I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi or Steve Jackson Games.

Warning, the last 3/5ths of this chapter is high-citrus content, NSFW!

Another day of school over, Toshiko was loading up her backpack at her locker again. And as had also been normal over the last few days, she again had to pull her thoughts away from her husband. And it hadn't gone without notice, either, more than one teacher had called her on her failure to pay attention in class. Only Barnes-san had actually asked why she was so distracted, and had been understanding when after her initial stammered denial she had admitted to thinking about Win and his short dogfight the previous Friday ... but even he had kindly pointed out that such was the nature of the career her husband had chosen, and dogfight or no dogfight, she still had a test tomorrow. And speaking of studying for the test ...

"Remember, we have to be done by 5:30," she said to Mercedes at the locker next to her—in English, this time. (After using some phrases she'd picked up from the U.S. Marines she'd trained with during the training trip had landed her in the Principal's office, Patterson-san had suggested that she stick exclusively to English at school even when talking to those that knew Japanese, to get a proper feel for what conversational English was really like ... at least in 'polite company'.) "I have to be home in time to cook dinner."

"You'd better make it 5:00 to leave room for a shower," a boy nearby said with a sneer, "you'll need to clean up when you're done, and a tongue-bath won't hack it."

What? Toshiko glared at the boy, the same one that had body-checked Mercedes into her locker the previous Friday. She was tempted to break his nose for him, but ... Bad Ranma! ... Toshiko! No beating up the civilians, you'll get Win in trouble. So instead she contented herself with pulling the wedding ring she kept on a chain around her neck out from under her blouse to show to him. "Since you have been living under a rock for the past few weeks, let me kill your fantasies. I. Am. Married. Asshole. Go away." She dropped the ring back down into her blouse as she turned back to Mercedes. "Come on, I want to find out what other idiocies you got up to in your civil war."

As they walked away from their lockers Toshiko talked about some of the idiocies the Japanese had gotten up to during their own Warring States period until they were well away from the school, when she could switch to Japanese with a clear conscience. "So, who is that idiot and what's his problem.?"

Mercedes snorted. "Joshua—always Joshua, you understand, never Josh—is General Layton's son." At Toshiko's clear lack of recognition, she added, "The base commander."

"Oh, one of those. Yeah, I've met them before." Ranma scowled. "They think 'cause their dads are big shots they rule the school. Sad thing is, sometimes they're right. Is he?"

"No," Mercedes replied, shaking her head. "I'm sure he'd like to think so, but unfortunately he's not that stupid. But it does mean that he gets cut a little more slack—other students not willing to report him, teachers not being as hard on him as they might—and he knows exactly where the line is."

"Well, at least that's better than—" Toshiko broke off, waving off the rest of her comment as irrelevant. "So what's his problem with you?"

Mercedes shrugged. "He asked—no, he demanded—I go on a date with him and I blew him off. He's decided that since I don't date anybody I must be a lesbian and any girl willing to hang out with me must be, too. Or at least that he could use it to harass any girl that might be getting friendly with me whether he believes it or not."

"Yeah, a real asshole, all right. So are you?" Oops! "Ya don't hafta answer that," Toshiko added, waving her hands and falling back into her old cruder speech habits in her haste, "it's none'a my business."

"Relax!" Mercedes giggled for a moment. "Yes, I am ... is that a problem?"

"No," Toshiko reassured her, shaking her head. "Like I told the asshole, I'm married. So ... ya—you—said Sherman did something spectacularly stupid just before the battle of Shiloh?"

Mercedes' relieved laugh might have had just a touch of hysteria, but Toshiko ignored it as her new friend launched into a story of a military commander that blew off actual reports of enemy troops just beyond his army's picket line because it didn't fit his conviction that there weren't any within twenty miles, and how he spent the next day desperately fighting off the surprise assault that came within a hair's breadth of destroying his army.

