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

Toshiko focused on the blue-white ball of ki floating above the cupped palm she held close to her baby bump (she thought she could feel the beginning of a baby bump, maybe even see it) as Mercedes finished the last touches on a complicated circle she'd drawn around the redhead. At least, it looked complicated to Toshiko, by what did she know?

They were in the center of the Bakers' kitchen/dining room, the table that usually occupied that space leaning up against the counter with the sinks and covering the window. Toshiko was standing very, very still—even with the table out of the way there wasn't room for a large circle, so Mercedes needed to make it as tight as she could. Good thing Toshiko was wearing jeans and a t-shirt this evening.

"You sure this isn't going to set off any alarms with whoever's watching you?" she asked again—well, strictly speaking for the first time, but the third time she'd asked something similar. She could understand Mercedes' desire to learn more about how ki worked and how it interacted with her magic, she wanted to know herself. But from what her friend had said, she and her mother were badly exposed, flying under the radar by hiding just what a tasty morsel Mercedes was.

Toshiko didn't want to lose her first real friend in too long if they had to run back to the States because they'd sent up some kind of magical flare.

"It's fine," Ms. Baker absentmindedly assured her, the Air Force Sergeant and practicing witch on hand and knees as she carefully scrutinized her daughter's work, comparing it to a note pad in the hand she wasn't using to hold herself off the floor. "We're just seeing if we can passively sense your ki, there won't be any more magic in this than your average teenager slumber party playing with a Ouija board, just better directed. Mercy, this is good work. I've never seen this particular combination, but it's well thought out." (Toshiko had accidentally shortened 'Mercedes' to 'Mercy' at one of the swim club's meetings and everyone had happily adopted it, including her mother when she heard Toshiko use it during one of her many visits—Ms. Baker privately mentioned to Toshiko, with a wink, that her daughter had been called that when she was little but had decided when she was nine that she wanted an 'adult' name; apparently, she'd changed her mind.)

Mercedes sat back on her heels and gusted out a breath. Pretending she wasn't blushing at her mother's praise, she said, "I'm surprised we haven't encountered any ki masters in the U.S. before, what with all the Asians that have immigrated, but now that we know you guys exist we really need to at least be able to notice you when you're around. Now cut the ki, I need to close the circle."

Toshiko relaxed her concentration and dropped her hand as the floating ball of ki vanished. She was glad that was done, while keeping her ki manifested that long hadn't been tiring, it had been boring—even worse than schoolwork. But they were almost done ... when they would get to the schoolwork, darn it.

All in all not one of their more interesting evenings, Toshiko definitely preferred the weekly afternoons when the pair would join Stacy to drop by the base's gym (for adults so the kids at school wouldn't know about it, Win had pulled some strings) and she'd train Mercedes and Stacy in the fundamentals of her Art. As Mercedes had pointed out when she's asked for the lessons, their little adventure with the ice worms might have been a little early for her, but was unlikely to be the most exciting adventure of her future career as a Guardian and she'd be a fool to pass up the chance to train with a Master of the Martial Arts (even if Toshiko wasn't yet, officially). Stacy just wanted to stay fit and learn to "protect myself from the drunks." (Not that what the fighter pilot had learned in boot camp wasn't enough for that.) And it wasn't as if there was any risk of either injuring her during what Toshiko generously called their spars—or more importantly, her baby.

For that matter, there probably wouldn't have been any risk if Toshiko had been really sparring, with the Marines that watched them approvingly and occasionally shouted advice—they were very good for civilians, but they just weren't in Toshiko's class.

Then Mercedes rose to her feet and stepped back. Her mother shifted around the circle to look over the last of her daughter's work, then rose as well and joined her, handing her the note pad. "Everything looks good, my turn." (She'd insisted that she be the one to activate the circle, that way if anyone did notice, it would be her 'signature' on the casting rather than her daughter's. Not that they expected anyone to notice, not with Japan's onmyoji guarding the base.) Closing her eyes, she spread her arms began to chant in a language that Toshiko didn't recognize.

At first, Toshiko didn't feel anything. Then she began to sense the same thing as the athame she had noticed the first time she'd visited Mercedes' apartment, only all around her, seeming to rise higher and higher until it met above her head and pressed in until she felt like she was coated in a film of magic.

