the pen in the air. "Neptune planet power, Make up!" She called, before the flow of water overtook her, leaving her in her sailor uniform.

HR.

Sailor Mercury gulped as she saw the Youma's newest draining victim drop to the ground and roll away. She'd gotten the thing's attention, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. She'd gotten a scan of this Youma with her computer before attacking it, and it was quite strong. Even though she now had a projectile attack, she was still more of a support member for the Senshi, and she'd have to keep the youma occupied until the others arrived.

She launched her Aqua illusion attack at the creature again as it charged down the hallway at her, but it only slowed it down slightly. Diving out of the way as a claw passed through the space she'd once occupied, Mercury observed a large hole getting punched in the wall. She quickly regained her balance and started to back off, charging another attack, when a shout she didn't recognize came from behind her.

"Deep Submerge!" Mercury flinched as a very large ball of water missed her by a couple inches, impacting against the Youma and sending it staggering back in pain. She quickly turned, seeing another Senshi. She paused for a few seconds, trying to identify the other girl. She was shorter than Ami, with bright red hair. That pretty well eliminated any of the other Senshi. Was this a new member of the team?

"Move!" The new Senshi bellowed, running forward and pulling Mercury by the arm. The blue haired girl was grateful for the help, as she saw that one of the Youma's clawed hands was buried in the ground where she'd been. "Now stop gawkin and let's destroy this thing." The redhead said, sounding distinctly annoyed.

"R…right." Mercury stammered, jumping back and sliding her visor over her eyes to scan the Youma again. "This is a left-over Droid from the Dark Moon family. If it soaks up enough damage, it should dissolve."

"Got it." The redhead said, briefly wondering what the heck the dark moon family or a 'droid' were before charging at the enemy and starting into hand-to-hand combat. As she'd thought, the Senshi transformation kept the 'droid' from sucking away any of her energy, and her blows were now doing some damage. She heard Mercury starting to charge up her attack again, and jumped away to join in.

From that point on, the battle was pretty well wrapped up. Although Sailor Moon wasn't there to administer a final blow, two Senshi constantly pounding away at it's healing ability eventually destroyed the droid.

As the creature dissolved into dust, Neptune turned and started to walk off, before being stopped by Mercury. "Excuse me?" The younger girl asked, catching the redhead's arm.

"I gotta go." Neptune said, trying to shrug off Mercury's hold.

"Who are you? You aren't one of the Senshi in our team, so who are you?" Mercury blurted.

"My name's Sailor Neptune. Sorry about this, but I really gotta go." The redhead said, successfully dislodging Mercury's arm and running. She had a few things to think about before talking to the other Senshi.

HR.

Setsuna rubbed her forehead. Ranma had just proceeded to make things a lot more complicated, unknowingly, of course. She had thought that it would take another encounter with a Youma to make Ranma accept her role as a Senshi, and had been prepared to teleport in to assist the redhead if necessary, but she hadn't been planning on Mercury's interference.

Normally, the outer Senshi wouldn't be revealed to the inners even as Senshi for another few weeks, but as it was, Mercury, and soon all of the inners, would at least know about Neptune. This could cause a problem regarding the outers' mission of checking heart crystals, but she'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

Haruka was supposed to awaken in only a few days, and she had to be ready for the event. Hopefully, the even more drastic derailing of the Senshi related timeline that had just occurred wouldn't effect it. She needed to speak with both of them soon after that. Sighing in irritation, the green haired woman teleported from the gates of time back into her bedroom. This was not her century.

END.

Well, that's all folks. Please remember to drop me a review.

Push the button, Frank.