That kept them going until they reached Mercedes' family's apartment, and Toshiko looked around, curious about her new friend. Like the Western homes he'd seen in movies before she was locked—like her own new home, for that matter, if with fewer books and more knickknacks on the shelves—it was ... overfull. Stuffed, really, not to the point of having trouble moving around, but she found herself missing the simplicity of the Tendo residence. (At least, the public spaces, Akane's and Nabiki's bedroom were pretty full. So were Yuka's and Sayuri's, when she had visited with Akane. Maybe it was a teenager thing?)

Then an item caught Toshiko's attention that wasn't a knickknack—a dagger, a real one, for all the jewels and fancy carving of guard and pommel the blade looked true and the grip comfortable. She walked over to examine it more closely, and caught Mercedes stiffening out of the corner of her eye. "May I?"

"Sure, go ahead. Just be careful, the blade's sharp."

"I'd hope so, anything else'd be a travesty for somethin' this good." Toshiko picked it up and smiled. She'd been right, her grip naturally fell into place, as comfortable as any blade she'd held. And the blade—she shaved off some of the fine hairs on her forearm—was as sharp as the day it was forged. For all its finery, this was as beautiful a working blade as she'd ever seen.

And, she suddenly realized, she seemed to be picking up a similar ... vibe? ... as she had most recently from the open water kettle.

She hastily placed the dagger back on its display holder and turned to Mercedes. "Like I said, I gotta be done by 5:30. We'd better get ta studying."

Mercedes' gaze sharpened, but she simply nodded acknowledgement. "We'll use the kitchen table, this way."

/oOo\

Jason Evans stood in the area for those waiting for new arrivals at Misawa Airport, watching the passengers from the latest flight from the United States streaming out of the baggage claim. So far they had been what you'd expect, mostly business people of both sexes though there were some tourists taking a Christmas holiday vacation, certainly none with the pure physicality of the men he was waiting for. The Company's Grunts were the best physical specimens the human race had to offer, at the top of their game and with training and experience no military in the world could consistently match—and it made them very difficult to use in any kind of op requiring a light touch, they stood out like Dobermans surrounded by kittens.

Then one of the men he was watching for came out of baggage, another a few seconds later, Tony Hopkins and Jeff Andrews ... and that was it. Jason didn't like where this was going. He watched as they looked around, saw him, and walked toward him. They were dressed in Standard Tourist like he was, dragging perfectly ordinary wheeled luggage behind them, but people were instinctively shying away from them where Jason would have been just one more gaijin tourist.

As the pair reached him he grinned, holding out a hand to Tony then when he took it pulling him into a one-armed hug. "Brian, Jerry, it's good to see you! Where's Mike and Jose?"

Jeff shook his head and grinned, accepting his own shake-and-embrace. "They couldn't make it, came down with a bug. Let's grab a bite and we'll tell you all about it."

"Sure, come on." Jason kept his concern off his face as he led them out to the parking and his car, tossing their luggage in the trunk. Only once they were on the road did he ask, "What happened?"

Tony sighed and shifted uncomfortably in the front passenger seat. (Cars in Japan were not made for people his size.) "They really did come down with a bug—the burrowing variety. The docs think they'll be able to dig them all out before they burrow into anything important, but they can't do it if Ben and Guile aren't there."

"Damn." Jason hoped the two Grunts would be all right, he'd worked with them before and had liked them. And their absence left him with another problem. "Did they tell you it's ice worms? We'll need more than just two of you." He glanced away from the road for a second to catch Tony's grimace, and imagined Jeff was doing the same—there were worse threats, but no one like ice worms. "Well, we'll have a day or two before whoever Security manages to shake loose gets here. Maybe another squad can join us." He didn't glance over again but imagined that the other two were grimacing again, none of the Grunts enjoyed having 'Squealers' (yes, he knew what the Grunts called secops) along as minders ... even if they should be used to it, seeing how regs called for one on every mission to keep things from getting out of control. Though if we can't shake free anyone else, in this case they might not mind having another warm body along, even if he is a Squealer.

For a moment, memory of a young laughing redhead dodging glowing balls of green as she returned fire with her own shining blue missiles came to mind, but he shook off the thought. I don't care how skilled a combatant she is, she's a civilian. She's not trained for the field.

