I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi or Steve Jackson Games.
Several days later:
From a few steps below the wide glass doors, Toshiko stared up at the entrance to the school. She really didn't want to be here. Suck it up, girl, Win explained it, and his explanation actually made sense—ya really should have at least yer high school certificate, and it'll give ya something to do during the day. Ya can't practice the Art until they find that empty ship's hold anyway, not really.
Not that she was buying the other reason her husband had offered, she really didn't see the point in mixing with other teenagers her age ... it wasn't like she'd have much in common with them, not even a mother tongue however good her English was (and getting better). And the teenagers at her last school didn't exactly impress her. A' course, they aren't likely ta have anything like Kuno and the Hentai Horde here—they're sane. At least, I hope they're sane. There can't be two schools like Furinkan! Still, it would be a relief to be out of the apartment for at least a while, now that she had the I.D. to go with her new identity and relationship—things there had been ... not tense, but awkward since their ... shared shower, like neither was quite sure how to deal with the other one, now.
And other than bumping against each other in bed, Win hadn't touched her.
Think about that later, one problem at a time. Taking a deep breath, she strode up the last few steps and through the front doors. Just inside, a tall, pretty, freckled brunette leaning against the wall looked over the top of the massive book she was reading. (Toshiko whimsically thought that holding up that book, and all its siblings, all day would be a great constant upper body exercise.) Seeing Toshiko, she closed the book with a thump, and said in passable if heavily accented Japanese, "Hi, you must be Tatsuno Toshiko. I'm Baker Mercedes, Patterson-san asked me to meet you and show you around when you showed up."
"Oh, uh ... yeah, I'm Toshiko. I thought I was gonna hafta take some tests, see where I stand?"
"Yeah, but Pope-san, the secretary, had a family emergency and is going to be late. Patterson-san thought I could keep you occupied until she gets here. Better than having you just sit in an empty room until then."
"But don't you have class?"
Mercedes waved off her concern. "It's history, I could teach it. Come on, this won't take very long. We're not exactly big, after all, just the kids from the base—more like a small-town school, Patterson-san says." And she was off, keeping up a running commentary as they went past classrooms and offices and the cafeteria and lockers and a baseball and football (though Mercedes called it soccer) field, talking about events and personalities until Toshiko's head swam.
/oOo\
Ukyo looked up at the sound of her restaurant's door chime, a little surprised—the lunch rush was done, and the handful that would trickle in after school let out up to the dinner rush hadn't started yet. "Welcome to ... oh, it's you. I thought I told you to never set foot in my place again."
The middle Tendo didn't so much as twitch at Ukyo's growl. After the very public brawl that had marked Ranma's attempt to return to Nerima, Ukyo had made her opinion of how Nabiki and the fathers had treated Ranma known to them, loudly and publicly—but unfortunately, Ukyo was sure that Nabiki, at least, had to have a good enough read on her to know she wouldn't attack someone that wasn't an immediate threat. Which Furinkan's Ice Queen wasn't—a threat any number of other ways, from blackmail to rumormongering, but not physical.
With a shrug, Nabiki said, "I'm not here to buy, just to pass on a warning to you and Konatsu. Last night I found out that the fathers have landed us in a bigger mess than we knew. The people they sold Ranma to are getting impatient, last night they threatened to grab Akane if she she isn't handed over to them soon. The thought occurred to me that they might not be picky about the substitution and try to grab more than just Akane."
"Yeah, right, you decided to pass it on out of the goodness of your nonexistent heart," Ukyo scoffed. "What do you really want?"
Nabiki just shrugged again. "Would you believe anything I told you? I've passed on my warning, do with it what you will." With that she turned and walked out, leaving behind one of the most dangerous people in Nerima trembling with the effort not to chase her down and chop her into giblets.
"Ukyo-sama, do you think she was telling the truth?"
At the soft-spoken words, Ukyo sighed as she turned to look at her 'waitress'. Konatsu was an effeminate young man—very effeminate, in his make-up, hairstyling, and sartorial selections he was more beautiful than Ukyo had ever dreamed of being ... even though male clothing had become comfortable second nature for her, the male kunoichi that insisted on working for her occasionally sparked off flashes of jealousy. But not this time, as she considered Nabiki's words. "We can't chance it. Fetch my battle harness while I close down the grill, we need to talk to Akane."
/oOo\
Toshiko was too much the martial artist to actually stumble as she left the room where she'd just finished her last test for the day, but that didn't stop her from almost walking into the door before stepping one pace to the side and making her escape. She knew she wasn't stupid, far from it—he'd managed to earn passing grades whenever his father had been forced to send him to school, after all. At least it's Friday, no half-Saturdays so no more tests till Monday.