At that point Mercedes nodded to her, she lifted her hand, summoned again the blue-white ball of ki—and everything went to hell. The film of magic 'coating' her seemed to turn into millions of tiny hooks digging into her from all sides, and she barely had time to shout, "Cover your eyes!" as she slapped her hands over her own eyes, and the world went white through her hands.

A moment later it was over. Her hands dropped to her sides as she swayed in place, blinking, what she could see of the kitchen through the afterimage glow seeming to tilt and turn. Mercedes caught her as she collapsed and managed to lower her down to lie on the floor. "What happened?" Toshiko managed to gasp out.

"I don't know!" Mercedes wailed. "It shouldn't have done that! Are you okay? Is the baby okay!?"

"We're fine," Toshiko assured her. She lifted a hand and stared at the way it shook. "I just lost my ki reserves, all of it, all at once."

"You ... but why ... oh, crap! Mama, check the circle. I think I used the symbols for banishment instead of detection."

"You— Give me a moment, until my vision clears. Help Toshiko over to the couch."

With Mercedes' help Toshiko managed to stand up and stagger out of the kitchen into the living room. She could not believe how weak she felt! I must'a been unconsciously living off'a my ki reserves all this time. She was going to have to change that, and not just in her workouts—life was not going to be fun until she got used to doing without.

/\

Toshiko shrugged off the gentle shake of her shoulder. "Jus' a few more minutes, Win..."

The laugh that statement caused had her eyes blinking open—the tone was too high for her husband... Then Mercedes' grinning face came into focus, and she remembered the botched ritual. "Come on, sleepy head, you've been napping for an hour and we have some schoolwork to finish up before you head home."

Reluctantly sitting up on the couch, the blanket draped across her sliding down to her legs, Toshiko yawned and rolled her shoulders. She still felt weak—she knew from previous experience draining her ki to the dregs that it would take days for her reserves to recover—but at least she didn't feel shaky anymore. "So what happened?" She realized she'd spoken in Japanese and repeated it in English for Ms. Baker's benefit.

Now it was Mercedes' turn to blush, her grin vanishing. "I screwed up, badly. Like I said, I don't know of anything that detects ki, neither does Mama, but I thought I could modify a ritual we use to tell whether a supernatural apparition is an actual haunting or an echo—only I pulled the circle I modified from the wrong page, the one for banishing a haunting. We're lucky your ki reserve must be separate from you somehow, or I could have ripped your life away. I almost killed you!"

Now tears were streaming down her face, and Toshiko had to fight down the panic that she—he, really—usually felt when girls cry. What would Kasumi so? (She certainly wasn't going to wonder what the Tomboy would do, and definitely not Nabiki!) The answer to her question was obvious, and she stood and pulled her friend into a hug, murmuring in her ear, "But you didn't, I'll be fine. I wasn't in any danger, a Martial Artist has ta choose ta use his own life to power techniques and usually doesn't—any techniques needed for a situation that bad usually take more ki than yer own life can provide. And now I know how much I've been leaning on my ki just to get along, I'll need to fix that. You've helped, really."

Mercedes shook her head, her hair brushing across Toshiko's face, but Toshiko just tightened her embrace and after a moment Mercedes sighed and relaxed, finally returning the hug. The pair simply stood there for a few minutes, until she reluctantly broke the hug. "Thank you. Now we really do have some schoolwork that can't wait."

As the pair grabbed up the backpacks full of schoolbooks that has been sitting by the couch and headed for the kitchen, Mercedes said, "By the way, some of the girls on the swim team wanted to throw you a surprise baby shower, but Paige pointed out that your husband might have family coming to visit that would want to be there. Do you?"

"I don't know. What's a baby shower?"

"A party for an expectant mother, where family and friends give gifts for the baby. It's a way to get the mother a bunch of what she needs for the baby. Do you do that in Japan?"

Toshiko shrugged. "No idea. I'll ask Win anyone's coming to visit." Now that she thought about it, her husband had never talked about his family. Not that she'd ever asked... She plunked her backpack down on the kitchen table now returned to its proper place. "What's first?"

"Algebra." Mercedes laughed at Toshiko's groan.

Mock-glaring at her friend, Toshiko sat down and dug through her backpack for her algebra textbook, then paused. There was one other issue she really needed to bring up, and she'd been putting it off long enough. Suck it up, Ran—Toshiko. She took a deep breath. "Mercy?"

Her friend looked up from getting her own textbook. "Oooh, that's a serious face, what's up?"