/oOo\

Toshiko stood in front of the full-length mirror on their bathroom door, scrutinizing her naked body. She hated to admit it (to herself, never out loud), but Ryoga had had a point—she wasn't as in shape as she had been. Sure, the weeks of sleeping warm and eating until she was full had done her a world of good. (Something that had been a source of amazement for her husband, before it had changed to a source of amusement and subtle joshing—the sheer amount she could eat ... once her stomach had again adjusted to having enough, that is).

But those handful of weeks were nowhere near enough to fix what long months of living hard—especially not eating well—had done to her muscle tone. The lack of a place where she had the privacy to really cut loose while training hadn't helped, though she was looking forward to the weekend when she'd have another chance to use the ship's hold.

And you're deflectin'. She could hear the old accent that Kasumi had tried to train out of her, that she managed to avoid most of the time now, when she wasn't stressed or caught by surprise ... and she was definitely stressed. She hadn't really given much consideration to Win's career, when she had chosen to make a leap of faith and accept his offer of marriage, but last Friday had been a wake-up call—it could have been his body fished out of the water, her a widow before she'd been two months a wife.

And she would have failed in her duty, to her husband and his line. This wasn't like her ... his ... engagement with Akane, when they'd had all the time in the world and both been too young to marry, anyway. Her husband's duty wasn't safe.

Toshiko took a deep breath as she ran her fingers over the soft red fuzz above her cleft, before turning to grab razor and shaving cream. Dream of Columbus. At least after the shower on their wedding night she knew she could expect it to be pleasurable if not exactly comfortable.

/\

When the sound of the shower cut off Win set the book he'd been reading in bed while waiting for his wife on the bedside table and settled back for another awkward night. He still hadn't come up with a way to get Toshiko to just relax. Surely by now she ought to have figured out that he wouldn't demand— He glanced over as steam billowed from the just-opened door to the bathroom and his train of thought derailed at the sight of his wife. Or more specifically, the sight of the nude body of his wife as she toweled her hair, something he hadn't seen since their wedding night. "Toshiko ..."

She just gave him a look that shut him down (not that he had anything coherent to say) and sat down at Mandy's vanity table and brushed out her hair before braiding it for the night. His eyes were fixed on the mirror, watching as her firm, large (for her size) breasts shifted and bounced with the motion of arms and hands quickly formed the single braid with the speed of long practice. Then their eyes met in the mirror and he blushed and looked away.

Toshiko sighed. "Win, I'm your wife. You're allowed to look."

"Toshiko, I ... you ..." He stammered to an incoherent stop, feeling like he was the blushing, uncertain teenager just graduated from High School a decade past.

The braid done, Toshiko rose and faced him, once again putting herself on display. "I am your wife, and tonight I am going to be your wife. Would you have gone this long without sex with Mandy?"

Instantly, Win felt his uncertainty vanish as he found himself back on familiar ground—at least, in his thoughts. And for once, the mention of his dead wife didn't come with a twinge of pain. "You are not Mandy, do not compare yourself to her. It isn't fair to you, or to her. You should take all the time you need."

"I don't think time is going to make this any better, just ... familiarity. And I did enjoy our shower. I just need to get used to it."

She stepped toward the bed, and Win felt his cock twitch and grow as his eyes took in the jiggle of her breasts, the way her shaved cleft vanished and reappeared with each step, and he threw back the bed covers as he sat up. "Come here, wife."

Toshiko couldn't help but giggle at the growl. In spite of a playful edge she thought she'd heard it had sounded so forceful, and husband or not, the thought of anyone getting 'forceful' with her ... but she played along. After all, in spite of all the blushes she'd suffered reading the book Stacy had given her from cover to cover (at some cost to her studies), she didn't really know how it all fit together—he'd always learned best by doing (even when his teachers had been men other than Genma). So when Win gently pulled her down she sat demurely on the bed beside him.

With her sitting on the bed he moved around behind her, and just like in the shower his hands slipped around to cup firm breasts, fingers brushing across smooth skin and crinkling nipples. Again, she leaned back against him as she shivered at the gentle pleasure, and spread her legs for the next step.