The hallway was full of teenagers hurrying to their cars or rides home—she'd just managed to finish the last test as the school day was ending—and Toshiko heard someone call her name. Turning, she saw her guide from the morning waving to her from beside a hall locker and walked over to join her.
"So, how did you do on your tests?" Mercedes asked, again in her accented Japanese, as she turned back to the combination lock.
Toshiko shrugged. "I mostly did all right, I think." She grimaced. "At least except for U.S. history, that was horrible. My brain feels as bruised as I ever got from sparring."
"Well, of course, you didn't do well on U.S. history, who would expect you to?" Mercedes swung open her locker, and Toshiko's eyes widened as the girl began loading enough books into her backpack to do a weightlifter proud. "That does mean we'll be spending time together, though, I'm the school's tutor for history. Do you need a ride home?"
Toshiko shook her head as her new maybe-friend crouched to zip closed a backpack now bulging at the seams. "I'm good, thanks ... see ya Monday, I guess?"
"Sure, see you then." Mercedes hefted her backpack and headed for the exit. Toshiko watched her go, noting how she kept her spine straight and shoulder level in spite of the weight she was carrying. Not bad, for a civilian, she's got potential. It looked like a heavy school workload could be great exercise, for beginners at least, so long as they switched off which shoulder they used to carry the backpack. Enough daydreaming, ya gotta get home and see if you can cook dinner unsupervised.
And she had to get back into the habit of speaking—or thinking—proper Japanese again, or Kasumi would be so disappointed in her the next time they met.
/oOo\
Yasuhiro sat back on his haunches and wiped at the sweat beading his forehead with the back of the hand not holding his wrench. "Finally!"
"Yeah, I think that's got it," his co-worker agreed, gazing with satisfaction at the new pipe they'd just installed. He glanced around at the water-stained kitchen walls and ceiling surrounding them. "There's going to be some remodeling to do."
Yasuhiro shrugged. "Not our problem, and it wouldn't be theirs if they had called us in when the pipes started to leak instead of when they burst."
"True enough." Seishisai chuckled, then straightened. "You got any plans tonight?"
Yasuhiro straightened as well, and stretched. "No, the wife's out of town visiting family, it'll be take-out and a video. You?"
"There's family visiting, we'll be hitting a restaurant. In fact—" He glanced at his watch. "We need to get moving."
"In that case, let me head down and get the water turned on, if it's good just head out. I'll take the train home and in to work on Monday."
"That sounds good, thanks."
"No problem." As Seishisai placed the last of the tools in their box, Yasuhiro headed for the door to the apartment building's public hallway, and the stairs down to the basement and the entrance to the tunnel with the pipe that supplied water for the entire building. He turned on the light on his helmet and put it on as he went.
A few minutes later he was sweeping the helmet's beam along the walls and ceiling of the tunnel as he walked. They'd found the tunnel floor free of debris when they'd turned off the water, and he was fascinated by how clean everything was—hardly any dirt or grime, no mold, no insects, no spiders or their webs, no rat droppings. For that matter, no rats. It was really quite remarkable, he'd never seen a tunnel so clean, not even brand new ones. Even the inevitable cracks to be found in any tunnel of any real age didn't have grime or insects.
And there was the valve he needed to open. A quick few spins of the wheel, and he pulled his radio from its holder on his belt. "It's open."
" ... And the water's running fine, and ... no leaks, we're good. See you tomorrow."
"Enjoy your night out." Yasuhiro returned his radio to his belt and turned to leave, only to freeze as the beam from his helmet played across the tunnel floor—it was covered with white worms the length of his forearm, all undulating as they wriggled over and around each other as they flowed toward him. Except these worms had teeth, tiny ridges circling the round openings at their front end that he assumed to be mouths of some sort. And more of them were wriggling out of cracks and dropping to join the mass below them.
He stepped back and felt something squish under his boot, and looked down to find his back foot surrounded by even more of the small monstrosities. Several of them rose like snakes and lunged forward, tiny mouths clamping onto his boot around his ankle, and fell back into the mass a moment later taking chunks of boot leather with them. He turned to run for the exit through the mass of things, only for pain like nothing he'd ever felt to shoot through him from the back of his heel. Convulsing with a high hissing shriek, he stumbled forward then collapsed onto the undulating mass of wrigglers and more pain filled his world as teeth bit through work pants and shirt into legs and abdomen as other wrigglers pushed into his open mouth and bit into tongue and cheeks. His last sight was several of the things striking for his eyes.