Switching to Japanese, Toshiko said, "Could you stop teasing me? Stop ... hitting on me? I don't care myself, it's actually kind'a nice. But I've heard some'a the other girls commenting on it."

Her friend sobered at the change in languages, and even moreso at Toshiko's reversion to what Mercedes had taken to calling hillbilly Japanese. (She'd actually pulled up some episodes of 'Beverly Hillbillies', it had been a long time since Toshiko had laughed that hard over something that silly.) "Why do you care about what the girls say about me? They all know I'm a lesbian, now that Joshua's gone most of them don't care."

"They ... uh ... they haven't been commentin' on you ... at least, not just on you." Toshiko could feel her cheeks heating, and had to struggle not to drop her gaze. "They've been commentin' on how I've been reactin' to it. Uh ... it's not just been commentin'—commenting—it's been advice on how not ta get the same reputation as you."

" 'Reputation'?" Mercedes repeated.

"As a lesbian."

"What!? But you said you're straight!"

Toshiko shook her head. "No, I said I'm married. I ... uh ..." Her cheeks were combusting. "I admire Win the same way I admire a tiger—he's fit, and he's dangerous with the right tools"—(strapped into a multi-million dollar war machine)—"and great in bed, but he doesn't—how did Helen put it?—just looking at him doesn't 'rev my engine'." Though thinking about what her husband could do with that body—fingers, tongue ... pistoning cock ... Her cheeks were so hot, she wondered if it was actually possible to faint from embarrassment.

"And my teasing has been 'revving your engine'."

" ... Yeah."

"And some of the girls have noticed."

"Yeah."

Mercedes gazed at her for a long moment, then ostentatiously pouted. "They're spoiling all my fun." Then when Toshiko found herself giggling (from relief as much as anything else), the pout transformed into a wicked grin. "So I'll just have to find something else to tease you about." Toshiko's giggles died an abrupt death as her eyes widened, and Mercedes broke into her own giggles. "Come on, let's get to the quadratics."

Toshiko eyed her friend suspiciously for a moment, before nodding. "Right, let's get it over with." She was happy to drop her gaze to her textbook as her cheeks slowly cooled.

So she didn't notice the way Mercedes' smile turned wistful for a moment before returning to its usual impish edge.

/oOo\

Lying cuddled up against her husband in their bed, Toshiko swore her insides were still quivering from their shower. Since the night she'd told Win about her pregnancy the pair had taken to having all their evening showers together, and while most nights those showers didn't go beyond the occasional kiss and caress as they washed each other, tonight had not been one of those nights.

At least all the shower sex cut down on the laundry, the number of sheets they'd have to wash without it ...

Normally a bout of shower sex would have both of them quickly drifting off to sleep, but Toshiko remembered Mercedes' question about the baby shower and pushed away from her husband as she twisted to face him. "Win?"

"Hmmm?"

His response was sleepy, and Toshiko hesitated. She couldn't really see Win's expression in what faint light was coming through the bedroom's window shades, see whether he was really paying attention or even really awake, but she finally soldiered on. "Mercy says the swim club wants to throw a baby shower and was wondering if any family would be visiting. I never asked and you've never said, do you ... do we have any family?"

Win was silent for a long moment, before he reached out to pull her against him with a sigh. "No one will be visiting. We have a home, friends I've told about you, but my friends can't afford to hop a plane to Japan, my parents are dead, and my brother ... moved to New York and tries to pretend he never lived in Idaho, much less grew up there. We haven't spoken since our parents' funeral—he was not happy that the ranch had been left to me and that I had no intention of selling it."

"Oh ... I ..." Toshiko scrambled for something to say, but all she could come up with was, "I'm sorry."

Win sighed and reached out to pull her against him, let her turn back around. "Don't be. Darryl has made his own choices and seems to be happy with them, and for the rest ... that's the price we pay for being survivors—we're the ones mourning at others' graves, not the other way around. Let me know when the baby shower is."

"You want to be there?"

She felt his chuckle rumble in his chest. "Good God, no! David's been talking about another night out now that you seem to be settled in. I'll let Stacy decide whether she prefers to deal with drunks hitting on her or squealing teenage girls."

Toshiko giggled. "Yeah, like there's a question. I'd rather join you for your night out, but Mercy says the guest of honor can't duck out."

She shivered at his warm breath on her neck when he chuckled again, and the pair drifted off to sleep.

Author's Note:Mercedes' new nickname came from DrYuriMom, thanks much!