Only this time, the next step didn't come, just her breath coming faster as fingers began to massage breasts and fingers to tweak and gently tug at pleasure-tightened nipples, until she finally gasped out, "Win?"

Win sighed, making her shiver at the warm breath on neck and ear. "I guess your breasts aren't as sensitive as I'd hoped." He stopped and shuffled back on the bed. "Lie down."

The fact that Toshiko felt vaguely insulted by the comment didn't keep her from beginning to tense up again, and she forced herself to stay relaxed as she swung her legs up and stretched out on what had become her half of the bed, thoughts of where they could go from here, fueled by Stacy's gift, running through her head. She'd felt the slickness of her inner thighs as she'd shifted position, and this time the water of the shower had nothing to do with it ... and yes, there was a wet spot where she'd been sitting, she was going to have to wash the sheets and wipe down the liquid-proof mattress cover tomorrow. But she was worried that things could get awkward, she wasn't sure how good an act she could put on given the circumstances...

But he didn't try anything like the 'mood-enhancing' suggestions of the book, to add a 'romantic air' to the 'encounter', simply scooting down along the bed toward her feet—

Oh.

She was already spreading her legs when he tried to push them apart, sucking in a breath at the first touch of fingers tracing her damp folds, and he chuckled when one finger slid across her clit and her hips bucked.

"Your breasts may not be as sensitive, but this certainly is." She shivered at the feel of warm breath on those folds, then he blew gently and her hips bucked again as she moaned. His chuckle turned into a sharp laugh, probably at the moan since lying down she couldn't really see his eyes over her breasts and so he couldn't see the blush rising in her cheeks.

"N-new," she gasped out.

"Maybe, we'll see." He shifted, slipping his arms under her legs to wrap around her thighs, holding her in place as she watched the blond hair of the top of his head dip out of sight below her breasts. Then his lips touched hers, his tongue darting in, and it was all she could do to bite back a shriek as her hands clutched at the sheet beneath them—the apartments' soundproofing wasn't that good, as she'd noticed more than once from sounds coming from the neighbors that had her blushing and turning up the music when she'd realized what she was hearing. "So maybe it wasn't just that spot I found last time," he mused, rising up on his elbows and smiling at her before dropping back down, and she was quickly lost in the new sensations washing through her, gasping and moaning with each wave of pleasure rippling from his working lips and tongue sweeping across her folds and clit and dipping into her sheath, pushing her higher and higher until the ripples turned into a bolt of fire blasting through her, tightening every muscle with a shout that this time she wasn't able to keep behind her teeth.

She came back to herself, panting and covered in sweat, to her husband's soft laughter, and looked past the heaving peaks of her mounds to see him braced up on his elbows, his mouth wet with her juices in a broad grin. "Not bad for a first time," he said before again dropping out of sight, and she felt his arms returning to their hold around her thighs. As she again felt his lips again press against her slick folds, she had a sudden vision of tsunami after tsunami washing over her, powered by lips and tongue and eventually fingers when she was worn out enough that he didn't need to hold her down, until she was limp as a noodle and unable to do anything but sleep, while he—

"Wait!"

It was more of a gasp than a shout, but it caught his attention and he lifted his head again. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing wrong ... your turn ... get up here ... just let me ... catch breath."

He hesitated for a long moment, then pushed up from between her thighs and scrambled up the bed to lie down beside her. "As you wish." His chuckles turned to laughter for a moment when she turned to look at him, confused, but he just said, "Take as long as you need."

Toshiko nodded and closed her eyes as she worked to bring her breathing under control, twitching as unseen lips captured one of her crinkled-tight nipples. She worked her arm out from underneath him to run her fingers through his hair as her breathing eased ... though that wasn't helped when his hand found her other breast. Finally, when her breathing started to speed up instead of slow down and she began to squirm under his attentions, she gently pushed him away. "On your back, my turn to do the work."

"Fair enough." Win rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head, his stiffened cock jutting up with a gleam of pre-cum shining at its tip. He grinned up at her as she pushed herself up. "Do your worst."

Toshiko found herself grinning back. "Not a chance, you get nothing but my best." Such as it is, she thought, remembering Ranma's first time on any number of katas before he'd gotten a solid grounding in multiple styles to provide a foundation for any style she could imagine. Though there couldn't be anything like that kind of variety for her newest 'style' ... could there? Stacy's book made it seem simple enough, but he'd never tried learning a new style from a book... So let's find out.

She scooted down a bit and swung one leg over Win to kneel straddling his hips as she braced herself on her arms. Reaching down to grasp his cock, she found herself moaning as she rubbed its tip between her nether lips before taking a deep breath and guiding it to the entrance to her sheath. She began to sink slowly, hissing faintly at the sensation of the steel-solid rod spreading wide her sheath's wet walls as it pushed deeper and deeper until she could feel his pubic hair tickling her clean-shaven pubic mound. This time, though she felt like the intrusion ought to feel like it was trying to split her apart like it did in the shower, this time it didn't hurt. Stacy's gift had said it likely wouldn't, if he wasn't too big and she was careful, but she hadn't been sure just what 'too big' or 'careful' meant.

She sat for a long moment, leaning forward braced on her arms, taking deep breaths, until she thought she was as adjusted to her well-filled sheath as she was going to get. Finally, she pushed herself upright and began to bounce.

At first her rise and fall was tentative, waiting for pain that didn't come. Instead, she found herself beginning to pant again as fresh pleasure grew with each lift-and-drop—even more than what her husband's lips and tongue had given her—and she grabbed her oscillating breasts to provide support as her bouncing became more energetic. She found herself beginning to waver as her rising pleasure swamped her senses, only to feel Win's hands on her hips providing support. Then he began to thrust up in time with her own motions, and her pants turned into moans in sync with the wet slapping of their colliding hips, then tiny shrieks.

Then even her husband's hands on her hips weren't enough, and she felt the hands rise up along her back and pull gently forward as he stopped his own thrusting for a moment. "This'll work better if you lie down, it would not be fun telling the hospital how you got a concussion if you dive head-first off the bed."

Toshiko felt her blush even through the heat that seemed to fill her sweat-slicked face (and body). "Yeah, ya aren't wrong," she managed to gasp out and let herself fall forward, catching herself on her outstretched arms. She shivered at the sensation of her nipples brushing against the hair on his chest as she rested for a few moments, shifted her legs into slightly better positions (shivering again as that also shifted the stiff cock filling her). Finally she resumed her rhythm, again losing herself in the pleasure that seemed to grow with each bounce, Win's hands stroking sweat-slicked skin from the swell of her breasts to her pistoning buttocks (distantly, she wondered why she was sweating so much—sex wasn't that physically demanding), until like in the shower that steel shaft she was impaling herself on seemed to stretch her even more before exploding. Only this time she exploded with it, each pulse splashing against her womb seeming to set off fireworks behind her eyes.

And this time, she wasn't able to bite back the shriek as she collapsed on top of him.

When she came back to herself, still lying on Win's chest, feeling the vibrations of his soft laughter, her face against the crook of his neck, she hoped her burning cheeks didn't raise blisters.

"So, better this time?" he murmured when his laughter died down.

"Mhmm." Toshiko gathered her returning energy and rolled off him, his softening cock pulling free of her sheath. She could feel her husband's seed oozing down between her butt cheeks onto the sheet under them. "Come on, let's grab a shower and get the sheets changed then get to bed—sleep. I'll do laundry tomorrow. But we're doing this again ... at least once a week."

"Except during your period."

"Yeah, except then." She could feel her cheeks heating up again.

"As you wish." He chuckled again, making Toshiko wonder just what he found so amusing about that phrase, it seemed innocent enough. Something to ask Mercedes about at school. "C'mon, in the shower while I change the sheets."

/\

Win chuckled drowsily as he drifted off to sleep. After Toshiko had come out of her second shower muttering about a test in the morning and what had she been thinking, she'd hopped into bed without a hint of her previous stiffness and faded off to sleep ... it seemed that whatever else might come of his wife's insistence on meeting her marriage bed 'duties', at least one good thing had come out of it.

He hoped it lasted.